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India's only mud volcanoes — cones of cool grey mud bubbling up along the Andaman subduction zone.

Baratang has India’s only mud volcanoes — low cones and pools of cool grey mud that bubble, gurgle and now and then erupt, known locally as jalki. Despite the name they are not igneous: gas- and water-charged mud is squeezed upward along faults from deep, over-pressured sediments, with no molten rock involved.

That plumbing is a by-product of the Andaman subduction zone, where the Indian Plate dives beneath the Burma Plate and scrapes off a thick, water-logged accretionary wedge of sediment. The same tectonic setting raised the islands and fuels the molten volcanism of nearby Barren Island — mud here, magma there.

Sources

• Geological Survey of India

A short reference note: this summary draws on third-party sources such as the Geological Survey of India and Wikipedia. In time I plan to give every geological feature its own learning-oriented write-up — with custom diagrams, graphs, and study pointers — as I’ve already done for the 11 locations that have an Instagram reel.