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India's largest inland salt lake, a shimmering playa on the edge of the Thar.

Sambhar is a shallow saline playa in a closed basin among the worn Aravalli hills. Seasonal streams carry in dissolved salts that have nowhere to drain; the water evaporates in the desert heat and leaves great crusts of common salt behind.

Worked for salt since ancient times, it is also a Ramsar wetland where thousands of flamingos gather when the monsoon briefly floods the flats.

Sources

• Ramsar Convention

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.