BharatSangraha

Punjab Doabs · Upper Indus–Gangetic Plain

Terrain and eco-zones

Semi-arid in the south-west and sub-humid at the Shivalik foot, with rainfall falling off sharply from north-east to south-west — over a thousand millimetres near the hills, under four hundred around Bathinda. Summers reach 45 °C and winter nights near the hills touch freezing, and the wide annual range is the reason the plain grows wheat well. The decisive rain is not the monsoon but the winter shower brought by western disturbances in January and February, which arrives exactly when the wheat crop needs it; without it the crop depends entirely on pumped groundwater. December and January fog closes roads, delays flights and is severe enough to be a recurring cause of highway accidents.

Landforms

Flat, deep Indo-Gangetic alluvium with almost no relief — the fall across a hundred kilometres is a few metresBet — the low, sandy, flood-liable strip immediately along each river, farmed differently from the uplandsBangar — the older, higher alluvial plain between the bets, which is what a doab mostly consists ofKandi — the gravelly, water-scarce piedmont strip under the Shivaliks in Hoshiarpur, Rupnagar and UnaChoe — seasonal Shivalik torrents that carry sand and stone out onto the kandi and destroy fields when they runSandy tracts and old dune fields in the south-west, towards Muktsar, Mansa and the Rajasthan edgeThe Ghaggar's shallow floodplain, a river that no longer reaches the sea and floods badly when it fills

Rivers and waters

Sutlej — the longest of the five and the region's defining river, separating Malwa from Doaba, dammed at BhakraBeas — between Doaba and Majha, and the only one of the eastern rivers still undammed along much of its courseRavi — the Majha boundary, and the river the 1947 line broadly follows in the northGhaggar — a seasonal river that dies in the desert, and along whose dry bed the Harappan sites clusterChenab and Jhelum — the two western rivers of the historic five, now entirely in PakistanSirhind, Upper Bari Doab and Bhakra main canals — not rivers, but they carry more water to more fields than the rivers now do

Through the year

SeasonMonthsTypicalWhat it is like
SardiNovember–February1–22 °CWheat is sown in November and grows through the cold. Mustard greens are cut from December, which is the only reason saag is a winter dish, and pinni and gur come out of storage. This is the wedding season.
Basant and BaharFebruary–March10–30 °CMustard flowers, kites are flown at Basant, and the wheat fills. Hola Mohalla at Anandpur Sahib falls at the end of it.
GarmiApril–June25–46 °CWheat is harvested in April, Vaisakhi marks it, and the plain then bakes. Paddy transplanting is legally held back until the second half of June so it coincides with the monsoon rather than running on pumped water.
BarsatJuly–September27–38 °CThe monsoon is unreliable here and mostly matters for paddy and for recharge. Heavy years flood the bets and the Ghaggar; light years are made up out of the aquifer.
Post-monsoonOctober18–34 °CPaddy harvest, the stubble-burning weeks, and the short window between clearing one crop and sowing the next that makes burning attractive in the first place.

Best time to visitOctober to March. November for the Guru Nanak Gurpurab at Amritsar, mid-January for Lohri and Maghi, March for Hola Mohalla at Anandpur Sahib, and mid-April for Vaisakhi and the wheat harvest. Avoid the deep fog weeks of late December and early January if you are driving.

The climate, landforms, rivers and seasons of Punjab Doabs, and the best time of year to visit. (5)