Famous Lakes in India

Here is a list of the top 24 famous lakes in India that you must visit to experience the country's breathtaking natural beauty, serene landscapes, and unique cultural surroundings.

Dal Lake
Lake in Srinagar
Nicknamed "Srinagar's Jewel," Dal Lake can be found in the Jammu and Kashmir region of India. With 8 square miles of water and wetlands, Dal Lake attracts locals and visitors during the warmer months. Plan a relaxing time on Dal Lake as you explore the floating gardens, colorful boats and more. Describing the Lake's Features Dal Lake has an unusual, curved shape, which can be further divided into three distinct bodies of water. Although a fourth area is also considered part of D...
Ashtamudi Lake
Lake in Kollam
The backwaters of Kerala get all the postcards, but Ashtamudi is the one that actually rewards your time. Eight arms of brackish water fan out from a central basin — "Ashtamudi" means "eight-braided" in Malayalam — reaching into coconut groves, fishing villages, and the edges of Kollam town. It's the second-largest wetland ecosystem in Kerala, and unlike its more famous cousin in Alappuzha, it hasn't been turned into a houseboat traffic jam. You'll see working fishermen casting Chinese nets a...
Beas Kund
Lake in Manali
At roughly 3,700 metres, where the grass gives up and the rock takes over, a small glacial pool sits ringed by the Pir Panjal peaks. This is Beas Kund — the source of the Beas River, one of the five great rivers of Punjab, and according to Hindu belief, the spot where the sage Vyas once bathed. It isn't pretty in the postcard sense. There are no pine-fringed shores, no reflections of snowy summits arranged for your camera. What you get instead is something stranger and more honest: a shallow...
Bhimtal Lake
Lake in Nainital
About twenty kilometers southeast of Nainital, a larger and considerably quieter lake spreads across a valley floor that most tourists drive straight past. Bhimtal Lake covers roughly 47 hectares — the biggest lake in the Kumaon region — yet it draws a fraction of the crowds that swarm its famous neighbor. This is precisely its appeal. The water sits at about 1,370 meters, cool enough to blunt a North Indian summer but low enough to remain accessible year-round. At its center, a small island...
Bhrigu Lake
Lake in Manali
At 14,100 feet, the air bites your lungs with each breath — and you couldn't care less. Not when that impossible sheet of turquoise water lies before you, cradled by snow-dusted peaks that seem close enough to touch. This is Bhrigu Lake, a glacial jewel tucked into the mountains of Himachal Pradesh's Kullu district, and one of the most rewarding treks you'll find anywhere near Manali. Named after the revered Hindu sage Rishi Bhrigu, this sacred alpine lake carries thousands of years of...
Chamera Lake
Lake in Dalhousie
Chamera Lake didn't exist before 1994. That fact stops people mid-sentence. What reads as a natural feature of the Chamba Valley — a wide reservoir of deep blue-green water pressed between deodar-covered hills — is actually a byproduct of the Chamera Dam, thrown across the River Ravi to generate hydroelectric power. The dam created the reservoir, and the reservoir, almost as an afterthought, created one of the few genuine reasons to linger near Dalhousie instead of treating it as a waypoint t...
Dal Lake
Lake in Mcleod Ganj
Say "Dal Lake" to most travelers and their minds drift to Srinagar, to houseboats and shikaras gliding through Mughal reflections. This is not that Dal Lake. The one at McLeod Ganj sits at roughly 1,775 meters above sea level, measures barely half a kilometer across, and has no houseboats, no flower sellers, no postcard industry built around it. What it has instead is stillness — the kind that settles into your shoulders after a steep walk through deodar cedars, the kind you don't realize you...
Gangabal Lake
Lake in Sonamarg
At roughly 11,500 feet above sea level, Gangabal Lake occupies a granite amphitheatre beneath the shoulders of Mount Harmukh, Kashmir's sacred peak. The water is so cold it aches against your skin, even in July. Fed entirely by glacial melt and snowfields that never fully retreat, the lake holds a particular shade of blue that photography consistently fails to render — somewhere between steel and sapphire, shifting with each cloud shadow and each brief interval of sun. This isn't a lake you s...
Karanji Lake
Lake in Mysore
A walk-through butterfly park attached to a lake in the middle of a city sounds like something conjured for children. But Karanji Lake in Mysore pulls it off with surprising grace, and without a trace of theme-park gaudiness. Spread across roughly 90 acres on the southeastern edge of the city, the lake sits in the shadow of the Chamundi Hills, its still waters reflecting the temple-crowned peak on calm mornings. What draws most people is the birdlife — pelicans, painted storks, cormorants, an...
Kareri Lake
Lake in Dharamshala
Located only 6 miles away from Dharamsala, Kareri Lake is a freshwater highlight in Northern India. At an elevation of about 9,600 feet, this lake is a popular place to hike to and around. As you plan a trip to the Kangra district in the state of Himachal Pradesh, consider Kareri Lake as a destination. Marveling at the Geography Kareri Lake is a high-elevation lake, which means it resides on a plateau between mountain peaks. During the warmer months, snow melts from nearby Manki...
Krishnasar Lake
Lake in Sonamarg
At roughly 12,000 feet above sea level, Krishnasar Lake occupies a high-altitude meadow above Sonamarg where the air turns thin enough to notice with every breath and sound behaves strangely — conversations drop to murmurs, footfalls land soft as whispers. The wind carries a metallic chill even in July. The water itself, glacial and impossibly clear, reflects the surrounding snowfields with such fidelity that the surface seems to vanish, leaving you staring into an inverted mountain range. Th...
Kundala Lake
Lake in Munnar
At roughly 1,700 metres above sea level, Kundala Lake occupies a shallow bowl of green hills about 20 kilometres from Munnar town. It's artificial — the product of a dam thrown across the Kundala River in the early twentieth century — and yet nothing about its appearance feels engineered. The water shifts between grey-green and slate blue depending on whether clouds have sunk into the valley or the sun has shouldered through. Most mornings, fog rolls across the surface so heavily that the ped...
Lake Pichola
Lake in Udaipur
Before the palaces came, before the white marble and the fairy-tale silhouettes that define Udaipur's skyline, there was just a man building a dam. In the late fourteenth century, a Banjara tribesman named Pichhu constructed an earthen dam across a natural depression to water his grain-carrying oxen. That modest act of irrigation became Lake Pichola — and when Maharana Udai Singh II arrived two centuries later and saw sunlight fracturing across its surface, he decided to build his entire capi...
Manasbal Lake
Lake in Srinagar
About thirty kilometers north of Srinagar, where the tourist traffic thins and the road narrows between walnut orchards, Manasbal Lake holds still. Not the stillness of emptiness — the stillness of a place so saturated with life that it seems to vibrate at a frequency just below hearing. Lotus flowers cover nearly a third of the lake's surface from July through September, their pink heads rising on thick stems above dinner-plate leaves so dense you could almost mistake them for solid ground....
Nainital Lake
Lake in Nainital
Most Indian hill stations exist because the British wanted to escape the heat. Nainital exists because a man saw a lake and lost his nerve to leave. In 1841, a sugar trader named P. Barron came upon this crescent of water held between seven hills in Uttarakhand's Kumaon region, and within a decade the British had raised an entire town around its shores. The lake didn't just attract a settlement — it became one. Even now, Nainital Lake isn't a feature you visit on the side. It's the town's cir...
Nakki Lake
Lake in Mount Abu
At roughly 1,220 metres above sea level, Nakki Lake occupies the geographic and emotional center of Rajasthan's only hill station — a state otherwise defined by sand, heat, and the relentless ambition of the Thar Desert. The water runs green, sometimes murky, ringed by granite boulders that look like they were abandoned mid-thought by a sculptor who wandered off. Hindu mythology holds that the gods clawed this lake into existence using only their nails — "nakh" in Hindi — as a hiding place fr...
Nigeen Lake
Lake in Srinagar
Everyone comes to Srinagar for Dal Lake. The postcards say so. The tour operators confirm it. And yet, barely a kilometer away, separated by a narrow causeway and a curtain of ancient chinars, Nigeen Lake sits in a stillness so complete you can hear a shikara paddle break water from a hundred meters off. Smaller, deeper, and far less commercialized than its famous neighbor, Nigeen is what Dal might have been without decades of tourist infrastructure pressing against its shores. The water here...
Pachpadra Lake
Lake in Jaisalmer
The first thing that hits you is the silence — vast, unbroken, almost sacred. Then your eyes adjust, and there it is: a shimmering expanse of saline water stretched across the Thar Desert floor like a secret the sand has been keeping for centuries. Pachpadra Lake, tucked near the town of Barmer in western Rajasthan, is nothing like the golden dune-scapes you'd expect from this corner of India. It's stranger, quieter, and far more captivating. A Lake That's Been Feeding India for Centur...
Pangong Lake
Lake in Leh Ladakh
At 14,270 feet above sea level, Pangong Lake doesn't greet you so much as confront you. After five hours on a bone-rattling road from Leh, winding over the Chang La pass where the air thins to the point of mild delirium, you round a final bend and the water appears — an impossible streak of blue cutting across a landscape otherwise devoid of life. No trees line its shore. No birds circle above in any great number. Just the lake, the mountains, and a silence so complete it becomes a sound of i...
Prashar Lake
Lake in Mandi
Located among the Kinnaur, Dhauladhar and Pir Panjal mountain ranges in Northern India, Prashar Lake is a natural wonder attracting travelers and Hindu followers year-round. With its oval shape, this freshwater lake offers gorgeous views, a trekking adventure and an ancient temple nearby. Discover Prashar Lake so that you can make it part of your Himalayan adventure. Exploring the Hindu Legend According to legend, the lake was created by Bhima after the Kurukshetra War. As the s...
Rewalsar Lake
Lake in Mandi
With a square-shaped shoreline, Rewalsar Lake can be found in Northern India's Himachal Pradesh at nearly 4,500 feet above sea level. Along the lake's perimeter, discover colorful buildings and dense vegetation as you wander this sacred area for Sikhs, Buddhists and Hindus. For your next vacation, add this mid-altitude lake to your itinerary for spiritual enrichment and meditative satisfaction. Understanding the Lake's Spiritual History The lake's history revolves around Guru Pa...
Sanjay Lake
Lake in East Delhi
Although Delhi is a densely populated metropolis, there's a refreshing body of water in the middle of everything. Named Sanjay Lake, this recreational space offers a relaxing environment for locals and visitors alike. Now, learn more about this narrow lake as you plan an itinerary for your next vacation. Taking in the History Technically, Sanjay Lake is a man-made lake. Although it resides in a natural, low-lying location, the lake was truly developed into a body of water by the...
Sukha Tal Lake
Lake in Nainital
Everyone who visits Nainital gravitates toward Naini Lake. They hire boats, crowd the Mall Road, and photograph the same crescent of water backed by the same ridge of mountains. Meanwhile, less than two kilometers away, Sukha Tal sits in relative quiet — a freshwater lake that once served as Nainital's primary drinking water source and now exists in a strange limbo between neglect and rediscovery. The water here is still, almost unnervingly so, reflecting the oak and pine forests that slope d...
Vishansar Lake
Lake in Sonamarg
At roughly 12,000 feet above sea level, Vishansar Lake doesn't give itself away easily. You won't drive up to it, snap a photo from a parking lot, and move on. The lake sits at the end of a demanding two-day trek from Sonamarg, through meadows that shift from emerald to gold depending on the month, past glacial streams cold enough to make your bones ache. When you finally crest the ridge and see that pale, ice-fed water stretched out beneath the Himalayan peaks, the exhaustion doesn't vanish...