Rajasthan Mixed Quiz: Set 4

Where the Chambal runs through the soft alluvium of Dholpur, Karauli and Sawai Madhopur, the monsoon run-off cuts deep channels that widen year after year into the badlands called bihad, taking farmland out of use and giving the area its old reputation as a hiding place for outlaws.

It lies in the extreme west of the state, farthest from both branches of the south-west monsoon, and parts of the district record under 200 millimetres a year, which is why the sand dunes there are the largest and the most mobile in Rajasthan.

Keoladeo Ghana at Bharatpur was added to the Ramsar list in 1981 and Sambhar Lake, the large saline lake spread across Jaipur and Nagaur districts and a major source of salt, was added in 1990; both are also important bird habitats, Sambhar drawing flamingos in the wet season.

Keoladeo National Park lies at Bharatpur in eastern Rajasthan. It began as a duck shooting reserve created by Maharaja Suraj Mal of Bharatpur, who built the Ajan Bandh whose waters still flood the shallow marshes, was declared a bird sanctuary and later a national park, entered the Ramsar list in…

Mustard is the great rabi oilseed of Rajasthan, sown in October and November across Bharatpur, Alwar, Sawai Madhopur, Tonk and the canal districts of the north-west, and the state harvests more of it than any other.

The canal, originally called the Rajasthan Canal and renamed after Indira Gandhi, begins at the Harike barrage in Punjab, built just below the point where the Beas joins the Sutlej, and carries water about 649 kilometres through Sri Ganganagar, Hanumangarh, Bikaner and Jaisalmer.

Although the Indira Gandhi Canal and the Chambal canals are the famous works of the state, they water only a part of it.

The lake spreads over the districts of Jaipur, Nagaur and Ajmer, is fed by the Mendha, Rupangarh, Khari and Khandel streams, has been worked for salt for centuries and was declared a Ramsar site in 1990, drawing flamingos in winter.

These, with the Sambhar basin, are the inland basins of Rajasthan: the streams that reach them have no outlet to the sea, so the water evaporates and leaves its salts behind, and the same salt is worked commercially at Sambhar, Didwana and Pachpadra.

Rajasthan has an international boundary with Pakistan about 1,070 kilometres long, the longest held by any Indian state, and Jaisalmer accounts for the greatest part of it, roughly 464 kilometres.

At Khejarli in Jodhpur district in 1730, when men sent by the state began felling khejri trees for lime kilns, Amrita Devi Bishnoi embraced a tree and was killed, and hundreds of Bishnoi men, women and children died in the same way; the Bishnoi faith, founded by Guru Jambheshwar, forbids…

These are the showers of December to February, brought by western disturbances that travel from the Mediterranean across Iran and Pakistan into north-western India, and they are valued because they water the standing rabi crops of wheat, gram, barley and mustard without any cost to the farmer.

The district lies in the extreme north-west, where the Gang Canal, opened in the colonial period, and later the Indira Gandhi Canal brought Sutlej and Beas water into country that had been desert.

Sariska lies in the Aravalli hills of Alwar district. It was notified a wildlife sanctuary in 1955 and brought under Project Tiger in 1978, and it earned a place in every exam list when tigers were flown in and released here after the reserve lost its tigers, the first such…

It stands in Punjab just below the point where the Beas joins the Sutlej, so it can command the combined flow of the two rivers.

A barchan is a crescent-shaped dune with a gentle windward slope and a steep slip face, its two horns pointing downwind, and it migrates as sand is carried over the crest.

It is the highest part of the Aravalli range and the only hill station of Rajasthan, so the monsoon winds are forced to rise over it and it receives well over a thousand millimetres a year, far more than anywhere else in the state.

The Kumbhalgarh sanctuary, spread over Rajsamand, Pali and Udaipur districts around the Kumbhalgarh fort, is counted among the better habitats of the Indian wolf in the state and also shelters leopard, sloth bear, four-horned antelope and the Indian wolf prey base of smaller animals.

The Chokla sheep is reared in Churu, Sikar and Jhunjhunu in the Shekhawati region of Rajasthan.

The project was planned by the engineer Kanwar Sain in 1948 under that name, the foundation stone was laid on 31 March 1958, and the canal was renamed the Indira Gandhi Canal in 1984.