Little Rann Of Kutch

Of Flamingo Dawns and Wild Asses on the Rann.

Rosy fingers lazily pierce through the opalescent pre-dawn mists seeking out the peachy hued roiling mass of flamingoes fighting for space in the waters of the wetlands, foraging for a delicious breakfast of prawns, plankton and other crustacean dainties along the coastal spaces of the Little Rann of Kutch. Mirage-like in the distance, speeding like an untethered wind across the Rann, two Asiatic wild asses head for the scraggly bushes skirting the salt pans in search of their morning feed…

Gujarat’s Rann, the world’s biggest salt desert, can be seen as an ecotone—a kind of transitional expanse between marine and terrestrial ecosystems. This desolate wasteland is rich in bio-diversity and, at a first glance bleak though it is, supports a diverse range of wildlife and a host of many local and migratory water birds.

The forbidding 4,953sqkm sprawl of the Little Rann of Kutch (part of the greater expanse of the Great Rann of Kutch) falls in the Rann of Kutch Seasonal Salt Marsh bio-geographic zone, rimming the coastal terrain of the Arabian Sea. To the northwest lies the Kutch Desert Wildlife Sanctuary, spread over 7505sqkm of the Great Rann. A greater part of Little Rann of Kutch (LRK) is just mud flats covered in a layer of salt-crystals—An awesome, wilderness bereft of any vegetation except for that confined to its rim and the bets—a collection of hilly elevations transformed into life-giving islands rising from the desert floor in the seasonal rains.