IIT Lake (Waterbodies of Chennai - 51)

IIT Campus in Chennai is a small town within the city with a lot of greenery. Some of the city's oldest and biggest trees are on this campus. It is unimaginable to find such a vast area with so many avenues in the heart of this congested city.

One of the best things about this beautiful site is the lake. This lake which occupies an area of around 8 acres, is the temporary home for many migratory birds. The site which has the slightest human disturbance obviously attracts the birds. The waterbody is surrounded by thick forests on both sides. It also has a canal as an extension.

It is definitely one of the best lakes in the city. However, it has its share of a sad old story. The lake initially extended up to 130 acres. When IIT was formed in 1959, it shrunk to its current size. More than 90% of the lake had been lost.

Happy travelling.

Note: As per a report, there were about 650+ waterbodies in the Chennai region till the 1980s. Today, only a fraction of them exist. And most of those surviving waterbodies hardly have water, and even some of them that have water have been poorly shrunk. In Chennai, there are tank roads without tanks nearby and lake-view roads without lakes. There is a high possibility that even the few waterbodies we have today might vanish soon. I decided to visit the currently surviving waterbodies of Chennai and its suburbs and write about them in my blog as a series.