How It All Started - Stand-Up Paddle Board Expedition in Chennai's Great Salt Lake

iFrom 2014, I started surfing and then Stand-Up Paddling, and every time I had to go to Bay of Life at Kovalam, I would cross this lake. The Great Salt Lake. From a distance, it would be beautiful, flanked by Mangroves both left and right, and wetland birds flying over it, and the urge to explore it kept growing. Although it is much smaller than its well-known counterpart in the United States, this lake is quite significant for the geography of Chennai and North Tamilnadu.

The Great Salt Lake is a natural water system that has formed over the course of millions of years. All of South Chennai’s waters from Pallikarani marshlands to OMR collect into this backwaters and drain into the Bay of Bengal via Muttukadu. It is like a sponge, ensuring absorbing all water from land before letting the excess waters go to the sea. However, such an important structure was ruined by rapid urbanization in the last 30 years. It is fed by the Buckingham Canal and the Kovalam estuary, and spreads over 5000 acres before it drains back into the Buckingham Canal. The Great Salt Lake is a part of the Kovalam basin. I would later go on to paddle across the oceans and rivers, but it all began in an unassuming salty marshland.

Chennai has 17 river basins and around 127 sub river basins of 4955 square kilometers of watershed area. Kovalam got two sub basins. No other metro (including its suburbs) has this much fresh water bodies system like Chennai. In South Chennai and suburbs we have one Kovalam water basin which in turns divided into two sub basins - Pallikaranai and Edaiyur. Edaiyur is almost intact when compared to Pallikaranai sub basin.

Water bodies of Chennai, 1814

There are 125 rivers in Tamil Nadu alone. This is just the number of rivers. In Tamil, there is a name for each type of water body. Pond, tank, lake, sea, river, stream, canal, etc.  However, are all in good shape? Despite the hydrology of Chennai supporting an abundance of water, we still face water scarcity because of our geographical dependency on the Northeast monsoon. The Nemmeli Desalination Plant aims to convert saline water into freshwater, but at a huge environmental cost – they might provide an illusion of short-term success but are long term ecological disasters. With deepening of existing lakes to 1.5m and 100mm rainfall we have capacity to replace Nemmeli desalination plant which supports 42 percent of the Chennai water supply. What we need is not desalination, but desilting.

Vintage photos of Chennai's Lakes

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Coming back to the Great Salt Lake, I had paddled in this lake earlier, but that was more of a casual paddle, and I intended this to be a proper expedition. That meant this would be my first attempt to explore unknown unexplored places on Stand-Up Paddle Board. There were lots of challenges: the route was not clear, and it not a well-explored area so we did not know much about it.

On April 5^th, 2015, Selvam and I set off on an expedition to the Great Salt Lake, Chennai. Selvam worked as swimming rescue personnel at the Taj hotels. After doing my Limca record, Selvam and I became a good team. He was an expert in the open seas, but was still new to an expedition of this sorts. He was a good support to me, becoming a partner in my records.

This area was within an island. A bridge would connect OMR to the island, and again to Kovalam. We launched near the bridge next to Bay of Life, atop the expedition paddleboards. There were a few rocks, fully white in colour, later we understood it to be the pelican guano deposits. We applied sunscreen all over our exposed skin, which made us resemble cricket players playing test matches on hot summer afternoons.

The starting point had an unmistaken stench of sewage. We started from the canal and entered the bridge. We took a right from the Muttukadu boat house. The tide was high, and the waters were much better as compared to the starting point. However, 100 meters to the right of the boathouse, the waters were polluted and we could see a thick sludge on the surface.

We heard a gunshot of a guy trying to shoot storks. We immediately charged towards him and shouted at him for his act, and he ran away. We could see the pollution that was detrimental to the wetland ecosystem, and the unchecked poaching even in the city scape was alarming.

Selvam was guiding me from the front as I followed him. He shared a little bit of Tirupathi prasadam with me, but I couldn’t eat anything in the stench. The mix of heat, humidity, sweat, and sunscreen did not sit well with my body and began conspiring against me, melting down as the expedition progressed. We kept on paddling, crossing Hiranandani apartments. Although the scenery was picturesque, we could not tolerate the stench emanating from the waters.

Our aim was to go as far as we could, even as far as Tiruvanmiyur. However, the water body was densely encroached by water hyacinths and we couldn’t move any further. After Hiranandani we took a right to enter a canal, but the pollution and sludge was even worse. We passed by a large garbage dump which made even breathing difficult. Unable to proceed, we pulled out.

This was a very short expedition, but a very impactful one. I intended to expand the reach of SUP to the general public by teaching Stand-Up Paddling in this lake, but I was heavily disappointed by its state. I later on went to explore lakes in the suburbs of Chengalpattu and Kancheepuram, and the reason for that was this expedition.

The lake was heavily polluted and encroached by invasive species, and I honestly stood helpless at that point. That’s where my strong conviction for advocacy started. I wanted to spread the word, and thus contacted lots of newspapers. Soon, my article was published in Times of India.

It all started with me wishing to connect people with freshwater bodies through water sports, and when presented with the stark reality of the water bodies, the seeds of advocacy and activism awoke within me. Advocacy without action is just words, and thus Paddle for Future was born - to preserve water bodies for a sustainable future.