This article is written by Bageshwer Singh, who walked along the River Beas in Punjab in February 2026. The walk was supported by Veditum as part of its Moving Upstream programme. This is the first part of a two-part series where he narrates his learnings and experiences of walking nearly 185-km over 12 days.
All photos used in this piece are by Bageshwer (unless specified otherwise)
Cover photo: Beas and the grasslands, near Harike Pattan where the river joins the Sutlej.
Introduction
Growing up in Jalandhar, I’d always wanted to see the Beas up close. Each time we crossed it on a bridge, I wondered where the river went. What lay on its banks and within its waters. I was always told it was unsafe to go down to the river. That curiosity stayed with me.
As I grew up, that curiosity only became stronger and more pressing. In 2023, I became involved in a rewilding project on the Beas floodplains, trying to restore native riverine grasslands. Even when I was in London, working as a nature educator taking school groups to the banks of the Thames and its tributaries, my mind would go back to Beas and the rivers of Punjab.
The river had an enigmatic allure. It was closest to where I grew up. It was also the last refuge of the Indus river dolphin in India. Yet, relatively little has been written about its floodplains and the communities that live with it. I wanted to do something, but for several years, I just didn’t know what.
In 2022, I was selected as a fellow for Veditum’s Moving Upstream: Sindh Fellowship. It fundamentally changed the way I understood rivers, and the possibilities of engaging with them. I realised that rivers unravel themselves only at walking pace, through their floodplains, wildlife and stories by its residents. As I walked the Sindh, the seeds of a walk along the Beas germinated within me.
For several months after, the contours of my dream, of my seemingly-impossibly ambitious idea took shape.
Beas is a 470-km long river originating from Beas Kund in Himachal Pradesh, the smallest of Punjab’s five rivers and the only one that both begins and ends within the present boundaries of India. After its rapid descent from the Himalayas, it is dammed at the foothills behind Pong Dam, after which it enters the Punjab plains near Pathankot. It snakes its way in these plains for another 180 km to meet the Sutlej upstream of Harike Barrage, where it forms the Harike wetland, a large marshy-lake replete with thousands of birds.
It was this 180-km stretch in Punjab, from Harike upstream to Pathankot that I wanted to walk. I intended to keep the journey small so that the focus remained on the river rather than worry about logistics. It did seem like no amount of planning was enough for the journey on foot. I had to carry everything I needed, I researched villages and the changing river channels.
In February 2026, after the annual World Wetlands Day event at Harike, I finally decided to start walking. I was joined by several friends, who helped enrich my understanding, experiences of the river and the expressions by which I could narrate my stories.
Dr. Sunny Sandhu, an environmental activist and artist based in southern France, joined during his visit to India for Beda Yatra, an annual gathering along the Beas that brings together artists, naturalists and local communities to reconnect with the river through music, conversations and boat journeys. I was also joined by Ankit Chhabra of Sanjhi Sikhia, an educational non-profit working in Punjab, and environmental researcher and planner Dimple Behal. They walked some stretches of the river with me, and I walked some alone.
The River meets its sordid reality
A few hundred metres upstream of the Harike Barrage, the Beas meets the Sutlej.
The Sutlej is dark and blackish in colour; the Beas, muddy and murky. The difference is stark. While Sutlej carries effluents from industries near Ludhiana, Beas is a relatively ‘cleaner’ river, with no big industries or large towns along its entire stretch.
The whole stretch of Beas in Punjab is a protected area, called the Beas Conservation Reserve. This 185-km long reserve is also a Ramsar site, that is, a wetland of international importance as declared under the Ramsar Convention, a 1971 global treaty of which India is a signatory. And this area immediately upstream of the Harike barrage is the Harike wetland, famed for its birds, and has been declared a Wildlife Sanctuary.
We started our walk from Gurudwara Nanaksar, situated in a nook between the barrage and the wetland. At the barrage, we crossed the river and walked upstream along the right banks of the river towards Harike village.
As we entered the village, situated on the boundary of the protected wetland, the sordid reality of rural India hit almost immediately. In the village, a solid waste management facility lay idle, its paint peeling off and its gates rusting. Villagers said the plant had been awaiting inauguration for over a year. Instead, waste was dumped on the roads and in the wetland. The smell of burning garbage pervaded the air. We could see waste everywhere, except in the waste management plant.
“For 50 years, we didn’t even have a Sarpanch who belonged to our village. The position usually went to politically influential people from neighbouring villages or their relatives, so Harike was never really part of the development agenda,” Gurdev Singh, a local resident, told us. “This is the first time our Sarpanch is from Harike, so we’re hopeful things will change.”
As we walked away from the village, the smell of burning waste slowly faded behind us. The congested houses of the village gave way to vast grasslands and sandy tibba (a stable form of sand dune). These landscapes are shaped over decades of flooding, shifting channels and sediment deposition.
Historically, one would have seen big mounds of sand and loam along the river. However, levelling of the landscape to make way for farms has cleared up most of these tibba.
Tibba and its ravines are a relatively uncommon but they are an ecosystem by themselves, hosting scrub vegetation with species such as Jand (Prosopis cineraria), Van (Salvadora oleoides), karir (Capparis decidua), Khair (Senegalia catechu), Maytenus along with several climbers and shrubs.
Memories of a bloody partition
From the Harike Barrage, the intertwined Beas and Sutlej flows into Pakistan, less than 20-km away. The river cares little for this political border. The Sutlej is the longest of the five rivers that give Punjab its name, and a majority of its course is within undivided Punjab. It meets the Chenab in the southern end of Pakistan’s Punjab.
In its journey, the river carries more than just water. It carries memories, scars, tears and joys of a region that is divided by a political border, but remains bound by a shared history, language and culture.
On the second morning on the walk, we sat in the courtyard of a home in Karmuwala village, listening to S. Ajaib Singh’s reminiscence about the sub-continent’s great tragedy: the Partition.
The trauma of the divide, which not only bifurcated India but also Punjab, continues to live on in the generation that saw the horrors unfold. Now, in their 90s, this generation carries the burden of memories of bloodshed, of friendly neighbours who turned into murderers, of hearing of razed villages and burnt homes, and of staying locked indoors in fear of mobs that roamed the cleaving land.
In the monsoons of 1947, this violence across the landscape seemed to manifest in the Beas too. It had swelled up and its flow was rapid, angry and violent. On land, the migration – some voluntary, many not – was taking place: Muslims were heading across the newly-decided border into Pakistan, while Hindus and Sikhs were crossing over into this part of Punjab. Violence followed in the aftermath of this migration.
It was decided by the villagers that it was not safe for the Muslims of Karmuwala to travel on land to Pakistan. Two Mallah (boatmen), Sant Singh and Basant Singh, insisted they would drop them safely by taking them on the beda (Boat) on the Beas.
They left under the cloak of darkness, keeping a wary eye on the currents of the river and movements of mobs that could ambush them from land. But amid the confusion and fear, they accidentally crossed the border. The two men could not row upstream. They had to walk upstream across dangerous lands to reach home. They hid in the grasses, weaving between the tibba and floodplains where the grassland cover of sarkanda, kana, jhall sheltered them from danger until they finally reached their village. The story stayed with us as we continued walking upstream. We did a bit of this walk from Harike to Karmuwala, but the riverine grasslands have all but disappeared. It is a landscape of open agriculture instead.
The story was a reminder of the compassion that we are capable of even amidst an unimaginable tragedy spurred by the worst in humankind. It’s natural to lament if this compassion was itself being eroded now.
We took a boat from Karmuwala pattan. The same Beas that once carried the Muslims of Karmuwala to safety flowed underneath us, this time more placid and calm. The songs of shabad (hymns or spiritual poems written by gurus of Sikh religion) rang out in unison from our fellow passengers. Most were crossing the river to work in the fields on the other side.
I was reminded of the resilience, compassion and camaraderie still alive in these rural communities, that came together to help each other during the devastating floods of 2025, and to support their brethren in the Farm Protests of 2020.
A revolution that destroyed the grasslands
The river was much wider than I had imagined, but then it occurred to me that the whole of Punjab is basically a floodplain, shaped by its rivers over millennia. For millions of years, alluvium brought from the Himalayas has been deposited across the plains, making it some of the most fertile lands in the country.
These rivers continue to be cantankerous and are constantly searching for new paths. The Beas twists and turns, splits and rejoins within this floodplain. In the chaos, it seems to forget its meander and returns to the original path, leaving behind oxbow lakes (These are crescent-shaped bodies of water formed when a looping, winding river breaks through its banks and rejoins the shorter path of its flow. The loop is isolated and creates a standalone lake) and abandoned channels.
At one place, we swam across the clear waters of what seemed like a channel that may have been abandoned by the river. We walked across the island and reached the active river channel.
The floodplains are not just empty spaces meant to contain the monsoon or flood flow of the river. They are part of the river ecosystem, providing a rich habitat for a lot of species to thrive.
Beas is an excellent example of successful Ghariyal reintroduction in 2007. We saw many Ghariyals throughout our journey, often basking motionless on distant sandbars, disappearing quietly into the water as we approached. Most villages saw them simply as “fish-eating reptiles” and did not see them as a threat.
We saw turtles, snakes, Ghariyal, Fishing Cat, Jungle Cat, Neelgai, Sambar Deer, Hog Deer, Muntjac, Indian Golden Jackal, Wild Boar, Small Indian Civet, Porcupine and thousands of migratory waterfowl during our walk. These creatures live and thrive in the floodplains.
However, it was these fertile floodplains which became the testing grounds for the Green Revolution in the 1960s. High-yielding varieties of wheat and rice were introduced in the landscape, and in the process, ushered in the era of chemical-intensive farming (that is, the high use of fertilisers and pesticides). Punjab became the country’s rice bowl and wheat granary. But the costs were borne by its floodplains.
Grasslands, which were replete with Saccharum and other grasses that helped stabilise the river bank, became fields of rice-wheat monocropping. Undulating terrains and sand banks were levelled. Now, the natural cycles of ebbs and swells of the Beas became an existential and livelihood threat for farmers.
There are a few fragmented patches of grasslands. Looking at the satellite images and confirmed by our experiences while walking, it is evident that the river banks were more stable here, compared to other places where severe erosion is visible.
Unfortunately, in a few areas, we saw that these grasslands were slowly being cleared out to make way for trees such as Arjun (Terminalia arjuna), Shisham (Dalbergia sissoo) by the Punjab Forest Department. Grasslands are dynamic but poorly understood ecosystems, and not all open landscapes require tree plantations.
Similarly in agroforestry practice, Poplar, which is a quick-growing tree, was a common feature of private farmland along much of the upper stretch of Beas. This was due to the changing floodplain landscape and frequent cycles of floods that have forced farmers to adapt their cultivation practices. Poplar can withstand standing water, unlike rice or wheat where floods can cause devastating losses.
On our third day, we walked towards Mundapind. We were surprised by the amount of sand deposited by the river. The landscape looked like a desert in some places, with only fragments of vegetation emerging through the freshly deposited sand. The 2025 floods had deposited mounds of sand, some even eight feet high, across fields.
“Most of our arable land is now covered with sand,” said Baba Nand Singh, a farmer from Mundapind. Sand mining is prohibited on the Beas, but after the floods, the government made an exception during the short window. “But, some people misused that relaxation to mine sand from the river. We couldn’t remove sand from our fields and now, we have to plant our crops within these mounds of sand,” he said.
We could see the buried sugarcane fields. Some had even attempted to plant wheat on those sandy fields.
Beas has significantly changed course during the 2023 and 2025 floods. Before this, the last major flood in this region was 1989.
These floods caused erosion of vast areas of farm lands, a body blow to farmers, especially those with small landholdings. But, there seemed to be a resignation to this fate. Many told us that the land belongs to the river, which collects its due from time to time. From time to time, the river deposits fertile soil in return.
Erosion seemed to be an inescapable reality here. Through the walk, I pondered if there was a solution to this. From initial observation, it seems the Saccharum–Phragmites grassland is most effective in stabilising the banks.
More recently, while working on rewilding a small stretch of the Beas floodplain, I have seen how these grasslands not only bind the alluvial soil but also withstand annual floods and even fires. Within a short span of restoration, we have documented at least ten species of mammals using the site. Perhaps the answer to living with rivers lies not in trying to control them, but in restoring the ecosystems that have evolved alongside them.
Who owns the river?
Rivers are interconnected, dynamic systems where interventions in one part of the river can have ripple effects in other parts. We saw this in effect on the 6th day of our walk. We had started off from Beas town (a town named after the river).
The town is known widely as being the headquarters of the Radha Soami Satsang Beas, a century-old religious organisation. While it was established in the late 19th century, it has expanded significantly in the last three decades. Its sprawling campus, home to thousands of devotees, is along the Beas riverbanks and just north of the town. An estimated 15 million persons visit this campus annually.
We walked on a sand bar on the left bank of the river. Dera Beas (as it is popularly known) was on the opposite side, and we could see hundreds of volunteers strengthening the embankments (probably as part of their Kaar Seva or voluntary service). They appeared to be using sand and soil from nearby tibba to reinforce the embankment.
We sat at the sand bar and observed them. Suddenly, we could hear them calling out at us, asking us to leave. We were confused. Within a few minutes, two young men came running towards us. They started to question us. They called their supervisor who said we were trespassing on their land.
We told them that since we were walking on the river bed and river banks, we were technically walking on public land. And since this was a protected area, we had already taken permission from the forest department.
The supervisor dismissed us. He maintained this was Dera land and asked us to leave. We relented, sensing there was little point in continuing the conversation. Our explanations were repeatedly dismissed, and we were simply warned again that we would be reported for trespassing.
But this exchange highlighted a question that we had been grappling with through the walk. Where does the river begin? The Beas Conservation Reserve (which is the 185km stretch of river in Punjab) was declared in 2018. But, the notification does not specify the exact local limits of the river.
So, while the actual river flow itself is protected to some extent, the floodplains and banks are in a sort of unprotected grey zone. Agriculture and private landownership is till the banks. There is constant conflict here that affects the river as a whole: sewage and chemical run-off that pollutes the river; floods that erode banks; embankment work on one side exacerbates erosion on the other.
Satellite imagery appears to show that while the strengthening of the embankments is protecting land of the Radha Swami Satsang Beas, it is leading to higher erosion on the opposite bank. Activists have raised concerns about this. Baldev Singh Sirsa, an activist and president of the organisation Punjab Lok Bhalai Insaf Welfare Society, has filed a Public Interest Litigation in the High Court against the Dera for interfering with the River’s natural flow.
While we walked away from the Dera, the question still remained unanswered: Where does the river end? Who owns the floodplains? And perhaps more importantly, can a river truly be conserved if the landscapes that sustain it remain outside our idea of the river itself?
We resumed our walk upstream carrying more questions than answers. Over the next few days, we were reminded that not every story of the Beas was about conflict. Some were about memory, kindness and the resilience of life that still survives in the river.
The second part of this article will be published in a fortnight’s time. To get updates about it, please follow us on social media (Instagram/LinkedIn) or subscribe to our newsletter.
Bageshwer is an ecologist and nature educator based in Jalandhar. He is associated with PAHAL, a youth organisation focused on holistic social development. Having worked as a nature educator in London and as an ecologist in Jalandhar and Kapurthala, he blends scientific knowledge with field-based learning and community engagement. He graduated in Botany from Hindu College, University of Delhi and holds a master’s in Forestry (specialising in plant taxonomy) from the Forest Research Institute, Dehradun. He has been a fellow of Veditum’s Moving Upstream Sindh Fellowship.
Reach Bageshwer at bageshwersingh30@gmail.com. If you’d like to commission stories from this walk, please write to the authors or email us at asid@veditum.org
This piece was copy edited by Mohit Rao, and produced by Siddharth Agarwal.
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