River
Ghaggar-Hakra river
494 km from source to mouth · India and Pakistan.
India and Pakistan
In numbers
Length
494km
Average flow
38m³/s
Basin
20,050km²
Drop
341m
from 513 m to 172 m
Countries
2
The journey
From source to mouth
494 km of river and 19 stops on the way: 19 towns and cities on its banks, dams, bridges and the tributaries that feed it.
- 0 kmSourceat 513 m
- 27 kmChandīman9,051 people
- 30 kmBir Ghaghar4,943 people
- 32 kmPanchkula211,355 people
- 38 kmRāmgarh4,934 people
- 43 kmMubārikpur5,217 people
- 43 kmMīrpur5,967 people
- 44 kmBasi26,295 people
- 44 kmBhankarpur10,768 people
- 92 kmGhanaur6,985 people
- 191 kmPakhi Khanauri14,096 people
- 220 kmAkālgarh6,993 people
- 220 kmMoonak18,141 people
- 229 kmJākhal7,411 people
- 229 kmJhakal Mandi7,788 people
- 264 kmRatia37,152 people
- 310 kmSardulgarh19,219 people
- 363 kmRānia25,123 people
- 426 kmHanumāngarh155,687 people
- 460 kmPilibangan37,288 people
- 494 kmMouthat 172 m
Water level along the river (RiverATLAS; the height is exaggerated). Towns: GeoNames and Wikidata; bridges, dams and tributaries: Wikidata.
Intermittent river in India and Pakistan
At the mouth it carries 38 m³/s on average: an Olympic pool every 66 seconds. It drops from 513 m to 172 m, 0.7 m per kilometre on average. Its basin covers 20,050 km², about the size of SI. 10.7 million people live in it. Highest water: from August to September; lowest: from April to June and December. No large dam holds it back: it is one of the world's free-flowing rivers.
Where to start
- PanchkulaLargest city on its banks · 211,355 people
- Shaheed Bhagat Singh International Airport (IXC)Nearest airport with scheduled flights, 6 km from the cityCar hire at IXC airport (Chandigarh)Discover Cars · Affiliate link↗
- From November to MarchThe best months to visit
Ghaggar-Hakra river, month by month
Highest water: from August to September
Lowest water: from April to June and December. Best months to visit: from November to March.
From about 0.0 m³/s in the lowest month to 170 m³/s in the highest. An estimate: the monthly flow is modelled from the lowest and highest months of WaterGAP (RiverATLAS, 1971–2000) and the rain and snow along the river (WorldClim). Dams change the real rhythm. The chip is the average air temperature; below it, the month's rain.
Plan the trip
Plan the trip: boat trips, a bed by the river, a car
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The basin
Ghaggar-Hakra river: the basin in numbers
20,050 km² of land send their water to this river. This is what lives on it.
- 10.7millionpeople live in the basin
- 531/km²people per km²
- 267maverage altitude of the basin
- 635mmof rain a year (basin average)
- 24.5°Caverage air temperature
- 1%protected areas
What covers the basin
- 2% Forest
- 87% Cropland
- 8% Towns and cities
RiverATLAS (HydroATLAS v1.0, CC BY 4.0): land cover, people, protected areas, glaciers and dams over the whole basin upstream of the mouth.
Along the river
Ghaggar-Hakra river: what you find on the way
- 4Weirs
From OpenStreetMap, within 2.0 km of the river. Not mapped is not the same as not there.
Cross-checked with our atlases
Ghaggar-Hakra river in our other atlases
What our sister atlases know about the waterfalls on this river, the lakes it flows through, the beaches at its mouth, the mountains where it rises and the islands off its mouth.
2mountains at the sourcePeakyas
Mountains at the source (2)
Within 15 km of the source, by Peakyas
- Karoh Peak4.0 km away1,467m
- Morni Hill Tract12 km away
From space
The source and the mouth, seen from orbit


Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 by EOX IT Services GmbH (contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2016), CC BY 4.0. The glowing line is the river as drawn by RiverATLAS.
Photos
Ghaggar-Hakra river in pictures




Tributaries
Where it flows, and what flows into it
In the same basin
Nearby
Rivers nearby
Where these numbers come from
| Name, length, places | Wikidata (Q798422) · CC0 |
|---|---|
| Course, profile, basin | RiverATLAS v1.0 (HydroATLAS, Linke et al. 2019) · CC BY 4.0 — followed from the source to the mouth given by Wikidata |
| Flow | WaterGAP (RiverATLAS), 1971–2000 · CC BY 4.0 |
| Climate along the river | WorldClim (RiverATLAS), 1970–2000 · CC BY 4.0 |
| Towns, bridges, dams | Wikidata · CC0; GeoNames · CC BY 4.0 |
| Along the river | © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL |
| Images | EOX Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 · CC BY 4.0; Wikimedia Commons |
| Our other atlases | Peakyas — Wikidata · CC0; © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL; GeoNames · CC BY 4.0; HydroLAKES · CC BY 4.0; NOAA OISST |
Every source and licence is on the data sources page.
The family
Do you prefer beaches, lakes, mountains, waterfalls, islands, rivers or canyons?
Same idea, other landscapes: field atlases built on open data, month by month, in seven languages.