River · India
Mahanadi
The Mahanadi flows from the hills of Chhattisgarh eastwards through Odisha to the Bay of Bengal. Its name comes from Sanskrit and means 'great river', and on its way it feeds a huge dam lake and a wide delta.
Picture credit: Chickun16 (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Chandan kumar Mohapatra (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is Mahanadi?
The river starts here: A pool near the village of Farsiya, Dhamtari district, Chhattisgarh, India.
It ends in the Bay of Bengal near Paradip, Odisha.
Countries on the river: India.
The story behind it
The Mahanadi begins at a small pool near the village of Farsiya in Chhattisgarh. At first it is a modest stream, but many tributaries make it bigger; the Shivnath, Tel and Ib alone bring almost half of its water. Near Sambalpur in Odisha the Hirakud Dam holds the river back. Counting all its side walls, the dam is about 26 kilometres long and is often called the longest earthen dam in the world. Its lake is one of the largest artificial lakes in Asia, and water birds such as pochards and grebes visit it. Further downstream the river flows through the Satkosia Gorge, where gharials and mugger crocodiles live and elephants swim across the water. Before the dam was built, floods did so much damage that people called the river 'the sorrow of Odisha'. Near Cuttack the Mahanadi splits into many channels and forms a large delta before it reaches the sea near the port of Paradip.
Questions children ask
How long is the Mahanadi?
According to India's water resources information system, the Mahanadi is about 851 km long. Some reference books give about 900 km, so the length depends on how it is measured.
What does the name Mahanadi mean?
The name comes from Sanskrit: 'maha' means great and 'nadi' means river. So Mahanadi simply means 'great river'.
Why was the Mahanadi called 'the sorrow of Odisha'?
In the past, its floods often damaged large parts of the delta. The Hirakud Dam, opened in 1957, now helps to control these floods.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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