Travel to India Themes: Irrigation 1: Ancient Methods: Photo 11

A grander version of the same kind of irrigation system: this is the Asif Nahar, a 60-mile-long canal that diverts water from the Musi River ("the river of Moses"), downstream from Hyderabad. It was built in the 18th century and has the ingenious variation of feeding small reservoirs along the line of the canal, so that water will be available when levels in the Musi decline and the canal runs dry. (A similar design in China is vividly named "melons on a vine.")  Recent upstream reservoirs have kept the Musi so low that the Asif Nahar is not very useful anymore. Here it's choked with vegetation. On its banks, the humble but tough Prosopis juliflora, mesquite. Watch those thorns! They'll cause the devil of an infection.

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