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Lonar Lake in Maharashtra is one of the world’s rare hyper-saline meteorite crater lakes, where changing microbial activity can dramatically alter the water’s colour.
News18
In the middle of Maharashtra’s dry Deccan landscape lies a lake that looks almost extraterrestrial. From above, Lonar Lake appears as a near-perfect circular crater surrounded by steep slopes and dense green forest. But what makes the place truly strange is not just its shape — it is the fact that the lake occasionally turns a vivid shade of pink.
The phenomenon became globally famous in 2020 when photographs of the lake’s bright pink water spread across social media, leaving many people wondering whether the images were real.
They were.
According to scientists from the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI), the colour change was linked to a combination of high salinity, changing water chemistry and the growth of specific salt-loving micro-organisms inside the lake.
What makes Lonar remarkable is that the lake itself was created by a meteorite impact.
Researchers believe a massive meteor struck the basalt rock of the Deccan Plateau around 50,000 years ago, creating the crater that later filled with water. According to NASA Earth Observatory and geological studies, Lonar is one of the very few known hypervelocity impact craters formed in basaltic rock anywhere on Earth.
The crater stretches nearly 1.8 kilometres across and plunges to a depth of more than 100 metres.
For decades, scientists from around the world have studied the site because its geology resembles certain volcanic and impact landscapes found on Mars and the Moon.
But the lake’s chemistry is equally unusual.
Lonar contains both alkaline and saline water, creating conditions where specialised microbial life can survive. During certain environmental conditions — particularly increased salinity, hotter weather and reduced water levels — microorganisms such as haloarchaea can multiply rapidly and influence the lake’s colour.
Lower rainfall and intense evaporation likely concentrated salt levels enough to trigger the dramatic pink appearance.
The colour eventually faded as conditions changed again.
That temporary transformation only added to the lake’s mystique.
The area surrounding Lonar is also ecologically rich. Forested slopes around the crater contain birds, peacocks, langurs and small wildlife populations, while several ancient temples dating back more than a thousand years stand near the lake’s edge.
According to the Archaeological Survey of India, some of these temples belong to the Chalukya and Yadava periods and were built long after the meteorite impact itself shaped the landscape.
The lake’s isolation helped preserve much of its unusual environment for centuries.
Yet scientists have also warned about growing ecological stress caused by pollution, tourism pressure and changing water inflows. Environmental researchers have repeatedly argued that the lake’s fragile chemistry and microbial ecosystem require far stronger protection.
Even so, Lonar remains one of India’s strangest natural phenomena.
A prehistoric meteorite strike created a crater in ancient volcanic rock, rainwater slowly filled it over thousands of years, microscopic organisms transformed its chemistry — and now, under the right conditions, the lake can suddenly glow pink in the middle of Maharashtra.
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