Oxbow lakes form when a meandering river cuts a new, shorter path and leaves its old bend stranded. Anshupa is a textbook example. The Mahanadi, one of India's major east-flowing rivers, once looped through this depression between Saranda Hill to the west and Bishnupur Hill to the northeast. When the river straightened its course, it left behind a crescent of water that still connects to its parent during floods. Two small streams - the Kabula Nala and the Huluhula Nala - feed the lake from the surrounding hills, while the Mugger Nala provides an outlet back to the Mahanadi during high water. This hydrological connection is the lake's lifeline. When monsoon floods arrive, they flush sediment and refresh the water. When the connection weakens through siltation or channel blockage, the lake begins to choke on its own stagnation. Managing this balance between river and lake has become the central challenge of Anshupa's conservation.

Between October and March, Anshupa transforms into a staging ground for migratory birds. Pintails arrive from Siberia, joining teals, storks, and herons that work the shallow margins where fish concentrate. According to the Ramsar Sites Information Service, the lake supports 194 bird species, including endangered species like the Indian skimmer and the black-bellied tern, and the near-threatened painted stork. But the birds are only the most visible inhabitants. Below the surface, 61 fish species navigate waters thick with aquatic plants - water hyacinth, lotus, and hydrilla form a submerged forest that shelters fingerlings and provides food for larger predators. On the surrounding hills and shoreline, 26 mammal species and 88 butterfly species complete an ecosystem packed into a surprisingly compact space. Bird-watching towers positioned along the lakeshore offer unobstructed views across the water, and during peak migration season the lake's surface becomes a noisy, crowded convention of wings.

Anshupa is not a wilderness. Roughly 20,000 to 25,000 people live in the villages that ring the lake - Kadalibadi, Bishnupur, Subarnapur, Gholapur, and a scatter of smaller hamlets spread across the surrounding hills. Their lives are tied to the lake's rhythms. Fishermen work its waters for freshwater catch. Farmers cultivate rice paddies in the fertile catchment. During monsoon floods, the lake swells and inundates the low-lying fields, depositing nutrients that enrich the next season's soil even as they damage the current crop. It is a relationship of dependency and negotiation that has lasted centuries. In recent years, eco-tourism has added a new dimension. The Ansupa Nature Camp employs local residents as boating guides and hospitality workers, and bamboo eco-cottages provide accommodation for visitors who come for the birds and stay for the quiet.

Anshupa was declared a Community Reserve in 2003 under India's Wildlife Protection Act, and its designation as a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance in October 2021 elevated its profile further. The Chilika Development Authority manages the site under an Integrated Management Plan that targets the lake's most pressing threats: sedimentation that is slowly filling the lakebed, water hyacinth that chokes open water, agricultural runoff that degrades water quality, and reduced connectivity with the Mahanadi that starves the lake of fresh inflow. Channel dredging, reforestation of eroded hillsides, and weed removal are ongoing. But the challenges are not purely ecological. Encroachment on the catchment area continues, and the balance between the needs of surrounding communities and the lake's ecological health requires constant negotiation. Conservation here is not about locking people out. It is about finding ways for an ancient human-nature relationship to sustain itself in a changing world.

Climb the watchtower on Saranda Hill and the full geography of Anshupa reveals itself. The horseshoe of water curves below, its surface reflecting the sky and the green slopes of the Eastern Ghats foothills. Beyond the lake, the Mahanadi valley stretches eastward toward Cuttack and the sea. On the hill itself, the ruins of Saranda Fort hint at a deeper history - ancient stonework half-consumed by the forest, a reminder that people have been watching over this landscape for a very long time. In Odia literature, Anshupa appears as a symbol of harmony between people and nature, and from this vantage point you can see why. The lake, the villages, the rice paddies, the forested hills - they compose a single system, each element depending on the others. What makes Anshupa remarkable is not that it exists in pristine isolation but that it persists, battered and beautiful, in the middle of a densely populated agricultural landscape. That persistence is its own kind of wildness.