I started driving along the Kori Creek towards Lakhpat area as I was missing the Rann badly by then. After a few kilometers, the road runs parallel to the sea with the shore being only few hundred meters away on the left. Lakhpat is famous as a fort township. Presently, only a majestic wall encloses the township. The creeky landscape, with sea & land playing hide & seek, gives Lakhpat a unique look. It was a busy sea-port as the large delta of the river Sindhu enabled ships to reach deep into the land and leave the port easily with tides. Lakhpat got developed due to the sea-trade and, in fact, was named so because the daily income from it was one lakh koris (the local currency). The whole western creek is called Kori Creek.Gradually, with time, heavy siltation occurred due to the tectonic movements of the earth. This shifted the course of river Sindhu away from Lakhpat towards Karanchi in Pakistan. The place eventually has become the meeting point of the sea and the Rann, though it is difficult to make out where the Rann ends and Sea starts. No more trade turned the, once flourishing sea-port, into an abandoned legacy. People left the place slowly and now the total population of Lakhpat is hardly one hundred, spread in a total of fifteen families, excluding a Police Station. The town has one old and architecturally beautiful mosque, a few Shiva temples and a Gurudwara. Lakhpat is a tourists delight but without amenities. As I visited some of the Shiva temples there, I came to know that only left occupation is little bit of agriculture but that too is dwindling.
BSF posts dot the whole creek and there is one Center of Water Adventure Sports of Indian Army. I checked it out and was rewarded by the view of a fantastic seashore alongwith a few fishermen. There was a huge Guard Tower. The guards spotted me from a distance but didn’t say anything to me. As I proceeded towards the Rann, I wondered, how Lakhpat would have bustled with activities in its heydays. Although, the Rann is visible from the fort wall as a very wide empty stretch of flooded land, a more satisfying look can be had by zooming northwards from the fort to a nearby BSF post. The thing that makes this terra all the more interesting is the virtual absence of avian fauna, especially waders. Flamingoes, even otherwise, are known to prefer non-marine marshes.
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