Water, so vital for life to exist, hides within it a lot of secrets. From the depths of the ocean to flowing rivers, water can create and destroy. Here are some instances of water revealing its secrets.
1. Sahasralinga in India
A pilgrimage site located in the Sirsi district of Karnataka, Sahasralinga is in the middle of the Shalmala river. What’s special about the place is the sheer number of shiv lingas carved into the stones. Sahasralinga means thousand lingas in Sanskrit. During Shivratri, when the water level in the river is lower, it reveals the shiv lingas and pilgrims throng the place to offer their prayers.
2. Kbal Spean in Cambodia
A similar place exists in Angkor, Cambodia. Kabal Spean, also known as the ‘valley of 1000 lingas’, has a number of carvings in the river bed like in Sahasralinga. In one stretch of the river are also the carvings of the holy trinity, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Some of the inscriptions at the location are only revealed when the water level drops.
3. Apostle Santiago Church in Mexico
In the 1960s, the town of Quechula in Mexico, already deserted in 1770 because of plague, was submerged when a dam was built on the Grijalva river. Along with it, the river submerged a 16th century church, Apostle Santiago church, built by Dominican monks. With drought like conditions this year, the reservoir levels dropped and the church revealed itself for the first time in more than a decade. The last time the church was seen was back in 2002.
4. Town of St. Thomas in USA
This year summer has been particularly harsh for the western United States. Man made reservoir Lake Mead in Nevada, formed due to the construction of the Hoover Dam, dried up this year and the town of St. Thomas came up. A former settlement of around 500 people, it was founded in 1865. Along with the town , a crashed B-29 Superfortress that crashed in 1948 also emerged from its watery grave.
5. Xuanping village in China
After being flooded by a barrier lake after an earthquake in 2008, Xuanping emerged out of the water in 2013. A magnitude 8.0 earthquake hit the Beichuan county in China, and the small village went under water. In July 2013, the water level dropped 9 metres revealing the ghost of the village. Former residents were soon back, taking away their belongings that had been lost for five years.
