# @gettyimages on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DchV9_oIC0P
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/69720271-gettyimages-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/d31cbb1eca.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-08-26T23:00:44.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Getty Images (@GettyImages) — https://gondola.cc/GettyImages

## Caption

Over the last several decades, Dal Lake has severely deteriorated, losing significant areas of open water and becoming increasingly shallow due to heavy siltation.

1. Manzoor Ahmad, 50, stands near his shop along an alleyway that was once a backwater channel of Dal Lake in Srinagar, Kashmir, India. He recalls swimming and catching fish there as a child. Untreated sewage has contributed to severe pollution and environmental degradation.

2. An elderly Kashmiri fisherman paddles a traditional boat along a creek in Telbal toward the main waters of Dal Lake. Telbal Creek is the primary inlet, supplying approximately 80% of the lake's water. 

3. Kashmiri vendors push a handcart loaded with freshly harvested water lily stems (bum) along the banks of Dal Lake. Residents harvest the stems and leaves to sell as green fodder for cattle.

4. Young boys walk along a pathway toward a hamlet in Dal Lake's interior, passing a floating excavator in a weed-choked backwater channel.

5. A man crosses a wooden footbridge between houses over a backwater channel. Lake dwellers have depended on these waters for generations, cultivating vegetables in marshy gardens known as dembs and catering to tourism.

6. A wooden walkway winds through lotus gardens and backwater channels against the Zabarwan mountain range. Lotus stem, locally known as nadru, is a popular Kashmiri delicacy cultivated in the marshlands.

7. A young boy reacts as he catches a fish while sitting on a wooden footbridge spanning Dal Lake's backwaters.

8. A woman walks along a narrow alleyway that was once a navigable backwater channel connected to the lake's interior.

9. Ghulam Ahmad, 55, a local farmer, sows seeds in his ancestral vegetable field in Dal Lake's interior marshlands. “There was the time when we used to drink water directly from the lake, and today, I can’t even walk barefooted on this land, such is the poor condition of water these days,” he said. Vegetable cultivation is a major livelihood for communities living inside the lake.

10. A resident walks along a narrow wooden footbridge over backwater channels connected to the lake's interior. l August 9-16, 2026 l 📷️: yasiriqbal l #GettyImagesNews

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