Most know Tannu Jubbar to be man-made, fed by hillside channels and seasonal rain rather than natural springs. But in local memory, no human shaped it. The ground opened on its own, and water came uncalled. They say it was once a pasture, then cleared for farming, but the fields, thick with snakes, hardly offered any real footing.
One day, eighteen pairs of bullocks were brought in to plough, though midwork the earth gave way, swallowing the animals and the men guiding them, leaving behind a depression that filled slowly, with no inlet ever known. As it settled into the shape we see today, an idol of Nag Devta—the serpent deity—was found near the edge. It was placed beneath a willow, and a small shrine was raised soon after. In one fading strand of the tale, the ones taken turned up days later along the Satluj, farther down at Khekhar.
The lake lies ten kilometres from Narkanda, among slopes of deodars and apple plantations. Further west is Kotgarh, where in the winter of 1916, Satyanand Stokes planted the first Red Delicious saplings in his Barubagh orchard—what followed needs no retelling.
