Tapti River
— — a river that turns its back on the morning.
Not only on a wall.
“One of only three major Indian rivers that flow west instead of east. The Tapti rises at Multai in the Satpuras, runs seven hundred and twenty-four kilometres across Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Gujarat, and meets the Arabian Sea at Surat. The Hindu story names her Tapati, daughter of the sun. The Narmada runs parallel a hundred kilometres north, and the two rivers carry central India between them.
Tapti River, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Tapti, or Tapi, is the second-longest of India's three major west-flowing rivers, after the Narmada. It rises at Multai in the Betul district of Madhya Pradesh, at about 752 metres in the Satpura Range, and runs roughly 724 kilometres through Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Gujarat before emptying into the Gulf of Khambhat near Surat. Its basin covers about 65,000 square kilometres. Major tributaries include the Purna and the Girna; the city of Surat sits on its lower bank near the mouth, and Burhanpur and Bhusawal hold its middle course.
The river flows almost due west across the Deccan, parallel to the Narmada about a hundred kilometres north. Monsoon rains from June to September swell the channel; the same flow dies back to braided shoals by April. The Ukai Dam, completed in 1972 about 100 kilometres upstream of Surat, holds one of the largest reservoirs in Gujarat at about 8,500 million cubic metres. Below the dam the river carries silt and irrigation water into the cotton plains of the lower basin and into the deltaic creeks that meet the Arabian Sea.
In Hindu tradition the river is the goddess Tapati, daughter of Surya the sun and sister of Yamuna. A bathing ghat at Multai marks the source as a sacred kund, and pilgrims circumambulate the small pond. The town's name itself derives from Mul-Tapi, mother Tapi. Once every twelve years the Pushkaram festival of the Tapti draws gatherings to bathing sites along its banks, most prominently at Burhanpur and Bhusawal; the most recent observance was in 2018.