Damodar River - Course

Course

The Damodar originates in Chandwa (community development block) in Palamau district, on the Chota Nagpur Plateau, and flows eastward for about 592 km through the states of Jharkhand and West Bengal to the estuary of the River Hooghly. Metamorphic rocks form the watershed between the North Koel and the Damodar to the west of the Chandwa-Balumath road. This divide separates the Son and Damodar basins.

The Damodar basin forms a trough between the Ranchi and Hazaribagh plateaux resulting from enormous fractures at their present edges, which caused the land between to sink to a great depth and preserved from denudation the Karanpura, Ramgarh and Bokaro coalfields. The northern boundary of the Damodar valley is steep as far as the southeastern corner of the Hazaribagh plateau. On the south of the trough the Damodar keeps close to the edge of the Ranchi plateau till it has passed Ramgarh, after which a turn to the northeast leaves on the right a wide and level valley on which the Subarnarekha begins to intrude, south of Gola till the Singhpur Hills divert it to the south. Further to the east the Damodar River passes tamely into the Manbhum sector of lowest step of the Chotanagpur plateau.

The Damodar used to flow through Bengal on a direct west-to-east course and join the River Hughli near Kalna. However, it has changed its course, and in its lower reaches most of the water flows into the Mundeswari River, which combines with other rivers. Finally most of the Damodar water flows into the Rupnarayan River. The remaining mass of water flows through what is known as Damodar into the Hooghly south of Kolkata.