Telangana Geography

Telangana lies in the heart of the Deccan plateau, between 15° 46' and 19° 47' N latitude and 77° 16' and 81° 43' E longitude. It covers 1,12,077 sq km in 33 districts, and is bordered by Maharashtra to the north and north-west, Chhattisgarh to the north-east, Karnataka to the west and Andhra Pradesh to the south and east. The state was formed on 2 June 2014 from the Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh.

The Deccan plateau

The land is an undulating plateau of low hills, hillocks, boulder-strewn granite outcrops and shallow valleys, crossed by many streams. Nearly four-fifths of the state stands on hard rock: ancient granites and gneisses, the quartzites, shales and limestones of the Cuddapah and Kurnool rocks, and Deccan Trap basalt in the west. The rest, mainly along the Godavari valley, is Gondwana sandstone and shale and river alluvium. The Gondwana rocks of the Godavari valley hold the state's coal, mined by the Singareni Collieries Company.

With few perennial streams across the plateau, villages have stored the monsoon rain in tanks for centuries. Thousands of these tanks, many dating from the Kakatiya kings, still water the fields, and the state has been restoring them under Mission Kakatiya.

Rivers

Two great rivers, both rising in the Western Ghats and flowing east to the Bay of Bengal, drain Telangana:

Godavari: enters the state from Maharashtra in Nizamabad district and flows south-east through the north of the state, past Bhadrachalam. Its tributaries in Telangana include the Manjira, which flows past Medak and Nizamabad, and the Pranahita, the Godavari's largest tributary, which forms part of the border with Maharashtra.
Krishna: enters from Karnataka in the south-west and forms much of the southern border with Andhra Pradesh, where the Nagarjunasagar dam stands. Its tributary the Musi flows through Hyderabad.

Climate

Telangana has a semi-arid, mostly hot and dry climate, with hot summers and relatively mild winters. In May the mean maximum temperature is 40 to 43 °C; in December and January the mean minimum is 13 to 17 °C, and nights below 10 °C are recorded on some days. Humidity reaches about 80 per cent in the monsoon months of July to September and falls to 25 to 30 per cent in March to May.

The state receives about 900 mm of rain a year, about four-fifths of it from the south-west monsoon between June and September and the rest mainly from the north-east monsoon in October and November. Rainfall rises from under 800 mm in the south-west, around Mahabubnagar, to over 1,200 mm in the north and north-east, around Adilabad.

Soils

Red soils cover about 48 per cent of the state, including the sandy chalka soils and the deep red loams; black cotton soils cover about 25 per cent, alluvial soils about 20 per cent, and rock and boulders the remaining 7 per cent. Rice, maize, jowar, red gram and green gram are among the main crops, with cotton on the black soils.

Forests

Recorded forests cover 26,904 sq km, 24 per cent of the state, most of it dry deciduous forest. Dense teak forest lines the Godavari from Nizamabad through Adilabad, Karimnagar and Warangal to Khammam, and the Nallamala hills in the south are covered in mixed forest. The forests and their tiger reserves and sanctuaries are described on the Telangana Wildlife page.

Sources: Government of Telangana (area and districts; State Action Plan on Climate Change, Environment, Forests, Science and Technology Department), Central Ground Water Board (rocks, rivers and rainfall) and the Forest Survey of India (India State of Forest Report 2019).