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07/05/2026
With bottled soft drinks running out of stock, thanks to a dearth of metal cans in multiple cities, how does one stay cool? The Indian beverage repertoire has an answer to that. These drinks are not simple lemonades or even the thick lassis. These are hyperlocal summer drinks which are specialities of certain regions, using the best of local ingredients and wisdom, which are known to cool down the body.
Summer in India can be draining and quite inconvenient when it comes to meeting your hydration levels, with the constant sweating leeching you of electrolytes and dehydrating you. So, the goal here has always been the same: to consume something that cools the body from within, replenishes electrolytes, supports digestion, and uses whatever the local environment produces in abundance.
This is why India's best summer drinks tend to be hyperlocal, which can be dirt cheap too, if you procure the ingredients yourself and make them at home. For example, the Malabar Coast produces kokum and coconut, Tamil Nadu's Madurai sits in a particularly brutal heat corridor, producing a specific demand for a drink like the jigarthanda, made from the cooling badam pisin (almond gum) and nannari (sarsaparilla root).
What these drinks share, beyond their cooling properties, are functional effects that recharge fatigued bodies. There are fermented foods for gut health, tamarind and kokum for electrolyte replenishment, badam pisin and nannari for their documented Ayurvedic cooling effects, and poppy seeds for their calming, cooling properties, in all of the drinks below.
'Sol' means kokum in the Marathi language, and it comes from the coastal regions of Maharashtra (Konkan region) and Goa. There are ample coconut trees in this region, so this summer drink uses coconut and kokum, both of which are cooling and refreshing ingredients found abundantly in these areas.
Ingredients:
Dried kokum pieces, soaked
Freshly grated coconut or coconut milk
Ginger, green chillies, garlic cloves
Water
Cumin powder
Salt to taste
Fresh coriander for garnish
How to make:
Soak and squeeze kokum to extract its juice, strain and set aside. Blend fresh coconut with ginger, chilli, garlic, and water until smooth. Strain, extracting as much milk as possible; repeat for a second, thinner extraction. Mix the coconut milk with kokum juice; add cumin, salt, and coriander. Refrigerate and serve chilled
Hailing from the South Indian city of Madurai, jigarthanda translates to ‘cool heart’, with ‘jigar’, which is a metaphor for heart in Persian and ‘thanda’ means cold. It is generally prepared and served at roadside stalls as a summer drink, and in Madurai, it is as much a cultural institution as it is a beverage. It is a milk-based drink made with a blend of milk (full-fat and condensed), khoya, sarsaparilla root syrup, and edible almond gum.
Ingredients:
Badam pisin (almond gum or katira gond), soaked overnight
Full-fat milk, reduced by half (or use condensed milk)
Nannari syrup (sarsaparilla root syrup)
Khoya ice cream (or vanilla ice cream)
Sugar to taste
How to assemble:
Drain the bloomed badam pisin; it should be jelly-like after soaking amply; it will have increased enormously in volume to a clear jelly. Add to tall glasses and drizzle some nannari syrup per glass. Pour the sweetened reduced milk until three-quarters full. Top with a generous scoop of ice cream and serve immediately.
Come summer, there is one summer drink that is quite like no other in terms of taste, sweetness and thickness. Meet Bel Sharbat, made from ripe wood apple (Aegle marmelos), a fruit with a hard shell and soft orange pulp inside, naturally rich in fibre, vitamin C, antioxidants, and minerals that support digestive health and hydration.
Ingredients:
1 ripe bel (wood apple)
Jaggery or sugar to taste
Black salt
Roasted cumin powder
Lemon juice (optional)
Chilled water
Mint leaves and ice to serve
How to assemble:
Crack open the bel fruit using something heavy and scoop out the soft pulp into a bowl. Add water and mash the pulp thoroughly. Let it rest for a few minutes, then pass it through a sieve into a bowl. Be gentle when mashing, without crushing the seeds. Strain out the seeds and fibre, add more water for the right consistency, then season with black salt, roasted cumin powder, and jaggery or honey. Serve over ice with mint leaves.
Ambali is also called ambli, or ragi ganji, depending on the state, and is the working person's summer drink. It is not glamorous and does not layer dramatically like Jigarthanda or take as much effort as sol kadhi. But as a functional summer drink, ambali may be without equal in India.
Ingredients:
Ragi flour (finger millet flour)
Water for fermentation and cooking
Fresh buttermilk (or yoghurt whisked with water)
Salt, cumin powder, green chilli
Optional tempering: curry leaves, mustard seeds, ginger
How to assemble:
Mix the ragi flour with water into a smooth paste. Cover and ferment overnight at room temperature. Boil some water and slowly pour in the fermented ragi while stirring. Cook for a few minutes until thickened, then remove from heat and cool completely. Add buttermilk only after the ragi mixture has cooled to room temperature. Season with salt and cumin, add tempering if adding and serve cold or at room temperature.
In its most traditional form, panakam is simply water sweetened with jaggery, flavoured with cardamom and ground black pepper. Known as panakam in Telugu, panagam in Tamil, and panaka in Kannada, this drink is closely associated with the festival of Ram Navami and is commonly offered to the deities before being distributed.
Ingredients:
Jaggery (block or powder)
Water
Fresh lemon juice
Dry ginger powder
Green cardamom, crushed
Black pepper, coarsely ground
Pinch of salt
Tulsi leaves (optional, for offering)
How to assemble:
Dissolve jaggery in water and let it soak for 30 to 40 minutes until fully dissolved. If there are impurities, filter the jaggery water through a fine strainer. Add lemon juice, ginger powder, cardamom powder, black pepper, and salt, and mix well. Serve chilled or at room temperature. If preparing as naivedyam, add a few tulsi leaves before offering.
Aam stands for mango, pora stands for roasted, and sharbat stands for drink. It is a Bengali beverage which is made when raw mangoes are in season. Aam pora sharbat is a pure Bengali delicacy and an exclusively summer drink recipe, which goes by aam panna in other regions, extremely popular in West Bengal and across eastern India.
Ingredients:
Raw green mangoes (kancha aam)
Sugar
Black salt (kala namak)
Bengali bhaja masala (ground dry-roasted cumin and dried red chilli)
Green chilli (optional)
Mint leaves (optional)
Cold water
How to assemble:
Wash the raw mangoes and roast each one over a medium flame until nicely charred and the pulp is gooey soft from inside. Cool the mangoes by covering with a damp cloth, then peel and discard the charred skin and the stone. Blend the pulp with black salt, roasted cumin powder, green chilli, and a little water into a thick concentrate. To serve, dilute with cold water and ice and mix well.
The summertime drink recipes in this article represent a principle that modern commercial beverages have largely abandoned: that the most effective cooling is the one that works with your body's physiology rather than simply providing cold liquid. Some specific ingredients in each of these drinks cool down the body and also refresh your senses and tastebuds.
A: Solkadhi gets its pink color from kokum fruit, which releases natural anthocyanin pigments when soaked. These pigments tint the coconut milk base, giving the drink its characteristic pink hue.
