Rara Lake

Where is Rara Lake?

Countries on its shores: Nepal.

Largest lake of: Nepal.

Middle of the lake: 29.53° N, 82.09° E

The story behind it

Rara Lake is shaped like an oval, about 5 kilometres long and 3 kilometres wide, but in places it is 167 metres deep. From December to March the lake freezes over. Its water flows out through the Nijar River into the Mugu Karnali River. The lake is the heart of Rara National Park, which was set up in 1976 to protect it. When the park was created, the families of the villages Rara and Chapra moved to the town of Nepalgunj. Red pandas, musk deer and Himalayan black bears live in the forests around the lake, and water birds such as grebes, pochards, mallards and teal visit it on their long journeys. In the water swims the Rara snowtrout, a fish that lives nowhere else in the world. A small frog is even named after the lake. No other lake in Nepal is as big as Rara Lake.

Find it on the globe

Rara Lake is there as a small blue dot with its name, right on the water. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.

It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.