Sarygamysh Lake

Where is Sarygamysh Lake?

Countries on its shores: Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan.

Middle of the lake: 42.00° N, 57.33° E

The story behind it

Sarygamysh Lake sits in a deep hollow in a sandy desert. Long ago, the great Amu Darya River sometimes changed its course and filled this hollow with water, and later it dried up again. Since the 1960s, water from farm fields along the Amu Darya has been led through canals into the hollow, and a new lake grew. In 1977 it covered about 1 500 km², ten years later about 3 200 km², and today it is usually given as about 3 955 km². Its size keeps changing: satellite pictures show that it has been shrinking again since 2018. About a quarter of the lake belongs to Uzbekistan, the rest to Turkmenistan. The water is slightly salty, and the saltiness keeps rising. The farm water also brings chemicals. Still, 36 kinds of fish live here, and more than 20 000 water birds, such as pelicans, flamingos and cormorants, gather on the lake.

Find it on the globe

Sarygamysh 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.