Uvs Lake

Where is Uvs Lake?

Countries on its shores: Mongolia, Russia.

Largest lake of: Mongolia.

Middle of the lake: 50.30° N, 92.70° E

The story behind it

Uvs Lake is Mongolia's largest lake by area. Only its north-eastern tip belongs to Russia, to the Tuva Republic. The lake is very shallow, only about 6 m deep on average, and it is salty – about half as salty as the ocean. It is what is left of a huge salty sea that covered a much bigger area thousands of years ago. Rivers flow in, but no river flows out. The weather here is extreme: from −58 °C in winter to 47 °C in summer, and the lake is frozen from October to May. The name comes from "subsen", a word for the bitter leftovers when people make airag, a drink of fermented mare's milk, and "nuur", which means lake. 173 kinds of birds and 41 kinds of mammals live in the basin, and in 2003 it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Find it on the globe

Uvs 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.