The Most Beautiful Lakes in Asia

46 places in 15 countries · updated 14 October 2026

1. 01 Issyk-Kul

   Kyrgyzstan · 29.5 km from Cholpon-Ata42.417° N 77.250° E

   

   The setting is the great spectacle: the rivers of the Teskey cut deep, wide valleys through the range and spread in fans of gravel at the shore, while the lake itself lies like an inland sea between the ridges. The north shore became the Soviet Union's favourite mountain resort, with sanatoria and holiday homes clustered around Cholpon-Ata, where an open-air field holds some 2,000 petroglyphs made between about 800 BC and AD 1200, and a local museum. At the eastern end, Karakol keeps a wooden Dungan mosque built without metal nails and a wooden Orthodox church, and serves as the base for treks into the Teskey.

   More about Issyk-Kul →

2. 02 Lake Baikal

   Russia53.303° N 108.005° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage
   • UNESCO natural beauty

   

   That age is why roughly 80% of the species found in the lake exist nowhere else on Earth. The strangest of them is the golomyanka, a nearly transparent fish with no swim bladder and a body that's up to 40% fat by weight, adaptations that let it live and reproduce at crushing pressure a kilometre or more down — it's essentially the only fish species alive that has fully committed to the lake's abyssal zone as a permanent home.

   Did you know? Beneath the lake bed lies some 7 km of sediment, so the floor of the rift itself is 8 to 11 km below the surface.

   More about Lake Baikal →

3. 03 Dead Sea

   Israel · 38.9 km from Jerusalem31.521° N 35.484° E

   

   Its shores mark the lowest point of exposed land on any continent, and the number keeps changing — the surface has been dropping by roughly a meter a year since the 1990s. That's not ordinary evaporation; it's downstream of the Jordan River being diverted for agriculture and drinking water by Israel, Jordan and Syria, cutting off more than 90% of the sea's historical inflow. The basin itself sits inside a tectonic rift, part of the same fault system that runs south into East Africa's Great Rift Valley — so the sea isn't just low because water evaporated out of a bowl, it's low because the ground itself has been pulling apart for millions of years.

   Did you know? In 1980, after an unusually rainy winter, the normally dark blue sea turned red with a bloom of Dunaliella algae and red-pigmented salt-loving microbes.

   More about Dead Sea →

4. 04 Lake Khövsgöl

   Mongolia51.100° N 100.500° E

   

   The lake is among the world's ancient lakes, more than two million years old, and it is regarded as one of the least disturbed of them. Its waters are so poor in nutrients that visibility often reaches beyond 18 metres. At the southern end the Egiin Gol carries the outflow away; that water eventually joins the Selenge and reaches Lake Baikal after a journey of over 1,000 km and a drop of more than 1,100 metres. In winter the surface freezes completely. Lorries once crossed the ice as a shortcut, a practice since banned to keep fuel and oil out of the water.

   Did you know? Its water is so clean that it can be drunk without any treatment, making it Mongolia's most important drinking-water reserve.

   More about Lake Khövsgöl →

5. 05 Inle Lake

   Myanmar · 28.6 km from Taunggyi20.550° N 96.917° E

   

   The lake belongs to the Intha, whose way of life has adapted to it in ways found nowhere else. Their fishermen stand at the stern of narrow boats and row with one leg wrapped around the oar, leaving both hands free for the nets, and a silhouette of a leg-rower against the morning haze is the classic image of Inle. On the western side, farmers raise vegetables all year round on floating gardens, kyun hmaw, made by gathering lake-bottom weed and mud into long beds that are pinned in place with bamboo poles and rise and fall with the water. Between the gardens run lanes of water lined with stilt houses, workshops and monasteries.

   Did you know? Between 1935 and 2000 the lake's open water shrank by about a third, from roughly 69 to 47 square kilometres, mostly as floating gardens spread across it.

   More about Inle Lake →

6. 06 Lake Toba

   Indonesia · 37.6 km from Pematangsiantar2.670° N 98.888° E

   

   That eruption, about 74,000 years ago, was the largest explosive eruption on Earth in the last 25 million years. It threw out at least 2,800 cubic kilometres of material, left ash hundreds of metres thick near the vent, and dropped a layer of ash across South Asia, up to 6 m deep at one site in central India. Scientists have long debated whether the volcanic winter that followed nearly wiped out early humans; more recent studies have found little evidence of a lasting population crash, but the eruption remains one of the landmark events of the Ice Age.

   Did you know? Seismic studies suggest the volcano's eruptible magma, stored in stacked sills nicknamed magma pancakes, could total about 50,000 cubic kilometres.

   More about Lake Toba →

7. 07 Yamdrok Lake

   People's Republic of China28.978° N 90.746° E

   

   The lake lies at about 4,440 metres, with an average depth of around 30 metres and a maximum near 60. The colour changes through the day and with the weather, from pale milky blue to a saturated green-blue under a clear sky. Further west along the road, beyond Nangartse, the glaciated massif of Noijin Kangsang, a little over 7,200 metres, rises above the Karo La. Islands in the lake serve as summer pasture for herders, and fish caught here are sold in the markets of Lhasa.

   Did you know? Pilgrims from villagers to the Dalai Lama have traditionally walked to the lake, and people still circle its shores today.

   More about Yamdrok Lake →

8. 08 West Lake

   People's Republic of China · 3.1 km from Hangzhou30.238° N 120.141° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   The lake is as much made as found. It began as a shallow bay of the Qiantang River that silted into a lagoon, and it has survived as open water only because it has been dredged again and again for well over a thousand years. The dredged silt built its most famous features: the Bai Causeway, named in memory of the Tang poet Bai Juyi, who dredged the lake in 822, and the Su Causeway, built in 1089 by the Song poet Su Shi, who also compared the lake to the legendary beauty Xi Shi.

   Did you know? Marco Polo described the lake in his book, claiming a circuit of some 30 miles lined with palaces and mansions.

   More about West Lake →

9. 09 Lake Kaindy

   Kazakhstan42.985° N 78.466° E

   

   What keeps the submerged trunks standing over a century later is the cold: at roughly 2,000 meters elevation, the lake's year-round low temperatures dramatically slow decay, so the drowned Picea schrenkiana (Schrenk's spruce) trunks remain upright, stripped of bark, breaking the surface like a leafless, half-sunken forest instead of rotting away.

   Did you know? The lake is only about 400 metres long but reaches nearly 30 metres at its deepest point.

   More about Lake Kaindy →

10. 10 Lake Kawaguchi

    Japan · 21.7 km from Kōfu35.515° N 138.757° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The lake has no natural outlet. For centuries that meant floods in the lakeside villages whenever the water rose, until a canal linking it to a tributary of the Sagami River was completed in 1914. The altitude gives it cool summers and often frozen winters, and the area has grown into the most developed resort of the five lakes, with lakeside hotels, hot springs, camping grounds, sightseeing boats and fishing; it is also a base for climbers heading up Fuji in the July–August season.

    Did you know? In 864 lava from an eruption on Fuji's flank flowed towards the lake but stopped short at Naruzawa, sparing it.

    More about Lake Kawaguchi →

11. 11 Pangong Tso

    India33.705° N 78.750° E

    

    What makes it unforgettable is colour. Under the thin, bright air of the plateau the water shifts from turquoise near the shore to deep ultramarine in the middle and to grey and green when clouds pass, against bare slopes of ochre and rust. The lake lies in a closed basin with no outlet, separated from the Indus by a low ridge, and its water changes along its length: the eastern end is nearly fresh, the western end markedly brackish. Despite the salt, the whole lake freezes over in winter.

    Did you know? In Tibetan the whole chain is often called Tsomo Nganglha Ringpo, a name variously translated, including as long-necked swan lake.

    More about Pangong Tso →

12. 12 Gurudongmar Lake

    India28.020° N 88.710° E

    

    The lake covers about 118 hectares, with a shoreline of more than five kilometres, and for half the year it is locked in ice, typically from November until the middle of May. Streams leaving it run into Tso Lhamo, another high lake, and together they form one of the headwaters of the Teesta, the great river that later cuts through Sikkim and West Bengal on its way to the Brahmaputra. Despite the thin air the basin is not lifeless: yaks graze its margins, and blue sheep and other high-altitude animals live on the surrounding slopes.

    Did you know? The lake is named after Guru Padmasambhava, the 8th-century teacher who brought Buddhism to Tibet.

    More about Gurudongmar Lake →

13. 13 Karakul Lake

    Tajikistan39.040° N 73.420° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage
    • UNESCO natural beauty

    

    A peninsula reaching out from the southern shore and an island off the northern shore divide the lake into two very different basins. The eastern one is shallow, about 13 to 19 metres deep, while the western basin plunges to around 230 metres. Karakul has no outlet, and its water is brackish; after the last ice age its level stood some 35 metres higher than today. Only one species of fish, a loach of the genus Triplophysa, lives in it. The lake is a Ramsar wetland, listed in 2001, and an Important Bird Area for migratory and breeding birds, and it lies within Tajik National Park.

    Did you know? The lake's only fish, a small loach, is named Triplophysa lacusnigri, a scientific name meaning roughly the loach of the black lake.

    More about Karakul Lake →

14. 14 Big Almaty Lake

    Kazakhstan · 31.3 km from Almaty43.051° N 76.985° E

    

    Its colour is the reason people come and come back. The water changes through the year from a light, milky green to an intense turquoise blue, and the level rises and falls with the seasons, highest in August and lowest in February, when the shoreline widens. The lake is about 1.6 kilometres long and up to a kilometre wide, and 30 to 40 metres deep. Its basin was shaped by the restless tectonics of the Tien Shan, a range where earthquakes have long rearranged valleys and dammed rivers.

    Did you know? The lake holds roughly 14 million cubic metres of water, fed largely by meltwater from the glaciers above it.

    More about Big Almaty Lake →

15. 15 Lake Sary-Chelek

    Kyrgyzstan41.895° N 71.957° E

    

    The lake was created around ten thousand years ago, when a great rockfall blocked a mountain valley. It is about 7.5 kilometres long and on average 650 metres wide, swelling to more than two kilometres at its widest, and it covers 4.92 square kilometres. Its depth is remarkable for its size: up to 234 metres, with an average of nearly 100. The water level rises to its highest in May and falls to its lowest in December; ice forms at the end of December and breaks up in April, and in August the surface warms to around 20 °C. The lake drains through the Toskool, a tributary of the Kojata, and belongs to the basin of the Naryn.

    Did you know? The reserve around it shelters one of the largest wild walnut forests in the region, alongside wild apple, pear, plum and Semenov fir.

    More about Lake Sary-Chelek →

16. 16 Namtso

    People's Republic of China30.721° N 90.468° E

    

    The lake's southern horizon is the Nyenchen Tanglha range, whose highest summit rises to 7,162 metres; its snowfields and glaciers fill the view from almost anywhere on the eastern shore, and on still mornings they repeat themselves in the water. The road from Lhasa crosses the range at the Laken La, a pass at about 5,190 metres strung with prayer flags, and the first sight of the lake from the top - a long blue band laid across brown steppe - is one of the great arrivals of high Asia. Nomadic herders still pitch their camps along the shore, and the lake is an important stop for migratory birds.

    Did you know? The lake began forming in the Paleogene, created by the tectonic upheavals that also raised the Himalaya and the Tibetan Plateau.

    More about Namtso →

17. 17 Tso Moriri

    India32.900° N 78.300° E

    

    The lake is fed by streams coming down from the surrounding snowfields and glaciers, chiefly the Karzok Phu, Gyama Phu and Phirse Phu, and has no outlet; its water is only slightly brackish. The region around it, near the Rupshu valley, is home to the Changpa, nomadic herders of Tibetan origin who move with their yaks, sheep, goats and horses between seasonal pastures. On the north-western shore lies the village of Korzok, with its Buddhist monastery, said to be around four hundred years old.

    Did you know? In 2000 the people of Korzok declared the lake a Sacred Gift for a Living Planet, pledging to protect it under a WWF conservation initiative.

    More about Tso Moriri →

18. 18 Karakul Lake

    People's Republic of China38.446° N 75.054° E

    

    The lake lies at about 3,600 metres above sea level, near the meeting point of the Pamir, Tian Shan and Kunlun ranges, in Akto County of the Kizilsu Kyrgyz Autonomous Prefecture of Xinjiang. Three giants are visible from its shore — Muztagh Ata, Kongur Tagh and Kongur Tiube (7,530 metres) — and they remain snow-covered throughout the year. Meltwater from the Muztagh Ata glaciers strongly shapes the chemistry of the lake's water and sediments. It covers about 4.8 square kilometres.

    Did you know? Muztagh Ata, which rises directly south of the lake, takes its name from Turkic words meaning 'father of ice mountains'.

    More about Karakul Lake →

19. 19 Dal Lake

    India · 6.8 km from Srinagar34.120° N 74.870° E

    

    The shoreline owes much of its character to the Mughals, who chose Kashmir as their summer refuge from the heat of the plains. On the slopes of the Zabarwan range they laid out terraced gardens that step down towards the water, fed by channels and fountains and shaded by chinar trees: Shalimar Bagh, created under Emperor Jahangir, the neighbouring Nishat Bagh built by Asif Khan, brother of Empress Nur Jahan, and the smaller spring garden of Chashme Shahi. Two small islands, Rupa Lank and Sona Lank, sit in the middle basins; the first is known as Char Chinari for the four great plane trees that stand at its corners.

    Did you know? Causeways split Dal into four basins: Gagribal, Lokut Dal, Bod Dal and Nigeen.

    More about Dal Lake →

20. 20 Band-e Amir National Park

    Afghanistan34.840° N 67.231° E

    

    The lakes were not dammed by people but by the water itself. Springs rich in dissolved calcium carbonate have, over a very long time, laid down travertine where the water flows over rims and ledges, building natural walls that hold each lake back. The result is a rare landscape of mineral terraces and cream-coloured barriers, with water spilling over their edges in thin falls. Band-e Haibat, often described as the deepest of the chain, sits behind a travertine wall around 12 metres high, and its pale curved face is the image most people know; Band-e Zulfiqar is the longest, stretching for several kilometres.

    Did you know? The plateau is bitterly cold in winter: the mean January temperature is around −14 °C, and nights can fall to about −20 °C.

    More about Band-e Amir National Park →

21. 21 Lake Manasarovar

    People's Republic of China30.667° N 81.500° E

    

    Few lakes are held sacred by so many faiths at once. The Sanskrit name joins the words for "mind" and "lake": in the Ramayana, Brahma is said to have created it from his own thought. Hindus regard nearby Kailash as the dwelling of Shiva. In Buddhist tradition the mountain is identified with Mount Meru, and the lake is linked with Queen Maya, who is said to have bathed here before the conception of the Buddha; stories of the yogi Milarepa and his contest with a Bon master are also set on its shores. For followers of Bon, the region was the heart of the ancient kingdom of Zhang Zhung, and Jains associate it with Rishabhanatha, the first Tirthankara.

    Did you know? In Buddhist symbolism Mount Kailash is the father of the world and Lake Manasarovar is the mother.

    More about Lake Manasarovar →

22. 22 Kerala backwaters

    India · 22.7 km from Kochi9.863° N 76.359° E

    

    The system was formed as waves and coastal currents built low barrier islands across the mouths of the many rivers flowing down from the Western Ghats, trapping their water behind the shore. Here river water and sea water meet and mix, creating a rich brackish world of fish, crabs and mudskippers, with kingfishers, cormorants and darters along the banks. At its heart is Vembanad, the longest lake in India, stretching for close to 100 km from the Kochi area south past Alappuzha. Together with the wetlands around it, Vembanad was listed under the Ramsar Convention in 2002 as a wetland of international importance, as were Ashtamudi Lake and Sasthamkotta Lake further south.

    Did you know? The Vembanad-Kol wetland was listed under the Ramsar Convention as a wetland of international importance in 2002.

    More about Kerala backwaters →

23. 23 Gokyo Lakes

    Nepal27.980° N 86.669° E

    

    The lakes are fed by seepage and streams from the Ngozumpa. The largest and deepest is Thonak Cho, the fourth in the chain, about 65 hectares and more than 60 metres deep; Gokyo Cho, the main lake, is around 43 hectares and 43 metres deep, and the small settlement of Gokyo, a cluster of stone lodges, stands on its eastern shore. In 2007 the lakes and their wetlands were listed under the Ramsar Convention, a recognition of how rare such a high-altitude freshwater system is.

    Did you know? Gokyo Cho, the main lake beside the village, is also known as Dudh Pokhari.

    More about Gokyo Lakes →

24. 24 Lonar Lake

    India19.975° N 76.507° E

    

    The age of the impact has been debated. Earlier studies placed it at around 52,000 years ago; later argon dating suggested some 570,000 years, a result disputed because of possible contamination. The lake has no outlet, and its water is strongly alkaline and salty. In June 2020 it turned from green to pinkish red within a few days — a bloom of salt-loving microorganisms after a rise in salinity — and the pictures went around the world.

    Did you know? The meteorite struck lava flows of the Deccan Traps that had already been lying there for about 66 million years.

    More about Lonar Lake →

25. 25 Sarez Lake

    Tajikistan38.250° N 72.617° E

    

    The lake is the product of a single catastrophe. On 18 February 1911 a strong earthquake struck the central Pamirs, and a mountainside of roughly two cubic kilometres of rock broke away and fell across the valley of the Murghab River. It buried the village of Usoi entirely, and the rock mass it left behind, now called the Usoi Dam, stands around 567 metres high — the tallest dam on Earth, natural or built. Behind it the river slowly backed up over the following months, and within a year the rising water had drowned the village of Sarez, some 20 kilometres upstream, which gave the lake its name.

    Did you know? Survivors said the cloud of dust hanging over their vanished village took three days to settle.

    More about Sarez Lake →

26. 26 Crescent Lake

    People's Republic of China · 6.3 km from Dunhuang40.087° N 94.669° E

    

    No river feeds it. The lake survives on groundwater connected to a subterranean channel linked to the Dang River, whose ultimate source is glacier meltwater from the Qilian Mountains, far to the south — meaning a spring sitting in the middle of the Gobi's dune sea is, at the end of a long underground chain, fed by mountain ice.

    Did you know? The lake is only about 150 metres long and 50 metres wide at its widest point.

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27. 27 Loktak Lake

    India · 32.4 km from Imphal24.550° N 93.783° E

    

    The largest phumdi, about 40 square kilometres, lies along the south-eastern shore and carries Keibul Lamjao National Park, the only floating national park in the world. It is the last natural refuge of the sangai, the brow-antlered deer of Manipur, a subspecies of Eld's deer found nowhere else and once thought to be extinct. Many of the circular mats on the open water are athaphums, made by fishermen to trap fish, and some fishing families live on the phumdis themselves. Hills and islands such as Sendra, Thanga and Ithing rise in the southern part of the lake.

    Did you know? From a herd of just 14 deer in 1975, the sangai population had recovered to about 260 animals by the 2016 census.

    More about Loktak Lake →

28. 28 Song Kol Lake

    Kyrgyzstan41.850° N 75.150° E

    

    Mountains enclose the basin on all sides: the Songköl Too ridge to the north and the Borbor Alabas and Moldo Too ranges to the south. Glaciers and four permanent rivers feed the lake, and its water leaves by evaporation and through the river Kajyrty, which belongs to the Naryn basin. Winters at this altitude are long and harsh. The average yearly temperature is below freezing, January averages around minus 20 °C, snow covers the ground for 180 to 200 days a year, and the lake is sealed by ice a metre or more thick until it begins to break up in the second half of April. In July the mean temperature reaches only about 11 °C.

    Did you know? Around ten fish species are now recorded in the lake.

    More about Song Kol Lake →

29. 29 Attabad Lake

    Pakistan36.337° N 74.868° E

    

    What the landslide left is one of the most striking bodies of water in the Karakoram. The lake stretches about 21 km along the gorge and reaches a depth of over 100 metres, and its colour, a vivid turquoise from the glacial silt carried by the river, stands out against the grey and ochre scree slopes and the jagged peaks of the upper Hunza, known as Gojal. The surface is often completely still, so the mountains are doubled in it. The flooded homes and roads beneath give the beauty an undertone that is hard to forget once known.

    Did you know? Around 6,000 people upstream lost their homes, and up to 25,000 were cut off when the valley's only road went under water.

    More about Attabad Lake →

30. 30 Phoksundo Lake

    Nepal29.200° N 82.952° E

    

    The lake owes its existence to a landslide. Some 30,000 to 40,000 years ago a mass of rock and debris blocked the valley, and the water rose behind it. On top of that natural dam stands Ringmo, a village of Tibetan heritage with a seasonal population of around 200, whose people follow the Bön faith and live from trade, yak herding and tourism; a Bön temple stands just outside the village. Below the dam, the river flowing out of the lake, the Suligad, plunges about 167 metres in a waterfall. More than twenty stupas line the northern part of the shore, and a gompa on the eastern side is the scene of annual prayers.

    Did you know? Phoksundo holds an estimated 409 million cubic metres of water, released through its outlet at roughly 3.7 cubic metres per second.

    More about Phoksundo Lake →