Chaka Salt Lake โ€” salt flat
Image by JINMOUREN from Pixabay

Chaka Salt Lake

  • Elevation3,059 m
  • 2 min read
  • 36.698ยฐ N 99.096ยฐ E

Interesting facts

  • The lake holds an estimated 448 million tonnes of salt, which Chinese reports say could supply the whole country's table salt for some 70 years.
  • The salt bed averages about 4.9 metres thick and reaches as much as 15 metres in places.
  • Mineral traces tint some of its crystals a dark bluish colour, and the lake has long been famous for this "Daqing" or green salt.
  • The Book of Han, a first-century Chinese history, mentions a salt pond beyond the frontier near Qinghai Lake, which is identified with Chaka.
  • Chaka's salt is reported to be about 95 percent sodium chloride.
  • Chinese National Geography magazine named Chaka one of 55 places in China to see in a lifetime.
  • Despite the altitude, the area is one of sunshine, with close to 3,000 hours a year and only about 230 mm of rain, most of it in summer.
  • January in Chaka averages around minus 11ยฐC, while July averages about 15ยฐC.

Why it is worth it

At more than 3,000 metres on the Tibetan Plateau, Chaka is a salt lake so shallow and still that its surface often turns into a vast mirror. A thin film of brine lies over a hard white crust of salt, and on calm days it reflects the sky, the clouds and the people walking out across it, so that the horizon seems to disappear. This effect has given the lake its popular name, the "Mirror of the Sky", and turned it into a major destination โ€“ more than three million people came in 2018.

The lake lies in Ulan County, near the eastern end of the Qaidam Basin, about 298 km west of the provincial capital Xining. It is an elongated oval roughly 16 km long and 9 km wide, covering some 105 square kilometres, framed by mountain ranges to the north and south whose higher summits keep their snow for much of the year. The name Chaka is Tibetan and simply means "salt lake"; in Mongolian it is likewise called Dabsun Nuur, "salt lake". Beneath the brine lie layers of halite several metres thick. When brine is pumped out, the salt slowly crystallises again, and the deposits are pure enough to be refined for the table.

Salt has been gathered here for a very long time โ€“ Chinese sources trace its collection by the Qiang people back to the Han dynasty, with organised, large-scale working beginning in the eighteenth century โ€“ and Chaka remains one of Qinghai's main salt mines. The production area is managed separately and closed to visitors, while a narrow-gauge railway originally laid to carry salt now takes sightseers out onto the lake surface.

Getting there

The lake lies beside the small town of Chaka in Ulan County, Haixi Prefecture. A branch line links Chaka to the Qinghaiโ€“Tibet railway, and tourist trains from Xining, about 298 km to the east, take over four hours. The town of Qabqa, seat of Gonghe County, is about 145 km away. The nearest airport is Haixi Delingha (HXD), about 170 km away.

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in the People's Republic of China 105The Most Beautiful Salt Flats 13The Most Beautiful Natural Wonders in the People's Republic of China 32The Most Beautiful Natural Wonders 580

From the encyclopaedia

Chaka Salt Lake is a salt lake in Ulan County, Haixi Prefecture, Qinghai, China. The oval-shaped lake is located near the eastern end of Qaidam Basin, 298 kilometres (185ย mi) to the west of the provincial capital Xining. The name "Chaka" (เฝšเพญเผ‹เฝ) means "salt lake" in Tibetan.

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36.69765, 99.09588per Wikidata