Iskanderkul
Interesting facts
- A limestone rock on the shore bears the inscription 'Russians, 1870', carved by members of Alexei Fedchenko's expedition, which arrived from the Zeravshan valley.
- According to legend, every full moon the waters part and Alexander's horse Bucephalus rises as a snow-white steed to graze on the shore, followed by his grooms.
- In the East Alexander was known as Iskander Zulkarnain, 'the two-horned', and local tradition says he passed this way on his road to India.
- Nearby Zamin-Mulla, nicknamed Snake Lake by hikers, has warmer water and richer life than Iskanderkul despite lying so close to it.
- The lake holds roughly 0.24 cubic kilometres of water, according to measurements made in 1978.
- Iskanderkul appeared on a Soviet postage stamp in 1959, in a set dedicated to Central Asia.
- Its outflow, the Iskander Darya, later meets the Yaghnob to form the Fan Darya, a major tributary of the Zeravshan.
- A weather station and a hydrological post on the shore have kept watch on the lake throughout the year.
- Birds recorded in the reserve around the lake include the saker falcon, the Himalayan rubythroat and the fire-fronted serin.
Why it is worth it
Iskanderkul is a sheet of milky turquoise water held high in the Fann Mountains of Tajikistan, at 2,195 metres on the northern flank of the Gissar Range. Bare, steep ridges rise straight from its shores, and the colour of the lake shifts with the light against the bare rock. Roughly triangular, it covers about 3.4 square kilometres and reaches a depth of some 72 metres.
The lake is a dammed one: a great collapse of rock, possibly set off by an earthquake, blocked the valley and let the water pool behind it. Old shorelines visible on the surrounding slopes, more than 120 metres above the present surface, suggest the lake once stood far higher. The Sarytag, Khazormech and Serima rivers feed it, and its single outflow, the Iskander Darya, runs off towards the Zeravshan basin. A short way downstream that river drops 43 metres through a narrow gorge in a waterfall known as the Fan Niagara, and close to the lake lies the much smaller Zamin-Mulla, separated from Iskanderkul by a strip of land only about 300 metres wide.
The name joins Iskander, the Persian form of Alexander, with kul, the Turkic word for lake. Local legend ties the place to Alexander the Great's campaign in Central Asia: one version says he punished a rebellious settlement by diverting a river over it, another that his horse Bucephalus drowned in these waters. Around 300 square kilometres of lake and mountain are protected as a nature reserve, with juniper woods, water meadows and alpine grassland, and much of it is recognised as an Important Bird Area for species such as the Himalayan snowcock, the cinereous vulture, the wallcreeper and the white-winged grosbeak.
Getting there
Iskanderkul lies about 134 km by road from Dushanbe and some 23 km off the main highway between Dushanbe and Khujand. The nearest international airport is Dushanbe International Airport (DYU), about 71 km away in a straight line, though the road crosses the Gissar Range to reach the lake.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Iskanderkul is a mountain lake of glacial origin in Tajikistan's Sughd Province. It lies at an altitude of 2,195 metres (7,201 ft) on the northern slopes of the Gissar Range in the Fann Mountains. Triangular in shape, it has a surface area of 3.4 square kilometres (1.3 sq mi) and is up to 72 metres (236 ft) deep. Formed by a landslide that blocks the Saratogh river, the outflow of the lake is called the Iskander Darya, which joins the Yaghnob River to form the Fan Darya, a major left tributary of the Zeravshan River.
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