Köw Ata
Interesting facts
- The Turkmen name Köw Ata is usually translated as 'father of caves'.
- The cave has five entrances, but stairs lead down from only one of them, and no daylight reaches the lake.
- The descent to the water is a lit staircase of roughly 350 steps.
- The cave became widely known after an 1896 newspaper note reported that staff of the nearby Bakharly railway station had installed wooden ladders for visitors.
- According to official figures, the water contains 38 chemical elements, among them bromine, iron and antimony as well as sulphur and iodine.
- The lake fills the lower part of a geologically old karst cave that is now flooded by thermal groundwater.
- Bats of several species roost in the cave, including greater and Mediterranean horseshoe bats.
- According to a local legend, a shepherd who followed a cow into the cave met an old man whose gift of fig leaves turned into gold.
Why it is worth it
Köw Ata is a warm underground lake hidden in a cavern at the foot of the Kopet Dag mountains in Turkmenistan. A long, lit staircase leads down from the entrance into a hall roughly 250 metres long, where a still, transparent pool with a bluish-green tint fills the floor of the cave. The water stays between about 33 °C and 38 °C all year round, so steam hangs in the air above it, and bathing here — in a natural hot spring far underground — is what makes the place unlike almost any other cave.
The lake measures around 75–80 metres in length and between 8 and 23 metres across, with an average depth of about 10 metres and as much as 15 metres at its deepest; it is often described as the largest underground lake of its kind in the former Soviet Union. The water is heavily mineralised, carrying sulphur, iodine, magnesium, potassium, sodium and other elements; the lake drains into a sulphur-rich spring. The cave itself varies from 12 to 50 metres in width, and the lake lies some 55 metres below the surface. Bats roost in the upper vaults, and around fifty species of invertebrates have been recorded in the cave.
The cave was described by researchers as early as 1856, and a wooden staircase was in place by 1896. In the 1960s a road and electricity reached the site and it was developed for visitors, with an observation platform and changing cubicles set partway down the stairs. Bathing in its mineral waters as a form of balneotherapy has since become the main reason people make the descent, and the cave is one of the best-known natural sights within easy reach of Ashgabat.
Getting there
Köw Ata lies in the Baherden District of Ahal Province, about 17 km from the town of Bäherden. The nearest airport within Turkmenistan is Ashgabat International Airport (ASB), about 82 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Kow Ata is an underground lake in an eponymous cave near Bäherden in Turkmenistan, at the foot of the Kopet Dag. It is the largest in Commonwealth of Independent States.
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