Lake Saiful Muluk
Interesting facts
- Malika Parbat, which towers about 6 km south of the lake, rises to 5,290 metres and its name means "Queen of the Mountains".
- Local people long considered Malika Parbat unclimbable; its north summit was first reached in 1920 by Captain B. W. Battye with four Gurkha soldiers.
- The prince who gives the lake its name, Saif al-Muluk, bears a title meaning "Sword of the Kings".
- Manuscripts of the Saif al-Muluk romance go back to the 17th century, and the tale has been rendered in Urdu, Bengali, Balochi and English.
- Brown trout in the lake grow to about seven kilograms.
- Botanists have recorded around 26 species of vascular plants around the lake, with the daisy family the most common.
- Higher still in the same range lies Ansoo Lake, at about 4,126 metres, named for its tear-like shape.
Why it is worth it
At 3,224 metres, above the last trees of the Kaghan Valley, a broad green-blue lake lies in a bowl of snow-streaked mountains, with Malika Parbat, the highest peak of the valley, rising close by. Saiful Muluk is one of the highest lakes in Pakistan, covering about 2.75 square kilometres in the Saiful Muluk National Park in the Mansehra District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In winter the surface freezes over and the whole basin turns white.
The lake is glacial in origin. During the Pleistocene the Kaghan Valley was buried under ice, and as the glaciers withdrew their moraines blocked the stream running through the head of the valley; meltwater filled the hollow behind them. The lake reaches a depth of about 34 metres and drains through a stream that joins the Kunhar River. Brown trout grow large in its cold water, and the surrounding slopes carry the alpine flora typical of the high Himalayan foothills.
The lake takes its name from a prince of folk legend. The tale of Saif al-Muluk and Badi al-Jamal, an Arabic romance later attached to the One Thousand and One Nights, was retold in Punjabi verse in the nineteenth century by the Sufi poet Mian Muhammad Bakhsh, and his version made it one of the best-loved stories of the region. In it, an Egyptian prince dreams of a lake and of a fairy princess and falls in love with her, though his father warns him that she is not of the human world. Local tradition holds that this is the lake of the dream, the place where the prince at last found his fairy.
Getting there
The lake lies about 9 km north of the town of Naran, at the upper end of the Kaghan Valley, and is reached from Naran by a mountain road. Muzaffarabad is closer in a straight line but is separated from the lake by high ridges; the practical approach is the Kaghan Valley road (N-15) through Mansehra and Balakot. Islamabad International Airport (ISB) is about 168 km away in a straight line.
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From the encyclopaedia
Saiful Muluk is a mountainous lake in northern Pakistan, located at the northern end of the Kaghan Valley, near the town of Naran in the Saiful Muluk National Park. The lake is named after a legendary prince from the folk tale Saiful Muluk, later put into poem form by the Sufi poet Mian Muhammad Bakhsh. At an elevation of 3,224 m above sea level, the lake is located above the tree line, and is one of the highest lakes in Pakistan.
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