Lake Baskunchak

Baskunchak, about 115 square kilometres and 21 metres below sea level, protected since 1997, sits in a depression above a salt dome, fed by springs carrying dissolved salt, and it is essentially a solid salt body under a thin brine layer - the deposit runs to great depth and the surface is renewed continuously, so it has been mined since the eighth century and industrially since the nineteenth without exhausting it. A large share of Russian salt comes from here. Extraction is done by combine harvesters that run on rails laid out across the lake and cut the salt from below the brine, and the rails, the machinery and the salt crusts are as much what visitors photograph as the whiteness. The brine is dense enough to float in, like the Dead Sea, and people do; the crystallised shore forms sharp ridges and shapes. It is a working industrial site with a natural park around it, and Mount Bolshoye Bogdo rises a few kilometres away.

What's there

• The white surface - a salt body under thin brine, renewed by inflowing springs.
• The rail harvesters - combines running on tracks laid across the lake.
• The floating - brine dense enough to hold a body up.
• The crystal shore - salt ridges and formations along the margins.

When to go

April to June and September; July and August regularly exceed forty degrees with no shade. A day.

Good to know

It is an active industrial site - stay clear of machinery and rails. Salt is severely corrosive to skin, cuts, eyes and equipment, and rinsing water is not available on the lake. No shade whatsoever. Summer heat here is genuinely dangerous.

Nearby

Mount Bolshoye Bogdo is a few kilometres away; Lake Elton is north in Volgograd region.

Key facts