Uvs Lake has recorded both −58°C and +40°C at the same location. Mongolia's largest lake is a UNESCO World Heritage site, a Ramsar Wetland, and one of the most remote places in the country.
The Rara Avis Team
Scientists measuring the Uvs Nuur basin have recorded both −58°C and +40°C at the same location, within a single human lifetime. A swing of nearly a hundred degrees Celsius. That single fact begins to explain what Uvs Lake is.
Mongolia's largest lake covers 3,350 square kilometres of western steppe yet averages only six metres in depth, a vast shallow inland sea the colour of pale pewter on overcast days. The water is salt: in places the salinity reaches three times that of the ocean, crystallising on the shoreline in white crusts that crunch underfoot. No rivers drain the basin. What flows in evaporates or sinks, concentrating minerals over millennia. The Uvs Nuur basin is a closed system, isolated by the mountains surrounding it, which is precisely why scientists designated it a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003. It measures the planet's extremes.
That same isolation makes Uvs an extraordinary wildlife sanctuary. Designated a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance, the lake supports bird populations remarkable in both scale and variety. Flamingos stop here on migration. Bar-headed geese — the birds that cross the Himalayas at altitudes approaching 7,000 metres — congregate on the shallows. Whooper swans, waders, and waterfowl of dozens of species pass through, connecting the lake to the Arctic in the north and sub-Saharan Africa in the south.
Above the western shore the Turgen Mountains climb past 4,000 metres, glaciated and home to snow leopards. Standing at the water's edge and looking west, pale salt flats give way in a single sweep to glaciated peaks.
Almost no foreign travellers reach Uvs Lake. It lies in Mongolia's far west, bordering Russia, accessible by domestic flight to Ulaangom followed by rough road travel. There is no infrastructure on the shore. What there is instead is the particular quality of places genuinely at the edge of things: a profound silence, cold salt air, and the improbable flamingos. Rara Avis arranges expeditions to Uvs Nuur for travellers committed to Mongolia's most remote corners.