The Sea of Salty Lakes

Russian salt lakes

As every one of us knows, the land of Russia is spacious and it has almost any kind of scenery. From the very west end of the country and to the east end of it you can find almost all types of majestic landscapes. Today we will shift to the south edge of Russia, near the border with Kazakhstan, where the city of Astrakhan’ is located. The weather in this region is warm, mostly even hot, almost all year round… but the thing pictured on these shots doesn’t look like it was shot somewhere in a hot place at all. I would even say that a person who doesn’t know anything about this spot would think that this is somewhere in Antarctic. Or in the prairies of the USA with a piece of Antarctic landscape.

From a bird’s eye view the area looks fascinating, as if there was some kind of a sea long ago, and then it dried to the ground and now being deserted.

This white stuff covering the ground is not ice or snow at all. This is salt. The place is a production site of salt and therapeutic mud, which is being delivered to the closest and one of the most famous therapeutic mud-baths in Russia.

In summer, when the weather is hot, the bunch of lakes getting dry and you can even walk along the salty surface of these little pools. But in spring, rain is not a rare thing there and the water level making fast, maybe you can even swim in one of them. They say that swimming in such lakes can be compared with swimming in the Dead Sea, so salty the water is in there.

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17 thoughts on “The Sea of Salty Lakes”

        • The water of the Volga Delta would be brackish with an inconsistant sodium content. It’s no secret that the Volga Delta has been change by hydroelectric dams up river. That is why I asked my question!

          Reply
            • Cranberry – Of course there is salt in the Volga River.
              The level of salinity depends on the location,the environment of whatever part of the Volga River you test.

              In almost all cases the salinity is so low you can’t taste it.

              You need to take in consideration the industrial and agricultural leaching and runoff pollution as well as natural ones.

              Reply
  1. Such landscapes are better presented in western Kazakhstan, Caspian region. No trees just flat desert with solt swamps called “sor”. Some of them are real places of “no-return”.

    Reply

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