Speaking of Salt Lake, where do you think of? Bolivia's Salar de Uyuni? Or the Chaka Salt Lake in China? Or the Dachaidan Emerald Lake that has become popular on the Internet in recent years? Yes, these are very famous salt lakes, some are famous for the mirror of the sky, and some are famous for their color like emeralds. They are all good places for traveling and taking pictures.
But if you want to ask where is the largest salt lake in China? How many friends know? I believe that not many people know it, not because it is not beautiful enough, but because it is ignored by many friends. It is the Chaerhan Salt Lake located in Golmud City, Haixi Prefecture, Qinghai Province.
Chaerhan Salt Lake is located in the south of the Qaidam Basin, spanning the two cities and counties of Golmud and Dulan. The salt lake is more than 160 kilometers long from east to west, 20-40 kilometers wide from north to south, and the thickness of the salt layer is about 2-20 meters. The area exceeds 5800 square meters. square kilometers, which is almost 56 times that of Chaka Salt Lake. It is the largest natural salt lake and the largest soluble potassium and magnesium salt deposit in China.
According to local friends who are traveling with us, there are nearly 500 million tons of potassium chloride, 1.65 billion tons of magnesium chloride, 8.246 million tons of lithium chloride and 46.22 billion tons of sodium chloride in the Chaerhan Salt Lake, ranking first in the country. , especially the reserves of sodium chloride, which can be used by humans all over the world for more than 1,000 years. If calculated according to the market price, its salt reserves are as high as 12 trillion yuan, making it the veritable No. 1 salt lake in China.
Chaerhan Salt Lake is actually not a single lake, but is composed of multiple adjacent and connected salt ponds such as Dabson Lake, South Hobson, North Hobson, and Senie. At an altitude of 2670 meters, it is the lowest point of the Qaidam Basin, so many inland rivers such as the Golmud River and the Qaidam River also flow into the lake.
It is understood that Chaerhan is a transliteration of Mongolian, which means salt lake. According to legend, hundreds of millions of years ago, the Qaidam Basin where the Chaerhan Salt Lake is located was once a vast ocean. Later, due to the uplift of the Qinghai-Tibet land, the sea and land changed. Qaidam became a basin. At the beginning, although the ocean became land, countless lakes of various sizes were formed, and Chaerhan was only the largest of them.
Due to geological changes, it later became a vast Gobi. The climate is dry and hot, the sunshine time is long, and the evaporation of water is much higher than the precipitation in this area. Due to the long-term wind and sun, the lakes in this area are formed. The high-concentration brine gradually crystallized into salt grains, and a thick salt cover formed on the lake surface, which was extremely hard. As early as Li Shizhen's "Compendium of Materia Medica", there was a record of Chaerhan, and the "green salt" used at that time came from this place.
After liberation, the local government built the largest potash fertilizer production base in China, but ordinary people knew little about it. Later, with the rise of salt lake tourism, the largest salt lake in China, located deep in the Qaidam Basin, was discovered. It is gradually becoming known to the world, but in terms of fame, it is still far inferior to Chaka Salt Lake, which also belongs to Haixi Prefecture, Qinghai Province.
Although not well-known and not a real scenic spot, the beauty here has always been underestimated, especially the Wanzhang Salt Bridge across the Salt Lake, which is a 15-18 meter thick salt cover. The natural salt bridge formed has a total length of 32 kilometers, which is more than 10,000 feet when converted into a city system, so it is called Wanzhang Salt Bridge. The bridge is smooth and flat, and there is no problem for large vehicles to pass through it. It is unique in the world and people are amazed.
Yufan Tips:
1. Chaerhan Salt Lake is about 50 kilometers away from the city of Golmud. It is connected by a high-speed road. It takes about 40 minutes to drive. If you are not familiar with the road conditions, you can directly navigate to it;
2. Chaerhan Salt Lake is very beautiful, but it is also very sunny. There is no vegetation in the lake. Except for a few sightseeing pavilions, there are almost no other places for shade, so everyone must do a good job of sun protection when they come to play;
