The Blue Pearl of Mongolia — a pristine alpine lake holding 2% of the world's fresh water, ringed by taiga and reindeer-herding Tsaatan
Lake Khövsgöl (Хөвсгөл Нуур) is the largest freshwater lake in Mongolia by volume (38.36 km³ — about 2% of the world's unfrozen fresh water) and the second deepest lake in Central Asia (267m at maximum depth). It sits in the Sayan mountain system at 1,645m elevation on the Mongolian-Siberian border, surrounded by larch and pine taiga unlike any landscape elsewhere in Mongolia. The lake is 136km long and 36km wide, strikingly blue, and so pure it is technically drinkable. The northern shores are the homeland of the Tsaatan (Dukha) people — a Turkic reindeer-herding community of about 400 peopl…
The Tsaatan (Dukha) people have herded reindeer in the taiga around Khövsgöl and across the Sayan mountains for at least 3,000 years — their culture represents the southernmost extension of the circumpolar reindeer-herding tradition that once extended from Scandinavia to the Pacific. They are genetically and linguistically Turkic (related to the Tuvan people of southern Siberia) but politically Mongolian. Soviet collectivisation in the 1940s–1960s disrupted their traditional migration patterns and reduced herd sizes dramatically; post-1990 decollectivisation partially restored traditional pra…