Lake Burlinskoye in the Altai Territory

The average depth of 1.65 meters allows the existence of a railway route passing directly through the water.

This place looks like another planet.

There is salt and bluish soil underfoot. I can't believe that you can stand here only 700 kilometers from home. Only halophyte plants can survive in the soil next to the lake, and this makes the landscape even more unearthly, alien.

Lake Burlinskoye, it's called Bursol, it's Pink. One of the unusual places in Siberia, it is located in the Kulunda steppe of the Altai Territory, 450 kilometers from Novosibirsk.

The lake arose as a result of climate change. In the prehistoric era, there was the Mansi Sea here. Due to warming and falling humidity levels, the sea dried up and left behind many small salt lakes. They continued to dry out until they turned into shallow salt marshes.

One of the features of Burlinsky Lake is the pink color of the water, which varies from blue on a cool day to thick crimson on a hot one. The salmon color of the lake is given by the crustaceans artemia and nauplia. Moreover, they emit pink pigment under the influence of sunlight. The more sun there is, the more intense the color becomes.

Salt has been mined here since the XVIII century. In 2010, the Altai Salt Mining Company restored production at the Burlinsky salt field. Today it is the largest deposit of table salt in Western Siberia. In addition to salt mining, it seems to me that it is also a very cool art object at the moment. The colors of the lake, sky and beach are unearthly, as if from another dimension.

Burlinsky Lake has an absolutely closed system. There are no feeding tributaries, there is not a single stream flowing out of it. And the density of water is higher than in the Dead Sea. Therefore, in winter, the Bursol does not freeze and replenishes its volume due to rains and snow.

Imagine how cool it is here in winter, standing on the shore of the lake and watching the falling snowflakes melt in the warm waters of the lake?