Critics' choice 2020

Baskunchak Lake is a salt lake located on the south of Russia, in Astrakhan region. Since the VIII century, salt has been mined here and sent along the Great Silk Road. It is a small hollow on the top of a huge salt mountain 6 km deep. And besides these encyclopedic facts, this is an amazing place with a special microclimate and surreal, unearthly landscapes. This is a small Dead Sea with the same healing mud and salt, but almost no one knows about it. The lake keeps its secrets.