Northern Mongolia - Mongolia - page 275

NATIONAL PARKS OF KHÖVSGÖL
Khövsgöl Nuur National Park With Mongolia's deepest and second-largest lake at
its heart, this national park features craggy mountains, grass plains and thermal
springs.
Khoridol Saridag Nuruu Strictly Protected Area This park consists of 188,634
hectares of mountains and plains, sandwiched between Lake Khövsgöl and the
Darkhad Depression.
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Khövsgöl Nuur National Park
The Khövsgöl Nuur (Blue Pearl of Mongolia) is an extraordinary lake that stretches 136km
deep into the Siberian taiga. As with its larger sibling across the border, Siberia's Lake
Baikal, superlatives don't really do this immense, mountain-fringed lake justice. Its
moody blue waters, ranging from midnight blue to tropical aquamarine, form the basis
for this popular national park (admission T3000) and attract thousands of Mongolian and
international tourists every year.
In surface area, this is the second-largest lake (2760 sq km) in Mongolia, surpassed in
size only by Uvs Nuur, a shallow, salty lake in the western part of the country. Khövsgöl
Nuur (sometimes transliterated as Hövsgöl or Hovsgol) is Mongolia's deepest lake (up to
262m deep) as well as the world's 14th-largest source of fresh water - it contains
between 1% and 2% of the world's fresh water (that's 380,700 billion litres!). Geologic-
ally speaking, Khövsgöl is the younger sibling (by 23 million years) of Siberia's Lake
Baikal, 195km to the northeast, and was formed by the same tectonic forces.
The lake is full of fish, such as lenok and sturgeon, and the area is home to argali
sheep, ibexes, bears, sables, moose and a few near-sighted wolverines. It also has more
than 200 species of bird, including the Baikal teal, bar-headed goose ( kheeriin galuu in
Mongolian), black stork and Altai snowcock.
The region hosts three separate, unique peoples: Darkhad, Buriat and Tsaatan (aka
Dukha). Shamanism, rather than Buddhism, is the religion of choice in these parts.