Chaka Salt Lake

Chaka Salt Lake is a “Qinghai’s top four scenery”, and rated as “one of the 50 places people must go” by Chinese National Geographic.

In the eastern Tibetan Plateau, there is one place where produces most of salt in China. This is the Chaka Salt Lake, also named Tsaka Lake is located in Wulan County, Haixi Mongolian Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Qinghai province. With an altitude of 3100m above sea level and 300km from Xining via Qinghai Lake. Chaka is Tibetan Language, meaning “salt pond”. Chaka Salt Lake is reopened to the public in June 2016, and got a lot of attention since then. It’s a “Qinghai’s top four scenery”, and rated as “one of the 50 places people must go” by Chinese National Geographic.

The Chaka Salt Lake is well known as the “the mirror of the sky”, mountain surrounded the lake, the white pure lake reflects the azure sky if the weather is brilliant. Only one part of the lake is open to tourists and the other part is still producing salt and Salt factory is still operational. Once you entry the tourist zone. There are many rare sculptures that are made of salt, and the trails on the lake also made of solid salt. Travelers also can take a small train inside the tourist zone to enjoy Tsaka Salt Lake landscape. If you prefer to walk, it takes about 30 mins to get to the central of the lake. The lake is shallow and white, it became one of the photography feature. Many Chinese tourists walk inside the lake by bare feet to pose a photo.

Because of its natural advantage, the Chaka salt lake could be a heavenly place for photographer working on a great shot during both day and night. Night fall on the lake, “mirror of the sky” turns to a sky full of twinkling star, it’s just like a paradise under the starry sky Lake, azure and starry sky makes a good decoration in Tibetan plateau.

The best time to go Salt lake is from June to middle of September when the weather is warm enough to heat up the salt so that you could walk in the salt. In winter, you can enjoy the lake surrounded by snowcapped mountain.

As it’s so special and spectacular that attracts tons of people that boosts the economy and tourism, on the other hand, it brings out some negative consequence like pollutions, lack of management, lake of maintenance .etc. The lake was once closed for tourists for a while because of trash and other pollutions.

How many days do you need to travel to Chaka Lake?

If you plan to stop by Qinghai Lake on the way to Salt Lake, it might be tight to visit Salt Lake and Qinghai Lake in one day. The common practice is to take 2 days for Qinghai Lake and Chaka Salt Lake. You drive from Xining to Qinghai Lake after that either stay in Heimahe township to see the sunset and sunrise of Qinghai Lake. Then next day drive to Chaka Tsaka Lake and return back to Xining in the afternoon. Or you can spend the night in Tsaka Lake, there is one hotel at the Tsaka Lake where you can stay. But again, staying at the Qinghai Lake is best option.

The entrance fee to Chaka Lake is 60CNY during Covid 19 Pandemic. But original entrance fee is 120CNY per person.