Chaerhan Salt Lake

Chinese Name: 察尔汗盐湖（Cha Er Han Yan Hu）
Location: Chaerhan town, Golmud city, Qinghai Province.(about 60 km away from the northern of Golmud City)
Ticket: Free
Estimated tour time: 2-3 hours
Recommended time to visit: May to Oct
Nearby Attractions: Golmud Kunlun Mountain National Park, Tanggula Pass, Yuzhu Peak, Keluke Lake-Tuosu Lake Nature Reserve, etc.

Qarhan Salt Lake , located in the salt marshes of the Qaidam Basin near the Mongol-Tibetan prefecture city of Haixi in the northeastern part of Qinghai Province, is the largest salt lake belonging to the Qaidam Basin, sometimes called China's Salt Lake City.
The Salt Lake is gone across by the Qinghai-Tibet Railway. The salt lake is more than 160 kilometers long from east to west and 20-40 kilometers wide from south to north. The thickness of the salt lake is 2-20 meters. The salt lake covers an area of 5,800 square kilometers. The elevation of the salt lake is 2,670 meters. There is more than 50 billion tons of sodium chloride in the salt lake. Those sodium chlorides can serve the people in this planet for more than 1,000 years.

Qarhan Salt LakeThe word "Qarhan" is Mongolian, meaning "salt marsh". Located in a hyper-arid basin that is extremely hot and dry – and with long days – the amount of evaporation from the lake far exceeds the amount of rainfall for a comparable water surface elsewhere. Indeed, Qaidam Basin is itself endorheic, with no inflow of water from the outside except for runoff surface water that accumulates in the marsh and its lakes. The lakes have therefore shrunk over time, and this shrinkage is also due partly to the lakes' (marshes') briny water which crystallizes into salt under the searing heat, leaving a hard, sloped rim in the form of a salt bed that rings the present-day lakes, including Qarhan Salt Lake.

The land surrounding the salt lake is flat. Although it is surrounded by the boundless desert, it has exotic landscapes.

The area around Qarhan Salt Lake produces so-called pearl salt, a product dubbed the "King of Salt Lake", a pure salt that is as white as driven snow. On days of gentle breeze and bright sun, the vast surface of the lake looks like a huge precious mirror. It seems that the lake emits rays of silver light with steaming heat. The glittering lake looks like a boundless sea. The 32 kilometers long 'Wan Zhang Salt Bridge' is the most famous attraction of the lake.

Now the Qinghai Salt Lake Potash Fertilizer Plant stands on the lake. It is the largest Potash Fertilizer plant in China, which can produce one million ton of potash fertilizer each year. Moreover, there is a Salt Lake Museum in the plant. There are many beautiful salt blooms in all shapes on display. Some of them are like corals, pagodas, flowers and some of them are like constellations, ivories, precious stones. It is so much complimented that it is called blue flowers. It is beyond people’s imagination. When standing in front of them, it feels like you are wandering around the fantasy.