Lakes of Asia

Balkhash

Lake Balkhash (Balkash) is Kazakhstan's large endorheic lake, Central Asia's largest at about 17,000 km2, fresh in the west and saline in the east, fed mainly by the Ili River and threatened by upstream water use.

Beyşehir

Beyşehir (Beyşehir Gölü) is Turkey's largest freshwater lake, in Konya and İsparta provinces; a 1993 national park with 33 islands, Seljuk Kubadabad Palace, major birdlife, and declining water levels under drought and irrigation pressure.

Bosten

Bosten Lake (博斯腾湖), also called Bagrash Lake, is China's largest inland freshwater lake, in Yanqi Basin, Xinjiang, at about 1,048 m elevation. Terminal of the Kaidu River and source of the Kongque River; salinity rose from 0.38 g/L in 1956 to 1.87 g/L in 1988.

Buir

Buir (Buir Nuur, Буйр нуур; 贝尔湖) is a 615 km² transboundary freshwater lake on the Mongolia–China border in the Amur basin, fed by the Khalkh River, drained by the Orshuun River, a Ramsar site since 2004.

Dal Lake

Dal Lake, an 18 sq km urban freshwater lake in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, India, with four basins, houseboats, shikaras, and floating gardens (Raad), facing eutrophication and sustained restoration.

Dong dongting hu

Dongdongtinghu (East Dongting Lake), part of Dongting Lake (洞庭湖) in northern Hunan, China, is a Ramsar wetland (Site 551, 1992) with a 1,328 km2 water surface, extreme seasonal water-level swings, and heavy Three Gorges Dam impacts.

Dongting

Dongting Lake (洞庭湖), China's second largest freshwater lake in Hunan, a Yangtze floodplain lake; shrank from ~6000 to ~2000 km2 through siltation and reclamation, key Yangtze flood regulator.

Erhai Lake

Erhai Lake (洱海) is China's seventh largest freshwater lake and Yunnan's second largest plateau lake, at Dali. Mesotrophic, phosphorus-limited since 2006, with blooms in 1996, 2003, and 2013 and Grade II–III water quality since 2018.

Inle Lake

Inle Lake (Inlay Lake), Southern Shan State, Myanmar: shallow 884 m mountain lake, country's second-largest, home of Intha floating gardens (Yechan), Lawpita hydropower source, Ramsar and UNESCO Biosphere Reserve site facing siltation and shrinking area.

Issyk-Kul

Issyk-Kul (Ысык-Көл, "warm lake") is a deep, endorheic saline lake at 1,606 m in Kyrgyzstan's Tian Shan: 6,236 km², 668 m deep, never freezing, Silk Road heritage, declining water level.

Khanka

Khanka (Ozero Khanka; Xingkai Hu, 興凱湖) is a large shallow transboundary freshwater lake on the China-Russia border, largest in Northeast Asia, about 4,380 km², Ramsar site 112, draining via the Song'acha to the Ussuri.

Khyargas Nuur

Khyargas Nuur (Хяргас нуур), a large brackish endorheic lake in Mongolia's Great Lakes Depression, terminal sink of Altai-Khangai meltwater; second-largest brackish lake, with dated paleoshorelines to +129 m (MIS 5c).

Kolleru Lake

Kolleru Lake is one of India's largest freshwater lakes, a Ramsar wetland in Andhra Pradesh that acts as a flood-balancing reservoir between the Godavari and Krishna deltas.

Kulundinskoe

Kulundinskoe (Кулундинское озеро, Lake Kulunda) is a large drainless hyperhaline lake on the Kulunda Plain, Altai Krai, Russia; area about 720–728 km², salinity 40–131 g/l, mirabilite reserves, and a commercial Artemia brine shrimp cyst fishery.

Labaz

Labaz (Лабаз, Ozero Labaz) is a 470 km² shallow freshwater lake in the North Siberian Lowland, Taymyr Peninsula, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, at 72°N 99°E, draining via the Kegerdi River into the Khatanga basin; a relic of an ice-dammed pre-Labaz lake and a permafrost paleoclimate research site.

Lake Baikal

Lake Baikal is a rift lake in south-east Siberia, Russia, the oldest and deepest lake in the world at about 25 million years and 1,700 m deep.

Lake Poso

Lake Poso (Danau Poso), ancient tectonic lake in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia; 323.2 km2, ~400 m deep, ultraoligotrophic, home to at least seven endemic fish species, several possibly extinct from invasive fish and habitat degradation.

Lake Toba

Lake Toba (Danau Toba), also called the Toba Caldera, is a volcanic caldera lake in North Sumatra, Indonesia, formed by a supervolcano eruption about 74,000 years ago and now part of a UNESCO Global Geopark.

Lake Urmia (دریاچه ارومیه)

Lake Urmia (دریاچه ارومیه), once called Lake Rezaiyeh, is a hypersaline lake in northwestern Iran and the world's second largest hypersaline lake, now about 90% dried up.

Lake Van

Lake Van (Turkish: Van Gölü) is a large soda lake in eastern Anatolia, Turkey, the largest soda lake and third largest terminal lake on Earth after the Caspian Sea and Lake Issyk-Kul.

List of lakes of India

Lakes of India: natural and man-made standing waters, from Himalayan glacial lakes to Kerala's Vembanad lagoon and Rajasthan's saline Sambhar. 22,361 lakes counted in the 2017-18 census; 101 Ramsar wetland sites as of 2026.

Loktak Lake

Loktak Lake, in Bishnupur district, Manipur, is the largest freshwater lake in Northeast India, a Ramsar site (no. 463, designated 1990) famous for its floating phumdis and Keibul Lamjao National Park, the world's only floating national park and home of the Sangai deer.

Namtso

Namtso (纳木错, gnam mtsho, Tengri Nor), the "heavenly lake," is a ~2,000 km² saline closed-basin lake at ~4,718 m on the Tibetan Plateau, China's second-largest saltwater lake and a Tibetan Buddhist holy lake.

Ngoring

Ngoring Lake (鄂陵湖, Tibetan Cuoelang, cyan lake) is the largest freshwater lake on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, in Madoi County, Qinghai, at the Yellow River source; sister lake of Gyaring, area about 610-651 km2, elevation about 4,269 m.

Pangong Tso (སྤང་གོང་མཚོ)

Pangong Tso (སྤང་གོང་མཚོ), also called Pangong Lake, is a ~134 km brackish, endorheic high-altitude lake at about 4,350 m spanning Ladakh (India) and Tibet (China), bisected by the Line of Actual Control and a focal point of the India-China border dispute and 2020 standoff disengagement.

Sambhar Lake

Sambhar Lake (Shakambhari Jheel), Rajasthan's hypersaline wetland southwest of Jaipur, is India's largest inland salt lake, a Ramsar site producing about 9% of India's salt and a major flamingo wintering ground now shrinking from groundwater over-extraction.