Lake Burlinskoye (Bursol)

Lake Burlinskoye, better known as Bursol, is an endorheic salt lake in the western Kulunda steppe, in Altai Krai, Russia. It lies within the Slavgorod municipal district, about 20-27 km from the town of Slavgorod. The village of Bursol stands on the lake's shore, next to the Ainak railway station on the Kulunda-Tatarsk line.

History

Salt has been mined at Lake Burlinskoye since 1768. The Burlinskoye salt works is considered the largest table-salt deposit in Western Siberia. According to legend, Peter the Great called the lake the "tsar's saltcellar," and salt from here was said to be supplied to the table of Catherine the Great — this story has come down as folklore, confirmed only by oral tradition rather than documents.

Industrial extraction was stopped and restarted repeatedly over nearly two and a half centuries. In 2010 the company Altaikraienergo obtained a license and resumed large-scale salt mining at the lake. Today about 65,000 tonnes of table salt are extracted here every year, making Bursol one of the key salt-producing sites in Altai Krai and in all of Western Siberia.

Why the lake turns pink

In summer the water of Bursol takes on a vivid pink colour. The shade comes from the brine shrimp Artemia salina living in the water and from the single-celled alga Dunaliella, which produces a red-pink pigment under high salinity and strong sunlight.

The salt concentration is so high that it is impossible to sink in the lake — the body is simply pushed to the surface, much like in the Dead Sea. The lake bed is covered with a thick layer of salt crystals. Rails run along the bottom, and several times a day a train travels along them, carrying the mined salt from the extraction site to the shore — the sight of a train moving straight across the pink water is itself one of the reasons tourists come to Bursol from across Altai Krai.

Getting there

The village of Bursol and the lake can be reached by car along the roads of the Kulunda steppe, or by rail to Ainak station on the Kulunda-Tatarsk line, a short distance from the lakeshore.