A lake of love

Many names

Sayram's literal meaning in Mongolian is "saddle strap" because its long, cinched form appears to bind the surrounding peaks. Its name in the Uygur and Kazak languages translates as "Lake on the Ridge".

It has a long list of nicknames, each a shorthand for a story that endows it with a description beyond mere title.

One, the "Last Tear of the Atlantic", flows from mythology, not hydrology. It imagines the ocean's last, lonely tear, blown inland until it crashed against the Tianshan Mountains, dribbled down its sides and settled into a lost memory of the sea, landlocked and forsaken.

Although this description is more myth than science, Sayram actually delineates the furthest inland location that the Atlantic's atmospheric moisture travels before the soaring range wrings it from the sky. On the massif's other side lies the Taklimakan Desert, also called the "Sea of Death", whose waves crash as dunes and whose arid mists swirl as dust rather than vapor.

The "Pearl of Tianshan" bejewels the crown of the "Heavenly Mountains". The "Most Beautiful Sky Lake" is Xinjiang's highest and largest alpine lake, with an elevation of 2,073 meters and a surface that ripples across 458 sq km. The "Plateau Lake of Many Hues" whirls from deep sapphire to brilliant cobalt, vibrant turquoise, soft emerald and pale milky gray, shimmering as a vibrant palette of watercolors.

The "Purest Sea in the Western Region" is pristine by virtue of sheer isolation.

Frozen fantasies

This convergence of numerology, folklore and geology has forged a unique destination where the quest for eternal love is mapped by numbers, which become words that transcribe the story of the land.

But in addition to functioning as formulas or pages of poetry, Sayram becomes a canvas in winter, an iridescent blue-ice "Mirror of the Sky" festooned with silvery filigree — bulbs, flowers and needles wrought by the forge of ice. Such structures, typically formed by the effervescent exhalations of decaying plants captured and suspended in time by a sudden freeze, are only reliably found in two other places on the planet: Canada's Abraham Lake and Russia's Lake Baikal.

And in its most elusive moments, Sayram stares back at us with rare, unblinking "ice eyes" — phantom irises that gaze from glassy sockets toward the sky straight above, like Earth searching for furtive gods veiled by gauzy curtains of clouds.

Another spectacular formation — actually, millions of them — appears as the weather warms. The ice mantle splinters into countless tinkling shards that slosh in the waves like avalanches of crystal puzzle pieces dancing up and down the swells.

After the mirror shatters, it melts into a massive lens revealing a hidden world below — one inhabited by the lake's living triumph over desolation.