Khovsgol
2% of Earth's freshwater in one lake—70% of Mongolia's reserves. Home to Tsaatan reindeer herders (~300 people), one of world's most endangered cultures. Shamanic nomads in Siberian taiga.
Lake Khovsgol holds 2% of the world's fresh water in a single body—136 kilometers long, up to 260 meters deep, over two million years old. The "Blue Pearl of Mongolia" contains 70% of the nation's freshwater reserves, its waters so clear they rival Siberian Baikal, to which it connects via the Egiin and Selenge rivers. This hydrological link matters: what happens to Khovsgol affects the world's largest freshwater lake downstream.
The Khovsgol National Park, established in 1992, protects 70,000 square kilometers around the lake—an ecosystem where Siberian taiga meets Mongolian steppe. The park shelters 63 mammal species including brown bear, wolverine, moose, snow leopard, and musk deer. Nine fish species inhabit the lake itself, including omul and taimen.
In the taiga north of the lake live the Tsaatan—"those who have reindeer" in Mongolian. These Dukha people, descended from Tuvan ancestors who migrated from Siberia, practice something almost no one else on Earth does: they ride reindeer. Numbering perhaps 300 individuals in two communities, the Tsaatan represent one of Mongolia's most endangered cultural groups. They live not in gers but in ortz—conical tents resembling teepees—and practice shamanism rather than Buddhism. Their existence depends on reindeer that graze the high mountain pastures.
Tourism has discovered Khovsgol. Summer visitors arrive for the lake; adventurous travelers seek out Tsaatan camps. By 2026, the province faces the tension between conservation, cultural preservation, and the economic pressure that attention brings—a freshwater reserve and vanishing culture both vulnerable to the interest they attract.