The highest lake in the world is an unnamed crater lake about 100 m across near the summit of Ojos del Salado, the volcano on the Argentina–Chile border. Sources put it between 6,390 m and 6,500 m (20,965–21,330 ft), on the Argentine side. Next in the table below comes Licancabur Lake, at about 5,900 m in the summit crater of a 5,916 m volcano on the Bolivia–Chile border, then Gurudongmar Lake in Sikkim, India, at 5,430 m (17,800 ft). Lake Titicaca, at 3,812 m on the Peru–Bolivia border, is lower than any of these but is often called the highest navigable lake. Almost every lake on the list is in one of two places, the central Andes or the Himalaya and Tibetan Plateau, and the reasons why explain the whole ranking.
| Lake | Country | Elevation | Type and size |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ojos del Salado crater lake | Argentina (Argentina–Chile border) | 6,390–6,500 m | Volcanic crater lake, about 100 m across |
| Licancabur Lake | Chile (Bolivia–Chile border) | about 5,900 m | Crater lake, 70 × 90 m |
| Gurudongmar Lake | India (Sikkim) | 5,430 m | Glacier-fed, moraine-dammed, 118 ha |
| Puma Yumco | China (Tibet) | 5,030 m | Plateau lake, 280 km² |
| Tilicho Lake | Nepal | 4,919 m | Glacial lake |
| Namtso | China (Tibet) | 4,718 m | Salt lake, 1,900 km² |
| Lake Manasarovar | China (Tibet) | 4,600 m | Freshwater lake, 320 km² |
| Laguna Verde | Bolivia | 4,310 m | Salt lake, 7.5 km² |
| Pangong Tso | India and China | about 4,300 m | Brackish, about 604 km² |
| Karakul | Tajikistan | 3,960 m | Lake in an impact crater, 25 km across |
| Lake Titicaca | Peru and Bolivia | 3,812 m | 8,372 km², highest navigable lake |
No official world list of high lakes exists, and the answer depends on what you count. The elevations above come from the Wikipedia article on each lake (2026), which cite figures such as the Government of Sikkim’s for Gurudongmar. A small seasonal pond or a pool on a glacier would rank higher than some of these lakes, so this table covers permanent, named lakes with published elevations. It is a list of notable examples, not every lake above 3,800 m; the Tibetan Plateau alone has many more.
Andean volcano craters: why Argentina and Chile hold the top two places in the table
The two highest lakes in the table sit inside volcanoes. The central Andes contain a chain of very high volcanoes, and Ojos del Salado, at 6,893 m, is the highest volcano on Earth. Its summit is not a single cone but a cluster of overlapping lava domes and more than 20 craters. One of them holds a permanent lake about 100 m in diameter. The Ojos del Salado article gives its elevation as 6,480–6,500 m, while Wikipedia’s Extremes on Earth list uses 6,390 m, but either figure makes it the highest lake of any kind.
A crater is a natural basin, and that is why volcanoes can hold water so high. On Licancabur, a 400–500 m wide summit crater contains a lake measured at 70 by 90 m, lying at about 5,900 m. The climate is so dry that the mountain has no glaciers. The lake survives anyway, and researchers study it because conditions there may be the closest match on Earth to former lakes on Mars. Licancabur also shows that people reached these heights long ago. Archaeological sites on the summit are thought to have been built by the Inca or the Atacama people for ceremonies, and the name comes from the Kunza language, in which lican means “people” or “town” and cábur means “mountain”.
The same volcanic landscape produces lower lakes at the foot of the mountains. Laguna Verde, in Bolivia’s Eduardo Avaroa Andean Fauna National Reserve, lies at 4,310 m at the base of Licancabur. Its green colour comes from suspended arsenic and other minerals, and during the Last Glacial Maximum its surface stood at least 45 m higher and it merged with neighbouring Laguna Blanca.
The Tibetan Plateau: China’s large lakes above 4,500 m
The Andes win on the single highest lake, but China has far more big lakes at great height, because of the Tibetan Plateau. Covering about 2.5 million km² with an average elevation of more than 4,500 m, it is the largest and highest plateau on Earth and is often called the Roof of the World. The plateau is a high, dry steppe with mountain ranges and large brackish lakes. Many of those lakes are endorheic: they have no outlet to the sea, so water collects in basins high above sea level instead of draining away.
Puma Yumco, at 5,030 m in Nagarzê County, is the highest large lake in the table. It is 32 km long, covers 280 km² and freezes over for much of the year. Shepherds cross it with their sheep in winter, when repeated freezing and cracking break the surface into ice blocks from less than ten to hundreds of metres across. Namtso, at 4,718 m and 1,900 km², is the largest lake in the Tibet Autonomous Region. It formed in the Paleogene as a result of Himalayan tectonic movement. Lake Manasarovar, at about 4,600 m near Mount Kailash, is one of the highest freshwater lakes in Asia. It spills into the salt lake Rakshastal, and the sources of the Indus, Sutlej, Brahmaputra and Karnali rivers are nearby. By comparison, Qinghai Lake, the largest lake in China at 4,317 km², lies in a hollow of the same plateau at only 3,205 m, too low for this list.
Himalayan glaciers: the lakes of India and Nepal
India and Nepal reach the list through glacial lakes on the southern flank of the Himalaya. Gurudongmar Lake, at 5,430 m according to the Government of Sikkim, is fed by the Gurudongmar glacier and held in place by a moraine, a ridge of rock and debris left by the ice. It lies in Mangan district, about 5 km south of the Chinese border, covers 118 hectares and stays completely frozen from November to mid-May. Its outflow is one of the source streams of the Teesta River.
Tilicho Lake in Nepal’s Manang district lies at 4,919 m in the Annapurna range (another source gives 4,949 m). It is so cold and short of nutrients that, according to Nepal’s Department of Hydrology and Meteorology, no aquatic organism had been recorded in it as of 2003. In 2000 a Russian team of Andrei Andryushin, Denis Bakin and Maxim Gresko made what is described as the highest-altitude scuba dive ever recorded there.
Glacial lakes show why it matters that a lake be permanent. The Lhagba Pool, on the north-east slopes of Mount Everest in Tibet, was once listed as the second-highest lake in the world at 6,368 m. It was described as about 50 m wide and 180 m long. Satellite photos and other evidence now suggest that it has dried out, so it has dropped off the list.
The Altiplano and the Pamirs: Titicaca and Karakul
The last two lakes in the table sit on high plateaus that are not volcanic summits or glacier basins. The Altiplano of Peru and Bolivia averages about 3,750 m, slightly lower than the Tibetan Plateau. It was once covered by much larger prehistoric lakes, and Lake Titicaca and the now-dry Lake Poopó are what remained; Poopó was declared defunct in December 2015. With 8,372 km² at 3,812 m, Titicaca is the largest lake in South America by both area and volume. That combination of size and height is why it is often called the highest navigable lake in the world. About 1,200 Uros people lived in 2011 on some 60 floating islands built from totora reeds near Puno.
Tajikistan reaches the list through Karakul, at 3,960 m in the Pamir Mountains. It is unusual among high lakes because it lies inside an impact crater about 52 km across, first identified in about 1987 from space imagery and probably less than 5 million years old. The lake has no outlet, its water is brackish, and after the last ice age it stood about 35 m higher than today.
Borders and pilgrimages around Pangong Tso and Manasarovar
Several of these lakes lie on contested or sacred ground, which affects who can reach them. Pangong Tso stretches 134 km across eastern Ladakh in India and Ngari Prefecture in Tibet. About two-thirds of it is administered by China and the rest by India, and the Line of Actual Control between them runs through the water. Part of the lake is claimed by both countries, and the area saw fighting in the 1962 Sino-Indian War and the 2020–2021 skirmishes. Gurudongmar, about 5 km south of India’s border with China in Sikkim, far to the east, is a Buddhist pilgrimage site named after Padmasambhava, who is said to have visited in the 8th century.
Lake Manasarovar is sacred in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and the Bon religion. Its Sanskrit name joins mānas, “mind”, with sarovara, “lake”, while Tibetans call it Mapam Yumtso. Pilgrims from India, Nepal, China and beyond travel there, and the journey usually includes a walk around Mount Kailash. Namtso had a similar tradition: pilgrims crossed the frozen lake to spend the summer meditating on its islands, a practice Chinese authorities no longer permit.
To learn more about the landscapes behind these records, read our guides to the Tibetan Plateau and the geography of Lake Titicaca. Height is only one way to rank lakes; for the other extreme, see the deepest lakes in the world.