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Tilicho Lake Is Called 'The World's Highest Lake.' It Isn't Even Nepal's Highest Anymore

Every trekking brochure calls Tilicho the world's highest lake. At 4,919m it's spectacular — but a Nepali lake discovered in 2019 already beats it, and the real global record sits over 1,400m higher, inside a volcano.

DS 作者 Dawa Sherpa · 2026年8月27日 · 3 分钟阅读 · 更新于 2026年8月27日

Tilicho Lake Is Called 'The World's Highest Lake.' It Isn't Even Nepal's Highest Anymore

Trek the Annapurna Circuit and you'll hear it from every guide, teahouse sign and blog post: Tilicho Lake, the world's highest lake. It's one of the most repeated facts in Himalayan trekking — and it's not true. It isn't even Nepal's highest lake anymore.

Key facts

Tilicho Lake sits at 4,919m (16,138ft) in Manang district, roughly 4km long and 1.2km wide
In 2019, mountaineers found Kajin Sara Lake nearby at 5,020m — over 100m higher, and still in Nepal
The true world record: a crater lake atop the volcano Ojos del Salado (Chile/Argentina), at 6,390m
Tibet's Lhagba Pool, at 6,368m, is the official second-highest — also far above Tilicho

Tilicho is real, and it is genuinely extraordinary: a glacial lake nearly 5,000m up, ringed by ice walls, with an average depth of 85m and a surface so still it mirrors the peaks around it. It even holds a real record — the site of the highest-altitude scuba dives ever attempted. What it does not hold is the title trekking marketing gives it every single day.

4,919mTilicho Lake, Nepal

5,020mKajin Sara Lake, Nepal — found 2019

6,368mLhagba Pool, Tibet

6,390mOjos del Salado crater lake — the real record

The gap matters. Ojos del Salado's summit lake sits 1,471m above Tilicho — more than the entire height of Ben Nevis stacked on top of the difference. Reaching it means climbing the world's highest active volcano, a serious high-altitude mountaineering objective on the Chile-Argentina border, not a trek. Even Lhagba Pool in Tibet, rarely visited and little photographed, sits nearly a kilometre and a half above Tilicho. And within Nepal itself, Kajin Sara — discovered by a group of mountaineers in Chame rural municipality, in the same Manang district as Tilicho — was measured at 5,020m and locally recorded as the country's new highest lake, more than 100m above its famous neighbour.

1949Tilicho first surveyed

Maurice Herzog's French expedition maps the lake during Nepal's earliest era of foreign exploration.

2000sA trekking icon is born

Tilicho becomes the signature side trip off the Annapurna Circuit, marketed worldwide as the world's highest lake.

2019Kajin Sara is found

Mountaineers locate a previously unmapped lake at 5,020m in Chame, Manang — higher than Tilicho, and still in Nepal.

TodayThe real record stands elsewhere

Ojos del Salado's 6,390m crater lake and Tibet's 6,368m Lhagba Pool both sit far above any lake in Nepal.

What this means for trekkers

What this means for you

None of this makes Tilicho less worth the walk — if anything, it's the honest version that sells it better. Ojos del Salado's lake needs technical volcano mountaineering to reach; Lhagba Pool sees almost no visitors at all. Tilicho is the rare high-altitude lake you can actually stand beside after a well-supported trek, on marked trails, without ropes or a mountaineering permit. That's the real headline: not the tallest lake on Earth, but one of the very few genuinely spectacular ones you can reach on foot. Our Tilicho Lake Trek takes you there directly over 11 days from Kathmandu; if you'd rather see it as a side trip on the full loop, the Annapurna Circuit passes within reach of it before crossing Thorong La.

Source: Wikipedia, Lhagba Pool (elevation and world-ranking data cross-checked against the Tilicho Lake and Kajin Sara Lake entries).

Cover photo: Prabeshsdev via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

来源： Wikipedia (Lhagba Pool)

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