Is Tilicho Really the World's Highest Lake? The Honest Answer
Nepal's trekking brochures have repeated the same superlative for decades. A local newspaper finally measured it — and found five lakes sitting higher, one of them in the same Nepali district.
Ask a search engine which lake sits highest on Earth and it will likely tell you: Tilicho Lake, a wind-scoured turquoise bowl above Nepal's Annapurna range at 4,919 metres. Trekking blogs repeat it, brochures print it, and generations of trekkers have shaken hands at its shore believing they stood beside a genuine world record. It has not been true for years — and Tilicho does not need the exaggeration to earn its place on a bucket list.
Key facts
- Tilicho Lake sits at 4,919m (16,138 ft) in Nepal's Manang district, on the Annapurna Circuit route
- Nepal's own Kajin Sara Lake, found near Chame village in 2019, was measured at roughly 5,020m — higher than Tilicho, in the same district
- The true highest lake on Earth is a crater pool atop Ojos del Salado, the Chile-Argentina volcano, at around 6,390m
- At least four other pools — three in Tibet, one in Chile — also sit above Tilicho
The claim traces back decades of Nepali tourism copy repeated so often that The Himalayan Times eventually sent someone to check it. Its measurement of Tilicho matched the figure every guidebook uses, 4,919m — then it listed what actually sits higher: Lhagba Pool below Everest's Tibetan approach (roughly 6,368m, now apparently dried up), Changtse Pool on the mountain's north side (about 6,216m), Acamarachi Pool in Chile (around 5,950m) and Ridonglabo Lake in Tibet (about 5,801m). Ojos del Salado's summit crater pool, at close to 6,390m, tops all of them — a body of water sitting inside the world's highest volcano.
| Lake | Location | Elevation |
|---|---|---|
| Ojos del Salado crater pool | Chile / Argentina border | ~6,390m |
| Lhagba Pool | Tibet (now dry) | ~6,368m |
| Changtse Pool | Tibet, Everest north side | ~6,216m |
| Acamarachi Pool | Chile | ~5,950m |
| Ridonglabo Lake | Tibet | ~5,801m |
| Kajin Sara Lake | Nepal — Chame, Manang | ~5,020m |
| Tilicho Lake | Nepal — Manang | 4,919m |
The Nepali surprise came in 2019, when a mapping team working the ridges above Chame — a village a few valleys from Tilicho, on the same Annapurna Circuit trail — found a lake local herders knew about but no map recorded. They called it Kajin Sara. Early readings put it around 5,020m, roughly a hundred metres above Tilicho; a later, unofficial measurement suggested it could be even higher, though that figure has never been formally verified by Nepal's Department of Survey. Either way, Nepal quietly holds a higher lake than the one on its own postcards.
What this means for trekkers
What this means for you
None of the lakes ranked above Tilicho are ones you can actually trek to. Ojos del Salado's crater pool sits inside an active volcano's summit, reached only by technical mountaineers carrying oxygen and permits. The three Tibetan pools are glacial meltwater features on the flanks of 7,000-plus-metre peaks, off-limits or simply unreachable on a normal itinerary. Even Kajin Sara has no trail, no teahouse, and no marked trekking route — it was found by surveyors, not walked in by guided groups. Tilicho keeps a title none of its rivals can claim: it is the highest lake on Earth you can reach on a maintained trail, sleep near in a stone lodge, and stand beside without a rope, an ice axe, or supplemental oxygen.
That is arguably a better sales pitch than the inflated one. The Tilicho Lake trek runs as an 11-day side trip off the classic Annapurna Circuit, climbing from Manang through Khangsar to a high camp before the final push to the lakeshore near 4,920m — one of the highest points most trekkers without mountaineering experience will ever stand. Because the route shares trailheads with both the Annapurna Circuit and the restricted Nar Phu Valley, it is easy to combine into a longer Manang-region itinerary rather than a single out-and-back.
So the next time a brochure calls Tilicho "the highest lake in the world," it is worth a gentle correction — Nepal has an even higher one a few ridgelines away, and neither needs to borrow a record that belongs, technically, to a volcano in Chile.
Cover photo: Ashok J Kshetri via Pexels (Pexels License).
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