Nurek Reservoir
Not a natural lake but the reservoir behind the dam that supplies most of the country's electricity.
Nurek is the exception among Tajikistan's lakes: a reservoir rather than a natural body of water, created by the damming of the Vakhsh river. It lies near Dushanbe and is easy to reach, which makes it the one most used for ordinary days out, for picnics, fishing, boating and swimming.
The dam#
The Nurek Dam was built during the Soviet period and completed in 1980. At 300 metres it was the tallest dam in the world for more than three decades, until the Jinping-I dam in China surpassed it in 2013. It remains the tallest earth-fill dam anywhere.
The station behind it generates the large majority of Tajikistan's electricity, which makes Nurek less a scenic lake than the piece of infrastructure the country runs on. Water levels drop noticeably through the winter as the reservoir is drawn down for power generation.
Visiting#
The reservoir stretches roughly 70 kilometres up the Vakhsh valley, and the road from Dushanbe reaches it in about two hours. The water is a strong turquoise in summer against bare hillsides, and the shoreline near the town of Nurek is the usual place to swim. The dam itself is a working installation and is not open to casual visitors.