Chaqmaqtin Lake
Chaqmaqtin Lake is a lake in the Wakhan District of Badakhshan Province in northeastern Afghanistan. It lies at an elevation of about in the Little Pamir. It extends for about and is about wide. The lake is part of the Wakhan National Park and patrolled by the Afghan National Police and Afghan Armed Forces. Foreigners must have an Afghan visa to tour the area.
Lake Chaqmaqtin lies towards the western end of the Little Pamir valley. The Aksu or Murghab River flows east from the lake through the Little Pamir and enters into Gorno-Badakhshan, Tajikistan, at the eastern end of the valley. The Bazai River rises a short distance west of the lake and flows 15km west to join the Wakhjir River and form the Wakhan River near Bazai Gumbad in the Wakhan District of Afghanistan. Some accounts state that the Bazai River also rises from Lake Chaqmaqtin. Another source calls the lake "a deeper and possibly marshy section within the Aq Su-Little Pamir River drainage divide".
Chaqmaqtin is a glacier basin lake formed when the ice was once very thick here before it melted away a few thousand years ago.