Tashk Lake

Tashk Lake is one of the lakes of Fars Province, located beside the beautiful old village of Tashk in Bakhtegan County. The lake occupies an intermontane depression covering roughly 800 square kilometres, northwest of Bakhtegan Lake and 160 kilometres east of Shiraz.

The lake is connected to Bakhtegan Lake through a small gorge in the middle of Mount Vol. Its main water supply comes from two rivers, the Kor and the Sivand. These rivers rise in the Baraftab and Musa Khani mountains, 50 kilometres southwest of Deh Bid. They then join each other west of Marvdasht at a place called Pol-e Khan, and after crossing the Marvdasht plain and the fertile Karbal plain centred on Soltanshahr, they flow into Tashk Lake. In wet years the lake is about 12 metres deep at its deepest point, and its depth varies from place to place. It is shallower than Bakhtegan Lake, and in low-rainfall seasons the connection between the two lakes is often cut off.

Inside Tashk Lake there are a number of small and large islands and peninsulas, formed of radiolarite, pelagic rocks and Sarvak limestone. The most important islands of the lake are Narges and Gonban, whose area depends on the annual rainfall. The highest point of Narges Island is 1,635 metres above sea level.