Vadskoye Lake

Vadskoye (or Mordovskoye) lake lies in the village of Vad, in the bed of the Vadok river, a tributary of the Pyana. The wonder is that the river goes underground just before its mouth and pours into the lake through a subterranean channel; the name 'vad' is read from the Mordvin 'vad' — water. The lake's origin is karst in Permian gypsum; the water body and its sinkholes are a protected natural monument. Scholars noticed the phenomenon back in the eighteenth century: the lake was observed by Lepyokhin (1771), Pallas (1768) and Georgi (1775), and described in detail by the Dokuchayev expedition assessing the lands of Nizhny Novgorod governorate. Over 130 years the lake has grown almost twice — to 1,750 metres long: its present shape owes to dams, one carrying a road on its crest. The water here is 'living' — from karst springs, clear and cold; locals have long drawn it for drinking. For the traveller Vadskoye is a rare chance to watch karst at work: the river's underground entrance by the pond, sinkholes in the neighbourhood and the open water among the hills.