There are many interesting places on the territory of Siberia, and one of them is the Putorana plateau. This place is striking not only for its size, but also for its fantastic natural beauty, which has practically not been influenced by human civilization.
This plateau is really huge - in terms of its area it is practically comparable to that of Great Britain - about 250,000 square kilometers.
It is believed that the name of this place was given by the Evenks and translated into Russian it means “lakes with steep banks”. But locals call it differently - "the land of a thousand waterfalls and ten thousand lakes." On the territory of the Putorana plateau, there is a reserve of the same name, which was founded here at the end of the last century - in 1988.
This reserve is one of the largest in Russia. There is also one of the largest waterfalls in our country - Khabarbinsky. Its height is over 107 meters. One of the deepest lakes, Khantayskoye, is also located here.
Its depth reaches half a kilometer. How this plateau happened - researchers still cannot understand. Looking at the pictures from a bird's eye view, it seems as if it is some kind of artificial.
Under one of the versions, the plateau could have formed as a result of powerful tectonic activity in the distant past - about 10-12 million years ago, powerful earthquakes could have taken place in this area.
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Supporters of this theory believe that before such a major natural cataclysm, the climate in this territory was much warmer and milder, and after a series of tremors, a powerful cold snap came here, followed by a change in the flora and fauna.
Now it is really cold here - in many places the snow lies until the end of summer. There are a lot of legends around the Putorana plateau. And one of them is about Lake Khantai. It also has another name - the Cup of Tears.
According to legend, in the distant past, girls from local settlements came to the lake in order to see signs of their future fate in its water. And the lake was formed at the moment when the Fire God killed the son of the goddess Eshnu, and took his soul with him to hell.
The goddess cried for so long that she herself turned to stone, and with her tears she filled one of the local hollows, turning it into a lake. There are a lot of rumors about the plateau. According to one of the versions, local meteorologists observe a very strange phenomenon every year.
In winter, for several weeks in the evenings near the Khabarba waterfall, a huge luminous spiral appears directly from the ground, which forms from many luminous concentric circles. Nobody can explain what it is.
The researchers also noticed that every year the Putorana plateau becomes slightly lower - by about a couple of centimeters. What this may mean is not clear, but some researchers suggest that such a subsidence is associated with active underground processes that can lead to another natural disaster.
But when it will happen and what will happen in the end - no one can say.
