Kulikalon has no outlet. No stream runs out of the basin's biggest lake — the water sinks into the wall of glacial rubble that dams it and resurfaces far below as the Artuch River. The lakes lie at 2,800 metres in a cirque on the northern flank of Tajikistan's Fann Mountains, fed by meltwater off the Chimtarga glacier. The name is plain-spoken: kuli kalon is Tajik for "big lake". Off the far shore stands the Kulikalon Wall — the north face of Mirali (5,106 m) and Maria — a rampart that Soviet mountaineers made one of Central Asia's serious big-wall arenas, worked from the Artuch alpine camp opened at 2,200 metres in the early 1970s. Around the shore grows something scarcer than the rock: the largest surviving stands of juniper forest in the western half of the Zeravshan Range.
The climb from Artuch takes three to four hours through juniper and old moraine, and the basin arrives all at once — a wide sheet of water with a flat green island, bays cut deep into the northern shore, and the wall standing in the reflection. You will not have it to yourself. Each summer, families from the villages below bring goats, cattle and donkeys up to these pastures and pitch camp along the far shore; walk past and you are usually waved over for bread and tea. Himalayan snowcocks whistle on the scree at first light and wallcreepers work the cliffs — BirdLife International lists Kulikalon as an Important Bird Area on the strength of thirteen such species. The juniper is the frail part of it: Zeravshan archa has been cut hard for timber and firewood, and now survives mainly in high pockets like this one. Beyond Artuch nothing is serviced, and snow closes the basin from about November to May.