Al Wathba Salt Lake

This guide to Al Wathba Salt Lake outside Abu Dhabi opens with a blunt fact: no river, spring or rainstorm feeds this turquoise water, only treated wastewater and farm runoff piped into the desert. It traces how that engineered water meets capillary action underground, drawing moisture up through the sand until the sun evaporates it and leaves behind the chalky white salt discs visitors photograph at the water's edge. Along the way it explains why the lake sits in a stretch of desert called sabkha, where the water table already runs close to the surface.