What you are seeing right here, we only have two of them in the world – There are only two suspended lakes in the world. The Hanging Lake in Colorado, United States of America and the Iyake Suspended Lake in Oyo State, Nigeria.
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Brief History: Iyake Suspended Lake
A Lake in Yoruba is called Omi Adagun (Omi – water, Adagun – suspended or stopped). This is the original name of the lake. A suspended lake is a body of stagnant water in the mountains.
According to a popular saying, a “mother” turned to this lake hundreds of years ago. This historical figure migrated from Sango Ota, now present-day Ogun State, to Oke-Ado.
There is Ado, There is Awaiye. This lake is located in Oke Ado, a very high mountain. These mountains are complex, it will always require a guide to have a better experience
How to Get to Iyake Suspended Lake
It depends on your current location. If you are not in Oyo state, first find your way to Ibadan. Your journey starts from there. There is no direct bus to Ado-Awaiye. We took a bus from Ibadan to Iseyin, then from Iseyin to Ado-Awaiye. You get Iseyin bus in Ojoo Terminal in Ojoo area, Ibadan.
It took us about 40 minutes to get to the top of the mountain. In Iyake Lake, there are living creatures like turtles and alligators. We only saw the turtles after maintaining utmost silence, they came out to the surface to play and immediately after they sensed our presence, they vanished. This happened for several minutes and it was very interesting!
The Elephant Tree
Another notable place to visit on these mountains is the popular Elephant tree. The Elephant tree is an uprooted tree whose root looks like an elephant as you can see in the picture below.
There is nothing absolutely special about the tree, to me. But there are some other amazing places on the mountains. It is taboo to have contact with another lake on these mountains – Agbomofunyake Lake which is described as a special place the community reserves for its festivals.
The People
These people are so interesting. This is not a promotion or something, it’s my experience. We had one of the best experiences, starting from the tour guides, they are friendly and compassionate.
We never eat their food, so I don’t know what to say about this, but next time, I will be going here with all interested tourists to camp for a day, visit places, their the local food and learn something about Oke Ado.
You can visit the lake and camp. This is going to be the most interesting experience so you don’t rush yourself.
This is one of the interesting places to visit. In place of this, we are using tourism to make a change, follow History Castle Media for more update