Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
work, the
Kutudhu Bilik
. Next door are the
foundations of several mausoleums.
The Shamsy Valley that leads south from
Burana has also yielded a rich hoard of
Scythian treasure, including a heavy gold
burial mask, though the greatest treasures
were all either spirited away to St Peters-
burg or to Bishkek where much is in stor-
age in the bowels of the State Historical
Museum (p232).
By public transport take frequent
marshrutka 353 to Tokmok (40som, 45
minutes), then a taxi for the last 24km
(700som round trip).
mer tourists who swim in the vivid blue
waters find views framed not by palms but
by the remarkable backdrop of the snow-
dappled Ala-Too mountains.
Indeed, while beach 'resorts' attract Ka-
zakh visitors and can make for amusingly
discordant photos, the foreshores are often
rather mucky with rubbish and the main
attraction for Western travellers tends to
be the accessible mountain hiking. Parts
of the central Tian Shan range accessible
from the lake settlements comprise some of
the finest trekking territory in Central Asia,
with the most popular routes being hops
between the valleys south of Karakol.
History
The lake level has periodically risen and
fallen over the centuries, inundating an-
cient shoreline settlements. Artefacts have
been recovered from what is now known
as the submerged city of Chigu at the lake's
eastern end, dating from the 2nd century
BC. The Mikhaylovka inlet near Karakol,
also reveals the remains of a partly sub-
merged village, though in the last 500
years, geological evidence suggests that wa-
ter levels have been dropping, albeit only
around 2m overall.
Before the Kyrgyz people arrived in the
10th to 15th centuries, this area appears
to have been a centre of Saka (Scythian)
civilisation. Legend has it that Timur
(Tamerlane) later used it as a summer
headquarters. There are at least 10 docu-
mented settlements currently under the
waters of the lake, and treasure hunters
have long scoured the lakebed for trinkets,
attributing finds to everyone from Chris-
tian monks to Chinggis (Genghis) Khan.
In the 1860s and 1870s, after tsarist
military officers and explorers had put the
lake on Russian maps, immigrants flooded
in to found low-rise, laid-back, rough-and-
ready towns - the establishment of Karakol
in 1869 was followed in the 1870s by Tüp,
Teploklyuchenka (now Ak-Suu), Ananyevo,
Pokrovka (now Kyzyl-Suu) and a string of
others, many of whose Cossack names have
stuck. Large numbers of Dungans and Uy-
ghurs arrived in the 1870s and '80s following
the suppression of Muslim uprisings in Chi-
na's Shaanxi, Gansu and Xinjiang provinces.
At that time local Kyrgyz and Kazakhs were
still mostly nomadic.
In USSR times, health spas were dotted
along the lake's shores, but the Issyk-Köl
Chong-Kemin Valley
Чонг-Кемин Долина
The 80km-long Chong-Kemin Valley, one
of Kyrgyzstan's national parks, starts about
140km east of Bishkek and runs along the
Kazakh border, providing another great
opportunity to roll up your sleeping bag
and trek into the hills. A six-day trekking
route leads up the valley to Jasy-Köl (Green
Lake) and the Ak-Suu Pass (4062m), and
then onto Grigorievka near Cholpan-Ata
on the northern shores of Issyk-Köl.
The valley's best accommodation is the
Ashu¨Guesthouse
(
%
031-355 8108, 077-252
4037; www.ashu.kg; Borueva 22, Kalmak-Ashu; d
US$50;
Wc
)
in little Kalmak Ashu village.
The place has a fresh yet rustic feel, prices
include full board and owner Stanbek Toi-
chubaev can organise a range of local ac-
tivities. Limited wi-fi.
Public transport is limited to a couple of
marshrutkas serving Kaindy (110som, 2½
hours) from Bishkek's Eastern Bus Station.
LAKEISSYK-KÖL
ОЗЕРО ИСЫК-КУЛЬ
More than 170km long and 70km across,
Lake Issyk-Köl (Ysyk-Köl, Issyk-Kul) is
the world's second-largest alpine lake af-
ter Lake Titicaca in South America. The
name, meaning 'hot lake', is something of
an exaggeration. A combination of extreme
depth, thermal activity and mild salinity do
indeed ensure the lake never freezes, even
in the fierce Central Asian winters, despite
lying at an altitude of over 1600m. And the
mysteriously temperate waters create an
ever-mild microclimate. But the brave sum-
