Blue-green water
Below spruce-clad slopes.
Fukurukudzu — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Timas38 — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Timas38 — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Zlvlezhnin — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Batyr Sultangazin — CC BY-SA 4.0
A blue-green mountain lake at about 1,700 m in the Issyk gorge of the Trans-Ili Alatau, inside Ile-Alatau National Park, some 15 km by road above the town of Esik. It formed 8,000 to 10,000 years ago, when a huge rockfall, probably quake-triggered, blocked the gorge with a natural dam about 300 m high. By the late 1950s it was a favourite summer escape from Almaty, with a hotel and restaurant on the shore. On 7 July 1963, a hot Sunday, a meltwater-fed lake below the Zharsay glacier burst and the mudflow smashed the dam: the lake drained within hours and the torrent tore through the town below. Officially about 100 people died, though the true toll is unknown. A new dam with spillways, completed by the early 1990s, let the lake refill, smaller and shallower than before. A paved road follows the Issyk river up to a car park by the water, where benches and pergolas look over the lake and its spruce-clad slopes. Stone steps climb to a cross and plaque for the 1963 victims on a rock above the shore, and a white pavilion on a cliff-edge terrace down the road survives from the old resort. Central Almaty is 65 to 70 km away by road, east along the Kuldzha highway to Esik and up the gorge, about 1.5 to 2 hours each way. The water stays glacier-cold even in July and swimming is banned, per visitor guides. In Esik, the Issyk museum-reserve, guarding the Saka burial mounds that yielded the Golden Man, makes a good stop.
Below spruce-clad slopes.
A cross above the shore.
A relic of the old resort.
Issyk gorge, Ile-Alatau National Park, about 15 km by road above Esik
No: Issyk-Kul is a vast lake in Kyrgyzstan beyond the mountains to the south, while this is a small lake in Kazakhstan's Issyk gorge. Its name is often traced to a Kazakh word for door or narrow gorge, and its Russian form was shaped by the name of the better-known lake.
Partly: buses and minibuses run from Almaty's Sayakhat bus station to Esik, and a taxi covers the last 15 km or so up the gorge, per visitor guides. Agree the return pick-up in advance, as mobile signal can be patchy in the gorge.