Tamgaly-Tas

About this place

Tamgaly-Tas (Tanbaly Tas in Kazakh, stone with marks) is an open-air Buddhist sanctuary in the Ili gorge below the Kapchagay dam. On about fifteen boulders fallen from its cliffs are five large figures, four Buddhas and a bodhisattva, and dozens of prayers in Tibetan and Oirat script. Carved between 1677 and 1771, it stands out among Kazakhstan's Tibetan Buddhist monuments for scale and artistry. Researchers date the first images to early 1677, when the Dzungar ruler Galdan, later Galdan Boshugtu Khan, wintered here by an Ili crossing; more mantras followed over five years. The last text, a long Oirat prayer of thanks, was carved by Volga Kalmyks who fled here in 1771; Kazakhs arriving after the Dzungar Khanate fell named the site. The Kazakh scholar Chokan Valikhanov sketched it in 1856; since 2018 the Tanbaly museum-reserve has run it. The largest boulder, over 5 m tall, holds three figures on lotus thrones: the four-armed Avalokiteshvara between Buddha Shakyamuni and the Medicine Buddha, holding a healing fruit and a bowl. Two more Buddhas sit apart: Nageshvararaja, crowned by seven snakes and the most weathered, and Akshobhya. Around them the mantra om mani padme hum recurs in both scripts. Keep to the rope-lined path. It lies about 90 km north of central Almaty as the crow flies, 20 km north-west of the dam at Konaev, formerly Kapchagay. The roughly two-hour drive crosses the Ili and ends on a dirt track into the gorge. Spring and autumn are best, since summer brings average highs above 30°C and biting insects; Konaev's reservoir beaches then draw Almaty weekenders.