Kyrgyzstan
Issyk-Kul (South Shore)
A salt lake at 1,600 metres that almost never freezes, snow peaks dissolving into haze.
Heat shimmers off the pebble beaches and the Tien Shan dissolve into white haze across the water. The lake is warm, faintly salt and startlingly clear, and in high summer the village stalls sell apricots and cherries ripe enough to split in your hands.
Issyk-Kul is the world's second-largest mountain lake after Titicaca, 182 kilometres long, faintly saline and fed by hot springs, so it sits unfrozen through most winters at 1,607 metres; the Kyrgyz name translates as 'hot lake'. The south shore is the quiet side, villages such as Bokonbaevo, Tamga and Kadji-Say strung along the coast road with guesthouses and beach yurt camps instead of resort strips. Bokonbaevo is the heart of salbuurun, the old Kyrgyz hunting tradition, and golden-eagle demonstrations still run outside the village. Within a few kilometres of the waterline the beaches give way to the Barskoon waterfalls, the red towers of Skazka Canyon and the sandstone walls of Jeti-Ögüz.
Couple
Quiet pebble beaches, warm evening swims and sunsets that put the Terskei Alatoo in silhouette; small guesthouses in Tamga and Kadji-Say keep it private.
Family
The pace is unhurried: mornings in the water, afternoons scrambling Skazka Canyon, evenings eating apricots on the shore. The beaches have no lifeguards, so children swim watched.
Friends
A ready-made base camp: Skazka, the Barskoon waterfalls and Jeti-Ögüz are all short drives, and evenings finish on the beach with smoked fish and cold beer.
- The south shore is the quiet side of the lake, village guesthouses and beach yurt camps in place of the north's resort development.
- Issyk-Kul is the world's second-largest mountain lake, faintly saline, spring-fed and very rarely frozen.
- Bokonbaevo is the centre of the salbuurun tradition, and golden-eagle demonstrations run just outside the village.
- Skazka Canyon, the Barskoon waterfall and Jeti-Ögüz gorge all sit within a short drive of the beach villages.
Smoked fish sold in strings at stalls around the lake, torn apart and eaten with warm lepyoshka flatbread.
Ripe apricots and cherries from the village markets in high summer, and cold, spicy ashlyan-fu wherever a Dungan stall appears.
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