Issyk kul? Yes, it’s kul.

Lake Nicaragua, our watery haunt for a hot minute in 2016, is a big boy. We know that. However, who has heard of Issyk-Kul by a show of hands? Ok, there’s obviously no way to tell whether my sole reader (thanks Mum) put her hand up. But, I’m going to take a stab in the dark and guess it’s a no so that I can continue with this online excuse for my introverted narcissisism.

Issyk-Kul is the second largest saline lake in the world after the Caspian Sea, it’s the seventh deepest lake in the world and the tenth largest lake in the world by volume. Wow, that’s a lot of facts about an unknown lake in country that no one can spell. Well, as I know you’re desperate for more lacustrine brain food, here’s another. It is the second largest mountain lake in the world however, despite being surrounded by the snow-capped Tian Shan mountain range, it never freezes over. 

So there you go, now you can go out into the world and tell those facts at parties and to people on the street. That’s what I used to do. But I’m not invited to parties anymore. Or allowed outside… 

No correlation of course. 

Alcoholics not so anonymous

Not quite ready to leave the food and drink of Bishkek behind, Brendan and Jeroen dragged me kicking and screaming towards the bus/taxi station one morning. We were heading to the southern shore of Issyk-Kul, which we had heard had the most impressive scenery and the best beaches. After a lot of negotiation on shared minivans (marshrutkas) and shared taxis, we eventually got a good deal and got into a car with two cheerful Kyrgyz men. I was sharing the back seat with one of them, the other was in the front seat while Brendan and Jeroen were in the folding cheap seats in the boot. Happy with this set up, specifically designed to give me extra leg room, we started our long journey. 

The drive unfortunately began with the realisation that the cheeriness of the men was solely being fuelled by the sweet inebriating elixirs that they had presumably been guzzling for the majority of the early morning. The swirling golden remnants of a bottle of whisky were dispatched by the man in the front within 10 minutes and the man next to me, not wanting to fall behind, pulled out a couple of two litre bottles of beer and began the sesh in earnest. They were smoking like chimneys and were clearly trollied, nevertheless, they seemed friendly for the most part. This changed after the second stop for more big bottles of beer. The man in the front seat decided to sit around and face me, grinning like the Cheshire cat for hours on end. I was tired and trying to come to terms with our steady movement away from Chicken Star, so his staring and drool hindered slurring wasn’t what I wanted to be seeing. This was especially true since every time I looked away he would hit me. Starting to get incredibly annoyed with the man who was so drunk that his eyes were spinning around trying to focus completely independently of each other, I swiftly got my message across and he passed out in his seat. The rest of the journey was punctuated by the driver stopping so the man could be violently sick, fall over in his own urine and nearly get run over by multiple cars. 

We arrived in Tamga in the afternoon, it was a small beachside town and our home for the next two nights. All of us stepped out of the car and hoovered in the fresh air with glee. I breathed a sigh of relief, I knew I’d never have to see the amorphous sweaty globule of teeth and sweat that was the slouched in the front seat ever again. 

Welcome to the Good Life

We were dropped in the dusty centre of town and without any idea where to stay that night we saw a well-made sign pointing to a guesthouse. We were sold. There you go, if you want to lure me to a fairytale death, you don’t need gingerbread houses or sweets, just be fairly good at arts and crafts and I’ll trust you. The guesthouse was actually beautiful. The large garden and patio area was full of enormous flowers and there were comfy seats and tables everywhere to chill out. It was the perfect place to write a blog post, so I sat down and crushed the Fann Mountains post in a few hours before bed, which was in a room entirely to myself. Luxury.

Skazka Canyon and the Beach

We had only heard of this canyon under its pseudonym “Fairytale Canyon” and therefore I thought it might be a little bit underwhelming. However, once we arrived with our taxi driver who ended up guiding us around, we were really impressed. As a contrast to almost all of Kyrgyzstan, this area wasn’t green or featuring a backdrop of jagged snowy peaks, instead it seemed that we had accidentally stumbled into Utah. We followed our driver as he pointed out lots of rocks that apparently looked like animals but we mostly attempted not to slip off the track. I’ve been threatened with swift and shocking acts of violence if I talk about the rocks too much so I will just say there were a myriad of colours and it was pretty? Is that ok, Brendan? Is that allowed? Please.

After the canyon, we went to the beach. Once we arrived it felt a little odd. It was a perfect sandy beach. The sun was shining and the water was blue. Yet, we were over 2000km away from even a faint whiff of briny, fish-infused, maritime air and sat next to the waveless water which didn’t lap against the shore. Instead, it was an azure pane of glass stretching to the hazy mountains on the far shore. This all combined to make the whole experience feel somewhat surreal. We all went for a swim in the refreshingly cool water with Brendan taking the whole swimming thing too far again. We get it, you don’t sink like a lead weight. Stop showing off. Jeroen and I watched from the beach as he slowly motored his way past the floating barrels of the swimming area and out into the shimmering expanse of gloriously clean water. His breaststroke bobbing could be seen for a while but soon he was out of sight. A random Kyrgyz man came up to me to explain that you shouldn’t go past the barrels because, “That is where you drown,” but there was nothing I could do, so I sat back down and continued to burn to a crisp under the sneakily spicy Kyrgyz sun.

Brendan did return alive and we headed back to the guesthouse, Jeroen and I nursing the ruby evidence of our lack of preparation for the beach. 

Final Thoughts

Our quick trip to Issyk-Kul felt like a holiday for us all. We only spent half the day at the water’s edge but it made a lasting impression on all of us. It was utterly pristine and overwhelming in its size and beauty. Compound that with the canyon and the guesthouse, it was a couple of days away from our extremely difficult life where we all felt any stress, terror, animosity, guilt and contempt wash away as a dark cloudy stream of emotional pollution into the lake. We would return to Bishkek to continue our food and drink marathon then head onwards to Kazakhstan. Issyk-Kul would continue to harbour all our resentment and spite for eternity. Sorry.