FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Turkish Airlines to Tartary: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan - and a Bit of Belarus
Old Oct 2, 2019, 7:56 pm
  #67  
Romanianflyer
 
Join Date: Feb 2014
Location: OTP
Programs: AF/KL platinum, Turkish gold, QR gold
Posts: 1,565
Part 19: Cholpon-Ata, Kyrgyzstan
Accommodation: Hotel Best, 18 USD/night

My apologies for the long hiatus in this trip report. Those who followed my previous TR's know that a long silence is most often due to busy days working and/or travelling, and this time was no exception with repeat trips to Germany and to Ukraine.

Back to the trip to Kyrgyzstan! Unfortunately I could not do the entire programme I planned in Karakol as I had to skip a day of hiking due to inclement weather. I was thinking for a while to maybe cancel my upcoming day in Cholpon-Ata in order to stay a bit longer in Karakol to still do the hiking there, but in the end I opted to cut my losses and to just stick to schedule. In the early morning I therefore took a taxi to the local bus station, where I got one of the last seats in a cramped marshrutka to Cholpon-Ata, about an hour or two away.



The road straddled the northern shore of lake Issyk-Kul, a large, deep endorheic lake which is the second largest saline lake after the Caspian Sea and second largest Alpine lake after Lake Titicaca on the Peruvian-Bolivian border in South America. Issyk-Kul means 'warm lake' in Kyrgyz – and the lake's thermal waters have remarkable effect on the surrounding area. Despite being located at an altitude of 1,600 metres above sea level, the lake never freezes, making the area around the lake lush and fertile.



The lake is therefore a beloved resort for holidaymakers since the times of the Soviet Union. Even though some of the resorts have fallen into decline since the collapse of the USSR, some places are still beloved by travelling Kyrgyz, neighbouring Kazakh and some Russians from the Siberian borderlands with Kazakhstan. In Cholpon-Ata I even saw a direct bus to Omsk – well over 2,000 kilometres away! I opted to stay in Cholpon-Ata because it is the largest and best known of all the Issyk-Kul lake resorts. Although some reviews on the internet (“full of boozing Kazakhs”) were not so positive, it actually sounded quite interesting to me, and the pictures of the place looked lovely. For those seeking solitude, the southern coast has a couple of small villages where stays in homes or yurts can easily be arranged by any tour agency such as the local CBT ('community based tourism') found in all main Kyrgyz towns.

Cholpon-Ata is full of small hotels and homestays, which can be easily booked in advance at most hotel booking websites or just on the spot on arrival. I opted for hotel 'Best' – which was centrally located, clean and did the job, even though the room interior design won't win any awards soon unless one might travel back in time to the 1970s Soviet Union.







After my arrival the weather was improving rapidly and I packed my beach towel and put on my swimming short for a walk around town and a dip in the lake. And odd feeling, being surrounded by high mountains and being as far away from an ocean as you can possibly get on earth.





The town of Cholpon-Ata basically consists out of a main drag (the main road which heads straight through town) and a couple of streets up towards the mountains and down towards the lakefront. Shops, banks, as well as most restaurants and such, are located on the main road. There is not too much to see in the town itself except for a small war monument. There are some interesting petroglyphs in the area, although I did not have the time to see them myself as I was too lazy to walk and couldn't find a taxi.





Cholpon-Ata has a lovely sandy beach – most of which is public, although a few sections are privately owned and require an entrance fee of around a dollar.





I found a small shack selling beer and renting out beach chairs – which sounded like the perfect thing to do. Surprisingly, despite being a mountain lake at 1,600 metres above sea level and it being still early in the season (June), the waters were actually warm enough to swim in! Weirdly it really felt like being at the sea.





After a beer or two I walked a bit more over the beach to admire the gorgeous scenery. Maybe it was the effect of the beers, but I really started to love this place. I mean, the town itself is not so much of a special place to visit, but just look at these gorgeous views! It felt so relaxing just to walk over the beach and kick back a few more cold ones.











I found another nice place for beer and just lazed the day away.





After a while it was time to head back into town to grab some dinner.









Unfortunately, the place I selected ended up being the only bad meal of the trip. The borscht (Russian beet soup) was good, although the plov and the manti were rather average and a bit tasteless. Worse was that the waiter said that they were out of beer but could get it for me if I had five minutes patience. I saw him returning with a 2,5L plastic bottle of what turned out to be absolutely disgusting lukewarm beer. Why get such s**t if you can also buy a cold bottle of beer? Still, it being Kyrgyzstan means that all together the bill didn't exceed the 5 USD mark.







The rest of the evening I spent more time lazing on the beach and relaxing a bit in my hotel room. If you head in with low expectations, I'm sure Cholpon-Ata will please most people as a quirky little beach destination. I for one loved it.
Romanianflyer is offline