September 20/21st, 2021

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

After four weeks of classes in Bishkek, I finished my current course level. Between four-week sessions, we have a week’s break, and for this week, we were taken on a five-day excursion to lake Issyk-Kul. It’s about a five hour drive from the city, and on the way, we stopped at perhaps the most post-Soviet place I’ve seen so far. About an hour away from just about everything is located the Hawaii Resort, complete with antique cars, artificial lakes, and a small zoo (?). According to our cultural manager, Iliaz, it was only built a few years ago, and we saw maybe two people besides ourselves while we were there. It clearly cost a lot of money to construct, especially considering the location, and really lacked any tact at all. Very strange. The ostriches were cool, though!

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Issyk-Kul (which means warm lake in Kyrgyz) is the second largest saline lake in the world, after the Caspian Sea, as well as the second largest alpine lake in the world, after lake Titicaca. It is the 10th largest lake in the world by volume, although not even top 20 by surface area. That being said, I wasn’t fully prepared for just how big it is. If it wasn’t perfectly clear outside, it was impossible to see the opposite bank — and we were located for most of the time at one of the narrower points. The first few pictures here are of the journey to the lake, and of just how brown and flat things get once you leave the valley where Bishkek is located and cross the mountains.

On our first full day on Issyk-Kul, we drove to a little salt lake. Issyk-Kul itself is somewhat salty, but this unconnected spot was pretty ridiculous. I tried my hardest to sink under the water and physically couldn’t due to the saline levels, and after I got out I was encrusted entirely with little crystals. We spent the first several hours of the day just relaxing and swimming in the lake, completely isolated from the world as there were no settlements for probably 5-10 miles in any direction.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Once we got back from the salt lake and showered off, we had an amazing opportunity for some of the locals from the village we were staying in to show us how to construct a yurt. It was a mini-yurt, keep in mind, so in reality there would be more involvement in the process for everyone there. But also it was finished in only half an hour despite them slowing way down to show us how it’s done and allowing us to help a little bit. One of many fun facts we learned was that they are built entirely without metal parts, which is fascinating given how large yurts can get. (For context, the largest yurt ever built was around 100 feet in diameter — normal ones are around 15-30 feet across).