On our second full day, we visited the Barskoon River Valley, about two hours away from our village. Issyk-Kul, being an alpine lake, is naturally surrounded by mountains, most of which reaching a height of 10,000 feet or more. The Barskoon River Valley was located already around 6,000 feet up and was stunningly beautiful – once again, as though a CGI rendering of a fantasy world came to life. We ended up hiking around to some waterfalls, which involved at least 500-1000 vertical feet, and ate lunch near one of them.
The interesting fact about the place we were hiking, though, was that which was related to the world-famous cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, whose face you can see in two different installations in the photos from the valley. Gagarin was very Russian indeed, having been born near Smolensk, but who apparently loved the valley as a vacation spot. He stayed there soon after becoming the first human in space, and according to our guides, often came to spend time there whenever he had the chance to vacation. Therefore, there are two very cool Soviet-era representations of his face on opposing sides of the road to commemorate.
The second place we visited on the way back to our village was Skazka Canyon. Skazka (Сказка) translates from Russian as “fairy-tale”, and the canyon certainly earns its name. Though photos rarely do justice to natural beauty, the unfortunate truth is that Skazka is even more heavily affected — it was a truly breathtaking place, especially considering where we had just been, less than an hour away. Look back at the pictures from Barskoon again! Skazka looks like it’s a different planet, yet is really relatively close. The first photo in the collection is of the Great Wall of Skazka, a natural rock formation that runs the length of the red rocks, and that we ended up climbing through for the majority of the time. Skazka was an amazing place that I would have loved to have spent more time in, but it was very hot out already and most of us were ready to head home.
The final photo for the day was taken on a dock over the lake. We spent some time there before we made it home, and I was lucky to capture this image as the fisherman was quite active and talkative with us. Still, I think that it quite effectively demonstrates just how large Issyk-Kul is, in that you could easily be convinced that it was any of the world’s oceans from a glance.
Nate in Bishkek 2021 