Lake Issyk-Köl & the Central Tian Shan Getting there & around

Getting there & away

The western road access to Issyk-Köl is a 40km-long, landslide-prone, slightly sinister canyon called Shoestring Gorge (Boömskoe ushchelie), which climbs into the Alatau east of Tokmak, with a howling wind funnelling up it most of the time.

There’s a police checkpoint just west of Balykchy, where cars are searched for drugs and an ‘ecotax’ is collected from each inbound vehicle from outside Issyk-Köl and Naryn provinces.

From the north, a rough jeep road (4WD only) from Almaty’s Bolshoe Almatinskoe lake leads over the Ozerny Pass, through the Chong-Kemin Valley and then the Kok Ayryk Pass to Chong-Sary-Oy near Cholpon-Ata. There’s no public transport along the route, the bridges often get washed out and there’s no immigration post, making it a particularly tricky option for foreigners. It might make an interesting mountain-bike trip if you can sort out the visa situation.