


	Remember me on this computer
	Forgot your password?
	Register

MT news

Russia – Holland 2009

On 19 June 2009 a bi-lingual, colour supplement to The Moscow Times will be published. The “Russia-Holland” supplement is an annual business publication, devoted to the partnership between Russian and Dutch companies.

This year the magazine is timed to coincide with the most glorious event in the cultural co-operation between the two countries for the last decade – the opening of Hermitage Amsterdam. The unique exhibition centre will be opened on the 19 June by Her Majesty Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and the President of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Medvedev.



Monday, July 06, 2009 Updated at 05 July 2009 22:24 Moscow Time.

The Moscow Times » Issue 2404 » Features

Christopher Pala / For MT

The shores along Issyk Kul, which means Warm Lake, offer an incredibly diverse range of scenery, from green meadows to sandy beaches, alpine peaks to rugged desert terrain. And aside from the occasional day-tripper, very few take advantage of the lake's c

The Many Faces Of Issyk Kul

19 March 2002By Christopher Pala / Special to The Moscow TimesOffering rugged peaks and spectacular terrain, Kyrgyzstan is a potential gold mine for adventure-seeking trekkers. But this northwestern end of the Himalayas attracts only a fraction of the tourists who annually visit Nepal. Christopher Pala spent a month on Lake Issyk Kul to take a closer look at the diverse natural beauty of this Central Asian nation.

As we sailed by the south coast of Kyrgyzstan's Lake Issyk Kul, we watched in wonder as the scenery drifting past us displayed a startling juxtaposition of Caribbean, desert and Alpine snapshots -- all in a spot that is about as far from any sea as one can get anywhere on the planet.

Placid turquoise waters lapped at a deserted sand beach that stretched for kilometers. Behind it, scrubland dotted with mesquite-type bushes turned into bare hills of russet clay fantastically gouged by erosion. Beyond rose mountains clad with thick forests of pine and fir. And above it all, looking down from 5,000 meters, the soft curves of year-round glaciers dropped from the peaks of the Tian Shan mountain range, the northwestern end of the Himalayas. We were just over 1,600 meters high, the same altitude where the first ski resorts start popping up in the Alps.

Turning our heads to gaze at the north side of the lake, we saw the water turn to a deep blue, stretching to an ocean-like horizon under a high bank of cumulus. If you looked very closely behind the cloud cover you could just detect more snowy peaks beyond.

Issyk Kul means Warm Lake (slightly salty, it never freezes). About 180 kilometers long, it is the world's second highest major alpine lake after Peru's Titicaca.

Once located along the Silk Road -- the ancient, bustling trade route linking Europe and China -- the region has in more recent years been closed to outsiders. Indeed, during the Soviet era military planners took advantage of the lake's remoteness to build a torpedo-testing range here. As a result, only Soviet citizens were allowed to use the resorts dotting the 600 kilometers of coastline, many of them run by the Defense Ministry.

Mountainous Kyrgyzstan is a potential gold mine for adventure travelers. Five times the size of Switzerland with only half of its population, Kyrgyzstan seems poised to succeed Nepal as the trekking destination of choice. The fact that it attracts but a tiny fraction of the 400,000 tourists who annually visit Nepal, 1,100 kilometers to the southeast, only made me keener to explore it.

I saw from the map that Issyk Kul's proximity to 5,000-meter-plus peaks would afford dramatic landscapes. But I was still unprepared for the lake's eclectic scenery.

As the sun started to set, we left the beach behind us and glided into the bay of Ton, roughly in the center of the lake's south coast. We headed into a tiny cove on the west side of the bay. And there we were greeted by another jaw-dropping sight: the cove, at the end of a narrow valley, was carpeted with short, rich grass interwoven with clover of such an intense green that a member of our party swore it looked like Normandy. An invisible spring irrigated the field where a few cows grazed.

Climbing out of the boat, we headed up the rocky hillsides studded with thorny bushes and fragrant wild thyme to watch the sun set over the narrow end of the lake. At that point I could have sworn I was staring out on the Mediterranean coastline -- perhaps Greece or Dalmatia.

Arranging for a monthlong cruise on Lake Issyk Kul is not a matter of picking up the phone and giving a credit card number. It took two trips to the lake just to determine if there were any sailboats at all with cruising potential. In fact, there were just two, and both were 1980s-era one-ton formula racing boats. I found them in a dry-dock at the so-called yacht club in Balykshi, a charmless industrial town on the eastern end of the lake. The club functions mostly as a sailing school for children.

Christopher Pala / For MT

While the northern coast of the lake is populated with tasteless Soviet-era hotels, the wilder southern coast offers higher peaks and more unspoiled views. In some areas the snow leopard has started to return.

One of the boats, privately owned, had a gaping hope in its wooden hull. The other, painted garishly in lemon yellow and sky blue, was standing next to the first one. Its captain, Valery Artemyev, was a grizzled old man with a pleasant face and piercing blue eyes.

The boat, named Zlata, or Golden, had been shipped new in 1988 from St. Petersburg to a local metals-processing plant for use by its employees. Artemyev, an engineer, was named its captain and had taken care of the boat ever since.

Some years ago the plant sold the boat to a health spa on the lake, where in the summer Artemyev takes paying customers for trips of an hour or two, rarely a day. But no one had ever spent more than a couple of nights on board. Indeed, the only cabin at the front of the boat lacked a mattress and was used as a sail storage area. Aside from a German sailing club that had sailed aboard the Zlata and a few smaller boats for a couple of weeks in 1996, no one had cruised the lake in the usual sense, Artemyev said.

A cursory inspection of the Zlata yielded an impressive list of nos: no depthsounder, no wind-speed indicator, no charts, no toilet, no water tanks, no bilge pump, no fuel gauge. Five sockets over the companionway intended for the instruments that racers rely on to fine-tune the sails had never been filled.

Yet Artemyev seemed amenable to the idea of a monthlong cruise -- something he had never done. He told me Erkin Akayev, who happened to be the nephew of the president of Kyrgyzstan, had bought the health spa and the boat with it, but he had turned over the management of the boat to the director of the metals factory.

The director, a youthful Kyrgyz named Boronchu Mamerkanov, was delighted to rent me the boat and we agreed on $1,000 for four weeks. In mid-August, five of us plus the skipper and a portable toilet set off to introduce the Age of Cruising to Issyk Kul.

I had driven along the northern coast several times. It was more populated and most of the hotels, Soviet-era monuments to tastelessness, were there. The wilder southern coast beckoned. The mountains were higher on that side, and from the lake we would be seeing their northern face, which had more snow than the southern face since it is less exposed to the sun.

In Ton, a village a dozen kilometers from the main road circling the lake, we bought a huge, lightly salted trout that served as the centerpiece for a succulent dinner. Our next stop was Tamga, where we moored against a pier. The bay boasts one of the 50-odd rivers that pour into the lake, and the dock was lined with fishermen pulling out small fish with stupefying speed, sometimes four at a time. A portly woman fried up some fish for us that night, lamenting all the while that the paddle-boat business where she had worked had all but collapsed; ever since Kyrgyzstan's independence, ending two centuries of Russian domination, the flocks of Soviet-era tourists had slowed down to a trickle.

Just as the number of visitors went into decline, so did the number of cars in Tamga. In fact, I observed that the village appears to have many more horses than cars. Central Asia is, after all, known for its superior horsemanship, and it is where the horse was first domesticated. We took advantage of the surplus to rent a few horses for the day and ride up to the cool, forested mountains.

But these horses, I soon found out, were no national symbol, no intentional return to the traditional way of life. When Kyrgyzstan became independent, horses were rare and tractors were common. Now that the tractors and cars have broken down, horses have been gradually taking their place.

A few days later, we rented a car and driver and went up a well-maintained road to the 4,000-meter-high Kumtor plateau, home to the world's seventh-largest gold mine. Far above the tree line the vegetation was limited to grass kept soggy all summer by melting snow -- a favorite among grazing horses, sheep and yaks. According to one local chiban, or Kyrgyz cowboy, the grass had once been threatened by the overgrazing ordered by Soviet-era planners. But since post-Soviet poverty had led to the slaughter of many herds, the grass was much healthier. The ibex and Marco Polo sheep were starting to return, along with the snow leopards that prey on them.

Our next spot was Pokrovka, a wide bay with a narrow opening leading to a small cove lined with reeds. We anchored in the middle, savored the silence and admired the variety of waterfowl around us -- ducks, mountain geese, coots, pochards and grebes.

Christopher Pala / For MT

In some areas, horses outnumber cars. Traditionally known for its superior horsemanship, this Central Asian nation is turning back the clock on transport.

Another day's sail brought us to Karakol, located at the end of a 15-kilometer inlet where a torpedo-testing range is located. Having never been there, our captain did not know where to stop for the night. Near a pier where a gray military ship was moored, we spotted another pier that was empty. As I jumped ashore to tie up, two men looking both displeased and drunk appeared, and one took me by the arm and tried to drag me away, saying that tying up at the pier was strictly forbidden. I resisted, the captain argued our innocence, the name of the president and his nephew were evoked and I was eventually able to jump back on board. We tied up under a rather unprepossessing coal pier and heard no more from the security services.

During our stay in Karakol we visited the memorial, grave and museum complex dedicated to Nikolai Przhevalsky, Russia's premier explorer of Central Asia. After trekking 35,000 kilometers over 15 years he died in Karakol in 1888 of typhus from drinking unboiled water while hunting one of the region's last tigers. The complex is set on 11 beautifully kept hectares overlooking the bay.

Ironically, Przhevalsky is best remembered in zoos around the world for the small horse he named after himself that he discovered in the Russian Far East on his one expedition outside Central Asia. The horse, impossible to break in, no longer exists in the wild but prospers in zoos.

After leaving Karakol we slowly retraced our path along the southern shore and, arriving at Balykshi, marveled at the fact that -- aside for some fishermen's rowboats -- we had seen not a single other boat in motion during the whole month.

The best times to travel to Issyk Kul are between May and August.

For information on chartering the Zlata, call Boronchu Mamerkanov at (996) 517-710-331 or (996) 313-533-316.