Issyk-Kul Lake Travel Guide: 13 Best Places to Visit in 2026

Cholpon-Ata is the main resort on the lake, a town of sanatoriums, guesthouses and sandy beaches about 250 km by road from Bishkek. Its name joins the Kyrgyz words for the morning star and ‘father’.

The beaches are public. Resort fences along the shore came down on presidential orders in 2023 and again in 2025, and charging people to reach a public beach is illegal. Sunbeds and umbrellas still cost extra.

The water is warmest in July and August, when the surface averages about 20 °C, and the beach season runs from late June to the end of August. Cholpon-Ata hosted the first three World Nomad Games, and its hippodrome held the closing ceremony of the sixth in September 2026. Two of the sights below, the petroglyphs and Ruh Ordo, are within 4 km of the centre.

On the slope just above Cholpon-Ata, a 42-hectare field of boulders is covered in carvings of hunting scenes, animal fights and symbols. The oldest date from the second millennium BC, and well over a thousand carved stones have been registered.

The field is an open-air branch of the Issyk-Kul history museum, with a ticket hut at the gate. Entry was 80 som in 2025. A full round of the marked stones takes about an hour and a half.

The entrance is at the top end of the old airport runway, about 3 km from the bus station, and there are no signs, so a taxi is the easy way. Vandalism has damaged some of the stones, so look at the carvings but don’t touch them or climb on them.

Ruh Ordo is a 4.5-hectare park on the shore at the eastern edge of Cholpon-Ata, named after the writer Chingiz Aitmatov. It has an Aitmatov house-museum, sculptures of characters from his novels, statues of Kyrgyz khans and Manas reciters, and five chapels for Islam, Judaism, Catholicism, Orthodoxy and Buddhism.

The concert hall’s stage opens onto a view of the lake. The park began as a private project and became state property in December 2023.

Foreign visitors paid 500 som in May 2026. It is 2.4 km from the bus station, a short taxi ride.

The Chon-Ak-Suu gorge, usually called the Grigorievka gorge after the village at its mouth, runs 35 km up into the Kungey Ala-Too about 35 km east of Cholpon-Ata. It is narrower, rockier and more forested than the Semenovka gorge next door.

Three small lakes sit along the river: the lower one in the first part of the valley, the middle one near the At-Jailoo summer pastures, and the upper one about 6 km further on. Above it, at around 3,500 metres, the forest gives way to alpine meadow. In summer there are yurts to stay in.

A dirt road runs up the valley and you only need a 4x4 for the upper part. The village is about 45 minutes by car from Cholpon-Ata. Litter and campfires are a problem here, so take your rubbish back down.

Karakol is the capital of Issyk-Kul Region, a town of around 80,000 people, and it is where you sleep before heading into the valleys to the south. It is about 400 km from Bishkek, 6 to 7 hours by marshrutka. Asman Airlines also flies from Bishkek in about 40 minutes, at a fixed fare of 4,000 som (2026).

Holy Trinity Cathedral was consecrated in 1895, a wooden church on a brick base that replaced one destroyed by an earthquake. In Soviet times it lost its bell tower and crosses and was used by a children’s sports school, and it went back to the church in the early 1990s. Women cover their heads, and scarves are left at the door.

The Dungan Mosque was finished in 1910 to a design by an architect from Beijing, and its beams sit in grooves rather than being nailed. Visitors paid 20 som in 2025, and women are lent a hooded coat. The town itself is being rebuilt: the history museum is closed for reconstruction, and the central square and many streets are being redone through 2026.

About 30 km west of Karakol, the Jeti-Oguz river cuts through a wall of red conglomerate. One long ridge of it is the Seven Bulls, and a nearby split cliff is the Broken Heart.

Past the rocks is the Jeti-Oguz kurort, a spa village at about 2,200 metres with hot mineral springs. The sanatorium was handed to the presidential affairs department in 2025 and is being rebuilt, with the work due to finish in 2026, so check that it’s open before planning a stay.

Walk on past the Seven Bulls and up the valley for about 3 hours to reach Kok-Jaiyk, a wide meadow known as the Valley of Flowers. Marshrutka 372 runs from Karakol’s Ak-Tilek bazaar every 30 minutes, 07:00–18:30, and costs from 100 som (2025). In summer some buses stop at Jeti-Oguz village, 15 km short, so check the bus says ‘Kurort’.

Altyn-Arashan is a valley of spruce forest, guesthouses and hot springs at about 2,500 metres. The only road in is a 16.7 km track up from the Ak-Suu side. It is too rough for ordinary cars, so you either walk it, which takes 4 to 7 hours uphill, or ride in one of the old Soviet UAZ vans that run the route.

A UAZ costs about 8,000 som one way for the whole van, or 1,500–3,000 som a seat when shared (2026). Expect to pay a park entry fee at the checkpoint at the bottom of the valley.

The springs come out at up to about 40 °C. Guesthouses have their own pools in wooden sheds, and two free covered pools sit by the river below them. Marshrutka 350 from Karakol’s Ak-Tilek bazaar towards Ak-Suu passes the turn-off. It runs every 10 minutes from about 07:20 and costs from 50 som, plus 30 som for a big pack (2025).

Ala-Kul is a turquoise lake at about 3,530 metres, reachable only on foot. Most people walk it as a loop: up the Karakol gorge to the lake, over a pass of about 3,860 metres, then down the Keldike valley to Altyn-Arashan.

On the classic route you camp in the Keldike valley at about 3,200 metres, then walk 11 km and drop 1,100 metres to Altyn-Arashan, so the hot springs come at the end. The whole loop from the Karakol gorge to Ak-Suu is about 50 km and takes 2 to 4 days.

You pay a park fee at the Karakol gorge gate. The climb to the pass is steep, so if you haven’t trekked at this altitude before, go with a guide: Destination Karakol, the town’s tourist office, lists guided treks.

The Barskoon gorge climbs south from the village of Barskoon into the Terskey Ala-Too. Its road is the supply route to the Kumtor gold mine, so expect heavy trucks, but it is in good condition, and the waterfalls are 18 km from the village.

There are four named falls: Tears of the Snow Leopard, Beard of the Aksakal, Splashes of Champagne and Manas’s Cup. The main cascade is 24 metres high, and a steep trail of about 3 km, with 370 metres of climbing, leads past the smaller falls to it. Yurt cafes near the falls serve food in summer.

Yuri Gagarin came here in August 1964 while staying at the military sanatorium in Tamga. A stone head of him stands by the road, with a second memorial nearby. Above it the road heads for the border zone, and you need a permit to go beyond the Kara-Say post. A taxi from Barskoon village to the falls and back, with a couple of hours’ wait, cost 1,600 som in 2026.

Tamga is a small village with a military sanatorium, beaches to the west and about two dozen guesthouses and camps. The sanatorium was built for Soviet officers and later hosted cosmonauts, and its 1970s mosaics and reliefs are by Valentin Barskov, who also carved the Gagarin head in Barskoon.

In the Tamga gorge above the village, 6 km by road, three boulders carry the Buddhist prayer ‘Om mani padme hum’ in Tibetan script. One study dates them to the 7th to 9th centuries, which would make them the earliest known Tibetan inscriptions in Central Asia, though other sources place them much later.

Kaji-Say, 37 km west, has beaches on the lake north of the village. It grew up around a Soviet coal and uranium works. The tailings, about 3 km from the village, were made safe in 2019, and demolition of the old plant buildings began in 2025.

Skazka is a small canyon of eroded red clay and rock just inland from the village of Tosor, between Kaji-Say and Tamga. Its best-known formation is a long ridge called the Chinese Wall. Paths wind between the other shapes, and several viewpoints look back over the lake.

Expect to pay 50–100 som each at the barrier (2026). There are trail boards with walking times, and a yurt camp at the entrance.

The canyon is under pressure. In May 2026 the head of the state tourism agency said it was being worn down by visitor numbers, and proposed moving most activity to its lower part. Stay on the paths and take your rubbish with you. From Bokonbaevo it is about 34 km, roughly 40 minutes by car.

Bokonbaevo, the seat of Ton District, is the place on the lake to see berkutchi, the hunters who train golden eagles. A demonstration takes one to two hours and is booked locally, often the day before. In early 2026 one cost 2,500 som per person, including transport from town. Agree the price before it starts.

On the first Saturday of August the town hosts the Salbuurun festival, with eagles, taigan hounds, archery on horseback and wrestling. It fell on 1 August in 2026 and 2 August in 2025.

Several yurt camps sit on the shore north-east of town, among them Bel-Tam, 8.5 km away. Bokonbaevo is about 260 km from Bishkek by road and 30 km from Kyzyl-Tuu, the next stop.

Most households in Kyzyl-Tuu, 30 km west of Bokonbaevo, make yurts: the wooden frame and the tunduk, the crown at the top, as well as felt coverings, shyrdak carpets and chi reed screens. A couple takes about two months to make one, and village yurts have been sold to Turkey, Tajikistan and the USA.

Yurt makers from the village won both the best-yurt contest and the speed-building contest at the 2026 World Nomad Games. The fastest team put a yurt up in 6 minutes 48 seconds.

Some workshops take visitors who want to watch or learn, and a shop in the village sells yurts, carpets and felt souvenirs. Kyrgyz and Kazakh yurt-making has been on UNESCO’s intangible heritage list since 2014.