Long ago, in the Issyk-Kul basin, there was a city, around which stood a castle atop a steep mountain. Deep chasms and gloomy gorges surrounded it on all sides. The castle belonged to a powerful khan. The khan was known for his wealth, but even more so for his cruelty. One day, he heard a rumor that in a poor family of a nomad there was a girl of unimaginable beauty. The girl lived in aail, nestled at the foot of the mountains, by the bank of a stream. One day, horsemen surrounded the aail, captured the girl, and whisked her away to a dark gorge. When the blindfold was removed from her eyes, she found herself amidst a fairy-tale splendor and realized that she was in the power of the khan, in his cursed castle, from which escape was impossible. She decided that she would rather die than become the khan's wife, and she leaped down into the abyss. At that very moment, the impregnable cliffs trembled, the granite vaults collapsed, the castle of the old khan sank, and water rushed from all the gorges. In the place of the khan's castle, among the bare and dark cliffs, a blue lake emerged, as blue as the sky, as clear as crystal, and as warm as a maiden's heart, which people named Issyk-Kul (literally, warm lake).
