Caves of Kyrgyzstan
Caves are rightly called the cradle of humanity. Primitive people took shelter in them from the wind and cold, and from predatory beasts. Later, artificial caves created by humans appeared. There are very few artificial caves in Kyrgyzstan. The most notable are the salt mines of Chon-Tuz in the Kochkor district and the tunnel under the Tuy-Ashu pass on the Bishkek-Osh road.
Natural caves are formed as a result of karst processes in water-soluble rocks (limestones, gypsum, and rock salt), as the presence of soluble rocks is a prerequisite for cave formation. The largest number of caves is located in the south, in the area of the so-called Osh Hills, which occupy the foothills of the Pamir-Alai in the interfluve of the Aravan and Ak-Buura rivers. Currently, more than 100 caves are known. The most interesting and unusually beautiful are the caves of Chyl-Ustun and Ashkhona in the Aravan district; the caves of Surprise, Victory, Fersman, and Big Barite in the Nookat district; the caves of Kan-i-Gut and Jubilee in the Batken region; Kara-Unkur in the Uzgen district; the Zindan cave in the Alai Valley, and several others.
All questions related to caves are studied by the science of speleoogy (from the Greek "speleo" - cave). However, the content of this concept has changed over time. Today, speleology is understood as one of the Earth sciences that studies the origin, development, geological, hydrogeological, and microclimatic features of caves, their modern and ancient fauna, technical methods of underground penetration, and work in underground conditions.
People who study caves are called speleologists.
The unusual landscapes of the underground world, its beauty and diversity increasingly attract extreme tourists. Caves are becoming an attractive object for tourism; they possess not only amazing attractive qualities, a set of extreme and adventure factors, but also the ability to accumulate and preserve diverse information about the natural conditions of the past.
In the Tian Shan mountains, there are fairy-tale cities and towers that nature has sculpted from peaks and mountain ridges for centuries. These are caves, the realm of Pluto, adorned with stalactites and stalagmites...
An interesting cave was found by a speleological expedition in the Naryn region, in the mountains of the Molto-Too ridge. It did not have traditional stalactites and stalagmites, but it did have a small glacier about 15 m long. The floor and walls here are blue and cold, and on the ceiling, peculiar ice icicles sparkle like diamonds.
In one of the chambers of the cave, dry grass was discovered, and beneath it — a black coating. Could it be mummy? Indeed, it is. The thickness of the layer containing the legendary medicine sometimes reached 20-30 cm. What a find! Such deposits of mummy are extremely rare.
In the northwest of the Tian Shan, between the Kyrgyz ridge and Talas Ala-Too, in the Besh-Tash area, lies the Kuyul-Duyurek cave. According to the stories of the elders, no one dares to descend into it, as a noise resembling either the roar of falling water or the howling of the wind, or perhaps the cries of unknown creatures, is constantly heard from it.
The speleologists were greatly surprised when they descended into the cave and found not a waterfall, but even a tiny stream! The rumble and roar, which they took for the roar of falling water, is produced by a stream of air forcefully escaping from the narrow entrance of the cave. The length of the cave is more than 110 m, and its depth is over 30 m. In one of the chambers, traces of notches left by the picks of ancient miners, animal bones, shards of pottery, and remnants of hearths were found.
Divaïram — according to legend, a sacred cave, the abode of evil spirits, is located in the valley of the Sokh River in Haidarkan. Once, a beautiful girl disappeared from a small village. The tracks led to the cave. However, no one dared to descend into it. Since then, every spring, a stream appears from a small round hole in the sheer wall. They say it is the tears of the beauty mourning her bitter fate. The length of the cave is about 140 m, and the walls are covered with cracks, sparkling from droplets of moisture.
The Manas Cave — a huge stone grotto that can accommodate up to fifty horses with riders. The legend says that in the Manas cave, Manas sheltered his horse from the bad weather. Nowadays, shepherds use this cave to shelter their flocks of sheep unexpectedly caught in bad weather.
“At an inaccessible height, on a rocky slope lies the entrance to a mysterious cave. A narrow sheer passage leads to a spacious hall, from which five corridors stretch in different directions. Each of them, in turn, necessarily divides into five new ones, and only one among this multitude of passages leads to a beautiful underground road, which can take you to a fairy-tale kingdom where countless treasures are gathered. In all other passages, the brave adventurer awaits death!” This legend about the Besh-Unkur cave lives in a small picturesque village of Tash-Ata, located between the ridges of Chyl-Ustun and Chyl-Mayram.
Speleologists found the legendary cave. But when asked how it looked before, it is difficult to answer. The cave turned out to be blocked by gigantic boulders. Who knows, maybe someday speleologists will find that very passage that will lead them to the wonderful underground river, beautifully described in the legend.
In the Batken district of the Osh region lies the Kan-i-Gut cave. It is not distinguished by an abundance of stalactites and stalagmites, but you can see a lot of so-called helictites and gypsum formations, rocky flowers, patterns, garlands, and shrubs. The cave impresses with its size. The total length of its passages, transitions, galleries, and grottos, explored by geologists and speleologists, is 98 km. This is 24 km longer than the famous Mammoth Cave in Kentucky (USA), which is considered as much a wonder of nature as Niagara Falls or the hot springs of Iceland.
The Chyl-Ustun cave in the Aravan district. There is much to see and listen to there. There are halls where, for example, the Frunze Circus could easily fit with all its auxiliary premises. They are adorned with dozens of sparkling light-pink columns and numerous stone sculptures.
Even the most skilled architect could not create this enchanting symphony of crystals. These crystals are not silent. If you lightly touch them, they produce a variety of sounds, sounds that probably no musician could reproduce.
The possibilities of speleotourism in Kyrgyzstan remain largely unexplored. The presence of extensive unexplored areas composed of karst rocks in the regions of the Kokshaala-Too ridge east of the Ak-Sai valley may open great prospects for the development of this unusual type of tourism.
Imagine three interconnected underground halls, the walls and ceilings of which are adorned with deposits of the most diverse colors and structures of crystals, producing a soft melodic chime... A complete sense of fairy-tale.
The names of the caves still preserve the mythological representations of antiquity, albeit with an inevitable element of modernity, which the locals introduce when telling you the secret of one cave or another. And there are as many secrets as there are caves.
In Kyrgyzstan, you will see Azhidaar-Unkur — the Dragon Cave, where the prophet Ali defeated a terrible dragon, hear about the Ashkona cave — the "room of remembrance," about Bir-Uyya — the "wolf's den," about Kaptarhon — the "pigeon room," about Sasyk-Unkur — the "stinking cave," about Teshik-Tash — the "pierced stone," as well as many others.
The name of the Kan-i-Gut cave translates from Arabic as "the spring of doom." And it is not surprising: three kilometers underground, with intricate branches — this is not what is on the surface! The cave Daba-khanaunkur is called the medicinal room because the deposits on the walls of the cave — mumiyo — were used in ancient times for mending broken bones.
One of the oldest myths of the ancient Turkic-speaking peoples about the origin of man is also associated with caves. Water, flooding the entire earth, poured into the cave. The clay brought by the water settled in the cave's hollow. And when the storm calmed down — from this hollow in the cave, a girl of unparalleled beauty rose...
Today, in Kyrgyzstan, there are more than three hundred surveyed caves, and almost every expedition brings new discoveries. Somewhere water gurgles and bubbles, and the magnificent decoration of the "rooms" shimmers under the beam of your flashlight in all the colors of the rainbow. And then the beam stops on a flat section of the wall, and you behold ancient inscriptions in Sanskrit and Arabic... Such is the Chyl-Ustun cave on the southern slope of the mountain range of the same name in southern Kyrgyzstan — one of the most beautiful caves in Central Asia. By the way, it should be noted that there is already project documentation for its development for excursion and tourist purposes.
Many legends and tales are also associated with another cave — Azhidaar-Unkur, which is located one and a half kilometers from the Tuy-Muyun pass on the southern slope of the mountain. At a depth of one hundred and ten meters from the surface, the only colony of bats in the country has settled here. The Sel cave on the southern slope of the Katran-Too mountain range, not far from the modern working settlement of Haidarkan, was long ago — in the Stone Age — the dwelling of humans. This is evidenced by the findings of archaeologists and rock paintings on its vaults.
What could be the length of caves? Someone might say one hundred, two hundred, someone — five hundred meters. But the Kan-i-Gut cave, located on the southern slope of the Mayda-Too, stretches three kilometers underground! In this cave, you will find several reddish-brown lakes. The Victory cave in the gorge of the Kyrgyz-Ata River is also not small — one and a half kilometers long. And throughout this length, it confuses speleotourists, presenting a complex labyrinth with a network of honeycomb-like passages. Another giant cave well known is Kara-Unkur in the Kara-Darya gorge, which is 960 meters long.
Caves are found in various regions of Kyrgyzstan, but most of them are in the south, in the southwestern part of the Osh region. Some are ready to reveal their magical beauties to all who wish, others will only allow well-prepared speleotourists, and some can be used as speleotherapy centers. The underground halls with majestic grottos, intricate passages, and colorful lakes can be called natural museums. The walls of many of them are painted by the hands of ancient artists, and many bear traces of the daily life and production activities of ancient people.
As objects of cognitive tourism, the caves Kan-i-Gut, Kara-Unkur, Chyl-Ustun, Besh-Unkur, Big Salt, Big Barite, Snake, Azhidaar-Unkur, and Katta-Unkur are excellent — of course, provided that both the approaches to them and the underground halls themselves are properly equipped and improved. Various conditions for speleotourism of different difficulty categories are available in the caves of Kan-i-Gut, Chyl-Ustun, Victory, Surprise of Petrov, Fersman, Birthday Girl, Ala-Myshik, Ak-Turak, and others.
The origins of speleotherapy date back to the Neolithic period when, as established by historians, sulfate-calcium waters of the Tana-di-Re-Tiberius cave in modern Italy were used for therapeutic purposes. In the 6th-5th centuries BC in Sicily, in the cave of Mount Cronio, infiltration water was collected in terracotta vases, which was then used for treatment. And just recently, in the last century, people descended into the Pyatigorsk sinkhole in the Caucasus to a depth of forty meters just to bathe in the healing underground lake. In 1958, a tunnel was drilled to this lake, and the bathing facility was officially opened.
In Kyrgyzstan, a health resort operates successfully in the salt mines of Chon-Tuz near the village of Kochkor, although its improvement and equipment leave much to be desired.
Kyrgyz scientists have established that people suffering from bronchial asthma, asthmatic bronchitis, certain lung diseases, chronic ENT diseases, and skin allergic diseases will feel much better after visiting the caves of Big Salt or Warm, Ak-Turak or Arpylaq. The unique set of climate-therapeutic factors that these and many other caves possess obliges us to use them for the benefit of people's health and to create speleotherapy centers based on them. The underground realms of Kyrgyzstan not only provide a wealth of impressions but can also offer healing.
Conquering caves is no less fascinating than climbing mountain peaks. Romantics can get their fill of impressions: complex transitions and passages, labyrinths and underground ponds, the bizarre variety of minerals, unraveling the mysteries of caves... All this awaits those who penetrate deep into the earth. The flickers of lights, the swaying shadows on the walls of the grottos, the underground silence — all this makes the participants of the cave expeditions quiet. The feeling of historical time is most acutely experienced precisely in the cave. No matter how good and ancient an architectural monument of antiquity is — you are still next to it, and therefore you look curiously yet somewhat detached. In the cave, however, you are “as if,” “like,” “as” that very ancient ancestor of yours, who took shelter from wild animals, from bad weather, from the hustle of terrestrial life. And every old hearth is like a greeting from those long-ago times.