The abundance of landscape resources or interesting geological features often plays an important role in defining the international tourism image of the respective country. Tourists may travel thousands of kilometers just to see such famous natural wonders of the world as the Himalayas, the Great Barrier Reef, the Grand Canyon, Mount Fuji, etc.
The main natural attractions of Kyrgyzstan include: Lake Issyk-Kul, Sary-Chelek, Son-Kul, the mountains of the Tien Shan and Pamir, the Inylchek glacier, the peaks of Khan Tengri, Victory, Lenin, the Jety-Oguz gorge, the Koozhokelen valley, the Kokomeran river, the Arslanbob forests, numerous gorges and passes, mysterious caves, waterfalls, and healing springs - all of which are important landscape elements with the potential to attract a large number of visitors. Although none of these sites are the highest, largest, deepest, or rarest in the world, they are remarkably beautiful and are world-class attractions. However, it should be emphasized that the potential of these attractions is utilized at no more than 15%.
The mountainous landscape of the republic is complex and extremely diverse. The lowest elevation above sea level is 401 m, while the highest is 7439 m. More than 93% of the territory is occupied by mountains, with only 7% consisting of valleys and plains.
A characteristic feature of the landscape is the alternation of high mountains and intermountain basins, scorching deserts and dry mountain steppes, alpine and subalpine meadows, high-altitude glaciers, and peaks.
Kyrgyzstan is rightly called the "land of heavenly mountains." Almost 90% of the territory of the republic lies above 1500 meters above sea level. Some peaks of the mountain ranges rise to heights of 6, or even 7 thousand meters. Here are three of the highest peaks (after the peak of Communism in the Pamir, 7495): the peaks of Victory (7439), Lenin (7134), and Khan Tengri (6995).
Inaccessible peaks attract brave athletes. Every year, climbers from various cities and countries come here to conquer the icy peaks of the Tien Shan.
The first ascent of the previously considered inaccessible peak Khan Tengri was made on September 11, 1931, by the expedition of M. T. Pogrebetsky.
Khan Tengri has a sharp pyramidal shape, composed of marbles and marbleized limestones. In Kyrgyz, it means "lord of the sky."
Victory Peak is located 20 km south of Khan Tengri. The first ascent was made in 1938 by participants of a Soviet expedition led by A. A. Letavet. The summit was named the peak of the 20th anniversary of the Komsomol.
In 1943, Soviet topographers led by P. N. Rapasov determined the true height of the summit — 7439 m, and it was named Victory Peak.
The highest peak of the Chon-Alai range — Lenin Peak — rises in its central part on the border of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The ridge of the range, over which Lenin Peak towers, has a continuous cover of firn and ice. Glaciers of the Big and Small Saukdars descend to the south, while to the north lies the Lenin Glacier.
The first Soviet ascent of Lenin Peak was made by climbers E. Abalakow, K. Chernukha, and I. Lukin in 1934. Upon reaching the summit, they built a stone cairn, draped it with a crimson cloth, and installed a bust of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.
Eternal ice, 50-degree frost, blizzards, snowstorms. All this is associated with the Arctic, the Northern Polar Ocean. Yet, few have thought that sunny Kyrgyzstan has its own Arctic, which in some ways rivals the Arctic of the Far North. The same ice, the same frost, the same blizzards and snowstorms, and all this year-round.
A "cloud country" in the literal sense of the word. It is held up by giant mountains, shielded from human sight by clouds...
In the cloud country, there are its own seasons, which essentially amount to eternal winter. There lie the non-melting ice, the area of glaciation in the Tien Shan is 7200 sq. km. Glaciers are the storages that preserve water among the vast waterless expanses of Central Asia. Here, the word "water" is synonymous with "life."
The volume of water contained in the glaciers of Central Tien Shan is 650 cubic kilometers. The glaciers surrounding Issyk-Kul hold 13 times more water than all 80 rivers bring to the lake annually.
In one massif of Khan Tengri, glaciers occupy an area of almost 2,500 sq. km, equivalent to the territory of Luxembourg.
One of the largest centers of glaciation in the Tien Shan, and indeed in all of Central Asia, is Akshiyrak. There are a total of 131 glaciers in Akshiyrak.
The largest glacier in the Tien Shan and the second (after the Fedchenko glacier in length) among mountain-valley glaciers is the Enilchek glacier, consisting of the Southern and Northern Enilchek. The length of the Southern Enilchek is over 60 km. It has tributary glaciers on the left: Zvezdochka, Diki, Proletarian Tourism, Komsomolets, and others.
The Northern Enilchek, or the Reznichenko glacier, is separated from the Southern by the latitudinal Middle ridge with the peak of Khan Tengri to the east. Its length is over 38 km.
Ninety years later, glaciologists established that since Kaulbars' time, the glacier has shortened by 1.5 km.
The glacial Merzbacher Lake is one of the wonders of the Tien Shan. It is named after the German traveler who first described it.
Between the Southern and Northern Enilchek glaciers lies a lake filled with meltwater from the glacier and snowy shores. The mountain shores of the lake are sometimes encased in an icy shell. Occasionally, a "piece" weighing several thousand tons breaks off from them and crashes into the water with a roar. It dives and then floats, becoming a white iceberg.
Gradually, the lake fills up, the water level rises, and the accumulation of ice ridges and icebergs rises until the ice masses that have been "plugging" a hole somewhere at the bottom rise. A breakthrough of the lake occurs. The water escapes through a tunnel it has carved in the glacier and flows through an under-ice channel for about 20 km, breaking out where the glacier ends and the Enilchek river begins.
Sometimes, up to two water releases occur in a year, usually in August and September. During a breakthrough, the small river Enilchek becomes a mighty and fearsome flow, carrying huge boulders like grains of sand. When the water recedes, the supporting wall of the glacier is exposed — by 40-60 m.
Then the lake gradually fills with water again, and it trickles gently down the wall, flowing into the valley.
When a water release occurs, a roar fills the entire route of the under-ice channel. Strange sounds are also heard at the lake: a low, rumbling roar, as if something enormous is swallowing stones and grinding them in its monstrous stomach. This is the voice of Enilchek. The glacier resembles a factory that operates around the clock, grinding stones. There are never breaks for lunch here.
Can ice be called hot? Everyone knows that its temperature does not rise above zero. However, a day spent on the glacier will reward you with burns that can only be obtained by being in the flames of a fire.
On a square centimeter of the horizontal surface of the Tien Shan glaciers at noon, 1.5 calories of heat enter per minute, and during daylight hours, about 600 calories. With light cloud cover that promotes heat retention, the total solar heat on the glacier can rise to 800 calories. These figures are the highest for our planet. There is no such high intensity of solar radiation at the equator or in the tropics.
The "land of mountains," Kyrgyzstan can also be called the "land of valleys." There are many valleys in the republic — wide and narrow, sunny and shady, fertile and desert. The most famous of them is the Chui Valley.
The most important of the intermountain basins are the low-mountain depressions — Talas (length 140 km, width up to 26 km) and Chui (respectively 250 and 60 km); mid-mountain — Issyk-Kul (250 and 70 km) and Middle-Naryn (170 and 54 km); high-mountain — Aksai-Muduryum (180 and 30 km) and Alai (165 and 25 km). The most extensive of the basins is the Fergana basin, 340 km long and 160 km wide.
The Tien Shan is characterized by many fearsome natural phenomena. One of the most destructive is earthquakes.
They may last for fractions of a second but can cause enormous damage. Scientists have calculated that about a million earthquakes of varying strength occur on Earth each year. Of these, more than 100,000 are registered by sensitive instruments. Approximately a thousand of them are destructive, and more than a hundred are catastrophic.
Every year, our mountains tremble repeatedly. Mountain formation in the Tien Shan is not complete; the mountains are still "growing," which is one of the reasons for earthquakes. Currently, all major cities in the Tien Shan and in neighboring lowland areas of Central Asia are equipped with seismic stations fitted with the latest instruments, which keep a round-the-clock watch, keenly listening to the pulse of the planet.
In 1975, the Institute of Seismology was established as part of the Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz SSR. Its tasks include studying seismicity in the territory of the republic, monitoring the deformation of the Earth's crust to detect signs of earthquakes.
The Institute of Seismology has determined the degree of seismic hazard for several regions of Kyrgyzstan, including microseismic mapping of Frunze, Tokmak, Rybachye, and Osh.
The strongest earthquake in the Tien Shan (magnitude at the epicenter 10 points) in the last 2-3 centuries occurred on the night of January 4, 1911. Its epicenter was located in the middle course of the Chon-Kemin river. It has gone down in history as the Kemin earthquake. In the Chon-Kemin valley alone, 248 people and many livestock perished.
Scientists calculated the energy of the earthquake. It turned out that the energy released was equivalent to the amount that the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station could produce over 325 years at full load of all turbines.
In November 1946, the Chatkal earthquake occurred with a magnitude of 9, in 1954 — the Dyurbelzhin earthquake (7 points), in 1955 — the Ulugchat earthquake (6-7 points), in 1958 — the Son-Kul earthquake (6-7 points), in 1961 — the Alai and Maylisai earthquakes (6 points), and in 1962 — the Kokanak earthquake (7 points). Other catastrophic earthquakes are also memorable: the Tashkent earthquake (1966), the Sarykamish earthquake (1970), and the Tyup earthquake (1978).
The destructive power of mudflows is enormous — suddenly arising and briefly acting muddy-stone flows in riverbeds. One of the catastrophic mudflows occurred in June 1966 due to the breakthrough of a blocked mountain lake, Zhashil-Kel, in the valley of the Tegermench river. The lake was formed 200 years ago due to an earthquake.
With a terrible roar, large granite boulders were thrown from the breached dam like artillery shells. Following them, water rushed in, carrying a mass of mud and stones. The lake disappeared. In the valley of the Tegermench river, 15 million cubic meters of water, along with 3 million cubic meters of stones and mud, rushed down. According to specialists' calculations, the maximum flow rate reached 5,000 cubic meters per second.
Humanity does not remain a bystander to the manifestations of the untamed forces of nature. Hydrologists of the republic have conducted an inventory of the prevalence of mudflow-prone valleys, aiding in the fight against the destructive force of mudflows. The path to taming mudflows is suggested by nature itself. It turns out that the more foothills are covered with forests, the fewer mudflows are formed on their slopes.
In addition to afforestation works, effective measures include the construction of mudflow barriers over channels and roads, as well as mudflow protection dams near populated areas. An avalanche of snow, which can be unleashed by the mountains at any moment, is the most powerful weapon of the icy world against the invading human. Nothing foreshadows its appearance: the sky is clear, the sun is shining, there is no wind, and silence surrounds. And suddenly... an anxiously rising whistle instantly turns into a roar, a crash, an explosion. The sky, air, mountains disappear, the whole world comes into motion — a white whirlwind, a white collapse, white weight, white death... This is an avalanche, one of the most fearsome phenomena of nature.
No more than a minute passes, and again — a gentle sky above, hot sun, calm, silence...
In the snows of the Kyrgyz ridge, Susamyr, Kavak, and Chatkal, six avalanche scientific stations operate.
The "avalanche workers" monitor the behavior of the snow, the development of avalanches, predict the possibility of catastrophe, and prevent it around the clock.
The uniqueness of glacial landscapes and sceneries, the dangers and difficulties that tourists experience while on glaciers, are a strong attracting factor. Glaciers become a desirable tourism product and are widely used by tour operators in the resource base of adventure and extreme types of tourism.
Glaciers
<Southern Inylchek, Northern Inylchek
Kainy
Korzhenevsky
Mushketov
Semenov
Nalivkin
Petrov
Lenin