Cholpon Ata

Cholpon Ata is the main tourist resort around Lake Issyk-Kul which in theory is hopping with Russian and Kazakh tourists enjoying the closest thing Central Asia has to a beach. This is unless you come on the 1st September, which is the first day of the off season. We booked 3 places to stay, each of which then told us they'd closed for the winter before finally chancing (mercifully) upon an excellent guesthouse, owned by the friendliest woman we've met in months, who looked after us like we were family and fed us to within an inch of our lives with some incredible breakfasts.

Cholpon Ata itself is an extremely nondescript and unscenic place along a main road. It does however have some genuinely nice beaches if you can brave the water (decently warm in the evening, icy freezing in the morning, but it is an Alpine lake to be fair).

Some sunny mornings mixed with some incredibly violent storms which implies that we are having autumn (after 14 months of summer we don't mind too much) and a power cut for extra fun.

We also went on a very lovely hike up into the mountains north of the lake which featured lots of delightful waterfalls and canyons and after carefully fording several rivers, one which was only bridged by a large tree trunk. Unfortunately Chris made it across with some impressive upper body strength and Elli did not, so we peeled off and Elli went back while Chris completed the circuit. Turns out Chris got the short straw when he got to the end slightly traumatised by some vertical scree slopes.

All in a normal day's work for us and we continue onwards...Read more