Hearing the question, "What sea washes Kyrgyzstan?", School students will be surprised to notice that the country has no outlet to the World Ocean, and, therefore, no sea of Kyrgyzstan does not exist. It is difficult to argue with scientific facts, and yet there is a special treasure in the mountainous republic, which the Kyrgyz revered no less than the real sea.
Hot lake
At an altitude of more than 1600 meters above the horizon, there is a true pearl of the Kyrgyz land - Lake Issyk-Kul. The reservoir, which does not freeze even in winter and is located in high mountains, is called "hot lake" in translation from the Turkic language. Its waters are quite salty, but the rivers flowing into Issyk-Kul make mineralization almost imperceptible, and therefore a varied number of freshwater fish live in the lake.
Interesting Facts:
- Lake Issyk-Kul is endless, not a single river flows out of it. At the same time, about eighty tributaries flow into it.
- The sea surface area of Kyrgyzstan exceeds 6,200 sq. km.
- The water level is subject to cyclical changes and can vary significantly during each period of this cycle. The latter lasts for several decades.
- The average depth of the lake reaches more than 270 meters, and the maximum depth is seven hundred. This allows Issyk-Kul to occupy the honorable seventh line in the list of the deepest lakes on the planet and enter the top 25 among the largest in area.
- The lake stretches for more than 180 km in length, and its shores are 58 km behind each other at the widest point.
- According to his will, the famous explorer and traveler N. M. Przhevalsky was buried on the shore of the lake near the mouth of the Karakol River.
Beach vacation
A special microclimate has been created on the coast of the lake, which can be called marine. Due to the high-altitude location, the air temperature here, even in July, rarely rises above +20 degrees, and the waters of Issyk-Kul are heated to about the same values. In the area of the town of Tamchy on the northern shores of the lake, beach tourism flourishes during the calendar summer, which travelers successfully combine with treatment at the local mineral springs. The lack of heat is more than offset by the huge number of hours of sunshine a year. There are up to 2,700 of them here, which even exceeds the Crimean indicators, and therefore fans of Lake Issyk-Kul know the answer to the question of which sea is in Kyrgyzstan. Their version sounds like this - cool, but very clean, blue and sunny.
