SE Tour Day Five - Kolsai Lake Fest

Thursday 21 September 2023

Today was Kolsai/Kolsay Lakes day.  There are three lakes here, known as the pearls of the Tien Shan, the mountain range in which they sit.  They are natural mountain reservoirs formed by landslides across the Kolsai River.  The lower one is about 1 km long, 400 m wide, and 80 m in depth.  Upstream by 5 km as the crow flies is Kolsai 2.  This middle lake, at 2,252 m, is the largest of the three and considered the most scenic.  6 km further on is the upper lake, Kolsai 3.  This is 6 km from the Kyrkyzstan border and hiking/tourists are discouraged.

We started at Kolsai 1 (the only place you can park), admired the view, then headed southwards up the river towards Kolsai 2, skirting Kolsai 1. It's a ~7.5 km walk with 500 m elevation gain.  


We were sharing a path with a bridle way and occasionally had to stand back for groups of horses coming through.  The Kazakh army has a border post at Kolsai 3 lake and we twice passed a foot soldier and two horsemen, their horses ladened up.

The path was pretty muddy and slippy but the views were gorgeous.

The last third of the hike was a steep slog but eventually we arrived at Kolsai 2.  We could have been in Switzerland.


We had a happy hour up there.  We also met a Danish couple that we had bumped into twice at Charyn Canyon yesterday.  We were obviously on the same tourist circuit.  They were only in Kazakhstan for a week so running around a bit faster than us!  We took our time descending as it was super easy to slip.  

We were down by 1700 and discovered, to our joy, coffee.  We are mainly drinking tea in cafes and the home stays so it was a caffeine kick with a view.  

Quick photo opp on the way back to Saty looking up the valley - so beautiful.