The Sunken City of Issyk-Kul: Legends of the Warm Lake

Issyk-Kul has always seemed enchanted to the people who live around it. Until Russian settlers arrived at the end of the 19th century, hardly anyone swam in it or fished it. The lake is ‘warm’ — that is what issyk means — it never freezes in winter, and its water is slightly salty, though dozens of fresh mountain rivers flow into it and none flow out.

The Kyrgyz have many stories to explain it, and almost all of them begin the same way: once, where the water is now, there was a city.

The girls’ tears

Long ago a great and beautiful city stood in the valley. One day a terrible earthquake struck. The ground sank, the city fell, and the hollow filled with water.

On the eve of the disaster, a group of young girls had gone up into the hills to gather firewood. They were the only ones who survived. Every morning they came down to the shore and wept for their families, and their tears fell into the water — so many tears that the lake became bitter and salty, and warm, like tears.

The elders say the lake still shares the mood of those grieving girls: one day grey and roaring, the next calm and dreamy, its clear water the colour of sapphire.

The khan’s castle

In another version, a cruel old khan ruled the city from a castle on a steep mountain. He heard of a beautiful girl from a poor nomad family and sent riders with rich gifts to bring her to him. She refused: she loved another — a rider on a white horse who had once carried her up into the sky, put a ring on her finger and promised to return.

The khan’s men seized her and locked her in his palace. When he finally came to take her by force, she ran to the open window above the abyss. ‘No, khan, I will never be yours,’ she cried, and threw herself down.

At that moment the castle walls shook and fell, water burst out of every gorge, and the palace sank. Where the khan’s fortress had stood there now lay a lake — blue as the sky, clear as crystal and warm as a girl’s heart. On quiet summer evenings, they say, you can see the ruins under the water and hear her voice.

The well that was never closed

The simplest story is told about a magic well on a great plain. Its water was so powerful that everyone who drew from it had to close it again at once with a heavy stone — or, in some versions, lock it with a key kept by a holy man.

One day a girl came to the well to meet her sweetheart. They talked and talked, and forgot the well. The water rose, spilled over the plain and kept rising until the whole valley, with all its villages, was gone. That is how Issyk-Kul was born.

Is there really a city under the lake?

Surprisingly, there is something to the legends. The level of Issyk-Kul has risen and fallen many times over the centuries, and archaeologists have found the remains of drowned settlements, walls and pottery in shallow water along the shore — some from the Silk Road period. Divers and researchers still explore them today. The lake keeps its secrets well, which is exactly why the stories live on.

Visit

You can see Issyk-Kul on almost every trip in Kyrgyzstan — swim from the beaches of the north shore in summer, or stay in a yurt camp on the quieter south shore. Read on: Cholpon and the winds Ulan and Santash and The khan with donkey ears. More legends and places: the Kyrgyzstan travel guide.