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Note that although the real river names should be written in the Russian alphabet, I've mangled them into some sort of anglicisation here for convenience. To get a better general sense of things, Tim put together a general overview of river locations. Passable roads are marked in blue, and the red marks the sections paddled. The overview does not include all rivers (especially from the area around Bishkek), but still gives a reasonable idea of where things are.
Around Bishkek
The rivers flowing towards Bishkek from the mountain range to the south of the city are low volume and are ideal at various different points in the season; The Ala-Archa would probably be great early in the season with more water, whereas the Alamedin was ideal mid-August. Driving south along the Kara-Balta to the pass we would guess that much more water would be required to make this run. The East and West Karakol rivers which flow south from the same mountains again appeared to be too low at in mid-Aug and would be better earlier in the season. the Kerkermeren however was at an ideal level, and would go with both more (scary) and less water. The Chong-Kemin lies to the east of Biskek, running almost parallel with the border with Kazakhstan.
- Alamedin
- Ala-Archa
- Kerkermeren
- Chong-Kemin
- Chu (not yet available)
Issyk-Kul Lake (South)
A reasonable road runs round the south side of the giant lake Issyk-Kul and forms a good platform from which to push up the variety of rivers that feed into the lake. In general the best rivers in this region are towards the eastern end of the lake, though in higher water earlier in the season some of the western rivers may also provide some good boating. A typical river in this region is low-volume and steep, dropping out from the mountain range south of the lake into the floodplain. The levels we found towards the end of August were ideal for some rivers, but on the low side for others. However, more water in a number of the rivers we explored would have made things a bit too fast to stop before the log-jam portages particular to this region.
- Ak-Suu (not yet available)
- Arashan
- Barskoon
- Chong-Kyzyl-Suu
- Jeti-Oghuz
- Juuka
- Karakol
- Turgen-Ak-Suu
Sary-Jaz Catchment
The entire Sary-Jaz area can currently be accessed by only one road. This road crosses the chong-Ashuu pass which is 3822m above sea level. The road over the top is a dirt track, but of reasonable quality, and when we crossed this at the end of August and it still had snow covering the top 100m or so of the pass. On the other side the road between the pass and the Enilchek confluence is tarmaced and in a good condition (due to the now abandonned tin mining operation), although in a few places landslides have fallen into the road. The rest of the roads in area are dirt tracks and considerably less well maintained (i.e. not at all). Some bridges shown on our maps were unsuitable for use, limiting exploration of the area by vehicle. The area appears to be VERY sparsely populated, with no shops or petrol stations to the south of the pass. Plan to be entirely self-sufficient and take lots of spare fuel! The rivers in this region were low at the end of August when we paddled them, but earlier in the season there may be too much snow to get over the pass.
Around Naryn
The Naryn is one big long river, running for at least a few hundred kilometres. We explored the area above and around Naryn town itself. I particularly enjoyed this area, with the Kichi-Naryn and Song-Kol being the highlights of my trip.
And more...
The information included above includes all the areas in which we paddled, but certainly the country has more to offer. Notice that we stuck to the safer, more stable NE of the country, and by the sounds of it, there's plenty more in the west and south-west of the country. The area around Osh in particular is supposed to be a granite region.. maybe some big old slides?
Some links to more info is included below, most, of course is in Russian. If you happen to know Russian, or know someone who speaks it, you'll be well ahead of us... One thing to note before you start is the Russian grading system is different! From a Russian kayaker: "Please also note that the grading system in Russia (the one used in the reports) is different from the international. It equals the UK one for low volume rivers, is higher one grade for medium ones (I mean, if you have a Russian grade 5 for a medium-volume river, you would normally give it a 4 in UK) and two grades higher for the high volume stuff. For instance, I would grade Tryweryn at low release at about Russian 5-ish as compared to UK Grade 3-4. Correspondingly, Grade 6 in Russia is something that still can be run. Something that cannot has no grade and is usually classed simply as 'not runnable'. Besides, the grade highly depends on the type of boats you're using as it's highly subjective." I'm personally unsure as to the reliability of this info, but its something to bear in mind.
- Typically, just after we got back, the Russian site kayaking.ru released an english version. This contains some great guides to a whole range of rivers in the area.
- The site www.whitewater.ru has loads of stuff, but all in Russian. For example, if you'd like to scare yourself on the Sary-Jaz...
- Check out a river map to a wider area than that included above (locally hosted). I'm not too sure where exactly this came from.
