Walking the Kolsai lakes and Kaindy

For most visitors, Kolsai is a walk rather than a trek. The path from the first lake to the second is a good half day on a wide, well-made trail with a couple of hundred other people on it in August. It is beautiful and it is not an expedition, and anyone arriving with boots, poles and an expectation of solitude has been mis-sold.

The version that genuinely becomes a trek is the continuation to the third lake, which sits under the Kyrgyz border, needs a permit applied for weeks in advance, and is a different day entirely. Almost nobody does it. That is the article.

Where this is and how you get in

The three Kolsai lakes lie in a steep spruce valley in the Tian Shan, above the village of Saty, in the Kolsai Kolderi national park. Kaindy is a separate lake in a neighbouring valley, reached by a different track from the same village.

Saty is about five hours by road from Almaty, or two hours on from Charyn canyon, which is why the sensible shape is Charyn in the late afternoon and Saty for the night. That decision is set out at length in the best two-week route through Kazakhstan.

The road from Saty to the first Kolsai lake is now surfaced and any vehicle manages it. The track to Kaindy is not: rough, rocky, fording a stream, and needing a 4×4 with a driver who knows it. In wet weather it deteriorates. This is why we price a 4×4 day into the Saty section rather than pretending a minivan will do.

Accommodation at Saty is village guesthouses. Clean, warm, twin rooms, sometimes a shared bathroom, home cooking, a family who eat with you. That is the whole market, and there is no premium option at any price.

The three lakes, and Kaindy, in numbers

Kolsai 1 to Kolsai 2: what it is actually like

This is the walk ninety-five per cent of visitors do, and it is a genuinely good half day.

The trail leaves the first lake, climbs above the eastern shore and follows the valley through spruce forest with the river below. It is a wide, well-trodden path with root steps and a few loose sections, nothing exposed and nothing requiring hands, at a steady rather than steep gradient. You cross the stream on log bridges two or three times.

The second lake is smaller, darker and colder, ringed with spruce coming down to the water, and it is where the valley starts to feel remote. Most people stop, sit for an hour and eat something.

Honest difficulty: moderate. A reasonably fit adult who walks occasionally will find it comfortable. Someone who does not walk at all will do it in five hours rather than three and a half, which is fine. Well within range for a fit twelve-year-old.

Honest crowd: in July and August, at midday, this is a busy path. Not Alpine-busy, but you are not alone. Start at eight from a guesthouse in Saty and the first two hours are quiet, which is another argument for the overnight.

Honest altitude: 7,500 feet (2,300 m) is high enough that some people notice the climb and not high enough to require acclimatisation. Nothing about this walk carries altitude risk.

You can also ride it. Horses with a handler are available at the first lake and many local visitors go up that way. It is a legitimate option if the ascent is beyond someone in your group, and it does not spoil the day for the walkers.

Kolsai 3: the part that is a trek

Above the second lake the character changes completely.

The trail narrows, leaves the forest and climbs through alpine meadow and scree to a third lake at about 9,500 feet (2,900 m), in a bare cirque under the ridge that forms the border with Kyrgyzstan. No facilities, no shelter, often nobody else. Weather comes in fast and the top lake can be twenty degrees Fahrenheit (about ten degrees Celsius) below the valley.

Three things to know before you plan it.

It is a border zone. The third lake and the ground beyond it lie inside the Kazakh border security zone with Kyrgyzstan. Access requires a permit issued in advance against your passport details, with a lead time of several weeks, and it is checked. We apply for it as part of the file and we need your details early. Turning up at Saty and asking is not a route to getting one.

It is a long day or an overnight. From the first lake to the third and back in one push is roughly 19 miles (30 km) with about 3,600 feet (1,100 m) of ascent, a serious day for most people. The better version camps at the second or third lake and takes two days, which is how our twelve-day trekking route builds it.

The pass onward is a real crossing. The Sary-Bulak pass at about 11,150 feet (3,400 m) leads over the ridge and down towards Issyk-Kul in Kyrgyzstan. It is walked as a trek with permits on both sides, and it is not an official border crossing point for a normal itinerary. If a two-country mountain trek is what you want, tell us at the start and we will build it properly rather than bolt it on.

If you do get to the third lake, this stops being a nice walk and becomes the best mountain day in Kazakhstan. It is also the day almost no visitor takes.

Kaindy

Kaindy is not a walk at all and we include it here because people expect it to be.

The lake was formed by a landslide during the Kebin earthquake of 1911, which dammed a valley and drowned a spruce forest. The trees died, the water preserved the trunks, and the bleached poles still stand out of a green-blue lake at about 6,600 feet (2,000 m). Below the surface the branches and needles are still on them. You drive to within ten minutes of it and walk down. The whole thing is a morning.

Go first thing. The water is stillest before mid-morning, the light is on the trunks rather than behind them, and the 4x4s bringing day visitors from Almaty have not yet arrived. From a guesthouse in Saty you can be there at eight. From Almaty you cannot be there before eleven, which is the strongest practical argument for the overnight.

Season

The wider calendar is in Kazakhstan month by month.

What we would build

Two nights at Saty. Not one. Arrive in the late afternoon after Charyn. Day two: Kaindy at eight in the morning, back for lunch, then the first Kolsai lake and an easy hour on the shore. Day three: the walk to the second lake with the whole day available, back for a late lunch, and on. That is the shape in our classic ten-day route, and it costs one extra night in a simple guesthouse.

If you want the third lake, add two more nights and give us your passport details at least six weeks out.

What this costs

Our bands are $125 careful, $200 comfortable, $330 boutique and $560 luxury per person per day, land only. Here the upper two buy almost nothing, because Saty has no premium accommodation. What the extra money buys is a better 4×4, a private guide who walks with you and the permit handling for the third lake. The breakdown is in what a trip to Kazakhstan costs.

Related

• Kazakhstan: the complete guide to planning your trip
• Kazakhstan month by month
• The best two-week route through Kazakhstan
• Trekking the Tien Shan in 12 days
• All our Kazakhstan trips

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