FolkloreGreen

Lake Issyk-Kul

added29 August 20261375

A non-freezing mountain lake in the Tien Shan with several drowned settlements beneath it, from Saka times through the middle ages. Divers have brought up bronze cauldrons, coins and courses of brickwork. One legend ties the lake to Tamerlane's grave, another to a monastery of Armenian brothers where, according to the Catalan Atlas of 1375, the relics of the apostle Matthew were kept. The last is taken seriously enough that expeditions still work the lake.

Getting thereDirections Flights Where to stay

Suggest a correction

Comments

No comments yet. Be the first.

On the map

42.43330, 77.18330

Open in maps

Getting there

Booking links may be affiliate links: if you book something, the site earns a small commission. It costs you nothing extra.

Sources

Nearest on the map

Anomalous zoneGreen

The Charyn Canyon

Charyn Canyon is an immense natural gorge system extending roughly 154 kilometers along the Charyn River within the Charyn National Natural Park in southeastern Kazakhstan (approximately 195 kilometers east of Almaty). Its most famous section, the "Valley of Castles" (spanning 2 kilometers with sheer walls dropping 150 to 300 meters), features striking layers of ochre-red sedimentary sandstone and conglomerate weathered into the shapes of towering towers, fortress parapets, and ruined ramparts, earning it global recognition as a Central Asian sibling to the American Grand Canyon.

190 km away

UFO sightingGreen

Kanas and the Lights over the Mountain Lake

A glacial lake in the far north of Xinjiang, near where the borders of China, Kazakhstan, Russia and Mongolia meet. It is known in China for two things: a lake monster, which is almost certainly a large taimen, and steady reports of lights over the water. The latter increased noticeably in the 2000s, when a road was put in and tourism arrived. The explanation here is largely geographical: the lake lies away from developed country, the air is clean, and launches from Russian and Chinese ranges regularly pass over the mountains, their upper-atmosphere trails visible for hundreds of kilometres and looking exactly as described.

1043 km away

FolkloreGreen

Mount Belukha

The highest point of the Altai, which the Altaians call Uch-Sumer and hold to be forbidden: one did not climb it, or speak loudly at its foot. Nicholas Roerich came here in 1926 and tied the mountain to Belovodye and Shambhala; his paintings made Belukha the centre of a Russian esoteric pilgrimage that has not dried up. The peak stands almost equidistant from three oceans — a fact the esotericists are fond of citing.

1093 km away

More: Folklore

FolkloreGreen

Tsaritsyno and the Rejected Palace

The Tsaritsyno State Historical, Architectural, Art and Landscape Museum-Reserve is an expansive imperial palace and park estate in southern Moscow, commissioned in 1775 by Empress Catherine the Great. It stands as Europe's largest complex built in the Russian Gothic (pseudo-Gothic romanticism) style and represents one of the most dramatic architectural sagas in Russian history: the nearly completed grand residence was abruptly rejected and ordered dismantled by the Empress herself, leaving the site as a romantic, unfinished ruin for more than two centuries.

FolkloreGreen

The Sukharev Tower and Jacob Bruce

The Sukharev Tower was a masterpiece of late-17th-century Russian civil architecture, formerly standing at the junction of Moscow's Garden Ring, Sretenka Street, and Prospekt Mira. Commissioned by Peter the Great and designed in the ornate Naryshkin Baroque style, the 60-meter-tall red-and-white monument functioned as a ceremonial city gate, the administrative birthplace of the Russian Imperial Navy, and the nation’s first astronomical observatory. In folk memory, the landmark is permanently tied to one of Peter's closest intellectual confidants, Field Marshal Jacob Bruce, who was mythologized as the supreme warlock and sorcerer of the Russian Empire.

FolkloreGreen

The Library of Ivan the Terrible

The Lost Library of Ivan the Terrible (known in Russian as the "Libereya") is a legendary repository of ancient classical and Byzantine manuscripts, parchment scrolls, and codices purportedly assembled by Russia's first crowned Tsar, Ivan IV. Popular mythology claims this priceless collection of ancient Greek, Latin, and Hebrew literature was sealed away inside subterranean brick vaults beneath the Moscow Kremlin, the Alexandrov Kremlin, or the royal estate of Kolomenskoye, standing for four centuries as one of the world's most sought-after literary grails.