Things to do
11-
Karakol Ski Base
From Karakol it is a short drive to a former Soviet training ground for Olympic athletes, where you can ski from December to March.
View more → -
Ak-Suu
Village at the mouth of the Arashan valley, formerly Teploklyuchenka, where the road up to the hot springs begins and where rental car contracts stop being valid. It has thermal baths of its own at the bottom of the valley, busy with Kyrgyz families at weekends, which makes it the low-effort alternative to the long track above.
-
Ala-Kul
Glacial lake at 3,532 metres, reached over a pass at 3,860 metres that stands higher than the water it overlooks. The standard route runs three to four days from the Karakol valley over the pass and down to the hot springs at Altyn Arashan. Snow shuts the pass from autumn until early summer, so the walkable window is mid-July to early September and the huts on the route close outside it.
-
Altyn Arashan
Stay the night. The drive up the valley is long both ways, so use the hot springs in the evening instead of squeezing them between transfers.
-
Dungan Mosque
The tiered wooden cornice and upswept eaves make this mosque look more like a Chinese temple, so look up when you arrive.
-
Holy Trinity Cathedral
In the centre of Karakol, on any walk through town, you can stop at a Russian cathedral built of wood.
-
Jeti-Ögüz Rocks
An hour is enough for the rocks, which you can see from the road. Give the rest of the day to the gorge of forest and waterfalls behind them.
-
Karakol Animal Market
Sundays only, from seven: this is a working livestock market, not a show for visitors. Arrive late and the trade is already breaking up.
-
Przhevalsky Memorial Museum
Museum and grave of the explorer Nikolai Przhevalsky, who died at Karakol in 1888 of typhoid contracted from a river hundreds of kilometres west, while preparing an expedition toward Tibet. The town carried his name twice. His own books describe the peoples of the region in terms modern scholarship treats as contemptuous, and he wrote that an explorer should approach Asia with a carbine in one hand and a whip in the other.
-
Pushkin Park
The town park, reopened in August 2026 after a rebuild that also returned the historical museum beside it to use. Poplars, painted railings and Soviet-era statuary, including the first secretary of the Kyrgyz Communist Party, who was shot in the purges of 1938.
-
Yrdyk
The Dungan village outside Karakol, settled in the spring of 1878 by eleven hundred and thirty Hui Muslims who crossed the Tian Shan from Gansu in winter after the Dungan revolt failed. Their descendants still cook the northwest Chinese food the town is known for, and hosted dinners in family houses are arranged through the tourism office in town.
