Altyn-Emel National Park: Petroglyphs, Desert Mountains and the Ili River Corridor

Why would a stretch of dry, bare mountains and sand on the north bank of a Central Asian river hold rock carvings from the Bronze Age, burial mounds of steppe elites, standing stones wrapped in legends of Chinggis Khan and, just beyond its edge, Buddhist prayers cut into the river cliffs? Because the Ili valley has always been a passage: for water, for herds and for the people who moved with them between the Tien Shan and the steppe. Altyn-Emel National Park, in southeastern Kazakhstan, lies across that corridor, and on Day 24 of our small group tour through Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, the group spends a day exploring it.

Altyn-Emel National Park and the Ili River

The Ili River, according to Britannica, runs for about 1,400 kilometres from the Tien Shan of western Xinjiang into southeastern Kazakhstan, passing north of Almaty before it empties into Lake Balkhash. Its main tributaries, the Kax, Künes and Tekes, gather in a high basin between the Tien Shan and the Borohoro mountains; near Yining the valley opens into a fertile plain before the river turns west into Kazakhstan. The valley is wetter than most of Chinese Central Asia; it supports a large farming population, and its uplands support sheep, goats and horses.

A valley like this, running between high mountains towards the open steppe, is a natural road. Altyn-Emel National Park lies on the river’s north bank, between the Ili and the mountains, close to the Kapchagay reservoir. Created in 1996, it covers about 4,600 square kilometres. Our itinerary describes it as a desert-mountain complex on a branch of the ancient Silk Road, and its name, of Mongolian origin, as meaning “golden saddle”.

For broader orientation to the country, our guide to exploring Kazakhstan and our answers to common questions about Kazakhstan cover the practicalities. This article stays with the park, and with what its rocks, mounds and stones say about the people who passed through the Ili valley.

A desert of cold winters

Altyn-Emel is a desert, but not a hot one in the usual sense. In 2023 UNESCO inscribed the Cold Winter Deserts of Turan, a serial property shared by Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, on the World Heritage List, and three of its fourteen components lie within Altyn-Emel National Park, covering the mountain depressions and foothills of the park. UNESCO describes these deserts as having very cold winters and hot summers with little rain, and recognises them for the way their plants and animals have adapted, including globally threatened mammals such as the goitered gazelle.

Within the park, the multicoloured Aktau hills are sometimes called the lunar mountains for their colours, and the Kalkan mountains rise above open foothill plains. Among the park’s rarer animals are argali sheep, the Asiatic wild ass or kulan, and goitered gazelles. It is a landscape that looks empty, and was not.

The inscription also ties Altyn-Emel to places earlier on the route. UNESCO describes the Turan property as stretching more than 1,500 kilometres from east to west, from the mountain depressions of Altyn-Emel to the gypsum deserts of southern Ustyurt; the tour crosses the same plateau further north on its way to the Aral Sea, as described in our article on the Aral Sea and the changing landscape of Karakalpakstan. UNESCO lists the threats to these deserts as poaching, which caused a historical decline in their hoofed animals, border fencing that blocks migration, roads, railways and canals, and grazing pressure outside the protected areas, while judging the overall level of threat low at the time of inscription.

Bronze Age petroglyphs: images on the rock

Some of the oldest human marks in Altyn-Emel are carved into its rocks. Our itinerary describes Bronze Age petroglyphs in the park showing hunting scenes, wild and domestic animals, rituals and deities with sun-like faces.

Comparison helps. Our article on Gobustan’s petroglyphs and mud volcanoes describes another great rock-art landscape, on the Caspian shore of Azerbaijan, where the same themes of hunting and animals appear on the rocks.

Besshatyr: the mounds of the steppe elite

The park’s most monumental ancient site is the Besshatyr burial ground on the right bank of the Ili. It is not on the tour’s itinerary, but it explains who was moving through this valley some 2,500 years ago. Kazakhstan’s archaeology register describes a necropolis covering about two square kilometres with 31 burial mounds, 21 of them covered with stone and ten with embankments of crushed stone and earth. The largest, known as the Big Barrow, is about 104 metres across and 15 to 17 metres high, ringed by a stone wall, and around it some 94 stone fences are arranged in a spiral. Smaller mounds have their own rings, about twelve around the second barrow and some forty around the third, so the stone rings are a feature of the whole necropolis, not of one great tomb. Kazakhstan’s national history portal describes the first barrow’s three-part wooden vault of Tien Shan fir and notes that, although the robbed mounds yielded little in the way of grave goods, their timber chambers are of special value to science.

The site has been known to scholars for a century; the register records a visit by V. Parfentyev in 1924. The archaeologist K. A. Akishev’s expeditions later excavated 18 of the mounds in 1957 and from 1959 to 1961. Beneath them were burial chambers built of hewn Tien Shan spruce logs, with corridors and roofs of layered logs and reed mats, and under two of the mounds ran catacombs, one with passages totalling 55 metres. Radiocarbon dates place the construction in the early Saka period, around the middle of the first millennium BC, and the register describes Besshatyr as a necropolis of the nomadic elite. The mounds had been robbed, probably in antiquity, but their scale, the variety of their structures and the stone fences around them are read as signs of political organisation, social rank and developed religious belief among the nomadic peoples of the Ili valley. The register compares Besshatyr with other great elite burial grounds of the steppe, such as Arzhan, and the purpose of its underground catacombs, as Kazakhstan’s national history portal notes, is still unclear.

Oshaktas: standing stones and a legend of Chinggis Khan

After lunch on Day 24, our itinerary takes the group to the stone columns of Oshaktas near the Kalkan mountains. They are three vertical blocks of stone, each about two metres high, standing on the open foothill plain. Two stories are told about them. In one, Chinggis Khan camped nearby in 1219 on his campaign into Central Asia, and a giant cauldron was set on the stones to cook for his army; in the other, the stones were a signal tower where fires were lit to warn of approaching enemies. Both are legends, and the stones are best read as what they are: a landmark on a route, remembered through the most famous army said to have crossed it.

Buddhist images on the Ili

The corridor carried belief as well as armies. On the cliffs of the Ili near the edge of the park, at a site known as Tamgaly-Tas, Buddhist images and inscriptions in Tibetan and Oirat scripts were carved in the seventeenth century, when the Dzungars, a western Mongol people, ruled the region; the last, left by Volga Kalmyks, is dated 1771. The Kazakhs named the site after the Dzungars were driven out. Tamgaly-Tas is not on the tour’s itinerary, but it is a reminder that Buddhist rulers and monks from the east left their mark on the valley as well.

The singing dunes

In the afternoon the group visits the Singing Barchans, crescent-shaped sand dunes that, in our itinerary’s words, sing with the wind. The largest rises more than a hundred metres, a strange island of sand between the Ili and the mountains; published figures for its exact length and height vary.

How long does the tour spend in Altyn-Emel?

One full day and a night. On Day 24 the group drives from Almaty by way of Kapchagay and Chengeldy village, sees the Bronze Age petroglyphs, has lunch, visits the Oshaktas stones and the Singing Barchans, stops near the sacred place our itinerary calls the Spring of Chokmor Valihanov, and ends the day at the guesthouse.

Where does the group stay in Altyn-Emel?

In a local guesthouse for one night. Our itinerary names the Agaikum Guesthouse or similar, with dinner served there, and notes that, depending on the size of the group, travellers may be split between two guesthouses close to each other. The next morning the group sets off for Charyn Canyon and the Kolsai Lakes.

How physically demanding is the Stans tour?

The tour is rated Level 3, Moderate to Challenging. Our itinerary says participants must be in excellent health, extremely mobile and live an active lifestyle, and that activities may include up to six hours a day of continuous strenuous, moderate to fast-paced activity over varied terrain. Ask a Tour Specialist how the Altyn-Emel day is paced, and raise any health questions with your doctor before you travel.

Altyn-Emel on the Stans route

Altyn-Emel opens the final stage of the journey. After the oasis cities of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan and the high pastures of Kyrgyzstan, the route turns to the desert and canyon country east of Almaty. On Day 25 the group continues to Charyn Canyon and then to the Kolsai Lakes in the northern Tien Shan, from desert to mountain forest in a single day. Our article on the Kazakh steppe explains the wider landscape of which these places are part, and our four-country journey through the Stans sets Altyn-Emel within the whole route.

Reading a corridor

Altyn-Emel National Park rewards the visitor who asks what passed through it. Bronze Age hunters left images on its rocks; Saka nobles were buried beneath its mounds in chambers of mountain spruce; armies and their legends attached themselves to its standing stones; Buddhist monks carved prayers on the river cliffs nearby. The river that made the valley, and the mountains that funnel travellers along it, explain why so much of Central Asia’s history crossed this one stretch of desert.

Travelling in a small group of up to 16 travellers with an Odyssey Program Leader, you reach Altyn-Emel near the end of a long journey across four countries. If you would like to study the route’s landscapes and history in that way, our 28-day Stans tour gives the park a day of its own.