Son-Kul Lake: Pastoral Life, Yurts and the High Mountain World of Kyrgyzstan

How do people and animals live at 3,000 metres, where snow lies for half the year and summer lasts a few short months? On the high grasslands around Son-Kul Lake in central Kyrgyzstan, the answer has long been movement: herders bring their flocks up to the basin’s summer pastures as the snow retreats, live in felt yurts beside the water, and take them down again before winter closes in. At Son-Kul lake that pattern of seasonal mobility is easy to see, and on Days 19 and 20 of our small group tour through Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, the group spends two nights in yurts on its shore.

Son-Kul lake: a high basin in the Tien Shan

Son-Kul, also written Song-Kol or Song-Kul, lies in Naryn Province at about 3,015 metres above sea level, ringed by ridges that rise to around 4,000 metres. According to the information sheet prepared when it was listed as a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention, the lake is about 29 kilometres long and 18 kilometres wide, no more than about 13 metres deep, and is the largest freshwater lake in Kyrgyzstan. More than forty channels feed it, most of them only during the snowmelt, and it drains through the Kokjerty River into the Naryn, a headwater of the Syr Darya. Eight rivers feed it regularly. The water is clear, with visibility of up to about 7 metres.

This is a hard climate. The same document gives average temperatures of about minus 20°C in January and plus 11°C in July, and snow covers the ground for 180 to 200 days a year. The ice can reach a metre or more in thickness, and it is not fully gone until late May. For broader orientation to the country, our answers to common questions about Kyrgyzstan cover the practicalities; this article stays with the basin and the people who use it.

Jailoo: the summer pastures

What makes Son-Kul matter to people is its grass. The Ramsar information sheet describes the surrounding grasslands as summer pasture for sheep, cattle and horses from May to October, used by herders who come up each season from four districts of Naryn Province. In Kyrgyz these high summer grazing grounds are called jailoo. A case study by the Japan Wildlife Research Center, published through the United Nations University’s Satoyama Initiative and based on Tong district beside Issyk-Kul, describes them as alpine grasslands above about 2,500 metres, one to six days’ travel on foot or horseback from the villages.

The same study sets out the year that the jailoo belongs to. Spring and autumn pastures lie in the foothills, mostly below 2,500 metres; winter camps lie on the semi-arid steppe nearest the villages. In the district it describes, herders leave their winter camps around April, shear in May, move to the higher pastures in June, and begin the descent in September, completing it by mid-October before the snow. Sheep and goats are the most numerous animals, alongside cattle, yaks and horses.

The rest of the year explains why the summer matters so much. In the same account, the animals fattened on the high pastures are taken to livestock bazaars in nearby towns after the autumn descent, breeding follows in December and lambs and calves are born around March, before the cycle of migration begins again in spring. Sheep and goats are the most numerous, partly because of the push for wool production that began in the Soviet era; wool is also the raw material of felt.

A landscape shaped by grazing

Grazing has shaped the basin, and it can wear it down. The Ramsar sheet notes that the pastures around Son-Kul were overgrazed and degraded in the Soviet period and have since recovered. Its concerns for the lake itself are different: fish introductions that have probably altered the lake’s zooplankton, overfishing and abandoned nets, and the erosion of nesting islands by wind and ice.

The lake also belongs to the birds. According to the Ramsar sheet, bar-headed geese, grebes, gulls and terns breed here, black storks and demoiselle cranes feed nearby, and thousands of ducks, geese and waders stop to rest and moult on migration. It counts about seventy species of wader, and records species of conservation concern such as the ferruginous pochard, the great bustard and the Eurasian spoonbill. About a quarter of the site lies within the Karatal-Japyryk State Nature Reserve.

The yurt: a house made for moving

The dwelling that makes summer at Son-Kul possible is the yurt, in Kyrgyz the boz üy. UNESCO, which added the traditional knowledge and skills of making Kyrgyz and Kazakh yurts to its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2025, describes a collapsible circular wooden frame covered with felt and tied with braided ropes, made from natural, renewable materials and quick to put up and take down. It is, in other words, a house built for the journey to the jailoo and back.

Making one is shared work. UNESCO records that men and their apprentices build the wooden frame and its fittings of wood, leather, bone and metal, while women make the felt coverings and the interior decoration, often working in groups led by experienced craftswomen and using weaving, spinning, braiding, felting, embroidery and sewing. Births, weddings, funerals and other ceremonies take place in yurts, and families keep and hand them down as heirlooms. The skills pass through families and from masters to apprentices, taught by community elders and shared at festivals and workshops, so a yurt on the shore of Son-Kul is the product of knowledge as well as of wood and wool.

The yurt’s crown, the round wooden ring at the top of the roof through which light enters and smoke leaves, is called the tunduk, and it has become a national emblem. Kyrgyzstan kept the Soviet flag for several months after independence in August 1991. Britannica records that the flag it adopted in March 1992 showed a stylised view of the roof of a yurt, the crown ring seen from below, at the centre of a yellow sun with forty rays, and that the flag law describes this emblem as standing for the origin of life, the unity of time and space, the history of the Kyrgyz people, solidarity, and hearth and home.

Felt: the material of the jailoo

If the yurt is the house, felt is its fabric. Kyrgyz women have long made two kinds of felt carpet, ala-kiyiz and shyrdak, to warm and decorate their homes. UNESCO placed the art of making them on its List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding in 2012, warning that the number of practitioners is shrinking and most are over forty, that cheap synthetic carpets dominate the market, that good raw material is hard to find, and that ala-kiyiz have practically disappeared from Kyrgyz homes. Knowledge passes from older to younger women within families, often in rural and mountain areas, and UNESCO stresses that making the carpets depends on a community working together.

On the way to Son-Kul, the tour stops in Kochkor, a village our itinerary describes as a hub for the Kochkor valley, where the group sees a demonstration of felt carpet making, visits a handicrafts shop and meets a local needlewoman. It is good preparation for the lake, since yurts are traditionally covered in felt.

What is the yurt stay at Son-Kul like on the tour?

It is simple, shared accommodation for two nights. Our itinerary describes yurts on the lake shore as more sophisticated than a tent but still relatively basic, with no showers but access to water and a private washing area, and outhouse-style toilets at a distance from the yurts. Yurts are limited and sleep three to four people each, so the whole group shares for these two nights.

What should I pack for two nights at Son-Kul?

Warm layers and a torch. With an average July temperature of only about 11°C at this altitude, evenings by the lake can be cold even in summer, and our itinerary recommends a torch, ideally a head-torch, for night-time visits to the outhouse toilets. There are no showers at the yurt camp, so plan accordingly, and raise any concerns about altitude with your doctor before you travel.

What does the tour do at Son-Kul?

The group arrives on Day 19 after lunch in Kochkor and has a traditional nomad dinner in the yurt camp. On Day 20 our itinerary lists a visit to the shepherds’ yurts, a climb up one of the nearby hills for a panoramic view of the lake and the opportunity for some horse riding. On Day 21 the group returns to Bishkek over the Kalmak-Ashuu Pass. 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.

Son-Kul on the Stans route

Son-Kul comes in the middle of the Kyrgyz part of the journey. Before it, the group spends two days around Issyk-Kul, the great lake of the northern Tien Shan, with its petroglyphs and Silk Road history. Elsewhere in Naryn Province, on the road towards the Chinese border, the stone caravanserai described in our article on Tash Rabat and mountain travel in Kyrgyzstan shows another side of life in this upland country: the shelter it offered to people moving through it rather than living off its grass. After Son-Kul, the route returns to Bishkek and continues to Almaty in Kazakhstan, and our four-country journey through the Stans sets this stop within the whole route.

Reading the high pastures

Son-Kul is not a monument, and there is little to tick off. What it offers is a working landscape: grass that grows for a few months at 3,000 metres, animals brought up to eat it, felt and wood shaped into houses that can follow them, and a lake that freezes hard every winter and fills with birds every summer. Spend two nights there and the logic of a nomadic year becomes easier to see.

Travelling in a small group of up to 16 travellers with an Odyssey Program Leader, you reach Son-Kul between Issyk-Kul and Bishkek, after the oasis cities of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. If you would like to study the route’s landscapes and history in that way, our 28-day Stans tour gives Son-Kul two nights of its own.