How to get to Kyrgyz-Ata national park by yourself from Osh

[shvedsky]

I was just thinking of how lucky I am to have other people’s experiences written down so I don’t have to experience the bad parts. So... for some reason no one have written a guide about actually getting to Kyrgyz-Ata National Park by yourself.

1. Forget the name Kyrgyz-Ata, this is a small community before the national park and no one knows about the national park.

2. Where you’re going is Kalday (40.0573310, 72.5985870), about 30 km of very bad gravel road south of Kyrgyz-Ata.

3. If you want to go there without renting a driver for the whole day it’s easiest to go to Nookat from Osh (200 som according to locals for a whole car). Takes about 50 minutes or so. Goes from the western taxi station (that’s what people called it anyway), it’s not really a station though.

4. From Nookat, get a driver who’s up to the task of going to Kalday. I actually don’t what a fair price is, it takes about an hour from Nookat and it takes a skilled driver to not make it extremely bumpy. Get the number for the driver to have a way back, the problem is you might not have any cell connection though, O! didn’t work but I saw others with cellphones up there so...

5. We saw masthruskas going up there but I don’t have any info on them. Ask around in Nookat.

6. There’s tons of yurts for rent up there, so if you want to stay over night it shouldn’t be a problem, you can probably find some grilled meat to eat if you like.

7. Finding a way back shouldn’t be a problem if you’re alone or a couple, if you’re a group then you might need to plan ahead. There are cars coming and leaving often, so you can hitch a ride with one of them back, but sitting in the back of a pickup on a dusty and bumpy road in the sun might sound fun for a while but for the almost an hour that it takes?

8. The entrance to the park is 130 som, not sure if he ripped us off since it said something about 30 som on the sign but the guy was friendly and spoke English (!)

We never went for a hike so I don’t know anything about that

[steven]

Thanks, Shvedsky. Let's all keep paying it forward! It's the fuel this website runs on.

[borekj]

Hi to all!
We recently visited, so I thought about posting some updates.

We took a yandex from the center of Osh to the road leading to Nookat (200 som). From there we hitched a ride to Imeni Chapaeva and from there it was a very little wait for another car to the park itself (locals seemed to know the name Kyrgyz Ata Park). The entrance is indeed 130 som. We had some connection with Beeline, but had to walk a little up and down to find 4g.

There is a lot of yurts around the village. You pay per day, not per night - most locals go there only for day to eat and they leave in the evening. Expect to pay around 1500-5000 sum for a yurt, depending on your bargaining skill. It doesn't matter how many people you are as long as you fit in there. The local "boss" showed us some documents in Russian stating that sleeping in a tent in nature would be for 2000sum/tent/night, which honestly felt like a scam - not sure how anybody would check. But we rather stayed in a yurt. You can order food pretty cheaply, but we didn't need to.

Do not expect national park in the European style - it is more like a park where the nation need. During the weekend, locals party hard until 6am. They have little mercy for foreigners in the neighbouring yurt - the louder the music, the better. So unless you want to get drunk with locals (which you'll have plenty of invites for), I'd suggest not to sleep there on weekends!

We were (5 Czechs) quite an attraction and were posing for about 100 pictures a day. We even appeared on the Facebook of the park . We made hikes to the Mazar mountain and tried to go to a lake on 39.9836637N, 72.6827925E, but a storm stopped us. An afternoon storm felt more like a rule than a bad luck, at least during our three days here (end of July).

On our way back, we hitched ride within few minute to Nookat. Overall, if you want to get into nature for few days, I'd recommend other places, where there is not so much partying locals - maybe area around Sary-Bel pass?