Karakol

Karakol ( russ / Kyrgyz Каракол = black arm; .. 1889-1921 and 1939-1991 Przhevalsk ) is a town of about 68,800 inhabitants on the eastern end of Lake Issyk Kul in Kyrgyzstan, about 150 kilometers from the Chinese border today. It is the administrative capital of Issyk Kul region. Karakol is not to be confused with the much smaller town of Karakol in Jalalabad area.

History

Karakol was since 1860, when the Tsarist empire spread in Central Asia, an advanced Russian military base. The city itself was founded on July 1, 1869, developed when explorers came to the area to explore the mountainous region between China and Kyrgyzstan. After 1877, the city grew rapidly, mainly because Chinese Muslims ( Dungan ) died while fleeing from religious persecution in the city.

1888, when the Russian military and geographer Nikolai Przhevalsky had died on an expedition to Tibet in Karakol of typhoid fever during the preparations and buried there, the city was renamed in his honor in Przhevalsk. After local protests, it was renamed again in 1921 in Karakol, but then in 1939, again in Przhevalsk. Only in 1991, after the independence of Kyrgyzstan, the city regained its original name Karakol.

Attractions

Prschewalskis grave and a small museum located about 7 km north- west of Karakol in pristane Przhevalsky, in a memorial park on the banks of an arm of the Issyk Kul Lake, where the Soviet Navy carried out its secret torpedo tests and the Russian Navy today is a test base for submarine hunting operates. Sven Hedin visited the grave in 1891.

An attractions the city offers a wooden mosque, which the Chinese skilled workers and local Dungan 1907-1910 for the local Dungan in the style of the Tsin dynasty, and was built entirely without metal nails, and also a wooden orthodox church from 1895, during Soviet times was used as a club and warehouse and then restored and is now back in use.

Tourist Karakol is the starting point for trekking and for climbers of interest that have the mountains of Tianshan goal. Near the city of " Kyrgyzstan Trail ", a 2007 newly designed long-distance trail opens up the mountain chains of the Issykköl region in Kyrgyzstan and connecting runs.