Yssyk-Kol

So Cholpon-Ata did the double on me. 

Everything I had heard about it had been a bit negative, a lot of things along the lines of "Cancun for Khazakhs." I was basically expecting Budva; I got was The Naze.  An attractive largely nature fronted beach. Yeah there was the opportunity to go paragliding but I didn't find any evidence of beach bar stupidity. So that was refreshing. And the whole lakeside setting was ridiculous. You could see the snow-capped mountains on both sides of Yssyk-Kol, just hanging out and doing their mountain thing.

The second thing was the petroglyph open air museum. I'd been pretty cynical about it expecting it just to be a handful of rocks with a handful of pictures. What you get is a giant boulder field, some of which have pictures, some don't. So you get to ungeek your inner Indiana and find your own exhibits, which makes it pretty unlike any museum I've been in before. Add to that you're up in the foothills with a ridiculous view of the lake and it all points to a big, fat thumbs up for Cholpon-Ata.