The Sunken City of Lyesh: Everything You Didn't Know (Full Documentary) | TRACKS

we're snow-capped peaks reflect in the deep blue water travel with us through breathtaking mountain landscapes and indulge in exotic cultures on a journey to the most beautiful mountain lakes in Asia [Music] this is the issyk-kul in kyrgyzstan a lake on the roof of the world this is the lake known as the CEO of the kyoki's the people of kyrgyzstan for them this is the lake where the water is said to touch the sky it is the issyk-kul which means hot lake the lake has been given this name because despite being more than sixteen hundred meters above sea level it never freezes even in the coldest of winters the issyk-kul Valley in eastern Kyrgyzstan has been settled by humans for thousands of years in ancient times the lake was an important station on the Silk Road trading route between Europe and the East it is by far the largest lake in Asia it is the tenth largest lake in the world by volume it is also the second largest saline lake in the world second only to the Caspian Sea [Music] the issyk-kul egg lies in the northern Tian Shan Mountains in eastern Kyrgyzstan the lake is sandwiched between two mighty mountain ranges its southern shore is dominated by the ruggedly beautiful teske Allah - range and the peaks of the koe ala to tower over its northern shore [Music] perhaps the best way of getting to the issyk-kul lake is by road from bishkek the capital of Kyrgyzstan and about a hundred and sixty kilometers to the west of the lake [Music] the road from bishkek to the lake takes you up hills through the picturesque chewy Valley which the River Chu has carved into the mountains for centuries it was thought that the true river was an underground outlet of the is a cool in fact whilst the river does flow to within a few kilometers of the lake it neither flows into the lake nor drains it the is a cool is an indoor haic basin or Terminal Lake that retains its water so whilst numerous rivers and streams flow into the lake none flow out of it like all terminal Lakes the is it cool is a saline lake but the water isn't so salty is to prevent it being a good watering place for horses and cattle it has around one-fifth of the salt content of seawater the grass lands on the lake were formerly used for grazing by nomads as their winter pastures in summer they went up to the mountain meadows these days most Kirk is no longer live a nomadic life [Music] the yurts the dwelling places of their ancestors in which they lived in the mountains and the grasslands of Central Asia are now only built for special occasions [Music] but the art of yurt construction is far from dead and everyone joins in with the task [Music] in Kyrgyzstan weddings and funerals tend to be held in yurts birthdays and other happy events such as successful livestock sales are also celebrated in them [Music] this yurt is being built in honor of the eldest of a large family it is a ceremony the family holds in early summer each year where they join him in asking the spirits of the lake for good luck and prosperity for the family and for good weather and a fertile time for their herd of animals [Music] the internal wall of the yurt is decorated with bright rugs in preparation for the festivities [Music] and the weatherproof tarpaulin is tightly secured around the yard [Music] as the younger members of the family show off their horsemanship the yurt is gradually taking shape it is obviously important to make it resistant to all kinds of weather meanwhile just fifty kilometers away on the other side of the lake one sees a contrasting picture from the open grassland and the ancient traditions of the kicker's tribesmen [Music] the former nomadic settlement choppin otter on the north shore of the lake has become a sprawling urban settlement during the Soviet era the north coast of the issyk-kul became one of the most popular tourist destinations in the Soviet Union with visitors coming here from all over the former USSR as part of mass tourist package tours and today it continues to attract lots of tourists now mainly from Kyrgyzstan itself than from neighboring Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan the tourist season hasn't started here yet but in high season during July and August tourists will outnumber the residents of the town there are many hotels here to accommodate the thousands of tourists that descend on the lake each summer [Music] white steamboats are very popular on the lake these boats so much of their popularity to chingy's a team atop a communist author from the Soviet era and the best known figure in Cuba stands literature [Music] well if his best-known novels is called the white steamboat written in 1970 which tells the tragic story of a little boy who lives in the mountains he dreams of becoming the captain of the white steamboat he sees on the is a cool lake it is full of myths and legends and the young boy's grandfather tells him lots of paint and kikis legends everyone who lives in job anata has read potamia talks book captain Sergei builds a she certainly has [Music] there was nothing peralta just over there if you look down from the hills on the issyk-kul and see a little white steamboat you will always ask who is a captain of that ship significally Shinya I think every child here dreams of working on a ship on the lake and being captain which Cappadonna at CEATEC domesticity his accrual played an important part in a tomato's life and featured prominently in his work which was infused with modern-day interpretations of folklore [Music] and there are plenty of kick his legends about this extraordinary lake [Music] for Sergei Ilyushin the dream of the little boy and the white steamboat has come true but for him the is a cool lake and its secrets always leave room for lots of new dreams [Music] yes miss bag dear but that's what Vicki Anna there are places in the lake where many things are hidden by water or buried in the sand and they Massacre monthly beloved stack does a couch once the last the tourists have left and the pleasure baits have stopped freezing the lake the lake will belong to us fishermen again solution HSE Saguna Jim Cordia the often search for the treasures of the lake according to legend there were once cities here where weapons and ceramics were made in the shadows of the East Coast and of course we hate to find something one day it may be a sword or coins from ancient times [Music] the lake still hides many secrets it is thought that the water level was some eight meters lower in medieval times divers have found the remains of submerged settlements in shallow areas around the lake and in 2007 the team of kikis archaeologists claimed to have discovered the remains of a 2500 year old city several square kilometers in size their finds were sensational coins that have survived thousands of years and a bronze cauldron of stunning craftsmanship [Music] this is the teacher who won in Manali he regularly combs the eastern shore of the lake looking for relics [Music] and quite often he finds something it was a katana key oh these are ceramic pieces small pieces of pottery our lake is unique with many of its unexplored secrets yet we uncovered [Music] many of qu one's discoveries tell stories of power and wealth what lies in the capital developed here I have Caracara dick coins from the Middle Ages still well preserved we found them in a jar this is why they are so well preserved it is thought that there was once an important trading center situated here which had connections with far-flung places d'argo lobola economist key the survivor Thousand apologies [Music] the CARICOM it's that q1 is referring to were a Turkish dynasty which ruled throughout Central Asia during the 11th and 12th centuries they ruled a large section of the most important trade route from east to west the famous Silk Road de la Sierra that Azir collapse and here is an antique mirror we have found it probably dates from the second century BC it is the kind of mirror that would have been used in China this suggests that there was a branch of the Silk Road trading route here I knew it said they make there are regular professional archaeological expeditions to the lake but it is unlikely that any museum holds as many artifacts from the lake as there are in the village school where q1 Iman Lu works [Music] there are many legends about lost cities submerged landscapes and violent storms here on the lake and the mountains to the north and to the south creates something like a winter storms here can come in either from the east or from the west and when they do they can be quite spectacular one of the most famous legends of the lake is based on this natural phenomenon [Music] I shall pry so cool dad my league in the east according to legend she warriors once lived here Santosh and Olin they both loved the same girl but the girl couldn't choose between them the Warriors began to fight for her and the girl fell in the exact cool and was drowned from that day the worry is Santosh and Newland turned into the winds rotten so order this one into the east wind and one into the west wind I knew I'd end is near Santosh I didn't volunteer at least yet [Music] most important is this to this day we call the wind from the east santosh and the one from the west : what we have today is Santosh the east wind [Music] the storm soon passes [Music] and something that the legend doesn't tell us is that the east wind santosh usually brings good weather to the lake and sometimes the dry airflow it brings in from China provides one of the fabulously bright moonlit nights for which the is itcool is famous there is another local saying about the sunrise [Music] that is that if the peaks of the hugely impressive Teske color to mountains are not wrapped in clouds of dawn then the weather will stay dry all day [Music] you can see the lake at its very best when on a clear day it offers a wondrous view of this vast stretch of mountains [Music] a drive around the lake on a day such as this surrounded by such inspiring beauty is a truly wondrous experience [Music] for powderpuff wisps of cloud over the mountains add to the feeling that this is some kind of idyllic Garden of Eden in the mountains [Music] [Music] they take their boat and lose themselves for the day [Music] because of commercial overfishing of the lake and the increase in populations around it in recent years the stocks of fish in the is accrual are currently dangerously low to counter the threat to the fish population strict controls on commercial fishing and now in place [Music] now is done only as a leisure activity as well as the overfishing many of the indigenous species of fish in the lake were largely wiped out by two large scale experiments in the 1960s and 70s when new species were introduced into the lake including the seven trout which proved to prey on the native fish because the lake and its tributaries form a self-contained ecosystem it can only recover very slowly from such human intervention [Music] selected coder their fan risk elope Akash Birkhoff have spent over four hours on the water [Music] as is almost always the case their catch is hardly worth mentioning still they love going out on the lake anyway when I was a child there were loads of fish in the issyk-kul the lake was a good place to fish we used to catch loads of teach perchick then they introduced the pike perch here in 1967 and it almost wiped out the teach perchick then they tried it again with the rainbow trout after that there were even fewer fish today hardly anyone goes fishing it simply isn't worth it there are too few fish I know for sure that the water in the lake has a great healing power in general the lake is good for your health the air is clean not as dirty as it is elsewhere the climate is pleasant and people simply feel good when they come to the lake anyone who holidays here once comes back again and again every year I think that it is because of the health benefits who has the good but most was the need mr. Khurana white the issyk-kul is like a real mother to me whenever I'm on the lake it protects me the issyk-kul is my home [Music] - on amanu also goes out on the lake in a boat from time to time [Music] but it isn't the fish that interest him [Music] as always he's on the lookout for further evidence of past civilizations on the lake since scientists have found a whole underwater city by diving to the bottom Kerwin Aman Alou has decided he will also search there for ancient ruins and again he is in luck he dreams of finding the sunken city of liège the Kirghiz atlantis which is often spoken of in local legends [Music] and he does find some remarkable things he also dreams of getting some decent diving equipment so he won't have to keep leaving his booty to return to his boat the history of human settlement on and around the issyk-kul lake goes back thousands of years it is thought that more than three thousand years ago the legendary Citians inhabited the region and that they lived here in a place the locals call the river of stones more than 2,000 petroglyphs attest to the fact that there must have been an important place of worship on this spot there are pictures of horses and camels and imposing hunting scenes depicting wild animals of the region such as snow leopards and siberian ibex [Music] the sinking of entire cultures and the special shape of the landscape at the lake are caused by the same theme that is the constant ebb and flow of the water level even the smallest climatic changes can disturb the fragile balance between water inflow and evaporation these in turn can lead to noticeable changes in the level of the lake from one season to the next [Music] [Music] there is another lake just 500 meters from the southwestern shore of the issyk-kul this is the Salt Lake Kara cool which has a much higher salt content than the Izzie cool in fact it is as salty as the Dead Sea originally this lake was a bay of the issyk-kul when the water level dropped it was separated from the larger Lake the more the water in it evaporates the saltier the caracal becomes there is still visible signs on the surrounding mountains showing how high the water level of this lake once was there are different types of landscapes positioned close together around the is a cool lake the lowlands by the edge of the lake are dominated by semi desert contrast these arid lowlands with the peaks of the tian shan mountains up to 6,000 meters high where the longest glaciers outside the polar region can be found [Music] the area between the lake and the mountains is predominantly meadowland and forest [Music] the beauty of the landscape around the lake the unspoiled mountain scenery and the diversity of flora and fauna these are all good reasons why much of the is equal region is protected the issyk-kul state reserve the first nature reserve in kyrgyzstan was established in 1948 in 2000 UNESCO established the issyk-kul biosphere reserve here the acutely endangered snow leopard is a native inhabitant of the hilly areas around the lake they are one of the rarest of the big cats [Music] worldwide only a few thousand of them live in the wild here local Rangers have sent up a nature reserve for them where injured snow leopards are being cared for in near natural conditions the head of the local snow leopard protection group Victor Callaghan is seeing the reserves first successes as poaching declines or just convinced echo village a new chief minister at the moment we are seeing an increase in the leopard population the most difficult period was just after the collapse of the Soviet Union watching closely the decline of the economy had serious consequences for wildlife not only the Snow Leopard now the stock is recovering slowly I estimate that the population in kyrgyzstan has increased to around 1,000 animals I'd be paid it is almost impossible to observe these beautiful big cats close up in the wild they live in the most inaccessible mountain areas at an altitude of more than 3,500 meters [Music] however the reserve isn't entirely safe as injured lepers here are a particularly easy target for poachers so they're guarded around the clock and every poacher in the region knows that Victor Callaghan and his team of conservationists are here for the long term [Music] [Music] [Applause] not far from the snow leopard reserve a picturesque Valley leads into the mountains of the Kuna Yala to G to the north of his accrual this spot is where one of the scenes from at avatars novel the white steamboat is set here the meltwater from the glaciers high up in the mountain plunges thunderously into the valley and here it pours into the river which flows towards the lake it is from here that at Amitabh's child hero dreams he is a fish and that he swims to the white steamboat on the lake up here the fictional child saw the legendary horn dear mother who always protected the Kirghiz tribes and the snez Nikki the ever bright snow white mountains [Music] and this is where chilled alert Mamet offs hunt stands he is a Kyrgyz mountain man the kind of man you might expect to see in a novel by atamanov [Music] it is very pleasant to live on the mountain here that is if you know how to appreciate it often we don't know how to appreciate it we are living healthily the air is clean and the water is fresh our ancestors have always lived here you find a lot of healthy plants and vitamins here that our bodies need that's why we're here turned alert Mamba Tov is one of the last real mountain curcas one to whom the secrets of the tian shan mountains were revealed by his grandfather again just like in a tomato story [Music] on the high mountain meadows there are more than 4,000 plant species and nobody here knows them better than shunned alert [Music] in summer weather permitting his always in the mountains in search of traditional kirghiz plants with which he can make herbal medical remedies and if he is to be believed the most valuable one grows in the highest places in the mountains [Music] these are the places that other sources of the water that feeds into the sacred is a cool [Music] Balthus Condor which had the wall wild animals eat this plants roots because they know that it is very healthy many valuable medicinal plants grow in the mountains [Music] chunder lot is not frightened of going up however high he needs to in search of the most elusive plants get out of this flower was traditionally used as a medicinal plant it protects against liver and kidney diseases you can boil the root of this plant and drink it twice a day it fights various diseases the most useful part of the plant is the root we call them golden root also it only grows on high mountains [Music] this is also a medicinal plant in Kyrgyz but it's called your skin it is juicy and acidic but very healthy very good just try it [Music] chunder let mama Tov is used to thin air and the rough mountain climate he'll stay up here in the mountains for the summer where it is so high that even in summer it's snows [Music] but almost all the people that live in the is a cool region now live permanently in the mild climate around the shores of the lake livestock breeding is still the main source of income here even in the towns and you can see some strange sights when rural needs urban [Music] the local people have exchanged yurts and huts for houses most of which were built in the Soviet era whilst you can mourn the loss of local traditions this settled life style offers definite advantages for most kia keys unlike in the mountains there is electricity and telephones there are schools and nurseries and there is access to medical care and there are still cattle [Music] the people here have not completely abandoned their traditions [Music] graves are still adorned in the traditional manner although the taste for lavish burial monuments is one which must have driven many families to financial ruin [Music] [Music] there are two traditions that are not under threat firstly horses the kickers are a nation of horsemen and horse breeding remains an integral part of their culture whether they are settled or not [Music] and then there is the cake is partial for Lam the lands from the issyk-kul region are said to be the best in all Asia the meat is lightly pre salted from the water in the lake herding sheep on horseback combines the two traditions perfectly [Music] it is unheard of for a kickers family to hold a feast without having fresh land to eat after the Asian sacrificial rituals have been carried out and the tools of sacrifice need to be prepared [Music] family parties are communal events everyone participates and everyone helps in the preparation [Music] [Applause] [Music] the job for the men is the slaughter and cooking of a lamb [Laughter] [Music] and the saying of prayers for a good summer back in the party yet the women are in charge they are preparing the food including traditional Kiki's noodles [Music] there is a fixed seating plan at Kyrgyz family feasts the elders sit on the side of the yurt for this from the door as Amira ACMA Tova and sarlaac Arriba do here is there yes we live here on the peninsula since we have no rivers to irrigate the fields it's good that we live here the lake helps us we have a good harvest our cattle thrive golden classic nian contradict an atom there gaily push with your grip we have mountains great mountains with glass ears we are rich in cattle sheep and cows that's all we need when guests arrive we slaughter a lamb we give them comers and iron I think we are a friendly people and of course we love our country we love Kyrgyzstan [Music] the national lamb dishes beshbarmak which means five fingers because it's normally eaten with the fingers [Music] to drink there is cake his tea with milk and salt [Music] and no feast ends without the traditional songs of praise the hopes and wishes of the people of is a cool are modest they hope that the spirits of the lake will continue to grant them these wishes as they have always done [Music] and the white steam box will continue to remain a symbol of pride for the people that live around this their cake is see [Music] you [Music]

Channel: TRACKS

Views: 93,235

Rating: 4.7920194 out of 5

Keywords: tracks, tracks travel channel, tracks travel, where was atlantis located, kyrgyzstan documentary, unseen parts of the earth, Lakes on the Roof of the World, sky vision documentary, central asia documentary, sunken city lyesh, hot springs

Id: Uw9d66U06J4

Length: 48min 15sec (2895 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 13 2018