Ala-Archa National Park

Ala-Archa National Park tickets and tours: which one to book

Ala-Archa is the alpine gorge forty minutes south of Bishkek, and it is the one excursion every visitor to the Kyrgyz capital makes, so it is sold in many forms from the city. The half-day tours drive to the park's alplager base at 2,100 metres and walk an hour or two up the main valley or to the Ak-Sai waterfall viewpoint; the full-day hiking tours climb the Ak-Sai trail to the waterfall and, for the fit, on to the Ratsek hut below the glacier, a long steep day with lunch carried. Horse-riding tours ride the lower valley from the base. Winter tours come for snow walks and the frozen waterfall.

Tours that combine Ala-Archa with the Chunkurchak valley or with the Burana tower over two days are for people with a car-free itinerary. Private 4×4 tours drive further up the valley road than the buses. The park entrance fee is charged per vehicle and per person at the gate and is normally included by tour operators; independent visitors take a taxi or a marshrutka to the gate and walk or hire a taxi to the base, since there is no public transport inside. A guide is not needed for the main trails, which are obvious, but is useful for the higher routes and for the winter.

Visiting Ala-Archa National Park: what you will see

The park was established in 1976 and covers about 194 square kilometres of the Ala-Archa gorge in the Kyrgyz Ala-Too range of the Tian Shan, rising from the base at around 1,500 metres to the summit of Semenov-Tian-Shansky Peak at 4,895 metres, the highest point in the range. It is named after the river and after the archa, the juniper whose smoke the Kyrgyz burn against evil spirits, and the lower valley is a wide gravel river bed between slopes of juniper and spruce that gives way higher up to alpine meadow, scree, twenty or so glaciers and a cluster of peaks above four thousand metres that made the gorge the training ground of Soviet mountaineers.

The Ak-Sai trail climbs steeply from the base to a viewpoint over the Ak-Sai waterfall in about two hours, and continues to the Ratsek hut at 3,300 metres below the Ak-Sai glacier and Korona peak, the base for climbers; the Adygene valley on the other side is gentler, with a trail past the memorial cemetery of mountaineers to a small glacial lake. The main valley road runs a few kilometres above the base to picnic meadows by the river. Marmots whistle from the rocks in summer, ibex graze the high slopes and the park's cameras caught a snow leopard in 2017, though visitors will not see one. The mountains fill the view from Bishkek and the park is, for most people, their first sight of the Tian Shan.

Ala-Archa National Park: best time to go, seasons and hours

The park is open daily from about 7 am to 7 pm, with the gate staffed in daylight. Summer from June to September is the walking season, with warm days at the base and cold nights higher up, and afternoon thunderstorms in July; the waterfall trail is passable from May to October. Autumn in September and October is clear and golden, and winter from November to March brings snow, ice on the trails and a different, quieter park for those with crampons or snowshoes.

Weekends fill the lower valley with Bishkek families, so go on a weekday or start early. Allow half a day for the lower valley and a full day for the waterfall or the hut. Burana tower and the Chunkurchak valley are the other Bishkek day trips, and Issyk-Kul lake is three hours east.