A trip to Lake Aiyr (Monastery)

Aiyr (Monastery) lake.

A trip to Lake Aiyr (Monastery).

"He does not believe, even though he saw them yesterday, that the rainbow mountains look into the azure lakes"

Fedor Ivanovich Tyutchev.

Recreational tourism in the lakes of the East Kazakhstan region.

In the intermontane basin at the northwestern foot of the Monasteries and Airtau mountains, Lake Air is spread out. The southeastern shore of the lake is rocky, rising steeply. The southwestern, western, and northeastern coasts are gentle, open, and soddy.
The lake feeds due to spring snowmelt, groundwater runoff and liquid rainfall. The maximum depth is 7 m, the average is 3.2 m; water transparency 1.5 m, greenish color. The water in the lake is slightly saline, slightly alkaline, moderately hard.
The bottom of the lake is hard, yellowish silt. There is roach, perch, carp, and pike in the lake. There is such a legend. About 70 versts from Ust-Kamenogorsk, beyond the Irtysh River, a ridge of high pointed mountains stretches called the Monastery Mountains or Monasteries stretches from the south-western side.
On the site of the mountains there was once a Kalmyk monastery with a large number of monks. For the sins of the monks, the monastery was petrified - "froze". The robbers settled in one of the monastery caves and hid a treasure in it, cursing the cave so that no one could get in there.
There were daredevils trying to take possession of the treasure, but each time they were thrown back by the strong wind that was breaking out of the cave. The treasure remained intact in place. The Ust-Kamenogorsk Cossack chieftain Mr. Ivanov told another legend.
The name was given by the Russians along the main peak, which from a distance, seems to be a building decorated with numerous towers. These mountains surround, like natural walls leaving into the sky, a large plain, two versts long.
It is covered with beautiful greenery and is irrigated by numerous keys flowing down from the mountains. These keys form a small river, whose narrow channel is the only road through which you can get into this closed valley of the Monastery Mountains.

Aiyr (Monastery) lake and its environs.