National Parks in Central Asia

A spectacular alpine gorge just 40km from Bishkek, with glaciers, waterfalls, and day hikes into the Tian Shan on the capital’s doorstep.

A jewel-like biosphere lake ringed by walnut forest and jagged peaks in remote western Kyrgyzstan, one of Central Asia’s most beautiful protected areas.

A vast high-altitude lake surrounded by summer pastures where Kyrgyz herders pitch their yurts. The classic place to sleep in a yurt under brilliant stars.

Kazakhstan’s answer to the Grand Canyon: a 12km gorge of eroded red sandstone pillars known as the Valley of Castles, a day trip from Almaty.

A desert park famous for its ‘Singing Dune,’ which hums in the wind, and for striped, otherworldly hills striped in chalk and rust.

Three stepped alpine lakes of astonishing blue in the Tian Shan foothills, linked by forest trails and near the mirror-still Lake Kaindy.

A submerged spruce forest whose bleached, ghostly trunks still spike out of turquoise water, created by an earthquake a century ago.

The mountain wall directly above Almaty, protecting glaciers, gorges, and the peaks that give the city its dramatic alpine backdrop.

A turquoise mountain lake in Tajikistan’s Fann Mountains, named for Alexander the Great and one of the country’s most photographed spots.

A UNESCO-listed wilderness covering much of the high Pamirs, home to some of the largest glaciers outside the poles and to snow leopards.

The ‘Roof of the World,’ a vast plateau of 7,000m peaks, remote valleys, and the legendary Pamir Highway threading between them.

Uzbekistan’s mountain playground near Tashkent, with the Chimgan peaks, Charvak reservoir, and the country’s main hiking and ski terrain.

The ‘Kazakh Switzerland’: a lake district of pine forest and granite outcrops on the northern steppe, beloved as a summer escape.

A huge, wild park in the Altai where Kazakhstan, Russia, China, and Mongolia meet, full of alpine meadows, rivers, and rare wildlife.

A remarkably intact 15th-century stone caravanserai set alone in a high Kyrgyz valley near the Torugart Pass, a Silk Road relic amid empty grassland.