Tours to Karkaraly park.

“As soon as man seeks to penetrate the secrets of nature - in which nothing is secret and it is but a question of seeing - he realizes that the simple produces the supernatural” 

Honore de Balzac.

Excursions and Walk Karkaraly park.

A jewel of a landscape lies hidden between Karaganda and Semey: the small mountain range of Karkaraly Even in the year 2000 this area was still in a deplorable condition, the numerous Pioneer (youth movement) camps and rest homes crumbling in the fairy­tale woods, and boisterous campers and grotesque, once-white plaster monuments to the workers sharing the best places.
In the Karaganda region there is a mountain-forest oasis Karkaralinsk.
When leaving the eastern borders of the mining capital - Karaganda, a wide asphalt road stretches before the traveler, bypassing many yellow-green hills, through the boundless steppe distance it leads to the very heart of Sary-Arka - Karkaralinsk, which is also called the pearl, “Kazakhstan Switzerland”. 0 Karkaraly folded a lot
poems and legends. The truly pristine beauty of the Karkaraly mountains and forests, the blue of the sky and the purity of the lakes, the world of the people living in it and the world of animals and birds, how rich this promised land is, cannot but delight the soul of everyone who has ever been here.
Karkaraly like magic, pulls and attracts to itself. And people come here from all over the republic to again and again come into contact with this mystery of nature in order to breathe in its life-giving air. In all civilizations and all peoples, there was always an idea of ​​the need for a careful attitude to nature.
Some have more, others less. But everyone understood that the land, rivers, forest and the beast that existed in it were a great value, perhaps the main value that nature possesses. And preserves probably arose long before the very word "reserve" appeared.
So, even Peter the Great, who cut down the entire forest in Zaonezhie for the construction of the fleet, forbade the ax to touch the forest that was in the vicinity of Kivach. For a long time, the main practical tasks of ecology were reduced
It is to environmental protection. The degradation of nature began to turn into a threat to the very life of society. This stimulated the emergence of special environmental laws and the creation of specially protected territories of republican and local significance.
The effectiveness of solving a number of regional environmental problems was facilitated by the practice of holding joint meetings of the deputy commission on ecology of the regional Council of People’s Deputies with the board of the regional administration.
In 1993, at these meetings, measures were considered and taken to accelerate the implementation of environmental issues that are very important for the region, including:
- construction of the construction of environmental facilities in the region and measures to intensify this construction; - Creation in 1994 of the Karkaraly State National Natural Park (hereinafter - GNPP). Short description.
1. Karkaraly GNPP is located in the eastern part of Karaganda region, 215 km from the regional center of Karaganda. The area of ​​KGNPP is 90.3 thousand ha. The territory of the national park borders on the following farms: Bakhtinsky SEC, named after Kasym Amanzholov, Dzhambul, named after Nurken Abdirov, named after Tokhtar Aubakirov, named after Martbek Mamyraev (Kyrgyzstan), the land plots of the college are KZB, the sub-site of Karagailinsky GOK, and Karkaralinsk city. The territory of the national park is divided into the following functional areas:
1. The protected area
2. Custom mode zone,
3. The area of ​​regulated, tourist and recreational use,
4. Zone of limited and traditional economic activity.
The territory of the national natural park belongs to the second category of specially protected natural territories with the status of a nature protection and scientific institution of republican significance, intended for the conservation of biological and landscape diversity, and the use of unique natural complexes and objects of the State Nature Reserve for environmental, ecological, educational, scientific, tourist and recreational purposes - Reserve Fund (GPZF), having a special environmental, scientific, historical, cultural and recreational value.
In the intervening years, however, sanatoriums and guesthouses have been renovated, small hotels are being built on the edge of the national park, and the slowly rising spending power of Kazakhstan is makes holidays in their own country possible again.
The small town of Karkaraly (formerly Karkaralinsk) is located around 200 kilometres to the east of Karaganda. The journey takes about three hours by car through the steppe along the main road to Ayakoz, at first through flat steppe, but all the way you are accompanied by innumerable electricity and telegraph poles, where eagles, buzzards and falcons perch, waiting for roadkill.
Partway along, a side road leads to the large salt lake of Karasor, known for the healing qualities of its mud. The end of the journey is in sight when, about 30 - 40 kilometres away the mountains, blue and full of promise, start glimmering on the horizon.
As you draw nearer, you discover that they are covered with dense forests of pine, birch and aspen - an interesting contrast to the bare steppe hills that surround them. The highest peak of the mountain chain, Zhirensakal Peak (formerly Komsomol Peak), rises to 1,403 metres and provides the name for the whole range. It looks like a karkara, the headdress for young women.
A legend goes that a young woman, who fled in front of the groom she had spurned, threw her headdress off from her galloping horse. Immediately, the headdress transformed itself into a mountain chain, hiding the girl from the eyes of her pursuer, hotly intent on marriage.
(An even more visually impressive way of getting here is to go south from Aktogay via Zharly. For this option, though, you need a 4WD). The territory of Karkaraly has enough attractions for several days of touring.
To stay in the 900-square-metre national park, you need an entry ticket, which can easily be obtained in the administration building. There are well-signed routes and picnic spots. On these routes, you get to all the park's important attractions - the mountains, the bizarre rock formations, the caves, the lakes, two small ones of which are hidden high up near mountain peaks.
The national park museum has a lovingly assembled display and a small zoo. The houses in Bokeychan St and the mosque in Aubakirov St are superb. This place of worshp was founded in the middle of the XIX Century by Sultan Kunanbay, the father of Abay.
Good-value overnight stays are possible in the town's small hotels or in one of the numerous resthouses surrounding the town. There are also private guesthouses belonging to Ecotourism. The Karkaraly-Kent mountain junction consists of five relatively separate mountain groups: Buguly, Shankoz, Maten, Airtau and Kent.
The Karkaraly mountains and the Kent massif have a noticeable landscape asymmetry: their northern slopes are steeper and noticeably richer in springs and vegetation than the southern and western ones. They are ridges that form a network of rocky ridges and peaks, separated from each other by deep gorges, intermountain valleys and gently sloping plains.
So, in the Karkaraly massif, the ridges Tar-kenzen and Akpet, Buguly and Air are diverging, Komsomol Peak 1403 meters high above sea level, Shankoz 1360 meters high above sea level, Buguli 1323 meters high above sea level, Koktobe 1254 meters high above sea level and a number of other less significant in height.
The region is characterized by a wide distribution of river valleys, natural meadows and lake basins, as well as areas of smoothed small hills. The climate throughout the small hills as a whole is sharply continental with an anticyclonic weather regime, which is characterized by the severity of the winter period, cool summers, significant fluctuations in daily and annual temperatures, and the frequent occurrence of droughts, dry winds and cloudy days in a year.
The following species of animals are listed in the Red Book: argali, golden eagle, gray partridge, gray crane, demoiselle crane, as well as the great spotted woodpecker, black stork. The list of endemic, rare and endangered plants of the region listed in the Red Book - medicinal marshmallow, Karkaraly barberry, Pallas honeysuckle, perforated St. John's wort, Zalessky feather grass, thin poppy, red fescue, large-flowered one-piece flowers, smooth wormwood, Karkaraly wheatgrass, male tulip.
Fuchsa orchis 12. On the territory of the national park argali lives mainly in the Sarmantai and Karagash mountains of the Kent regional branch, according to visual observations, in the amount of 14 individuals.
In the National Park according to the Chronicle of Nature, materials are collected.
The priority and promising types of outdoor activities in the national park will be cognitive-excursion and sports and recreational tourism. Compiled a map of the GNPP for development of recreational activities and eco-tourism. Seven hiking trails have been developed: hiking, cycling, horse riding and winter hiking trails.
In Karkaralinsk there are holiday homes, including Tasbulak LLP, Pearl, Cascade, Shakhtar holiday home and others, and a Shapagat camp for children. The Shakhtar Recreation Center of the coal department of Mittal Steel Temirtau JSC (the former Ispat-Karmet UD) is located in the mountain forest oasis of Karkaralinsk, on the shores of Lake Pashenny, 224 km from the city of Karaganda.
The magnificent nature, clean mountain air invariably attract many people who want to relax in comfort. The holiday home has two 4-story buildings, with double rooms of ordinary, superior and superior comfort, which can simultaneously accommodate 200 vacationers.
Vacationers have at their disposal a wonderful dining room, a comfortable beach area, a boat station with boats and catamarans, a bar, a dance floor, a disco, billiards, checkers, chess. For sports lovers - a football field, volleyball court, tennis court.
Especially popular is the ski resort with a chairlift. A special playground is provided for children, equipped with sandboxes, ladders, carousels, swings. The guides of the holiday home will guide curious tourists along the routes of the mountain-forest oasis, show Lake Shaitankol covered with legends, a cave of primitive man, a museum of local lore, an aviary and much more.
From Karaganda to Karkaralinsk 225 km.

Authority:
"The guidebook across Kazakhstan". Authors Dagmar Schreiber and Jeremy Tredinnick. Publishing house "Odyssey".2010. 

Photos
Alexander Petrov.