Mountains of Asia: the greatest heights of the planet Earth. Mountains of Asia What mountains are in Western Asia

Asian countries: big and small. The largest mountains, islands, rivers and lakes of the continent

Asia is the largest in area (44,579,000 km2) and the most populated part of the world (3.88 billion inhabitants) of planet Earth. Together with Europe, it forms a single (not separated by straits) continent of Eurasia, which is connected by the Isthmus of Suez to Africa, and separated from North America by a rather narrow Bering Strait (the maximum width is only 86 km). Asia is washed by the waters of all four oceans: the Pacific, Indian, Arctic and Atlantic (Mediterranean Sea).

• There are enough wonders of the world in Asia, both those that mother nature gave to mankind like Halong Bay in Vietnam or wonderful ones in Thailand, and those that were created by man

Some like the Great Chinese wall or, very famous, others - - not very, but some (for example, in Japan, the Sigiriya Palace on a rock in Sri Lanka, the imperial residence in Hue in Vietnam), today they are considered to be attractions of the regional level, although they clearly deserve more !

Asian countries (47 states):

• Most of Asia's population is concentrated in countries such as China (PRC): over 1.3 billion people, and India: 1.1 billion people, which are the most populated on the planet.

Geography of Asia: mountains, rivers, lakes and islands

Asia is the most mountainous part of the world: the average height of the territory is 950 meters. The main mountain ranges cross the continent approximately in the middle: in the southwest-northeast direction. The highest plateau, Tibetan, rises above the surface of the oceans by about 4500 meters and covers an area of ​​about 2.5 million square kilometers.

• Here is also the world's highest mountain system, the Himalayas (which in Sanskrit means "dwelling, shelter of snow"), which includes 17 (!) The highest mountains on the planet. Chinese-Nepalese Chomolungma (or Everest, 8848 meters), Pakistani K-2 (Chogo Gangri, 8611 meters) and Indian-Nepalese Kangchenjunga (Kangchen Dzö-nga, 8586 meters) top this impressive list

There are also many volcanoes in Asia, most of which are active. Among the most famous we highlight:

• Klyuchevskaya Sopka volcano in Kamchatka is the highest active volcano in Eurasia (4750 meters). It is highly active to this day. The last recorded eruption was in 2007.
• Indonesian (Krakatoa) is also world-famous, having once “gobbled up” itself. Once it was located on the island of the same name, located between Java and Sumatra, and in 1883 it gave birth to a powerful eruption (on a nuclear scale equal to approximately 200 megatons), which was heard even in Perth, Australia, 3,100 kilometers away.

The sky, even over Europe, was for a long time painted with an ominous red color due to clouds of ash raised into the atmosphere - the famous Norwegian artist Munch even dedicated this. By the way, another eruption of Krakatoa (in 1927) "gave birth" to a small (about 2 km in diameter) volcanic island, called "Son of Krakatau" (Anak Krakatau). He is growing rapidly and, like the parent, has a violent temper.

Let's also mention:

Pusuk Buhit, Lake Toba, Indonesia

• Tomboro (Tambora or Tomboro), also located in Indonesia and in 1815 during the eruption (presumably the strongest in recent history) that destroyed more than 70 thousand inhabitants of the island of Sumbawa
• Indonesian (Lake Toba), which is also a supervolcano and covers an area of ​​​​about 100 by 30 km. The largest volcano lake in the world. It is believed that the massive eruption of this volcano approximately 70-75 thousand years ago led to global climate change
• A whole volcanic region is also in Indonesia, which is a popular tourist attraction in the country mainly because of its pristine landscape from the series “This is how the Earth was born”

Mount Fuji in Japan

• (Fuji), which is considered one of the three Japanese "Sacred Mountains" and has a relatively "meek" disposition. The last of the recorded eruptions refers to 1707-1708. Fuji is located very close to the Japanese capital, Tokyo, is very loved by tourists and therefore is positioned as one of the main attractions of the "Land of the Rising Sun".

Any tourist can climb this mountain today - in the summer season!

The Asian continent includes a large number of islands. The largest of them are the Indonesian Borneo (the third largest, 743,330 km2, after Papua New Guinea, the island in the world) and Sumatra (470,000 km2). And the most populated: Indonesian Java (124 million inhabitants, according to a 2005 estimate) and Japanese Honshu (103 million people).

, Sri Lanka

Some Asian countries are located exclusively on the islands (island): Brunei, East Timor, Indonesia, Cyprus, Maldives, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Philippines and Japan and have no territories on the continent.

• The largest peninsulas of Asia: Hindustan (or the subcontinent of India, with an area of ​​4,480,000 sq. km), the Arabian Peninsula, the Indochinese Peninsula, the Kamchatka Peninsula, the Korean Peninsula

The largest rivers in continental Asia

• Chinese Yangtze (6300 km long - 3rd in the world after the South American Amazon and the African Nile)
• Russian river system Yenisei-Angara-Selenga (5540 km)
• Chinese Huang He (Yellow River, 5464 km)
• Russian river system Ob-Irtysh (5410 km)
• Russian-Chinese-Mongolian river system Amur-Argun (4444 km)
• Russian Lena (4400 km).

All these rivers and river systems are included in the list of the ten largest on the planet Earth.

The largest lakes in Asia

• The Caspian Sea (with an area of ​​371,000 km2) is a colossal body of salt water, which is recognized by various sources as either a sea or a lake.
• (37,500 km2), in addition to being the deepest lake in the world (1470 meters) and the largest reservoir in terms of fresh water (23,600 cubic km)
• Balkhash (18,428 km2).

It is noteworthy that all of these reservoirs are wholly or partially located on the territory of the former USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics).

Mountains have attracted people since ancient times. The history of their research is extremely fascinating. Many people are interested in what is the highest mountain in the world.

The proposed material tells about the most famous mountain peaks of the world, the history of their conquest and interesting moments associated with this.

The European continent is part of the Eurasian continent. Unlike the Asian half, it is not distinguished by such serious mountain peaks.

But there are mountain ranges with peaks that are included in the list of the most significant on Earth. Let us consider in more detail the characteristics of the remarkable mountains in Europe.

In Russia, the Caucasus mountain range is the highest.

The most famous peaks include:

• Dykhtau- located near the Georgian-Russian border. The summit was first climbed in 1888 by a mixed Swedish-English climbing team.

  It is easy to climb and is always popular with tourists. Height - 5205 m.

• Elbrus- the highest mountain in the country, formed by an extinct volcanic vent and consists of two peaks united by a bridge.

  The western one exceeds sea level by 5642 m. The first ascent of it was made by an English team in 1874.

• Tsakhvoa- the most significant and picturesque peak in Sochi. A biosphere reserve has been established here.
• In Dagestan there are five peaks, some of which exceed sea level by more than four thousand meters.

In addition to the Caucasus, one cannot fail to note the Ural Mountains. This system is older than the previous one, and therefore does not have a serious height.

Ural Mountains, conditionally dissecting Eurasia into two parts of the world, are characterized by large deposits of minerals. From the point of view of climbers, there is nothing remarkable in the Urals.

Altai mountains are located near the Mongolian border and are characterized by stepped landforms with peaked peaks and lake valleys. The height of their peaks does not exceed two thousand meters.

The mountains in the Crimea do not differ in height either. The most famous peak (Roman-Kash) extends 1545 m above sea level.

Eastern Europe is marked by the presence of the following mountains marked on the map:

• Hoverla, located in Ukraine in the Carpathians, is a popular tourist attraction, with a height of 2061 m. The first tourist route was opened in 1880.

  Part of the Carpathian Range is called the Ugrian Mountains by some local peoples living in Hungary and western Ukraine. The massif is not high, but very picturesque.

• In Kazakhstan - arrays characterized by high and low mountain areas.

  In the low-mountain, located in the center of the country, the highest point is located at one and a half thousand meters. Alpine are peaks exceeding one and a half thousand meters.

• In Georgia, Mount Shkhara stands out with a height of 5201 m, representing the central part of the Caucasian massif, on the border with our country.
• In Bashkortostan, Yamantau is known, representing the southern Urals; characterized by two peaks, Big (1640 m.) and Small (1510 m.).

The following mountains are located on the territory of Western Europe:

• Mont Blanc- Western European peak (4810 m.) on the border of Italy and France in the western part of the Alpine massif.
• Dufour (4634 m.)- peak in Swiss and Italian territory. The highest Swiss mountain peak.
• House (4554 m.)- Swiss mountain, first conquered by the British Davis.
• Liskamm (4538 m.)- a peak on the border territory of Switzerland and Italy, dangerous with avalanches and nicknamed the cannibal.
• Weisshorn (4506 m.)- Another Swiss peak, conquered by the British climber John Tyndall.
• Matterhorn (4478 m.)- also on the border of Switzerland and Italy. During its conquest, four climbers fell into the abyss.
• Unlike the nearest neighbors, in Germany there are no such high arrays. There are several peaks up to three thousand meters high.
• In Great Britain there are also several mountain systems, the highest being the Grampian Mountains, representing Scotland.

  The height of some peaks exceeds 1.3 thousand meters from the base.

• In Greece There are several peaks, the most significant of which is Mount Olympus. It is associated with ancient Greek myths that have come down to us from the deep past of Greece.

  In addition to it, several more peaks are noted, with a height not exceeding three thousand meters.

History of the highest mountains of Asia

The Asian continent is distinguished by the presence of the highest peaks belonging to the Himalayan mountains, passing through the territory of different countries:

• Chomolungma (8848 m.). The modern name of the mountain - Everest, is located in China, next to Nepal.

  It is impossible to reach the top of the mountain without the use of special oxygen devices. First conquered in 1853.

• Chogori (8611 m.)– almost falls short of Everest. Located in the northern territories of Pakistan.
• Kangchenjunga (8586 m.)- also in the Himalayas, in India, not far from Nepal.
• Lhotse (8516 m.)- a representative of the Tibet Autonomous Region, located next to Everest, from which the South Col Pass separates.

  The first time a Swiss expedition climbed the peak was in 1956.

• Makalu (8485 m.)- Another Himalayan peak, conquered in 1955 by a French team.
• Himalayan chain In addition to those listed above, it is represented by six more eight-thousanders belonging to India, Pakistan and China.
• In Japan the famous peak is Mount Fujiyama of volcanic origin, which does not reach four thousand meters.

  Thanks to its close-to-ideal conical shape, this is a cult object on the island of Honshu, a place of worship for pilgrims of the Buddhist and Shinto religions.

• In Australia the presence of high mountain ranges is not noted, but they are as peculiar as the continent itself.

  The height of the Western Australian Plateau does not exceed five hundred meters. The mainland is separated by a chain, four thousand kilometers long.

  One part of it is called the Australian Alps, it is the highest system on the continent, some peaks of which barely exceed two thousand meters.

In addition to those listed, there are mountain systems in other parts of the world.

In Africa, unlike Asia, there are no such high mountains. Known for Kilimanjaro, whose name translates as "sparkling mountain", is located in Tanzania, the height is nine hundred meters.

In North America interesting massif of the Cordeliers. Most of it is located in the USA, but also passes through Canada and Mexico.

The ridge is located along the western part of the American continent, the length is over six hundred and fifty kilometers. Mount Robson, part of the part called the Rocky Mountains, rises to 3954 m.

In South America this massif continues with the Andes. This is the longest mountain range on Earth, the length is nine thousand kilometers, it is marked by an average height of four thousand meters.

The highest peak - Aconcagua (almost seven thousand meters) - is located in Argentina.

In Antarctica there are several mountain ranges. The height of the Vinson massif reaches 4892 m.

TOP 10 highest mountains in the world

Here is a list of the 10 highest peaks in the world in the table, listed in descending order:

Photos of these peaks can be easily found on the Internet.

Interesting fact! In the above list, the highest peaks represent the Himalayas - the most significant mountain system in the world.

The highest mountain in the world - what is the name, what height, climbing stories

As already noted, the largest mountain on the planet is Chomolungma. Any climber dreams of climbing it, but not everyone can boast of it.

Almost three hundred climbers and Sherpas died during the ascent to the top. Up to seven thousand successful expeditions were recorded, in which more than four thousand people participated.

The first attempt was made in 1921 and ended in failure. Success was achieved by Italian climbers only in 1953.

As you can see, there are many peaks on the planet that pose difficult tasks for a person.

But, conquering the mountain peaks, people, overcoming multiple difficulties, temper their character and improve themselves. Only a purposeful person will succeed in conquering the mountains.

Useful video

Mountains of Asia are the largest mountain systems in the world: in fact, most of Asia is occupied by mountains and plateaus. Also, the mountains of Asia are the highest in the world - here, in Asia in the Himalayas, is the most high point our planet - Mount Chomolunga (Everest). Its height is 8882 m.

The highest mountains are located in southern Asia and in the south of Central Asia - these are the mountain systems of the Himalayas, Pamir, Hindu Kush, Tien Shan, Tibetan Plateau. In the north of Asia there are lower mountains - these are the Central Siberian Plateau, the Stanovoye Upland, the Chersky Range, the Verkhoyansky Range, the Sredinny Range, the Altai Mountains. In the east, there are such mountains as the Big and Small Khingan and Sikhote-Alin. In the western part of Asia, on its border with Europe, there are such mountains as the Caucasus and the Urals.

The Himalayas are the highest mountains in Asia and in the world. They are located on the border of South and East Asia and separate the lowlands of the Indus and Ganges from the Tibetan plateau. In the northwest, the Himalayas border on another high mountain system in Asia - the Hindu Kush. The length of the Himalayas is more than 2400 km, and the width is about 200-300 km. The steepest slopes of the Himalayas look south, towards the valley of the Indus and Ganges rivers. From the side of Tibet, the Himalayas look more gentle. In total, there are 130 peaks in the Himalayas, which rise to a height of more than 7000m. 11 mountains in the Himalayas are over 8000 meters high. They are mainly found in the Nepalese Himalayas - the highest part of this mountain system. Among them: Mount Everest (8882 m), Mount Kapchenjunga (8598 m), Makalu (8470 m), Apnapurna (8078 m), Gozaintan (8018 m), Dhaulagiri (8172 m), Cho Oyu (8180 m), Shisha -Pangma (8013 m), Manaslu (8128 m), Lhotse Main (8501 m) and others.

The second highest after the Himalayas in Asia, as well as in the world as a whole, is the Karakorum mountain range. It is located southeast of the Pamirs and the Hindu Kush, between Kun-Lun and the Himalayas. Its average height is 6000 km. More than 80 mountains above 7000 meters. There are also eight-thousanders: mountains Chogori (8611 m), Hidden Peak (8068 m), Gasherbrum (8073 m) and Broad Peak (8047 m).

One of the longest mountain systems in Asia is the Kunlun Mountains - they stretch from the Pamirs in the west to the Sino-Tibetan Mountains in the east, bypassing the Tibetan Plateau from the north (the Himalayas bypass the Tibetan Plateau from the south). The length of the Kunlun is about 2500 km, the width in some places reaches 600 km. most high mountain Kunlun is Aksai Chin (7167 m).

Pamir is also a large mountain system. It is located in the south of Central Asia on the territory of modern China, Afghanistan and Tajikistan. The highest mountain in the Pamirs is Kongur Peak. Its height is 7719 m.

The Hindu Kush mountains are also located in the south of Central Asia. Their length is 1000 km., and the width is from 50 to 500 km. They are the boundary between the Indus River basin (South Asia) and the endorheic basin of Central Asia. The highest mountain in the Hindu Kush is Tirichmir (7690 m).

The most grandiose mountain systems in our country stretch from Altai to Kopetdag for almost 2,000 kilometers and form powerful natural boundaries on its borders with China and Afghanistan.

The southernmost link of the mountains of Central Asia - the Pamir Highlands is not accidentally raised above all others: it is the most complex knot at the junction of the two great mountain belts of the planet - the Alpine-Himalayan and Pamir-Chukchi. In the first of them, the greatest uplifts gravitate precisely to this node: the alpine garlands of the Iranian Highlands, just at the junction with the Pamirs, reach more than seven kilometers (up to 7690 meters) in the ridgesHindu Kush; from the southeast, even higher ridges of the Karakoram, Kunlun and Himalayas approach here.

At the same time, the Pamir Highlands also serve as the southwestern section of the Pamir-Chukotka belt, the neighboring links of which, starting from Gissar-Alay, are arranged as if in wings, each of which is more northerly shifted to the east. Behind the huge Fergana basin, a colossal Tien Shan was erected, not inferior in height to the Pamirs. The isolated northeastern link of the Tien Shan is formed by the mountains of the Dzungarian Alatau; they are followed by Tarbagatai and Saur.

An exception in the picture of the latitudinal system of irregularities is represented only by single "oblique" ridges like the Fergana and a fan of spurs at the western ends of the Gissar-Alay and Tien Shan. In this play of strikes, the different directions of tectonic stresses affected: some were latitudinal, others reflected the oblique orientation of deep faults - the western parts of the Kunlun and the Himalayas were raised along them, and in our case - the Kopetdag and Mangyshlak. It is no coincidence that large depressions in the relief of neighboring plains stretch diagonally to the degree network - Karakum, Kyzylkum, Chui; this helped to rush to the northwest and the lower reaches of the largest Central Asian rivers. Thus, the listed directions are inherited from the ancient structural plan of the bowels. Only the Pamirs are reared up on a curve of young alpine folds convex to the north. The bowels of the Gissar-Alay and Tien Shan were crumpled back in the Paleozoic within the limits of a single Ural-Tien Shan arc, which deviated here to the southeast.

The present height of these mountains is the result of the enormous scope of the latest uplifts. They captured both the young structures of the Pamirs and the ancient sections of the Ural-Tienshan arc. For 24 million years of the Neogene, the Pamirs were raised by 3400, and over the last million years (for the Quaternary period) by another 700 meters. And the scope and pace of uplifts near the Tien Shan with Gissar-Alay is even greater.

The heaving blocks were often crushed, hummocked, and even crushed. Even ancient rigid structures were corrugated with large bending radii. These bends - ramparts and valleys - ran parallel to the strikes of the nearest arc of the Alpine-Himalayan zone. It is this corrugation that owes the elongation of the largest Central Asian ridges along the parallels.

The depressions separating the mountains have their own life. Sometimes the basins, the bottom of which also rises, only lag behind the ridges growing nearby - this is how the Issyk-Kul and Naryn basins of the Tien Shan behave. But there are cases when the depressions themselves sink, and their bottoms are above sea level only because, while bending, they are filled with sediment from neighboring mountains. On the outskirts, these sediments themselves experience crushing - this is how the Fergana, Ili, and South Tajik depressions behave.

The mountains of Central Asia are among the most seismic in the world. Verny, now Alma-Ata, was destroyed in 1887 and 1911, and Andijan in 1902. In 1911, a shock shook the western Pamirs and caused a collapse that created Lake Sarez. In 1948, Ashgabat was terribly destroyed, in 1949 - Garm and Khait, in 1966 - Tashkent. The rapid restoration of both capitals in an earthquake-resistant version showed how it is possible to withstand the elements in the most seismic foothill zones.

These mountains are an important climate division, a barrier that has grown on the path of humid western air masses into the interior of the continent. Like mysterious ghosts, the snowy ridges are visible through the dusty haze from the sultry desert plains of Turan. But it often happens that they are not visible, and not because the haze is thick, but because of the density of the clouds. Deserts do not receive a drop of rain for months, and the invisible Atlantic moisture, far from saturation, does not reach the earth. Only when it meets mountain barriers does the air rise, moisture becomes visible and forms lingering fogs, heavy rains and snowfalls at levels above 2-3 kilometers. Humidification increases from the foot to the ridges tenfold. Moisture is conserved by glaciers, so that later it can be used to drink the rivers of deserts. The water supply of the foothill plains, and with it the irrigation of the fields, depends on the regime of replenishment and melting of these "ice storages". Therefore, it is important to study glaciers.

In the mountains of Central Asia, they are the longest in the country. "Rivers of ice" take in the same ice tributaries. Tree-like glaciers are so characteristic here that they are called Turkestan. Each of their tributaries brings its lateral moraine to the core, and it begins to accompany the axial moraine of the main glacier. Therefore, the median moraines of tree-like glaciers usually consist of several parallel embankments and resemble a picture of multi-track railway tracks.

Often you even have to fight with water. During summer downpours and when lake dams break, it happens that mud-stone streams, mudflows, rush to the foot of the mountains. Now entire regions are provided with anti-mudflow service: “suspicious” mountain lakes, which may threaten to break through, are being monitored, barriers are being erected on the paths of possible mudflows.

Snow-covered peaks are visible from the streets of almost any major city in Central Asia. For many citizens, these mountains look like an unreal world. But how much attractive force they have for those who have ever tasted the temptations of mountain tourism! This is a world of amazing majesty of nature, one of the cradles of our mountaineering. Seven-thousanders dominate all sky-high heights - Communism Peak (7495 meters), Pobeda Peak (7439), Lenin Peak (7139) and Evgenia Korzhenevskaya Peak (7105).

The mountains of Central Asia are not only high, but also multi-tiered. Elevated foothill trails and terraces are densely dissected by ravines and form bands of mountain-desert and semi-desert bad lands - adyrov. The lower mountain steps are the advanced ridges - counters. In the ridge zones, patches of ancient leveled surfaces have survived, and in the east of the Pamirs and in the Central Tien Shan - entire plateaus. Even at the pointed ridges, uniform levels with heights of about 4-6 thousand meters are visible over long distances.

Wildlife is also multi-storey, changing from deserts at the foot to eternal snow and ice at the peaks with zones of mountain semi-deserts and steppes, forest-steppes and meadows; there are pistachio and juniper woodlands. There are many thorny cushion shrubs on rocky areas. In the wind shadow, where descending air currents move away from saturation, meadows are replaced by mountain steppes and even high-mountain deserts.

Although it is now customary to separate the Tien Shan and Gissar-Alai, there is no reason to ignore many of their similarities. First of all, it is reminded by the deep conjugations of the structures of the southeastern branches of the Urals and Inner Kazakhstan, submerged under the Aral part of the Turan Plate, with the Tien Shan and Gissar-Alai. Both mountain systems rise on the elevated flank of the Ural-Tienshan arc, in both of them the young latitudinal corrugation has crumpled into folds of a large radius a very ancient complexly folded substrate. The youngest alpine folds were superimposed on pre-existing structures. In combination with a powerful general uplift, this created a revived mountainous country. Nowhere in our country have such ancient folded structures been subjected to such intense recent uplifts and ascended so high.

Both mountainous countries are related by powerful modern glaciation, susceptibility to mudflows. The altitudinal zonality of the landscape has many common features. But the mountain-spruce forest-steppe, so characteristic of the northern slopes of the Tien Shan ranges, is replaced by juniper sparse forests on similar slopes of Gissar-Alay. But in the south of both mountainous countries, the surviving massifs of lush broad-leaved forests flaunt.

Comparable in terms of abundance of minerals are the bowels of these mountains. Their ore content is especially remarkable - the richness in ores of non-ferrous, small and rare metals, as well as the presence of oil in the basins.

On the border of Siberia and Central Asia. To get from the mountains of Southern Siberia to the Tien Shan, you need to cross the Zaisan basin drained by the Irtysh. It has already been said that the dam of the Bukhtarma hydroelectric power station raised the level of the entire Zaisan lake by 7 meters and forced it to flood the nearest shores. The backwater spread 100 kilometers up the Black Irtysh, which flows into the lake. The depths were so insignificant that even now they rarely exceed 10 meters. The reservoir is navigable - fast "Rockets" and "Meteors", cargo tankers and barges move along it. Ice is a meter and a half thick. In the spring, it does not so much melt as it is eaten up by the sun for evaporation. Seiners catch a lot of fish and endure real sea storms.

The expanded Zaisan has not lost its name and continues to delight the eye with its boundless expanse and silky-whitish luster of the water surface. Winter in the basin is severe in Siberia, the semi-desert is more Central Asian, but such flat-bottomed depressions are much more characteristic of Central Asia. The whole hollow is like a bay of Central Asian landscapes.

Tarbagatai and Saur mountains with three-kilometer heights - this is also a buffer between South Siberia and Central Asia. There is still taiga on the slopes, semi-desert in the foothills, but mountain steppes are the most extensive here. At the southern foothills of Tarbagatai, the well-known trading Chuguchak tract goes to Xinjiang since ancient times.

From the northeastern facade of the Tien Shan - the mountains of the Dzungarian Alatau - Tarbagatai is separated by a flat-bottomed tectonic depression, a direct continuation of the Balkhash-Alakolskaya strip of depressions. This is a rubble-desert corridor with eternal drafts blowing out all the fine earth, the well-known in world history Dzungarian Gates - the most convenient, barrier-free passage from the Central Asian plateaus to Kazakhstan. It served as one of the most important routes of past migrations of peoples.

Mountains of Central Asia (Tien Shan, Gissar-Alai, Pamir)

Tien Shan stretched from west to east for 2,500 kilometers, of which 1,500 fall on the territory of the Soviet republics - Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, and the eastern thousand go to Xinjiang. The high part of the highlands, dominating the Tarim Basin, was called by Chinese geographers in ancient times the Tien Shan, that is, "heavenly mountains". Later, Russian geographers extended this name to the ranges that accompany the Central Tien Shan from the north and west. Naturally, a further division of the highlands also developed - in our part, groups of ridges are distinguished under the names of the Northern, Western and Inner Tien Shan (in addition to the already mentioned Central). Sloping plains crouched at the foot - more than half of the largest oases of Central Asia owe their moisture.

Many ridges in the west and in the center exceed 4 kilometers and bear eternal snow and glaciers. To the southeast, the heights increase. Already Terskey-Alatau raises peaks for 5, and Kokshaltau reaches 6 kilometers. At the eastern junction of these ranges, the Central Tien Shan is especially grandiose.

In the Mesozoic and the beginning of the Cenozoic, the Tien Shan, built by Paleozoic folds, was leveled, but in the Neogene it was subjected to powerful mountain-building movements - splits and crushing into large folds. At this time, he was erected as a revived upland. The plateaus with permafrost soil, the syrts, that survived at an altitude of 3-4 kilometers are occupied by excellent meadow-steppe pastures.

Permafrost, a northern phenomenon in the sunny south, is developed in regions with little snow. Frozen "to the core" peaks never thaw. As in the subpolar tundra, here one can see soils that are slumping and broken into polygons, swelling mounds, subsidence over thawing ice lenses, and ice wedges. Steam rises above the rivers in winter - water walled up with freezing ice pours into cracks and forms completely Siberian-looking ice.

The Tien Shan is one of the most powerful centers of modern mountain glaciation in our country. Some valley glaciers stretch for tens of kilometers. And there are also funny "glaciers of flat tops" lying motionless on the plateaus and devoid of food areas. Above them there are no slopes from which ice could flow and snow fall; they have no flowing tongues either. Annual melting does not exceed the arrival of snow due to precipitation falling on the surface of the glaciers themselves.

There are two kinds of evidence about the double ancient glaciation. Cloaks of moraines with boulders lining the surface of syrt plateaus help to conclude that the first, largest of the two glaciations was covered by extensive covers. And the Alpine-jagged peaks of the highest ridges, circus-shaped armchairs and trough-shaped valleys with more recent heaps of moraines prove that only the last, recent glaciation, whose tongues did not crawl out onto the plateaus, could sculpt them.

The cooling of the ice ages and the glaciers themselves significantly impoverished wildlife. Of the broad-leaved forests that covered the slopes before, only massifs of walnut and other “wild-fruited” trees survived in the south of the Ferghana Range and Chatkal. In the north of the Tien Shan, only more hardy apple and boyar plantations have survived from the former mixed forests. Higher up the slopes they are replaced by copses of Tien Shan spruce. This avant-garde of East Asian spruce forests has taken root on the shady slopes above 1200 meters; the southern slopes are conquered by mountain steppes, often tall grasses.

Tien Shan firs are so slender that they are not without reason compared to cypresses.

Ridge Terskey-Alatau

In two places the uplands are crossed by the Trans-Tienshan tracts. The Naryn highway leads from the Chui valley along the Boam gorge to the Issyk-Kul basin, crosses the end of the Terskey-Alatau ridge in a through gorge and descends through the Dolon pass, over 3 kilometers high, into the Naryn basin of the Inner Tien Shan. Behind Lake Chatyrköl, the tract goes to Kashgar through the Kokshaltau ridge. The Susamyr, or Great Kyrgyz, tract connects the Chui valley with the Ferghana basin. It overcomes the Kirghiz ridge with the help of a tunnel under the Tyuz-Ashuu pass (“camel's hump”, 3586 meters), through the Susamyr syrts it goes to the valley of the Naryn breakthrough through the Fergana ridge and serves as the most important artery for communication with the cities that arose at the hydroelectric stations of the Naryn cascade - Toktogul , Kara-Kul, coal mining Tash-Kumyr. The route leads to the Jalalabad and Osh oases of Fergana.

Dzungarian Alatau in vain they call it a ridge - this is a whole mountainous country, the northeastern link of the Tien Shan. It is separated from the rest of the highlands by the flat-bottomed Ili depression, and is connected with it only by the Boro-Khoro bridge outside our country. It's like an independent Tien Shan in miniature. There are spruce forests on the northern slopes, and mountain steppes on the southern, and desert-steppe foothills, and ridge surfaces with permafrost; there are mountain meadows and alpine highlands with glaciers and peaks above 4000 meters. There are also intramountain valleys with a semi-desert landscape. The bowels contain valuable ores, for example, polymetallic ones at Tekeli.

The "Dzungarian Tien Shan" has its own halo of flowering sloping plains with their inherent fame. The shady sloping of the mountains and their western valleys, open to the fertile and fertile Semirechie, are especially well provided with moisture. Under this name, they unite the entire southern slope of the Balkhash-Alakol depression, primarily the Jetysu - the "land of seven rivers" that flow into the Balkhash or dry up in dry deltas. Thus, the more western plain at the foot of the Trans-Ili Alatau is also included in Semirechie (the city of Verny was the administrative center of the Semirechensk region). The heart of the eastern Semirechye is now the regional city of Taldy-Kurgan, buried in parks.

Northern Tien Shan creates an outer frame for the middle parts of the highlands. The facade chain of ridges here is formed by Ketmen, Zailiysky and Kirghiz Alatau. Over Alma-Ata, the frame turned out to be double - parallel to the Zailiysky from the south, the Kungei-Alatau ridge, which dominates Issyk-Kul, stretches very close. In the form of an oblique northwestern spur from the tip of the Trans-Ili Alatau, the wings of the Chu-Ili mountains depart, the watershed significance of which is reflected in their very name.

The most popular area of ​​the Tien Shan is the Zailiyskiy Alatau. Fame brought him proximity to Alma-Ata and the beauty of the mountain-forest and alpine landscapes. About 900 square kilometers of them are protected in the Alma-Ata Nature Reserve, where the mountains are crowned with a magnificent five-thousander - the Talgar snow massif.

In 1963, one of the corners of these mountains became the scene of a terrible disaster. Peace and beauty delighted the "Alma-Ata Ritsa" - Lake Issyk (not to be confused with Issyk-Kul!), dammed 800 years ago by a landslide in a mountain valley - a blue-green eye among the steep, overgrown with spruce forests, a favorite vacation spot for Almaty residents.

On a sunny day, thunder rang out... in the middle of a clear sky! A mud-stone stream burst into the lake with an artillery roar, which arose during the breakthrough of a moraine lake in the upper reaches of the Issychka River. The mudflow mass overflowed the reservoir, broke through the ancient dam, and through the gaping hole hundreds of meters deep, 5 million cubic meters of water rushed down Issychka. It was no longer a mud-stone, but a “water-stone” stream - it tossed and rolled stones as high as a house, uprooted trees, demolished several streets in a piedmont village and rushed into Ili, into which it flowed before parsing its waters for irrigation. "Trophies" were carried away along Ili even to Balkhash. Now it has been decided to revive Issyk - to return the former lake beauty to the empty basin.

The two-stage Issyk mudflow was not the first to make one think about how to prevent such catastrophes; there have already been cases when cities and villages, including Alma-Ata, suffered from mudflow "invasions". After all, the sloping plains on which the cities are built are composed of the outflows of these formidable and uncontrollable streams. So, it is necessary to protect vulnerable objects more reliably. Especially formidable mudflows overthrew Alma-Ata from the valley of Malaya Almatinka, in which the popular Medeo stadium is located. Now his name is worthy of more than one sports glory. In the 60s, with the help of directed explosions, an anti-mudflow dam of almost a hundred meters in height was erected here. In 1973, she withstood the “battle test” and stopped the first major mudflow. But the dam was at its limit. “Only mountains can stand against mountains,” they said then, and they built a dam-mountain 50 meters high.

Another dam was erected in the neighboring valley - the Bolshaya Almatinka River. And the Bartogay reservoir in the upper reaches of the Chilik with an area of ​​14 square kilometers and a capacity of 1/3 cubic kilometer will supply water to the Big Almaty Canal, which has nothing to do with its namesake river. It is laid along the sole of the Zailiysky Alatau for more than 100 kilometers. Dozens of siphons (underground conduits) will allow him to cross the lower reaches of many rivers flowing from the ridge. Water will come to the foothills, and even Alma-Ata will be, as it were, on a full-flowing river!

Of course, the proximity of the mountains brings to the townspeople of the oases not only mudflow anxieties: it also pleases them with the splendor of landscapes - forest and alpine, and at the same time suburban in the full sense of the word. Within easy reach under Alma-Ata, or rather, above it, as well as over Frunze and Tashkent, there are strings of tourist centers, ski resorts and health resorts - climatic, koumiss, balneological.

It is interesting to compare the appearance of two sloping plains, on which Alma-Ata and Frunze grew up - the capitals, immersed in the shady greenery of alleys and parks. Along the foothills of the mountains, Ili and Chu flow in the middle segments of their currents. But Ili, which is 50-70 kilometers away from the sole, does not participate in the irrigation of the foothill oases - all of them are dependent only on rivers flowing directly from the Zailiysky Alatau. Another picture in Kyrgyzstan. Chu, having reached the foot of the sloping plain, turned to the west and became here itself the main source of irrigation, feeding the canals Bolshoi Chuisky (BChK), Atbashinsky and others; the entire valley between the Chu-Ili mountains and the Kirghiz ridge is called the Chui. In both lanes, agriculture is carried out in the Central Asian way - irrigated, but from the southern crops at these heights (700-900 meters), only rice and grapes coexist. Fields of wheat and yellow tobacco, melons, and vegetable gardens predominate. The outskirts of Alma-Ata are famous for their apple orchards, where aport apples of amazing size ripen. The Chumysh waterworks is in charge of irrigating the entire valley.

The Northern Tien Shan is separated from the Inner Tien Shan by the vast Issyk-Kul tectonic and still seismic basin, in which an amazing creation of nature lies - Issyk-Kul, a “warm”, that is, non-freezing lake-sea, the surface of which is elevated more than 1600 meters above the ocean level. The reservoir is huge: along its length for 178 kilometers the horizon is not visible, the impression is as if you see a large bay of the open sea. Across the lake for 60 kilometers, the shores would also be almost invisible, but the Kungei and Terskey-Alatau mountain ranges, 4-5 kilometers high, rise above them. The picture is especially spectacular when their snowy crests are doubled by reflections in the lake. And the depths here are completely sea - a little less than 700 meters.

Very close to the lake, almost touching its western corner, flows the Chu, which had just left the Orto-Tokoi reservoir. Its connection with the lake was renewed more than once along a temporary watercourse, but now the runoff along the Boam Gorge carried the entire river with it.

The area near the western tip of Issyk-Kul is unattractive, the port of Rybachye has only recently been decorated with plantings of greenery. To the east, the nature of the coasts becomes richer - a direct response to the increase in moisture: at the opposite end of the lake, it rains 5-6 times more than in the west. Wet winds from the reservoir here truly breathed life into the landscape: wheat fields sway, melons and vegetable gardens turn green; poplar alleys and blooming gardens are reminiscent of the landscapes of Ukraine and Kuban. Not far from Przhevalsk bathing in the gardens, on the shore of one of the bays, there is an obelisk with the image of an eagle and a bas-relief - this is a monument on the grave of the traveler Przhevalsky who died here.

Marvelous bathing, all the charms of the sea south, but without heat even in the height of summer (height affects!), Healing springs and the grandeur of the mountain-lake landscape - all this earned Issyk-Kul the rank of a health resort of all-Union significance. The resort at radon springs in the valley of the "seven bulls" - Dzhety-Oguz is especially life-giving; this is how the artsy cliffs of brick-red sandstone at the foot of Terskey are called in Kyrgyz.

Part of the bottom of the basin and the adjacent mountain slopes are protected in nine isolated areas of the Issyk-Kul Reserve.

Together with the Caspian, Aral and Balkhash, Issyk-Kul shares the fate of non-drainage lakes, the life of which depends on the inflow of river waters. They spent it on irrigation, the runoff decreased due to overcutting of the forest - the lake in response lowered the level by 3 meters.

Chingiz Aitmatov compared his mirror to the inescapably shrinking shagreen leather and inspired him to save the “fragile pearl of Issyk-Kul”. After all, both the reservoir itself and the surrounding landscape suffer.

Perhaps some archaeologists rejoiced at the departure of water from the coast. Once upon a time, the lake rose and flooded coastal structures - divers were equipped to study them. Now underwater secrets have become available for land excavations. Medieval bricks and shards of pottery have already been found in ancient silts, and stone tools have even turned out to be Neanderthal.

To maintain the beauty and glory of Issyk-Kul, it is necessary to more resolutely protect the lake from pollution; sharply reduce cuttings; at least partially reorient irrigated grain and fodder agriculture to less water-intensive horticulture... But more and more calls are being made to refill the rivers that feed the lake with water from neighboring basins. The easiest way is to return the Chu River here. But the fields of the Chui valley need its water. Take it away from the tributaries of the middle reaches Or? But this will create another damage to the water balance of Balkhash.

Maintaining the merits of Issyk-Kul is one of the unsolved problems of nature management in Central Asia.

To the south of Terskey, the most celestial part of the highlands is piled up - the alpine-desert Central Tien Shan. In the east, on the border with China, the gigantic Mustag knot (ice mountains) with 6-7-kilometer heights has ascended. Among the tree-like glaciers is Inylchek, the second longest in the country (59 kilometers).

Northern Inylchek Glacier

At the confluence of its two branches, an incredible lake, which is called buzzing and even speaking for the rumble that periodically arises in it, frantically turns blue in the ice shores. Water occasionally leaves through voids in the ice, lowering the level by tens of meters or even completely emptying a wild ice bath with stranded "white marble" icebergs. Then the multi-kilometer drainage tunnel is clogged, and the reservoir is filled again. The lake is named after the geographer and climber Merzbacher who discovered it.

The southern facade of the mountains is formed by the eastern links of the border chain - the Kokshaltau ridge, crowned with the second highest peak in the country - Pobeda Peak. And on the middle spur of the Meridional Ridge rises the legendary Khan-Tengri - "the ruler of the heavenly forces." Its popularity was especially facilitated by the chased regularity of the pyramidal peak and the fact that it culminates over neighboring peaks more noticeably than the more vague Pobeda Peak.

To the west, the Inner Tien Shan stretches, it is also called the syrt, or the edge of the jailoo - summer pastures. The calm, albeit fast, flow of rivers on the stretches of longitudinal valleys is replaced by seething rapids in through transverse gorges. Two vast lakes rest on the syrts above 3 kilometers - the fresh flowing Son-Kol and the non-flowing bitter-brackish Chatyr-Kol. Until recently, the icy waters of Sonkel were considered dead, but now Siberian peled and whitefish have been bred in it.

The core river here is Naryn, an energy hero. About 6 million kilowatts at more than 20 hydroelectric stations will make it possible to obtain drops in its channel in through valleys. In total, six cascades will be created. The mighty Lower Naryn cascade is the first to be completed, consisting of the Toktogul, Kurpsai, Tashkumyr and two Uchkurgan hydroelectric stations. Here, the Toktogul HPP operates at full capacity - almost a million and a quarter kilowatts. Its reservoir contained more than 19 cubic kilometers of water, and the dam that dammed it near the young city of Kara-Kul rose more than 200 meters. Below, the path of the green-turquoise waters of the Naryn has already been blocked by the dam of the Kurpsai hydroelectric power station.

From the southwest, the Inner Tien Shan is surrounded by the Ferghana Range, which is obliquely drawn on the map, and which in modern times was raised along an ancient deep fault. Its foothills are coal-bearing and oil-bearing, the resort city of Jalal-Abad has grown on hot waters.

On the lower slopes of the ridge, relict walnut forests inherited from pre-Quaternary times are good. They also continue to the west, along the southern slopes of the Ugam Range and Chatkal.

The extreme western ledge of the Tien Shan is called the Western Tien Shan. The mountain junction of the Talas Alatau, topped by the peak of Manas, 4.5 kilometers high, adjoins a lattice of ridges, amicably elongated in five parallel rows and separated by large longitudinal valleys.

In the south, the coal-bearing valley of Akhangaran (Angren) is especially famous. Chirchik glorified one of the more northern valleys with its cascade of 18 hydroelectric stations, and large valleys of its tributaries open up to it - Chatkal, Pskem and Ugama, after which the ridges adjacent to them are named.

The united delta of Chirchik and Akhangaran at the western end of this "package" of ridges forms one of the richest oases in Central Asia - Tashkent. Numerous traces of 2000 years of history are intricately intertwined in its space. Today it is occupied by a huge city with a whole swarm of satellite cities. Tashkent, restored and transformed after the catastrophic earthquake of 1966, is generously decorated with greenery of parks and alleys, mirrors of reservoirs.

In the north, the depression between the ridges of the Kirghiz and Talas Alatau is occupied by the flourishing Talas valley, at the exit from which the rich Dzhambul oasis is located near the mountains. To the west of the Tien Shan, a saber, as it were, rolled backhand - the Karatau ridge - "black mountains" leaves. The angle between it and other ridges of the Western Tien Shan is filled with the merged deltas of the Arys and its tributaries - this is another blooming oasis - Chimkent.

No part of the Tien Shan is endowed with mineral wealth as generously as the western one. Against the background of the blackish-gray slopes of Karatau, the quarters of Kentau and Achisay, where polymetal ores are mined, the cities of Zhanatas and Karatau, one of the world's largest phosphorite pools, turn white. It stretches along the mountains for 125 kilometers and contains more than one and a half billion tons of phosphorites.

Particularly ore-bearing is the Kuraminsky ridge with the Karamazor coulisse. According to the spectrum of minerals concentrated here, it is compared, albeit not without exaggeration, by some with the Urals, some with the Kola Peninsula. We list only ores - iron and copper, polymetals, tungsten, molybdenum, bismuth, mercury, arsenic, cadmium, a number of rare metals; there is also gold.

Kuraminsky bowels have been known since ancient times. The mines of Kani-Mansur near Adrasman, which are famous today for their bismuth, or Kansai for mercury, are still prominent today and other workings of silver and copper ores, which are prominent today as monuments to the labor of ancient miners. Polymetals and copper accompany each other in the especially rich ore region of Almalyk, Altyntopkan and Kuruksay.

Angren is a stoker containing about a quarter of Central Asia's coal reserves. Mining here is both mine and from the surface. On the basis of the Akhangaran “valley of treasures” and the nearby mountains, the Chatkal-Kuramin territorial production complex is being formed with favorable mutual placement and interaction between mining and processing enterprises.

For the inhabitants of Tashkent, the Western Tien Shan is a cool and green suburban area, a favorite vacation spot. The trip to Charvak and Chimgan is especially good. Above the mouth of the Ugam River, Chirchik is dammed by the largest dam in the entire cascade (one and a half hundred meters high) of the Charvak hydroelectric power station. Its power is 600 thousand kilowatts. Two cubic kilometers of water entered the mouth sections of the Chatkal and Pskem valleys, forming Chirchik, creating a water area of ​​about 40 square kilometers. Wonderful memories are left by a trip around the reservoir and the panorama from the panoramic platform above the dam.

The blessed corner of the Western Chatkal stretches around the reservoir - the Bostandyk area and the Chimgan valley, which invites skiers. The three-kilometer-high mountain barrier of the same name intercepts the moisture that has not fallen out from the winds that have crossed the desert, and Bostandyk receives up to 1000 millimeters of precipitation per year - three times more than in Tashkent. Here, as in the south of the Chatkal Range, thickets of wild apple trees rage, walnut groves flaunt, the northernmost in Central Asia.

Resorts arose at the southern foot of Chatkal. The most famous of them - thermal hydrogen sulfide-radon Chartak - became an all-Union health resort.

Four large natural areas of the Western Tien Shan are reserved. More than 350 square kilometers are occupied by the Chatkal nature reserve, the closest to Tashkent, more than 180 by Besh-Aral in the Chatkal valley, about 240 by Sary-Chelek, near the junction of the Chatkal and Talas ridges, and 730 square kilometers by Aksu-Dzhabagly on the Ugam ridge and the tip of Talas Alatau. All these are majestic mountainous territories with heights up to 3-4 kilometers, in Aksu-Dzhabagly - with dozens of glaciers. The name of the Sary-Chelek Reserve gave one of the best decorations of Central Asian nature - Lake Sary-Chelek, located at a two-kilometer height.

Fergana basin. The mountains of the Tien Shan and Gissar-Alay, firmly connected in the east by the Ferghana Range, and in the west adjoining the neck of the Farhad Gates of the Syrdarya, part widely between these nodes, embracing a giant basin, which for some reason has been assigned the name "Fergana Valley", although there is nothing like a valley here. This tectonic oval of subsidence, amazing in size and shape, with diameters of 325 kilometers along the parallel and up to 90 kilometers along the meridian, covers an area of ​​more than 22,000 square kilometers. For its wealth, Fergana was considered the pearl of the Russian Empire in the past.

The fact that in ancient times the basin was the center of various civilizations is reminiscent of traces of ancient settlements and monuments of the Middle Ages. Today it is one of the most prosperous territories of Central Asia, divided between three union republics - Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It gives the country about a quarter of all cotton harvests and a third of silkworm cocoons.

This basin is a seismic trough inherited from ancient times and still today, the folded foundation of which is submerged for kilometers. Its bottom would long ago have been lower than the ocean level (as it was when the bay of the pre-Quaternary Sarmatian sea penetrated here), if this subsidence was not replenished by an intensive supply of rubble and pebbles from the surrounding mountains. The modern bottom of the basin lies at altitudes up to 1000 meters in the east and 300 in the west.

The ridges isolate the basin from damp winds. During the year, only a meager desert dose of rain falls on its bottom - 100-150 millimeters, and only the foothills receive a little more (up to 300). Therefore, on the flat bottom, the desert dominates, and on the periphery - the mountain deserts of the foothills, higher turning into mountainous semi-deserts. The mountains protect the depression from cold winds (the average temperature in January does not drop below minus 3°C) and share with it the moisture flowing down from the slopes.

The ring of rich oases embraced Fergana. They are watered both by surface watercourses and a powerful plume of underground runoff under foothill sediments. Along the northern border of the Fergana ellipse, the transit Syrdarya flows, formed by the confluence of the Karadarya and Naryn. Their waters are fed by large main canals - the Big, Northern and Southern Fergana - the first-born of nationwide construction projects from the time of the pre-war five-year plans and many of the newest canals. Waterless planes are decorated with Uchkurgan, Kairakkum, Farhad reservoirs, but the latter has become heavily silted up.

In addition to the round dance of cities and roads connecting this ring of oases, Fergana is also ringed by a network of gas pipelines and a single control system for all channels that feed it. Irrigation also involves transverse rivers, which even dry up in dry deltas. They, too, joined hands as if in a round dance - their lower reaches are connected by channels that allow you to regulate water supply and transfer water to neighbors who need it.

Part of the pebble-rubble outcrop was involved in the arched uplifts of the neighboring ridges. Thus arose whimsically cut by ravines ( sai) bad lands: conglomerate and loess adyrs hugging almost the whole of Ferghana. In some places, and even in the axial part of the depression, these young sediments have experienced recent crushing and rise in surprising youthful ridges of impressive size. In some of them domes of rock salt are squeezed upwards.

The cultural landscape dominates - endless fields of cotton, cut through by fans of ditches, green massifs of gardens, melons and vineyards, alleys of poplars and mulberries, white locust, plane trees and elms. Large cities grew up in oases: Leninabad, Andijan, Fergana, Kokand, Osh, Namangan, Margilan. Resorts are gaining more and more popularity; the most promising of them is hydrogen sulfide Chimion, "Ferghana Matsesta".

Hissar-Alai. In the heap of the highest ridges between the Tien Shan and the Pamirs, a kind of buffer zone stands out with the Alai ridge in the east and the fan of the Gissar ridges in the west. For a long time there was no consensus on what to attribute this strip of mountains to: some ranked it as part of the Pamirs and spoke as about something united, about the Pamir-Alai; others believed that here, close to the Pamirs, the extreme southwestern ledge of the Tien Shan adjoins. But this strip of mountains is separated from the Tien Shan by the huge Ferghana Basin, and from the Pamirs by the deep trough of the Alai Valley. And the structure of the bowels is different from that inherent in both neighboring highlands. That is why it has become generally accepted to single out an independent mountain system under the name of Gissar-Alay, opposed to both the Tien Shan and the Pamirs.

The close proximity of the icy heights of the northern and dry subtropics of southern Tajikistan... The brightest colors of rivers and lakes, flowering gardens and meadows, even the rocks themselves, iridescent with all the colors of the stone rainbow - so colorful are the rocks that compose them... Giant dams and reservoirs... Everything this is Gissar-Alay, an asymmetrical rampart with a drier and gentler northern slope and a more humid steep southern slope (the north receives up to 450, the south - 600-1200 millimeters of precipitation per year). On the inner slopes of the mountains and in the valleys, dryness, rockiness, an abundance of almost bare rocks increase sharply - here only 150 millimeters of precipitation falls annually.

The length of the shaft is about 750 kilometers, and the width is different in different segments. In the east, this is one Alai Range, only 70-90 kilometers across. In the middle part, Kuhistan - the "country of mountains" - expands more than twice, but is divided into three parallel ranges: Turkestan, Zeravshan and Gissar. The western branches of Hissar fan out for 350 kilometers. To the northwest, with an oblique feather in relation to the latitudinal ridges, the nondescript Malguzar-Nuratau chain departs. From the south, Gissar is adjoined by a lattice of ridges of Southern Tajikistan with densely populated valleys.

The largest ridges have a high-alpine appearance and powerful glaciers. In the Matcha junction up to 5621 meters high, where Alay bifurcates into the Turkestan and Zeravshan ranges, the treelike Zeravshan glacier is almost 25 kilometers long.

The northern slope of the Gissar-Alai faces the Fergana basin. To the south of the city of Ferghana, the mountain-climatic resort of Khamzaabad is popular in the Shakhimardan valley, near beautiful lakes. The most inhabited part inside Gissar-Alay is the Zeravshan valley, heavily terraced, as if lined into five tiers of platforms and brows. Its extensions form the Penjikent basin, and in the lower reaches the Samarkand oasis. The tugai of the Zeravshan floodplain and its dry delta are protected in the Zeravshan and Karakul reserves. Archaeologists have unearthed the settlement of ancient Penjikent from the times of ancient Sogdiana. The monuments of the Middle Ages are also interesting.

In 1964, this valley was not spared by a catastrophic landslide, which dammed the river near the village of Aini. The breach of the dam threatened disaster for the entire underlying valley. An explosion cut through a route for water drainage - it was drained by a 60-meter waterfall.

The Zeravshan ridge with heights up to 5489 meters (Mount Chimtarga) would be more accurately called a chain - it is cut through by the gorges of the left tributaries of the Zeravshan, the longitudinal upper reaches of which and the Kashkadarya going to the west separate it from the more southern Gissar. There are many first-class natural phenomena here: a chain of magnificent Marguzor lakes, strung like beads on a thread of the Shing River, the seething rapids of the Yaghnob, which has broken through the cyclopean stone blockages; Iskanderdarya, flowing like a 30-meter waterfall from the landslide-dammed lake Iskanderkul, also one of the most beautiful in Central Asia.

Subsoil and here are ore-bearing. The belt of antimony-mercury deposits stretches along the northern slope. There are tungsten ores, fluorite reserves.

In coking coals near Yaghnob, an underground fire has been lasting for centuries, resulting from spontaneous combustion - it was known already in the 10th century. Along the Fergana foothills, two garlands of deposits are stretched out - coal and oil.

Nature is protected in five reserves: mountain-junior Kyzylsu, Miraka, Ramit, Zaamin and mountain-nut-bearing Nurata. The first two are located in the basin of the Kashkadarya River, the third is in the upper reaches of the Kafirnigan, the fourth is in the area where the Malguzar ridge adjoins the Turkestan, and the fifth is on the slopes of the extreme northwestern branch of the Gissar-Alay - the Nuratau ridge. The markhorned goat, listed in the Red Book, is guarded in the mountains of Kugitangtau and South Tajikistan. A natural national park has been organized on the northern slope of the Turkestan Range.

The transgissar motorway Leninabad-Dushanbe crosses all three ridges (two through the passes, the Zeravshansky through the through Fandarya gorge) and allows you to get acquainted with Gissar-Alay as if in a section. In addition to the "usual" beauty of the mountain-alpine heights, the route captivates with the variegation of the colors of the rocks - intensely red, pink, lilac, green, yellow. Immediately, as on the poster, you can see the differences between the high-altitude zones and the contrasts of the opposite slopes. A 5-kilometer tunnel is being built around the Anzob Pass.

When descending from Gissar to the south, we find ourselves from the world of bare stones under a green tree canopy. The place of northern juniper sparse forests here was occupied by lush broad-leaved copses of maple, plane tree, walnut and many wild fruit trees in mountain forest gardens. In the zone of maximum precipitation (900-1200 millimeters per year), non-irrigated agriculture is possible, this is a “zone of secured rainfed". On tens of thousands of hectares, work has begun on terraced forest plantations.

The Varzob flowing through Dushanbe (below it is called Dushanbinka) waters both the city's water pipelines and the Great Gissar Canal, laid to the west along the foothills of the mountains up to the Surkhandarya basin. Along the eastern foothills of Hissar, the valley of the right source of the Vakhsh, the Surkhob River, ran along the tectonic suture. The north-western Pamir Highway (not to be confused with the main Trans-Pamir Highway!) is the easiest way to get to the highest Alai ranges, the Alai Valley and the seven-thousanders of the Pamirs. In the lake-like extensions of the Surkhob valley, the villages of Garm, Novabad and Khait, which have repeatedly suffered from devastating earthquakes, are buried in gardens.

The chain of ridges Malguzar - Nuratau is cut by the gorge of the Sanzar river, the narrow part of which is called the Tamerlane or Iron Gates - in the past, the approaches to the capital of Timur, Samarkand, were blocked in this defile by gates with an iron chain. Now both the highway and the railway from Tashkent to Samarkand are laid here. Sanzar would have dried up, if even in the last century it had not been flooded by a canal diverted from Zeravshan through the tip of the Turkestan Range. Sanzar has muddy water even in autumn - after all, it is Zeravshan, fed by glaciers.

The southwestern branch of Gissar, the Baisuntau-Kugitangtau chain, reaches its tip into Turkmenistan and approaches the Amu Darya. The well-known mountain pass Iron Gates (another one!), this time customs, opens the way from Karshi and Samarkand to Termez, it is called the Great Uzbek Highway. Baysuntau and its spurs also amaze with the fantastic colors of rocks. Sulfur deposits of Gaurdag are important in the mountains of Kugitang. Enchanting caves are known with streaks of marble-like onyx of rare transparency. The reserves of the Karlyuk and Karabil deposits of potash salts amount to billions of tons.

To the east, deeply indented gorges are heaped South Tajik mountains, composed, like part of Gissar, by Meso-Cenozoic variegated strata. The eastern ridges of the middle mountains rise in the form of steps leading to the Pamirs, already clearly higher than the “average” ones (up to 3-4 kilometers). The western ones rarely exceed 2 kilometers, but they look like low mountains, because the basins separating them themselves lie at levels of about a thousand meters. Among the mountains there are massifs made of pure rock salt - such is the snow-white, although snowless mountain Khoja-Mumin.

The pride of Tajikistan is the gigantic Nurek hydroelectric power station, the “eighth wonder of the world”, with a capacity of 2.7 million kilowatts, which curbed the wild Vakhsh. Following it, on the same Vakhsh, the even more powerful Rogun hydroelectric power station, the most powerful in Central Asia, rises. And in total, in the Vakhsh cascade, counting the three previously created stations in the lower reaches, nine HPPs with a total capacity of up to 10 million kilowatts will operate.

Nurek owes its name to the Tajik word "norak" - a light, a light, a ray. In the Pulisanginsky Gorge, a dam has been erected that has risen to 300 meters - this is the height of the Eiffel Tower! In conditions of the greatest seismic activity, this is a miracle of hydraulic engineering. In response to the shaking, the dam only needs to compact, promising to withstand the pressure of the 10.5 cubic kilometers of water it holds. The reservoir, which flooded the Vakhsh valley for 70 kilometers, argues with its blueness, shape and size with the Sarez Lake of the Pamirs. Here, shipping to the alignment of the Rogun hydroelectric power station arose. An almost 14-kilometer tunnel transfers its water to the neighboring Dangara Valley. And below the Nurek Vakhsh is blocked by another one - the Baipaza dam. She raised the river level by 50 meters; From here, water was let through a seven-kilometer tunnel through the ridge into the Yavan and Obikiik valleys, which until recently were waterless. It is in these three valleys that the fine-staple Egyptian cotton ripens.

The Vakhsh valley, oddly enough, is not a synonym for the entire Vakhsh valley above and below Nurek, but an independent proper name applied only to the lower reaches of the river. It was this that glorified it when this area was the first object of irrigation in the dry subtropics of Tajikistan. Here, long before Nurek, a cascade of three hydroelectric facilities was created. The 40-meter-high head dam made it possible to accumulate 10 cubic kilometers of water and flood the valley for 15 kilometers.

Unfortunately, even the most useful landscape transformations have their downsides. Silt settles in the reservoirs, which previously enriched the fields and puttied the cracks in the bottom of ditches. Clarified water has become depleted in nutrients - they can be replaced by fertilizers, although not cheap ones. But who will keep the intensified filtration with losses from a quarter to a half of the volume of water? And here considerable funds are needed for lining thousands of linear kilometers of the irrigation and drainage network.

Much has changed in the Tigrovaya Balka Reserve. In the 1930s, more than 400 square kilometers of tugai thickets in the lowlands at the confluence of the Vakhsh and Pyanj were taken under protection. Nature here amazed with the virgin density of thickets of turanga poplar and dzhida, thickets of tamarisk and wild sugar cane. Until 1959, there were tigers in the reed jungle. The glory of the "beam" was the tugai Bukhara deer hangul - the "royal flower" of the Persian poets. There were wolves, jackals, hyenas, reed cats - houses. The world of birds was rich: slow swans, Indian starlings of the lane, pheasants, considered the most beautiful in the world. There are also huge monitor lizards, a lot of snakes. The reserve was literally teeming with life.

The huge withdrawal of Vakhsh waters for irrigation changed the entire regime of reserved land and water: the channels began to shallow and dry up, reeds died, animals began to scatter ... Well, close the reserve and drain its lands in order to put them under cotton? No, it has been found useful to extend the protected regime of this "laboratory in nature", but not as a standard of the primordial landscape, but as an object of study of the processes that arose as a result of its forced transformation.

The richest of the southern Tajik valleys is the Gissar. It stretched out in a wide strip for more than a hundred kilometers. It is wetter here than in the lower foothill valleys (over 500 millimeters of rain per year), and there are also excessively heavy downpours, leading to mudflows and floods. The conditions of dry subtropics are at the limit - it can be cold at a kilometer height. Nevertheless, flowering oases appeared in the Kafirnigan and Varzob valleys - Ordzhonikidzeabad and Dushanbe, in which the young capital of Tajikistan, Dushanbe, grew up.

From the city of Osh, which lies at the eastern head of the Fergana basin, the Trans-Pamir Highway begins. It rises to the Alai Range to the Taldyk Pass 3650 meters high, from where a very short descent leads to the Alai Valley, the bottom of which itself is raised above 3 kilometers. This trench is a seismic trough, but it did not descend: it rose along with its sides, only lagging behind them in the course of uplift. This is how a dol arose, stretching for 190 kilometers with a width of 25-40.

Erosion of the red sandstones of the Zaalai Range gave a red color even to the water of the main river of the valley. In Turkic-speaking Kyrgyzstan, the upper course of the river is called Kyzylsu, and below its confluence with Muksu, in Farso-speaking Tajikistan, it receives the name Surkhob; both names mean "red water".

The Alai Valley is often considered the threshold of the Pamirs - it already has many typical Pamir features in the landscape, the average annual temperatures are close to the tundra (+ 10 °), there are almost no days without frost, meager mountain semi-deserts dominate in the western half. But unlike the Pamirs, in the eastern part of the valley, luxurious mountain-steppe and even meadow pastures with highly nutritious grass stands are concentrated - large flocks of sheep and shoals of horses feed here; even from Fergana cattle are driven here - in the summer it accumulates over a million heads! On the more stony foothills and on the ancient moraine hills at the foothills of the Trans-Alay one can see herds of yaks - a clearly Pamir trait.

Like two snow-white ridges of clouds, hovering over the bottom and sides of the valley are strips of transcendental peaks and ridges. On the Zaalai Ridge, many of them exceed 6 kilometers, and Lenin Peak even reaches 7134 meters - this is the third highest peak in our country. A picture of rare grandeur, however, with such absolute marks, one could expect more. This is what the lower alpine ridges of the Caucasus look like when you look at them from the plains of Ciscaucasia. After all, here the base is raised up to 3 kilometers, so that the excess of the ridges above the bottom of the valley turns out to be relatively moderate.

In Persian, "pa-mi-ihr" means "the foot of the sun god" - is this not where the name Pamir came from? And another elevating definition has grown together with it - “the roof of the world”. Truly a roof raised over the world at levels from 4 to 7 kilometers. The inhabitants of the Pamirs joke that they are 4 kilometers closer to the sky than the rest of the inhabitants of the Earth. Only people living in the high parts of the Tibetan and Bolivian highlands can argue with them.

Pamir is crowned with the highest peak of the country - Communism Peak (7495 meters, since 1998 it has been renamed Ismail Somoni Peak. - Note. ed.). And how many more are the only and greatest! The deepest gorges and the longest glaciers. Neighborhood of huge accumulations of ice and mountain-desert lack of water. Incredible under such low latitudes (37-39 °) area of ​​permafrost soils. Here, as nowhere else, the size of geological catastrophes occurring before the eyes of man is colossal, but here, higher than anywhere else in our country, settlements penetrate and high-mountain agriculture finds its upper limit ...

What are the boundaries of the Pamirs? In the broad sense of the word, this highland extends beyond the borders of our country. In the west, the mountains of Badakhshan continue on the left bank of the Pyanj. In the south, the Eastern Hindu Kush is also easily considered another latitudinal range of the Pamirs. To the east of our border, the relief and landscape of the Pamir type are characteristic of the Kashgar mountains, that is, the tip of the Kunlun. Highest peaks The “Kashgar Pamir”, and hence the entire highlands, are foreign giants Kongur (7719 meters) and Mustagata (7546 meters). But let us agree to apply the concept of Pamir only to the Soviet territory.

The structure of the bowels here is complex and mosaic, as few places are in our mountains. Masses of enormous thickness, measured in tens of kilometers, are crumpled and crushed. Alpine folds and faults captured both Cenozoic and Mesozoic sedimentary formations, while older and more rigid structures were crushed and heeled. The highlands warped and crumpled even in the process of the newest arched uplift, which had a colossal scope here. The strata deposited at the foothills geologically recently, in the Paleogene, are now at heights of up to 5 kilometers in the Zaalai and Peter the Great ranges.

There are ridges-monuments to pre-existing mountains. The cliffs of Darvaz seem to be stuffed with stones. These are fragments of those mountains that arose here in the early stages of the uplifting of the Pamirs, but were destroyed. Crushed stone and pebbles reminiscent of this, cemented into conglomerates, are lifted up, they are called Darvaz. Geologists appreciate their gold content, and tourists admire the diversity of cliffs - colorful and pebbles, and the cement that holds them together.

The intrusions of granite magma and eruptions of ancient volcanoes contributed to a variety of mineralization - there are ores of molybdenum and tungsten, many rare metals, deposits of rock crystal, mica, gems.

On the border of the Eastern and Western Pamirs, the highest uplift of the entire highlands is reared - almost the meridional ridge of the Academy of Sciences. Peaks such as Communism Peak and the country's fourth-highest seven-thousander Peak Evgenia Korzhenevskaya (7105 meters) are concentrated on it. Along this ridge lay the longest (77 kilometers) glacier named Fedchenko. It is tree-like - it receives more than 30 tributary glaciers. The ice in this numb river still flows, moving an average of 250 meters a year.

Pamir is a majestic center of modern glaciation. Over a thousand glaciers occupy an area of ​​8 thousand square kilometers. In the recent past, although the snow line was reduced by only 400-700 meters, the area of ​​the glaciers was many times larger. The length of some of them exceeded 200 kilometers, and in the east there were ice "caps" of the Scandinavian type.

The glaciers of the Pamirs have to be closely studied. This has been done for many years, in particular, by the highest hydrometeorological observatory in the world above the Fedchenko glacier, located at an altitude of 4169 meters.

We used to think that glaciers flow slowly. Pamir forced to change this opinion. Some of them, as if pulsating, accumulate such excesses of matter and force that they episodically push their ice down the valley with a piston at a speed of tens and even hundreds of meters per day.

With a roar, the ice ram advances, bombarding the slopes with "suitcases" of ice blocks falling from its edges, and with its façade cutting forward, like a bulldozer's knife, it cuts off moraine hills, shrubs, and buildings. This is exactly how the enraged "ice bear" - the Medvezhiy glacier - behaved in the spring of 1963. His advance cut off the path to the development of crystal, made people homeless. An uncontrolled ice flow blocked the way to one of the sources of the Vanch. If 14 million cubic meters of water were to break through the ice dam, a terrible shaft from the drained lake would roll down the entire Vanch, bringing incalculable devastation. At the cost of strenuous efforts, the water was dumped and diverted. The glacier "has gone mad" and calmed down. But the pulse is the pulse, it has its own rhythm, and after 10 years the "bear" gained strength again, as predicted by glaciologists. Much has been repeated, 16 million cubic meters of water have already accumulated in the lake. Only after a new advance in 1978, the lake was finally lowered.

The boundary between the Eastern and Western Pamirs is considered to be the line of the “valley fracture”, to which the deep incision of the thalwegs has managed to spread to the east. To the west of this winding line, the valleys sharply narrow, turn into gorges, and their gentle channels become steep - this is the Western Pamir. On its ridges, only partially destroyed sections of plateaus with landscapes of the Eastern Pamir type survived; on the other hand, the upper reaches of individual western gorges made their way in deep cuts far to the east.

The Eastern Pamirs are a world of extremes, more reminiscent of the highland deserts of Central Asia. Desert moraine and rubble plains at altitudes of 4-5 kilometers; ridges with 6-kilometer peaks, but in appearance only medium-altitude and even low-mountain - they rise only a kilometer and a half above the soles. Some plateaus are so vast that the mountains from them are visible only in a gray haze near the horizon. “The Pamirs are a flat palm of the earth on which the sky lies,” Yuri Sbitnev managed to generalize!

A lot of things helped here to preserve the ancient leveled surfaces: wide arches of folds; distance from cutting gorges; mitigating role of ancient glaciers - they slid down from the ridges to the foothills and merged into a single foothill mass, as now in Alaska. The valleys are littered with moraine rubble, sometimes as if tightly rolled, and depressing with the barren bark of solonchaks and takyrs.

The air is rarefied, the pressure is sharply reduced, the snow border runs along the heights of 4.5-5.5 kilometers. Frosts down to minus 50 °, despite the brightness of the southern high sun. There is a frozen microrelief on saline soils: typically tundra stone polygons, and on these stones there is a completely southern desert tan - after all, here we have the highest indicators of solar radiation.

Moist winds penetrate here through the ridges only in a downward flow and almost do not give precipitation - they fall only 75 - 100 millimeters per year.

Among the deserts, lakes turn blue: drainless - Shorkul, Karakul and flowing - Rangkul. The most remarkable of them Karakul is the “black lake”, which stretches in a tectonic depression at an altitude of more than 3900 meters - 100 meters above the famous Titicaca in the Andes, with a mirror 20-30 kilometers in diameter. Its bitter-brackish water freezes for more than half a year. Depths reach almost a quarter of a kilometer, and the ancient glacier, which covered it with a continuous array, also participated in the final design of the appearance of the depression. In the underwater foot of the coastal cliffs, powerful layers of non-melting ice are visible.

Konstantin Simonov Karakul revealed not black, but deep blue with white - these were the colors of water and ice: “And around the blue-white lake there are red camel mountains with prickly peaks cut into the light blue sky. This landscape is reminiscent of Roerich's paintings, as, by the way, very much in the Pamirs in general resembles them.

In calm weather, this is a reservoir with azure-clear water. But more often dashing dusty winds blow here. During the storm north, the lake turns gray and even blackens from boiling ripples and swells. Isn't that where his "black" name comes from?

To the north of the lake, the snow-icy Zaalai Range stretches for 290 kilometers, topped by Lenin Peak and crossed by the Trans-Pamir Highway (it is also called simply the Pamir Highway). It took a lot of effort to build the tract. They are also needed for the daily operation of the track in a harsh climate and oxygen starvation - both people and motors feel it. Avalanches are terrible in winter. "Route of increased difficulty" is called this motorway of year-round operation. The length of the tract is 700 kilometers; it does not cross the Pamir square diagonally, but runs along the peripheral legs of its outskirts.

In the northern part, the road leads through two famous passes: Kyzylart (red pass) - through the Zaalai Range at an altitude of 4280 meters and the ever-snowy Akbaital (white stallion) south of Karakul - 4641 meters. In the vicinity of Murgab, the desert is full of only rare nondescript bushes of teresken, the only fuel in these places; it also serves as food for yaks. Life processes are so slow that even tiny specimens of teresken can be several hundred years old. On rare patches of pastures, only nomadic pastoralism is possible: food is so scarce that not a single pasture, except for yak tereskenniks, will feed cattle throughout the season. And yet, tens of thousands of sheep and many thousands of meat-and-wool yaks graze here, which, moreover, give excellent milk. Yaks are unpretentious, “frost-resistant”, they spend the whole year in the open air and do not complain about either low pressure or a mean oxygen regime.

Biologists and agronomists breed early-maturing varieties of barley, rye, and vegetables at the Chichekty experimental station near Murgab. The Naizatash pass, 4137 meters high, leads the route to the Alichur valley. Along the way, you can't stop admiring the intricate weathering figures of creamy conglomerates and brick-red sandstones. This is one of the most beautiful sections of the route. Bristly and comb-like ridges, domes, pyramids, a variegation of yellow, brown and purple colors combined with the whiteness of snow...

If you leave the tract and turn along the path to the underlying segment of the Alichur valley, you get to another lake - Yashilkul (green), formed at an altitude of 3734 meters by a landslide that struck eight centuries ago. Even today it looks as if it had just been poured into a strange valley 22 kilometers long among exposed pale-yellow steeps. Deep bays are separated by curtain capes, and the whiteness of a 6-kilometer giant, Pathor Peak, shines above. The lake has always attracted anglers. In 1979, the Siberian peled was released into it.

Alichur flows into Yashilkul, and the Panj tributary Gunt flows out of it. In its valley, having overcome two more passes, the tract descends. Here the Eastern Pamir landscapes end and the Western Pamir landscapes begin: immense depths, shady gorges open up, green bushes, knotty birch trees appear. Isn't this the most mountainous country in our country - the relief is not cut so deep and steep anywhere! Yes, and on the whole Earth, perhaps, only in two places: in the Peruvian Andes and in the east of the Himalayas, you can see such a depth of dismemberment of the mountains - the ridges rise 4-5 kilometers above the valleys, which are cut here to a level of 2 kilometers above the sea. There are no number of rocky cliffs, there are planes of kilometer height, almost sheer.

The deepest furrow was dug by Pyanj, dividing the steep slopes of Badakhshan into approximately equal parts - our Western Pamir and Afghan Badakhshan. The cracks of the Pyanj itself and its right tributaries cut the first of them into large parallel ridges. The Obikhingou valley in the upper reaches of the Vakhsh separated from the Darvaz ridge the extreme northwestern bastion of the Pamirs - the ridge of Peter the Great.

The Western Pamir is wetter than the Eastern. A powerful glaciation could develop here, but the ridges are so narrow and the slopes are steep that usually only small hanging glaciers fit on them. Frequent earthquakes shake off not only snow, but also stone landslides. Superiority among the landslide-dammed lakes, both in size and beauty, is, of course, held by Lake Sarez.

In 1911, about 2 cubic kilometers of stone, weighing 6 billion tons, collapsed into the Murgab valley from a seismic shock! The village of Usoi was buried under the collapse, and this tragic event entered geology under the name of the Usoy dam. In front of a dam hundreds of meters high, a lake began to accumulate. By the end of the year, it flooded the village of Sarez, which lay higher in the valley, and three years later it swallowed up the valley for 70 kilometers. The narrowness of the gorge did not allow the lake to spread more than one and a half kilometers in breadth, and the depths in it arose up to five hundred meters. Filtration through the dam prevented the water from overflowing over the top (there were still 50 meters before overflow), and finally, by 1921, its mirror stabilized at around 3239 meters.

Sarez Lake and the blockage that gave birth to it are rare monuments of geological catastrophes of this size, which arose before the eyes of man. A meeting with Sarez excites everyone who was lucky enough to get to him along the path from Yashil-Kul or by helicopter. Some visitors are intoxicated by its "sky blueness", others - by "cobalt blue", comparable in density to dark blue ink, and those who spent the evening on the lake even remember the anthracite blackness of the waters. The frame of the lake is formed by reddish-brown, and higher along the slopes and reddish rocks, as if wrinkles pitted with dry hollows.

The lake has accumulated up to 15 cubic kilometers of water. But is a natural rockfill dam strong enough? Its breakthrough in case of digging underground runoff or overfilling the lake with new landslides of rocks hanging over it can lead to disastrous consequences. In a few hours down the Bartang valley, and even further down the Amu Darya down to Termez, an all-washing wave of flood will sweep. Shouldn't the lake be drained at least 100 meters to reduce the danger?

Ameliorators and power engineers look at Sarez with envy: this is both a supply of water for irrigation and a ready-made reservoir for a hydroelectric power station. They propose to pour the lake from its three-kilometer heights through a tunnel or a bypass channel down the valley, where it will be warmer and where another, but obviously heavy-duty dam 300 meters high, will allow pouring a new, this time man-made Sarez, with a capacity equal to natural. It will also be convenient to locate the water intake devices of the hydroelectric complex that feeds the irrigated lands, and powerful power plants will start working on the water drain route.

The Pamir continues to rise and makes the rivers tirelessly deepen their beds. There are extremely narrow or completely absent floodplains. Planes suitable for agriculture - dasht, occur only on the mouth drifts of tributaries and on rare fragments of river terraces, which are “suspended” on steep slopes by balconies at a height of hundreds of meters above the channels.

And they bring soil to dashts in baskets!

From the villages, clinging along the slopes like swallows' nests, truly eagle horizons open up. Dizzying paths are laid along the steeps over the abysses along the narrow cornices and one-way balcony bridges - these are the famous ovrings. No less bold routes are drawn along the steeps by hanging irrigation canals, which take water high in the mountains and supply it along the slopes to the upland fields.

Mountain Tajiks cultivate naked barley, beans, peas, flax, and millet. With artificial irrigation, wheat and rye will be born, mulberry, apple, and apricot will bear fruit. The lower slopes are occupied by a mountainous semi-desert with prickly hedgehogs of pillow-shaped shrubs and rare "grass trees" - umbrella tall grasses. The annual drive of sheep flocks to the overlying steppes and meadows sometimes requires acrobatic dexterity from both shepherds and animals.

The main source of the Pyanj - Vakhdzhir and its continuation Vakhandarya are located in Afghanistan. From Lake Zorkul, elevated to a height of 4125 meters, the Pamir River begins. After gurgling through the terrible gorge cut through the Wakhan Range, it meets the Vahandarya, and together they form the Pyanj proper. As far as Ishkashim, it flows southwest along the longitudinal valley separating the Vakhan Range from the foreign Hindu Kush, and from here it turns sharply to the north. The left bank here is the wild and formidable steeps of the Afghan Badakhshan. On the right bank, where mountains are just as huge, signs of development are clearly visible: electric fires powered by a power plant in Ishkashim, forest plantations, roads replacing former ovrings, irrigated fields ...

The energy power of Pyanj is enormous. It is realistic to create gigantic hydroelectric power stations - Rushanskaya with a capacity of 3 million kilowatts and Dashtijumskaya - 4 million.

Going down along the Pyanj to Khorog from the south, it is a sin to pass one of the most famous places in the Pamirs - Garm-Chashma. We turn into the canyon of one of the tributaries of the Pyanj and climb it towards the white giant - Mayakovsky Peak. Among the bare rocks, a staircase of petrified waterfalls opens up to the eye - terraces of snow-white, yellowish or bluish calcareous tufa deposits with reservoirs filled with blue water. It bubbles in places and even gushing up to one and a half meters, forming microgeysers. At springs with a temperature of 50 - 75 ° there is a hydropathic, one of the highest in the world (at an altitude of about 3 kilometers). Luxurious cascades of sinter terraces are comparable to the world's treasures of natural architecture - with the Mammoth Terraces of Yellowstone America's Park and the New Zealand cascades of Tetarat - geysers were also the main architects of masterpieces there.

Along one more gorge we will get to the anciently developed gems of the “ruby mountain” Kuhi-Lal (it was mentioned by Marco Polo, who passed here). Frets, as well as yachts, were called rubies in the old days, but here they mine, now with the help of modern mechanisms, raspberry and amber-colored spinels. And there are green-blue amazonites, honey-colored sphenes, blue and “tea” topazes, the most transparent scapolite, dark cherry rutile, jasper, mica, asbestos, talc in the Pamirs ... The extraction of many treasures is hindered by their sky-high inaccessibility. However, there is even a coal mine at an altitude of 5200 meters - this is higher than the top of Kazbek. Coal is given here not "to the mountain", but from the mountain!

In the Shakhdara valley, deposits of the “heavenly stone” of lajvar, lapis lazuli, are glorified, about which Marco Polo wrote that the best azure in the world is extracted from it. A pack trail has been cut to a 5-kilometer height to the “blue gorge” of Lyadzhvar-dary, and the extracted blocks of blue stone are taken out by helicopters.

Decorated with poplars, Khorog, the center of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region and the highest of such centers, is located at a level of 2200 meters. And a high-mountain botanical garden has been created 10 meters above Khorog. Plant varieties adapted to the harsh conditions of the highlands are bred here, they help to introduce fruit plantations and berry plantations into the economy, cultivate fodder grasses and vegetables.

The western part of the tract (Khorog - Dushanbe) is often called the West Pamir. It is laid along the old caravan road, the movement along which took riders and packs up to 40 days. Now it is 550 kilometers of road, the most difficult profile (11 passes!) And full of so many serpentines and dizzying cornices that drivers call it a slalom track. Khorog is connected to Dushanbe and the airline, which takes only 45 minutes, but it is also associated with strong sensations. The plane, especially before descending in Khorog, repeats the whimsical bends of the gorge, narrowing in the "Rushansky window" to 50 meters, so the pilots call this path an air slalom track.

When the Panj breaks through the Yazgulemsky ridge, at the dam site of the future Rushanskaya hydroelectric power station, an unusual combination of a huge almost mirror-like surface, like that of flat rivers, with a truly mountainous speed of flow, strikes. The mountainous Volga was named this part of the Pyanj by the traveler N. N. Sushkina.

Towards the mouth of the Yazgulem with dark brick water and further at the intersection of the gorge with the Vanch ridge, and even below the mouth of the Vanch, the most spectacular part of the Pyanj gorge is located. The smooth planes of the plumb lines rise hundreds of meters above the river, forming scenes, like scenery in 5-6 plans. The surface of the river is interrupted by rapids cascades, deployed up to one and a half meters along the front. Below the mouth of the Vanch Pyanj, and with it the tract rush to the northwest. But from the village of Kalai-Khumb, Pyanj goes southwest to the Dashtidzhum gorge and South Tajikistan, while the road climbs along the beautiful Rabotsky gorge to the pass through Darvaz 3270 meters high. The path down the brick-red canyon of Obi-Khingou coincides with the border between the ridge of Peter the Great and the southern Tajik branches of Gissar-Alay.

Mountains of Southern Turkmenistan. The great deserts are not completely bordered by ranges. To the west of the branched Hissar-Alay, the mountains are interrupted by the Karakum, and even to the west the deserts are again framed by mountains, only belonging not to Central, but to Western Asia (the marginal ranges of the Iranian Highlands penetrate into the south of Turkmenistan). In the east, the edges of the North Afghan Paropamiz are visible - the low mountains of Karabil and Badkhyz, to the west - the Kopetdag mountains (the northern barrier of the Turkmen-Khorasan mountainous country) and the "island" blocks of two Balkhans. In fact, this is already part of Eastern Middle-earth.

The Kopetdag towers over Ashgabat, stooped, much more unprepossessing than the northern Tien Shan Alatau over Alma-Ata and Frunze. Only when viewed from afar, from the desert, it seems to grow, rises to its full 2-3-kilometer height. And yet Ashgabat residents are proud of Kopetdag, love to relax in its shady gorges and green valleys. The closest and most popular of them is Firyuza with its gardens, park and the legendary multi-stemmed plane tree "Seven Brothers".

Steep and flat-topped ridges stretch for more than 600 kilometers, occupying a width of up to 175 kilometers in the west and only 20-50 kilometers in the southeast. The border divides the mountains into Soviet and Iranian parts: their northwestern third almost entirely belongs to the Soviet Union, the remaining two thirds are larger than Iran.

As if along a ruler, the northeastern foot of the mountains is drawn, separating them from the flat Karakum. This is a trace of a moving seam, along which the Kopetdag is elevated above its foothill trough and even pushed over it. From the cracks that form a whole “thermal zone” here, warm springs beat, including the cave lake Coe near Baharden and the healing waters of the Archman resort.

Just as straightforward is the Forward Chain, sawn by gorges into many links. It is separated from the rest of the ridges by a vast trough - the Great Kopetdag Valley. But the frontier ridges lying behind it are true to the same strike only in the southeast. To the west of the Nokhur knot of crowding, they bend, forming an independent arc, convex to the north. Huge neighboring mountain arcs of Elburz and Paropamiz are docked in it - on the map they look like garlands sagging to the south. Here the Kopetdag ridges diverge: the border ranges stretch to the southwest, to Elburz, and the forward chain steadily follows to the northwest. The rivers of the Atrek basin flow in the longitudinal valleys between the branching ridges, the main one being the Sumbar.

Alpine jagged ridges are not here. Even the higher ones (2.5-3 kilometers) barely reached the snow line during the past glaciations. Each large ridge is accompanied by parallel, lower ridges. The skeletons of their ridges form the steps of huge stairs - witnesses to the change of stages of alignment and uplifts. From the most ancient stage, still pre-Quaternary, the Siberian ridge plateau has been preserved - its name speaks of the severity of the climate. And the youngest steps, the foothills, are the raised plumes of the foothills, bizarrely cut by a dense network of ravines, - bairs, tiers of bad lands.

In the course of kilometer-long recent uplifts, corrugation continued - the arches of the ridges grew faster, and the valleys lagged behind. There were shifts and cracks. During the earthquake in May 1929, Mount Dushak rose so much that in the Sekizyaba gorge cutting through it, a dammed lake remained for many years, which arose in front of the all-stone threshold.

On the night of October 5-6, 1948, the Kopetdag trembled even more. The epicenter had 10 points, but 8-9 were enough to destroy most of the buildings in Ashgabat. Even many years later, one cannot read without excitement about the days of disaster, the scale of destruction and casualties, about the enormous assistance provided to the population of the collapsed city.

It was crumpled into folds by the Meso-Cenozoic, which means that the Kopetdag is a very young folded structure. From Cretaceous limestones and sandstones, massive angular forms are hewn, while from Cretaceous and Paleogene marls and clays, as well as from younger loose rocks, bad lands. The last pre-Quaternary advance of the Caspian penetrated into the western valleys.

The sedimentary strata contain barite and witherite. But the main wealth of the bowels is water. Before the construction of the Karakum Canal, their underground plume, penetrating under the sloping plain, was the only source of foothill oases in Turkmenistan and its capital. Although ditches “carried the murmur from the mountains” along the streets, everyone knew that the main moisture here was extracted from underground, with the help of karez - damp and gloomy galleries, fixed from the surface with chains of wells.

And yet, the strip of foothill oases has been inhabited since ancient times. In ancient times, here was the city of Nisa, the heart of the power that began to rise - Parthia; all that remains of it today is a pale-gray settlement unearthed by excavations with the most valuable traces of ancient (Parthian) and later (medieval) culture.

Now the landscape of the pre-Kopet Dag oases has dramatically changed. Of course, Ashgabat, as before, endures 40-degree heat and dust storms, but how much easier it is to endure with an abundance of shady greenery and water! The kyariz were replaced by boreholes. But the main drinker of the foothills is the already mentioned "Karakumdarya", the channel.

The intramountain valleys of the west are more modestly provided with water. This is annoying: after all, on the middle Sumbar, in the Karakala region, subtropical crops can be cultivated. Here in the surrounding valleys there is a world of lush forest gardens, the eastern avant-garde of the Hyrcanian (Northern Iranian) mountain-forest landscapes, penetrating into the depths of the mountains like bright green tentacles. Over 40 species of wild fruit flourish in these valleys and form forests even more lush than in the south of Hissar-Alay and the Tien Shan - here the Hyrcanian center of distribution of pre-Quaternary relics is closer. Gorgeous are the groves of walnuts, figs, pomegranates, wild apple trees, pears, plums, medlars - all this is entwined with wild grapes (and perhaps even wild since Parthian times).

The main miracle of the Sumbar Valley is not a tree, but a completely nondescript nightshade grass, discovered in 1938 by the botanist O. F. Mizgireva, which turned out to be a new species of mandrake unknown in the world flora - a mysterious plant of physicians in Tibet and Middle-earth. Tonic, vitamin-rich, medicinal, similar to ginseng (even the root of both resembles a human figure), this plant turned out to be a relative of tomato, potato, henbane, nightshade - it resembles them in the shape of the stem and leaves, and tomato and fruit, but combines the aroma and taste of tomato, melon and pineapple. Unfortunately, so far it has not been possible to introduce this miracle into culture.

To protect the relic forests of Sumbar, thinned out by felling and grazing, the Syunt-Khosardag Nature Reserve was created.

An implausible landscape of a naked mountain desert opens up on the road from Kizyl-Arvat to Karakala. The stratifications, visible in the oblique sections of the folds, are painted so brightly and variegatedly that, if they were depicted in painting, they would resemble the paintings of abstractionists. The relief forms also look fantastic: a dense network of dry ravines, filled with water only during occasional showers - once every few years, cut the surface into small ridges, pyramids, cones, tightly pressed one to the other and as if cut with a comb. There are snow-white ridges, there are green, bluish, red, gray ... A dead desert of clown-colored obelisks and domes, stretching for many kilometers.

In the upper parts of the slopes of the border ranges, among the mountain steppes, juniper forests are found, and in the east - pistachio woodlands; in some places the landscape can be called a mountain forest-steppe. Vast spaces are prickly, like hedgehogs, cushions and large grasses with umbrella grasses taller than human growth. Astragalus cushions and ferula "grass trees" are valuable as sources of resins - gums, an important medicinal and technical raw material.

To protect mountain semi-deserts, steppes and areas of juniper sparse forests in the Central Kopetdag, the Kopetdag Reserve was created.

The fauna of the Kopetdag is colorful and exotic - it has many species common with the neighboring mountains of Central Asia, Transcaucasia, the Iranian Highlands and even India. In the gorges of Sumbar, in the first half of our century, a Turanian tiger was encountered (its last entry to us from Iran was recorded in 1970).

The eastern links of the strip of mountains of South Turkmenistan - Badkhyz and Karabil- arrays of hilly-rolling bad lands, and partly low mountains with heights up to a kilometer. Badkhyz is separated from the Kopetdag by a through gorge of the Tejen River, which in this section of its course, bordering on Iran, is called the name of its Afghan upper reaches - Harirud. And between themselves, Badkhyz and Karabil are separated by another through valley - it was cut through by the Murghab River, a neighbor of Tejen. The semi-desert alternates with woodlands - "pistachio savanna".

Pistachio, which Badkhyz is especially proud of, is not just a nut tree that gives tasty nuts, but also a source of technical raw materials. Oil, resin for the manufacture of varnishes and paints, tannins, and medicines are obtained from nuts. She is a champion of drought tolerance: her widely spread roots help her survive in the mountainous desert, so trees cannot grow close to each other.

The Badkhyz reserve protects the honorary members of the Red Book - the gazelle and the main pride of these places - the kulan, a wild relative of the horse and donkey, large-headed and fast-footed. Once it lived in the steppes of Ukraine and Kazakhstan, but now it is preserved in the wild only here.

Transcaspian plains and ridges— western links of uplifts in Southern Turkmenistan. Both Balkhan and the Krasnovodsk plateau, although they lie on the direct northwestern continuation of the Kopetdag, differ from it primarily in the greater antiquity of the bowels. Here, fragments of the Karakum plate are pushed up in the form of blocks, the folded base of which was crushed back in the Mesozoic. And the plains adjacent to them are very young troughs, only recently freed from under the waters of the Caspian Sea.

The Small and Big Balkhans are separated by the lower reaches of the dry channel of the Uzboy. The low-mountainous Small Balkhan does not even reach 800 meters, and the Big Balkhan is raised to almost 2 kilometers. The slopes of both are densely, like bad lands, indented with ravines and pitted with failures such as karst. But karst here is not in limestone and not in gypsum. Subsidence in a dry climate is also characteristic of marly-clayey soils; this is a special karst - clayey. Both boulders were raised by the latest movements simultaneously with the Kopetdag, so they do not differ much in relief from its ridges, the bowels of which were crushed much later. And in the appearance of the landscape there is a lot of Kopetdag.

The region of generous oil content adjoins the foothills of the Greater Balkhan. Among the dry lake Babakhodzha, the salts of which are still being developed, surrounded by the flat salt marsh Kelkor, where the Uzboy that flowed here once ended, a modest hill rises. Here in 1931 the first oil field was discovered. The oil mountain, Neftedag, became the core of the oil-industrial region. Near the Balkhan itself, on the path of dashing intermountain drafts, the well-planted city of Nebit-Dag, amazing for a recently still wild desert, has grown up. Of course, he did not have enough water, but now a water conduit has already been laid here from the Karakum Canal. And yet, with all the greenery, the city feels like in hell: the sun, the hot winds, and the slopes of the black mountain, the Big Balkhan, are to blame for this, breathing heat like from an oven.

Mollakar salt lake lurks nearby, framed by poplars and reeds. a. Its healing mud is used by the resort. And the Boyadag hill surprised me with a geyser that occasionally gushed from a well. Along the Balkhan bhor railway Ashgabat - Krasnovodsk goes to the sea.

The Balkhano-Kopetdag swell plunges towards the Caspian, continuing further in the underwater threshold, the transition to which is indicated on the shore by a land ledge. The edges of the plateau on this Krasnovodsk Peninsula are dissected into steep scallops. On a rocky terrace between the cliffs and the sea, the main seaport of Turkmenistan, the city of Krasnovodsk, arose. Its predecessor, the settlement of Uzun-Ada, was destroyed by an earthquake in 1895, after which the port was moved to its current location.

The city needs water. He took part of it from Nebit-Dag, received part from water carriers, and desalinated part from the Caspian Sea. But even here the Karakum Canal is already supplying a stream through the water conduit.

To the south of the Krasnovodsk Bay, an amphibious landscape extends - the sea left here only in the 30s. The Cheleken peninsula arose from a former island: the drying up of the Caspian contributed to its attachment to the land. Cheleken is oil-bearing, for a long time it produced mountain wax - ozocerite, rock salt, mineral ocher. Mineral springs flow here, mud volcanoes bubble up. Associated waters pouring out with oil give iodine and bromine. And oil is also extracted at sea, on the Turkmen "Oil Rocks" - this is how offshore oil production units are called here, following the example of well-known Baku ones.

Piled buildings look funny, saving water from wind surges. Now the sea has gone, and the piled buildings have remained, as if standing on tiptoe just in case.

Once the plain was irrigated by canals from the high-water Atrek. The majestic ruins of Messerian, one of the cities of medieval Dakhistan, which existed for a millennium and a half, have survived to this day. Now the Atrek dries up to the mouth, so it was necessary to dig a 26-kilometer canal to the receded sea in order to return the river spawning grounds to the Caspian fish.

The lower reaches of the Atrek are a unique region of our dry subtropics. Only here the date palm bears fruit! The experimental station in Kizyl-Atrek cultivates dozens of arid subtropical plants - olive, fig, almond, pomegranate, and even tropical - cacti, ornamental palm trees. Vegetables grow all year round outdoors. The subtropics will flourish with the arrival of water from the Karakumdarya; it will also transform the entire Messerian plain.

Thick and impassable are the tugais of the lower reaches and the delta of the Atrek - here are walls of cattail and reeds, thickets of tamarisk, entwined with vines of clematis and pavoi. Wild boars live in this jungle, and even in the 30s tigers came here to feast on them. In the Atrek tugai, on the former bottom of the dried-up Gasankuli Bay and along the coast of the Caspian Sea, protected lands and waters are spread - "winter apartments" for hordes of birds. Both land and coastal waters of the Caspian Sea are protected. Gasankuli Reserve, when its own bay dried up, was expanded towards the Cheleken and Krasnovodsk bays and made part of the larger Krasnovodsk Reserve, which exceeded 2.5 thousand square kilometers. More than 160 species of waterfowl, ankle-footed and other birds winter here, including swan, flamingo, gray goose. Red-throated goose, white-fronted goose, tundra herring gull and falcon arrive from the far north.

Winter gatherings of birds near Gasankuli are an element! Their density and abundance make one recall bird colonies. Flocks of flamingos are compared to pink clouds, pink foam...

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