Lake Markakol

(text provided by the East Kazakhstan Regional Museum of Local Lore)

Legends about Markakol are associated with the Kazakh word “mark” – a six-month-old lamb. Previously, there was a valley on the site of the lake, among which a spring was beating. Once a shepherd was herding a flock here, and a lamb-mark, the best, came to the spring of water to drink and … went underground. The shepherd saw, grabbed the lamb, pulled it out with difficulty. And then water gushed out of the spring into the valley. First I flooded the grass, then I climbed to the slopes of the mountains. So Markakol appeared. The wind drives the waves with foam crests – as if a herd of white lambs is really grazing on the lake. That’s really the Mark-kol.