Rafting travel

Rafting tours

If you a big fan of rafting Kyrgyzstan is just the perfect place for doing that! We have many mountainous rivers that are renowned among rafters. You will spend a wonderful time being there and you will get a lot of new impressions. Rafting in Kyrgyzstan is one of the most popular extreme activities. Do not miss your opportunity and come for rafting to Kyrgyzstan!

A big amount of mountainous rivers and wonderful sunny days always attract fans of white water to Kyrgyzstan since the second half of the last century. Thanks to the unique natural environment of the republic, there is a  big abundance of  rivers to provide routes of all different categories of complication suitable for both experienced sportsmen and beginners.

You can think of nothing more thrilling than a rafting tour along mountainous rivers. In Kyrgyzstan, the best rivers for this kind of travel are the Chu, Chon-Kemin, Kekemeren, Chatkal, and Naryn. Everything that is required to make your holiday memorable is here...rivers quietly flowing through the beautiful landscape, and rapids that will take your breath away and excite even the most skillful extreme sports fans. The rafting season on these rivers varies from April to October. The level of complication on the six-point scale depends on the season, since the melting of glaciers provides a high level of water in the rivers; and in hot summer months the waterline can vary each day. As follows, for some rivers, the most promising time for water tours is the end of August, and September.

The river Chu is the most suitable for commercial rafting. Parts of it flow at over 1,500m above sea level. The climate and temperature of the water can reach 15°-18°C from June till mid-September. That means that rafting can be done even without diving suits, and the complexity of obstacles cannot exceed five points. The section of the river that passes through the Bohom gorge is the national 'white water arena and an exclusive training site for the whole Central Asian region. Here in earliest times there lay one of the northern routes of the Great Silk Road. Due to its location near the capital of the country and infrastructure development over the years, the popularity of rafting in the Bohom gorge is strikingly growing both among the people of the country and foreign guests.

Rafting in the republic emerged not long time ago. Its future fate rested upon the enthusiasm of some junior rowing league coaches. It was only in 1992 when rafting first adopted a commercial direction having received the status of deliberate objective for the development of tourism in Kyrgyzstan.

During the times of Soviet Union the most extensive were many-day tours on the Chatkal, Kekemeren, Naryn rivers. The Chatkal river was among the five most predominant rivers in the USSR. Usually, during August and September, there used to come about 60 or 70 tourist groups here. For the last several years, one-or two-day tours on the rivers Chu and Chon-Kemin have accumulated the same popularity.

In spite of the half-century history of  exploring the Kyrgyz rivers by rafting fans, lots of rivers still remain unaware of rafts and kayaks. There are lots of hazards for pioneers to travel down the rivers, starting from their source. The most amazing is the rafting tour from Inylchek, the second biggest glacier in the world (59km), through the almost impassable Sarydzhaz canyon, 30km long. Or from the source of the Naryn which is the higher course of the second longest river in Central Asia the Syr-Darya.