Issyk kul legend

The Turkic for Issyk-Kul means ‘Warm Lake’. It was given this name because it never freezes over. The Chinese noticed the fact as long ago as the 1st с BCE, naming the lake Ze-Hi, meaning the same, and - either because of their love for poetry or disagreement - Tien-Chi (‘full lake’) and Yang-Hi (‘salty lake’). The Buddhist monk Xuanzang (Hsuan-tsang), who lived and preached in the 7th с CE, was lucky to see even dragons in the lake, which he reported in his chronicle. In his work Hudud al-Alam (‘The Limits of the World’) an unknown Persian geographer of the 10th с was the first to use the name Issyk-Kul and it has got stuck to the lake - the Pearl of Kyrgyzstan the lake is often nicknamed.