TIANSHANSKY — Pyotor Petrovich Semyenov

In Balykchi is a statue of the Russian explorer Pyotor Petrovich Semyenov leading his packhorse. He was awarded the honourary title TianShansky by the Tsar in 1906, some 50 years after his expeditions, in recognition of his achievments.

Born in 1827, Semyenov was elected a member of the Russian Geographical Society in 1849 and later, in 1873, he became a vice-president of the society and he was to be an influential voice for the expansionist policy of the Russian Empire into Central Asia.

He translated the book «The Physical Geography of Asia» by the famous German geographer Karl Fitter from the original German into Russian and traveled to Italy, apparently climbing Mount Vesuvius seventeen times.

In August 1856, he arrived in Almaty — known at that time by the name Vernoe — and with an armed group of Cossaks, he crossed the Kungei Ala Too mountain range and entered the Issyk Kul hollow from the East. He mapped the lake, which he described as «A blue emerald set in a frame of silvery mountains.» Later he approached the lake through Boom Gorge and discovered that the Chui river did not flow through the lake as everyone had previously assumed.

He returned in 1857 and proceeded further into the Tian Shan mountains and discovered the upper reaches of the Naryn river. In July 1857, he crossed the Kok Jarmountain pass and became the first Westerner to penetrate the region around Khan Tengri and what was later to be named Peak Pobeda. He showed that the Tian Shan mountains were not made up from young volcanic rock formations — but were, in fact, a very old mountain range. He explored many of the regions glaciers.

He died in 1914.