| Seok Pass | |
|---|---|
| Söök Pass | |
  Location in Kyrgyzstan | |
| Elevation | 4,028 m (13,215 ft) |
| Location | Kyrgyzstan |
| Range | Tian Shan |
| Coordinates | 41°44′53.7″N77°47′20.7″E / 41.748250°N 77.789083°E Coordinates: 41°44′53.7″N77°47′20.7″E / 41.748250°N 77.789083°E |
Seok Pass, Söök Pass or Suyak Pass (Russian : перевал Сёок, Kyrgyz : Сөөк ашуусу) is a mountain pass in the Terskey Alatau mountain range of Kyrgyzstan. Its elevation of 4,028 metres (13,220 ft) makes it the third highest mountain pass in Kyrgyzstan after Bedel Pass and Kyzylart Pass, and the highest one that is not on a border. It connects the Ala-Bel plateau, where the Kumtor Gold Mine is located, to the upper Naryn River valley.
Russian is an East Slavic language, which is official in the Russian Federation, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, as well as being widely used throughout Eastern Europe, the Baltic states, the Caucasus and Central Asia. It was the de facto language of the Soviet Union until its dissolution on 25 December 1991. Although, nowadays, over two decades after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russian is used in official capacity or in public life in all the post-Soviet nation-states, as well as in Israel and Mongolia, the rise of state-specific varieties of this language tends to be strongly denied in Russia, in line with the Russian World ideology.
Kyrgyz is a Turkic language spoken by about four million people in Kyrgyzstan as well as China, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Russia. Kyrgyz is a member of the Kyrgyz–Kipchak subgroup of the Kypchak languages, and modern-day language convergence has resulted in an increasing degree of mutual intelligibility between Kyrgyz and Kazakh.
The Terskey Alatau or Terskey Ala-Too is a mountain range in the Tian Shan mountains in Kyrgyzstan. It stretches south and southeast of Lake Issyk Kul, from the river Joon Aryk near Kochkor in the west to the far northeastern part of Kyrgyzstan. The length of the range is 354 km and the highest peak is Karakol Peak. Another high peak is Boris Yeltsin Peak.
Seok Pass is situated on the ancient Silk Road route connecting Barskon on Lake Issyk-Kul and Kashgar in China's Xinjiang province across the Tian Shan mountains. It is one of three major passes on this route, located between Barskoon Pass (elevation 3,819 metres [12,530 ft]) and Bedel Pass (elevation 4,284 metres [14,060 ft]). As the border road over Bedel Pass to China has remained closed since Soviet times, Seok Pass is nowadays significant mainly as a strategic gateway on the A364 road to the southeastern high mountain desert areas of Kyrgyzstan along the Chinese border, and to the border posts at Kara-Say and Ak-Shyrak.
The Silk Road was an ancient network of trade routes that connected the East and West. It was central to cultural interaction between the regions for many centuries. The Silk Road primarily refers to the terrestrial routes connecting East Asia and Southeast Asia with East Africa, West Asia and Southern Europe.
Issyk-Kul is an endorheic lake in the northern Tian Shan mountains in eastern Kyrgyzstan. It is the seventh deepest lake in the world, the tenth largest lake in the world by volume, and the second largest saline lake after the Caspian Sea. Issyk-Kul means "warm lake" in the Kyrgyz language; although it is surrounded by snow-capped peaks, it never freezes.
Kashgar, officially known as Kashi, is an oasis city in Xinjiang, People's Republic of China. It is one of the westernmost cities of China, near the border with Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, India and Tajikistan. With a population of over 500,000, Kashgar has served as a trading post and strategically important city on the Silk Road between China, the Middle East, and Europe for over 2,000 years.
The name means "Bone Pass" in Kyrgyz, a reference to the Urkun incident of 1916, when thousands of Kyrgyz died attempting to cross the border into China, fleeing from Tsarist Russian forces.
The Kyrgyz people are a Turkic ethnic group native to Central Asia, primarily Kyrgyzstan.
Tsar, also spelled czar, or tzar, is a title used to designate East and South Slavic monarchs or supreme rulers of Eastern Europe, originally Bulgarian monarchs from 10th century onwards. As a system of government in the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, it is known as Tsarist autocracy, or Tsarism. The term is derived from the Latin word Caesar, which was intended to mean "Emperor" in the European medieval sense of the term—a ruler with the same rank as a Roman emperor, holding it by the approval of another emperor or a supreme ecclesiastical official —but was usually considered by western Europeans to be equivalent to king, or to be somewhat in between a royal and imperial rank.
The condition of the pass can be seen using Google Maps satellite imagery.
