The Cave of Amir Temur (Tamerlane)

The famous Tamerlane Cave (Amir Temur Guragani) is located in the Gissara Mountains near the village of Tashkent and the Kyzylgaza pass and administratively belongs to the Yakkabag district of the Kashkadarya region of Uzbekistan. The huge entrance to the cave is located at the foot of the Eastern Wall of a grand canyon cut by a river in limestone.

Getting into the cave is not easy – you need a guide. You can try to find an inconspicuous path yourself, descending stone steps into the canyon to a depth of more than 200 meters. The picturesque canyon is about 6 kilometers long and resembles the canyon of the famous adventure movie "McKenna's Gold". Bizarre rock towers surround you from all sides. Going down to the bottom of the canyon, you get into a stone "bag", which in some places does not even get sunlight. The width of the canyon narrows to 10-12 meters, then expands to 50-60 meters. The vertical walls of the canyon go up to 200-300 meters. Crossing to the right bank of the river and climbing the scree slope of the canyon, overgrown with bushes and juniper, we climb to the base of the rock wall, where the entrance to the cave suddenly opens.

The entrance to the cave looks like an arch up to 6 meters high and 7 meters wide. A huge corridor with a height of up to 10-15 meters goes deep. Bizarre calcite deposits, similar to jellyfish and stalactites, "flow down" from the walls. In places, the walls are finished with torches. There are almost no side branches in the main corridor, which goes deep into the mountain for about 400 meters, and it is impossible to get lost here. In the far part of the corridor, the walls and the vault (ceiling) narrow and you have to crawl further.

The distance between the floor and the ceiling is 45-60 cm. We do not recommend that bulky tourists (clothing size no more than 52), as well as people who are prone to claustrophobia and simply with a weak psyche, crawl into this course.

Having thus overcome 3 small narrow sections of 2-3 meters each, alternating with chambers where you can stand up to your full height, we get to the far part of the cave into a huge collapse hall measuring 60 x 30 m. The most powerful lantern barely illuminated the ceiling of the hall at a height of about 70 m. It's wetter here, the floor is covered with large boulders, and there are several branches. There is a small lake in the farthest hall of the cave. The lake is formed by a 10-meter waterfall falling from a crevice in the ceiling. The lake does not have a constant level and disappears in September and October, seeping through the rubble stones. We recommend taking a bright lantern and you will enjoy the magical sight of the jets of water falling into the lake. Visiting the cave takes about 2-3 hours (depending on the desire of the participants of the hike and the number of people in the group). There is a legend connected with the cave-the legend that the great Tamerlane (Amir Temur) and his companions found shelter in it, who were preparing for military campaigns here. This is hard to believe, since it is problematic to descend into the canyon on horseback and it is inconvenient for horses to graze on the bottom and slopes of the canyon. But in front of the cave there is a rather old elaborately built wall of large stones. Perhaps it was made by shepherds.