We set off on our big road tour of Kyrgyzstan today. There are only two train lines in Kyrgyzstan, and they don’t intersect, so road or air are the only ways to get around. My conservative estimate is that we drove over 2,000 km in 3 weeks which doesn't sound a lot, but about 20% of it was off road on mountain passes (very slow and windy ... also nausea inducing). Hopefully the map gives a rough indication of our route. Sorry I forgot the scale bar but, of course, north is up.
We headed towards Burana Tower. As I read the guide book to gen up on its history, I discovered that in 1941 Stalin had forcibly relocated Germans from the Volga region. Some ended up in this area of Kyrgyzstan and named local villages after home. And we were bizarrely just about to drive through one - Luxembourg. Home sweet home.
Burana tower is one of a handful of ancient monuments in Kyrgyzstan, what’s left of a minaret of Balasagun. 11th century Uyghur poet Yusuf Balasagun was born here and gave the town its name (after the minaret was initially established in 10th century). For interest, he also features on the 1000 Som note.
As for most things built a millennia ago, it has been damaged by the elements, earthquake and local builders. It now stands at 24 m, just over half its original height of 46 m. I also found my one and only survey point of the whole trip, and even this wasn't a government/survey one but a local site one.
Surrounding it is a collection of balbals, or Kurgan stelae. Balbals are gravestones but of a kind I haven’t seen before - an image of the dead person but no inscription to provide their name of dates of existence.
We popped up inside the tower. The internal stair case was unlit and only one person-width wide. Unfortunately there was there was no way of knowing if it was free until 1/3rd way up or down, so traffic jams ensued. Fortunately JC had a powerful torch in his camera bag (ever ready for darkness that man) which helped navigate.
We drove towards Lake Issy-Kul passing through the narrow Boom Gorge. This was a Silk Road route through the mountains and nestled closely in the bottom are the road, river and railway.
Many of the roads here were being upgraded but it didn't appear to be in a systematic way - there would be a couple of km tarmac'ed and then the next 10 km still dirt track. And then, suddenly, there would be a few km of tarmac'ed road again. To control the traffic flow they didn't use cones much, instead a line of stones marked out which side of the road was out of bounds. Sometimes you'd just come around the corner on a road/dual carriageway to find a dumper truck unloading stones blocking both carriageways.
Excitingly, for a Ruth, we spotted freshly cooked sweetcorn by the side of the road. It wasn't yet sweetcorn season so I didn't see this again, but I was glad to find a (the?) corn seller.
We stayed in a guesthouse by Issy-Kul (Kul means lake). Issy-Kul is the second largest high alpine/saline lake in the world, the eighth-deepest and eleventh-largest by volume. It was formed by a split/depression in the western end of the extensive Tian Shen mountain range. The mountains we could see out of our room were the southern split, the Terskey Ala-Too range.
We had time to wander down to the lake for a stroll. Yusup and Timur swam whilst we explored the shoreline. I slightly regretted not bringing bathing stuff but hey ho. I also get very cold too quickly anyway.
Not sure why there was a crutch here.
Supper out was nice except the only thing on the menu I could eat was, you've guessed it, fried aubergine with tomatoes in chilli sauce. The aubergine is battered before it’s fried and they use the same bottled sweet chilli sauce. This was my third dose of this dish and although it'll sustain me it’s not memorable, or rather it is memorable but not for the right reasons ;-).
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