Breathtaking Kyrgyzstan! (page 4 of 16)

Rewriting this:

We came across our first 4x4 pick-up trucks with camper shells coming from the southeast. You’ll spot them quickly by their license plates written in Chinese characters.

(I definitely saw way more converted trucks than any other car/van to sleep in)

Well, there you go, Christian opened the floodgates... 😇

Well, apart from construction workers and their bosses, plus some truckers, I only came across one car with Chinese tourists.

Worse than a 4x4 with a camper cell—they were in an RV...😄

It was a short night.

Kyrgyz youth are just as loud as French youth, and the noise is the same: boom, boom, boom...

Grandma must still be asleep—it’s her daughter who serves us breakfast with her very young child in tow.

Still no culinary wonders on the table...

The baby seems well-loved, and they won’t lack company on the school benches.

After the landscapes, it’s the youth of this country that strikes travelers!

Strollers everywhere, kids playing everywhere, pregnant young women everywhere.

What a contrast with aging France!

We’re now packing up and discover, puzzled, that the front right tire seems quite flat.

A compressor comes with the car, so we pump up the Sailun and check the others.

Something to keep an eye on!

Before leaving town, we make a small detour to the bakery we spotted the day before.

Finally, fresh bread straight from the oven.

Can’t wait for lunchtime—it smells divine!

We’re now in the middle of roadworks, crawling painfully toward Karakol.

A beautifully situated cemetery soon catches my eye, and we don’t miss the chance to take the track leading to it.

The graves face away from the mountain—too bad Mecca isn’t in that direction.

The dead are buried directly in the earth, with mounds marking the graves.

The wealthier ones surround their final resting place with either a yurt or a mausoleum. A photograph, a name, wood, marble—sometimes nothing at all, anonymity for eternity.



Our next stop is cheerier: a beach by the lake.

It’s not exactly peak season—just a few fishermen livening up the place.

The beach isn’t very clean, but what a backdrop!





No big hotels in this area—just small, more or less chic bungalows.

Too bad the road is often right behind them...

Something to double-check if you want to stay by the water!

The entrance to Skazka Canyon is just a few minutes from the lake.

A barrier blocks free car access to the site, so you’ll have to part with a few soms to avoid a long walk under the scorching sun.











Unlike yesterday, there are people here. Well, by Kyrgyzstan standards...

Three or four tourist minibuses, about ten private cars.

I think this is where we’ll see the most crowds—this excursion is on every itinerary!

The site is quite large, so the walk doesn’t feel crowded.

No one left in the next valley, Chong-Kyzyl-Suu!

We’ll only cover part of this track—the easy section that goes up to the hot springs.

A few red cliffs, then we follow the river, meadows, and forests.



It’s so idyllic, and we’re bummed we don’t have time to explore beyond this bridge.









All good things must come to an end—80 kilometers of roadwork, Karakol, phew, everyone out!

This city isn’t some dusty backwater with dirt roads but a major urban center with nearly 70,000 people.

And it’s touristy to boot!

No rococo guesthouse on the agenda, just a bit more modernity!

Plus plenty of restaurant options...

Our reserved room is a little outside the center, and we settle in for two nights.

A little rest, and suddenly it’s dinnertime.

Trout and laghman on the plates, cocktails in the glasses...

Temporary end to the dry spell.

"What a contrast with an aging France!"

I don’t know who you’re talking about. ;)

"A beautifully situated cemetery soon catches my eye" and it goes on.

Otherwise, some truly beautiful shots of those landscapes we particularly love.

I think the fertility rate is around 4.

And these aren’t babies born to forty-somethings, but to twenty-somethings...

I get the feeling Kyrgyz people still have that carefree attitude we’ve lost. They’re definitely not record-holders for anti-anxiety meds!

Cemeteries are often quite nice in this country.

The burial mounds feel a bit odd, especially since some don’t have anything to protect them.

It seems a bit like they’re left to the elements. The dead appear forgotten—at least physically.

Hi Agnes,

I get the feeling that Kyrgyz people still have the carefreeness we lack. They’re not the world champions of anti-anxiety meds!😄

They’re Muslim or Orthodox, and in either case, they believe in destiny. They don’t want to plan everything, anticipate everything, or counter everything, and they don’t have a moralizing state telling them how to be happy. They just live. So glad you got to see and experience that for yourself.

Michel

Fortunately, the landscapes more than make up for the food 😎

The more a people would be subjected to dictatorship, the happier they would be?

You’re defending some strange theories.

But we’re getting off-topic here.

If you stick to areas with restaurants, you still eat way better in Kyrgyzstan than in the US, Iceland, Norway, etc. 😉

(No need to break the bank to eat well here)

The more a people are subjected to dictatorship, the happier they’d be? You’re defending some strange theories. But we’re getting off-topic here.

Having a worldview—a Weltanschauung—that resonates with you and isn’t meant to be universal idealism has nothing to do with "being subjected to a dictatorship".🤪 Still glad Central Asia led you to notice certain things. At the start of our long exchanges about your trip, I actually predicted that.

Michel

I’ll let you ramble on.

You're right, to discuss with a degree of analysis and abstraction, you need two people.

Michel

I’ll let you ramble on.

You're right, to discuss with a degree of analysis and abstraction, you need two people.

Michel

It's mostly that for my part, I'm here to discover Kyrgyzstan through Agnès's eyes, not to argue for 400 messages about the benefits of dictatorship for peoples according to Tatra 😅. Off-topic.

Start a separate discussion if the topic fascinates you. But maybe I'm mistaken about the person who's supposed to lack analysis and abstraction 🙁

100% agree with Montagnard 74.

Beautiful and interesting travel journal that makes the country so appealing. 🙂

I’m counting on you for logistics.

Is my mission also to keep the mosquitoes away? 😇

To paraphrase Chesterton: "The traveler sees what they see, the tourist sees what they came to see... and the intellectual sees nothing at all, they just carry their baggage."

We can also call on George Orwell: "Some ideas are so absurd that only intellectuals can believe them."

@Perju

Yes... actually, Tiger’s version worked just fine for me...

Would "magnificent light cavalry" work? [;]

For my part, I'm here to discover Kyrgyzstan through Agnès's eyes, not to debate for 400 messages about the benefits of dictatorship for people according to Tatra.... Off-topic

Anyway, no harm done. Admittedly, Tatra got a bit carried away in his bold attempt to link the happiness and optimism of Kyrgyz people to an authoritarian regime, trying to cling to relativism and defiance of the global order. After all, this worldview is very much in the spirit of the times... But still, I agree, the argument was a bit of a mess. Pa-Tatra 😄

That said, I appreciate Tatra's intention to show Attila that he's glad she could see, like him, this amazing carefreeness of the Kyrgyz people. And even if they don't share the same views on the causes, I don't see any malice in it, and it doesn't deserve a "mosquito hunt" either. This isn't the Kyrgyz dictatorship here 😆

In the end, it's just a side note in this travel journal, and sitting in the back of the pickup, I'm looking forward to the rest of this beautiful journey!

Happiness—a vast topic...

This would fit right in with this discussion . 😇