French adventures in Nomad's land
End of summer – the best time for trips, sun shines no so brightly, but weather is warm. August in Kyrgyzstan – is the real "velvet" season and very pleasant time to take rest at the Issyk-Kul Lake. So, our trip would go around Issyk-Kul and Son-Kul lakes. Our tourists were Olivie, Sabine, Nicole and Bernard – two wonderful family couples.
Nicole and Sabine – were physics teachers, Olivier- was an engineer and Bernard was a businessman.
We were so lucky, because the weather was very sunny and warm during all tour. And our guests didn’t feel Kyrgyz summer rain.
First our stop was in Komorchek canyons.
Komorchek canyons –occupy the eastern part of Kygrgyz Ala-Too, and the territory is so huge.
Dry canyons without any grass with red slopes (because of mineral pieces) seem an accumulation of fantastic tumbledown castles, ancient temples, modern skyscrapers, columns and steeples. Water, filling out cracks during summer storms, changed slopes into the labyrinth of pointed ridges, low mesas, roundish cupolas, pyramids and columns. If you have a look from a distance, it looks like shambles of antique towns.
After the canyons we moved to Cholpon-Ata city to have a look at local field with stone inscriptions.A remarkable open air art gallery lies on the lower slopes of Kungey Alatau just north of Cholpon-Ata. Above the town is a huge field of stones, many with pictures scratched or picked into their south-facing surfaces.Said to date from 500 BC-100 AD, they depict wolves, long-horned ibex, goats, horses, snow leopards, sacrifices and some hunting scenes, were probably made by Scythian (Saka) people, predating the arrival of the Kyrgyz area. The stones with pertoglyphs are those with green inventory numbers painted on them (which unfortunately takes away a bit of mystique). At the Middle Ages Cholpon-Ata tract was a habitat of settled population, so here a lot of colony ruins X-XII centuries.
At the lunch time it turned out that Olivier didn’t know anything about Russian salad with the same name “Olivie”. Certainly, he decided to test it, and he, like a real Frenchman appreciated the miracle of Russian kitchen.
Our final destination for first day – was Karakol city and guest house “Green Yard”.
Next morning we had time to visit Holy Trinity Cathedral, Dungan mosque and famous market “bazaar”. It is a very pleasant place for tourists, for good purchases. I should say that Bernard and Olivier were fond of photoengraving. They always fought which picture would be better. They were crazy about photoengraving local people, children, especially they were impressed with bazaar, merchants, national clothes…and ship’s brains, hoofs and others national eatable things. Tourists… ?
That day was very important because we had tons of things to do. And our next stop was in Jety-oguz gorge. This gorge is famous for its sandy rocks. At first we saw the “Broken Heart” rock and seven rocks with name “Seven Bulls”. This gorge is also famous for thermal springs. We went farther and wonderful picturesque view opened to our gaze. We saw wonderful view of Oguz-Bashi top glacier.
After that we moved to Djuukuchak gorge,which is famous for hydrogen sulphide springs, which are so useful for health.
We had a short walk along this gorge to the small waterfall. Our French guests didn’t want to take a bath in springs, because, you know, that hydrogen sulphide has a very “bad” smell.
Our final destination for that day was guest house in Tamga village. While we were driving along the Issyk-Kul shore, we saw wonderful sunset. In guest house we were met with funny dog with name Vulkan. The house was full of loud Russian tourists. After dinner we talked about rich day, we’d spent and we went to sleep with sense of gratification .
We couldn’t sleep too much in the morning, because we had many places to visit. The main phrase for that morning: French people don’t eat porridge! They were right, the best breakfast for Frenchmen are bread and butter, jam and coffee (thanks God, without frogs).
Our first stop for that day was “Skazka” canyons. And our guests were so impressed with view. We climbed at the higher place and we admired of wonderful panorama of Issyk-Kul Lake, canyons and high mountains. “Skazka” is mean “Fairy tail”, because of different wonderful rocks with contours of animals, castles and people. Tourists called these canyons “O-la-la-place”. After we had taken tons of nice photos, we moved to the Salt Lake. This small lake is situated not far from the Issyk-Kul’s shore. In the salt lake with healing behaviors we couldn’t sink because of mineral salts. It turned out that Nicole was a good swimmer; she crossed the lake (about 200 m) two times.
Our final stop for that day was Kochkor village, and before staying in the guest house, we moved to workshop for demonstration of making national carpets “ala-kiiz”. The name of the young lady, who showed us how to produce carpets, was Fatima, and Olivier found that was so interesting “Fatima looked like a Chinese, her name was Arabian but she spoke in Russian”. During the carpet producing we were dancing to the accompaniment of Kyrgyz national music, according to the technology we had to dance on the blank of our carpet. So, after all dances we had a very nice excursion in small felt art museum. In this museum we had a nice possibility to try on national clothes and feel like a real nomad people.
After that we moved to our guest house to take a rest, because for the next day we were going to Son-Kul Lake.
Son-Kul – is wonderful place with unforgettable nature, here we touched to way of life of nomad people. This lake is situated at 3016 meters above the sea level. During the road it was getting cold. And suddenly Bernard asked was there any birds in Kyrgyzstan? And at that moment our driver pointed two soaring falcons. We made tons of nice pictures of local birds.
After twenty minutes we reached to our yurt camp. We had been waited, everything was prepared. For lunch we had dish out of this world from local fish. And our guests liked it some much, they had never eaten the same kind of fish before, so they asked about second helping. I became a little bit scared about our guests.
After lunch we made a short walk to the nearest hills to make more photos of marvelous lake. After a while we went to discover coastal side of Son-Kul Lake on horseback. It turned out that our tourists were good riders. After had reached a hill, we saw really top-notch view of Son-Kul lake. It was so strikingly! We felt like a real nomads – on the horses, on the hill close to our yurt and nearly the wonderful mountain lake.
After the walk we came back to yurt, where was cooked top-notch dinner. The main national dish was “beshbarmak”. Night we spent in a real Kyrgyz yurt, which nomads used the same many years ago.
Next day we got up early, because we had lot of kilometers to drive.
After some hours we drove to Burana tower (minaret of XI century), had an excursion around the archaeological museum. Our guests hadn’t seen anything looked like “balbal”- Turkic statues. They were listening legends about the tower very carefully and with big interest.
Then we moved to Bishkek for the farewell dinner. Everything was fine and Olivier, Bernard, Nicole and Sabine were so impressed with all tour. They became crazy about national cuisine, and all Kyrgyz culture. They liked Kyrgyz nature, they hadn’t seen before. They showed many photos to each other. They were so fortunate of visiting our country, and they promised to come back...
