Holiday in Central Asia (7): travel to Lake Issyk-Kol in Kyrgyzstan
Now in another country: Kyrgyzstan is a thinly-populated nation bisected by mountain ranges and the north-south divide has always bedevilled the country’s politics. Since independence, there have been three revolutions (2005, 2010, 2020) and six presidents. The Kyrgyz language has two dialects, one in the north influenced by Russian and the other to the south shaped by Uzbek. In fact, Russian is the everyday language of all educated citizens and, like the other countries of Central Asia, emotionally most people still identify with Russia.
Now in another city: Modern Bishkek was founded in 1878 on the site of a Russian garrison. From 1926 to 1991, the city’s Soviet name was Frunze, honouring locally-born Mikhail Frunze, a Russian Civil War commander. Today it is a city of 1M. Before leaving town, we had a quick look at the main squares, viewing the soaring national flagpole and new equestrian statue of Mighty Manas, observing the changing of the guard with slowly goose-stepping soldiers, and finally observing the large statue of Lenin opposite the single-chamber parliament.
For the next two days, our itinerary will be focused on the Issyk-Kol Lake, so on Day 6 we drove east on a road which early on actually took us into and out of neighbouring Kazakhstan for a few minutes. The quality of the roads was terrible but we made steady progress on our journey of 330 kms (200 miles):with one short comfort stop at a service station (the toilets were out of order) and an hour and a half for lunch in a family home in Bokonbaievo (there were no adequate restaurants anywhere on the route).
So we left the hotel at 8.30 am and finally reached our overnight accommodation at 3.40 pm. We are staying at an artist colony at Kadji-Sal just 10 minutes walk from Lake Issyk-Kol. Unlike Saty village in Kazakhstan, each room has a toilet and shower and decent WiFi but, at the time of our arrival, there was an unannounced absence of electricity locally (it returned at 5 pm). Dinner was at the guesthouse with a large group of Israeli tourists.