Kyrgyzstan Diaries #7

Ала Арча

For my personal urban photo project, I visited two different abandoned places: a hotel in Bishkek and the Ak Tuz village. I did a walking tour to the ruins of ancient cities on the silk road and had a hike in the Ala Archa nation park. About my volunteer work, I found a video maker that will help us with a promotional video, we had a nice meeting about the two projects and the exhibition probably will be on my last week in Kyrgyzstan.

We are trying to build up a vision that goes after my staying here. Like in which way to use the dacha and how to promote it, I took some pictures in the way to do it. There we had a nice meeting/dinner with other volunteers/friends and we planned how should be the charity exhibition, basically, we need only a date.

This dacha is really a peaceful place, just outside the city but far from the noise, pollution and chaos of Bishkek. There you can enjoy the fresh air and the sound of the creek. I think it could be a nice place for a lot of different activities like workshops for artists, youngsters and kids or renting it as a coworking space.

I did a one day trip to UNESCO heritage sites on the silk road, I visited the ruins of three medieval cities: Nevaket, Ak-Beshim and Burana. 

The archaeologist who guided us on the tour did a great job, he was full of knowledge and facts that made the tour really interesting. Discover that Buddism was the main religion in that period and after when Islam arrived it was able to coexist with Christianity it was fascinating, a leap into the past.

On Sunday I went to the Ala Archa national park, not far from Bishkek. A lot of people suggested to me visit it as a must-see in Kyrgyzstan. It was difficult to select the pictures to put here, the place is simply wonderful and deciding which one is the best was impossible.

We started the hike at 6 am, and we walked 18 km with a 1500 m difference in altitude one way, at the end of the day I walked around 40 km. Our destination was the Big Ala-Archinsky glacier at 3400 m altitude, there it was snowing, and in general the weather variable. It was really hard, the way back was never-ending because I was really tired, but as you can see from the pictures it was worth it. A nice experience that I will never forget.

I realized that this week was really intense and I don't have space for the urban photo project, I will talk about it in the next post or I will do a dedicated post.