After having completed two years of a very intense project I decided it was time switch gears and seriously travel again.  World history has long been an interest of mine and exploring the famous East-West trade route of antiquity, the Silk Road, made it to the top of my list.  The trade route is a grueling 4000 miles (nearly 6500 km) traveled by horse, camel and on foot for centuries.  It is not just one well-defined road, but a collection of many branches of a general route that connected China to the Mediterranean.  The route wound through modern-day Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Turkey.  Thus planning a trip to see THE Silk Road became challenging. Not only is that a lot of countries to visit, some are not accessible to travelers.  Deciding how to experience the Silk Road is a little like tackling the Appalachian Trail in the US— you can hike the 2190  mile trail (3500 km) in one trip across six months or you can select smaller pieces of it to hike and, bit by bit, traverse the whole route.  My approach to the Silk Road is more the later, deciding to spend a few weeks experiencing part of it, knowing I would have to come back more than once to take in the whole to the extent that is practical given geopolitical events.

Given the distances involved and potential logistical headaches I determined to join a group and researched extensively the type of tours that are available.  There are a lot of travel companies offering a wide-range of experiences and I finally settled on one that had more of an adventure flavor; a 16 day trip covering Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.  The trip starts in Bishkek, Krygystan and ends in Tashkent, Uzbekistan and is a “plane, trains and automobiles” experience (literally) as we work our way across the two countries following the historical route.  I booked the trip and made my travel arrangements to arrive a day early to acclimatize and look around on my own before the official start of the tour.

Bishkek, the capital of Krygystan, has a population of approximately 1.5 million, but does not feel like a large city although it has the traffic of one. The hotel is in the city center not far from the seat of government so fortunately, I can walk almost anywhere I want to get to.  To stay awake and start shifting to the local time, once I got to the hotel and settled in my room, I headed out to explore the city.  For the next three hours I wandered around exploring the many different parks that are situated near the government building complex.  Bishkek is a very green city with trees and shade plentiful throughout so despite the heat I remained fairly cool.  Likely due to the extensive exercise and the time shift, I was able to get a pretty good night’s sleep!

There are many Soviet style statues displayed in Bishkek city center still today.

Saturday the group met at noon in the lobby of the hotel and I met the people I will be spending the next two and a half weeks with.  The group is small-only six people- and ironically, five are women and all from the east coast of the U.S.  The sole guy is an older gentleman from Britain.  Apparently, there was supposed to be an additional couple from Britain, but they canceled at the last minute.  After going through a few top-level logistical details, Umid, our main tour guide established our agenda for the day and ten minutes later we headed out to lunch at a local restaurant for what turned out to be a fairly large meal.  The amount of dill in the food, and the food was delicious despite the dill, reminded me that I was back in an area of the world with heavy Russian influence.  As a matter of fact, Russian is used widely in  Kyrgyzstan, providing me with an opportunity to practice my language skills.

One of the many channels running through the city to direct snow melt to the agricultural areas.

After lunch, Olga, our local Bishkek tour guide, took us on a tour of the city center, covering much of the area I had walked through the day before, but now I had narration and history to explain some of the statues, buildings and city planning features I had previously observed.  The city was built on a grid and designed to absorb some of the cool breezes and snow melt run off from the nearby mountains.  I had noted the deep trenches running along some of the sidewalks and her explanation solved the mystery of their utility—channels to direct snow melt through the city to fields for irrigation.  During our excursion we stopped to watch the changing of the guard at the official 100m high flagpole flying the Kyrgyzstan flag and that is the only time I saw other western tourists in the city.

The guards were high-stepping the whole time and it looked really hard!

The history of the country, along with its three “revolutions” since being established as a in independent country when the Soviet Union dissolved, was interesting but Bishkek is not a large tourist center as most of the city is relatively new.  Genghis Khan and his hordes successfully wiped out any trace of the Silk Road outposts in the area and as the Krygystan natives lived as nomads, nothing permanent was established until the last century or so as the Russian influence became dominant.

We finished up the tour at the Osh Market, the main city market where just about anything that can be bought is available.  The market is very similar to some of the markets I experienced in Moscow decades ago before they were banned- vegetables, freshly butchered meat, spices, starches, baked goods, household items, clothing— all were represented and it was a beehive of activity.

There were a large variety of dried cheese balls (cow’s milk) that are a common snack food. I have not tried one yet. Apparently they are hard enough you can break a tooth— so not for chewing!

After the market we headed back to the hotel to rest.  Everyone else in the group arrived earlier in the day and needed a bit of a break to recharge their batteries before meeting to depart to our traditional Krygzystani dinner.  No one wanted to stay up too late as the next day, early in the morning, we were headed out into the mountains which give Krygystan the nickname the “Switzerland of Central Asia”.

Bread, in many forms, is very popular here. The colored bread in the background is apparently popular for weddings. Not sure how it tastes….