After we pass the president’s palace, the road becomes bad with tons of potholes. The neighborhood is poor but people are nice again.
After 45 minutes we reach the Ala-Archa National Park. It has fresh snow here and the peaks are still in some clouds. We hike through the park and see some yurts people still live in during the summer (occasional snow possible...). Our tour guide prepares a picnic which is simple but nice and tasty. Back in Bishkek we wander through the center. The entire downtown feels like one big park, with trees sprouting from every crack in the concrete. It still feels very Soviet-ish. But like all other countries we visited in Central Asia: it is very clean! The squares are big and the Lenin statues were replaced with local ones. The tiny museum we have seen within 5 minutes and next stop is the local „Jelmoli“, the big department store since we want to buy some local music (for our slide show later this year...). It feels like 25 years back but in a friendly way. Back in the hotel working on photos and webpage, quick visit to gym and sauna and dinner is at an Indian restaurant next door.
A beautiful country (yeah - we are mountain boys) and friendly people. Another positive experience along the Silk Road (article under „About Asia“ with a song of the Kyrgyzstan’s Lady Gaga added).

The native Kyrgyz are a Turkic people who first settled in the Tien Shan mountains. They were traditionally pastoral nomads. Due to extensive Russian colonization in the 1900s, Russian settlers were given much of the best agricultural land. This led to an unsuccessful and disastrous revolt by the Kyrgyz people in 1916. Kyrgyzstan became part of the Soviet Federated Socialist Republic in 1924 and was made an autonomous republic in 1926. It became a constituent republic of the USSR in 1936. The Soviets forced the Kyrgyz to abandon their nomadic culture and adopt modern farming and industrial production techniques.
Kyrgyzstan proclaimed its independence from the Soviet Union on Aug. 31, 1991. The country adopted a shock-therapy economic program. Voters endorsed market reforms in a referendum held in Jan. 1994, and in 1996, referendum voters overwhelmingly endorsed proposed constitutional changes that enhanced the power of the president. There is an ethnic and economic divide between the more developed north with its Kyrgyz population and the impoverished south, which is made up of Uzbeks and a diverse group of other ethnicities. About 50% of the entire population lived below the poverty line in 2003.

Kyrgyzstan is a nation defined by its topography. Like some kind of Central Asian Shangri-La, the soaring peaks and rugged ranges of this small country (still five times bigger than Switzerland) form both barriers and borders. And like James Hilton’s mythical landscape, once entered it can be difficult to leave.