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KYRGYZSTAN
Make things happen
We spent the last long weekend exploring remote valleys
and historic passes in Kyrgyzstan's pastoral heartland, Naryn.
It is no secret Kyrgyzstan is amazingly beautiful.
But just how beautiful surprises even veteran explorers like us.
Dramatic landscapes change almost every minute. You think, 'it can't get any better', or 'I've seen all by now' but the country keeps surprising you.
The scale is so dazzling, so staggering, it makes you feel small and insignificant. These mountains have been here long before any humans; and they will probably be here long after we've done with.

In these mountains, one feels beyond, and above, any trouble. Climactic events may be taking place down, in the human world, but you would not know it. Going up, breathing the pure mountain air, feels curiously liberating.

On this journey, we explored a few places we had never been to, or never been to in summer.
Min Kush, the former uranium mining town tucked in a remote corner of Naryn region, far from any tourist trails (although this will change with the opening of the new north-south highway in the next two years).
We love Min Kush.
There is no other town in Kyrgyzstan with a similarly dramatic mountainous backdrop, street grid, architecture and atmosphere. If you are a photographer, this should be the first place you explore in Kyrgyzstan. It has everything: curious characters; not-so-distant-crumbling past; amazing nature in the background (and often, in the foreground, too).
The Ak-Sai Valley and Kel Suu lake. Another incredibly remote area, just off the Chinese border. We did not reach the lake due to snow and very heavy mud, but the journey was nevertheless worth it. We did the full circle, going through Torugart (one of the two border checkpoints with China) on the way in, and through the Bosogo valley on the way out. I had never been to Ak Sai in summer.
I always expected, as I had heard in old stories, the valley to be much greener and fertile. It was dry, dusty and cold, and had few shepherds, tucked in the far end of it. Ak Sai turned out to be a harsh, eery land, fenced off on one side by the border with China and abandoned guard towers. During the hot Soviet-Chinese conflict, this would have been a meticulously guarded border. The last ten miles to Kel Suu turned amazingly green and lush - one of the most beautiful landscapes in Kyrgyzstan.
And the Tossor Pass, hailed as the hardest mountain pass in Kyrgyzstan. It probably is the hardest pass! It offers stunning views, fantastic scenery, including the endless Kyrgyz green rolling hills, and almost no people - save for a band of scattered shepherds and a car or two we saw for a full day's driving.
The high pass, at nearly 4000 metres, offers incredible views of Issyk Kul - perhaps the best views that you can get. You are more than two kilometres higher than the lake, and about twenty far - yet the air is so clean, you may be fooled to think you are much closer to the clear azure waters of the lake than you actually are.
We love Kyrgyzstan. Just stark beauty and variety of landscapes in a country that's so much smaller than any of its mighty neighbours. There is still more to explore! We can't wait to hit the road again.

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