Kyrgyzstan

Our journey to Kyrgyzstan was very eventful. In fact I don’t think that I have ever travelled that much in such a short period of time, nevertheless, it was well worth it. There were many beautiful things to see, including rolling hills, an amazing lake which felt more like an ocean and the fascinating capital city, Bishkek.

We started our journey traveling by train to the capital city. There we said goodbye to our good friend Katie, who was the director of our English Center for a time and is now going back to the states to get married! We couldn’t be happier for her, but of course, we were sad to see her go.

Once we said our goodbyes, we got on a plane to Bishkek. We arrived there at 3am and made our way to a wonderful little bed and breakfast that is run by like-minded people. We stayed there for 3 days to get a feel for the capital city and to get our return visa process started.

Bishkek was a lovely city. The streets are spacious and all lined with trees. There are so many nice cafe’s and tons of beautiful souvenirs, many made of felt and a lot of fine embroidered handiwork. After indulging in coffees and cafes and the wonder of Bishkek, we made our way into the wilderness of Kyrgyzstan.

On Thursday we took the long trek down to Naryn which is a city set in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan, where one of our former teachers used to work. The taxi drive was pretty crazy, but the beauty was worth it. On our drive there, we saw many traditional Yurts (as pictured above), rolling hills and lots of diverse landscape along which a flowing river streamed throughout most of the drive. We stayed in Naryn one night and then made our way over to Lake Issyk Kul.

We relaxed at Lake Issyk Kul until our visas were ready, for about four days. It was not a difficult wait. We enjoyed ourselves on the beach of this unique lake, which seemed more like an ocean. Lake Issyk Kul is special because although it is surrounded by snow-capped mountians, it never freezes; which is the reason for its name, Issyk Kul means “hot lake” in the Kyrgyz. It lived up to the name because it was a lot warmer than the Pacific Ocean, which is what we are used to swimming in, well, at least Curtis…

After our time at Issyk Kul, we made our way back up to Bishkek to retrieve our visas and then made the long trip back home in one day, arriving early on Thursday morning to our new apartment.

We arrived home to a clean apartment, thanks to the folks who stayed here before us. What a blessing it was to lay our heads down in our new homes after what seemed like a really long journey. Our trip to Kyrgyzstan was fun, but being back in our apartment makes the statement “There’s no place like home” ring more true than ever.