Travel Tips

Bishkek is located on a high plain in northern Kyrgyzstan. For all that it is surrounded by high mountains, Bishkek itself is FLAT! A true "study in contrasts". Traveling east from Bishkek toward Lake Issyk Kul you past through mile after mile of flat open terrain. Some of this area close to Bishkek seems to be under intense cultivation. The roads have "good intentions" but watch your teeth! Even the four lane highways have some VERY nasty pot holes in them.

Along the way there were occasionally monuments and statues to local and national heroes from time to time. This statue of Manas was well away from civilization in Bishkek in a small rural village we passed.

We passed along the river that forms the border with Kazakhstan for quite some distance. The rural area of Kazakhstan that we saw seemed quite primitive, women were washing clothes in the river standing in water up to their knees in some places (in late March I would have to believe that the water was quite cold!) . My driver seemed somewhat embarrassed by this so I did not even try to take pictures of them.
These hills emerged on the south side of the roadway, for all that we we were still on very flat land, it was obvious the whole character of the landscape was changing as we encountered some gently rolling areas as we moved south east away from the river.

As we turned more directly southeast the terrain became much more rugged. It was obvious we were driving up what had been, eons ago, a channel for a large river. The river now was quite good sized but from observations of the "cuts" through the terrain, it was now but a shadow of its former self. The hills became higher and the walls steeper. but there were still places for those occasional monuments!

As we continued to climb southeast, the gorge narrowed considerably. There were a few "wide spots" which always seemed to have some level of "habitation. But at times the railroad and the highway were just above the river in discreet "stair steps" cut into the sides of the mountains.

The vegetation had slowly become sparser and thinner until we reached this area were there really was no visible soil at all. The vegetation consisted solely of "scrub" bushes interspersed with rocks. Notice the avalanche shed over the railroad tracks ahead on the "hillside". We frequently saw rocks that had rolled down the hillside onto the roadway. Most were small 3 to 5 inches but on the way back to Bishkek, in a VERY narrow part of the gorge a truck had had its front tire blown by a large rock (16 to 24 inches) that had rolled onto the road. In some places this must happen quite often because there were retaining walls with chain link fencing on the top of them to prevent rocks from falling onto the road. There was even one area where a second wall had been built in front of the first, the chain link fencing on the first one was visible at the end as it protruded through rocky rubble that must have overwhelmed it and buried it at some time.

I was totally puzzled at first when i saw this terrain. The mounds looked like mine tailings than had been moved with a conveyer belt, but there were no mines!
The only explanation I can find is that these could have been formed by water washing down a glacier moving small stones (gravel) along with it and then having the stones and perhaps water fall through cracks in the ice sheet as if it where floating on a large body of water. That is the only way I can see that each of these "gravel mounds" could come out the same height, plus form in a straight line with the gravel falling to the sides in a "talus slope" formation with a reasonably narrow peak..

These eroded hills along the way showed evidence of the geological history of the area around Lake Issyk Kul. There are layers of fine sediment mixed with, yet distinct from, layers of courser conglomerate. The layers of conglomerate where not consistent with each other in the size distribution of the gravel contained therein. This bespeaks a very long and complex geological history where it would seem the same story was repeated over and over with only minor variations, yet none of this activity appeared to be volcanic in origin.