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Published: September 12th 2014
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Sept 7th - left Tamga and headed around the southern shores of Lake Issyk Kol. We passed Kadji Sai - the town that until recently was unnamed due to the presence of a Uranium mine and extraction facilities. Long since closed, there are still radiation issues and the mine is banned from visiting. Finally we reached the small village of Bokonbayevo where we had arranged to see the Eagle Hunter show. Turned out to be a private show just for us, and the 'eagle man' turned up with 3 birds in the boot of his car - two huge Golden Eagles, and a smaller Falcon. Plus one worried looking white bunny rabbit ?! After a bit of a show and holding of the giant birds, they released the terrified bunny at the bottom of the valley, and then released the larger of the eagles. After a bit of a fly around, the eagle spotted the bunny - by this stage fixed to the ground with fear - and the eagle swooped down and in a few seconds, the bunny 'was no more' . That naturally was the end of the show.
Bought some of the delicious smoked trout on the
roadside and had a 'picnic' lunch on the roadside. Turned of the highway, and headed east up the Chong Kemin valley - just another spectacular mountain pasture and mountain ranges on both sides that we had seen so many of in Kygystan, until we arrived at our CBT home stay for the night - contrary to the information in the LP, there is good accommodation in the valley, esp the one owned by Akiev (call me Jackson) and Nora Zhekshenbek, Bapakova #7, Chong Kemin. Highly recommended home stay, great food, modern bathroom (you don't know how good that it is until you don't have one !), friendly people, and great rooms. Chong Kemin is (in)famous for being the birthplace of the now deposed president Akaev.
Bonus event of the night was to learn that there was to be a Horse Games festival in the village at 6pm that nite, so off we went.
Sept 8th
Horse trek up into the hills, huge lunch on return.
This was so large, we thought we would itemise what was served up for just four people
" Apricot jam, raspberry jam, cherry jam - 12 servings 3 for each
person, Fried potato - 2 plates, Tomato mayonnaise mixture 4 plates, Eggplant carrot - 4 large bowls, Spicy cabbage - 4 bowls, Huge bowl of Borsch soup each person filled with veges, 3 Plates of homemade Bread, Pastry crispy scroll, M&Ms bowl of, Cookies, Chocolates, Apples - huge bowl, Watermelon - 2 large halves, Peanuts, Raisins. And a continuous supply of chai (black tea) !!!!!! "
And this was just a light lunch after an almost as large breakfast.
After lunch and the 'mandatory' lie down after such a gorge, John decided to go and search for the petroglyphs site that was reportedly just 500 m from the home stay, but no avail.
Sept 9 - early start today as we headed back to Bishkek, to retrieve our passports from the Khazak embassy hopefully this time complete with Khazak visas who had kindly agreed to a morning pickup time instead of the usual 1830 slot. And yes we had success, so then off to an Internet cafe to print boarding passes and tickets for trains and flights. A brief visit to a rather dilapidated Zoological museum in the city, a bookshop, a cafe for lunch and a
visit to the main bazaar in Bishkek, strangely called Osh bazaar, filled in the hrs until time to go to the airport ready for our flight to Almaty.
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