Explore Enigmatic Central Asian Country: Kyrgyzstan

From reading petroglyphs to lifting golden eagles and visiting a caravanserai, a biker takes the ride of his life across an enigmatic central asian country.

- Rishad Saam Mehta

The hunter asked me to brace my forearm as he prepared to lure the golden eagle from his arm to mine. The eagle touched down on my arm, gently at first, and then tucked away its wings, transferring its entire weight on my arm. I have lifted full-grown dogs that were lighter.

I was in a small village called Bokonbayevo on the southern side of the Issyk-Kul, which is the second largest mountain lake in the world after Lake Titicaca in Peru and the second largest saline lake in the world after the Caspian Sea. The region surrounding this lake is one of Kyrgyzstan’s main tourism draws and I, along with a bunch of adventurous travellers, was on a motorcycling trip around the country.

Kyrgyzstan is one of the ‘stans’ of Central Asia that, for the better part of the 20th century, were in the shadow of the USSR. When I went for a stroll in Bishkek, the capital, I was frequently greeted by imposing black statues, reminiscent of the region’s communist past. Most of the statues were symbolic by way of messages about duty, sacrifice and the common man’s compulsory obligation towards the welfare of the state above personal gain. Since capitalism replaced communism—in the aftermath of the 1990s era of perestroika—billboards now advertise western brands.

However, this isn’t Kyrgyzstan’s first tryst with fancy merchandise from faraway lands. Its geographical location meant that the region lay plumb on one of the parallel routes running from Europe to China, popularly called the Silk Road. Along this road flowed ideas and inventions between the eastern and western hemispheres of the medieval world.