It was cool and overcast this morning as we headed out for an hour and a half drive to Burana Tower. On the way we passed through a tiny sliver (about a mile or so) of Kazakhstan…our fourth Stan on this trip. It was a “transit” zone and the only really memorable thing we saw was a plaque on a post and huge lines of trucks waiting their inspection so they could proceed on their rout into Kazakhstan and point beyond. It seems that there is a bit of an "issue" between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and Every. Single. Truck going into Kazakhstan is stopped, fully unloaded and it's entire contents inspected. Then it has to be reloaded. It takes at least an hour to clear each truck...so the waits to enter can be hours long and the string of backed up trucks was massive.
There were a lot of yellow flowers in the fields…probably either mustard or canola (rape seed). Hard to tell.
Our destination is Burana, another large tower that is a restored minaret . There were a lot of school groups on sight. We opted not to go up into the tower as the lines were long and it was very similar (and of the same period and people) as the tower we saw in Uzgen a few days ago.
The area also had a lot of stones called
Balbals. They are sort of like tombstones
except that they represent the assassin (most had a wine glass and a knife in
their hands) that were over the burial site of their victim.
There were also a lot of small to medium size stones with petroglyphs. These had been brought to this one site from many sites in the surrounding areas.
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More Petroglyphs
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We visited with some of the visitors to the site.
Nearby were a few small herds of cattle with their herders on horseback (the grass was so tall it was hard to see the horse. And the grassy areas had wildflowers (it is spring after all).
By the time we got back into Bishkek it was time for lunch and then we were off on a walking tour. Unfortunately, by this time it had begun to rain so it wasn’t quite as much fun.
We saw their “White House”…a white building that is the central administrative building for the country. The president lives elsewhere.
We also visited the State Historical Museum. No cameras were allowed inside but it seems
that cellphone cameras were ok. But we
didn’t take a lot of photos.
In the evening we took our bus to a large, local restaurant where we were escorted to a private room. There we had a lovely dinner and were treated to a great concert of local folk songs played on native instruments.
And some were very unusual like the one that appeared to require inserting a tooth into the hole at the top. It was most interesting.
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Video of folk music 1
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Video of folk music 2
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Video of folk music 3
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Video of folk music 4
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Video of folk music 5
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Of most interest to us all was a flute that was
played by blowing straight in…however, the position of everything made it look
like the flute was positioned on one of the performers front teeth. It looked very odd and also looked like there
was no way he could get a sound out of it…but he did.
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Video of folk music 6
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