Bishkek, Issyk-Kul & Naryn

The Chüy valley was the northern Silk Road's gateway into the Tian Shan. Sogdian merchants founded towns here from about the 6th century: Suyab, at the site now called Ak-Beshim, was a seat of the Western Turkic khagans, and Balasagun, around the Burana tower, became a capital of the Karakhanids, the Turkic dynasty that brought Islam to the region in the 10th century. Balasagun declined after the Mongol conquest, and for centuries the valleys and pastures belonged to nomadic Kyrgyz clans. In the Talas valley, which runs on into Kazakhstan, Abbasid and Tang armies are believed to have fought the Battle of Talas in 751.

In the early 19th century the Khanate of Kokand built a fort at Pishpek on the Chüy river. Russian forces took it in the 1860s, and Russian and Ukrainian settlers followed onto the best land around Issyk-Kul and in the Chüy valley. Karakol was founded in 1869 as a garrison town; it was renamed Przhevalsk after the explorer Nikolai Przhevalsky, who died there in 1888. Dungan Muslims fleeing the Qing arrived in the late 19th century. The 1916 revolt against conscription reached Issyk-Kul, and its suppression drove hundreds of thousands of Kyrgyz and Kazakhs over the mountains to China.

Under Soviet rule Pishpek became Frunze, the capital of the Kyrgyz republic, and grew into an industrial city. It took the name Bishkek at independence in 1991. Since then the capital has been the stage for each of the country's uprisings, in 2005, 2010 and 2020, while Issyk-Kul turned from a Soviet health-resort lake into Kazakhstan and Russia's summer beach and Kyrgyzstan's tourism engine.

The north is the more Russified half of Kyrgyzstan. Russian is still the everyday language of much of Bishkek, where Kyrgyz, Russians, Dungans, Uyghurs, Kazakhs and Koreans live side by side, and Orthodox churches stand alongside mosques. A loose north–south divide runs through national politics and humour, with northerners cast as city-minded and southerners as more conservative and commercial. Naryn, by contrast, is almost entirely Kyrgyz and among the most traditional regions, where families still move their herds and yurts to the high pastures each summer.

Karakol shows the region's mix in two buildings: a wooden Russian Orthodox cathedral and a Dungan mosque built by Chinese craftsmen in the style of a Chinese temple. The Dungans, Chinese-speaking Muslims, keep their own villages, weddings and cuisine around Karakol and in the Chüy valley.

Talas is Manas country. Tradition places the hero's grave at the Manas Ordo complex, whose 14th-century mausoleum is revered by pilgrims, and the writer Chinghiz Aitmatov went to school in the Talas village of Sheker. Naryn Region is known for its felt co-operatives making shyrdak carpets. Kok-boru matches, eagle-hunting displays and horse races fill summer festivals, and Cholpon-Ata on Issyk-Kul hosted the World Nomad Games in 2014, 2016 and 2018.

Bishkek has about 1.2 million official residents, and many more migrants from the regions live in the fast-growing settlements on its edges. It is a grid of wide tree-lined avenues, Soviet blocks and new towers, with the big Osh and Dordoi bazaars — Dordoi a sprawling wholesale market of shipping containers that re-exports Chinese goods across Central Asia. The Chüy valley around it is the country's farming and industrial belt, with Tokmok and Kant as its towns.

Karakol, with about 80,000 people, is the main town of Issyk-Kul Region, and Balykchy guards the lake's western end. The Kumtor gold mine in the region's mountains is the country's largest private employer and taxpayer, while summer tourism, orchards and fishing support the shore. Naryn town, with about 40,000 people, and Talas are small, quiet regional centres.

Winter in Bishkek brings heavy coal smog, one of the city's main public complaints, and traffic has swelled with the car boom. In Naryn and at Son-Kul the year follows the livestock: lambing in spring, the move to the jailoo in June, and the return before the first snow in September.

The north eats the national repertoire — beshbarmak, plov, manty, laghman — with local accents. Around Karakol the Dungan community serves ashlan-fu, a cold, spicy, vinegary noodle dish made with starch jelly, and lagman, the noodle dish considered Dungan or Uyghur in origin, is served everywhere. Dungan, Uyghur and Uzbek cooking are all common in the region's towns.

In Naryn and on the pastures the food is herders' fare: boiled mutton, chuchuk horsemeat sausage, kuurdak, and boorsok, puffs of fried dough piled on the table for guests, sometimes dipped in honey. Bread is dipped in jam, kaymak or butter. Beshbarmak, the national dish of boiled, shredded meat with thin noodles, is made for feasts marking a birth, an important birthday or a death in the family.

Kymyz, fermented mare's milk, is sold fresh by the roadside in the mountains from about May to August; in summer Bishkek drinks maksym, a fizzy fermented grain drink, and chalap, a fizzy drink made from ayran. Bishkek also has the country's café culture, its Russian bakeries and its beer.

Bishkek is a place to start rather than linger: Ala-Too Square with its changing of the guard, the State Historical Museum, the parks along Erkindik boulevard and Osh Bazaar. Ala Archa National Park, about 35 kilometres south, has trails up its gorge towards the glaciers that feed the Ak-Sai river. East along the Chüy valley, the Burana tower near Tokmok stands in a field of carved stone balbal figures and the mounds of Balasagun, part of the UNESCO-listed Silk Roads corridor.

Lake Issyk-Kul, about 180 kilometres long, is the north's centrepiece. The north shore has the beaches of Cholpon-Ata, a field of Bronze Age and later petroglyphs on the hillside above town, and the Ruh Ordo cultural centre. The quieter south shore has the red rock of Skazka canyon and the Barskoon waterfalls. At the east end, Karakol has its wooden cathedral, the Dungan mosque and the Przhevalsky memorial museum, and is the base for the Altyn Arashan hot springs, the trek over to Ala-Kul lake and, a short drive south-west, the Seven Bulls cliffs and the "Broken Heart" rock of Jeti-Ögüz.

In Naryn Region, Kochkor is the gateway to Son-Kul, reached by horse or rough road over the passes, where visitors sleep in herders' yurts. Further south, Tash Rabat, a stone caravanserai with a domed central hall, sits in a quiet valley off the road to the Torugart pass. West over the Too-Ashuu pass, the Talas valley has the Manas Ordo complex and orchard villages beneath the Talas Ala-Too range.