Why Kyrgyzstan
There are countries that look like a set in an adventure movie. Kyrgyzstan is one of them. Perched in the heart of Central Asia, surrounded by the peaks of the Tian Shan ("the celestial mountains") which rise to more than 7,000 m, it unfolds a landscape of gentle violence: endless green valleys, vertiginous passes, high-altitude lakes with impossibly blue waters and steppes swept by a wind that belongs to no one. Here, 40% of the territory exceeds 3,000 m. Here, the nomads have not disappeared from the history books.
Because Kyrgyzstan is above all the country of living nomadism. Every summer, hundreds of Kyrgyz families set up their yurts (boz-uy, "grey house") on the jailoos, the mountain pastures, to graze horses, sheep and yaks as their ancestors did for millennia. Sharing their meal, sleeping in their yurt on the shores of Lake Song-Kul at an altitude of 3,000 m, waking up in the middle of herds and a silence that the cities have forgotten: it is an experience that few destinations in the world still offer with this authenticity.
Less than 5 hours from Osh (the country's second largest city, a crossroads of the Silk Road for 3,000 years) and a day's drive from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan keeps its promise on a single promise: to be truly disoriented, far from the marked circuits. No ostentatious monuments, no crowds photographing themselves in front of the same fountains. Just mountains, lakes, horses and the quiet generosity of a people who welcome you as if you had come from a nearby valley.
