Excursion destinations come when you have your ear close to the ground in a hostel. I was quietly watching a Russian dub of Nanny Mcphee 2 in my hostel with an Australian ex-miner. He’d been going round Kyrgyzstan’s abandoned soviet era mines. An abandoned uranium mine was next on his list, but he suggested I take in the old coal mining infrastructure at jyrgalan.
Interesting Kyrgz mining fact
There is a gold mine in Kyrgyzstan, the product of which accounts for a not insignificant proportion of Kyrgyzstan’s GDP.
A British man worked in this mine and made some jokes in the canteen that Kyrgyzstan’s national horse sausage looked like a horse’s penis.
The Kyrgz workers did not agree nor find this funny and in fact went on strike. The British man was arrested and deported and the UK embassy was forced to formally apologise.
As an impartial reporter I can’t comment on the accuracy of the Brits’ claim but I do invite you to Google ‘Kazy’ and then ‘erect horse cock’ to form your own opinion.
Jyrgalan is a pastoral scene morphing into the M25
Jyrgalan probably encapsulates Kyrgyzstan’s appeal, with dramatic mountain scenery, an agricultural village that has hardly changed for centuries, wildflower meadows, grazing livestock and picturesque lakes in the hills. The Kyrgz government knows it’s a tourist gem, so they’re following the national tradition of digging up literally everything with heavy machinery and then not following through with any construction after
Nevertheless it was a great place, still had the least tourists of anywhere I’ve been, and I got to milk a cow.
Planet Caravan 
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