How about skiiing?

Long time ago tourism was proclaimed as one of the strategic sectors of Kyrgyz economy. In fact, there were times, when Kyrgyzstan was even informally named as the Switzerland of Central Asia, meaning that it has enormous capacities for tourism development. Despite the numerous drawbacks hindering the development of tourism in the country, one’s heart gets filled with joy to actually find out a number of positive developments in this respect.

In particular, the ski base in Karakol, Issyk-Kul province is well known as one of the most popular tourist destination sites in the country. Indeed there are a number of factors that constitute the positive reputation of the ski base in Kyrgyzstan, of which I became double assured during my recent visit with a couple of foreign friends of mine.

On 7 January 2008 early in the morning, we departed for the ski base, which was already replete with tourists from Kazakhstan, particularly Russia and other countries. The ski rent at the base itself was 700 soms per day, whereas one could rent them for only 300-500 soms in Karakol. Also, a ticket costs 700 soms per person. As I had expected, a bowl of soup solely costs about 300 soms, while one could drink a coup of tea with a slice of lemon for 25 soms. Nonetheless, one could witness a continuous line of people standing for various snacks and drinks.

Anyways, the ski lift of French origin, which took us to the top of the mountain of about 3000 meters above sea level, as I later found out, was installed last year. Its significance for the ski base leaves no single doubt. Thus, the higher it took me to the top, the more I felt proud of the unforgettable beauty of the surrounding gigantic snow-peaked mountain ranges.

Once on top, however, it required lots of efforts and patience, before I finally began to master skiing to a certain extent. As a matter of fact, I felt somewhat embarrassed to find out that even small kids were skiing so well as if they were purely running down a hill. I even lost the track of number of times I fell, but shortly I began to take more enjoyment from skiing as I was already making some progress. By the way, quite experienced skiers were skiing from much higher and way steeper mountain slopes.

Toward the end of the day, the pleasure I took from skiing outweighed all of my bruises and pain from frequent falls in the beginning. And the only thought that occupied my mind at that time was “I definitely should come back here as soon as possible”. Hopefully, my forthcoming visits to the ski base will bring many more impressions that might prove the first ones either right or wrong. Time will tell...