Bishkek is the capital of Kyrgyzstan and its largest city at just under a million people. The Tien Shan mountain region covers over eighty percent of the country with its highest mountain peak at 24,406 feet. So, much to our delight, we were commonly treated to snow-capped mountains in the background whether we were in town or out in the country. Bishkek itself is between 2,100 and 2,700 feet elevation so descriptions on getting around town involve upper and lower Bishkek.

Bishkek does not have a long history as a city, only back to about 1826. The city was originally a part of the silk road network connecting Tashkent and Lake Issyk-Kul. Russia has been the major influence since about 1862 and Russia ran this area plus Kyrgyzstan eventually became one of the USSR’s 15 entities. You can still see lots of Soviet era housing in town. The city has wide boulevards and marble faced public buildings. The city enjoys innumerable large street trees and lots of city parks. Streets have small irrigation channels on both sides to water the trees. Our local guide said Bishkek has 15 million trees or 15 trees for every person in town. Our guide said that part of Bishkek used to be a swamp and that the trees play an important part in keeping the ground water in balance and were planted for just that purpose.

Kyrgyzstan broke free from the USSR in 1991 and changed the city’s name from Frunze to Bishkek. All five central Asian countries have struggled somewhat since breaking free of the USSR but I think all five are making good strides towards finding themselves. Leadership of the countries seems to have given them some problems, but what country doesn’t have that problem.

Our first stop in Bishkek was to check into the Golden Tulip Hotel (first photo). For some reason, I felt like I was checking into a partner hotel of the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (if you’ve seen the movie). I was unsure if we would be checking out, but of course, we did three days later. It was a nice hotel and very centrally located for our touring. The second photo is a view of town from our hotel window. Who knew?

You can see two government buildings in the third and fourth photos. The marble facing gives them away. These buildings are in Central Square. The first building is the Department of Agriculture and I’m not sure about the second building. But a big surprise was all the flowers and roses in both Bishkek and all of central Asia. You can see the street divider in the fourth photo is all roses, and a really lot of roses. We eventually were told by one local guide that roses were the favorite flower of Muhammad. I’d never heard that before but at any rate, central Asia has lots of roses.

On the religious front, central Asian countries are secular. By denomination, they are overwhelmingly Muslim. But to give you an idea, we were in central Asia during Ramadan and we never once heard a call to prayer. In some places, we were surrounded by mosques but never heard a call. To that front, I would also have you notice the last photo which is a Russian Orthodox church. We saw both Russian Orthodox churches and Jewish synagogues on our travels, though of course, mosques were by far what we saw the most.