FirstLook: Kuylu Valley, Kyrgyzstan

Little explored for tourism and not a popular destination even among locals, this section of the Tien Shan mountains, some 360 kilometers east of Bishkek, Kyrgystan’s capital, lies near the border with China. We trekked down a rough pasture road off the highway that winds towards the village of Enilchek. With Kyrgyzstan’s borders effectively closed to tourists in summer 2020 because of the pandemic, many in the domestic tourism sector took to the mountains to find trekking routes and local travel destinations. Spurred by a pretty view from the bottom of the valley and tempting topography on the map, along with friends from Kyrgyzstan Tourism, we headed up the Kuylu Valley. On our final evening, while laying out our sleeping bags in a vacant hut, local shepherd Altyn (pictured here on the last horse) rode across the river and invited us to join him for a trip to his pastures the next morning.

Horses are excellent models but difficult photography platforms. As I often do in Kyrgyzstan, I rode with the group to the top of the valley to then dismount and take pictures on foot. At some point, as I wandered off from the group, I could see Kanat Murzabek uulu (here on the first horse) approaching and the composition forming. I raced ahead to frame the three horses against the backdrop of the 4,600-meter peaks of the Mola Valley behind them.

—Stephen Lioy

@slioy
stephenlioy.com

You may also be interested in…

On the Origins of Gothic Architecture: A Conversation with Diana Darke

Interview by Tom Verde

With its rose windows and soaring, pointed arches, Gothic architecture is a crowning achievement of medieval Western Christendom but not, writes Oxford-educated Arabist Diana Darke, an independently developed one.

Read

Creatives

FirstLook: The Sphinx Imagined

Postcard collection by Jonathan Friedlander

Two summers ago I was browsing several hundred vintage postcards contained in narrow boxes all piled up in a Stillwater, Minnesota, antiques store...I came across several postcards that each featured an imagined sphinx as seen in natural rock formations.

Read

Greetings from Cairo, USA

Written by Jonathan Friedlander
Postcards courtesy of Jonathan Friedlander

Westward expansion of the United States in the 19th century coincided with the popularity of all things Egyptian. Beginning in 1808 some 25 villages, towns and cities throughout the country were named Cairo. Of them, Cairo, Illinois, became the largest, although today it is Cairo, Georgia, whose nearly 10,000 residents gives it that title. Five of the “American Cairos” produced picture postcards, mostly during the early 20th century: These included both Cairo, Illinois and Georgia, as well as the Cairos of West Virginia, New York and Nebraska. Today these postcards record what these communities—distinct in geography, economy and history but united by a name—regarded as points of pride.

Read