the viewing deck: Bishkek City Walk Tour

Monday, May 07, 2018

Bishkek City Walk Tour

5 Days Solo Trip in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan

April 20 to 25, 2018

Introduction and Visa Application in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan

I spent my 1st day in Kyrgyzstan by sightseeing the capital city by foot. The ambiance is like a rural province of Russia; no skyscraper, no english signs and almost no western establishments. Bishkek is, an interesting example of a czarist planned city; laid on a grid with wide boulevards flanked by irrigation canals and large trees, buildings with marble façades, and Soviet apartment complexes.

Bishkek was founded when the Uzbek khan of Kokand built a small clay fort by a settlement on a tributary of the Chuy river in 1825, to connect up several stop-off points on the Silk Road through the Tian Shan mountains. In 1862 it was captured and trashed by Russians, before they set up their own garrison. Russian peasants were soon lured here by land grants and the fertile soil of the Chuy Valley. The renamed town of Frunze became capital of the new Kyrgyz ASSR in 1926, but it was renamed Bishkek (Kyrgyz form of it's old Kazakh name, Pishpek) in 1991.
https://wikitravel.org/en/Bishkek