Festivals

January 20th, 2013 Sections: Tourism, Tours

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Every year, the Kyrgyz Community Based Tourism Association, (KCBTA), organizes a number of festival around the country.

Fortunately,  they usually announce those festivals well in advance – which means that people can make their travel plans and arrange to visit one, (or more), whilst they are in the country.  Indeed, we’ve had several trips where the group has decided that they wanted to visited Kyrgyzstan simply in order to attend the festivals, and we’ve had to arrange an itinerary around them.

To be frank, they are not normally big events … I sometime liken them to a village fête back home … but that has distinct advantages.  It means that you are not “crowded out” and can get much closer to “the action”, and interact with the participants and the locals who also come along to enjoy the event.

People come to Kyrgyzstan for a wide variety of reasons:

  • One of the major attractions is, of course, the landscape: the magnificent mountains and indeed the sheer variety of different landforms that abound here, (I often say that it is a artist’s paradise – painter’s or photographer’s – as there is so much variety and there are plenty of opportunities to let their talent flow and produce quite different and distinct pictures.)
  • There are many who come looking for adventure, whether it is strenuous mountain climbing, or trekking, horse riding or white water rafting, or … well, you name it and it’s probably possible to arrange.
  • Another attraction is the traditional nomadic culture, whether it be staying in yurts or sitting listening to local musicians or a manaschi recite portions from the Kyrgyz National Epic, Manas; riding horses or tasting traditional cuisine,

Attending one or more of the festivals can give people the chance to do all three.

This year there are four events planned.

One of them is what has become a traditional ecological action, the Clean up at Son Kul.  The other three concentrate on specific aspects of the traditional Kyrgyz nomadic culture: Horses; Eagle Hunting and traditional “Rites of Passage“.

Here’s the calendar:

Event

Date

Place

 Brief Description

National Horse Games Festival

July 20

Saturday

Kyzyl-Oi village, (Kekemeren Valley)

 National horse games Ulak-Tartysh, Kyz-Kuumai, Er-Enish; Folklore show; Kyrgyz cuisine

Clean up at Son-Kul 

July 27-28

Saturday Sunday

Son-Kul Lake (northern shore,100 km from Kochkor)

 Cleaning up action; national group games, (Arkan Tartmai, Jooluk Tashtamai and others); folklore show; display of making national felt and woven items; song contest; campfire

Kyrgyz Traditions and Ceremonies Festival

August 3

Saturday

Chong-Kemin valley, Karool-Döbö village

 Demonstration of traditional ceremonies, (Beshik Toi, Tushoo Toi), testing of traditional dishes. Traditional music and national games. Exhibition and sale of handicrafts and souvenirs

Birds of Prey Festival

August 17

Saturday

Bel-Tam Seaside yurt       (southern shore of Lake Issyk Kul, near Bokonbaev)

 Demonstration of hunting with a Golden Eagle; folklore show; exhibition and sale of handicrafts and souvenirs; tasting of Kyrgyz cuisine

 

At Celestial Mountains, we have some itineraries for anyone who is interested in attending one or more of these festivals … to be honest, they are fairly standard itineraries and the main thing is that we have arranged the dates for them to be in the fight place, at the right time, in order to attend the festival.

You can download them, in pdf format, ( you will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader, which you can download here), here:

 

If anybody wants more information or has any questions, then drop us an email to

 

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