Bishkek is the capital and the largest city of Kyrgyzstan. Bishkek is an attractive city, especially in the summer when its thousands of trees provide color and shade. Though the city is relatively young, the surrounding area has sites of interests dating from prehistory, the Greco-Buddhist period, the period of Nestorian influence, the era of the Central Asian khanates, and the Soviet period.
Bishkek, is situated at about 800 m altitude just off the northern fringe of the Ala-Too range, an extension of the Tien Shan mountain range, which rises up to 4,800 m and provides a spectacular backdrop to the city. North of the city, a fertile and gently undulating steppe extends far north into neighboring Kazakhstan.
Bishkek is a city of wide boulevards and marble-faced public buildings combined with numerous Soviet-style apartment blocks surrounding interior courtyards and, especially outside the city center, thousands of smaller privately built houses. It is laid out on a grid pattern, with most streets flanked on both sides by narrow irrigation channels that water the innumerable trees which provide shade in the hot summers.
Airlines to fly into Bishkek: Aeroflot, Turkish Airlines, British Airways.
|