Trip to Karakol, 24-25 of November 2019

Trip to Karakol, 24-25 of November 2019

Travel Discover Help team together with children of Voenno Antonovka orphanage went on a trip to Karakol town and around Issyk Kul Lake on the last weekend.

There were 31 passengers in total and 26 of them are children from 6 to 9th year of studding in school. Those children take part in all our meetings and courses of learning English language. They are considered inside of our concept so called “Green suitcase”.

All the time of the trip we had good weather conditions. Our first stop happened in the house of Almaz – craftsman’s house on the south shore of Issyk Kul Lake in Kyzyl Tuu village. Almaz and his family create yurts or “Booz ui”, traditional nomadic house that passed through the time of Middle Ages and came to the present.

Almaz was happy to share with his knowledge, told about all the intricacies and nuances of his craft and then, our children had chance to practice in constructing yurt.

Next our stop was in Kajy Sai village. Here we met the real local eagle hunter who showed us his special hunting dogs – Taigans and the Golden Eagle itself with elements of hunting. It was great to see the skill of the bird, but instead of the real prey, hunter used prepared in advance fake skin of a jackal.

Later we headed to Karakol town where tasty dinner and warm bed were waited for us.

On the next morning we visited memorial complex devoted to Przewalski and Karasaev at first. It was the first time when children met those two outstanding scientists, who did a great job in sphere of geography, botany and linguistic of Central Asia, Mongolia and China.

There were two more interesting objects in Karakol town that we visited: Dungan mosque and Orthodox Cathedral name after Saint Trinity. Mosque and Church are two the most important and famous sights of Karakol town.

After delicious lunch in a local family house, we headed to the picturesque gorge Djety Oguz. First stop we did near the “Broken Heart” rock to listen one of the legend of this place. Went a little bit further by bus and then walked up the hill to enjoy the magnificent view of the Djety Oguz – 7 Bulls.

Here we split on 2 teams and organized winter battle with snowballs. Our team decided to put an idea into this, at a glance children’s, game. Rules of the battle wasn’t fair in the beginning as one team had opportunity to move freely around, another team supposed to stay at one spot and fight back to all attacks from different sides. With this game we tried to touch unfair reality and discussed it with children afterwards.

After active games on the open air we came back to Karakol town where we had tasty dinner.

The third day – the day of departure back to Bishkek. This time we took the way along the north shore of Issyk Kul Lake, where our adventures got continuation. Near the village Chon Oruktu we visited hot springs where the children had the great fun jumping and swimming in the hot clean water. It was interesting to observe how children enjoy the moment. It seemed for us that hot summer came to Kyrgyzstan unexpectedly. Later this day we safely arrived to Bishkek, tired but very happy.

This was our weekend in Travel Discover Help project, interesting and rich with events. Our children told us that they will remember this forever.

3 years of the project TDH passed, we, as well as our wards, are moving ahead. We always develop and look for the right direction for our energy not to be wasted.

We see the great benefits of this work as the lives of our children are changing. This is a long way, but we are not going to stop on what we achieved.