Burana tower and Tokmok

3.2.2018
Our awesome volunteer group

This weekend lovely Natali from our volunteering job showed us around Tokmok and Burana tower. Tokmok was around 2 hours taxi ride away from Bishkek and Natali picked us up from Tokmok bus station.

The car ride from Tokmok to Burana was only around 20 min even with some cow and sheep -inclusive traffic jams on the way.  We also stopped for some horse and lanscape photography on the way.



Burana tower is a remnant of an ancient city Balasagun build around year 900 and destroyed by an earthquake in 15th century. Burana tower was a minaret and a watch tower. Before the earthquake it was 45 m high but afterwards only 25 meters. The tower was restored in 1970s. We took the narrow and dark staircase all the way to the top of Burana Tower. I am not too fond of narrow places but managed to make it almost without panic noises.


The tower has of course its own legends in many versions. A long time ago the daughter of a local leader was cursed by a witch. At the age of 18 she would die. To protect her the leader built the tower where she grew up. On her 18 birthday a poisonous spider sneaked into the tower on her lunch tray, she touched it and died. Natali told us that every now and then someone can still be killed by that same kind of a spider.

Para taking video on top of Burana Tower 

Lamees throwing her first snowball from the top of Burana Tower

The area also had a collection of gravestones found around the area, a museum and a yurt-souvenir-shop. We were really eager to enter a yurt for the first time in Kyrgyzstan as yurt are hard to find in the winter. The shopkeepers told that taking a yurt apart or building it would take 15 min with five men. I don´t think our group, Natali, me, Yulia, Lamees and Para could manage the task. Besides of taking a lot of pictures of the beautiful colors in the yurt we also bought some souvenirs.

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