An epic journey on horseback through Kyrgyzstan’s mountains
If you tell friends you are going to Kyrgyzstan, they look blank, or think you are talking about Kurdistan, although the two are 2,000 miles apart. If you get the choice, choose Kyrgyzstan. Like so many, I first learned of the place because of Alexandra Tolstoy: writer, adventurer, horsewoman and cousin of the author of War and Peace. She discovered the romance and beauty of the place for herself when she rode 5,000 miles of the Silk Road by horse and camel in 1999. Since then, she has ridden in Kyrgyzstan most years, taking parties of 12 or so into the lower slopes of the vast Tian Shan mountains, the highest range west of the Himalayas. Blonde, fearless and always elegantly turned out, she leads. We follow.
