Aksu Zhibagly

Aksu Zhibagly nature reserve is a 120,000 square hectare area of mountains, rivers, waterfalls with a wide range of flora and fauna in the Talasky Alytau tange of the Western Tian Shan. I stayed a couple of nights in a homestay, home of 3 generations; Natasha, Emira (who is married to a Dutch guy) and little Nathalie. One day I spent being driven around the rough terrain of the nature reserve, across streams, past rivers and waterfalls all the time surrounded by peaks reaching up to over 4200m. The area was full of bird and plant life and includes some elusive snow leopards, but there was sadly no chance of seeing these without climbing to the most extreme points which would take a couple of days.

The village of Zhabagly had nothing more than a school and one store, population surprisingly was around 2500 (I have no idea where they all were), some 400 houses and a school that teaches around 600 children from Zhabagly and surrounding area. Vehicles were very rare along the roads, the usual mode of traffic being horseback clearly identified by the road through the village being constantly covered in horseshit. Twice a day a large flock of sheep would go by, sometimes there would be a stray cow wandering around lost.

Left & Right: In the Aksu Zhibagly nature reserve.

I was the only tourist in town at the time, as the peak time is April - June when the fields are filled with red and yellow tulips, this apparently being the home of the tulip.
Emira and Natasha looked after me well, far more food than I could ever eat. I don't think Natasha was used to cooking for one as I usually had enough food for two or more people, I think they usually cater for groups rather than the lone traveller.


Left: My hosts in Zhabagly, Natasha, Emira & little Nathalie.
Right: Nathalie again.

Leaving there was not easy, it took 7 vehicles and a bit of a walk to reach Tashkent! First Emira drove me to their local taxi stop, from there a shared taxi eventually drove to Vanovka having waited around a while for more customers, Next a mini-bus (called Gazelles in this part) to Shimkent Ozera station, from there a bus to Shimkent main bus station. Next another shared minibus to the Kazakh-Uzbek border (which broke down on the way! but was fixed), there you have to cross the border, through customs etc, which I did on foot and then find another shared minibus to Tashkent only to find they drop you nowhere near centre of town, so had to then get a taxi to my hotel. Seven legs to that journey, considering it was probably 200 km in total, across a border and included a breakdown, probably not bad that it took only around 5-6 hours in total.