Kyrgyz highway paves the way for ancient stone art
One of the largest and most remote petroglyph collections in the world will soon be made easily accessible through a massive highway project through central Kyrgyzstan.
This is Saimaluu-Tash, a national park located in the rugged Jalal-Abad region of Kyrgyzstan, about 200 kilometers south of the capital, Bishkek.
The site is littered with thousands of flat-faced basalt chunks that have lain for millennia along an ancient shepherds’ route.
About 10,000 ancient petroglyphs – images created by chipping away at the surface of rock – have survived for thousands of years. Some of the illustrations are estimated to be around 5,000 years old. Saimaluu-Tash means “patterned stone” in Kyrgyz.
The sacred side of the mountain is home to the largest collection of ancient rock art in all of Central Asia, but only a handful of people access the site each year due to its extreme remoteness and small window of accessibility.
Saimaluu-Tash is usually only accessible for two or three weeks in August, when the summer sun briefly melts on the mountain snow before fall arrives.
Reaching Saimaluu-Tash from Bishkek requires a winding 10-hour drive through the mountains, followed by a roughly four-hour hike. But the site is set to become much easier to access thanks to a massive infrastructure project known as the North-South Highway.
The north-south highway (pictured under construction in 2017) will run directly through the mountains of central Kyrgyzstan, connecting Bishkek in the north to Jalal-Abad, near the southern city of Osh.
The highway, which is financed largely with Chinese money and is part of the Belt and Road Initiative, is expected to open next year. The highway will pass directly in front of the Saimaluu-Tash entrance, making the site accessible in just one day from Bishkek.
Bishkek-based tourist guide Altynai Kudaibergen (pictured during a visit to Saimaluu-Tash in August 2021) told RFE/RL that Kyrgyz residents have mixed feelings about the changes the highway will bring to the holy site.
“It’s good that more people can see the place, learn the history and explore the petroglyphs,” Kudaibergen said. But the guide and art expert says “with all the things becoming more accessible, it can kind of be devalued”.
Kudaibergen also fears that the site, which is almost impossible to save, could see an increase in vandalism.
“There are already petroglyphs with names from later times saying ‘so and so was here’, that kind of stuff. It’s actually interesting. You can see what mattered to people from different eras. You have the hunting and plowing scenes depicted in ancient petroglyphs, then in the 20th and 21st centuries it’s more self-expression and everyone just writes their name.
Kudaibergen says visitors to the site were surprised last summer to see hundreds of sex scenes depicted on the rock.
“Everyone was very excited about it,” says the guide. “They were like, ‘You didn’t tell us this Kama Sutra would be here!'”
American travel journalist Stephen Lioywho took the photos for this gallery, says the mountainside is “one of the most remarkable historical sites I have visited in Central Asia” and says he hopes the Kyrgyz authorities will be able to conserve Saimaluu-Tash for future generations once the nearby highway opens.
Kudaibergen echoes those sentiments, but points out that if anyone wants to see the art, they should probably make the trip soon while it’s still possible to walk the mountain wilderness without signage or fencing, and allow visitors thousands of ancient figures depicted on the rocks to “show themselves to someone who is supposed to see them.”
Written by Amos Chapple from reporting by Stephen Lioy.
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