Wintersport in Kirgistan

My name is Hayat Tarikov. I am 47years old. I am from Kyrgyzstan. My home town is Arslanbob which is located in southern part of Kyrgyzstan, where is located the biggest walnut forest one the world. I am a guide for the summer trekking, hiking and mountain biking.
But since 2006 we have started to develop winter activities. I have a little bit ski skills. Right now we are started to teach the local kids how to ski, this ski training-project, which is doing Edda, will be really useful for me and for the locals. It will be new things and in the future new job for the locals.

With warm regards
Hayat

My name is Shamurat Matiev from Kyrgyzstan. I am 21 years old. I live in the south of Kyrgyzstan where one of the highest mountain is located: LENIN PEAK(7134m). Our village is small, the winter time is 7 month long. Altitude of our!!! village (3200m). We have good place for skiing. Every year in winter time i come to Sary Tash to ski. We have the problem, that many young people want to ski, but they need to learn elementary skiing.
Edda, your training is very interesting for me and importent. Not only for me, but also for my friends. In my village we have no ski resort, just places for skiing. One of my future goal is to build a ski place (resort), for people. Edda, your plan is very good and interesting for Kyrgyzstan. Your training is not only skiing but also exchange experiences ski.... tradition, culture with Switzerland.. Thank you Edda for this possibility!

My name is Azat and I live in Karakol, Kyrgyzstan. I work at the tourism company “Ecotrek-Karakol” as an office manager. I like winter very much because snowing is the phenomenon I cannot stop admiring with. I look at the mountains in the winter and want to go there to conquer those places which are almost impossible to reach but tempting anyway. I have worked for the company already 8 month. During my work here I understood that summer tourism is pretty developed here and the stuff already has a great experience to render a good service. I have a lot of dreams but one of them is to learn skiing. Until last year when I first tried skiing it was exotic and out of order thing for me. Now I know that it is one of the things I want to learn to do because I liked it very much. Although for the first time it seemed easy for me to learn to ski I know that it is not so. I want to take my family on weekends and teach them to ski to lead a healthy life. Also I want to teach other people he would like to learn skiing, explain them and show that they are missing some really good things. In my country we have a lot of places to ski. The landscape of Kyrgyzstan is mountainous and it has a great potential for winter sport. But there are several things why winter sport is not getting developed. 1. Due to the inappropriate governing my country cannot find enough finance to invest in the tourism at all. 2. Our people as I do have less experience in winter sport. If you do not know or haven’t experienced a thing, you cannot say anything about it and I am not saying about investing money on it. We have very few skiing trainers. And it would be a very helpful thing for my people if they like it they will have other stimuli to do something else. Winter tourism is not so much developed in my country it is just starting to build its fundament. In the future I believe that winter tourism will be very developed.

Seit zwei Tagen bin ich zurück in Schweiz. Dies nachdem ich mit gespendeter Skiausrüstung auf einem Truck der Reisefirma „Oasis Overland“ nach Kyrgyzstan gereist bin. Lies den ausführlichen Reisebericht hier: schneesportschule-bivio.ch
In Kirgistan habe ich meine Reise durchs Landesinnere fortgesetzt. Begleitet wurde ich abwechselnd von meinen Übersetzern „Rachad“ aus Kochkor sowie Latschin aus Arslanbob begleitet.
Während meiner Reise durch das Land habe ich Teilnehmende des ersten Trainings im November getroffen. Im persönlichen Gespräch habe ich mich mit ihnen über ihre Motivation und zukünftigen Pläne als SkilehrerInnen unterhalten. Darüber hinaus ging es darum organisatorische Fragen vor Ort zu klären.
Die Hintergründe der TeilnehmerInnen sind ganz unterschiedlich wie auch ihre Pläne für die Zukunft. Ich werde die Zeit bis zum Training nutzen euch einige der Teilnehmenden in einem kurzen Porträt vorzustellen.