Naryn is not a particularly interesting place anymore with it being dominated by soviet apartment blocks for the most part. We were actually staying in one of these, which was a first, and from inside you can see just how badly built they were. The walls and ceilings were higgledy piggledy and the rooms were an odd shape. This is odd for a town that once lay on the Silk Road and that would have been strategically important. Still it seems that so much of Kyrgyzstan’s Silk Road sights have suffered in this way.

We met Thecle again on the streets and, unsure as to what we would do here, headed to the small tourist information office. From there we took a taxi 65km to Eki-Naryn a small village with one sight – that of a Swastika constructed from a forest of trees built by German prisoners of war in an act of defiant irony when the Soviets forced them to plant a forest here.

It made for a pleasant morning’s stroll before we returned to Naryn for a late lunch. I then headed to the rather uninspiring regional museum before coming back into town and faffing around. We all met up for supper again with a Dutch couple. It was a real change from the mountains of Tash Rabat, that was for sure.