During the pandemic, many of us began to explore interesting locations nearby, including in neighboring countries. If you visited Kyrgyzstan many times already and think you know everything about it, our new article is for you. Lada Khasanova, a guide with twenty years of professional experience, national tourism trainer, civic activist, and a true patriot, shares attractions in the city of Osh and other reasons to choose Kyrgyzstan as your destination.
by Victoria Miroshnichenko
January 20th, 2022
Why does Kyrgyzstan attract tourists?
Lada Khasanova:
The Epic of Manas: The Memory of the Kyrgyz People
Manas is everything for the Kyrgyz – they have Manas Avenue, Manas Airport, the Manas military base, and, of course, the largest epic in human history. The printed version of the Kyrgyz epic is twenty times larger than Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and five times larger than the Indian Mahabharata. It takes half a year to chant Manas to the komuz (a string instrument) — pretty long, indeed! This was found out in the 1930s when Stalin ordered that the epic be recorded. All the akyn performers were gathered to make the recordings. They worked ten hours a day and the entire process took six months. Interestingly, there were six groups of akyns working and all the six recordings turned out to be identical.
Manas is a trance epic. A performer enters into a special state of mind before reciting the epic. The Altai people and the Far North nomads have similar epics. It is astonishing how nomads tell the legends that trace back thousands of years. Living human memory is a special instrument. While we hope to store information on artificial media such as flash or hard drives, the art of the akyns is a living human memory that is thousands of times more effective and capacious than any artificial device.
In Kyrgyzstan, the manasci (readers of Manas) traditions are more widespread in the north – Bishkek and Talas. Talas has Manas Ordo, a large historical and ethnographic center, and Bishkek plans to open the Manasci Center.
