{"id":2606,"date":"2012-03-29T10:19:05","date_gmt":"2012-03-29T04:19:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/memmott.us\/blog\/?p=2606"},"modified":"2012-04-01T05:34:45","modified_gmt":"2012-03-31T23:34:45","slug":"tulips-poppies-and-other-wildflowers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/memmott.us\/blog\/2012\/03\/29\/tulips-poppies-and-other-wildflowers\/","title":{"rendered":"Tulips, Poppies, And Other Wildflowers"},"content":{"rendered":"

The wildflowers of Kyrgyzstan are rightfully considered among the most beautiful in the world.\u00a0 While I got a chance to get around and see a lot of them while I was there, one of my regrets about departing so soon was that I missed the opportunity to get out again this spring, now that I\u2019ve learned a bit about where to find them.\u00a0 I figured I\u2019d write down a bit of what I discovered.\u00a0 Maybe someone else will add their own favorite place in the comments?
\n\"\"
\nYou don’t have to go far from Bishkek to find beautiful fields of wildflowers. Here is one<\/a> you could visit on a lunch hour.
\n\"\"
\nOne of my favorite drives near Bishkek is the Ala Archa-Alamedin drive<\/a>.\u00a0 As I noted in that write-up, it takes you very close to the Chunkurchak State Biological Reserve, established to protect several endangered Tulip species.\u00a0 That\u2019s definitely one place you should check out.<\/p>\n

A great drive for looking for poppies is the upper road to Issyk Ata, described is my post on the Burana Tower<\/a>.\u00a0 It seems that the best fields for poppies vary from year to year, but this road is a good bet.\u00a0 By the way, from a distance the poppies, mixed in with other foliage, can look almost brown, so if you see a large brown area on the hill as you are driving along, it might be worth getting a little closer.
\n\"\"
\nLast year, the best poppy field I came across was right next to the Ata Beit memorial<\/a>, so that\u2019s another place to look.
\n\"\"
\nOne of the most beautiful fields of wildflowers I have been to in Kyrgyzstan was near Kel-Tor lake<\/a>, so that is another good destination.\u00a0 I was too late in the year getting up there to find tulips or poppies, so I can\u2019t say for sure, but I would be surprised if there were not tulips in the Kel-Tor Gorge.
\n\"\"
\nKok-Moinok Gorge<\/a> is a great place to visit during tulip season.<\/p>\n

I have one more suggestion which I will try to get up soon: Zhylamysh Gorge.<\/p>\n

The truth is, though, that you should be able to find an extraordinary variety of wildflowers anywhere in Kyrgyzstan over the next few months, if you can only bring yourself to get out of Bishkek and look.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The wildflowers of Kyrgyzstan are rightfully considered among the most beautiful in the world.\u00a0 While I got a chance to get around and see a lot of them while I was there, one of my regrets about departing so soon was that I missed the opportunity to get out again this spring, now that I\u2019ve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,61,99,63,52,59],"tags":[167,172,188,173,166,23,55,170],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/memmott.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2606"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/memmott.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/memmott.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/memmott.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/memmott.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2606"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/memmott.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2625,"href":"http:\/\/memmott.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2606\/revisions\/2625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/memmott.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/memmott.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/memmott.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}