Kyrgyzstan
Jeti-Ögüz
Seven rust-red sandstone bulls rearing from the valley floor, a broken heart cleaved beside them.
Seven ridges of red rock rise like the backs of sleeping animals, and at dawn the colour deepens to blood-orange against green alpine meadow. Beside them a cleaved rock face is called Broken Heart, and it looks exactly like one. The air smells of juniper and wet grass.
Jeti-Ögüz means 'Seven Bulls' in Kyrgyz, and the red sandstone wall it names guards a gorge in the Terskey Alatoo, an easy drive southwest of Karakol. Legend blames a heart for the split rock beside it: a woman who died of grief when two suitors duelled to the death for her love. Beyond the formations the valley climbs through Tien Shan spruce to the Kok-Jayik pastures, where nomad families raise yurts each summer beneath the icy cliffs of Oguz Bashi, and a sanatorium established in 1932 still takes guests near the gorge mouth. South of it, the Valley of Flowers turns over to poppies in May and early summer. Come at first light, when the stone burns against meadows still in shadow.
Couple
The Broken Heart is geological romance made literal. Morning light on red rock, meadow walks, and a yurt breakfast of clotted cream and warm bread; the valley delivers beauty without effort.
Family
Children get seven bulls to count and name, horses to ride from the yurt camps, and a waterfall to walk to when the counting is done.
- The Seven Bulls wall and the cleft Broken Heart rock stand an easy drive southwest of Karakol.
- Legend says the rock split when a woman died of grief over two suitors who killed each other for her.
- Nomad families raise summer yurts on the Kok-Jayik pastures beneath the icy cliffs of Oguz Bashi.
- Valley yurt camps serve kaymak breakfasts, with waterfall hikes and horse rides straight from the door.
Kaymak, thick clotted cream, spooned onto warm bread with dried cheeses at a Kok-Zhayik yurt-camp breakfast.
Laghman or a slow mutton soup for dinner back at camp, homemade preserves standing open on the table.
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