The post title should really read Azimut Hotel and Kyzyl. We only left the hotel after 2pm. As I mentioned earlier, it has an excellent swimming pool, which we took advantage of. In addition, we had quite some laundry accumulated, which took a while to do. Moreso, weather was in agreement with us and it only stopped raining after we left the hotel. We had some rain later during the walk, but it was quite minor.
As we left the hotel, we visited the Centre of Asia square and monument as Kyzyl prides itself in being located in the very centre of Asia (I haven't verified to what extent this is a credible statement). Then we had a good lunch with local food, which is tasty, but very fatty and heavy. As we were eating, there was a company of three (two men and one woman) drinking and getting a little excited. I realised that it's really better to avoid drunk Tuvans.
Then we went for a walk in the centre and visited local monuments and buildings that are built in Tuvan and Buddist style. Quite an interesting mix - I felt like in China. As Abakan, Kyzyl existed well before the Soviet Union, but it was really built by the Soviets, hence a lot of Soviet architecture, plus of course modern buildings in Tuvan style. The history of Tuva is pretty much of never being independent - at times it belonged to the Chinese, Mongolians and since early 1900s to Russia. A perfect example of a small nation being entangled in geopolitics. As it is located really in the middle of nowhere, I wonder what it would be if it were indeed independent... Should we look across the border in Mongolia to give us a clue? Or would it be the Switzerland of Asia?
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| Centre of Asia monument |
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| Royal hunt monument |
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| Lenin monument in Kyzyl, if you wondered if there was one! |
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