Burana Tower

One of the highlights of the trip. I will copy what the guide book says about this area.

"The legend says that a father built a minaret to save his daughter from the predicted death but it didn't help... The Burana Tower was the site of the Balasagun city, the center of Karakhanid culture of the X-XV centuries. That is a place of unique mixture of Buddhism culture together with Christian and Muslim inheritance. The tower's minaret (Burana from Turkish munara--minaret) is one of the oldest of its kind in Central Asia. The mineret was built in the 11th century."

Trying to find this place was another challenge. We missed the last turn off and went about 10-15 km the wrong way and there was no one to ask. We finally saw this old LADA coming down the road so Dave go out and flagged down the car. It was quite an elderly man driving the car and of course he spoke no english but he had a middle age lady in the back seat with her nose all bandaged up and lots of iodine on the bandage and they looked like they were on their way to the hospital but she spoke english. It was quite the scene and they tried to explain to us where to turn but finally just told us to follow them and they would show us where to turn. Then to top things off the old LADA took a long time to get started -- we were getting a little worried of how bad of situation we were making for these people. But the car finally started and they showed us the turn off and we say thank-you to the friendly people of Krygyzstan!