News

A Kyrgyz mountain water legend

01.08.2016

Though the province of Batken in Kyrgyzstan is located south of the Fergana Valley, a very fertile part of Central Asia, it can hardly be called a ‘place of heaven’. The landscape is flat with a lack of vegetation, surrounded by rocky mountains. Arid climate and scarcity of water resources makes Batken province a hard place to live. Natural disasters and inclement weather do little to help. But the rocky soil does nourish lush gardens of apricots, which are widely planted by local villagers, who work hard to keep a decent livelihood in these harsh conditions.

Water is a vital resource here, given the dry climate and high temperatures in agricultural season, making dependency of rural populations on it even stronger. Competition over access to water has fueled conflicts due to the limited area of arable land and high population density.

The vital meaning of water resources in locals’ lives is illustrated by a legend about three khans who used to live in Batken province with their tribes a long time ago. At the foothills of mountains covered by juniper forests, there is a place that local people call ‘Suu Bashy”, or head of water. It is the mouth of a spring that runs down the valley, forming on its way a river that provides downstream villages with water.

Once upon a time this area used to be fertile and green, full of vegetation and wild animals. People had enough food to eat and plenty water for drinking and farming. This happy life lasted until the three khans got into a conflict over power and the khan who lived upstream next to Suu Bashy, as revenge, decided to cut the water off from the two khans who lived downstream in the valley. He blocked the mouth of the spring with skins of wild animals. Water got offended by such attitude of people (many Kyrgyz people believe in spirits and animistic features of nature and natural resources) and decided to leave the tribes for good. It ran away to the other side of the mountain gorge using underground channels. In the end, nobody won in the conflict over power, as nature is stronger than human, according to the legend.

Without water, the area once green and fertile turned into dry desert. The grass was gone and so were the animals, who migrated up to the mountains. The tribes, led by their greedy khans, also had to leave their homeland in tears, as there were no resources left to live on.

Many years later, one man decided to find the lost Suu Bashy. In his search, he followed the ancestors’ description of the place in the legend, where the main sign of the location of Suu Bashy was marked by an old tree.

He managed to find a lonely old tree at the foothill of a mountain, mobilized all the villagers and together they started to dig the rocky soil next to the tree. Their hard work paid off, and they finally found the dry bed of the spring. They kept cleaning it, and one day water started to come out. This is how water returned to the people.

Nowadays the Suu Bashy is considered a sacred place by locals. People come here from downstream villages to worship and thank God for blessing their families with clean water from the mountains. It is a place where water comes out of the land, forming a small lake surrounded by trees, planted by people. The old tree is still there, and they say it is 1 000 years old. In fact it takes several people to fully hug the tree.

News by Tursunali Tolomushov of Alysh Dan

Photo: Alma Karsymbek