Asia 360° creator Adilet Bektursunov is a TV journalist, producer, and director of documentary films and investigations. He has worked for RFE/RL since 2015.
Inspector Adilet Imanbekov is a man with a mission: Warding off poachers from the 28 species of fish in Kyrgyzstan’s Lake Issyk-Kul, the world’s second-largest saline lake after the Caspian Sea. But he must rely on others for his boat. Asia 360° took to the water to witness his battles firsthand.
A dangerous mountain trail is the only direct route that connects the remote southern Kyrgyz village of Zardaly to the outside world. Every year, people and cattle plummet from the cliffs, but locals continue to use the perilous path because they have no other choice.
Central Asia's largest bazaar has been closed for a month now, causing hunger and poverty for some 50,000 people in Bishkek who worked there before COVID-19 struck. Some of these people live on-site in shipping containers, while others live at an informal shantytown on a garbage dump near the giant marketplace in the Kyrgyz capital.
No need to worry about the carbon footprint of Uzbekistan's ancient technique for preserving winter melons. Its special "kovunkhona" storage chambers have no automatic cooling systems at all. Instead, they just rely on cold outside air and centuries of local experience keeping melons fresh until spring.
Arslanbob is an ancient walnut forest on the slopes of the Tian Shan mountains in southern Kyrgyzstan. Every fall, the locals, mostly ethnic Uzbeks, harvest walnuts for sale at Central Asia's biggest walnut market.
It once was a proud and prosperous part of the Soviet Union’s robust uranium-mining industry. But today, residents of northern Kazakhstan’s Saumalkol call their home a ghost town.
