TRAVELS
ON THE
SYR DARYA
T
he Syr Darya, one of the two great rivers of CenThanks to their efforts, we were able to gather a real
tral Asia, flows through four countries in the region. set of human stories connected with one river, and to
Hundreds of thousands of people in each of these build a real network of journalists from neighbouring
countries are directly dependent on the temperament countries, many of whom were able to visit each other
of the river and the water it provides for their very exis- and look at the water situations “with the eyes of their
tence. In some places, the threat of flooding is a serious neighbours” for the first time. Their impressions and the
problem – in others, droughts are becoming more fre- articles they produced vary widely, both in content and
quent and lasting longer. But wherever you live along its style. But both during and after the project, the particicourse, life on the Syr Darya is never easy. Three journal- pants began to call themselves “Syr Daryans”, adding one
ists from Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan decided more identity to the already rich tapestry of citizenship,
to join forces and visit neighbouring countries to report nationality, language and culture that makes Central
on how simple farmers, fishermen, and engineers live on Asians who they are.
the banks of the Syr Darya.
Journalist Sergei Kostychev travelled from Tashkent
to the Fergana Valley, one of the most densely populated
regions of Central Asia, some 400 kilometres southwest
of Uzbekistan’s capital. Sergei then went to neighbouring Kazakhstan, where he met farmers living next to the
new Koksarai Reservoir, not far from the Uzbek border in
South Kazakhstan Province.
Zainudin Orifi journeyed from Tajikistan’s capital
Dushanbe, crossing the Anzob Mountain Pass and covering 380 kilometres on a journey to the north of the country to see with his own eyes the rice planters of the Kanibam district.
Bakyt Ibraimov, from the Kyrgyz city of Osh, travelled
350 kilometres to the village of Ozgorush in the Jalalabad
region, where he heard the stories of people whose fates
were changed forever by the construction of a reservoir.
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