Kyrgyzstan travel health
Required is not recommended: the first is what the border asks about, the second is what a clinic would suggest. Both, for Kyrgyzstan, then the number to dial and what care costs a visitor. Applies to every guide in Kyrgyzstan: Bishkek, Karakol, Song-Köl, Osh.
Required to enter
Nothing. No vaccination certificate is asked for at the border.
Recommended
- Hepatitis A
- Typhoid
- Tetanus up to date
- Rabies for the mountains, where the dogs guard the flocks
Emergency number
112 from any phone; 103 for an ambulance, 102 for police
Care for visitors
Limited
Basic. Bishkek has a couple of private clinics used to foreigners; beyond it the district hospitals can stabilise and not much more, and the mountains are a helicopter away from anywhere. Evacuation cover is not optional here.
Altitude is the thing that sends visitors home: Song-Köl is at 3,000 m and the Ala-Kul pass at 3,900, and people go up too fast. Shepherds’ dogs bite. Stomach upsets from kumis and unboiled milk. The sun at altitude burns through cloud.
The general rules — clinic timing, water, mosquitoes, insurance — are in travel health tips.
The guides in Kyrgyzstan
BishkekKyrgyzstanThe greenest Soviet capital, a grid of poplars under 4,000-metre peaks, and the base for the most beautiful mountains in Central Asia
KarakolKyrgyzstanA frontier town at the far end of Issyk-Kul, a wooden mosque built by Dungans, a Russian church, and every trek in the Tien Shan starting from it
Song-KölKyrgyzstanA lake at 3,000 metres on a plateau of grass, yurts and horses and nothing else, where the herders spend the summer and you can too
OshKyrgyzstanThe oldest city in Central Asia, a sacred mountain in the middle of it, a bazaar that has run for two thousand years, and the door to the Pamir Highway