By Nikola Marinko · EIA Site Manager, WSS Jalal-Abad, Kyrgyzstan, 2015-2016 · Updated October 2026 · 11 min read

Jalal-Abad was the province I worked in, not a detour. From June 2015 to June 2016 I was EIA Site Manager for Ludwig Pfeiffer on WSS Jalal-Abad, a $10.5M ADB-financed rebuild with six wells 135 metres deep, 12.4 km of mains and two 3,000 m³ reservoirs for 150,000 people. Two more of my sites sat in the same province, the village water system at Bazar-Korgon and the modular wastewater plant at Enesai, so I drove these roads constantly.

The story begins on the border-hugging scenic route from Osh, past the Andijan Reservoir and through Uzgen, over a pass where the Alay Range appears on the horizon. In town, sheep have right of way at every junction, the lepyoshka shack by the Kugart River becomes a daily habit, and schoolchildren in Soviet-style uniforms walk past donkey carts. There is paragliding at sunset with the Fergana Range turning pink, a taxi driver called Kubat and his shortcuts, and the day I found a faster alley through Uzgen than my Kyrgyz colleague Talant. The last chapter goes into the mud-brick houses still built the old way, cool inside with no air conditioning.

One tip from the page that I stand by: a new road bypasses Uzgen now, but take the old one. Some detours are the journey.

WSS Jalal-Abad project · WSS Bazar-Korgon project · WWTP Enesai project · Osh · Field stories

Jalal-Abad, Kyrgyzstan - The Province I Drove in Every Weather

FIELD STORY