There are ashrams in India and cultural centres for spiritual research in America and Russia, but there is no centre in the world that combines both, spirituality and science.

Tashkul Kereksisov

Along the southern border of lake Issyk-Kul, Kyrgyzstan there is an abandoned complex full of secrets and mystery. Aalam Ordo, the centre of the universe, was meant to be a place to support the youth, 365 emerging young talents, meeting elders, exchange ideas and learn without any lectures, but discussions. Every year there would be an online journal about the outcome of these meetings and could be accessed digitally by everyone. The vision behind the project was planned and built in 2009 by Ташкул Джанузакович, a Kyrgyz statesman. Regrettably, Tashkul’s project never came alive and remains as a surreal utopia.

Beside the 36 concrete yurts Aalam Ordo is full of abandoned monuments, paintings and spiritual places. A guardian and her husband still lives in one of these yurts. They have a dog and keep a few turkeys who sometimes follow you through the whole complex.

The White Ship is a soviet drama movie about a seven-year-old boy who lives isolated in a primeval forest cut off from the rest of the world with six adults. An old Maumoon serves as a substitute for his parents. A world of tales and beautiful legends as perceived by the impressionable child prone to fantastic perception of reality, conflicts with the harsh existence of adults engrossed into their own problems.

Al-Khidr is a figure described but not mentioned by name in the Quran as a righteous servant of God possessing great wisdom or mystic knowledge who embodies the renewing vegetation “the green one”. On the picture above it is represented with a pole in his hand and a face covered with kind of a net. Its character varies according to local tradition: it is a man, a saint or a prophet who wanders. In Kyrgyz tradition, he appears several times in the epic Manas. In a dream he announced to Yakup the imminent birth of his son, the hero Manas.