For people living in the mountainous regions, bridges are "connectors" that open up the world beyond their villages. Bridges help people getting to neighboring villages, pave the way to remote pastures, open new tourist routes and most importantly, keep people connected to their homeland. Bridges are therefore important infrastructure elements of the mountainous regions in the country.
This year, 6 bridges will be built in four regions of our country.
The initiative to build new bridges over mountain rivers belongs to a foreigner. Bernard Repond, a Swiss citizen, came to Kyrgyzstan as a tourist in the early 2000s. During one of his walks in the mountainous area, he saw that the local shepherds were only grazing their cattle on one section of pasture. In response to a question - why not graze animals on the entire pasture - he heard that there was no bridge to move the cattle to the other side. The simple French teacher appeared to be a desperate enthusiast. After discussing the problem of mountain bridges with Ernest Gabatuller, director of the Central Asia Mountain Partnership (CAMP) program in Kyrgyzstan, they outlined a plan of action.
Back in Switzerland, Bernard Repond founded the association "Pamir's bridges" and began collecting money for reconstruction and construction of mountain bridges in Kyrgyzstan (today in Switzerland there are 27 public organizations working in this field).
The partner of the association in our country was the program "CAMP", which worked with the support of the Swiss government. Later, its successor became the public foundation "CAMP Alatoo", which today is a local consultant in the promotion of the project "Mountain Bridges of Kyrgyzstan".
