Bishkek

Skyscanner has released its latest reports highlighting the destination set to be big hits for travellers in 2027, as well as some of the biggest changes in flight prices.

Topping the list is Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, where flight searches have risen by 501% year-on-year.

Other destinations seeing significant growth include Hurghada in Egypt, up 186%, and Chongqing in China, which has seen searches increase by 70%.

The report also reveals the biggest drop in airfares, with flight prices to Bilbao in Spain falling by 66% compared with the previous year.

Yeah, I mentioned it in Friday's episode.

But yeah, I love the list of like the best value places to go and things like that.

Don't know much about Bishkek, but I've been watching lots of videos about Chongqing.

Yeah.

And so to discuss a bit of this, I invited to speak with us today Matthew Hennigan.

He is an ESRC doctoral researcher at the University of Glasgow and is also an associate research fellow with the OSCE Academy in Bishkek.

He is currently working on a thesis with the very grand title of The Elusive Wealth of Nations, Labour Migration, Illiberal Financialization and the State Remittance Complex in Bishkek.

Central Asia.

And we'll be talking on this topic here in Almaty.

It was in Kyrgyzstan.

It was in Bishkek.

We don't want to fire the chief of protocol here in Gurung.

Well, if Pashinyan's chief of protocol still is, you know, working, because I think in one of his speeches he, you know, during COP17, I think he also used the word Kazakhstan.

of saying you better not do anything.

Well, I mean, there's a lot of interaction right now.

There have been at least three meetings of the leadership in Bishkek.

I think they met and then Pashinyan was in Tehran for the Supreme Leader's funeral.

But closer to home, in terms of the place where I'd done my dissertation fieldwork in Central Asia, it instantly recast Central Asia strategically.

because we went from seeing the region as this kind of sleepy backwater with like these sort of Soviet legacy structures, maybe some sort of NGOs playing around, maybe some of them had oil or minerals, so they were getting some investment, some interest, to all of a sudden, boom, we set up military logistics bases in Uzbekistan, in Karshi Kanabad, the old Soviet base, and then a couple months later in Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan.

at the civilian airport there that's expanded and so all of a sudden it's like high level strategic cooperation and security assistance in central asia in support of what's going in afghanistan

now in your bio i read that you took a job selling some kind of banking or payment systems in the

you know, Instagram, and you get tens of thousands of Russian IT workers leaving the country, where do they go? They go to places where they can travel visa-free.

So they go to places like Yerevan, in Armenia, in Georgia, and in Central Asia.

As a result, Central Asia and places like Tashkent Astana, Bishkek, they have a mini tech boom, right, of sort of these displaced IT workers setting up sort of startups.

I'll give you one stat.

They overthrew President Abkayev, who was the first democratically elected president of a Central Asian republic.

Basically, the CIA recruited a bunch of Islamists, and they marched on Bishkek and overthrew him.

he was you know had the opportunity he had the option to order his troops his presidential guard to fire on the on the crowd before they rushed the presidential palace he forbade it he said no kirghiz should die because of my government if the kirghiz people don't want me i will not be here and i think honestly i don't think any government should really be I don't know if it's ever appropriate for a government to use force like that against its people.

I mean, if things get to that point, because, I mean, the government's supposed to serve the people.