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Where should I base myself for cross-country in Kyrgyzstan?
Chon-Tash, 45 minutes from Bishkek. Almost every top flight registered in the country starts there, and it is the cheapest serious flying to reach in Central Asia. Too-Ashuu for the longest lines, Karakol for the second week.
In detail
The answer surprised us too, and we changed our own site because of it.
The obvious assumption is that you base in Karakol or Suusamyr, because that is what everyone writes about — big mountains, high cloudbase, remote valleys. The public flight record says otherwise. Across two seasons, the flights that actually got registered and scored in Kyrgyzstan launched overwhelmingly from Chon-Tash, the ridge above the Ata-Beyit memorial, forty-five minutes from Bishkek on a paved road.
The 2026 season's top-scoring flight: 110.13 km, 6 h 21 min, from Chon-Tash. The 2025 season's best: 104 km and 100 km, from Chon-Tash. Fifth place in 2026, 93 km, Chon-Tash.
Why this matters to your budget. Basing at Chon-Tash means you sleep in Bishkek, which has cheap hotels, an international airport 30 minutes away and hospitals. Compare that with a Karakol base, which is a six-to-seven-hour drive from the airport. A week at Chon-Tash costs a fraction of a week in the mountains and, on the evidence, flies further.
Too-Ashuu is the other one to know: the three longest flights of the 2026 season, 116–119 km, launched from the pass in mid-July. It is 2.5 hours from Bishkek on the highway, so it works as a day trip from the same base.
Karakol is a real XC site too — 80 km flights register from there — and it is where the scenery is. We would put it in week two rather than week one.
Suusamyr is the one everybody talks about and almost nobody registers flights from. The cloudbase claim is real enough as a claim; we simply have not seen the flights that would confirm it, and we are not going to build your week around it on that basis.
The flying sites table has all of this with sources attached.
Related
- When is the best time to paraglide in Kyrgyzstan?
- Does travel insurance cover paragliding?
- What rating and experience do I need for an XC trip here?
- How does retrieval actually work here?
- How far can you actually fly in Kyrgyzstan?
- Can I bring my own wing, and what about gear transport?
Tell us what you fly
Send your rating, hours, personal best and last SIV, and you get a specific answer — a route and a retrieval zone, not a brochure. A person reads it and answers within one working day.
Or just get the season report
One email at the end of each season with the flyable days we actually logged, and one more if the SIV course opens. Nothing else, ever.