Lucky find… his entire village could retire on the proceeds… would be interesting to know if he was looking for it or just found it.
There is a lot of gold in that general region. Just across the border in Kyrgyzstan is one of the worlds larger gold mines, the Kumtor mine in ... although this is is a hard rock mine. There are many smaller placer mines in the vicinity… Kyrgyzstan is broke, this one mine was 13% of the country’s GDP, but it is now politically unstable and not condusive to foreign investment.
The soviets had been attempting to extract the gold from the ore sice the 60’s but is was not until the demise of the Soviet Union that the Canadians (Centerra Gold) were able to come in and develop the mine.... The Canadians were in the region looking for uranium deposits around the side of lake Issykul.... There is a now abandoned uranium mine that was the original source of fuel for the Soviet Nucleur program.... It now rates as one of the most radioactive polluted places, warning and keep out signs everywhere and kid herding sheep and goats all over the tailings totally oblivious to the risk.
Early last century there was a mine some 10km from the existing gold mine… the mine was a gulag with both WW1 and Soviet political prisiners used for labour. The area is now locally known as the valley of bones, as human bones are scattered around the valley… it is an erie place, old wooden stopes, tunnels mostly filled with ice, old tram lines and carts that were pulled by hand probably.
This gold rich area is at 4000m altitude with temps down to -40C, life would have been very hard without the infra structure and luxuarys of a modern mining camp.
