Amid eternal snows at a phenomenal 4200m altitude, Kumtor is the world's eighth-largest gold field and produces an estimated 12% of Kyrgyzstan's GDP. Throughout summer 2013 protestors clashed with police while barricading the access road and attempting to cut power supplies to the mine. Locals seem divided as to whether these protest were genuinely out of concern for better environmental conditions, part of a political move agitating for the mine's nationalisation or simply a way of persuading the mine-owners to spend more money in local communities... some had suggested that the protest was the result of the mine owners not paying up to a major protection racket. Whatever the reality, there are no tours of the operations and even getting up onto the higher sections of the access road requires a special invitation to get past the various checkpoints.
