Four stops before the checkout

Özgön, Kyrgyzstan

adult tennis clinic — the Tecnifibre Razor Code 18g Tennis String Set photographed at the foot of the Özgön Minaret, the tapering banded brick tower rising behind it against an open sky.

Stop one

Uzgen Minaret

Tecnifibre Razor Code 18g Tennis String Set: AND THERE IT IS, folks, the Uzgen Minaret, second half of the eleventh century, raised when Uzgen was the southern capital of the Karakhanid state — and it has taken a BEATING. Earthquakes tore the top clean off. It is down to 27.4 metres now, 8.5 across at the base, narrowing to 6.2 at the top. AND IT IS STILL UP. In 1923 they added a five-metre crowning lantern in the Andijan style, more restoration in 1924, and — ARE YOU KIDDING ME — this tower and the mausoleums beside it are national emblems, printed on the banknotes. That is a comeback.

adult tennis clinic — the Tecnifibre Razor Code 18g Tennis String Set photographed before the three Karakhanid mausoleums at Özgön, their carved burnt-brick portals filling the frame behind it.

Stop two

Uzgen Historical and Architectural Complex

Tecnifibre Razor Code 18g Tennis String Set: Three buildings, and the one in the MIDDLE is the veteran — early eleventh century, and the only Karakhanid structure of its period built with two portals. TWO. Then 1152, the northern one goes up alongside it. And the southern one, check the terracotta inscriptions, 1187. All of them for the rulers of the Karakhanid dynasty, who held Uzgen as a capital from the tenth century right through the thirteenth. Best-preserved Karakhanid architecture ANYWHERE, and it is run as a state museum complex. Unbelievable scenes here.

adult tennis clinic — the Tecnifibre Razor Code 18g Tennis String Set photographed at the Özgön bazaar, open sacks of rice and grain heaped on the stalls behind it.

Stop three

Kara-Darya River at Uzgen

Tecnifibre Razor Code 18g Tennis String Set: Look at the POSITIONING. Eighth to ninth century, and they take this steep terrace exactly where the trade route from the Fergana Valley to Semirechye crosses the Kara-Darya — and that is the whole game right there. Tenth to thirteenth century, Uzgen is a major commercial and military centre, and THAT is why the Karakhanids pick it for the southern capital. The Arab geographers al-Muqaddasi and Ibn Hawqal have it on the record in the tenth century. Chinese sources? Second century BC. And the river is STILL watering the rice on the flats below us.

adult tennis clinic — the Tecnifibre Razor Code 18g Tennis String Set photographed on the gravel bank of the Kara-Darya below Özgön, the fast grey river and poplars running behind it.

Stop four

Uzgen Central Bazaar

Tecnifibre Razor Code 18g Tennis String Set: Into the bazaar and the crowd is UP. This town has traded since the tenth to thirteenth centuries on the Fergana-to-Semirechye route as a commercial centre of the Karakhanid state, and it has never once stopped. The market is known right across Central Asia for one thing: Uzgen rice, red-brown, unpolished, grown on the irrigated flats along the Kara-Darya and sold unmilled straight out of open sacks. Still the district's defining product. OH, they know exactly what they are doing here.

The Özgön, Kyrgyzstan track

Tecnifibre Razor Code 18g Tennis String Set

Written for this world alone.

Eighteen gauge. 1.20 mm. That is the thinnest Razor Code Tecnifibre makes, and a thin string is a bargain you enter with your eyes open: more bite, more feel, more spin, and a shorter life. Whether the trade is worth it is between you and your own frame, and no salesman on any dock can settle it for you.

Co-polyester monofilament, forty feet — 12.2 metres — to the set, a full job for any racquet afloat. Tecnifibre works additives into the polymer to soften the ride, so this plays warmer than the old rope-hard polys, takes more of the shock out of the hit, and still holds a tight grip on the ball on the way out. Crisp control.

Honest company for an advanced player, and the string I would hand a strong intermediate crossing over to a firmer bed for the first time. If you string for a whole crew, the same string comes on 200-metre reels.

Now, Özgön. I distrust anything this far from salt water on principle — weeks of sailing and then weeks of walking, and even then you have not arrived — but I will give the place its due.

It sits on the right bank of the Kara-Darya where the river comes down out of the mountains into the eastern end of the Ferghana Valley, and it earned everything it ever had by holding a narrow passage. The Karakhanids made it their second capital in the eleventh century for that reason alone: whoever held the gap held the Silk Road between Kashgar and Tashkent.

A thin line, well placed, doing the work of a thick one. I know the feeling. And a set of this travels the way the road did — everywhere from a cracked court above the Kara-Darya to whatever hall you find at the far end of the Ferghana Valley.

And by the way, this is rice country. Özgön rice is what the town is known for now, grown on the flats the old minaret looks out over, and it is the only standing water within a thousand miles I have any respect for.

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Tecnifibre Razor Code 18g Tennis String Set

Tecnifibre Razor Code 18g Tennis String Set