Archana Pathak is a PhD candidate at Indian Institute of Technology Mandi studying Himalayan borderlands and infrastructure anthropology. Otabek Omonov is a PhD student at TIIAME National Research University in Uzbekistan researching hydropower development impacts on Central Asian transboundary rivers. Yaxuan Su is a PhD candidate in anthropology at the National University of Singapore examining gendered mobility and digital kinship networks along Vietnam-China borderlands. The three co-authored this piece following their collaborative exploration of Bishkek’s Dordoi Bazaar during the Border Lab Summer School 2025.
One of the highlights during Border Lab Summer School 2025, was the field trip to Dordoi Bazaar in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Located at the edge of the city, the Bazaar is an open-air market and one of Central Asia’s busiest wholesale hubs. As we made our way through the entrance of the market in scorching heat, we gradually became attuned to the visual boundaries that structure and give meaning to this vast commercial space. The entrance is packed with sellers, buyers and tourists, everyone trying to make space for themselves to move forward, occasionally interrupted by moving carts selling tea, snacks, and fruits.
The Bazaar is composed of thousands of shipping containers, most of them stacked in two levels, with upper containers used for storage and lower ones as storefronts. Many containers are marked with signs that hint at their affiliations to different regions or companies. Yet, these markings do not create sharp lines; rather, as the containers are stacked, repurposed, and circulated, they render the boundaries of ownership, origin, and trade networks only partially visible, blurring and shifting depending on how and where one looks.
As we moved through its layered corridors, we were struck by how different sections seemed to carry their own visual and sensory worlds. Areas selling clothing and tourist souvenirs were filled with warm colours and bustling crowds. In contrast, zones for shoes and leather goods felt dimmer, quieter, and were spatially congested. As we ventured deeper into the Bazaar, these shifts in tone, atmosphere, and texture marked transitions across space and time. More than anything, for us, it was this sensory experience which stood out, and how boundaries were manifested within them. National labels also played a role in organising the bazaar. Certain sections were named after the origins of goods or decorated with national flags, overlaying imagined geographies onto commercial arrangements and shaping how people and commodities move through the space.
Dordoi Bazaar, thus, emerges not only as a marketplace but also as a dynamic archive of mobility, where borders are constantly reimagined through colour, commerce, and circulation.
