Participants of Istanbul-China international marathon arrived in Shymkent

Participants of Istanbul-China international marathon arrived in Shymkent, Tengrinews.kz reports. The marathon is dedicated to the problem of water deficiency in Central Asian countries. Professional sportsmen from Taiwan are taking part in the race. They have been running for 79 days and covered 5,500 km. The sportsmen have run along the roads of Turkey, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan. Now they will spend 20 days running in Kazakhstan towards the Chinese border. On their way the marathon participants made camps in villages of different countries. They say all the villages have a common feature: water is extremely precious there. “During the marathon we saw women carrying water in buckets. Plus I think that water was not of a very good quality. There were cases when we could not buy bottled water and had to drink whatever locals drank. To be honest, I had diarrhea, despite of the fact that we had water purifiers,” the marathon participant Kevin Lin said. The project is organized by Andrew Strahan. As he is not a professional sportsmen, he has run only a few km and has been accompanying the runners by car for the rest of the trip. “There is water deficiency in all the countries we have been to. I think that people who have water have to be responsible: they can wash cars and water grass less frequently and stop taking baths, as water is really highly precious in some countries,” Andrew Strahan shared his impressions. The marathon will last for 80 more days. After the marathon the runners will make reports and publish them on the Internet. The sportsmen hope that their project will draw people's attention to the water deficiency problem.