Kyrgyzstan

PART 1: CHAOS IN THE CAPITAL

Kyrgyzstan's capital Bishkek is surprisingly close, geographically, to Almaty, Kazakhstan. Were it not for the Soviets' arbitrary border-drawing in Central Asia - which in most instances did not map to any real geographical features like mountains or rivers but instead consisted of geopolitically conniving land-border demarcations designed to create conflict-provoking allocations of resources and ethnic distributions that played into the hands of central rule from Moscow - then our four hour bus ride between the two cities might not have involved a border crossing.

We ran into some...trouble at the border, though I cannot possibly elaborate on this. For reasons. Anyway, we eventually got into Kyrgyzstan, and caught a taxi to Bishkek, which lay only half an hour away. As our taxi drove through the city periphery, I saw a suburban squalor that reminded me of Delhi. Dusty streets lined with bilingual facades were bustling with Kyrgyz families who would not have looked out of place in the countryside. Once we made inroads into the city centre, things lightened up considerably, and I detected more of an Almaty vibe. Areas of greenery punctuated the streets in the style of that other city, and pockets of modern buildings were interspersed with more traditional Soviet-style structures across the board.

Soon, we arrived at our accommodation. An externally drab but internally classy apartment, this Air B & B number served us well for our first few nights in the city. Comfortable living quarters were a blessing, as we had much business to attend to in the capital, and little of it was pleasant. It was not that we had to wade through sewerage pipes to escape from a secret police outfit, or join the Kyrgyz circus as sword-swallowers to make extra income for the next leg of our trip. In actual fact we had a far worse institution to contend with: Iranian bureaucracy.

Getting into the Islamic Republic of Iran requires a visa. We were savvy enough on the general ins and outs of the procurement process to have arranged a letter of invitation previously, and one that was valid for long enough to allow us to get the visa in Bishkek. This aspect of things was fine. The predictably annoying side of things came immediately after arriving at the consulate, which was a small, uninviting, one woman-manned room that closed for two hours each day between 1 and 3pm - itself a problem, as 1pm was the precise time we arrived to do business on our first day. After coming back in the late afternoon, and attempting to get the process underway, we were informed we needed hard copies of our LOIs, as well as our insurance policy. Setting aside my incredulity about the fact that a physical piece of paper was required for such a simple task in the year 2017, I - the one with the (bad) Russian - set off down the street in search of somewhere to print the documents.

The universe, apparently, did not find this situation sufficiently hapless. So it decided to make rain pour from the Bishkek sky. I upped my pace to a fully-fledged run as I navigated the Bishkek streets, scouring the signs to my left for any indication of the presence of a printer. As I ran, I opened up Google Translate and looked up the verb for 'print', which I realised I did not know. Being careful not to trip over pavement irregularities or middle-aged Kyrgyz men, I located the appropriate word, and repeated it to myself out loud over and over. RaspeCHATat, raspeCHATat, raspeCHATat... I poked my head into a shop that looked like it held some promise. I was referred to a small-time translation agency further up the street, which was said to possess a printing machine. Non-descriptly called the 'GLC', it was a miracle I remembered the correct sequence of letters to look out for. It must have been the rain pelting down on my head that induced my memory to perform well. Wet and bothered, I staggered into the translation office, whose primary function was rendering Russian and Kyrgyz documents in Turkish, or vice versa, and not helping a New Zealand tourist to print Iranian visa documents. Still, the woman was pleasant, albeit bewildered - particularly after I attempted to compensate her with a Kazakhi coin - and I left with what I needed.

It was back to bedlam then, as various other bureaucratic hoops were held in front of us to jump through. I will not torture you with the details, both for the sake of brevity, and also because the longer one probes into the finer details of bureaucracy, the deeper one becomes lost in a dystopian, Kafkaesque labyrinth of inefficiency and meaninglessness where the rational mind is bludgeoned repeatedly by cackling goblins holding reams of paperwork and rejection stamps. Instead, I will skip to the happy ending of that subplot, which is that a couple of weeks later, we successfully collected our visas, and thereby secured our entry ticket into Iran.

After the trials and tribulations associated with acquiring the visa, mum and I decided we should try to enjoy Bishkek, and see some of its sights. It is a self-consciously Central Asian city, whose main square would provide plenty of clues to an extra-terrestrial that had swotted up on earth's geography that he had landed in a Stan country. Towering over the plaza is Kyrgyzstan's distinctive flag, whose yellow softball-in-a-sunflower gets squashed up into a xanthic mess as the wind makes the flag ripple. Trying to photograph the flag on a breezy day involves snapping dozens of pictures, and hoping to catch the flag at least once when it's unfurled. To boot, a giant statue of the Kyrgyz folkloric hero Manas looms in the background, offering our learned alien further hints that he is in Krygzystan. Manas was a young warrior who rode on horseback, and did all sorts of ethnically important stuff, the details of which are concisely described in a 500,000 line epic poem. Also, the centre of the square is occupied by rows of illustrious water fountains that appropriately reflect Kyrgyzstan's rich water resources. Overall, it's a memorable affair.

Another notable attraction of Bishkek is the Osh Bazaar, a typical Central Asian marketplace named after a different city in Kyrgyzstan. The Bazaar is the sort of place where one goes to collect vivid memories, since much of the merchandise is of dubious quality, and was probably sourced from a sweatshop in Uzbekistan. Walking into the bazaar, one is struck by the amount of throughput. Hundreds of Kyrgyz shoppers wearing kalpaks or headscarves mill about the market, as established sellers hawk their wares and shout special deals in the guttural Kyrgyz tongue. When I went, my main aim was to buy a new belt, as my previous one had broken and I'd gone for several weeks looking like a poster-boy for hip hop subculture. It didn't take long for me to find a shop that sold them; the belts were conspicuously hung on the walls, flopping down like dog's tongues. All of the belts without exception were several sizes too large for me, but the shopkeeper was happy to help in this regard, and snipped my favoured belt down to size, before pressing several additional holes into it. And for the accessory and his troubles combined, he only charged 150 som - three dollars.

Other memories of the bazaar include listening to a blind accordionist serenading market-goers in one of the main areas, and waiting half an hour in a shoe store for the staff to locate the partner to the shoe we wanted to buy, all the while refusing to give us our money back and let us leave. At the Osh Bazaar, the paraphernalia is cheap, but the memories are priceless. Ka-ching.

PART 2: AROUND LAKE ISSYK-KUL

After five days in Krygyzstan's capital city, which as far as cities go is pretty hum-drum overall, we were ready to move on. Bigger and better things beckoned us yearningly from afar. Specifically, it was time to head east from the capital, and begin a two week excursion around Lake Issyk-Kul, a massive saline lake that never freezes over, despite being surrounded by snowy mountains.

Planning a trip around Lake Issyk-Kul is a slightly strange experience. As opposed to being a continuous series of beach-style holidays, as you might expect, it does not turn out like that at all. The reality is that many if not most towns 'around' the lake are not actually by the lake at all, meaning they afford no access to the beach, and so they're really only 'lake towns' by some figurative stretch of the imagination. The Lake serves more as a conceptual identity point for the towns than a practical place to have a swim.

Nevertheless, our first destination - the town of Tamga - was situated right by the lake, on its southern shore. I will always remember our arrival in Tamga as feeling like we'd been dropped off in an abandoned ghost town from the old American West. Long, empty streets stretched in every direction - the only protagonists in sight were lumps of gravel. Mum was not impressed, but I felt instinctively that there must be more to this town than met the eye. This premonition was less to do with my having a sixth sense, and more to do with having seen various recommendations of the town from travel bloggers. And yet, I could still tout an 'I told you so' over my mum later on.

We soon found our guest house, called 'Askar and Tamara's', and after a dinner of Kyrgyz food, got to know one of the most ebullient women we'd ever met. Tamara, a sixty-something Kyrgyz lady who used to work as a teacher and is now semi-retired, talked to us mirthfully and at length about her life, our lives, the town of Tamga, and - as they say - 'everything else inbetween.' Her eyes could be single-handedly used to deduce her emotions, so full of character were they. Over the course of our three days in Tamga, we would spend many hours in conversation with the female half of the guest house couple, and learn a lot about Kyrgyzstan in the process.

So much, then, for the personnel. As we soon discovered, there were several things to do in and around Tamga, and my premonitions were avered. At the top of our agenda was getting down to the lake shore, which lay on the far side of town. Tamara well-meaningly spent ten minutes delivering a list of memorised navigational instructions of which, after the fact, neither of us retained more than a handful. The recitation involved specific houses, paths, forests, gates, cardinal points, and several other referents that would have overwhelmed even the talented army recruit. We set off with the few scraps of information we could recall, and eventually - by asking a few locals and using our common sense - found our way down to the lake.

It felt strange to encounter a genuine body of water after many weeks on the dry subcontinent. Central Asia is not the place to go for a beach holiday, or to 'hang ten.' Nevertheless, Tamga's was a nice little beach. It lacked waves, since it was a lake, but the water was pleasant and the view fine. I had a ten minute dip before hanging out on the shore for a while, and watching a boat pass by.

The following day, we undertook a trip to Barskoon Valley, and then Skazka Canyon. The former was a picture-perfect valley with a mountain backdrop, filled with yurts, horses, and very young Kyrgyz boys prostituting their ponies out for cheap rides. I chatted to Tamara’s husband Askar in hackneyed Russian on the way over to the valley, and used the language again to reject the offers of horse rides we were bombarded with. Instead, we hiked up to the signature waterfall, which took all of ten minutes.

       

   

Skazka Canyon, meanwhile, is also known as ‘Fairy-Tale Canyon,’ which despite its lack of goblins, sprites, or any creatures of folklore, is indeed a magical location. This is a stark Badlands where cruel red rock formations knife their way across a desert terrain that’s drier than the prose from an R.L. Stine book. It is surprisingly easy to become lost in its labyrinthine corridors and mini-peaks, but we avoided that by always keeping one eye on the road from whence we came. Anyway, it was my first time in such a terrain, and it will stick in my mind as one of my favourite landscapes from Central Asia.

Karakol

A day or two later, it was time once again to up-and-away; our next port of call was the much-lauded town of Karakol. Upon arriving in the town, I felt a surge of disappointment, as it appeared to lack anything that would make anyone want to visit it. It is actually lauded only for its proximity to a number of rewarding multi-day treks that attract sinewy hikers from across Europe.

            I will not go into detail on Karakol town, as I found it to be nothing more than a poorly thought-out series of mundane suburban streets with no lake, park, forest, interesting monuments, or anything at all for me to write about. Instead, I will skip to the hikes we did, which were enjoyable, and made the excursion out to this eastern part of the lake worth it.

            First up was a day-trip to Jeti Oguz and back. This cute little number takes you up a gentle road in a valley for a few kilometres, before arriving at a couple of high pastures where summertime nomads ride horses and look wistful outside yurts. Since we hadn’t trekked properly since Leh, ‘Jeti’ was a nice way of easing back into that activity. Towards the end of the track, I made a side excursion up to – you guessed it – a waterfall. Halfway up I was hustled for a horse ride by a middle-aged Kyrgyz man and a young boy, and taking pity on the boy, I submitted myself to his pony. It was too small for me, and moved slower than I would have on foot, but I felt more culturally engaged. Plus, it was time to finally ride a horse in Central Asia.

    

 

      The following day, we moved onto bigger and better things. A two day trek from Ak-Suu village to Altyn Arashan and back was made into three days by a day trip I did from the latter village to a lake called Ala Kul. The trekking to Altyn Arashan was not too difficult overall, but there were more kilometres to cover, and also a couple of steep sections that taunted the tread on our shoes.

I took on the long day-trip to Ala Kul alone, as the route was too difficult for mum. I myself found it pretty sketchy at times, with the final mountain pass being plain nasty. A gradient that flirted promiscuously with an angle of 45 degrees combined with a walking surface of loose scree to form a thoroughly despicable climb. Going up, I was often on all fours to get enough traction. Going down, I was mostly on my backside, hoping I could slide down without rolling off the edge of the mountain. But I have to say, it was all worth it, because Ala Kul was probably the most incredible thing I’ve seen on the entire trip.

On the way back, I was aggressively hustled into a yurt by a couple of Kyrgyz men, to be served a cup of tea. I was not really in the mood, but gave into their macho tactics. Unsurprisingly, after I attempted to leave, one of them yelled ‘100 som!’ from behind me. I turned around with a sigh, and regarded the Central Asian scheister. As Milton Friedman once said, there is no free lunch. Conveniently though, I had not a dime on me. I searched every crevice of my pack, and found no money to pay him with. So the nefarious nomad suggested I give him my wrist watch. Considering the analogue time-piece cost over 150 dollars, I was rather reluctant to grant his request. Racking my brains for an alternative gift, I remembered that I was carrying some confectionery, for an energy boost. I offered him the rest of my candy, and he quickly agreed. Once the saccharine transaction was complete, I put my pack back on and got the hell out of there.

In sum, I thoroughly enjoyed the trek, even as it left us both quite weary. The scenery, with valleys and rivers and mountains, was good photo-fodder. And there’s no doubt that my fitness has improved on this trip, which can only be a good thing.

Cholpon Ata

Our final stop around Lake Issyk Kul was at Cholpon Ata, an oft-criticised beach getaway for wealthy Russians. I was less concerned about mean-hearted demographical insults, and more interested in the fact that Cholpon Ata actually had access to the lake, which meant there were swimming opportunities. On the first day in the town I had a solo swim at one of the beaches, and enjoyed the pleasant waters. I did not so much enjoy the swathes of pot-bellied fifty-something Slavic men who smoked cheap cigarettes as they burned on the beach. But the lake was great.

            And now, readers, a solemn tale. On the first day in Cholpon Ata, I contracted food poisoning. Mum and I had eaten lunch at a stock-standard roadside café on our street, and had had decently tasty fare in my opinion – manti, a Kyrgyz dish comprised of noodles, horse meat and vegetables. Nothing seemed off about the food to me at the time. But a couple of hours later, I began to feel very, very sick.

            Matters were not helped by the fact that I had left my good pair of sneakers at a hostel back in Karakol, and had to call the owner of that hostel for help, which consisted of him putting the shoes on a marshrutka that was heading to Cholpon Ata anyway. The agreed place for me to meet the driver was outside a bank on the main strip of Cholpon Ata, and I had been given a fairly specific time window. The trouble was, when the target marshrutka finally showed up – twenty minutes late – it drove straight past, and I couldn’t catch it. In the meantime, I was feeling increasingly sick, and had to throw up several times on the sidewalk.

            Indeed, the driver reneging on his promise to deliver me the shoes was a kick in the guts right after I had just chucked my guts. This was definitively the worst moment of the trip so far. Later, I got a half-hearted call from the driver, in difficult-to-understand Russian, asking where I was. He was probably going through the motions, hoping I would give up so that he could keep the sneakers, and maybe sell them to a rare Kyrgyz man with feet as big as mine. He won in the end, too, as I was too sick to locate his next suggested rendezvous point. It was sayonara to my footwear, and an evening of vomiting lay ahead.

            I threw up nearly fifty times over the course of a few hours before my stomach decided it had rid itself of what I assume was bad meat. I did not feel right in the belly again until two days later, and then I would not touch meat for a few days. Fortunately, I was in fit enough condition during my recovery to salvage my Cholpon Ata experience from misery. Mum and I visited a historical museum, as well as the famous petroglyphs – ancient drawings on rocks. Most of these were of goats drawn side-on, which became so repetitive as to be funny. I really liked the site though, and after a swim at the lake later in the day, I ended up with some nice memories from the town.

A goat drawn side-on

Goats drawn side-on

A goat drawn side-on

Yeah, you get the picture...

            After three days in Cholpon Ata, we located a shared taxi and made the three hour trip back to Bishkek. And there, I shall end this blog post. For all the dirt on the latter half of our stay in Kyrgyzstan, be sure to keep your eyes peeled for the next entry!