Soviet Satellites - Kyrgyzstan

09 Jun 2016 . category: Travel . Comments
#Soviet

Intro

In our largely East to West itinerary, Kyrgyzstan was up next. It holds several distinctions amongst the Stans, being both the most difficult to spell as well as the most democratic. It is also home to the bizarre/terrible tradition of bride kidnapping. See here for a VICE feature by Thomas Morton on the phenomenon. As an aside, I highly recommend Morton and VICE in general, their content is both unique and quite interesting.

Drive to Bishkek

We set off in the morning for Bishkek, getting a taste of the crazy roads that our guide and driver had mentioned the previous day. People are incredibly aggressive about passing on the single-lane highway, leading us to be within a second of colliding with oncoming traffic multiple times. The situation is exacerbated by the variety of cars in this area. Central Asia apparently imports a lot of used cars from Japan, which drives on the left, despite the fact that these countries all drive on the right. So, our driver Slava ended up on the right side of the car, behind a huge truck that’s blocking visibility, while trying to pass on the left. As you might imagine, this leads to a lot of leftward drifting followed by abrupt right swerving upon seeing oncoming traffic. Thankfully, we survived the four days in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan without incident. Slava was surprisingly nonchalant about the long days in these driving conditions. Let’s see if Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are any better…

We thankfully exited Kazakhstan without incident, though the border crossing was a bit chaotic and confusing at times. No need to bribe my way out of the country as a friend of mine had done a couple years ago after misplacing some paperwork!

Bishkek

In Bishkek, we also wandered around the center city, seeing a similar variety of parks and statues. At one location, they had relocated a statue of Lenin, only to replace it with one of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels! And of course, across the street was a former Communist Party building since converted into the American University of Central Asia:

Here’s that statue of Lenin, still in a prominent location. Apparently, Lenin remains quite respected in the area, as he put a stop to many cruel policies by the Russian Czar. On the other hand, Stalin is unsurprisingly less revered, having enacted the forced settlement of many of the area’s nomadic peoples, amongst other misdeeds.

It was while in Bishkek that we heard a bit about the country’s two recent revolutions, from 2005 and 2010, both of which deposed national leaders. This makes Kyrgyzstan unique amongst the Stans, as Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan are all still led by their original post-Soviet leader, and Turkmenistan was as well until Niyazov passed away in 2006.

We also stopped by one of the city’s bazaars, where it seems that anything can be purchased, from toilet paper to horse sausages. Here are some colorful carpets:

And old women manning various food stalls:

Dinner that evening was a reminder of East Asian influence in the area, as I had these distinctly Chinese-looking noodles:

Day 2: Bishkek to Issyk-Kul

On our second day in Kyrgyzstan, we left Bishkek on the way to Central Asia’s largest lake Issyk-Kul, stopping at a couple of sights along the way. First up was Burana Tower, a 11th century brick minaret that was aggressively restored by the Soviets in the 1950s. Zakir even described it as Kyrgyzstan’s Pisa, as the tower has a slight lean to it despite the restoration:

After Burana, we headed to the lake, which really is quite massive. There’s also some thermal activity in the depths, meaning it was reasonably warm despite the altitude. We waded into the water a bit, and Aaron was able to get a swim in the following morning.

From the lake, we went North to the Grigorievka Gorge. While there, we passed many men on horseback herding livestock, as well as people erecting yurts. Not exactly sure how similar this was to “traditional” Kyrgyz life, but this was probably the cloest we got to it. Unfortunately, the road to the three alpine lakes was probably the longest and bumpiest I’ve done in a decade. Frankly, while the lakes were beautiful, it was probably not worth the extra distance up the gorge. And of course, it began to rain right around when we reached the lakes. This made the couple tiny streams we had driven through a bit more harrowing on the way back. Again, Slava seemed unfazed and did an excellent job getting us back. I, on the other hand, was largely asleep. Here’s a shot of our vehicle from this day:

Day 3: Back to Almaty

Due to our late return the previous evening, we had pushed visiting the Cholpan-Ata Petroglyphs to this last day. They were quite interesting, though we were a bit surprised to see them just out in the open air and able to be touched by anyone. Our guide traced out several of the glyphs with his hands…

We then just spent the rest of the day driving all the way back to Almaty. As the crow flies, it’s not terribly long, but there are these damn mountains in the way. This meant that we had to drive basically back to Bishkek and then from there to Almaty, again making the chaotic border crossing.

Our adventures in Kazakhstan weren’t quite done though. We had seen all these signs around Almaty for McDonald’s, so we went searching for one, as I especially enjoy international McDonald’s. Unfortunately, we ended up at what was apparently their corporate office instead of a food-serving location. We were told that real establishments had sadly not yet arrived. So instead, we went to this somewhat swanky place for dinner, and embarassingly managed to run out of local currency The meal was even quite affordable by American standards: around $10 each. But given that all our other meals had been less than half that, it somehow seemed crazy expensive. After a brief panic, Zakir found some extra Kazakh money, and we were able to pay him back by going to exchange our extra Kyrgyz currency.

The next morning, we said goodbye to Zakir and Slava, and left Almaty airport toward Dushanbe, Tajikistan! Here’s a picture of the four of us together, many thanks to the both of them for a wonderful couple of days.

---