CENTRAL
ASIA ADVENTURE – PART 1
The question asked by most people when they heard we
were heading to Central Asia and the “Stans”: “Why would you want to go THERE?”.
The best answer I could come up with was “Because we’ve never been there
before.” From the G Adventures tour description, this part of the world seemed interesting.
And then there are the other things that motivate me, number one being to
learn. At this stage in my life, learning opportunities are few and far between.
Travel is one of the most rewarding.
The five Stans achieved independence in 1991
following the breakup of the Soviet Union. So did nine other countries that
were part of the old USSR: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine,
Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. I guess I’d just like to know how
they’re getting along, twenty-eight years later. Maybe I’ll visit them all
before I’m done.
Thirty-six hours and nine times zones after leaving
Charlottetown, we touched down in Bishkek, capital of Kyrgyzstan (pronounced
Keer-ghiz-ston). Along the way, we had a six-hour layover in Istanbul airport.
It opened in April 2019 and will be the world’s biggest when it’s finished in 2025.
Soaring concourses, magnificent skylights, and sparkling marble floors combine
to create an unreal experience. Best of all, there are no PA announcements.
None! Either get to your gate on time or you miss your flight. Turkish Airlines
took very good care of us on the Toronto-Istanbul and Istanbul-Bishkek legs of
our journey. I’d fly with them anytime. Flight attendants tell stragglers to
“Hurry up and take your seat!” And they mean it. I like that.
Bishkek was the starting point of our journey. The
city of 1 million or so is rather drab. Most buildings date from the Soviet era
and look very much like what we saw in Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria: ugly and
ready to fall apart. Below is an example of the ugliest public sculpture I've ever seen, a concrete monstrosity typical of the Soviet brutalist style.
But the people are very friendly and things are cheap. A
very nice restaurant meal for two cost us $33 CDN. (We’d eat for much less outside
the capital.) We wandered around in a bit of a daze the first couple of days, recovering
from jet lag. Very few people speak English, very few places accept credit
cards, everything is written in the Cyrillic alphabet, and ATMs are very fussy
about which cards they’ll accept. Elva says: “You brought me here. Now figure
it out!” Lesson learned: never leave home without an ample supply of $US.
We met up with our G Adventures group on the evening
of Day 2 and had a very nice meal together. Our fellow travellers range in age
from early twenties to early seventies and hail from several countries:
Australia, the UK, Canada (six of us), and Sweden.
Our guide, Assan, led us on a walking tour of
Bishkek in the morning and gave us a brief history lesson. Not surprisingly,
the Kyrgyz people have had a difficult history over the past 150 years
characterized by war, genocide, revolution, corruption and, finally,
independence. As an example, 400,000 Kyrgyz fought on the Russian side during
World War II. Only half came home.
After lunch, we drove to Burana, a UNESCO World
Heritage Site, and climbed to the top of the tower, all that remains of the ancient
city of Balasagun, established in the ninth century as a caravan stop on the
silk road. Tour buses carrying Dutch and Chinese tourists stopped while we were
there, another indication that the “Stans” are being discovered.
Our accommodation for the night, Ashu Guest House in the village of Chong-Kemin proved to be the biggest surprise of the day. The village itself is rather quaint, reminding us of what Prince Edward Island might have looked like seventy-five years ago. But the guest house had wifi and was undergoing a major expansion, including a pool. Eighty people showed up for dinner!
On a bright, sunny morning, we walked around the
village and watched people pick potatoes by hand, the way we used to as kids.
We boarded the vans bound for Son-Kul (Lake Son) and stopped a few times along
the way to check out the scenery. We had lunch in a home stay in Konchar and
climbed to the top of a mountain pass at 3,400 metres along a rutted gravel
track before descending to our camp beside the lake. Five of us settled in for
the night in our yurt after a delicious meal. (Just so you know, we’re not
staying in a yurt because we have to but because we want to.) It was a damned cold
night on the shores of Son-Kul. I’m not used to sleeping with a crowd; let’s
just say that each of us took a turn on the saw… The pungent smell of
a dung fire greeted me as I took photos of the sunrise over the camp. Because
there isn’t a tree for miles, cow dung is the fuel of choice for heating and
cooking. Everything tasted fine to me!
The area around the lake is summer grazing ground
for local herders. A couple of families spend the season there in their yurts
and move the herds around on horseback. With winter on the way, the herds of
cattle, yaks, sheep, and goats are driven down the valley, a three-day trek,
where they will spend the cold months. We watched as they rode along the track,
expert horsemen all, the youngest only twelve years old. As we drove by farm
houses, I noted each one had a dung pile where you’d expect to see stacked
wood.
On the way to Bokonbayev, we were treated to a
felt-making demonstration by Ms. Fatima, leader of a cooperative and brimming
with entrepreneurial spirit. Carpets and bed covers are made by hand from wool
using a technique as old as time. (As you may have guessed, the photo below is not Ms. Fatima.)
Next morning, we drove along the south shore of
Issyk-Kul, the second-largest mountain lake in the world, topped only by South
America’s Lake Titicaca. The lake is lined with beautiful beaches and several
resorts, most of them half finished or boarded up. We were told these are a
holdover from the Soviet regime and that there is simply no money to finish
them.
We stopped in the town of Barksoon to visit a rather
unique tourist attraction that doubles as a yurt factory. We were welcomed by
Mr. Mekenbek, artist, craftsman, inventor, and musician; a truly impressive renaissance
man. He and his employees showed us how a yurt is made and erected. Elva even
went for a swing. As in every other place we visited, we were treated to way
too much food.
Next on the agenda was a photo stop at Jeti-Oguz
where we saw sheer cliffs composed of red conglomerates.
From the village of
the same name, we took a track that led us into the Sarychat-Ertash Nature
Reserve and our eventual destination, a yurt camp. The meadow where the camp is
located is called Kok-Jayik, meadow of the flowers, and is truly one of the
most beautiful places I’ve ever laid eyes on. It reminded us of the Alps and
the Rockies.
Next morning, we set out for Karakol, a regional
centre of some 90,000 souls. Along the way, we stopped in at the Przhewalsky
museum, dedicated to the memory of the great Russian geographer before settling
in to the three-star Green Yard Guest House. Point of information, there are no
showers, or electricity for that matter, in a yurt camp! We ended the day with
a pleasant dinner together at a local restaurant. Tomorrow, we cross the border
into Kazakhstan.
Our impressions of Kyrgyzstan are very favourable. Although
it’s a poor country (the average monthly wage being only $200 CDN), the people
are very friendly. The scenery is spectacular and tourism is on the rise. Of the
five Stans, Kyrgyzstan is the most democratic. But they have a long way to go. In
conversation with an Australian pediatrician we met at the Jeti-Oguz yurt camp
who runs a clinic in Karakol, I learned that one of the biggest threats to
progress is the brain drain. We leave here knowing we’ll not likely return and
hoping people’s lives will get better.
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