Stumbling onto the Soviet Union. Almost.
Kyrgyzstan – it’s difficult to know where to start. It’s a puzzling but friendly place. One minute you feel as though you really are in the Soviet Union, seeing European faces and statues of Lenin and speaking Russian (well, Wendy anyway); the next you’re in a truly Asian bazaar that seems like it couldn’t possibly be within a million miles of Moscow.
We haven’t actually done any of the main things we wanted to do yet while we’ve been working our way north, so I can’t really rate Kyrgyzstan as a destination, but the food and transport have been better/easier than we expected, the people are nice, and overall it’s actually been quite relaxing. And we certainly feel a long way from China, which was half the point.
Literally the first insight into the country we had, after being taken bleary-eyed in a taxi through the suburbs of Osh at 6am after the 21-hour bus ride from Kashgar, was from inside a classic Soviet-style apartment in an annex of the Osh Guesthouse, right down to the 1970s furniture and trickling water out of the taps. The very Russianness of it all was seemingly confirmed a few hours later when we saw people buying shots of vodka from a street stall at 8:45am. But there’s another side of Osh – the bazaar, where old Muslim women in colourful dresses and matching headscarves sell bread and there is finally a variety of faces (Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, Tajiks) after the monotony of a billion Han Chinese ones (the Uighers of Xinjiang aside).
At Ozgon, a day-trip from Osh, we saw an 11th-century minaret, three 12th-century mausoleums and our first statue of Lenin (my ‘favourite’ modern historical figure), resplendent in gold but with pigeon poop in top of his bald head.
From Osh we headed to Arslanbob and stayed for two days in a Kyrgyz homestay with a lovely family who didn’t speak any English but were very friendly and cooked us fabulous food. (Thankfully I have my linguist with me and her survival Russian is getting us by surprisingly well.) We hiked to two nearby waterfalls and otherwise had a relaxing time.
We then headed to the capital Bishkek en route to Lake Issyk-Kol (the world’s second largest alpine lake after Lake Titicaca in Peru/Bolivia) and Karakol, where we’ve been for the past two days. Karakol is a peaceful place but almost strangely too quiet for a town of 66,000 – other than the block around the bazaar, the general lack of shops or a significant commercial centre reminds me of Cuba (e.g. if you wanted to buy, say, a television, where would you go?) and seems to be a leftover from Soviet times. As does our apartment, which is another classic from a bygone era.
But we didn’t come to Karakol for the town. This afternoon we are heading off for our first trek in Central Asia, a four- or five-night journey with tent and stove in tow through the ‘extraordinary’ Jeti-Oghuz valley, over the 3800m Teleti Pass, to hot springs at Altyn Arashan in a ‘postcard perfect alpine valley’ and back to Karakol. We’ve been looking forward to trekking in the region for a long time so hopefully it meets our expectations.
Tags: Asia, bazaars, Central Asia, former Soviet Union, Kyrgyzstan, not China, Osh, Travel
Nick