Bananas Don't Travel Well

Uzbek manThings seemed instantly different when we crossed the border from Uzbekistan into Kyrgyzstan, even though Osh, the town we were heading to, is primarily Uzbek. Nonetheless, judging by the open-air teashops with boys outside grilling lamb shashlyk (shish kebab) and the street vendors everywhere, there seemed to be more life than there had been in Uzbekistan. The Kyrgyz too, with their Asian features and distinctive felt hats also seemed somehow more "Central Asian."

Right off the bat, we found a working ATM machine that provided both local and US currency. This was a huge improvement over Uzbekistan where, despite hosting large numbers of package tourists, there are quite possibly only three ATMs in the whole country, none ever stocked with cash, and banks will only take foreign currency notes in absolutely perfect condition and issue local currency in the equivalent of 20-cent notes. On the other hand, finding a hotel in Osh turned out to be no mean feat: we settled on a brothel the first night (laying our sleeping bags on top of the bed), then splurged on a much nicer apartment the next two.

Osh

grilling shashlykKyrgyzstan is not about the cities, which have little in the way of historical monuments, but you necessarily do end up staying in them. Osh is Kyrgyzstan's second-largest city. We enjoyed its bustling Sunday market and hanging out in the ubiquitous chaikhanas, or teahouses, even though Central Asian math—in which things add up randomly to some higher number than quoted prices suggest—still applied. In one case, when we insisted on going through each item, we learned that we had to pay for the toothpicks and the napkins, the latter having been carefully cut into quarters.

airplane viewBut mostly our time in Osh was spent trying to figure out how to get to Bishkek, the capital. The combination of mountain geography and Stalin's cynical border-drawing means that Osh and the South are cut off from Bishkek and the North. Osh is in the fertile, densely populated Ferghana valley, a primarily Uzbek region that Stalin parcelled into the Uzbek, Kyrgyz and Tajik SSRs in a jigsaw pattern. The region is a center of discontent to this day and Osh feels a bit rough around the edges, particularly at night. Getting from Osh to Bishkek involves traversing three mountain ranges and two high mountain passes, and there are few places to stop along the way. In the end, the prospect of twelve hours in a minivan on a mountain road with a driver who wasn't eating (Ramadan had just begun) was too much, and we opted to fly. The plane was a propellar-driven Russian Yak 80, and the view over the mountains was great.

Bishkek

Hotel DostukIn Bishkek too, we had trouble finding a place to stay: we later learned this was the last rush as the tourist season ended and people returned to catch their flights home. Virtually every hotel in our guidebook was full, and we ended up in what was probably at one time the best hotel in town, but now extraordinarily overpriced: the Soviet Hotel Dostuk. It wasn't that bad, but for $100 we'd normally expect a lot more. I suppose the convenience of having an onsite casino was meant to justify it. The staff were as surly as you'd expect from a state-run hotel. When we complained about extra charges on our bill at check out, they argued with us for ten minutes, then finally one of the ladies picked up the phone. I thought she was calling the manager, and was getting ready to finally get somewhere. But when she handed me the phone, it was the underling who'd been at the desk the first day, insisting she'd told us about the charges! One has to laugh sometimes.

Because our hotel was so expensive, we decided to stay only one day in Bishkek, and make a productive one of it. We picked up a trekking map, toques, and some trekking poles (we'd never used them before but they turned out to be lifesavers), and found a very helpful woman at a travel agency called Novinomad who, in Chris' words, "turned Kyrgyzstan around for us." She spoke excellent English, had travelled independently herself, and was a wealth of information. She not only spent a few hours with us, but she helped us book accomodation and transportation for our next stop in Kyrgyzstan, and didn't want any payment for it. We bought some postcards and a book from her, and made a donation to the agency's tip box.

That afternoon, we went for our first real coffee in months. Kyrgyzstan hosts a lot of foreign NGO and Peace Corps workers, and Bishkek has a well developed expat scene. As we sipped our Americanos, two UN consultants sitting nearby struck up a conversation with us. They were working on children's programs and were in Kyrgyzstan to lead training sessions for local UN workers. Both of them had travelled a lot doing this kind of work; it was one of the more interesting conversations we'd had for a long time.

Kochkor

The next day we went to the bus station to catch a marshrutka to Kochkor. We rejected the first offer of double the local fare and managed to find another, more honest ride. Long-distance marshrutkas never leave until full, so you often wait quite a while once you locate a ride. One of our fellow passengers wanted to practice his English with us, but was so drunk he could hardly speak. "I love you," he slurred in Chris' ear. By the time we rolled away half an hour later, he was passed out in his wife's lap. It was about 11am.

On arrival, he had revived and tried to get us to come drink with him. We politely refused and headed off to find our pre-arranged homestay. On the way, three other stumbling drunks repeated the offer. We walked all the way to the end of town, asking people for the address we'd been given. Only as we came to farmers' fields did it become clear that the street we were after was parellel to the one we were on. There hadn't been a single cross street in at least a kilometer! Making our way back we finally found our homestay and were welcomed inside and offered tea. Our host was a retired schoolteacher who supplements her pension by hosting tourists. She proudly showed us pictures of her four daughters, all of them professionals except one, and at her behest Chris taught her teenaged son how to copy MP3 and MP4 files onto his computer.

A better model for tourism

We arranged our homestays through an organization called Community Based Tourism (CBT), an initiative that was a breath of fresh air after the package tourism model adopted by Uzbekistan. Through a number of regional offices, CBT (and a competing organization called Shepherd's Life) arrange homestays, yurtstays, camping, trekking guides, porters and equipment, horse treks, and transportation at fixed, reasonable prices. The CBT office in Kochkor displayed a breakdown of the fees: fully 82% goes to the locals providing the services (the other 18% is commissions to run the regional and national offices, and tax). For us, CBT not only took the bullshit out of traveling (no-one ever contested the prices or tried to add anything on), but the homestays were infinitely nicer than hotels, the food was much better than restaurants, and it was a great opportunity to meet locals.

sauna...?As we were leaving Kochkor for Song Kol the next day, our asked in halting English if we would stay there again on our way back. When we told her we weren't sure, she went into sales-pitch mode. "Sauna," she said, a knowing look in her eyes. That sounded just too good, and we made sure that the CBT coordinator booked us there for the day we returned. On our way out of town, we were assailed and invited to party by three Kyrgyz men sitting by the side of the road, fully soused at 9am. There doesn't seem to be much else to do in Kochkor.

Song Kol

packing up for the seasonWe drove up to Song Kol lake in a Niva, the adorable and very tough 4X4 made by Lada. The ride went up, up, up, past small villages and open pastures and over two mountain passes until the lake came into view. On the way, we passed several Russian Kamuz trucks loaded with disassembled yurts coming down for the season, and shepherds driving their livestock to lower ground. We'd been warned that winter was coming here; at 3100 meters the air was thin and already very cold in the third week of September.

our host familyAt Song Kol, there are no permanent dwellings, but during the summer we were told that twenty families camp their yurts there (eight were left by the time we arrived). Many Kyrgyz still live a semi-nomadic lifestyle, with permanent homes in the cities and towns, but spending their summers in the jailoos, or summer pastures. Most of the families that come to Song Kol are shepherds, but our hosts were fishermen. Our family had three yurts and a couple of tents; two of the yurts were for tourists.

photogenic cowThe landscape at Song Kol was exactly how I'd pictured Mongolia: wide, open steppe, flanked by mountains on all sides, with a glacial lake in the middle. Herds of sheep, cattle, and horses roamed the grasslands by day, and were brought in by the shepherds at night. It was beautiful, but bloody cold up there, with the wind blowing across the water at us all day and night, and walking around was a chore at that altitude. In the mornings, the streams were crusted with ice.

As with virtually all the homestays we encountered in Kyrgyzstan (and the private guesthouses throughout Central Asia, for that matter), the show was run by a woman. In this case, she was a strong, beautiful Uzbek from Osh, who'd married a Kyrgyz man (we were never sure if she'd been kidnapped as we hear is common Central-Asian bride-getting tradition). She told us she'd given birth to her second child at Song Kol, in a yurt, with no doctor. She was in charge of the cooking tent, and made quite amazing meals considering the conditions. The first night we had a sort of noodle casserole with meat and potatoes, and were served kumys, fermented mare's milk. We had the fresh stuff (i.e., lightly fermented), and I have to say it wasn't as bad as I'd expected, sort of a strong-tasting but refreshing flavour. Apparently there is a stronger version, "schnapps" as our host called it, that is a bit more deadly, but we never got to try it.

That evening, we met the uncle in the family, who was fasting for Ramadan. He came in for supper with us, served just after sundown. They made much about how hungry he was from fasting all day, but when dinner was served he ate about three bites before excusing himself to go out for a cigarette: apparently some cravings are stronger than others. Although most Kyrgyz are Muslim, their interpretation of Islam doesn't tend to be that strict (thus all the alcoholism we witnessed). We later met a woman who must have been in her sixties who admitted she was fasting for the first time, just to try it out.

yurt interiorStaying in a yurt was a new experience for us. They are essentially round houses of felt stretched over a wooden frame; the walls and floor are covered in felt rugs which in Kyrgyzstan are made of brightly coloured felt stitched in animal-inspired motifs. If done up tightly they can be quite cozy, but this was the end of the season and they were getting a little wind-worn. Fortunately, given the weather, we had a stove in which our family graciously started a dung fire for us after dinner (8:00). We learned that dung burns very hot, but doesn't make good coals; all heat was gone within ten minutes of the fire going out. With the temperature rapidly dropping and there not being much to do after dark anyways, we decided it must be bedtime.

The next morning, we were served cream-of-wheat porridge. Except that it was made with mare's milk. The first bite was a bit of a shock, not what we'd been expecting, but actually not that bad. At breakfast, we met the father of the family. His daughter-in-law, the Uzbek woman, seemed to be discussing something of importance with him. We later learned what: she wanted to move the kitchen from the drafty tent into the third yurt. This involved kicking out a couple of guys who'd been sleeping there, something that required the endorsement of the head of the family. That day was spent rebuilding the yurt and moving the kitchen over to it.

view from the (not exactly) topWe decided to attempt to climb one of the nearer peaks that day. We set out on foot across the grasslands and walked and walked and walked: distances appear much shorter than they really are in that open space. By the time we got there, we were already pooped, and we only made it about a third of the way up the slope. Nonetheless, we were rewarded with a nice view over the lake, which we took in for a few minutes before the chill set in. Heading down was, of course, easier, and we ended up back at camp with plenty of time to kill, and the wind really starting to pick up.

Fortunately, Fiona and Henry, a Scottish couple, arrived to stay with our family, and we found very good company in them. Dinner that night was excellent: mutton and potato soup and freshly made bread, in the new, warmer kitchen yurt. We shared our yurt with Fiona and Henry as theirs didn't have a stove. Chris and I passed out for the night, but Fiona had trouble sleeping and in the darkness started imagining that the yurt was on fire and had to get up to examine it with her flashlight. Later, she was thirsty (they had misplaced their bottle of water) and snuck over to "steal" some from our bottle. We heard about these adventures and criminal activities the next morning and, after riding together back to Kochkor, they insisted on buying us a bottle of water to compensate.

kyrgyz cowboyBack in Kochkor, we just missed the weekly animal market, but did get to see peoples' purchases being driven, and ridden, away. Though we'd spent less than a day with our Scottish friends, we were really sad to see them move on (their time in Kyrgyzstan was limited). We, on the other hand, went back to our Kochkor host who, true to her word, fired up the sauna. After three shower-less days in the freezing cold, it was very welcome. Indeed, in the days to come I was to observe to Chris that hygiene and bodily functions were taking a back seat to overexertion and exposure, and Song Kol was just the beginning...