Day 10: Issyk-Kul or not Issyk-Kul

The Aiesec girls here had promised to arrange some trips while I was in Kyrgyzstan, and today we were going to Issyk-Kul. This is the huge lake in the north east of the country, the second largest mountain lake in the world (see the second post on this blog, “Kyrgyzstan-ho!”) They would pick me up at 7am and we would make the 4-hour drive; the parents of one of the girls owns a dacha there and we would spend the day picking fruit and relaxing by the lake.

At 7am I was ready, which was perhaps a little foolish but I didn’t want to be late or unprepared for my first trip with them.

By 8am I was drifting back to sleep when they arrived. There had been some complications and now they were in a rush. As we walked and walked I was about to ask “Where’s the car?” when they explained that the complications had involved the car: it wouldn’t start. As a result, we were not going to Issyk-Kul by car, we were going somewhere else by marshrutka. ‘Somewhere else’ meant the mountains to the south of Bishkek and instead of a lazy day picking fruit and sitting by the lake we would have a lazy day of hiking in the mountains. I thought about of my bag which contained quite a lot of things and was quite heavy, and I thought about lugging it around the mountains in the sun, and I thought “Bugger.”

On Sunday mornings the marshrutka aren’t too full and the 40-minute journey didn’t involve any armpits too close to my nose. There were four of us: Bolek, a Pole on a placement to help the fledgling Aiesec Kyrgyzstan find its feet; Eva, the head of Aiesec KG and her German boyfriend whose name I didn’t catch.
The boys were in a similar situation to me: Bolek was carrying his laptop and wasn’t too keen on much hiking either.

We got off the marshrutka in the middle of nowhere. An old woman walked with us a little, jabbering away in Russian, explaining about the properties and health benefits of the various plants and berries we passed. She was a mine of information, but I couldn’t understand a word of it. That probably wasn’t such a bad thing: she insisted we ate some berries which were apparently very healthy, and like many healthy things they tasted pretty foul. A few sentences were translated: “This is good for your eyes. This for your stomach. This for your heart.” I began to suspect she was making it up.

She sent us on our way with a few more berries and we walked along the banks of a river. After crossing a make-shift bridge (see picture above) we came to a yourt. These are the traditional homes of the nomadic Kyrgyz people, and although most of the population has now settled into bricks and mortar, yourts are still in use by some people. This one displayed a single concession to the modern age: instead of natural waterproofing from animal fat, it was covered in a plastic sheet. The occupants were friendly enough, though communication was difficult as they only spoke Kyrgyz and Eva doesn’t know it that well (Eva isn’t Kyrgyz: she’s half-Russian, half-Ukrainian.) They welcomed us into their yourt and let us take photos, but wouldn’t appear in any photograph themselves. They presented us with some apples (twice as big as European ones) and we left before they tried to make us stay for a meal: rural Kyrgyz people possess very little and although their sense of hospitality means they to offer what they have to guests, it’s generally better to make your excuses before they do so.

We climbed the banks near the yourt and found ourselves in an orchard. I wondered if the apples had been pinched from there. Deciding this would be a good place for a picnic, we settled down. The food was simple: bread, cheese, salami, some kind of pickled herring, and tea; simple and good.

All good things come to an end, however, and after we’d decided that hiking was a bad idea and lying in the sun was much better, we were interrupted by a soldier. He spoke no Russian and his Kyrgyz was apparently very unclear, and he and Eva had some communication problems. But his intention was obvious: we had to leave the orchard. He soon had a second soldier backing him up. As we left, I noticed a very grumpy woman standing nearby watching everything. I’d seen her walk past a few minutes earlier, and wondered if she’d reported us to the soldiers. It turned out was half-right: they weren’t soldiers, just boys dressed up as soldiers, and the grumpy woman in the bright pink jacket was their mother and the owner of the orchard.

We walked on, rejoining the river, and came to a more public space. Away from the families playing on the swings, we settled down and soon fell asleep by the river. Much better than hiking.

After venturing into the river – which flows directly from a glacier and was, unsurprisingly, rather cold – we made our way back to the marshrutka stop and from there back to Bishkek.

The afternoon was mine, and it was good to be free. After more flat-cleaning, I decided to venture into town. I had a vague idea of how to get by marshrutka to where I wanted to go, but no idea how to get back again so I would have to walk. I had no idea of distance and not wanting to travel by bus one way only to give myself a walk back of several miles, I decided to walk there and back.

My destination was TsUM, a big department store selling everything from mobile phones to traditional souvenirs. It wasn’t that I wanted to buy a mobile phone or a souvenir, I just needed a destination and reaching this one would mean passing several city landmarks.

I set off, walking past some of the sights from the previous weekend. There was a theatre, a pub, another theatre, the White House… that building over there looked like a theatre too. As it turned out, my flat wasn’t so far from the city centre.

By this time the weather had turned and a storm was coming. The wind picked up and whipped dust and grit into the air. In Bishkek, the streets are lined with oak trees, and at this time of year acorns are ready to drop to the ground. With the wind, they were plummeting earthwards at speed and in numbers. If you’ve even been hit by a high-velocity acorn, you’ll know that it hurts. Chicken Little thought the sky was falling and went to see the king when she was hit by an acorn, and here it looked like the sky really was about to fall, or at least torrential rain. Of course, I had nothing to protect me from the dust, grit, rain or acorns. Neither did the Kyrgyz: the streets were empty apart from outside shops with canopies to protect passers-by from falling acorns.

I eventually made it to TsUM, which had closed half an hour earlier. There was a large samsa (samosa) stall outside; Kyrgyz samse are supposed to be the best in Central Asia. This stall was also closed.
Picture: my bathroom, partially cleaned.

So, back to my flat, through the wind, grit and high-velocity acorns, waiting for the sky to fall. It never did; the rain never fell except for a few drops. Back in the flat with nobody to talk to and nothing to do except cleaning, I remembered that being alone in a foreign country can be rather lonely at times.