5.
BISHKEK
After the vastness of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan felt small, hemmed in as it is by mountains. It also felt more prosperous, though it is one of the poorest countries in the region. We rumbled past trees; fields of corn and sunflowers; herds of goats, sheep and horses grazing in verdant meadows, and trim gingerbread-like houses. Kazakhstan was drab, dusty and desolate, and the houses I saw dilapidated.
Approaching Bishkek I spotted something that looked suspiciously like a subdivision. Dozens of small, square houses at various stages of completion sat on plots laid out on a grid of streets. No trees, no vegetation, just dirt.
At the station I bid farewell and thank you to Valentina and went in search of a taxi. I ran into Jonathan and his wife Rebecca and their children Elizabeth, eight, and William, six; lucky, because I don’t think I would have found my guesthouse without their help. Jonathan had been living in Kazakhstan for fourteen years and spoke Kazakh very well and could understand Kyrgyz and the taxi driver could understand him.
I learned a great deal about the family during the ride. Both children, especially Elizabeth, were chatty. Elizabeth had long, thick hair like her mother but fairer in color, and her arms were long and thin ending in slender fingers like her father’s. I learned that her birthday was July 18th and that she had wanted to go to a water park in Shymkent that she swore, and William concurred, their mother had told them was just like Six Flags. It was closed, however, for mysterious reasons and she had had to settle for a movie and homemade pizza made with pepperoni shipped from the States. Her dad made delicious pizza.
She told me that she loved the outfit she was wearing, a denim jumper under a hot pink velour hoodie with diamante hearts on the right sleeve and a heart-shaped zipper, because if she zipped up the hoodie she looked like she was wearing a skirt. She described the hoodie as “treaty,” which I assumed was a good thing.
William, blond and skinny with lots of energy and enthusiasm, showed me the hole in his mouth where one of his front teeth had been until a month ago.
Elizabeth also told me that one of her grandmothers had died in June, the day before her father’s birthday. And William told me that The Four Seasons restaurant in Bishkek, where they have pizza and a kids’ menu, was the “bestest restaurant in the whole world!”
✢
Once in my room at the guesthouse I washed off four days worth of train grime and went out to explore the city. Ella would not have recognized Bishkek. She described Frunze, as it was called then after native son and first Soviet Commissar of War Mikhail Frunze, as a city of 40,000 inhabitants, with clean mountain water running in the ariks (narrow canals that run beside the roads), a few scattered public buildings, and a bazaar in the main square that “swarmed with people, tumble-down houses, booths, open-air eating places, and carts bringing in fruit, vegetables, and forage drawn by pairs of camels.”
Modern Bishkek has one million inhabitants, the ariks are filled with opaque gray water and BMWs, Mercedes, Audis, and Lexuses zip up and down the streets.
Shop windows display western style clothes, kitchen appliances, cell phones. In the window of a toy store were rows of Barbies and stuffed Disney characters. Women and girls ran around in camisoles, tight jeans, mini skirts and stylish dresses. I saw one woman in a tight black tee shirt with “No Romance Without Finance” emblazoned in English across her chest. Boutiques are filled with clothes that would be popular in America or Western Europe and the sales girls have the same bored expressions on their faces until a potential sale walks through the door. If your size isn’t on the floor, they’re off to the backroom to find it.
I stopped in a drugstore/money exchange to buy some som and a toothbrush. Ahead of me in line was an elegant, slender Kyrgyz woman. Her hair was swept up, her face perfectly made up and she was wearing a sheer black lace top stylishly cinched at the waist with a wide black patent leather belt, a white flounced skirt with a black and yellow floral design, and yellow patent leather kitten-heeled slides. She handed the man on the other side of the counter a wad of bills and he handed her a gold ring in a small plastic bag. The place also functioned as a pawnshop. I’d have to remember that if I couldn’t resolve my money trouble.
Beta Gourmet, a Turkish supermarket, is like any in the US or Europe: shelves crammed with cakes, cookies, breads, fruit tarts, pizzas, fruit, nuts, yogurts, cheeses, meats, sausages, olives, juices, soft drinks, Snickers, M&Ms, and Twix. Like in Moscow, the days of empty shelves and breadlines were part of the distant past. I purchased a bottle of water and some bananas. When I asked the clerk if she could forego a plastic bag for the bananas, she responded with an emphatic, “Nyet, nyet, nyet.”
And in the lobby – the market was on the ground floor of a mall – were three ATMs dispensing both som, the local currency, and dollars. Yippee! I was saved for the time being.
I aimlessly wandered the streets, always seeming to arrive back at a spot I had just left. Hunger drove me into Café Jalalabad. I raised a lonely finger to indicate a table for one; the hostess seated me at a table already occupied by three women. A serendipitous moment.
Alina was Kyrgyz, a tiny thing with almost Japanese features. She was wearing a t-shirt she had bought in Turkey. “Erotic Gym” was written on the sleeve and across the front was “de Puta Madre.” She said that if she had known what the words meant she never would have bought the shirt. She had spent a summer working at a hotel in Antalya on the Mediterranean Sea that was popular with Russian tourists. Russians loved Turkey, but the feeling wasn’t mutual, she told me. She had recently graduated from university and was trying to get a career going as an interpreter and translator. She spoke Kyrgyz, Russian, English and Turkish.
Kristin, an American PhD. candidate at the University of Michigan, was in Bishkek to research public health issues for a possible thesis topic.
Nina, a Russian psychologist, had recently returned from California where she had been a Fulbright scholar and she seemed to have fingers in a lot of NGO pies.
I walked away from the table with an invitation to accompany Kristin and Alina to a village located four hours south of Bishkek, near Kochkor, a popular starting point for treks to Song Köl, a mountain lake that was a backpacker Mecca.
Having discovered on the Internet the address of the Community Based Tourism* (CBT) office, I decided to head over there after lunch to organize a horse trek in Kochkor or Karakol. Alina pointed out Gorky Street on a map. I decided to walk, against Alina’s advice; she assured me that it was far away and taking a taxi would be a good idea. That was silly; Gorky Street was five blocks away. Well, one end of it was five blocks away and, much to my dismay, it wasn’t the end I wanted. More to my dismay, I discovered that the numbers on one side of the street did not correspond to the numbers on the other side. Walking down the odd-numbered side I began at 135 and passed 89 before the first number was visible opposite: 196. I was looking for 58.
I arrived at the office hot, sweaty, and parched. I took the news that no guides or horses were available in either Kochkor or Karakol for at least a week, maybe longer in Karakol, surprisingly well. No cursing my stupidity for not planning better from the States, no tears because my dreams had been dashed. I willed myself to be optimistic and confident that something would be available.
* CBT began as Shepherd’s Life in 1996 with help from the Swiss NGO, Helevetas. It arranges homestays in yurts, guide services, and excursions such as treks and horse treks. It offers the best way to experience traditional Kyrgyz life at affordable prices.
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