Kyrgyzstan June 2016

Bishkek

My journey to Uzbekistan the previous spring was perhaps my best ever solo trip; I was captivated by the overlaying Soviet & Islamic worlds, the context of the Great Game & the sheer depth of Central Asian history. The research alone required a new bookshelf. The Uzbek cities formed the backbone of the Silk Road as the caravans of trade followed the paths of least resistance & left Kyrgyzstan isolated. Local Kyrgyz travel literature is scarce & the country is even difficult to pronounce, let alone spell. Kyrgyzstan is a Silk Road bypass; a country of yurts rather than caravanserai. Mountainous & mysterious. Yet, visas were free & flights were cheap. They just landed at ungodly hours.


Historically, Kyrgyzstan is still looking over its shoulder. This is the post-Soviet world which isn’t sure where to turn next. The traditionally nomadic Kyrgyz along with streams of forcibly displaced ethnic minorities created a new Central Asian society which after years of struggle & hunger bore fruit in the Brezhnev era as the Soviets turned the region’s isolation to their advantage. They built armament factories & secret submarine bases, all away from prying western eyes. Benefit for the locals? Full employment. In the capital, Bishkek, Lenin & Marx still stand tall on park-side plinths, pointing to the future, to a scrapped world.

MiG, Bishkek

My hotel was a concrete beauty with all the trappings of the Soviet era; smoked glass, a vast marble reception area & juddering lifts. High up on my balcony, I looked across to the Circus & the Palace of Sports. Still standing & still open.

Bishkek felt provincial, particularly around the suburban fringes, but in the centre it was pure Soviet. Tank-sized boulevards that took an age to cross, huge squares with piped music & dancing fountains & parked downtown among the marshrutkas & battered taxis; a MiG.


A squashed three hour shared-taxi ride from Bishkek took me to Lake Issyk Kul. The lake is the heart of Kyrgyzstan, an alpine bowl, a mile above sea level with sandy beaches ringed by mountains. I stayed in a quiet village at a newly built hotel. Only, Igor, the owner, spoke some scattered English & the sole thing I could transliterate from the Cyrillic menu was an omelette, which I ate three nights in a row. Every time I needed something (Wifi password, another omelette); the staff summoned Igor by radio.

Lake Issyk Kul

The lake has a mirco-climate & the weather changed quickly & dramatically. In the mornings, blue skies backdropped snow-tipped mountains & the lake glittered. Then dark clouds rolled over the mountains & marched to the lake’s edge, surrounding the water but unable to push further. You could swim in the lake & feel the warmth of the sun & then return to the beach to find your clothes rainsoaked & the air full of static.

Burana tower

I trekked to a petroglyph site up in the hills above Cholpon Ata. Rainclouds were closing in & I was unsure of the way, even after a kind local drew a map in the mud with a lolly stick. In the end I retraced my steps & took a taxi, only to find I had walked to within thirty metres of the entrance. Sigh. A pound wasted. The stones depict deer & goats, dating back to the 5th century BC. Despite their longevity, modern chemical restoration could erode images which have survived 2,500 years of battering Kyrgyz weather. The effect is akin to a photoshopped image, the colours saturated & the contrast sharpened. I trekked back to town along an old runway & joined holidaying Russians on the beach, eating Samarkand non bread the size of dinner plates, & apples from Kazakhstan.

In the post-Soviet world, every car is a taxi & I caught a lift with a family to the Silk Road city of Balsagun & the Burana Tower. The city is long-gone, just grassy mounds, grave markers & a single minaret which in a country with few Silk Road survivors creates a visual brand for Kyrgyz tourism. Samarkand this isn’t, but the tower’s setting in a summer meadow full of flowers, backlit by sun filtering onto green hills was an accurate microcosm of Kyrgyzstan.



Aral Sea

Flying home, I lucked an emergency row & window seat. From 40,000 feet the view was sharp & cloud-free.

Through Kazakhstan, over the smudged outline of the Aral Sea, where Soviet irrigation has shrivelled the coast & then across the Caspian before the view changed from blue sea to white caps as we followed the Northern Caucasus to the Black Sea.

In transit at Ataturk, I was four days ahead of a terrorist attack that killed 42 in the arrivals hall. Two weeks later there was an attempted military coup. A sobering return to reality.