If I told you every interesting anecdote about Kyrgyzstan, everything me and my friend experienced here, this story would be muuuuuuuch longer than my already quite long stories…
Well, where to begin? What to tell you then?
Maybe its best to start with this very friend, the french girl Lise, with whom I am travelling at the moment, and also through Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan:
I met the Lise in Ürümqi, China, where we both applied for our visas to Kyrgyzstan.
Oh well, this very visa… We applied on the 24th of July (for an express visa – 3 days (750yuan) processing time instead of 5 days (460yuan)). On the 25th a law was published in Kyrgyzstan according to which 44 more states (EU-states included) don’t need visas to Kyrgyzstan anymore. On the 26th we got our visas. On the 27th the law got signed and became effective. Which means that we both have a nice but really expensive, and useless sticker in our passports… Never mind, I am glad to have met her!
After my short visit to Kazakhstan we met in Bishkek to start our trip together through Kyrgyzstan. I am really happy to have found somebody, who likes to travel the same way as I do: not really caring about comfort, as cheap and local as possible! Both of us found a perfect hitchhiking companion in each other.
And when it comes to hitchhiking we’re luckily not picky at all – anything on wheels going in our direction is fine: we had rides in normal cars, in nearly breaking-apart cars, in small tourist-busses, in a big truck and we once even had a ride in the trunk of a car too.
Cars in Kyrgyzstan are a really interesting chapter anyways: you’d see many cars your grand-grand-fathers would already have considered old-school when they were young. You’d also see many cars with the D-sticker for Germany, or old company-trucks from Germany (Wäscherei ABC, Metzger XYZ – I once even saw a truck with “Gebrüder Weiss”), and in the old small marshrutkas you’d find stickers saying “Notausgang” or likewise.
When driving on the bumpy gravel-roads in the mountains there are many cars on the side of the road, open engine hood, taking a break to cool down. I do understand that cars overheat on steep streets – but I guess it is also (or mainly???) because many Kyrgyz have let’s call it a quite particular way of driving. Accelerating and braking all the time; overtaking without really seeing if there are cars coming the opposite way (hence again: accelerating and braking all the time). And one time we were driving with a guy who was – no joke! – driving his old car in the first gear for long distances. Erm, yes, it did break down eventually…
This was only one of many encounters with non-functional cars we had: one car we stopped couldn’t leave for at least 20min because the alarm went off once we opened the door. Eventually it was fine after the battery was taken off for a while. On other rides we had to wait for the mandatory cooling-period. Another car we were sitting in, a new and modern 4WD, was – less by accident then by masculine “I can do it”-behaviour – driven too close to the lake, and eventually in the mud where it was stuck. But we had lots of fun drinking vodka with these guys before their 4WD-lake-adventure – and getting the car pulled out by a truck is just another great opportunity to cheer with vodka, right?!
Yes, yes, I lost the thread somehow…
Lise. Yes, that was it: Lise and our way of travelling. We’re both really easy going - when it comes to accommodation too. Couchsurfing is not really working here though: apart from the cities you wouldn’t find many CS-hosts. But here in Kyrgyzstan the perfect alternative to CS are homestays. Hospitality is written in big letters in Kyrgyzstan. Anywhere we stayed with a family the first thing would be an invitation to have tea with them, which is by definition accompanied by homemade white bread and various delicious jams – homemade too of course.
(One more thing I really like about Lise is that I finally found a girl, who eats as much as I do. And people who know my appetite know that this is quite unusual...)
Apart from CS and homestays we also once stayed in a falling apart but really cheap old soviet style hotel– but hey, what more than a bed do you need for the night?! And of course we also tried out the traditional nomadic way of life – staying in yurts:
But let’s just go a bit more into details, right?!
After a few days in Bishkek, where we both had to get some more visas processed (Central Asia is a pain when it comes to visas...), we left aiming for the alpine lake Son Köl - which is around 370km away: 300km on an ok road, and then another 70km up into the mountains on a quite... well... let's say not so good road. Hitching the first 170km were easy: after waiting only around 10min twice we got till Balykchy – which is already around half way. There we had a problem we encountered more often on later trips: many locals hitch a ride, but they pay. Shared rides are a typical way of getting around in Kyrgyzstan. So people are in fact not used to hitchhiking like we define it.
But we were still lucky: a guy on the way to Naryn took us even though we told him our typical phrase: „мы автостопом путешествуем, это безплатно” (we’re hitchhiking, that’s for free). He was on vacation, but showed us his police ID-card with pride (later we hitched another ride with a policeman who also showed us his ID with pride). He was even prouder of his new BMW though. (Short excurs: I automatically put my belt in the car. He saw it and his only comment was: "Hey, you don't need to put that. If there's a police control it's not problem, I'll show them my card"... well, yeah, that's right - the belt is not for safety but only to annoy the population, right?!)
Eventually he drove us all the way up to Son Köl, because he felt bad not to do so after we had really nice chats with him. So he not only drove his new car up a bad mountain road he wouldn’t usually drive it on, but what is more: for him this meant a detour of at least 3h! Man, I can tell you, Kyrgyz people are really guest-friendly and helpful. He even stopped for us (bloody tourists) when we saw camels in the fields and eventually organised a really cheap yurt-stay for us once we arrived at the lake.
I guess these five days we stayed at Son Köl were definitely one of the highlights of Kyrgyzstan (the other one will be the topic of my next story...)! We stayed with a family of sheepherders - mother, father, son and daughter. They had sheep, goats, some cows, two donkeys, one horse and two dogs. Like in Austria the farmers bring their animals up into the mountains to the jailoos for the summer. They live in yurts without running water (apart from the river not too far away from the yurt) and without electricity.
And we lived right with them in their second yurt, or how we called it “the fridge”. Yes, it was their fridge!! They had two yurts: one was their yurt, in which the whole family would sleep, eat, cook and so on, which was always cosy and warm. The other yurt was rather empty and not heated (and hey, even though I am sweating like hell at the moment here in Bishkek it gets really, really cold up there in the mountains!). They put all the food, which you’d usually put into a fridge (like big mountains of self-made butter, smoked meat,…) in our yurt – hence our nickname.
Staying as a guest with a family in their yurts means really being part of the family: we were having tea with them all the time (loads of bread and jam…), eating with them and even helping them out getting the sheep back in – on horse- and donkeyback. Yes, I am a professional sheepherder now! Oh, talking about donkeys, you HAVE TO watch this really short clip I took, it’s hilarious!!
The area around the yurts was just amazingly beautiful!
A beautiful lake, mountains and wide fields with horses, cows and sheep all over it. Definitely a place to relax: no electricity, no internet, no phone reception!
A beautiful lake, mountains and wide fields with horses, cows and sheep all over it. Definitely a place to relax: no electricity, no internet, no phone reception!
Our reason to come to Son Köl exactly on that weekend had been the Kochü Kyrgyz festival, which took place at the complete opposite shore of the lake. It was organised by the CBT – community based tourism (more about the CBT in my next story) – which is a local but very well organised tourism network in many towns providing homestays and local events. We hitched there without any problems with German tourists, who had been travelling with their dog in a minibus since months. Even though the festival was really touristy, it was great fun. We could see the traditional horse game Ulak-Tartysh: one guy has the “ball” under his leg, the others need to get the “ball” or make it fall. The ball is not a real ball though, it is a head-less sheep (yes, one that had been alive when it still had a head – no fake sheep). Check it out by yourselves:
After watching the horse-game for a bit we got more into in some other Kyrgyz traditions though: vodka :)
Did I mention that they were hospitable?! Well, they are – we had some great laughs with these guys, even after they had manoeuvred their car into the mud. You can definitely feel that Kyrgyzstan was once part of the USSR – not only because the biggest section in any shop is always the one with the vodka, which are – as in Russia – ridiculously cheap here. But also because Russian is still spoken everywhere. Even though people told me that the farmers in the mountains would only speak Kyrgyz, every farmer I spoke to up there had a perfect or quite good Russian.
Yes, I am happy to speak Russian: it is definitely really, really handy in the region. Not only is it helpful, but people are so interested in talking to you and we wouldn’t have had so many nice conversations and met so many people without speaking the language. However, I admit that it is often tiring as well. Lise is really good in communicating without the use of Russian, but when people know that I do speak Russian they wouldn’t make the effort anymore to try to understand her without me translating. So I am definitely always involved in any conversation – either directly or indirectly as interpret. (Does anybody need a Russian-French interpret? I’m ready to work straight away – haha)
Hospitality is as mentioned really big in Kyrgyzstan and they would always help you out when you have problems. I once walked in the street with my huge backpack (yes, it looks huge and it is still too heavy, even though I sent home and threw away stuff) when a guy asked me if he could help me. Another time, we were just standing at a street to hitch to another town and a man came over and gave us a bottle of water and ajran.
But sometimes their hospitality, interest and openness towards strangers like us are tiring: How often did people try to help us organise a shared taxi or similar ways of transport even though we insisted that we want to hitch. The people are really open and friendly, so you wouldn’t have any problems to meet Kyrgyz people. However, especially me I sometimes get really exhausted (and grumpy) as I am, because of the language, involved in every conversation one of us two has. Which means: answering the same questions again and again.
Also: homestays are great, but we were quite happy staying with families, who minded their own business. While we were staying with the family up in the jailoos they felt the need to constantly entertain us. We would have been happy just to relax for a day in the beautiful countryside and walk around. But no, we had to drink tea with them right then. One morning – just after a night I have had stomach cramps and we both therefore hadn’t slept till around 3am – they all came into our yurt at 9am and woke us up because it was time to get up at. I loved the time I spent with them, but four days of constant entertainment and translation work were enough and we were happy to stay another night in a yurt-camp for tourists closer to the lake. You can close the yurt-door and be sure not to be hassled, and even dance around hehe.
So yeah, Kyrgyz people are nice and friendly, and we had some really nice encounters, like with these three Kyrgyz men: Still up at Son-Köl we had hitched a ride with them (it was their car whose alarm went off constantly). They were really interested in our travels and our lives back home, and invited us to meet again in Bishkek. And we accepted this invitation with pleasure, had a great time with them and are really happy to have met them.
So everything at Son-Köl is now somehow painted in rose, while our stay at the other lake Issyk-Köl was overshadowed by some other experiences.
Issyk-Köl is the biggest lake in Kyrgyzstan and THE number one destination for tourists in Kyrgyzstan. Every single Kyrgyz person we had met and talked with would finally ask us if we had already been to Issyk-Köl, so: yes, Issyk-Köl is somehow compulsory when coming to Kyrgyzstan.
But our trip there started with a quite unsatisfying encounter with too helpful guys, who were eventually really getting on our nerves: I had given my phone-number to a man who had been quite funny and entertaining first when we had met him. When he called and wanted to meet, we mentioned that we wanted to go to Issyk-Köl. He said he was going there too and could drive us. Perfect! That’s what we thought first, till we realised that he and his friend didn’t drive there anyways but only for us (somehow even really believing and expecting that we would now hang out with them the whole weekend?! What the hell...). After we made clear that we’re don't want that and would rather get there by ourselves. Finally we were ok to get with them to the lake and hang out a bit there but then for sure split in the late afternoon. We both can’t really tell, what it was, but these two men were really getting on our nerves even though they didn’t act so much differently from the three Kyrgyz men we liked. They didn’t make or say anything inappropriate, drove us all the way to the lake (6 hours!) and even invited us for lunch. Maybe it's just because this is simply too much. Anyhow, we found them and the whole situation really annoying and regretted to have taken their offer.
Due to the save but really slow driving of Mr. Annoying we arrived quite late at the Southern shore of the lake, where another festival organised by the CBT had been taken place. If we had been on time we would have seen how the eagles of eagle fighters catch rabbits in the fields. Well, now we could only pose with the few remaining eagles.
The remaining few days we stayed at the tourist capital of the lake: Cholpon Ata at the Northern Shore, with it's fancy Soviet style beaches. Well, I have never been to a beach in Russia, but in Odessa and in Kazakhstan – and they do bear some similarities. I can’t really explain it, but maybe through this photo you’ll understand that the people on these beaches look different from those at the Mediterranean sea or in Australia. And of course no such beach without the odd babushka walking around and offering cold bear, salty dried fish or other snacks, or icecream. On the Cholpon Ata beach you can even pose on a camel, which is torn around between the sunbathing (people sunbath while standing!) people.
Apart from the beach itself, nothing around it would remind of a beach-town. The road down to the beach is some shitty, dusty path between houses and grass with a lot of rubbish everywhere. Well, of course there are many small and bigger restaurants, each fighting against each other to win the battle of loud music. And if you want you can go partying all night long I suppose.
After all the travelling around and changes of places we were quite happy to stay there for a few days to relax and do nothing. The homestay I had found through CS war really nice: a big garden with a lot of fresh fruits, and two crazily barking dogs.
My resumee of beautiful Kyrgyzstan so far: Son-Köl is great. Even though there are many tourists in the various yurt-camps, you can find yurts with local sheepherders by yourself. The landscape up there is amazing, and it is soooo calm.
Issyk-Köl is a must-go in Kyrgyzstan, but if you’re not so much into swimming and beaches, well, you wouldn’t miss too much neither.
And what I think about Bishkek and even more about Arslanbob and the CBT there will be the topic of my next story, upcoming in a few days... so get ready for some more news, and we'll now get ready to cross the boarder to Uzbekistan!!
