Of Kazakh Wine, Couchsurfing Parties and The Northwest Passage

Advance Warning: This entry will have precious few photos (at least those taken by me) because some utter swine called Ulanbek (How do I know his name?  All shall be revealed) stole my camera (plus another camera, a phone, an i-pod, a tent bag and two camping stoves, the blaggard) while we were camping in the mountains of the Alamedin valley.



A stock photo of the Alademin Valley - definitely not taken by me



So.  What news from Central Asia?  The previous month has seen the fair denizens of the London School Flats take up Couchsurfing with enthusiasm and aplomb.  The catalyst for this was the arrival into the Bishkek fold of one Alec Forss.  Restless wanderer, mountain man, lover of rollicking Canadian folksongs (of which more later), overenergetic puppy, Alec is many things to many men, but one thing he certainly is is an advocate of couchsurfing.


The Lesser-spotted Alec Forss, in his native mountain habitat.


It's an idea I've been interested in for some time but never been in a position to get fully invovled in.  The idea is gloriously simple, if you have a spare couch (bed, bit of floor, Central Asian floor cushion) you offer it up to weary travellers who msg you to request a place to lay their weary heads for a night or two.  In return, when you are travelling, other gracious hosts give you a place to crash for the night. 
Logan, with his usual all or nothing zest, took to it like white on rice, got signed up, set out his profile page with care and his first surfer accepted within about a day.

My Couch - A pair of Tushuk (floor cushions)

A few days later, surfer number 1 arrived in the form of Ingrid, a gently spoken, dryly humourous Norwegian with a penchant for the classics (she polished off a Jane Austen while she was staying with us)  who was travelling overland through Russia and Central Asia.

Ingrid holding a big ass bird - just 'cuase she can

Her stay proved to be a delight.  She introduced us to some belter Norwegian music including (to Logan's great pleasure) Diamanter og Kirsebær (Diamonds and Cherries) by John Olav Nielson.  A number of fine evenings were spent drinking beer and chatting into the wee small hours, with much badinage and dollops of wry wit  She even managed to get up and check out not one but two bazaars the morning after a binge which wound up around 7 in the am...a true trooper.. 
Our next visitor was Julia from Kazakhstan, a charming computer expert from Almaty who had a few days before hosted our fine friend Edward Charlton-Jones (a former Russian student at London School and gentleman of the highest calibre).

Ta da - The super-charming Julia from Kazakhstan

She arrived bearing gifts of Kazakh chocolate and Kazakh wine (both rather fine actually) and we reciprocated in this cultural exchange by introducing her to the wonder that is Borat. 
Once she realised that it wasn't meant to be an accurate representation of her country, but rather a massive pisstake of Western ignorance about Central Asia and a handy tool for revealing people's prejudices, she laughed along heartilly. 
I think Julia was slightly underwhelmed by her first trip to Kyrgyzstan.  Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan have gone on opposite trajectories since the split of the Soviet Union.  After some initial teething problems, Kazakhstan, rich in oil and natural resources, has flourished with a growing middle class and a shiny ultra-modern new capital city.  In contrast, Kyrgyzstam, which enjoyed artificially high importance during the Soviet era, has suffered from a paucity of natural resources, little arable land and growing poverty, struggling through a series of violent revolutions and venally corrupt regimes.  And Bishkek, although a pleasure to live in, is no grand tourist destination, with few major sights to see and only a sprinkling of museums and attractions.
Nevertheless, she seemed to enjoy herself.  We went out to a really nice traditional Kyrgyz restaurant, and I think she enjoyed the challenge of being in an English-speaking environment.
Bare hours after I bid farewell to Julia, I was hard at work on prep for the next Couchsurfing adventure, London School's first Couchsurfing party.  I cooked up a hearty stew of mince, onions, carrots, white wine, rosemary and thyme in the big party pot ready for the evening's festivities and then pottered off to do some of that teaching malarkay. 
Lessons over, my hopefulness for a big turnout was dashed upon the rocks of adverse weather conditions.  The rain (a rare thing in Kyrgyzstan but proof positive of the old chestnut 'it never rains but ii pours') was bucketing it down so hard that the London School Flats had developed a not inconsiderable moat.   The situation looked grim.
I shouldn't have worried though, a few hours later, and 20 odd portions of stew served,  I'm wending my way through a mass of revellers (I think we had about 35 peeps in total), these included friends, friends of friends and couchsurfers from the Phillipines, Japan, Kyrgyzstan and England; the last of whom, one Iain Webb, ended up becoming London School couchsurfer number three by crashing down on my Tushuk for the night (insert cheap pun of choice here).
The next morning was a (relatively) early rise, a quick cafe lunch at Lola's and then off up into the mountains.
 The plan; three days trekking through and camping in the glorious Alamedin valley to take advantage of the long weekend.   You can just imagine the beautiful views and stunning vistas which we photographed.  Actually, you'll have to just imagine them since all our beggaring cameras were swiped.
The team; myself, Logan King (on a rare foray out of Bishkek into that nature), mountain man Alec Forss (who earned the nickname Billy-goat Forss from Logan due to the way he bounded up a mountainside), a fine Melbourne lady called Katie (who's studying Russian at London School at the mo, whilst setting up the Central Asian Environment Coalition), and our erstwhile couchsurfer/crashee Iain.
The first day we wended our way along the left bank of a river for several miles past yurts and horses, finally scrambling through a good half hour of heavy, thorny vegetation and rocky outcrops, ending in a steep cliff fall over whitewater and no way forward.  We decide to head back to a fire pit we saw about forty minutes back and set up camp for the night
An hour or so later and the tents are set up, a fire is going, a noodly concoction is bubbling away on the stove and a bottle of cognac and cups of vodka and fanta are doing the rounds.
As I was nearing the end of the bottle of cognac (my addition to the even's libations) Iain proposed roasting some bananas over the fire.  Now, anybody worth their salt knows that the best way to cook a banana is to  flambée it in brandy...so that is what we did.  The last of the cognac was poured into a travel pan and we feasted on flambéed bananas (the taste for which I have to thank a Parisian banker in whose house I was a guest a few weeks many summers ago for).  This was followed by open-fire-blackened bananas with chocolate inside (also rather tasty).
And so, well fed and watered, the singing began.  Now, Alec is a huge fan of the Canadian Folksinger Stan Rogers, whose songs were inspired by Canadian History and the daily lives of its working people, particularly those from east coast fishing villages, and Alec's enthusiasm for said artist has spread like a rather tuneful virus amongst the London School flock.
In particular, we have taken to belting out The Northwest Passage, his celebration of the explorers who attempted to discover a northwest sea passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.
So that is what we did, two Brits, an American and an Aussie, belting out a Canadian folktune about the sea, at the top of our lungs, on a mountainside in Kyrgyzstan (a completely landlocked country). 
This was followed by a 'guess the missing word' quiz convoluted from Iain's bizarre imagination and a 'History of Philosophy' book, and then a limerick making circle.  The things one cooks up to entertain oneself while camping are truly many splendoured.
The next day dawned bright and sunny, which Logan appreciated mightilly.   Everyone else languished in bed untill the sun had pottered off to be replaced by a constant mizzle and mist interspersed with occasional bursts of full-on, lashing-it-down rain.
On an early-morning trip to clear his bowels Logan had dsicovered a series of well worn paths not much higher up the mountainside, so we take one of those routes up the mountainside.  A few minutes in, at a paticularly spectacular view, I note that we've all left our cameras at the camp and wonder whether we should head back and get them.  The collective decision is to keep moving.  What fools we are!
We cross a burn and trudge over pastureland in the persistent mist and mizzle, an experience a little like wandering through a cloud full of cows.  After a few hours the rain grows heavier and we picnic beneath a large slanting boulder for shelter.  The rain still sheeting down, and visibility increasingly low through the fog, we decide to head back to camp.
We return to camp to find that a good deal of small but valuable stuff has been nicked; including cameras, an ipod, mobile phone, a tent bag and, intriguingly, a bag of haribo sweets.  Much swearing ensues.
By this time the ground is a great slurry of mud, but our alcohol supplies were all consumed the previous night, and this kind of bad news needs to be washed away with a bevvy or three, so  me and Iain splodge off on the 2 and a bit hour round trip in search of beer, returning with dusk at our footsteps laden with 9 litres of Kyrgyzstan's very own (bloody awful) beer наше пиво (tip: drink арпа instead, it's miles better)
We arrive in high spirits to find that Logan's tent has flooded and the fire is completely unlightable.  Buggar and indeed buggaration.
Not to be deterred, we decamp to the party tent to feast on a creative mix of raw fruit and veg formed into a four-course menu by some mysterious alchemy of Katie's doing.  The night wended away nicely with beer aplenty, a four second trivia game (once again dredged from the depths of quizmaster Iain's imagination),  plus a hearty second rendition of The Northwest Passage.  The evening was further enlivened by Logan's phone ringing (the reception in the wilderness was surprisingly bloody good).  Who was our mystery caller?  It was the bounder who stole our stuff ringing us to show off his English.  This extended to repeating 'Hello, I am Ulanbek' several times and giggling. 

                                    What a total nobjockey!

And so, the next morning, we made our way back down to the car park and took a taxi back to Bishkek, stopping at the roadside to buy a bottle of fresh kumyz, a traditional Krygyz drink made from fermented mare's milk. 

So, there you have it.  The tale of London School's initiation into the wonderful world of couchsurfing.  In the coming weeks we have at least three more couchsurfers staying, including the return of the legendary Max Bishkek, fresh from his month's volunteering as an English teacher down in Osh.   He will be spending his final days in Kyrgyzstan before returning to normalcy and his dayjob in the Big Smoke that is London, in the guise of a humble couchsurfer.  Stay tuned for the next thrilling instalment of the Bishkek saga.

Of Earthquakes, Opera and Hiking in Sary Chelek



Wanderers in a white land

I feel a judder and then a sensation of motion somewhat akin to being a bit squiffy after one too many glasses of pimms    What has occured?  Is it the lumbering passing of a convoy of trucks along Sovietskaya road below?  No, I have just eperienced my first earthquake, a little brother to the hiedous behemoth which devestated Japan mere days before.  And it is, frankly, a little underwhelming.  Though this does not stop it spooking a few of my students, who inform me, 'this is not a good building to be in.'.  Hhhm, not reassuring news.  But then Iskender (a pleasure to have in the classroom and incidentally a big Chris Rea fan) breaks into a rousing chorus of Bobby McFerin's Don't Worry (Be Happy) and this inexplicably calms everyone down.

- / - \ - / - \ - / - \ - / - \ - / - \ - \ - / - / - \ - / - \ - / -
I feel a judder and then a sensation of motion somewhat akin to being a bit squiffy after one too many glasses of pimms     What has occured?   I've fallen face first into a two foot drift of snow.  That's what's happened.  I've been carearing around in this, disoriented, cod-inebriated  fashion for a good hour now, staggering along behind the rest of the group with my balance all shot to hell.
Perhaps we should backtrack a little.  The trip during which I am tripping is to the mountain lakes of Sary Chelek Biosphere Reserve.  The planning for this trip was extensive, essentially consisting of a phone call to CBT Kyrgyzstan where we were told it was madness to go trekking in Sary Chelek this time of year, that treks there didn't start til May and we'd be damn fools to attempt it.  A phonecall to another rep, who may have been a bit tipsy and suicidally bored at the time, gave a slightly different opinion:

                    <<Come over, it'll be fine!>>

So we headed to a map shop tucked round the corner of the Kyrgyz cartographic institure and clearly signposted with an A4 piece of paper saying 'Maps in English', and purchased a map of Jalal-Abad province in glorious technicolour...

We head eastwords across the plain, traversing the wasteland of Gorgoroth to the very foot of Mt. Doom

Over Gerorgian food (an extremely tasty, spicy stew type cuisne that I'd never encountered before) that night we (we being Dillon 'D-Solid' Cases, my fine co-northeasterner Stuart Colquhan and the newly arrived in town Alec Forss) arrange to meet at 7:30am the following day and get set off nice and early.
I wake up sharpish next morning, brush my teeth, check I've got everything in my backpack.  The doorball rings.  It''s Alec arriving to inform me that although he had brought everything necessary for backpacking with him to Kyrgyzstan, he'd unfortunately forgot to bring a beckpack to put them in, so was going to have to regretfully bow out of this one.
Undettered, I wend my way to the rendezvous point; Stuart and D-Solid's fine abode.  I arrive at the flat at 7:30am prompt; the door is opened by a bleary-eyed, pyjama-d Dillon.  He is not packed and has emails he needs to send.  On the sofa lies a crashed-out Stewart, sporting a sign which says:

                                <<Wake me immediately!>>

This instruction being carried out, he precedes to open his eyes, gaze around and begin swearing volubly, this toxic stream of obscenity carries on unabbated for about an hour.  It transpires that he's been drinking all night, got stuck in the middle of a heated row for which he spent several hours playing peacemaker, and has had approximatley an hour and half's sleep
After a few hours of variously frantic and lackadaisical packing we head off to get essential supplies.  These essentials include oranges (bloody expensive), sausages, goose liver paté and vodka. 
Stuart has realised he's forgetten to bring a hat and gloves, so we stop of at Osh bazaar, which is where we need to go to get taxis anyway.    He disappears into the densely packed throng of stalls while me and D-Solid provide idle amusement to a few pre-pubescent bazaar kids who know two words in English and aren't afraid to use them...repeatedly, repetetively, seemingly endlessly.  After half and hour, Stuart has not returned and we are beginning to get a wee bit concerned.  Five minutes later, he appears with not a glove to be spoken of, with a hat that merely says 'ATTACK' in large letters on it and is a few sizes too small and informs us he has been shaken-down by the police and they've been practising their sleight of hand by slyly pocketing 500 som.
Slightly, but not unduly, deterred we hop a taxi to take us to a the village of Kara Jigatch, where our homestay man is due to pick us up and deliver us to our evenings rest.  It;s a considerable journey and we stop off at a pitstop cafe on the way, where I engage in a fine lagman (a Central Asian dish of thick noodle stew), Stuart has a fine roast chicken and D-Solid ends up with what could best be described as a lump of slightly dried-out spam.

D-Solid, master of concealment

At nightfall, we approach Kara Jigatch.  But something is awry.  Our man is nowhere to be seen, the light is switfly vanishiing, his mobile is swtiched off, we are stood next to a billiard hall and surrounded by boozed up Kyrgyz fellas, a phone call to our man's house confirms his wife doesn't have a damn clue where he is either.  In desparation, we get a taxi to the homestay, and by taxi I mean a beaten-up old banger driven by two drunk Kyrgyz twenty somethings.  They laugh, burst into song, stop to talk to friends, veer erratically around the road; the chance of us getting mugged in the dark, far away from any kind of assistance, seems high.  We are now quite considerably deterred.
But all is well, we arrive and the worries and weariness of our long journey is soothed with broth, bread and steaming hot tea.
Next morning we meet our guide, a becapped and wellington-booted gentlemen called Juma, in the further end of his middle age.  He  tips us a nod, and we wander out of the village up into the mountains

Heading Off

We pass a few little farmsteads and hamlets, some livestock and some bemused cows

Some Bemused Cows

The initial going is not too bad, some inclines but not too steep, some log bridges to cross over streams, a few little fordlets to wade through but generallly nothing too strenuous...

A gnarly old tree - Gnarly!

But then we reach the snow and my coordination goes haywire.   In places two feet deep, every step felt like 10 steps on normal ground, feet sunk into the snow, the tent kept falling off my backpack and I was swaying like an uncoordinated drunk with a wooden leg.  The fact that my other companions, including a man at least a quarter century older than I, seemed to be making light work of it, made me feel like a hobbit struggling up Caradhras whilst Legolas the elf lightfoots it effortlessly over the top of the snow.
As night fell, we were still some 40 minutes short of our chosen destination, but decided to camp by a smaller lake
We set up camp and Juma lit a small fire, whipped out a cooking pot and proceeded to whip-up the kind of stodgy, filling, carb-heavy magic that you need after a hard days trekking.

Dog tired, we roll into bed.  Just as I am beginning to drift off into the realms of the unawake, the rain starts. It proceeds to rain (or snow, or sleat) solidly all night.  At 4am, we awake to find the outer tent area flooded, and our shoes and bags sopping wet.  Buggar!
Morning dawned, crisp and clear, but we ignored it completely and slept on through til 11:30.  When we finally dragged ourselves out of our pit, it was to discover that Juma had miraculously managed to get a good fire going with wet-through, green wood and was warming up some чай (chai = tea).  We also got a good look at the stunning frozen lake we'd glimpsed in the half light; great concentric circles of different thicknesses of ice created swirling patterns over the lake and there was one end where the lake was not frozen, where the water formed a shape that could best be described as a touch phallic

The willy-shaped water

Juma whiled away the breakfast by whittling me a walking cane to try and counterbalance my total inability to stay upright.
We trekked the 40 minutes to the main lake, a stunning great alpine vista of snow-capped mountains and denuded trees still far short of springs first budding.
We sat for some time by the lakeside musing on the transient nature of travelling life.  D. Solid explained to us  his theory that keeping relationships going had been made more complex in the last fifty years or so by two factors; globalisation and feminism.  It is an itriguing theory, which probably has a fair ammount of truth in it, but as he pointed out, more complex doesn't necessarilly mean worse.   We learn from Stuart that one of the former London School teachers, who had a fling with a German girl while living in Bishkek, had just moved to Munich to be with her, having kept contact through a good few of months of him living back in the states.  More difficult indeed, but not impssible.

Stuart Colquhuan - Gentleman Adventurer

Myself - doing that smiling, posing, nonsense

Having taken our heady fill of intelectual debate and emotional ramblings, we equalised the mood somewhat by throwing stones at the lake and prodding it with a big stick.  That done, we took our leave of the grandeur and trundled back to camp.

 

The rest of the day past by with us trying, with fairly limited success, to keep a fire going that Juma had begun and perfected with seeming ease before wandering off to prep the tea.  The evening saw us curled up in the bloody-chilly confines of our tent (thanks for the hot-water bottle mum, you are a lifesaver) playing a game of Texas Hold 'em Poker by the light of a single mobile phone. 

Keeping the home fires burning (just)

The walk back down was a much more gentle affair, with rolling slopes rather than steep inclines, which all went well until I got cramp and shooting pains in my right foot, causing me to exclame every few hobbled steps, like some half-mad, invalid, drill sergeant


Wild Garlic growing by the wayside

                                                                                       We stopped on the way to pick some wild garlic that Juma pointed out on the roadside. The stinging, allium, tartness of the leaves was a great pleasure to taste and D-Solid and Stuart gathered a loud with the intention of making wild garlic soup on their return.

 





Gathering Wild Garlic


Our return leg was no less eventful.  We accepted a sum of 5500 som to take us back to Bishkek, from a village guy who clearly didn't want to go all the way.  Stuart's lack of haggling incensed D-Solid, but I was inclined to be on Stuart's side, we could afford it and this was just some poor village fellow who couldn't afford any extravagances, only essentials.  When we discovered that his 80s monstrosity of a car had tinted windows and a souped up sound system complete with dayglo tweeters and big-ass subwoofers, I felt less positively inclined.  We reached the crossroads town of Tosh Komur and he had a quick chat with another taxi driver who agreed to take us back the rest of the way for the agreed sum.  No rats were sniffed until a moment before the guy sped off, when Stuart jumped out to check the details.  Too late the cry went out!  The guy was no more than a cloud of dust and a burst of dopler-effected Kyrgyz dance music toss.   We had been jipped for a thousand som.  We ended up paying the same ammount, but had to share the taxi with an extra passenger.  Curses were laid on the double dealing swine, the taxi driver was amused at our naivity.  In fact, amused turned out to be his default setting and the rest of the journey back was highly convivial.  That is until, about twenty minutes outside of Bishkek, a chunk of the back of the car fell of with a resounding screach and thud.  We pulled over to the roadside, a cloth was laid on the ground, and the driver borrowed my walking stick to knock the still half-attached lump of vehicle onto the ground and deposited it in the boot (Americans read 'trunk'). Crisis averted, we made our way back to our homes and warm beds, or in my case made my way back to Anton's Bar for a few bevvies.

In other shamelessly unrelated news crudely tagged on the end, I had my first operatic experience in the form of a ticket costing the princely sum of £2.80 to go and see La Traviatta at the Opera and Ballet Theatre.  It was a real pleasure, the opulence of the setting not entirely met by some of the male leads reedy voices. and the chorus being sung in Russian while the leads warbled away in Italian took a bit to get used to.  But the Prima Donna had a cracking voice and the music was stirring and powerful.  I have not the slighest clue how they could be breaking even with the event, as their were four extravagent sets and not that many more people in the audience than were onstage, but it was a ine evening.

So, mountains, mishaps, earthquakes and opera have been the flavours of my last few weeks.