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.

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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. 

Of Decadence, Decline and Fall(ing asleep)

The Heavy Duty Bit
For a large majority of the citizenry in Post-Soviet republics, the reality of liberty and free trade have not been the heady explosion of self-determination and consumer shopping spree contentment that early optimism hoped.  The liberalisation of the markets has resulted in a massive flight of capital elsewhere and in a seismic increase in the gap between rich and poor; while a small elite have amassed extraordinary wealth, the masses have had to deal with rising levels of unemployment and underfunded, decaying public services. 
Kyrgyzstan has been hit particularly hard by this shifting post-soviet landscape.   As an important location for  military testing and popular Soviet holiday destination, Kyrgyzstan punched above its weight in the USSR, and the Soviets engaged in construction projects in Kyrgyzstan that the country could not have hoped to have funded on its own.  Many people consider the late 70s and early 80s  to be a heyday for Kyrgyzstan.  In contrast, it is now a small, isolated nation bullied by big bruiser neighbours like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan that have considerably more natural resources and material wealth.
The power vacuum left by the crumbling iron fist of Soviet rule has been quickly filled by organized crime.  Many of the bigwigs in this murky underworld are the same well-placed officials of the former Soviet Republics, and their heirs in oligarchy.  There has been an alarming rise in violent retributive crimes, prostitution, gambling and human trafficking throughout the former Soviet republics.
This is clear enough to see in Bishkek, bookmakers proliferate throughout the centre of town and the city has a swathe of casinos totally out of proportion with its population (even before you consider the low earnings of the average Bishkekian). 
The flow of human cargo from country to country (for forced labour, domestic servitude, commercial sex etc.) is an opportunistic hydra that springs up in one part of the world, drains it of its most precious resource and then disappears when the going gets tough, only to rear another ugly head in some other farflung corner of the Earth.  So the rise in human trafficking from South East Asia in the 70s; was followed in the early 80s by a glut of trafficking from Nigeria, Uganda and Ghana; which neatly sashayed in the mid-late 80s and early nineties into a dip into the Latin American market with large numbers trafficked principally from Brazil, Mexico and the Central American States.  The impact of illegal trafficking was, if not negligible, at the least fairly low in the Soviet Union, but with the collapse in 1991 came a fertile new recruiting ground for modern slavers.  The perfect pool as well, a steady flow of young, strong, attractive, well educated people, in the depths of poverty and buoyed with dreams of The West  fuelled by an influx of Western films, music and television.  It begin in Poland, Romania, Hungary and the then Czechoslovakia, by the mid-90s it had shifted to Bulgaria, Moldova, the Ukraine and Russia.   Most recently the focus has shafted east, with Georgia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan becoming prime meat markets for traffickers.

None of which was going through my head as I watched dumbfounded whilst a hollering banshee of a woman (who may have been a prostitute) grabbed and tore at the hair of an employee at a private banya, with a khakied up security guy trying to control an raging bull of a man of quite inordiante bulk (who may have been a pimp).  No, my main thoughts ran as follows:

 <<What in the holy fuck is going on, is there anything I can do?  Will doing anything just make the situation worse? will doing anything make my face and body worse?  What kind of quilombo (both literally and figuratively) is this?>>

My questions are answered as the second security guard appears at the door carrying a beating stick, wipes his sweating brow and casually waves us over to our private banya rooms.   Clearly, this is business as usual. 
The layout of our private banya gives a good indication of the wide range of activities catered for, there is a sauna and shower room, a plunge pool, a tv rooom, a full sized Russian Billiards table, a massage table, and two double bedrooms (with convenient wipe-clean plastic covers).
And so, trying to ignore the drama unfolding outside, we get down to the important business of stripping down to a vaguely toga-esque cloth and alternatiely sweating, swigging beer and water and playing the fiendishly difficult game of Russian billiards (take a pool table, make it considerably larger and the pockets significantly smaller, increase the size of the balls and make all but one of them white - its not a game for the light hearted or impatient).  When we emerge from our pit of decadence to pay the bill all is quiet.  Aggresive negotations have clearly been concluded satisfactarally (though to whose satisfaction is an open question).  SNAFU.  To paraphrase a common cliche:

                                    <<T.I.B. - This Is Bishkek.>>

...and its Maximus Bishkekius to play a difficult white (i.e. any of them)

The (Rather More) Light Hearted Bit

There is an Old Chestnut which says that the fall of the Roman Empire was a result of its own growing decadence, the former discipline which allowed it to expand and conquer in all directions became debased in an orgy of alcohol, sexual proclivity and overeating and like an aging general’s belly the muscle and sinew of the Empire became softened with fat.
If this is the case, the Westerner in Kyrgyzstan is in for a fall.  I submit as exhibit A, 'The Logan', a challenge recently witnessed  This herculean event came about when Max noticed that Logan, a man of considerable metabolism, tended to order two full chicken dishes plus rice at our local fast food Chinese place (in the Vefa Centre, our local Turkish run shopping centre/mall and an opulent den of sin and iniquity if ever there was one).  This set off debate between Cole and Max ended in Cole laying down the gauntlet of 'The Logan' to Max: to wit, could they begin with Logan’s favourite instant pot mashed potato and then move on to eat two full Vefa Chinese Chicken in Dough portions, plus fried rice in one sitting.  Logan being a great fan of personal challenges (and ridiculously competitive) decided he would up the ante by doing all this but eating three portions instead of two.  Dan joined in on the action but in a state of some disrepair as he’d been at a party till the wee small hours the night before.   After the General gave an inspirational speech to his aspirant consumers, battle was joined.



The Chief Consumers square up

The master with his disciples

 The waitress taking the 11 orders for a table of 6 gave us all a quite reasonable look of disdain and mild disgust, but soon the food was flowing in true decadent banquet style.

The feast is laid before us

A debauched Roman feast - I think you'll agree the similarities are striking. 

 

                          

The unconscionable overconsumption ended in a merry score draw, with Cole, Max and the master himself all polishing of their supersized meals with aplomb.

Job Done

Sadly, things did not end so well for Dan, who ground to a despondent halt after a pitiful one and quarter portions.

Failure (and last nights alcohol intake) inspire abject despair

And so, bleary eyed and full bellied, the competitors slouched and slothed there way home with a post-competition nap in their sights.

The Fall of Rome - a salutary warning to us all?

p.s. Just in case you think this was going to be a looking-up-one's-nose piece entirely about the oddities, extremeties and excesses of others, here's my addition to the general picture of decadence and depravity.   At about 5 in the morning, having supped a plentiful quanitity of beer over a 9 hour period.  I find myself dog-weary in our friendly, local strip club (I'm painfully aware of the potential hypocrisy of the bookends of this article, but we've chatted with the strippers and they're mostly smiley, happy students training to be police officers and suchlike).   As a parade of scantilly clad girls gyrate in front of me, I do the only reasonable thing, pop myself onto the floor and have a good nap.  Prompting the owner to observe

                                'What is he doing!? Sleeping...ah well, he must be gay.'

Me at my classiest and best.



Of Noraebang 노레방, Spag Bol and Flaming Hot Metal

A variety of Muslim and Chinese sources (dating from the 7th to the 12th Century) describe the Kyrgyz (at that time making their long trek south from the Siberian North, picking up a bit of that their Turkic language and culture along the way) as a race of feirce, nomadic warriors, red-haired, with fair complexions and green-blue eyes.  A long time intermixing with other Central Asian peoples and the not insignificant influence of one Jenghiz Khan and his Mongol cohorts has given the modern Kyrgyz a more typically asiatic appearence, to a European eye superficially like a chinese person, but with a longer face and wider eyes.  
However recent DNA studies show a remarkable genetic legacy of this earlier time, with 63% of modern Kyrgyz men sharing Haplogroup R1a1 (Y-DNA) with Tajiks (64%), Ukrainians (54%), Poles (56%) and even Icelanders (25%). Haplogroup R1a1 (Y-DNA) is believed to be a marker of the Proto-Indo-European language speakers and goes some way towards explaining the distincly Indo-european red hair and green-blue eyes noted by those ancient Chinese and Muslim fellows.
The modern ethnic mix of Krygyzstan is no less intriguing, although predominantly Kyrgyz, there are not insignificant populations of ethnic Russians, Ukranians, Uzbeks, Uyghurs, Dungans and Kazakhs.  As a result of being part of the USSR, where whole populations were routinely dragged halfway across the world with the merest flick of a bureaucrat's pen, Kyrgyzstan now has some ethnicities from even further afield.
This is visible in the fact that there is a German bierkeller in Bishkek called Steinbrau, brewing a range of German biers and run by ethnic Germans who have lived in Bishkek for several generations.
There is also a not inconsiderable Korean population, principally in Bishkek, and I've taught a number of Korean students.  The Story behind this is that in 1937, the Stalin regime, fearing that the Korean community might form a "fifth column" in support of the Japanese who were then occupying Manchuria and Korea just across the borders, ordered a mass deportation of all 36,442 families from Sakhalin, Vladivostok and the Russian Far East to Central Asia, casually shifting a total of some 171,181 people thousands of miles to help prevent them from allying with a nation that they cordially despised.
Which longwinded ethnographic preamble serves to explain how when Ceci was having a little leaving do a few weeks back (to mark the fact she was leaving her job with the UN and going back to Sardinia for two weeks), I found myself enjoying a dish of  비빔밥 (Bibimbap, a sizzling, spicy Korean dish, with rice, meat and veg mixed together with a raw egg) and engaging in a little light 노레방, or as you might know it, Karoake
Although most of the world knows the act of amateur songbirds hollering along rambunctiously to a backing track, preferably out of time and out of tune, by this portmanteau of the Japanese words kara 空 "empty," and ōkesutora オーケストラ "Orchestra", the Koreans have their own word for it, “noraebang” (노레방) which literally means “song room.”.  This alternative term is maybe something to do with the aforementioned fact that Japan and Korea have what could be described as a hate-hate relationship.  Invading someone's country and raping their culture can give you that attitude, just ask the Irish.
And thus, there we were, tucked away in our own private room, with discrete servers popping in from time to time to see if we require a recharging of our glasses, and a large selection of songs in Korean, Russian and English available for us to merrily murder.

Giving it the beans -
growling, purring and hollering some classic 80s rock



Picking them songs
(note the hated Japanese word sneaking in there in the background)


 

Max Bishkek belting out a tune in a commanding baritone.

 

Ala, Ruta and Ceci getting all soulful

 A large part of the joy of the experience comes in the combnination of tinny, midi backing tracks (80s synthesizer distorted guitar sound = priceless) and in the utterly incompatable backing videos.  The pinnacle of this came when Metallica's One, a harrowing thrash-metal account of an incapacitated Vietnam veteran's empty existence and yearning for death, was backed by a natty dance routine performed by some squeeky clean K-pop girls. 

                                               / - / - /          \ - \ - \    

I woke up the next morning with a searing, burning, soar throat and the urge to organise a bit of a gathering.  This came partly from my great enjoyment of playing host, partly because I still don't feel I've got enough use out of my big-ass floor cushions/table cloth/tea set combo, and partly from my continuing quest to get to know the local teachers and get all the ex-pats and locals to get on like one big, sickening, Walton's-esque, happy family.
To this end invitations were liberally spread around and on the saturday afternoon of the party, I found myself in the supermarket, buying the biggest, fat-ass cooking pot they had on offer, and a variety of ingredients including 2 kgs of mince.  The aim of all this to-do was to cook up a monster-sized serving of Spag Bol (or Spaghetti Bolognese if you must), a perculiarly British take on Italian cuisine, basically being a British-style mince stew with nominal pasta and parmesan cheese to give that authentic Italian flavour.  Here's a sample recipe, although the variations are quite considerable.
The fridge packed to bursting with beer, coke and various juices (though, it must be admitted, mostly with beer), and the pot of Spag Bol bubbling away nicely, the first guests began to trickle in; first came Australian Dan, a softly spoken, dryly-witty, geologist; then Logan (American), Alexa (Canadian), Maxton (Scottish), Edward (English), Kurt (another American).  The room was starting to look worryingly anglophone.  Things reached crisis point when two local students arrived, took one look in, hovered at the threshhold looking awkward and left after 5 minutes.  Disaster!  My best-laid plans were in tatters, all had gone awry and the party was going to be the ex-pat scummiest of ex-pat scum parties, with narry a whiff of cultural exchange. 
But my prophesies of doom turn out to be unfounded, a very few moments later, a steady trickle of native teachers begin to arrive to assuage my fears, the prodigal students returned some 20 minutes later bearing gifts, snatches of Russian tongue began to intermingle with the various accentual flavours of English to be heard, then Eve arrived and struck up a conversation in Kyrgyz.  A few hours later, many and varied peeps have arrived, some 20-odd bowls of Spag Bol have been handed out, beverages have been consumed and much mixing and matching of conversational partners has taken place.  I breath a sigh of relief and allow myself to abandon hostly duties, have a tinkle on the ukulele and get down to some solid boozing and chinwagging.

The party in full swing

Slowly the guests meandered off to their beds or to other engagements (Dinara: a mad-as-a-bag-of-badgers, Kazakh party-girl had to potter off to the opening of a GQ/Playboy bar, for example).  In the wee small hours of the morn, the hardcore of peeps that remained decided to take a taxi to the Anti-valentine's metal extravaganza at Metro pub.
We arrive in time to enjoy the dulcet tones of Kyrgyzstan's very own Rammstein cover band.

The Rammstein covers band - tight as a monkey's nuts in a Siberian snowstorm.

Halfway through the set, the securtiy begin to push the crowd back to leave a performing circle vacant for the entry of a pair of Fire-Poiists...

 

Inset appropriate Arthur Brown/Bloodhound Gang/Coal Chamber/Johnny Cash quote here.

I take a moment to ponder the wonder of watching an art/dance with its origins in the Maori culture of New Zealnd, performed to the sounds of an ethnic Russian band performing covers of a German band playing an originally British music inspired by American music with its origins in the meeting of African and European musical cultures; whilst standing in a principally ex-pat bar in the depths of Central Asia. 

Multicultural ponderings over, I headed into the main bar and met a girl from Valencia and a Belgian girl who'd lived in Paraguay, giving me a chance to dust off my extremely rusty Spanish and give it a spin (to triple mix my metaphors)
On our return to the theatre of war, We are greeted enthusiastically by the drummer of the next band up, who reliably informs us that he is the only drummer in Kyrgyzstan who can really do double bass drumming.  And to be fair to him, he was a little machine of steady, hammering power. 

The only band in Kyrgyzstan with a drummer who can
really do that double-bass drumming - apparently.

Once again, we end our tale in the wee hours of the morning that most respectable people never encounter, stumbling out into the cool morning air, all circle-pitted out, drenched in sweat which is probably not exclusively ours and ready to retire to our beds.

                                               / - / - /          \ - \ - \    

 

p.s. I have of late discovered that The Kyrgyz Republic has a very intriguing range of toiletries and general cleansing products which my flatmate Daniel Mahony seems to have a knack of hunting out.  Here are a few examples:



Why bother with dull old mint when
you can have Oak-flavoured mouthwash



 

 

Or how about some beer-flavoured shampoo



And what serendipity that the name of this bleach
is also one of the main things it will be used to clean up.





Three Vignette's - The Banya, The Tea Party and Mirbek Atabekov

Vignette The First
           

                        <<Thank you for coming to our coutry during these troubled times.>>

It's been a common refrain, variations of which I have heard at regular intervals since my arrival in Kyrgyzstan, though I confess this is the first time I’ve heard it from the mouth of one of Kyrgyzstan’s top pop stars.  Well, not directly from the mouth of the great Mirbek Atabekov, but via the expert translational skills of Jana, onetime barmaid at the bar in which we are currently seated.
Indeed, as she had only resigned from said bar job mere hours earlier, Jana probably wasn't expecting to be back so soon.   So when she casually mentioned that Mirbek was there whilst explaining about her bust up with her boss, and the western numbskulls she had the misfortune to associate herself with, instead of being consoling and supportive, became randomly excited and dragged her back to the scene of her recent unpleasentness, she was bemused to say the least.    

Jana, Logan and myself - shiny happy people

But she is a trooper, so along she went, tempted Mirbek over with her womanly wiles and proceeded to translate his expressions of gratitude for our presence in his country.
But I am no missionary of the West, sent to spread the word unto a blighted and benighted population; I am here to experience, learn and enjoy at least as much as to teach, share and give.  Indeed, I’m mightily sceptical of the benefit of going anywhere with the sole intention of shoving your altruism in people's faces.   And my worst experience of hardship in this nation has been getting hassled one evening by a drunken rabble of Kyrgyz guys who thought we were ethnic Russian and wanted to pick a fight, which ammounts to no more hardship than a night on the lash in most towns of the UK. 
So I feel on considerably more solid ground when the conversation moves on to the topic of girls. Mirbek informs us that the girls of his native Talas are highly physically appealing by the subtle bodilly motions of a big thumbs up and sticking his tongue out and waving it about vigorously.  Then the secret agent assigned to protect Mirbek shows us his gun and Mirbek wanders off with several of the attractive ladies that have been seeking his attention all night, promising to return later and have a photograph taken with us.   He doesn't. 

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Vignette The Second

Classroom 14 - my (very) humble abode

When I arrived here a few months back, my bedroom had ceased to be a classroom bare days before.  It was spartan to the point of being barren.  My level of redecoration since then has been so minimal that the words 'Classroom 14' still remain clearly marked above my door. 
So a few days ago me and Max headed to Osh Bazaar in search of some soft furnishings to make the room feel a bit more lived in. 
Now, all the accounts of Osh Bazaar I have been regaled with have made it sound like a very Sodom and Gomorrah of a place, a Hieronymous Bosch painting come to life, where dead dogs lay rotting beside fruit and veg stalls, human shit can be found proudly deposited in the centre of pathways and dog-fighting dvds can be purchased at bargain basement prices.  Now, although I saw none of this on my visit, I can confirm that it is a veritable rabbit warren of narrow, twisting pathways and rampant commercialism, where the wares of the stalls bow in on you like ghouls on a fairground ghost train.  
We both hunt down what we are seeking, Max a pair of Tracky Bs (that's tracksuit bottoms for the unitiated) and myself a pair of long, decorative Central Asian floor cushions and a tablecloth. 

Purchase made

Set off with a tea-set, it made my hovel look almost liveable.  So I decided to invite a few peeps over for a dinner paty.

Despite my best attempts to cremate the pasta I was preparing, all went fine and dandilly, with genial conversation being exchanged to the gentle sound of Tom Waits hollering.

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Vignette The Third
I am standing, naked as a newborn babe, drenched in sweat, beating one of my colleagues repeatedly with a handful of crudely interwoven branches.   Surprisingly, this is not, as it seems, a scene from a low-budget, German porn film.  No, this is all part and parcel of the joyous sensual overload that is Banya.   A form of turkic sauna which includes a positvely arid hot dry room, a hot wet room where sitting down for more than about a minute puts your buttocks in serious risk of third-degree burns and a plunge pool so baltically cold as to make your testicles want to take a permanent vacation in the warm cosiness of your internal organs; all whilst surrounded by fat, perspiration soaked, middle-aged businessmen.   The experience, all told, is surprisingly invigorating and you leave with a sensation of healthilly revitalised and cleansed wellbeing. 

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These three vignettes provide a brief snapshot of my January in Bishkek.  It's been a relatively quiet month, but it seems no month in Bishkek can pass by entirely uneventfully.

New Year in Osh / Новый год в Оше (Pt2 Ozgon, Gulcha and other shenanigans)

A mural on Kurmanjan Datka Avenue in Osh

We are walking down a nondescript corridor on the American second floor of a building that has seen better days.  The building is two storeys high, so there is no British second floor.  We are seeking the Osh CBT (Community Based Tourism) office which the guidebook says is located in this building on the American second floor.   But it is nowhere to be seen.  Eventually we knock on a door to make enquiries. The door is opened by a middle-aged lady in surgical whites, behind her is what appears to be both a doctors' and a dentists' surgery combined.  The bright light emanating from the room is glaringly painful in the stygian gloom of the corridor.  She looks at us, impassive.  Max enquires:

                      <<Excuse me, would you be able to tell us were the tourism office is?>>

She responds, blank faced:

                           <<The place you are looking for is on the second floor.>>

and closes the door, plunging us back into semi-darkness.   If at this point a dwarf had meandered down the corridor and begun talking to us backwards, I would not have been surprised.  This is the first, and hopefully the last, time in my life that I've felt like I've stumbled unwittingly into the dark recesses of David Lynch's psyche. 
We make our way out into the light of day and the bustle of Osh's Kelechek Plaza.   Max does what he always does at such moments (and indeed at every available opportunity), he gets out his i-phone.  Now, Max is truly obsessed with this piece of kit, and with all the other gadgetry he has in his i-collection.  He mentions them so often, and with such regularity, that I am beginning to believe he's been sent undercover by Steve Jobs to singlehandedly expand Apple's influence in Central Asia.  A little bit of conspicuous i-phonic internet surfing locates the CBT website and confirms that the office has been moved to the first floor (British) of a hotel nearby.  When we locate said office however, it turns out that nobody is in.  Max rings the number written on the door to be greeted by a chap called Talant who tells him that everyone is on holiday but he could certainly arrange a new year's trip into the mountains to stay in the Alay Valley if we wanted.  We agree to call back tomorrow morning to finalise the details.
Job done, we hop in a taxi to take us to the town of Ozgon, 55km north-east of Osh.  Our taxi driver is a cheerful Uzbek chap who happily points out the various sites on the way.  As we are passing through an area on the outskirts of Osh still derelict from the June riots, he shows us in an equally offhand way the enormous scar he has on his belly from being knifed during the troubles.  The amiable manner in which he does this somehow makes the whole thing more, rather than less, shocking.  <<What's the situation like now?>> Max asks.  <<Back to normal.>> he replies.  Long may it remain that way

A merrily harrowing taxi ride to Ozgon

  Ozgon itself has had its fair share of troubles.  In the summer of 1990 violence broke out between Kyrgyz and Uzbek factions over issues of land tenure.  The violence was short lived but between 300 and a 1000 people lost their lives.  No outward mark of that violence remains today however, the town is pleasent and lively, with an atmosphere that makes one feel instantly relaxed. 

The three Mausolea - with inscriptions in Kufic and Naskhi script

The mausolea we have come to visit date from the heyday of Kharakhanid Mavarannahr ('The land beyond the river') in the 11th and 12th Century.  A time when Ozgon was one of the largest cities in the Fergana Valley and a centre of Silk Road activity.  

An 11th century minaret also found onsite



The central of the three Mausolea was probably built for Nasr Ibn Ali, the founder of the Karakhanid dynasty, who died in 1012/13.    

The mausolea are clearly viewed with much pride in Kyrgyzstan as they gloriously adorn the Kyrgyz 50som note.

As we wander away from the mausolea, a bunch of teenagers sitting on a bench listening to music on their mobile phones (it is reassuring to know that the world over teenagers are teenagers) shout a cheery greeting to us:

<<Hello Baby!>>

Too much American music and not enough English lessons methinks.

Returning to the town we are tempted into a cafe by Shaslyk (succulent, spiced junks of meat on a skewer) grilling on an open barbecue outside.

The proprietress posing proudly

After a hearty lunch of nan, shashlyk, chai and laghman (a noodle dish with many varieties) we had a wander around Ozgon's bazaar.  Got laughed at by children whilst taking a photo of the cornucopia of nan on sale (this is fair enough as it's the equivalent of a Kyrgyz guy coming to the UK and taking a photo of Tesco's bread aisle) and hopped a taxi back to Osh,

The gates of Ozgon Bazaar

The following day finds us in a taxi bound for the small town of Gulcha in the Alay valley.  An hour and forty minutes of wending our way through stunning mountain scenery on a route which would eventually take us into China and we are there.

    

On the road to Gulcha


This is true rural Kyrgyzstan, cows roam the streets, you can hear the bleating of sheep from every homestead and the backdrop in every direction is a stunning panorama of snowcapped mountains.

Roaming the streets of Gulcha

We are led into an attractive family home and ushered into a side room where we are served a lunch of freshly baked bread, fruit from the family orchard, honey from a relative's aviary and plentiful supplies of hot chai.


 

Chilling, waiting for lunch to be served





Chai Sippin' Boy



 

 





The man of the house comes in to welcome us to his home and tell us that his son will take us for a tour of the town.  He introduces himself as Alaybek, which translates roughly as 'Man of the Alay Valley'.  So, we have inadvertently become guests of the anthroporphic personification of the area we're visiting...intriguing. 

Walking the mean streats of Gulcha

In the centre of town preparations for the coming New Year's celebrations are well underway, a giant Yolka or New Year's Tree is set up and Djed Moroz and his granddaughter Snegoorochka are interacting merrily with all and sundry (any similarities to the Christmas celebration are purely incidental and imply no copywright infringement whatsoever).   Our arrival inspires a similar reaction to the arrival of the Beatles tour bus in a small town in the USA in the mid-1960s...I get the feeling Gulcha does not get foriegners wandering its streets casually very often.

The Yolka in all its glory

Posing with Djed Moroz and Snegoorochka

We buy some presents and a bottle of beer each at a nearby grocers, potter through the town back up to our Homestay house and take an afternoon nap.  By late afternoon, the merest hint of boredom is beginning to set in.  Max proposes a game of scrabble on (of course) the i-phone.  We are one move into the game when we are ushered into the main room to be greeted by an extended family gathering and a feast of herculean proportions.  Very little scrabble will be played tonight methinks.

The New Year's family gathering

Introductions are made, conversation and chai flows, much food is consumed.  Like all great feasts and banquets, it becomes an endurance contest, everything you could possibly want to eat is there in abundance and you want to eat it all.  Just when we thought we could fit not a morsel more food in our mouths, the main course of Plov (a rice dish which originated in Uzbekistan) is brought out.  In this type of endurance contest the meal always wins.  But the battle is a hell of a lot of fun nonetheless.

Our genial hosts - Alaybek and Alynkan

Although he has not drank alcohol for many years, Alaybek generously provides us with glasses of Kyrgyz wine and toasts begin to flow.  Alaybek begins to philosophise:

<<Back in the days of the Soviet Union, we used to get drunk and we would laugh and sing.  Nowadays, young people get drunk and they fight.  It must be they drink bad alcohol nowadays.>>

Blame it on the Jaguar. 

We perform a rousing chorus of Auld Lang Syne for the family's benefit (conplete with crossed hands and half-remembered lyrics) and then everybody decamps outside to watch the fireworks and see in the new year with sparklers and Champagne.

Alaybek pours the champers





The next day we thank our hosts vociferously and make the return journey to Osh with smiles on our faces.  The day is spent wandering and checking out museums.  The evening is an epic affair in which we consume 10 litres of liquid (5 of water, 5 of beer) during a mammoth 3 hour session in our guesthouse's private banya (a turkic style sauna room/plunge pool combo).

All in all, a fine end to a fine holiday.  Our rickety old Soviet plane touches down at Manas Airport and we take a taxi back to Bishkek content in the knowledge that we flouted all safety warnings and the worst of our suffering as a result was a little indigestion from overeating.



Some photos courtesy of Daniel Mahony