ماجرای تابستانم، بخش سوم: قرقیزستان

Kyrgyzstan, Kyrgyzstan, Kyrgyzstan.

This was my second Central Asian country (out of 5 or 6, depending how you count), and was a chance for me to see whether the five post-Soviet republics were made from the same cloth, or truly unique and individual countries. It was also a chance to see if I genuinely liked the region, or if Tajikistan had just been a fluke.

When we last left off, I was crossing into Kyrgyzstan at the border post of Bor Dobo, having recently picked up a new (hopefully temporary) travel companion. And as soon as we left Tajikistan, as in roughly 30 seconds after, I learned about one of the horrific realities of Central Asia. For you see, while there are five constituent republics in Central Asia, each with its own native language, and there are numerous ethnic minorities in those republics, one thing manages to keep any tangible support of cross-border cooperation and community alive.

And that is Russian.

You may recognize that I do not know Russian in anything beyond the most of basic levels. So when I asked the Kyrgyz truck driver his name (absentmindedly in Tajiki), he responded with a prompt Shto, or ‘what’ in Russian. It took me roughly a minute after that to realize I knew completely nothing about Russian, at which point I broke out my trusty (if never-before-used) Russian-English phrasebook, with a hope at starting some basic conversation.

If you don’t know anything about Russian, let me explain it like this. Pronunciation and spelling aren't terrible. Russian grammar…might make you consider biting a bullet.  And there are a lot of things that phrasebooks don’t help with, grammar being one of them. As we drove along, I was being talked at in Russian, having no idea how to respond, secretly hoping that the town we were heading to wasn't that far away at all…

…and as luck would turn out, it wasn't. We were headed for Sary Tash, which is the first village after crossing the border. Granted, that was almost an hour away, but still, not that terrible. As we pulled into the town, I was praying to whatever God lounges around in the border spaces of Central Asia that Shorat and the jeep was still there. So walking into the grounds of the town’s only “Ashkana” (if you recognize the word, yes, there is a story there), I was more than ecstatic to see Shorat and the driver, who started laughing and said what amounted to “Took you long enough!”

Now the drive from the border was fairly uneventful, although I will admit that Kyrgyzstan is a beautiful country. I’ve heard it called the “Switzerland of Central Asia”, and with its countless snow-capped mountains, emerald valleys, and pristine (looking) rivers and lakes, I can see the resemblance. The other thing about Kyrgyzstan is, well, you can quite plainly see the cultural differences between it and neighboring Tajikistan. There are numerous reasons for this, for instance, the Kyrgyz were traditionally nomads, as opposed to the sedentary, ‘urban’ Tajiks. As a result, things like yurts (traditional Kyrgyz nomad dwelling) and horses (and related horse products) are still huge in Kyrgyzstan.

So, after some 12 hours, the jeep arrives in Osh. Located in the Ferghana Valley (which in itself is occasionally a bit of a shitshow), Osh is Kyrgyzstan’s second-largest city, and, to my surprise, pretty much reminded me of one of Tajikistan’s provincial capitals, Kulob. We pulled into the main bazaar, and I spent the next few hours exchanging currency from the Tajik somoni (1 USD=4.87 TJS) to the Kyrgyz som (1 USD=48.10 KGS…I love exchange rates), and wandering the market, before enjoying a meal of lagman, the Central Asian/Kyrgyz/Dungan/whatever vinegary-spicy-filling noodle dish that is, to be honest, phenomenal everywhere in Kyrgyzstan.

Seriously, go to Kyrgyzstan, and at some point, order lagman. They have other good food, but lagman was probably my favorite.

Originally, I had planned to spend a day or so in this city, just seeing what there was to explore. To 

understand why I decided against that, let’s explain a bit of recent Kyrgyz history. Unlike the majority of the post-Soviet republics, Kyrgyzstan has had a political turbulent streak following the Soviet collapse. More specifically, look up “color revolution”, and Kyrgyzstan is the only country to have not one, but two. Hell, this place is nicknamed Central Asia’s “island of democracy”, and the predictable timetable for revolutions (once every five years or so), is the butt of several jokes I heard in Bishkek. The last revolution, held in 2010, had the very positive effect of establishing an at-least “semi-democratic” regime which is still that way today. However, 2010 also had a good deal of nastiness. In particular, the city of Osh (and Jalal-Abad, which I will also visit) saw major violence erupt between the Kyrgyz majority and the sizable Uzbek plurality. And by “major violence”, I mean the government in Bishkek was asking Russia, the old colonial overlord, to come in and fix thing. The aftermath of said violence is still a major sociopolitical issue today.

Now what does this have to do with me? Well, as previously mentioned, I don’t know Russian or Kyrgyz. Something else that happened to be an issue in Kyrgyzstan is that no one knew where I was from. In Tajikistan, I’d gotten used to the predictable answers (top two these days are “Iranian” and “German”). Kyrgyzstan, however, seemed to be thinking more regionally, like “Russian” or even (and I loved this) “Tajik”. So when a particularly angry looking Kyrgyz gent yelled “Uzbek” and poked me in the chest (several variants of this incident did occur within about 15 minutes of one another) , I realized that maybe Osh should be for another time…

Making my way to the vehicle bazaar, knowing full well that there were overnight mashrutkas to Bishkek, I was amazed when I found the woman from Karakol from earlier in the day. In broken Tajiki, she explained she’d found a car to Bishkek and asked if I’d like to tag along. Now, I should’ve said no, I should’ve found my own. But the events of a few moments prior were still in my head, so I said ‘Sure, why not’, and we were off.

I need to establish that the ride itself wasn't a bad one. An hour or so drive to Jalal-Abad for the “best shashlik in Kyrgyzstan” (dear Kyrgyz, please stick to lagman), then 7-8 hours to Bishkek. The driver and I seemed to get along after he asked me “What’s your name” in Russian, and I, mishearing him, said “I’m good/khorosho”, leading to him calling me “Mr. Khorosho” the entire ride. But nothing, and I literally mean nothing, could have made my ride worse than the young child I have previously referred to as the “child from hell”. You see, Kyrgyz woman had a baby, who I’d previously been sharing a jeep with for 12 hours. So, understandably, as this kid got into hours 14 and 15 in a moving vehicle, he got…well, ‘fussy’ is a polite word to describe it. There are times to accept fussiness. 11 PM when you’re trying to sleep is not that time…

When I finally dozed off at about 3 AM, I definitely had dreams of throwing that baby off a cliff. They were 

great dreams.

7 AM, I entered Bishkek, and, as is no doubt becoming predictable, my plan forward was nebulous as best. I’d been talking with members of AIESEC Kyrgyzstan about maybe meeting up while I was in Bishkek, but as I was currently without phone or internet, my current plan amounted to telling the driver (who thought I was batshit insane at this point) that I would meet my friend later in the day, and there was no problem. So after a bit of back-and-forth using my phrasebook as a translator, he dropped me off, and it was up to run through my checklist:

1.       Buy a return ticket to Dushanbe

2.       Buy a sim card

3.       Re-establish contact with AIESEC Kyrgyzstan

4.       Find a place to live

The first two were easy enough, if not totally entertaining for the woman at the ticket agency who found my attempts to speak Russian at least incredibly hilarious. The third also wasn't terrible, and soon I found myself sitting in the park in front of the Kyrgyz Philharmonic, lounging in the shade of the trees, people-watching, and appreciating the awesomeness of the statue of Manas, Kyrgyzstan’s national hero, preparing to stab a dragon on horseback.

This is a good time to talk about Bishkek itself.  I’d imagine Bishkek to look a lot like Dushanbe, after all both are cities that were made to exist by Russian/Soviet officials, and should probably follow the same parameters. And this was kind of true, and parts of Bishkek, especially near Osh Bazaar and the Autovoksol, look exactly like their counterparts in Tajikistan. But everything else…Bishkek just felt livelier, more developed, and it was so green. Another huge difference related to the fact that Kyrgyzstan, with its genuine changes of power, didn't have propaganda quotes and pictures of the president on every street corner and major building. Granted, instead they had statues of Manas everywhere, but I’ll be fair, Manas might not have been real, but he’s way more intimidating than Ismail Somoni. Similarly, the people, in both their actions and their dress are far less traditional than their counterparts in Dushanbe. Sometimes, I had to genuinely remind myself that I was still in Central Asia, and not in some part of Turkey, or Eastern Europe.

So what did I do in Bishkek? Well, for this, I need to thank AIESEC Kyrgyzstan, and my…interesting host Anvar for all of their help in navigating the city, in making sure I understood what exactly was going on (most of the time), and for in general just being an awesome bunch. Thanks to these guys, I got to see some things which were certainly Kyrgyz (beshbarmak, Osh Bazaar, being chronically late for absolutely everything), and some things which were a bit more…international (salsa night).

We find ourselves now at my last day in Bishkek. I’d had a pretty good day thus far, from being able to get a surprising discount at the bazaar by accidentally learning that the words for “cheap” and “expensive” were virtually the same in Kyrgyz and Tajiki (as stated earlier, the word ‘Ashkana’ in Kyrgyz, which means ‘restaurant’, corresponds to ‘oshkhona’ in Tajiki, just an example of how Persian words have diffused into the Central Asian Turkic languages), to being able to see and more of that fine city. I’d gotten back to Anvar’s house, and was planning to go to sleep since I had to be at Manas International the next morning at around 6.

Anvar, however, had other ideas.

As I’m packing everything up, Anvar asks me something. It’s worth mentioning Anvar barely speaks English, and I barely speak Russian, so naturally I have no idea what he’s asking me. I ask what, and he hits me. It becomes clear that Anvar wants to box. Now, I don’t box, and I've never really been one for fighting, so why I decided to go along with this is honestly beyond me. And why we decided to stop playing around, and actually started beating the hell out of one another is, again, beyond me. I do, however, know one thing. 

After 30 minutes or so, I took a swing at his face.

And my hand cracked.

The pain I felt within the next few minutes was, putting it mildly, excruciating. Feeling my right hand balloon up wasn't much better. And naturally, because I've already proven I’m not the smartest person in the world, I said I’d wait until I got back to Dushanbe to get it looked at or fixed. I mean after all, my flight was at 9 the next day, and I could just grab a mashrutka from the airport to the clinic. What could go wrong?

Let me count the ways…

First off, it rapidly became clear that doing nothing about it was a terrible idea. But I got to the airport and on the flight without major (additional) problems. The problem began when we landed…in Osh. Apparently, due to “bad weather” in Dushanbe, we were forced to sit in the airport at Osh for about 4-5 hours. By now, the pain was enough that I bought a small bottle of vodka and was just drinking that trying to numb everything up (that also worked, so it’s not alcoholism).

We land in Dushanbe, roughly 4 hours late, and as we start filling through Customs, I remember that I’m going to have problems because of the shenanigans in Kyzyl-Art. And sure enough, I get pulled out of line and questioned as to what exactly is going on. Now this wouldn't have been terrible under normal circumstances, but again, something is severely wrong with my hand, and I’m doing my best to not flip out and murder these otherwise helpful customs agents. But finally, after an hour of waiting for Kyzyl-Art to pick up, I was finally able to leave the airport, and head to the hospital.

I was back.

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And that sums up my Pamir Highway trip. I met some interesting people, made some awesome friends, saw some of the most beautiful scenery I believe the world has to offer, and experienced things that people live and die without ever seeing. I also dislocated my finger and fractured the joint, along with a few other bones.

I’d call it a win.

Many thanks to everyone who helped to make this trip possible.

As always: Ташаккуру Худо ҳафез