Poking Around in Central Asia: May 2015

Poking Around in Central Asia: May 2015
Trip 3 - Part 3
Kyrgyzstan: Tokmok to Kaji Say
by Craig Mains

Monday, May 18, 2015
A Walk in Tokmok
Chain and I were up fairly early. The grandmother made us some tea. She had noticed Chain's shoes sitting by the door and since they were walking shoes she asked us if we would like her grandson to take us on a walk in the neighborhood. She spoke no English but somehow we understood. He took us on probably about a mile or so loop. I'm guessing that he was probably about eight or nine years old.

There were lots of older Russian-style cottages in the neighborhood.

There were also some great views of the mountains to the south.

People were out and about, mostly kids of all ages on their way to school. I didn't see any school buses--it looked as though everyone walked.

Another view of some of the houses in the neighborhood.

We had to get our guide back home because he had to get to school too. We tried to give him a little bit of money, which he refused, but he did accept a handful of Jolly Ranchers.

Map source: orangesmile.com

This map gives an idea of our route. We had headed east from Bishkek to Tokmok. We would continue towards Lake Issyk Kul and head along the southern shore. We would go almost as far as Karakol at the eastern end before retracing our route back. It's about 250 miles from Bishkek to Karakol so our trip was slightly less than 500 miles round trip.

A closer look at the Issyk Kul region.

We were still in the Chu valley until we got near Issyk Kul. The Chu River flows within about five miles of the western end of the lake but there is no apparent hydrologic connection between the two. Some maps incorrectly show Issyk Kul as the source of the Chu River.

The only parts of Kyrgyzstan that I had seen in previous trips were around Bishkek and the area between Batken and Osh in the southwest, so I was excited to see a different part of the country.

Some examples of the scenery on the way towards Issyk Kul. It was a beautiful day, mostly clear skies, and a slight chill in the air.

As usual, it was not easy to get decent pictures of the landscape while bumping around in the back of a van. Just when you thought you had a good shot lined up a telephone pole would pop into view. The van was compact but comfortable.

I hardly ever saw a wooden electric line pole in Central Asia. Most of them were made out of concrete like this one. When I did see wooden poles they were not installed directly into the ground. Instead they were lashed to a shorter concrete pole that was sunk into the ground. All of the wooden part was above ground.

More roadside scenery. It probably wasn't this green all year round.

I enjoyed traveling with Ramil because he was informal and flexible. As we left the Chu river valley he asked if we wanted to see a Muslim cemetery. I had ridden by several cemeteries in Central Asia but this was the first time I'd actually got to stop and look around. It wasn't on our official itinerary. Ramil told us that a mausoleum such as this one is called a gumbez.

Ramil knew a lot of little details about Central Asian burial practices. He said there was traditionally not a lot of attention paid to cemeteries after the burial. That definitely appeared to be true at this cemetery--I didn't see any evidence that people visited or maintained the site.

He also told us that although the body was buried in the ground there was usually additional soil placed on top of the ground surface as well, as shown by the heaps seen here.

The photos don't do justice to the sky. Although it wasn't all that windy at ground level, clouds were rolling rapidly across the sky. It felt like being in a time-lapse video.

Ramil told us this pile of earth was almost certainly the oldest burial spot in the cemetery. It was originally a gumbez constructed of unbaked clay bricks that eventually weathered and collapsed.

Some of those buried in the cemetery had metal frames over their graves that were shaped like yurts.

Above is some of the scenery as we approached the west end of Issyk Kul. At the tip of the west end of the lake we drove through the city of Balykchy, which has a population of about 42,000 people. During Soviet times there had been some industry there but it has since collapsed. It still serves as a transportation center, hosting a rail yard, probably for the same line that runs past the Asia Mountains hotel in Bishkek.

Balykchy is situated at a highway crossroads. The main road from Bishkek splits into three smaller roads at Balykchy. One follows the north shore of the lake, one follows the south shore, and one heads due south. The lake roads reconnect at the eastern end of the lake. We saw some large tandem freight trucks in Balykchy that Ramil said were bringing Chinese consumer goods into Kyrgyzstan. Although China and Kyrgyzstan share 533 miles of border there is no direct border crossing between the two countries in the Issyk Kul region. Chinese goods must pass through part of Kazakhstan before entering Kyrgyzstan in this area.

The road that leads south from Balykchy leads to one of the only two border crossings between China and Kyrgyzstan. Ramil jokingly told us the border crossing at Torugart pass (elevation 12,300 feet) is always open, except at night, on weekends, on public holidays, and during bad weather--which meant it was usually closed. It can be blocked by snow in any month of the year. It is very difficult for someone who is not a citizen of either Kyrgyzstan or China to cross at either of the two border crossings.

Another view of the countryside as we approached the lake.

Beyond Balykchy we started getting views of the lake. Ramil said it was a deeper blue color in this area because it was shallower at the west end.

We stopped by the town of Bokonbaevo to visit a traditional felt rug-making cooperative run by local women. Bokonbaevo, according to the 2009 census has a population of slightly more than 10,000 people. It appeared much less than that to me. The census population may include people in the outlying areas or maybe Bokonbaevo was just bigger than it looked. It is said to be the largest town on the southern side of the lake until you reach Karakol.

These were the only two women who worked onsite in the building housing the cooperative. They told us they do some wool processing here but a lot of the work is done by elderly women who work at home. They had a display of photos of the members of the coop. All of the women looked old and the photos themselves looked old so it made me wonder how many of them were still living. These women seemed to be the two youngest members of the coop, unless there were some members who weren't pictured.

This was one of the bigger rugs. Since they were made of felt they did not have a nap like a typical rug. The patterns are all traditional Kyrgyz patterns. They also made some items besides rugs such as slippers, purses, and hats.

We bought the rug shown at the bottom, which we now have hanging on a wall at home. The wool seems to have been minimally processed. When we first hung the rug I could detect a faint sheepish smell when I walked by it.

This woman appeared to be the sparkplug who was keeping the cooperative going.

I liked this rug but it wasn't completed yet. They hadn't added the backing and the stitching around the edges.

Ramil negotiated a modest discount on the rug and other items we bought. There is not a lot of haggling over prices in Central Asia, with the exception of cab rides. It seems standard that vendors will give you an automatic courtesy discount of about five percent if you ask but nothing beyond that.

This was their wool processor, the only apparent mechanical part of the operation. All the colors were made using natural plant dyes that the women collected locally.

After leaving the coop we stopped for lunch. It had been prearranged that we would stop at the home of a local person for a home-cooked lunch. The rope-like dish in the center was a crispy fried dough that was lightly sugared. We each got a serving of mashed potatoes. She had used the bottom of a two-liter soda bottle as a mold for the potatoes. There were also some delicious homemade apricot preserves.

There was a traditional yurt in the back yard of the house where we stopped for lunch.

This is what her family's tundook looked like.

Another view of the back streets of Bokonbaevo. The place where we stopped for lunch was on the edge of town. Other than the main road along the lake, all of the other streets I saw in Bokonbaevo were unpaved.

From Bokonbaevo we continued east to the town of Kaji Say where we would stay for the night. This is some of the scenery as were nearing Kaji Say.

The hotel where we were staying was called Al Hyatt and was owned by a Russian couple who had retired to Kyrgyzstan after working in the Russian film industry. They now lived in Bishkek during the winter, where they operated an art gallery. They moved to Kaji Say during the warmer months, where they operated Al Hyatt.

Each year the owners invited artists to Al Hyatt for a couple weeks for an artists' retreat. The artists got a free place to stay and hang out with other artists in trade for some artwork that was left behind to decorate the hotel.

This gate to the hotel was made by the owners and their son, who had done a lot of other metal work around the hotel. Like many places in Central Asia, it was a walled compound and they closed and locked the gate for the evening.

The interior of the compound was nicely landscaped and cared for. The owners had just opened the facility for the season. We were their first visitors of the year and the only people at the hotel.

The hotel itself was not in any way fancy. Our room was spartan and opened directly to the outside like in a motel. There were no internal hallways or inside common areas. There were some nice local landscape paintings in our room, presumably left behind from one of the artists' retreats.

Besides the art work, the owners had a lot of antiques displayed around the courtyard. Kyrgyzstan seemed to be awash in artifacts from the Soviet era.

The fabric, I was told, was traditional Central Asian embroidery. I occasionally saw these on this and previous trips and they always looked old and faded. I never saw any that looked new and I wondered if it was a craft that was no longer being practiced.

After we stowed our stuff at Al Hyatt we went down for an afteroon walk on the shore. We drove but it was close enough that we could have walked.

Issyk Kul is about 113 miles long and 37 miles across at its widest point. More than 100 streams and rivers flow into the lake. They are almost all relatively small streams running down from the mountains that border the lake on both the north and the south. The lake has no outlet and is slightly saline.

The elevation of the lake is 5272 feet, so not quite a mile high. It's the second largest mountain lake in the world, next to only Lake Titicaca. Although it's a high altitude lake, it never freezes. It's the seventh deepest lake in the world (2192 feet deep). It ranks 24th in surface area but, because of its depth, it ranks 11th in volume.

The lake level is decreasing by about 5 centimeters per year, which has caused some concern that Issyk Kul is a second Aral Sea in the making. There are some big differences though. The Aral Sea was much shallower than Issyk Kul, so a small vertical drop in the level of the Aral Sea resulted in a relatively large contraction in surface area. And, so far, there is not anywhere near the same level of water diversion from Issyk Kul that there is from the Aral Sea, which was fed by two large rivers that flow through large cities and some intensely irrigated areas. Agriculture is expanding along the eastern end of Issyk Kul but it is still much, much less than the agriculture in the Fergana Valley.

One of the many delicate wildflowers that was blooming in the sand near the lake.

Marat's mini-van parked outside Al Hyatt. I'm not sure why there happens to be an English language stop sign here. I think the hotel owners posted it as a curiosity.

Kaji Say has two parts. One neighborhood is along the main east-west road close to the lakeshore, which is where Al Hyatt was located. The larger part of Kaji Say, however, sits at the base of the mountains about three miles away from the lake. I decided to take a late afternoon walk in that direction. Everybody else opted to either just hang out on the patio or to go to their rooms for an afternoon nap.

I couldn't find any figures on the population of the town but Ramil later told me the upper town is something of a ghost town. He said there used to be coal mines and uranium mines in the area but with the breakup of the Soviet Union, they closed and many people moved away. You can see in the photo that there are some larger buildings. These include a former sanitarium--which is basically a Russian spa or resort, which has been abandoned and some typical Soviet style apartment buildings, which are either empty or practically empty according to Ramil. I didn't walk as far as the upper village since I had to return by dinner time.

Ramil told us that there is an abandoned uranium mine somewhere up the canyon, whose mouth was just to the right of the photo. He said he was once guiding a tour for some Swedes and they wanted him to take them to the mine. He told them it wasn't safe but they insisted on going anyway. They ended up going on their own since Ramil refused to take them. He said beside the risk of radiation exposure, there were dangerous open shafts. The Russians abandoned many dangerous mine sites across Central Asia without any attempt to decommission them. The Swedes made it back OK but Ramil was still puzzled and bothered by why they would want to go there.

As I got closer to upper Kaji Say I saw this unusual Lenin monument. It was hard for me to accurately estimate how tall it was. The hill it sits on is small. I would guess that the sign is 10 to 12 feet tall.

Although there is some evident anti-Russian sentiment in Central Asia, the people don't seem to harbor the same level of animosity towards Lenin. I noticed there were still Lenin statues in some towns. I read that unlike the czars, Lenin treated the people of Central Asia as equals. None of Lenin's successors seem to be held in equal esteem.

Here's a closer view. The figure looks like it was created by cutting away pieces of a steel plate with an acetylene torch. What was left was then attached to a supporting wire grid. I couldn't translate the upper line of words because some of the letters are missing but the word on the bottom line is 'Communism.'

The view heading back towards lower Kaji Say and Al Hyatt. Issyk Kul is in the distance.

I passed this cheerful little house on the way back. Generally though there weren't many houses between the upper and the lower parts of Kaji Say.

Back at the Al Hyatt, we had our dinner on their outdoor dining hall. It looked similar to laghman with a sauce of tomatoes, peppers, and beef. It was served over rice instead of noodles though.

A view of Kaji Say at sunset. The mouth of the canyon where the old mines are is in the center of the photo. Ramil, Chain, Corbin, and I stayed up and played cards on the patio until it got too dark to see. We taught Ramil how to play 500. We made it to about 250.

Next: Kaji Say to Tamga

 

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