Osh

We decided to risk the overland trip south through Osh to Tajikistan, as things seemed to have calmed down a lot. No trouble and the town centre is much the same as it was when I visited a year ago, but the approach roads are lined with burned-out shops and houses, the anti-Uzbek graffiti mostly painted over now, and there are fields filled with UNHCR tents in the outskirts. I don't know how this can be fixed.

Carpets that I love

Shyrdaks are Kyrygyz felt carpets, traditionally found adorning the walls and floors of yurts. As you can perhaps tell, the designers are fairly unconfined by any notions of matching colours or taste, so the dilemma for the discerning shyrdak shopper is whether to spend hours (days) hunting for a vaguely tasteful specimen that might fit into some pre-exisiting colour-scheme at home, or just embrace the madness and go for purple-and-orange piece that carries a risk of seizures if you look at it for too long. If I had my own house they would be my floor-covering of choice in every room.

Yurting holiday

Dawdling in Kyrgyzstan is an almost entirely pleasant activity, even if its object (to wait out the violence down south) is somewhat less so. The reason for this is primarily because it is so easy to engage in said time-wastage in yurts up in the Kyrgyz mountains, which flicked in a day from spring to summer - morning drizzle gave way one day to bright afternoon sunshine that hasn't let up since. With this in mind, I coralled a trio of Swedes (travelling with Swedes is great: you learn the best Norwegian jokes) and we hired some horses and a guide to disappear for a few days into the hills in the centre of the country, where yurts sprout like mushrooms and there are ibexes (how do you properly pluralise an ibex? ibices?) on the mountain ridges and marmots (not marmosets. This caused a certain amount of confusion for a while) running shrieking at your approach.

I really can't get enough of the mountains here. Even when the horses are intransigent (Kyrgyz horses know damned well that foreign tourists have imbibed too much animal-welfare nonsense to follow the single piece of advice that constitutes riding instruction in these parts ("just hit it") with much conviction, and take full advantage of this, with the result that you frequently find yourself stationary in a patch of wildflowers for extended periods of time with the horse stuffing its face and you prodding it cautiously the whip, vaguely worrying that an RSPCA inspector is going to pop out from behind a rock and do you for animal cruelty, while the guide disappears over the horizon. Or possibly that's just me.) and the "saddles" appear to have taken their notion of comfort from a medieval torture chamber, everything feels fresh and bright and clean, with the high still covered with spring flowers and dozens and dozens of meltwater streams running off the hills. Wandering around the valley one evening I suddenly remembered what one is supposed to do when faced with a multitude of small streams and a large supply of flat stones and mud, and spent a very happy couple of hours damming and diverting several streams, and anyone who doesn't fully appreciate how supremely satisfying an activity this can be is probably dead inside.

Unlike the last time I was horse trekking here, this time we weren't particularly going anywhere, so we would do a bit of riding in the morning to get some nice views, then come back to the yurt, which is always very much a working place as well as somewhere for tourists to crash, so there were always small armies of daughters and nieces (it seems that a lot of families in the towns send their children to relatives in the country for their summer holidays so a lot of the kids up here now actualy spend most of the year in Bishkek) milking the cows and horses and making cream and fetching water and cooking, while the sons and nephews herded the goats and the cattle and we rather got in the way, but everyone was very nice and fed us neverending quantities of tea and kumis anyway (ah, kumis. The one (monumental) downside to yurt living. Have I waxed lyrical on the subject of fermented mares' milk before? Oh, I have. If someone in a yurt offers you a large bowl of slightly suspect-smelling white liquid with... bits floating in it, proceed with caution (see post immediatley below this one). I don't want anyone to say they weren't warned).

One afternoon, our host invited the neighbours (i.e. everyone who had a yurt within two hours ride) over for the Kyrgyz equivalent of a kickabout, which of course meant an enthusiastic game of kok-boru, the Kyrgyz national game which can be described as polo with a higher body count and which is played with the carcass of a goat. Compared to the full village-on-village clash I watched earlier this year, this was a more modest though no less chaotic affair, with half-a-dozen guys on each team as opposed to two hundred but an equal reluctance to confine the action to the pre-agreed playing field and feeling that nothing has been achieved until someone has been carried off unconscious (he woke up again in time for dinner, so that was OK). In the evening we ate goat kebab and fresh bread and cream and wild cherry jam by the light of oil lanterns while the Anglo-Swedish contingent strove to find an acceptable excuse for refusing the fourth bowl of kumis ( a partial list of what hasn't worked so far: I'm sick, it's against my religion, I'm lactose intolerant, I'm pregnant) and convincing defense for the inexplicable fact that despite the fact all of us were unmarried, none of us were imminently planning to rectify the situation, and the mountains turned pink in the sunset. I don't understand why everyone doesn't do this.

Kumis face

Nothing is better than feeding other people fermented mare's milk for the first time. NOTHING.

Kyrgyzstan again: a question of avalanches

What is it about this country that inevitably leads to me doing slightly silly things in pursuit of scenery? It's not as if it's hard to find the stuff here.

The pass was higher than I'd ever been in my life. The south side had been snow free, but the north was covered with overhanging snow bluffs, softened by the sun and the previous night's rain. A sentence I'd read once in a book about an avalanche disaster on K2 or some other such baleful mountain leapt to the front of my mind and lodged itself happily there, replaying again and again: "Strangely, the party had chosen to cross the snow field during mid-afternoon, the most dangerous time for avalanches". It was 2pm. Every ten minutes or so, a vast load of snow and rock rumbled off the neighbouring mountainsides, easily one of the most menacing sounds that there is. I probably wouldn‘t have been so concerned if our guide hadn't also been so very obviously Not Happy. “Too much snow, too dangerous”. With a rope or an ice axe the bluff would've posed no problems, but mountaineering equipment was just one other thing that we had not thought especially hard about. Of course, most people don't perish in avalanches. It's just that, well, some do.

The idea had been to do some gentle trekking in the hills around Karakol, in the east of the country. We had been informed by the head of the local trekking agency that there was a beautiful azure gem of a lake called Ala-Kol just two day’s hike away, and we could breeze up there, admire the Alpine scenery and breeze back down again. The pass crossing might be a little tricky because of the altitude he conceded (Oh ha ha, I thought bitterly, struggling to put one foot in front of the other at 4000 m), but there would be no snow, and we would be laughing our way down to the hot springs on the other side. Things we were not entirely aware of when we launched ourselves merrily into this enterprise: a) June still counts as spring in Kyrgyzstan, not summer and this had been the wettest and coldest June for a while and b) due to the unrest, we were the first group of tourists going up the pass this season. For a brief comparison, this is Ala-Kol as it usually looks in late June:

This is how it looked when we were there:

The similarities are, you must concede, striking.

We eventually scrambled down some snow-free boulders, which were vertical and unsteady in a way that lent new and intensely personal meaning to the phrase "rocks fall, everybody dies" and bolted across the snow as fast as we physically could, which was not very as it was up to our thighs, as one of the snow bluffs above us collapsed, sending a stream of snow and rubble past us slightly closer than I would've preferred. One slightly unexpected river crossing later (who knew that unstable ice sheets can harbour glacial streams underneath? Well, most people I suppose. I'm reasonably sure I've never uttered such high-pitched noises in my life) and we were down in a green, flower-filled valley, contemplating the uniquely ex-Soviet attitude towards health and safety. Actual mountain climbers do stuff like that all the time and at much higher, its just that they tend to have stuff like experience and equipment and some idea of what they're getting into. Evidently in Kyrgyzstan not much of this is important.

Still, the guy wasn't lying about the hot springs, and if there's one thing Kyrgyzstan is dead good for is hot springs. The thing to do with these is apparently to build a sanatorium on top and then depending on temperature either bathe in or drink the water, which of course cures everything, and everywhere you come across these decaying concrete complexes where cosmonauts used to convalesce and heads of state to meet and write constitutions and carve up new republics, and now they crumble gently but you can still get a two hour massage for five dollars. Fortunately the ones we stayed at that night were a bit too far away from anywhere for much of that, but there were still small concrete huts and huge baths smelling strongly of sulphur of which I got one of my own, because men and women sharing the same pool even while wearing bathing suits leads to the kind of moral degeneracy that even very smelly water can't cure. In the evening we talked politics, because now what else is there to talk about, and toasted to our survival and peace in the country with a bottle of vodka which had heroically survived being thrown over a cliff during our descent. It felt a little silly that here we were, wandering around scaring ourselves by having inept and mildly dangerous fun in the mountains, when everyone I speak to has a relative or friend in Osh that they're worried about, but then people are cancelling their holidays here in droves, and tourism is a major source of income in the rural areas, almost all of which are still safe, so we're probably not doing any actual harm.

Back in Bishkek now, keeping an eye on things and working out what to do next. Things are calmer now but tense, with everyone anticipating further trouble in the run-up to the constitutional referendum on June 27th. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

In less depressing news

Issyk-Kol is still beautiful.

Kyrgyzstan: bad timing

Words and phrases in Russian that I now know and wish I didn't: civil war, ethnic conflict, murder, rape, genocide. The appalling violence between ethnic Uzbek and Kyrgyz that exploded in the south of Kyrgyzstan last week is the only thing that anyone here is talking about (warning: both articles contain graphic descriptions of violence, and I found the latter in particular very difficult to read).

From here's it's pretty difficult to tell exactly who or what lies behind the eruption of violence: the interim government (and many locals I've spoken to) are quick to blame provocateurs in the pay of former president Bakiyev, ousted in April (and it certainly seems that a lot of the violence was organised in advance) and it also appears that the security forces may have been complicit in the attacks. No one here in the northeast seems to harbour any particularly strong ant-Uzbek sentiments or blame the Uzbeks for the attacks, but then there are hardly any Uzbeks in this part of the country. I rather suspect that opinions are very different further south.

I'm in Karakol, in the northeast of the country, which so far has remained peaceful and thankfully looks like it will remain so. Most of Kyrgyzstan's international borders are closed at the moment, so I'm here for at least the next couple of weeks (which actually suits me down to the ground, as rural Kyrgyzstan is as wild and beautiful and hospitable as ever) but keeping a close eye on developments (given the tight visa regimes in all the surrounding countries, short of flying back home there is rather a shortage of quick and easy escape routes even if the borders do reopen, so that should prove interesting). Watching this play out is miserable: this country is easily one of my favourite places in the world, and just a few months ago seemed to have so much going for it; although now the threat of civil war seems to have receded a little, to see things disintegrate like this is just heartbreaking.

Kyrgyz hospitality unleashed in all its muttony glory

Since Tashkent was persistently failing to honour the "get colder" part of autumn, I fled, as soon as I was decently able to Kyrgyzstan, about which I knew little but that it was high, and therefore cold, and that it had to be better than dusty Tashkent with its sputtering fountains and artificially green flowerbeds that serve only to emphasise the dryness of the air. I believe it was at the point at which I was stuck in the middle of a blizzard on the ascent to a 4000m pass, clinging frantically to my horse as it floundered through snow up to its chest that the thought occurred that perhaps there were less uncomfortable ways to escape. Surrounded on all sides by the massive peaks of the Tien Shan range, I felt that such a setting deserved slightly better than my flailing. One hundred and fifty years ago, British and Russian spies disguised unconvincingly as Turkmen horse traders were sneaking through these mountains, vigorously intriguing against each other all the while, and now here I was, trying not to fall off my horse and feeling utterly incapable of even the smallest intrigue. I couldn’t help feeling that I was lowering the tone of the landscape somewhat.

Kyrgyzstan is all about the majestic landscape: over 90% of the country is at an altitude above 1500m and nearly 50% is over 2500m. Lacking the picturesque crumbling masonry possessed in such abundant quantities by Uzbekistan, the country sells itself on a combination of its spectacular scenery and the traditional hospitality of its people. For centuries the Kyrgyz lived an entirely nomadic lifestyle, tribes pitching their yurts together and moving on every few months or so. The Soviets more or less put an end to this, but since independence many rural families have resumed a semi-nomadic existence. Come May or so, the yurt is loaded onto the top of the Lada, and everyone heads with their livestock to the jailoos, the beautiful and fertile alpine pastures that sustain the sheep and cows which are the livelihoods of these people. By the end of September, everyone heads back down again, but for those few months yurts cluster like mushrooms across the hills and mountains, by lakes, up tiny valleys, anywhere there is water and good grazing. Many families have decided that tourists seeking an Authentic Nomadic Experience are a better bet than sheep, so once you leave the unlovely cement streets of Bishkek, the capital, you are swept up into the hills and into a yurt with almost indecent haste. Fortunately, we are all here for the yurts, and from my viewpoint in a yurt by a mountain lake that would have been no doubt absolutely lovely but for the rather Welsh weather, I too was able to observe “Kyrgyz hospitality unleashed in all its muttony glory!” as one of the more enthusiastic local brochures put it.

Said hospitality is genuine, effusive, and generally involves much discussion of everyone’s marriage and children (potential children will do if you are lacking in this department, but this is considered letting the side down) conducted over copious quantities of food and drink, among which the prime culprit is the dread beverage kumis. Kumis is fermented mares milk and tastes exactly as awful as it sounds. It is mildly alcoholic, with a smoky, beery, rancid taste and an effect on the unwary digestive system that can only be described as unfortunate. It is the drink of welcome in a yurt, and one cannot stop anywhere without being presented with a large bowl of the stuff, which you have to at least attempt out of politeness, although finishing it is a risky business as it will immediately be refilled. I developed a kind of love-hate relationship with the stuff, and became unable to stop myself from sampling it at every opportunity, because I could never believe it was quite as horrible as I remembered (it always was). Much better is the Kyrgyz cream tea - fresh bread (cooked in a large saucepan on top of a stove, a technique which I never managed to get my head around), fresh cream and home-made jam. Oh, and tea. Pots and pots and pots of tea (I counted an average of about eight bowls per meal, which translated to about five or six mugs). When your water source is the stream you share with your herds of cows and horses, it is undeniably a better idea to rehydrate with tea as opposed to unboiled water, but yurt tea is usually served with sugar, condensed milk or jam (occasionally all three) which can be a little overwhelming. The Kyrgyz phrase the visitor is most likely to leave with is the stern “choy ich!” - drink tea! - that greets any protestation that one has had enough to drink. This is before even one gets to the muttony part (the primary ingredient of all Central Asian cuisine is mutton fat, and it remains a mystery to me how everyone here doesn’t die of heart disease before they’re thirty), and the upshot is that if you are me you end up huddling under a pile of blankets clutching your stomach, wishing you didn’t feel quite so full and vowing never to have any children.

After a few days of muttony hospitality, I was left feeling in dire need of a more active way to appreciate the scenery. Parked as I was in a lakeside yurt camp, I was thinking vaguely along the lines of a one day amble on horseback along the shore; however, by a combination of circumstances, the exact details of which escape me but I’m pretty sure involved a bottle of vodka, I found myself together with a charming British couple accompanying the guides and packhorses of an organised hiking tour (now disorganised and soaking their feet in the lake) 150 miles back home over the mountains. The vodka had naturally put paid to any qualms about our collective lack of horse riding experience and Russian language skills the previous night, but in the cold light of day the mountains looked steep, the horses were clearly unimpressed, and the guide had clearly taken my cautious venture that I speak “chut-chut pa-Russki” as admission of complete fluency. We struggled up that first ridge gasping fish-like in the thin air, with the guides more or less having to drag our horses who had not signed up for riders on the return leg of their journey, and were making their feelings clear. By the time we reached the top, I was more or less ready to call it a day and would’ve happily abandoned the horses to find their way back on their own, except that from the top you could see nothing but the lake stretching away towards one snow-capped mountain range after another, and nowhere could you see any habitation or sign of life apart from a herd of sheep clinging to a precipitous hillside, and it felt like we were the only people in the world. Which was actually a pretty good feeling, so we rode on.

For the next few days we rode along valleys, scrambling over ridges and up barren, stony morraine and across glaciers melting quickly in the late summer heat and unpleasantly prone to collapsing ice bridges, and over the steep, icy passes and back down again, galloping in slapdash formation across hillsides bright with wildflowers and air thick with bees and butterflies, and down, down, back to the treeline and then through pine-covered canyons until the valley broadened out into wide pastureland cut by a lazily meandering river, and a cluster of yurts sending trails of smoke into the chilly evening air. We stayed with farmers and eagle hunters (erm, they hunt with eagles, rather than hunting the eagles themselves. The golden eagles circling overhead in a picturesque manner gain a slightly more threatening air when you have spent a cheerful evening being shown a photo album full of pictures of the WOLVES which the eagles have killed ON THEIR OWN) in their yurts, nursing our blisters over tea, kumis and bowls of laghman (noodles in mutton soup). One night, I struggled out of the yurt at midnight (the combination of too much kumis, a cavalier approach towards the use of water purification tablets and the local remedy of five shots of vodka laced with pepper (NB I cannot emphasise enough how much this does not work, although it undeniably takes one’s mind off things) was proving a little much for me) and literally gasped aloud, because I didn’t know it was possible to see so many stars. There was no hint of an electric light for miles, but the stars were bright enough to cast shadows, highlighting the silhouettes of the mountain peaks surrounding me. In the morning there was frost on the ground in the shadows of the yurts and the cows loomed out of the mist like ghosts as the sunrise turned the mountaintops pink, and I thought that I had never been anywhere so beautiful in my life.

Just writing that is making me feel less than happy that I am in grimy Tashkent again, and the view out of my window is of grubby apartment blocks rather than rolling mountains. The school I wwas working at has been closed, so I am somewhat at a loose end at the moment, and Tashkent is more or less entirely the wrong place to be at a loose end in. Since the only other option seems to be joining the cotton harvest (the cotton picking season is beginning, where the universities shut for a month or two and the students are sent out into the cotton fields to bring the harvest in) and this sounds rather like hard work, I am dashing off to see the rest of the country to put off making a decision about what to do next. Procrastination forever!