Blue Lake Issyk-Kul
Osh, Kyrgyzstan, June 21
I'm back in Osh, and I got my ticket on the bus to Kashgar, China (well, actually a town about 20 miles from Kashgar, but close enough).
From Naryn, Gilles and I headed north to Lake Issyk-Kul two days ago (June 19). Our efforts to find a jeep and driver for a more adventurous direct routh across the mountains were unavailing, so we took a minibus along the main road. The drive was mostly uneventful, except for one annoyingly friendly drunk on the minibus. Fortunately, he got out after a couple of hours.
Lake Issyk-Kul is amazingly beautiful, both for its astoundingly Mediterranean blue color and for the awesome snowcapped peaks surrounding it on all sides. The name means "warm lake", since it never freezes due to a combination of mild salinity, great depth (up to 700 meters), and maybe volcanic vents too. It's still really cold in the surrounding area in winter, but at least you can go fishing. Stands selling dried lake fish are everywhere on the shore.
We drove along the south shore, and Gilles bailed out about halfway through because he'd made a lodging reservation. I stayed on until Karakol, just past the eastern tip of the lake. Karakol is basically a Siberian town in Central Asia. In Siberia they plant trees on both sides of every street. It's very bucolic in appearance, but it makes it very hard to see most buildings or landmarks until you're right next to them. Still, I eventually found my hotel.
The next day (June 20), I took the bus to the Przewalski Museum just north of town. The Russian explorer Nikolia Przewalski (1839 - 1888) died here from typhoid after he unwisely drank water directly from a stream without boiling it. On his four expeditions he explored Mongolia, Western China, and Tibet. He discovered (for Western scientific purposes, at least) the small wild horse that bears his name, as well as many lakes and mountains. His museum was built by the Soviets in 1957, and it shows (the tickets, for instance, still claim to be issued by the Ministry of Culture of the Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic). This is straight Triumph of Science and Reason over Barbarian Darkness stuff, with nary a postmodern doubt in sight.
I loved it. The best part was a huge relief map of Central Asia with the tracks of Przewalski's expeditions, next to a huge globe at least six feet across. There was a guide who spoke good English, which helped since the English-language captions weren't always very good. The actual grave, on a bluff overlooking the lake, is right next to the museum. From the gravesite there's a good view of an old military installation where the Soviets used to test torpedoes very far from the prying eyes of the US Navy.
After visiting the museum I got a shared taxi from Karakol to Bishkek along the north shore of the lake. I was the third passenger to show up, and the taxis normally depart with four people plus the driver. Sometimes, however, if things are slow, a smaller number of customers will pay extra to leave partly empty. My two fellow passengers suggested this after a half hour or so. Showing the hardening process of all this bazaar haggling, I agreed to pay more to leave at once, but only if I got to move to the front seat. I doubt it would have occurred to me to do this a couple of months ago. There were great views all the way to Bishkek.
Until the end of the USSR, Bishkek was called "Frunze", named after a Bolshevik leader who directed the Red conquest of much of Central Asia. The new name means, roughly, "plunger:" (A bishkek is the wooden plunger in a barrel for fermenting mare's milk into koumiss).
I'm not sure this is much of an improvement, but I guess it's really none of my business since I don't live there and didn't even visit for more than a couple of hours. Capitals of ex-SSRs tend to kind of run together after a while, and I wanted to be sure to catch the bus from Osh to China on Thursday.
To get to Osh I took another shared taxi, and it was a 16-hour trip. It actually wasn't that bad, except that one of the other passengers (three passengers and two drivers this time) brought some cats. They were fine as long as they were in a box, but once removed from the box they proved not to be housebroken just yet. But enough on that topic.
In Osh this morning I managed to pursuade the ticket office to sell me a through ticket to China, and I'll be leaving tomorrow afternoon. I've learned a couple of Chinese characters, but no longer being able to read the signs in Cyrillic is going to be a major adjustment.
A couple of other things from the six-day horse trek that I didn't mention earlier:
On the bus to our starting point there was an old Kyrgyz wih his Great Patriotic War and 50th anniversary of same medals on. I half-expected to find something in my phrasebook along the lines of "Let me extend fraternal thanks for your sacrifices in the fight against our common Fascist enemies", but no luck. I had to content myself with an enthusiastic "Fascisti, nyet!" and a throat-slitting motion, which was well-received.
Riding horses for hours on end makes your knees hurt by the end of each day. Bad. I think it must be the constant strain to the ligaments. Recovery is quick, though, and none of us had any lingering problems a day later.
When we paid our guide, we mostly used US currency, and the surrounding children proved not to have previously seen a $100 bill, which interested them greatly. I ransacked my phrasebook for ways to describe Benjamin Franklin: "Great American . . . scientist, inventor, political activist, good man." How appropriate, in his 300th anniversary year, for his picture to be intently scrutinized by a couple kids from the other side of the world. He'd have got such a kick out of that.
I'm back in Osh, and I got my ticket on the bus to Kashgar, China (well, actually a town about 20 miles from Kashgar, but close enough).
From Naryn, Gilles and I headed north to Lake Issyk-Kul two days ago (June 19). Our efforts to find a jeep and driver for a more adventurous direct routh across the mountains were unavailing, so we took a minibus along the main road. The drive was mostly uneventful, except for one annoyingly friendly drunk on the minibus. Fortunately, he got out after a couple of hours.
Lake Issyk-Kul is amazingly beautiful, both for its astoundingly Mediterranean blue color and for the awesome snowcapped peaks surrounding it on all sides. The name means "warm lake", since it never freezes due to a combination of mild salinity, great depth (up to 700 meters), and maybe volcanic vents too. It's still really cold in the surrounding area in winter, but at least you can go fishing. Stands selling dried lake fish are everywhere on the shore.
We drove along the south shore, and Gilles bailed out about halfway through because he'd made a lodging reservation. I stayed on until Karakol, just past the eastern tip of the lake. Karakol is basically a Siberian town in Central Asia. In Siberia they plant trees on both sides of every street. It's very bucolic in appearance, but it makes it very hard to see most buildings or landmarks until you're right next to them. Still, I eventually found my hotel.
The next day (June 20), I took the bus to the Przewalski Museum just north of town. The Russian explorer Nikolia Przewalski (1839 - 1888) died here from typhoid after he unwisely drank water directly from a stream without boiling it. On his four expeditions he explored Mongolia, Western China, and Tibet. He discovered (for Western scientific purposes, at least) the small wild horse that bears his name, as well as many lakes and mountains. His museum was built by the Soviets in 1957, and it shows (the tickets, for instance, still claim to be issued by the Ministry of Culture of the Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic). This is straight Triumph of Science and Reason over Barbarian Darkness stuff, with nary a postmodern doubt in sight.
I loved it. The best part was a huge relief map of Central Asia with the tracks of Przewalski's expeditions, next to a huge globe at least six feet across. There was a guide who spoke good English, which helped since the English-language captions weren't always very good. The actual grave, on a bluff overlooking the lake, is right next to the museum. From the gravesite there's a good view of an old military installation where the Soviets used to test torpedoes very far from the prying eyes of the US Navy.
After visiting the museum I got a shared taxi from Karakol to Bishkek along the north shore of the lake. I was the third passenger to show up, and the taxis normally depart with four people plus the driver. Sometimes, however, if things are slow, a smaller number of customers will pay extra to leave partly empty. My two fellow passengers suggested this after a half hour or so. Showing the hardening process of all this bazaar haggling, I agreed to pay more to leave at once, but only if I got to move to the front seat. I doubt it would have occurred to me to do this a couple of months ago. There were great views all the way to Bishkek.
Until the end of the USSR, Bishkek was called "Frunze", named after a Bolshevik leader who directed the Red conquest of much of Central Asia. The new name means, roughly, "plunger:" (A bishkek is the wooden plunger in a barrel for fermenting mare's milk into koumiss).
I'm not sure this is much of an improvement, but I guess it's really none of my business since I don't live there and didn't even visit for more than a couple of hours. Capitals of ex-SSRs tend to kind of run together after a while, and I wanted to be sure to catch the bus from Osh to China on Thursday.
To get to Osh I took another shared taxi, and it was a 16-hour trip. It actually wasn't that bad, except that one of the other passengers (three passengers and two drivers this time) brought some cats. They were fine as long as they were in a box, but once removed from the box they proved not to be housebroken just yet. But enough on that topic.
In Osh this morning I managed to pursuade the ticket office to sell me a through ticket to China, and I'll be leaving tomorrow afternoon. I've learned a couple of Chinese characters, but no longer being able to read the signs in Cyrillic is going to be a major adjustment.
A couple of other things from the six-day horse trek that I didn't mention earlier:
On the bus to our starting point there was an old Kyrgyz wih his Great Patriotic War and 50th anniversary of same medals on. I half-expected to find something in my phrasebook along the lines of "Let me extend fraternal thanks for your sacrifices in the fight against our common Fascist enemies", but no luck. I had to content myself with an enthusiastic "Fascisti, nyet!" and a throat-slitting motion, which was well-received.
Riding horses for hours on end makes your knees hurt by the end of each day. Bad. I think it must be the constant strain to the ligaments. Recovery is quick, though, and none of us had any lingering problems a day later.
When we paid our guide, we mostly used US currency, and the surrounding children proved not to have previously seen a $100 bill, which interested them greatly. I ransacked my phrasebook for ways to describe Benjamin Franklin: "Great American . . . scientist, inventor, political activist, good man." How appropriate, in his 300th anniversary year, for his picture to be intently scrutinized by a couple kids from the other side of the world. He'd have got such a kick out of that.
posted by jeros | 3:37 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home