Lake Issyk-Kul

We had a much -needed vacation from the London School the last week of April, and Mike and I decided to explore the northern shore of Lake Issyk Kul. We set off on a Saturday morning and caught a marshrutka from the bus station to a small village called Tamchy, known for having more donkeys than people on the beach in the off-season. We wandered around a little looking for a homestay, but there was really nothing going on. We asked some people if they rented rooms, and one woman pointed us in the direction of a man who rented rooms. He had a whole apartment building that he said in summer fills up with Kazakhs, but it was completely empty. We dumped our stuff and then wandered up and down the beach. We spent ages looking for the CBT office, which Lonely Planet said offered donkey rental, but unfortunately never found it. The beach had a few grazing donkeys, cows, and sheep, but that was the only thing going on. There was a little mosque and a small Russian cemetery, but Lonley Planet was about right, there is more life in a morgue than in Tamchy. It was a nice way to start our holiday because it was so calm and peaceful compared to Bishkek! We had dinner and breakfast cooked by the wife of the man hosting us, and had to pay the hefty cost of 500 som for some buckwheat and a fried egg- but it was the only option since there wer NO restaurants or cafes in the whole village.

The next day we hitchhiked to Cholpon-Ata, 35 kilometers further East along Issyk-Kul. A nice man stopped and picked us up, and told us how he has multiple guesthouses in summer to host tourists in Cholpon-Ata. C-A is the hub of Issyk-Kul tourism, the Costa del Sol of Kyrgyzstan. In summer it fills up with local resort-goers, the president, and Kazakh businessmen. But luckily for us, it seemed that we were the only tourists. We were stopped almost immediately by a Kyrgyz guy wanting to speak to foreigners, and he started conversation off by whipping out his phone and asking me to translate some things for him into Russian. They were all about "Jesus's love is the best love" and "Christ died for us." My religious vocab in English is terrible, so translating into Russian was abysmal. He offered to find us a place to stay. We didn't really want to spend time with him since he was sort of creepy and talked ONLY about Bible School and religion and asked why we weren't believers, but he came with us to the Lonely Planet-recommended guest house and when there was no answer, he told he he wanted to take us to a cheap room. We went to the Tourist Info Office in hopes they'd have a good recommendation for us, but alas, they were more useless than navel lint. So in the end, we got the guy to take us to a place he said rented cheap rooms. We made a deal with a guy who had a room, and the Kyrgyz Jesus took off and left us alone.

The first thing we did was set off uphill to see the famed KC-A petroglyphs. As we were waliking on dusty mountain roads, a car stopped and a man got out and asked us how we were doing. It turns out it was the same guy who gave us a lift from Tamchy, and he offered to drive us to the petroglyphs, since we'd gotten a bit lost. There was a giant field of rocks, and some of them had ancient petroglyphs- deer, reindeer, long-horned sheep, and people. They weren't marked though, so we wandered around looking at a lot of rocks. There were also 3 Balbal, which are old carved rocks with faces.

We talked to the grandmother of the man we were staying with when we got back to the house, and she recommeded a public beach to walk to to see Issyk-Kul in the evening. It was so peaceful and calm on the beach, and it was hard to imagine the place crowded with Kyrgyz families. The next day we caught a marshrutka to Karakol.

We got in mid-afternoon, but the weather was horrible and cold. We booked a homestay through CBT, and it started raining as we were walking. We took a nap (we did a LOT of sleeping on our vacation- went to bed at 8 or 9 pm and woke up at 8 or 9 am) and then went to find dinner. We had chosen the worst time to leave the house because the rain turned to hail and snow and we were soaked when we finally got to a cafe. But there was good food and it wasn't raining so hard on our walk back.

Next day we decided to go to Jeti-Oguz, a small village and a place with famous red rocks and a nice jailoo (mountain pasture). Jeti-Oguz means 7 bulls in Kyrgyz, and there are 7 red rocks that people believed looked like 7 bulls. Erosion has made now more like 10 or 11 bulls, but the name has stayed. There is a Soviet sanatorium there, famous for being the place where the first meeting between the first Kyrgyz president Askar Akaev and Boris Yeltsin took place. Yuri Gagarin, the Russian cosmonaut, also used to relax there. There was nothing much to see, but there were still some nice paths in the woods to walk on and some interesting statues. We walked along a river 5 kilometers into the moutains, where there was a great jailoo known as The Valley of the Flowers, which contains no flowes. Guidebooks say that it's full of poppies in spring, but the man at CBT said that it just has that name to entice tourists to come. Who knows. But we saw unone. There were lots of horses, sheep and cows grazing in the jailoo, and it was realy beautiful and vast and green. We walked back down by the nice mountain river, and spent the evening reading Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne.

We went to the Karakol Zoo the next day, which is the only zoo in Central Asia. Strangely, it's not mentioned in either guidebook I have on Kyrgyzstan. It may not compare to Western zoos, but it seems interesting enough to be included about a city that doesn't really have much else to offer tourists. Entrance fee was only 25 som, which is about 50 cents. There were more animals than I had expected- 3 bears, a golden eagle, 9 grey wolves, a vulture, owls, Turkmen lynx, llamas, goats, donkies, a yak, 2 camels, a moose AND a cage full of guinea pigs (?!). I've never seen them at a zoo! The cages were small and the animals didn't seem very happy, but they were happier than the animals look at the St. Paul Zoo, which is a feat considering this is Kyrgyzstan. We saw zookeepers taunting the moose and one guy spit on a goat. After that, we got a marshrutka back to Bishkek. We had been planning to go all the way around the lake and stop off somewhere on the southern coast, but we'd been there already 3 times and are going in a few weeks again, so we just went the north road back, which is a lot quicker.

After relaxing a day in Bishkek, eating non-Kyrgyz food, and doing laundry, we took a day-trip with our friend Josh to Kochkor, a small town in the center of Kyrgyzstan. It's known for being the best place to buy shyrdaks, which are felt Kyrgyz rugs. There is a women's cooperative there, where all the money goes back to the woman who make the items. It's a nice way to help the Kyrgyz village people.

There was a room FULL of shyrdaks and all things felt. There were so many to choose from, and I hadn't brought a lot of money in order to avoid temptation. Josh got a giant beautiful red and beige rug for 100$, and I found the perfect one for me- an orange and purple one! BUT, I didn't have enough money for it. I was going to settle for a beige one with neon green trim, but the orange one called my name. So Josh, Mike and I put all our small change together and were able to get almost exactly the right amount. So Josh and I had beautiful rugs, we got a taxi for SUPER cheap back to Bishkek, and spent the rest of vacation relaxing and preparing for our last month of teaching.

My birthday came and went with not much happening. Mike bought me the Kyrgyz epic poem, Manas, in English, and that will be a great souvenier to leave the country with. It's not even available on Amazon.com, so if I didn't get it here, I'd never get to read it. From my students I got a silly pig ashtray, a porcelin giraffe, and wooden figurines in Kyrgyz national dress. In the evening we had friends over and smoked hookah and drank rose' wine. It was a good birthday!

There are only 3 weeks left in Bishkek, and my schedule has started to fill up for the first time since I arrived. Last night I went out for a drink with some of my students, and tomrorow they are taking me and Mike to the mountains for the day. Next weekend, Mike and I are going to an Afghan students house for Afghan food, and on Sunday a friend from Minnesota is coming with his family, AND a coworker is getting married! It will be a real Kyrgyz wedding, and I'm SO excited. The next weekend is a school trip to the south of Issyk-Kul, to go trekking in the mountains for the day. I hope there will be time to swim in I-K, it was too cold when we were there. I can't leave Kyrgyzstan without doing that! The weekend after our last teaching week is a student-teacher trip to the moutains, so we'll spend one last day with our students and then leave Bishkek on the 31st.

Our travel plans have changed a bit- a few days in Arslanbob (Kyrgyzstan), then 2-3 weeks in the Pamirs and Tajikistan, 2-3 weeks in Uzbekistan and the Aral Sea, then flying to Istanbul, probably finding an apartment and/or a job, and then going to Austria for 2 weeks to meet up with my parents and my brother. It will be great!

Today is Victory Day, but there wasn't much going on in the Central Square today. Kyrgyz men are out getting drunk tonight though, so I'm going to avoid bars and nightclubs.

Time is flying! I'll be sure to update again a few times before leaving Bishkek.