If the Mountains Won't Come to Ryan...

Then Ryan must go to the Mountains.

And so he has.

In what I thought was going to be a multiple-hour car ride into the heart of the monstrous Alatau Mountains immediately to the South of Bishkek, I was in for more than a few pleasant surprises.

For my first real weekend in Bishkek, I was invited to go "to the mountains" by my co-worker Nadyr. I flatter myself by calling him my co-worker. Nadyr is an extremely accomplished Kyrgyz journalist, himself a graduate of the prestigious Moscow State University and a former Press Secretary for the Republic of Kyrgyzstan. He now runs the entire Russian-language side of Radio Azattyk - whereas the staff of 30 runs the Kyrgyz-language side, he is responsible for translating, writing, or finding stories which will be of interest to the Russian-speaking population. He is a one-man media source.

It should be no surprise that he's hella-smart, too.

The only difficulty between myself and Nadyr is that, having spent his entire life becoming an expert on Russian media, he speaks only a little English. I want to be clear: Nadyr speaks 3000 times more English than I speak either Kyrgyz or Russian, so I am not complaining. I just mention this fact to explain why Nadyr invited along his 20(something) son, Timek, for the excursion.

Timek speaks very good English (after only 1 year of study, a fact I still have difficulty believing). He is a law student at the American University of Central Asia, located in Bishkek. He was formerly a professional tennis player, and is now, I think, still an amateur boxer.

I met the two of them at their apartment, just a short ways south of the Radio Azattyk offices in downtown Bishkek. We got in Nadyr's Mercedes and started off.

Instead of a long car ride into the upper atmosphere, I was quite surprised when after about 10 minutes, Nadyr pulled off the main road and wound his way through a suburb south of town. We eventually parked alongside a modest white house, and got out.

Apparently, we were meeting up with some of his friends before proceeding.

Ok, no biggie.

The friends in question were quite a colorful lot: Janek is an accomplished surgeon, and his two sons (8 and 11) are respectively learning Chinese and Judo. Hassan is a professional Greco-Roman wrestler, and could probably snap me in two with his left hand, but instead usually cracked me up with his whimsical smile. Hassan's wife, Tamara, also accompanied us, outiftted as for a walk on the beach.

The most surprising moment was when we left the house, came to the car, and just kept walking. Apparently, this was as far as the car was going, and I was still practically within sight of downtown Bishkek.

Being a native Oklahoman, an adopted Texan/New Yorker, mountains are not something which which I have much experience. I've been to Boulder/Denver, but the most "mountaineous" town I can recall explicitly was Monterrey, Mexico. There, the town is built into several joining valleys, and the city has climbed up and consumed the mountains around it. Not so in Bishkek. Here, the slightest elevation change marked the absolute boundary of man-made architecture. This was partially due to the sudden, and very steep slope, with which the foothills suddenly spring up from the plain.

I am woefully underqualified to explain the geology of this place, but for whatever reason the mountains soar to such heights, I can say that nature seemed impatient to reach them.

A couple interesting things happened as soon as we were "on the mountain." For one thing, the concept of shade evaporated. I've made frequent mention of how many trees Bishkek has. It is a defining element of the city - they are freakin' everywhere, and usually in very thick abundance. In the foothills, I did not see one single tree. In fact, I didn't even see anything that could count as underbrush. When the ground went up, any vegetation over 18" tall disappeared. But it was still vibrantly green. At frist, mostly small grass, weeds, even some prickly bushes, but as we reached the first (of many consucutive) peak(s), this transitioned into the long grasses I know from Oklahoma. The kind that are green when you look at them upclose, but which shimmer in shades of white and silver as the wind curles across them in waves. If Oklahoma had mountains, I'm sure they would look something like this.

We continued hiking up for a few hours; each "peak" revealing itself to only be the crest of the next level in the neverending ascent. Each was a step to the next, and while some opportunities existed to peek (:-P) around the side of a hill to see the chain that lay before us, on and on up into the jagged white airs, for the most part the grade of the hills prevented one from seeing anything but the grass, or occasionally trail, in front of him. It wasn't long before we were hiking along ridges, sheer cliffs to at least one side, the snow-carved runoff valleys sweeping away below up.

We never made it to snow-pack, or anything that impressive. I'm no judge of altitude, but it was a solid 6-7 mile trek round trip (see Bishkek Googlemap), and my legs were certainly aware of it the next day.

While we were out, we met one or two shepards (young boys) with their small flocks, one stubborn herd of cows, and one or two joggers - American's from the nearby US Embassy, hell bent on self-destruction.

One interesting observation that Hassan passed along, in his usual comic (and strictly Kyrgyz) way, was to alert me that, upon achieving one particular peak overlooking a nice series of villas, that I was now being watched by snipers. The villas belonged to President Bakiev - his stately residence - and for "security" reasons they had military forces constantly surveiling the surrounding hillsides and tracking any potential threats. No one else seemed the least concerned by this, and after a time I just tried to ignore it, but I'm not yet accustomed to the idea of universal surveillance, even as a regular target of it in New York or London. To have such surveillance conducted not by a mindless camera, but by an armed sniper... was uncomfortable. Then again, I didn't feel great when I saw the M-16 carrying national guard troops at the San Antonio airport either. It's a disperity of force that is unavoidable as a puny little (unarmed, untrained) civilian, but I don't like being reminded of it.

It was otherwise a beautiful day to be out. Not very hot, a good cool breeze, and no rain. Perhaps a hat or some of the sunscreen (I left at the Apt) would have been a good idea. I'll be paying for the sunburn for the next week, I suppose. Worth it.

The pictures of course won't do justice to what there was to see, and I do hope to get a bit deeper into the more "alpine" regions another time. I can only imagine the beauties that my many friends have encountered in exploring, for example, the Kiwi lands down under. I can say only this - it would not have seemed unfathomable for an amry of Orcs, or even the Rhohirrim, to swarm over the steep pastures we walked along.

So let's call this Adventure #2 (following Mr. Vice Speaker - the American Financio-Scholar wasn't particularly adventurous), and I'll go soak myself in a vat of Aloe.

As we would say in Weberville, it looks like Lobster's on the menu tonight.

Weber (on the lamb)