Also, as the only resort in the country, and one that is acknowledged as being superior to anything it's much-richer neighbors and come up with, Issyk Kul is a source of great national pride in Kyrgyzstan, and as a result, a prominent talking point. Bishkek doesn't have anything to be ashamed about, and while the countryside is just that - country - the slight inferiority complex this perceived lack of development causes results in an even greater elevation of the significance of Issyk Kul. No Kyrgyz is satisfied with a foreigner's visit until they've seen Issyk Kul. When I first arrived, I was asked when I would go see it, and since then I've been asked - several times every week - if I've been, why haven't I been yet, and when am I going. It was unfathomable that I simply wouldn't go while I was in the country.
And this is not just for tourists - like Paris in the summer, Bishkek practically empties on summer weekends as families and young singles jet down the highway for 5 hours to the resorts at Cholpon-Ata, or the more frugal beach towns of Tamchy or Karakol. Evidence can be found in the suspiciously not-cramped disco dancefloors and usually-smokey local bars.
With only 3 days left before my Kyrgyz departure, and a friend over-nighting at Karakol after being an election observer and before starting a 5 day backpack trek, I had just the time and opportunity I needed to get going.
Rather than drag this on endlessly, as I'm wont to do, I'll cut out the musing about "what it all means," or some deep analysis involving suppositions and assumptions I'm not qualified to make, and just cut to what I did and what I saw.
Following the Kyrgyz Presidential Election on Thursday (July 23), and seeing that nothing was likely to happen, I hopped in a shared taxi with my American Fullbright buddy Evan, and two other random kyrgyz, and headed for Karakol. Had I wanted to make my life easier, I would have gone to the small beach town of Tamchy, just 3 hours away. Had I wanted to see the "jewel of Kyrgyzstan," I would have gone to the Cholpon-Ata resort, 4 hours away.
But I wanted to both see the lake, and spend time with my 2 good American Fullbright buddies, Evan and Kara, who were setting off on a 5-day backpack trek from Karakol on Saturday after spending Friday at the beach. End result: 6 hour taxi ride, plus a taxi driver who didn't know his way around Karakol (it's pretty small - think... Kerrville?), and a random 30 minute stop at a local auto repair shop (after we reached Karakol) where a variety of mechanics took turns pounding the inside of his front tires with a giant metal pole - what back home we call a "fix-it stick." In the end, it took 7 hours, with the last one conducted entirly within 5 blocks of our guesthouse. Total taxi cost: $12.50 (ended up $22 round-trip).
The guesthouse was awesome - Kara got setup there while she was out in the region (or oblast) doing election observing. That proved rather upsetting for Kara, but on the plus side, she got a free trip to Karakol, found a good place to stay (also $12.50/night), and could commiserate with the other kyrgyz at the hotel that night over serveral rounds of vodka, or what in the FSU counts as an evening of "light" drinking.
The following day Kara was quite bored as she waited for Evan and I to make our way across the northern half of the country. As I said - Karakol is not a very big (or exciting) place.
Upon arrival and check-in, we immediately headed for the beach. The hottest part of the day was already gone, and we wound up essentially spending a sunset at the beach - not too shabby. We ate Evan's "baby," the enormous watermelon he purchased mid-taxi ride. We stopped at one of the hundreds of road-side produce shacks, and almost everyone in the taxi decided they needed a watermelon (this included the taxi driver - I abstained). Evan was the last to realize how badly he needed one, so by the time he made it back, the trunk was 'full-o-melon, so he got to carry it on his lap for the remaining 4+ hours.
The beach was - and I apologize to my Kyrgyz friends - underwhelming. It wasn't much of a beach actually, just a sand/mud outgrowth of a reed-infested shallows in a small inlet near Karakol. The water was cloudy, and only warm by glacial standards. Across the bay were two decomissioned factories and one old chemical plant. This was the "safe" bay. On the other side of town, there was a beach surrounded by old Soviet-era military weapons factories and testing zones. I'm not sure how "unsafe" that really made it - locals didn't seem to mind - but rumors are something I pay close heed to anytime they involve actual landmines.
After managing to finish off 1/6 of Evan's "baby" (is more or less looked like we decapitated it), we got ready to call our taxi driver back (the Karakol beach is north of town), only to see him walk right past us in nothing but his shorts and dive straight into the lake. Apparently picking us up was all the reason he needed to come to the lake a little early himself.
Once we were dried off, full of watermelon, and only a little sticky from the lake, we decide to change back at the guesthouse before dinner. I should add a key element of this choice was that Evan, like 90% of everyone at the lake, didn't bother with a swimsuit, instead choosing to go for a dip in his boxers. Whether briefs or otherwise, underwear clearly seemed to be the favorite Kyrgyz men's bathing suit. However the downside to boxers is that some (ahem) don't have a close-able fly, and as a result Evan kept accidentally flashing anyone who became too curious about what that abberration was in his green/navy plaid pattern shorts.
For dinner we hit the only cafe in town (again, Kara's scouting turned handy), and enjoyed some really wonderful and bizarre eats. I had "Brizol" which can only be described as a Kyrgyz intellectual cousin of the pancake-sausage corndog. Instead of serving my thin burger in a sandwhich roll with ketchup, mayo, tomatoe and cucumber, they instead cooked a large thin burger, wrapped it around the tomato and cucumber, then magically fried and egg around the entire "meat burrito" and garnished it with piles of mayo and ketchup. I won't say it was a new taste explosion, but the mechanics of its construction continue to intrigue me.
After much debate (my last real nigth in Kyrgyzstan, their impending 5-day backpack, and the general assumption that drinking, rather than not-drinking, should be the norm), we decided to buy a *small* bottle of vodka and enjoy it together back at our guesthouse with some cherry juice. Man, how I'm going to miss that Cherry juice!
Evan took the crown for best toast(s), and I'm pretty sure Kara out drank us both. I blame my relative lack of Russian exposure.
The next day they were kind enough to help me secure the proper taxi before they geared up for the mountain trail. I had a mere 5.5 hour ride back to Bishkek in a car with 3 women and a young child. Poor thing didn't even make it 30 minutes before it started vomiting.
Well, that's a slice of life on the lamb. I did drive along the Issyk Kul shore for many miles, and can attest that the majority of it - not just the resort part - is breathtakingly beautiful. While my in-lake experience was a deflation, I still had a great time, am now allowed to leave the country unmolested, and got to spend another night with two very cool people. No loss in that.
tomorrow I finish buying my last souvenirs, get everything crammed into my 2 bags, and kill some time until my 3 am Monday flight.
It's been a roller-coaster of a summer, and while I'm filled with all sorts of bittersweet comments, I'll hold onto those until time and perspective have helped me clear things up a bit. And until after I recover from jet lag's virtual lobotomy.
For now, I can say that after 2 months of eating more sheep parts than I really care to admit, and enjoying a comfortable, if not ever entirelyfamiliar lifestyle, I am ready to get off the lamb. Or at least to put the metaphorical "lamb saddle" aside for a short time and give normalcy its due. Normalcy, and leafy vegetables.
But it has been a fun ride.
Weber (on the lamb)
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