10/30 – Friday – off to the countryside!

Today about 6 of us left to go off to the countryside near Lake Issuk Kul to see the Horse Games in Barskoon. The Kyrgyz revere their horses as pretty sacred – they are a shepherding people and horses have been used for that and they also eat horse here. You can still often find it on the menu, but it is a delicacy so is quite expensive (ok, like $8…but most meals only cost about 1.50). Don’t think I’ll be eating Black Beauty this trip. I’ve heard horse meat is tough and fatty – which would distinguish it so much from all the other meat here which is well, tough and fatty (it’s a nation of mutton…I’ve become a vegetarian).

But I digress. We took a marshrutka which is like a small local bus – they are everywhere in Bishkek to get around and are very inexpensive – about 15 cents or so a ride. To get all the way to the countryside it was only going to cost about $8 and the driver quoted us 7 hours. It doesn’t look far on the map – but the roads are pretty bad here and it can be slow going. As it was a marshrutka we had a few other passengers on board – including our requisite Boris the drunk. You must always have a token drunk Kyrgyz man around – it must be a law or something. He was terrible and kept trying to lay across our friend because he was “nauseous” – I didn’t get a whiff but was told that he had quite the odor (or maybe I’m just used to drunk old man smell after working with the homeless for so long).

About an hour outside of Bishkek the scenery turned amazing – Bishkek is such a terrible representation of Kyrgyzstan. Once you are outside it you can finally see the mountains and the tiny villages. We even drove alongside the Kazakhstan border for a bit – the countries were only divided by a small rock wall for some stretches of road. There was an official border entrance that had guard towers, but I suspect there aren’t tons of people clambering to run over the rock wall. The other side is just the same poverty as Kyrgyzstan.

We made a pit stop a few hours in at this roadside place that had tons of ladies selling piroshkies (well, something like them). One of the Kyrgyz men on board bought a bottle of vodka and started taking massive shots – in an odd cultural thing, you don’t buy a shot or two of vodka – you buy (and drink) the entire bottle. They are about 750ml big. When we started our journey again the man gave out about 2 shots to others, then drank the rest himself quickly and went to sleep. It is also very important here that men finish a bottle of vodka in about 30 minutes – seriously. It’s a bit disconcerting.

After about 6 hours we were pretty close and it was then that we found out our driver had never driven out to Issuk Kul before and had no idea where our town was. So then the drunk guys wake up and start to give directions. Well it was dark and the driver took the wrong road which led to the other side of a massive gorge (at least 100 yards across, maybe 200 it was dark) from where we needed to be. So then the bus stops and everyone was arguing loudly (I had to get the exact translation later). Apparently the driver did not want to admit he made a mistake and wanted us to get out right there and either walk the 6-7km in the dark or wake up a house and ask them to drive us – or we could pay him more money to drive us to our town. There was a lot of yelling for us to leave the bus immediately – I’m glad we didn’t!

It was kinda funny in retrospect b/c our only ally on the bus turned out to be Boris the drunk – who having slept the entire journey (and/or made us stop for numerous pee breaks in which we plotted to leave him on the side of the road) suddenly woke up and adamantly argued that he knew exactly where we needed to go. So I guess the one girl who spoke Russian well (friend of someone in the group) agreed to pay more to drive us to our town and the driver drove us to the road our town was on to a sign that said it was about 2km to the town and dropped us. Another argument ensued. We called our guesthouse and our host talked to the driver and agreed to come pick us up from the roadside. However, all our bags were locked in the back of the marshrutka and the driver refused to open it unless we paid even more money. Serious frustration. But we eventually paid up and got our bags and waited in the freezing cold on the roadside for rides to the guesthouse.

The guesthouse was absolutely amazing – it is run by Shepherd’s Way Trekking and was beautiful. Our hosts were very kind and greeted us with loads of homemade bread, donut sticks and jam, tasty soup and potatoes. I think I ate more than I have in weeks.

As for the bribes paid – well, that’s Kyrgyzstan. On a long side note, bribery here is just the way it is done. All cops are bribed – we were stopped by the police twice on the way to Issuk Kul and the driver paid both times. I had a class about it one day and learned that cops will stop you and just make up something so that you pay them about 50 soms (about a dollar). You are required to carry a copy of your passport everywhere and police can arrest you if you do not have one. Then you just pay a bribe to get out of jail. In class I was trying to explain that in America you can be arrested if you try to bribe a cop and the teacher just couldn’t understand so I had to say it in English. She was so perplexed at that notion that she thought I was getting my Russian wrong!