Postcards from Stanland

by David H. Mould

  MAP 5.2 From Bishkek to Osh (map by Brian Edward Balsley, GISP)

  FIGURE 5.5 On the road to Osh—with Jorobev outside truck stop

  At the top of the Tor-Ashuu pass is a 1.8-mile-long tunnel, with bare rock walls and icicles hanging from the roof. We had heard about it from Jonathan Barth, a Peace Corps volunteer, who told us that on one trip north, he and his companions were held up for over an hour behind a line of cars waiting to enter. A driver told him that hundreds of sheep were being herded through the tunnel. For Jonathan, a photojournalist, the opportunity was too good to miss, and he started setting up his tripod. The tunnel guards spotted him and became agitated. “No pictures!” they insisted. “Why not?” asked Jonathan, “I’m only going to film the sheep.” “It’s a secret tunnel,” the guards replied in an uneasy whisper, as if revealing its “secret” status somehow compromised its security. Jonathan was left to wonder how a tunnel on the main north-south highway, through which hundreds of vehicles passed every day, could be a secret to anyone. But the guards were simply following orders. In the Soviet era, all bridges, tunnels, railroad stations, and airports were strategic military assets to be protected. They were not shown on maps, and photographing them was prohibited. Even at the height of the Cold War, or in the most extreme Red Army war game scenario, it seemed unlikely that the United States would launch an attack by dropping paratroopers into the Kyrgyz Ala Too. But just in case they did, they should not know that the best route to the capital Bishkek was through the tunnel. And so, even though everyone knew about the tunnel, it remained an official secret because the authorities said so.

  On the south side of the tunnel, the snow was deeper, and the visibility poorer. Trucks with chains on their wheels struggled up the road. A few were stranded in the snow, and we wondered if they could be pulled out before spring. The road headed west along the wide, barren Suusamyr valley where in summer the Kyrgyz come to graze herds of sheep and horses. The snow became deeper as we climbed up to the 10,446-foot Ala-Bel pass over the Suusamyr-Too range. Near the summit, traffic in both directions was stalled. A truck had jackknifed; the cab was in the ditch, the trailer blocked the road. Another truck hitched on a chain and tried to pull it out, but its tires started spinning, and the driver, fearing he would also end up in the ditch, gave up. It was time for collective action, or rather a collective heave-ho. Drivers and passengers got out of their vehicles, formed two human lines behind the truck and started pushing. More than thirty of us slithered in the snow as the truck spun its wheels, creating a minor blizzard. It took twenty minutes, but eventually we pushed the truck back onto the road.

  On the other side of the pass, the snow cleared and the scenery changed as we entered a valley of evergreens and mountain streams. We stopped for a late lunch at a café, sharing our bread, cheese, and sausage with Jorobev, who ordered more meat dishes. By now we were short of gas, and hadn’t seen a roadside pump for more than sixty miles. Fortunately the café owners had a supply round the back, and a bucketful was enough to take us to Toktogul, the largest town on the Bishkek-Osh road. It sits on the north shore of a vast reservoir where the Naryn River has been dammed to provide hydroelectric power. The road skirts the reservoir and continues southwest to the town of Kara-Kul, site of a Soviet-built hydroelectric plant and the massive Toktogul dam—210 meters high, and 150 meters wide—the first of a series of dams along the gorge of the Lower Naryn. The Naryn is the headstream of the Syr-Darya, one of Central Asia’s two great rivers. Downstream, most of the water from the Syr-Darya and the Amu-Darya, flowing out of the Pamir Alay, was diverted by the Soviets to irrigate the cotton fields of Uzbekistan. By the time the two rivers reach the Aral Sea, they have been reduced to sluggish streams. Not surprisingly, the Uzbeks complain that their neighbors hoard too much water behind the Toktogul dam.

  By now, it was getting dark. Jorobev, who had dodged rocks and driven through snow, was weaving to avoid oncoming cars and trucks, their headlights blazing. The narrow road twisted and turned, steep cliffs to the left and, on our side of the road, a dizzying drop to the dammed lakes below. We descended into the Fergana Valley, and for the last sixty miles or so traveled on flat land through cotton fields. After leaving Djalalabad, the road to Osh passes through the far eastern corner of Uzbekistan. We sped through the first border crossing where there appeared to be no controls, but as we crossed back into Kyrgyzstan near Kara Soo, the Uzbek guards pulled us over. They were looking for drugs, and two Westerners traveling in a small car late at night aroused suspicion. One guard spoke some English and seemed less interested in Jorobev’s vodka than in promoting tourism. “Why are you passing through and not visiting Uzbekistan?” he asked good-naturedly. “It is a wonderful country, and the people are so friendly.” We said we’d heard that too, and would love to see Samarkand and Bukhara. We finally arrived in Osh around 9 p.m., tired but exhilarated after a wonderful trip. We gave Jorobev the baklava we had brought with us (just in case we were stranded in the mountains) and a well-deserved tip.

  In late 1996, there were two buildings in Osh with hotel signs outside. The Intourist, where I had stayed briefly in December 1995, had not changed—cold, spartan rooms, noisy, leaky plumbing, frequent power outages, a reception area that looked like an inner-city bus terminal, and a dimly lit restaurant that was usually closed at mealtimes. We were informed that the other hotel, the Alaii, was a couple of stars below the Intourist, so we did not bother to check it out. Instead, we rented a khrushchevka on the west side of Osh, about a fifteen-minute ride into the center by bus or marshrutka.

  In most Soviet cities, a central thermal heating plant provides hot water and steam heating for apartments and public buildings. As temperatures start to drop in October, many conversations begin with the question: “When will the heating come on?” Rumors abound. The heating is already on in government buildings and high-rent districts where officials and business people have apartments, but the administration is delaying turning on the heat to the microraions. Someone who knows someone who works at the heating plant says there’s a schedule, but it’s an official secret. One thing is sure. The date when the heating comes on has absolutely no relationship to the temperature outside.

  By mid-October, it was already chilly, and the bazaar vendors were doing a brisk business in small, electrically hazardous Chinese space heaters. There had been no hot water for months, except for apartments with bottled gas. Southern Kyrgyzstan depends on Uzbekistan for gas supplies, but the local government had not paid its bills. The Uzbeks had reduced supplies several months earlier, so gas was now available only for cooking, and the pressure was low. The government said it could not pay Uzbekistan until more people paid their utility bills, but to unemployed industrial workers, teachers who had not been paid for months, and retirees who had seen the value of their pensions decline, food came before utility payments. And so the rumors continued. Will Uzbekistan cut off the gas? Will Kyrgyzstan reduce the flow of water to irrigate Uzbekistan’s cotton fields?

  It hadn’t always been this way. In the Soviet Union, central planning had regulated water and gas supplies. Every year, Moscow ordered the Kyrgyz to empty their reservoirs into the Syr-Darya to irrigate the cotton fields and told the Uzbeks to keep the gas flowing. Some of the cotton revenue came back in annual subsidies to the two republics. After independence, the countries struck a barter deal—summer water from Kyrgyzstan in exchange for winter gas and electricity from Uzbekistan’s coal-fired power plants. Kyrgyzstan wanted to increase domestic energy production by boosting hydroelectric capacity, but had to wait until the dams filled up after summer to start producing power. Both countries started selling resources on a cash-only basis, and both complained that the other was not paying its bills on time. The victims in the energy wars were the people of southern Kyrgyzstan who endured frequent, unscheduled power outages and (even when the supply was on) low gas pressure. You have to adapt. In the morning, we put two large pans of water on the stove or hot plate, went back to bed for half
an hour, and then took a standing bath.

  The major attraction in Osh that weekend had the official-sounding title of the Osh Union Private Farmers Association Harvest Festival. Like other harvest festivals, it marked the end of the season when herding families packed up their yurts and came down from the summer pastures in the mountains to their villages for the winter. The passing of the season was celebrated with traditional sports—wrestling, falconry, horse races, and horseback games. Even though Soviet bureaucrats preferred structured, mainstream sports in showpiece public arenas, they allowed the traditional games to go on, perhaps reckoning that they were a safer outlet for cultural expression than Islam. The herders dutifully claimed to be competing for the honor of their collective farm, but everyone knew that it was all about individual strength and horsemanship.

  In the mid-1990s, Kyrgyzstan was going through the long and acrimonious process of privatizing farmland by breaking up the kolkhozes (the contracted form of kollektivnoye khozyaystvo, meaning collective farm or economy). Foreign agricultural consultants descended with their marketing plans, technical advice, and microfinance schemes. The major challenge was to divide land and resources equitably, and then enforce legal title. Herding families claimed hereditary grazing rights from the pre-Soviet era, although claims were often challenged by other families; because these rights were part of local oral tradition and never written down, it was often impossible to know who was right. Russians and Volga Germans who had settled in the region from the late nineteenth century tried to reclaim their family farms. In the Fergana Valley, Kyrgyz and Uzbeks fought for control of the cotton fields—first in the riots of 1990, and then in the courts and local administration. The process was fraught with corruption and influence-buying, with officials and business people taking over large tracts, despite having no clear legal claim. In any case, it was never simply a matter of dividing up the land of a collective farm between families. How were the herds of sheep, horses, and cattle to be shared? Who got the farm buildings, the dairy equipment, the tractors, and other farm machinery? Whatever decision was made, someone felt aggrieved.

  The privatization was part of what foreign donors liked to call the transition to a market-driven economy. The Osh festival celebrated the achievements of a new and growing class of private farmers, who were presumably applying scientific breeding and crop-rotation techniques and MBA-caliber business planning to their traditional practices. In fact, it was difficult to know how well private farmers were doing because, as in other sectors of the economy, statistics were notoriously unreliable. Most transactions took place informally; farmers tended to under-report livestock and crop sales to avoid taxes, and the local tax agency did not have the resources to count sheep. Nonetheless, the consultants reported statistics on the growth of the private sector in agriculture, and the usual cast of donors—the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), USAID, the European Union—sponsored the festival to celebrate the progress of privatization.

  The festival was held at the hippodrome, the horse racing track, about nine miles south of Osh. The field inside the track was lined with decorated yurts, their floors covered with shirdaks. Most competitors had arrived on horseback. In the fold of the lower Ak Burra valley, with sweeping views of the mountains, it was a fine spectacle. Behind the yurts was a line of steaming kazans—steel kettles, about three feet in diameter, heated over wood fires: the plov cook-off contest was under way.

  FIGURE 5.6 Kyrgyz man on horseback at Osh Harvest Festival

  FIGURE 5.7 Kyrgyz herders, Osh Harvest Festival

  FIGURE 5.8 Competitors in Ulak Tartyshy, Osh Harvest Festival

  FIGURE 5.9 Competitors in Ulak Tartyshy, Osh Harvest Festival

  FIGURE 5.10 Competitors in Ulak Tartyshy, Osh Harvest Festival

  Although you could see everything from the bleachers, it was more fun to be down on the field. We watched the wrestling competition, in which burly Kyrgyz (with the build of our driver Jorobev) grappled and whirled each other around in the air. In another game called Oodarysh, the wrestlers were on horseback, competing to be the first to throw the other from his horse; there was a referee, who periodically separated human and horseflesh for infractions, but the rules were never entirely clear. In Kyz Kuumai, male and female riders chase each other around the track; if the man catches the woman, she has to kiss him; if the woman catches the man, she horse-whips him. There was no scoreboard but, as far as we could tell, there was more horse-whipping than kissing going on. The highlight was Ulak Tartyshy, a cross between polo and rugby, popular throughout Central Asia. Two teams of riders struggle for possession of an animal carcass, try to pick it up, and race with it toward the opposition’s line for a touchdown. In the minor-league version, a headless, legless sheep or goat is the ball, but this was the big league, so they used a 250-pound calf. Picking up 250 pounds is tough at the best of times, but when you’re on horseback with other riders jostling, punching, and whipping you, it’s a real challenge. For most of the game, all we could see was a tight knot of riders; they would reach down to try to pick up the calf and get pushed or kicked out of the way. One team, sporting what looked like Soviet World War II aviator headgear, clearly had the edge (with the help of some sideline coaching), and made two touchdowns. This dangerous game was played with true passion, with the crowd cheering each block, tackle, and fumble. We were happy we had made the long road trip to Osh. The Kyrgyz are justly famous for their horsemanship, and this was our best chance to see the traditional games.

  Too High in the Tian Shan

  The guides looked doubtful. “You really want to go on a trek?” asked Pavel. “In the mountains?” Harvey and I nodded. “How about a nice trip to the beach at Issyk Kul instead? The weather will be lovely.” No, we insisted. Some of us were leaving Kyrgyzstan soon, and we wanted to do a trek in the Tian Shan. Pavel shrugged, went over to a desk and started pulling out maps.

  There were seven of us in the group, ranging in age from my son Richard (eleven) to my fellow Fulbrighter, Harvey Flad. Harvey was in his mid-fifties, but like many geographers was an avid hiker and in excellent shape. Jeania, an English teaching fellow, was in her late twenties and fit. Our friends Bob and Jane had traveled up from Osh, where Bob ran a USAID-funded agricultural development project; both were in their early thirties and in good shape, though Jane had a dodgy hip.

  Stephanie and I were in our mid-forties and in better physical condition than we had been in years. That’s because we walked almost everywhere in Bishkek—to the universities, to the local market, to dinner and the theater. Still, ambling along the level tree-lined streets, and stopping to rest and have an ice cream in one of the many parks, did not exactly prepare us for a trek in the mountains.

  The guides did a quick assessment, surmising, as Harvey put it later, that “we were not all twenty-five-year-old mountain climbers.” They spread out the maps of the Zailiskiy Ala-Too, north of Issyk Kul, and the Central Tian Shan range to the south. “The trails south are longer and more difficult,” said Pavel. “Let’s go north toward the border with Kazakhstan. Easy to moderate.”

  “Easy to moderate” sounded fine to us, although in retrospect it depends what scale you’re using. What was “easy” to an experienced guide or trekker might fall into the “really difficult” category for the novice; “moderate” into “mission impossible.” We assumed they had assessed our physical capacity and decided what we could manage.

  Today, trekking and adventure travel in the Tian Shan is a profitable niche of the tourism industry in Kyrgyzstan and southern Kazakhstan, with companies in Bishkek and Almaty offering packages to visitors, most of them from Europe and North America. They have modern equipment, medical supplies, GPS, and satellite phones; if there’s an emergency, they call in the helicopter mountain rescue unit. However, in the mid-1990s, few tourists had discovered Kyrgyzstan. The tourist agencies in Bishkek did most of their business selling air tickets and package vacations to Thailand and Turkey. They could put you in contact wit
h guides, but it was quite informal. “Here’s Vladimir’s number. He did two treks for foreigners last year, speaks English, and can arrange for porters. However, I haven’t seen him for a few months. My brother-in-law said he heard he has been working in Germany, shipping secondhand cars through Karaganda. Or perhaps he is back in Russia. Maybe he is available—maybe not. Posmotrim [We’ll see].”

  That’s pretty much how we ended up with Pavel (Paul) and Sasha (Aleksandr). In Soviet times, both had had well-paying industrial jobs but lost them at independence when the factories closed. Like other ethnic Russians, they considered moving to Russia, but relatives had said that economic conditions there were not much better, so they decided to stay in Bishkek, learn English, and benefit from the tourism boom that, according to the government and the more optimistic newspaper reports, was going to happen any day now. In July 1997, they were still waiting for the influx of well-heeled foreigners. They were happier in Soviet times, they said, before Gorbachev and his cursed perestroika ruined it all. But business was business, so they agreed to take us on the trek.