Postcards from Stanland

by David H. Mould

  We set out from Bishkek early on the morning of July 12—our group of seven, the two guides, and two Kyrgyz porters to carry the tents and cooking equipment. Collectively, we would not have made good models for an outfitter’s catalog. We brought layers of clothing and hiking boots, but the guides and porters wore sweat pants and sneakers or flip-flops. A few miles from Tyup (see map 5.1), where the lakeshore road turns south, we pulled over and put on our packs. It was a warm, sunny afternoon, and we were in high spirits. “That will be our campsite tonight,” said Pavel, vaguely waving his arm northward. I could not figure out where he was pointing, and could not see a trail, so it was reassuring to know that he knew where we were going. We hiked up a steady incline through the mountain pastures. The views back toward the lake were spectacular, and the mountainside was ablaze with color—wild irises, edelweiss, and other wildflowers. Stephanie wanted to stop to pick flowers, but the guides urged us to keep going: we had to make the campsite before darkness. We stopped for brief breaks, but the guides told us not to drink too much water because it would sap our strength. We weren’t sure of the medical basis for the advice. We didn’t want to become dehydrated, but we resisted temptation, passing cool mountain streams without pausing.

  We camped the first night in a narrow valley. We realized why the guides had pushed on so they could set up the tents and gather wood before darkness fell. In these deep valleys, shaded by the high mountains from the sun, darkness comes early, even in midsummer. We gathered around the campfire for dinner, and went to bed early. When we woke up, the sun had not yet reached down into the valley, but brilliantly illuminated the top third of the peaks, a dramatic visual contrast. After kasha and tea for breakfast, we set out, climbing over two passes. As the day went on, the party became strung out. Harvey and Jeania kept up with the guides, but the rest of us straggled along with one of the porters. Then the clouds moved in and the rain began. With visibility dropping, we lost sight of the forward party. The porter wasn’t sure of the way, and we ended up wandering along a ridge, looking for the lake that marked our campsite. The rain turned to hail. We plodded on, wondering whether we would find the rest of the party that night. Eventually, we spotted the lake below and scrambled down a hillside through rocks and across a stream. By the time we reached the campsite, we were soaked, and our mood didn’t improve when we found Pavel and Sasha sitting in their tent drinking cognac. There was a brief argument, which ended with a new protocol for the trek: one guide would lead the party, while the other would stay at the rear, keeping pace with the slowest-moving member.

  As we gathered around the campfire to drink tea and dry out our socks and boots, the mood was more subdued than on the first night. There was a minor alarm when Harvey’s socks caught fire and the soles of Stephanie’s boots partly melted. The next day dawned bright and sunny, and it was an easy three-hour walk to our lunch spot at another mountain lake. From there, the trail rose abruptly through forests and across streams. With one of the guides at the rear, the party did not become separated, but it was a steep and tough climb. Jane’s hip was hurting, and she was having trouble keeping up, so we took turns walking with her. As we emerged from the timberline to the high mountain pastures, she said she couldn’t go any further and collapsed. Sasha, Harvey, Jeania, Bob, and I were ahead of the rest of the party, resting on a small ridge, when we saw Pavel run toward us shouting. We hurried back. It was clear that Jane was in a bad way; she was feverish, and a porter was massaging her feet to restore circulation.

  I had heard of altitude sickness, but I thought it was the kind of thing that happened only to people who fly into nose-bleed cities such as La Paz in Bolivia or Lhasa in Tibet and then go jogging, or to serious mountaineers attacking Himalayan peaks on National Geographic specials. I didn’t expect it on an “easy to moderate” trek in the Tian Shan. But the guides immediately diagnosed it. Because air is thinner at high altitudes, when you make a rapid ascent—as we had done from the lake to about 9,000 feet—the body cannot take in as much oxygen as it needs. In mild cases, the symptoms are like a hangover—headache, dizziness, weakness, sickness in the stomach, and loss of appetite. In severe cases, the lungs and brain can be affected. You become confused, unable to walk straight, and feel faint; your toes and fingers may start to turn blue.

  This case was severe. We put up a tent, and Jane was laid down. Bob, Stephanie, and the guides massaged her feet, which were beginning to turn blue. The only solution was to get her down in altitude as quickly as possible. Today, trekking parties use satellite phones to call in rescue units, and provide GPS coordinates. In July 1997, for all we knew we were the only people on that mountain slope near the Kazakhstan border, and we had to face the challenge ourselves. One of the porters ran off to see if he could find a shepherd. He returned an hour later, saying he had been to the next ridge, but there was no one in sight.

  And then, as if in a scene from a Western movie, two Kyrgyz herders appeared on the skyline. We waved and shouted, and they rode toward us. There was a brief negotiation, and dollars changed hands. Jane, who was looking and feeling worse than ever, was helped onto a horse with Sasha walking behind to hold her. Bob, one of the porters, and the herders followed with the other horse. The plan was to head north toward the nearest road, and on to Almaty where Jane could receive medical treatment. We divided the remainder of the food between the parties. There were hugs all around, and Jane’s party started its descent. The rest of us turned south again.

  We had hoped to get over the final pass, which rose to almost 11,000 feet, that day, but it was now late in the afternoon and everyone felt drained, physically and emotionally, by the events of the past few hours. After two hours, we stopped to camp in a wonderful, lonely, treeless place by a stream. At almost 10,000 feet, it was cold, and we were glad we had brought our long johns. In the morning, we awoke to find the tents surrounded by horses. We pushed on to the pass, and moved from the pastures to a barren landscape of glacial scree, the loose rocks left by the ice when it retreats in summer. The scenery was, if anything, even more wild and spectacular than any we had seen so far on the trip, with beautiful alpine meadows and sweeping views of the mountains.

  The descent to Issyk Kul was long and strenuous. I stopped worrying about the blisters on my heels, because my big toes were hurting so much from the downward pressure (both of my big toenails turned blue from the bruising, and one detached a few weeks later). By late afternoon, we caught sight of the bus waiting for us on the road. It felt good to soak our feet in a cold stream and, an hour later, to stop by the roadside and pick up beer.

  We learned later that Jane’s group had made it down to the lake, hired new horses, headed north and picked up a ride to Almaty. The doctor who examined Jane confirmed altitude sickness, and prescribed a few days rest. That’s what the rest of us took, without prescription. Opinions on the trek were divided. We all agreed the scenery was fantastic, but that “easy to moderate” was more challenging than we expected. And, as someone said after the second day, “Are we really paying money to be cold, tired, and eat lousy food?” Harvey, Jeania, Bob, and I all said we would do it again; Richard, who did wonderfully well for an eleven-year-old, wasn’t so sure. Stephanie and Jane said they would have preferred a gentler outing that involved picking wildflowers and mushrooms.

  The Eye of the Sheep

  A month later, Richard and I took Pavel and Sasha’s original advice with a trip to the beach at Issyk Kul. We traveled with my university interpreter, Gulkhan, and rented a small apartment in Cholpon Ata. In Kyrgyz, Cholpon Ata literally means “Venus father,” the name of a mythological protecting spirit, and the town was renowned for its healthy climate and clean beaches. Most visitors stayed at a dom otdykha (rest house) or turbaza (tourist center), a rambling holiday camp with chalets or apartments, landscaped grounds and gardens, a common dining hall, and a beach. By the 1990s, the camps, and Cholpon Ata itself, had fallen on hard times because it was too expensive for people from other former Soviet rep
ublics to travel there. Still, it remained a favorite for vacationers from Central Asian countries. President Akayev had a summer home there with a yacht for entertaining foreign visitors.

  We spent three days lazing around on the beach and walking around the town. This is one of the major fruit-growing areas of the country, and in August the trees were laden with apples, apricots, and cherries. On our last night, we drove out to a village for a traditional Kyrgyz feast with colleagues from the KSNU journalism faculty and their relatives. Stephanie came out from Bishkek to join us. I had completed my second semester of teaching in June, so the feast was in my honor. This was an offer you definitely can’t refuse, but I’d heard enough about such occasions from Western colleagues that I approached it with trepidation.

  The family put out a huge spread, and we started eating at about 7 p.m. In the backyard, they had slaughtered a sheep and were boiling it over an open fire. The patriarch sat next to me, filling my glass, and talking to me in a rural Kyrgyz dialect that even Gulkhan could not understand. On schedule at 10 p.m. they brought in the besh barmak (five fingers)—boiled mutton served with noodles, so called because it is traditionally eaten with the fingers. I was presented with the sheep’s head. As the honored guest, I was supposed to carve it up and distribute slices to the company at the table. It’s not a random process because tradition determines who gets which part. Richard, as the youngest at the table, was expected to eat an ear, on the assumption that by doing so he would be more likely to listen to adult advice (he refused, of course). I don’t think they seriously expected me to do the carving, but I gamely chopped at the thing for a few minutes before passing it off to another guest who knew what to do.

  Regular power outages were common, particularly in rural areas, so I was not surprised when the lights went out a couple of minutes later. I breathed a short sigh of relief, thinking I had been rescued from eating the part destined for the honored guest. However, soon after they brought in oil lamps, the lights came back on, and I smiled through clenched teeth as I was presented with one of the eyes. It was a bit late to claim an allergy to mutton, so I tried to swallow it without thinking about what I was eating. It nearly came right back up but a quick swig of cognac did the trick. Richard sat looking at me in amazement. “Dad, how did it taste?” he asked. I just gulped.

  Heads and eyes apart, it was an enjoyable evening, enlivened by one guest, who was drunk when we arrived and who kept on drinking (presumably also in my honor) and trying to speak French. At that time, my French was better than my Russian, but his Russian was easier to understand. About fifteen of us stayed in the house that night. When they served the innards and boiled mutton again for breakfast, I felt I could now politely refuse. “Just some bread and tea, please,” I said.

  Visaless in Uzbekistan

  Although the borders of the Central Asian republics are artificial, crossing them can be a serious business, involving visas, vehicle searches, minor interrogations, and bribes. In the mid-1990s, the most open border was between Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Guards would routinely wave through buses and marshrutkas on the Bishkek-Almaty road without examining documents or checking the luggage. I made two trips to Almaty by marshrutka in 1997 but have no way of proving it because my passport was neither examined nor stamped. In principle, I should have been traveling with a Kazakhstan visa, but other expats said they didn’t bother. “Just say you’re on the way to the airport,” one advised me. “You may have to pay a few tenge to the Kazakhs, but it’s cheaper than a visa and less hassle.” Cars with foreigners—especially those “from countries with convertible currencies,” as my source put it—merited more attention (and more tenge), but I’d never heard of anyone being turned back.

  Uzbekistan was a different proposition. More than any other Central Asian republic apart from Turkmenistan, it had retained the Soviet police-state mentality. Official censors in the capital, Tashkent, still wielded their blue pens, removing any hint of criticism of the regime of President Islam Karimov from the newspapers. The government had some reason to fear the growth of Islamic fundamentalism but used it as a pretext to imprison political opponents, social activists, and journalists. It was difficult for NGOs, even those working in health, education, and poverty alleviation, to operate. It could take up to two years for an NGO to obtain official registration, and even after that it was subject to harassment by the tax police and other agencies. The government exercised strict controls over the economy. Starting a business required forms and fees, plus bribes to make sure the paperwork was processed; for foreign firms, it could take months (and more bribes) for a piece of equipment to make it through customs.

  The regime seemed paranoid about all foreigners, including tourists. This was a pity because of all the Central Asian republics Uzbekistan has the most to offer—from the great Silk Road cities of Samarkand, Bukhara, and Khiva and the museums of Tashkent to the environmental disaster of the Aral Sea. The food is wonderful, and the people hospitable. Most tourists were required to book vacations through the state travel agency Uzbektourism, which offered overpriced guided tours with accommodation at official hotels. Tourists saw what the guides wanted them to see, and contacts with ordinary Uzbeks—apart from museum and hotel staff and official souvenir vendors—were not encouraged. It was possible to travel independently, but it could be, as Lonely Planet put it, “an endless series of petty bureaucratic irritations and not-so-petty official hassles.”3

  I decided to try anyway, and flew with Richard from Bishkek to Osh (Stephanie was getting ready to leave Kyrgyzstan and stayed home to start packing). We joined Jane, now fully recovered from her altitude sickness, and her friend Diane who was visiting from the United States. We found a driver, Ilya, who agreed to do the five-day trip for $300. Obtaining a visa was difficult because Uzbekistan—perhaps in reprisal for the ongoing spats over water supplies and unpaid gas bills—did not have a consulate in Bishkek. The nearest was in Almaty, and we would have to wait for a few days while the visa paperwork was processed. The only other place offering visas was Tashkent airport, so we settled on the story to use with border guards and police: we were on our way to the airport. We supported it with a large passport stamp from the Kyrgyz Otdel Viz i Registratsii (OVIR—the Department of Visas and Registration) in Osh.

  OVIR was a classic example of how little independence had done to remove the layers of government bureaucracy. In the Soviet era, its main purpose had been to keep records of citizens who moved to a new city or district. Foreigners were required to register (and pay a fee) within three days of arriving in the country. Hotels took care of registration for guests, but long-term residents and independent travelers had to join the line at the OVIR office to obtain what was, for all intents and purposes, a second (if cheaper) visa. Nevertheless, we were happy to pay OVIR about $12 for a passport stamp that stated that we could travel in Uzbekistan for a week. What gave the Kyrgyz authorities the right to let people travel in another country is a diplomatic technicality that eluded me, but we hoped that the stamp would look official enough to confuse, if not convince, the border guards and police.

  No one checked us at the Uzbek border two miles outside Osh, but from midmorning on we were stopped by the police and asked for our papers every hour or so. As the only one in the group (apart from Ilya) who spoke any Russian, I was the designated negotiator. For the first 150 miles or so, I stuck to our story: we were going to Tashkent airport to obtain visas. Jane, Diane, and Richard, sitting in the backseat, nodded on cue. After passing the city of Khokand, it was clear that we were not heading north to Tashkent after all, so we dropped the story and replaced it with a narrative that went something like this, “Your colleagues back in Andijan and along the highway checked our papers, and welcomed us to your wonderful country. Why is there a problem now?” Then Ilya shook hands, slapped backs, and chatted with the police. As far as I could tell, we were fined for having tinted windows, having Kyrgyzstan plates, or simply for being there. Most of the fines were small—$2
or $2.50—and even when Ilya picked up a speeding ticket, it was under $5. But we still had two borders to cross.

  The road to Samarkand runs west through the northern panhandle of Tajikistan, a region of the Fergana Valley lopped off from the Uzbek SSR in 1929 when the Tajik SSR was created. I now had to deal with officials who wanted to see Tajik visas. Sometimes they just wanted to chat and were sincerely curious about these four foreigners passing through, but they were also ready to impose a service charge. Fortunately, we had stocked up with small gifts. Entry to Tajikistan cost us two blank audio cassettes. At the other side of the panhandle, I was forced to play the sex card. In the office, the middle-aged, sullen-looking border guard absentmindedly thumbed through the passport pages, but paused when he got to Diane’s passport picture. She was an airline steward, tall, shapely, and blonde. I sensed an opportunity. “Ochen’ krasivaya devushka [a very beautiful young woman],” I observed, in as offhanded a fashion as I could. He grunted in agreement and kept looking at the photo. I asked if he would like to meet her, and his face broke into a smile. Diane did a runway-style walk into the office and flashed a smile. The passports were returned. Back in the car, I apologized to Diane and Jane for my tactic. They said they didn’t care. Whatever it took to get across the border.

  Our plan was to do the five hundred miles from Osh to Bukhara on the first day, and then return via Samarkand, but the car kept stalling because of bad gas, so we were happy to make it to Samarkand. We stayed with Ilya’s uncle’s family in a traditional Uzbek house with a courtyard, about a ten-minute drive from the center. We still had time to go into the city and visit Registan square, the heart of medieval Samarkand’s religious, intellectual, and commercial life, its three great madrassas with their minarets, arches, and courtyards sparkling in the evening light. Many of the city’s architectural wonders date from the reign of Tamerlane (Timur) who chose Samarkand as his capital in 1370 and over the next thirty-five years made it a center of commerce and religion. Samarkand’s architecture and art were financed by Timur’s conquests; by 1395, his empire included most of Central Asia, modern-day Iran, Iraq, eastern Turkey, and the Caucasus. His grandson, the educated and cultured Ullughbek who ruled until 1449, made the city a center of learning in the Islamic world. Ullughbek was more interested in astronomy than governing. He built an observatory where he spent many nights using a marble astrolabe to chart the positions of stars and make calculations of time. Maybe he should have spent more time on earthly affairs. The Islamic clerics of Samarkand resented his preference for science over the Koran; one his sons hatched a plot in which Ullughbek was dethroned and decapitated and the observatory (but not its astrolabe and records) destroyed.