People of Kyrgyzstan #2: Metal guitarist and bandits in uniforms

The moment we meet Sasha, he has a particularly bad day. His previous boss owes him several months' salary and he doesn't seem willing to pay him anytime soon - or maybe ever. Sasha of course has no contract because that's not the way things work in Kyrgyzstan. Also, he had to give some of his last money to corrupt cops in the previous village. He didn't do anything wrong but there was no way how to argue with someone in a uniform.

We live in a free country

Sasha - or Alex, as he prefers to be called - was the first driver who stopped to give us a ride on our way from Bishkek to the Issyk-kul lake. It's a robust blond guy in a metal hoodie coming from the Kyrgyz countryside. 

We are driving along a picture-postcard country road surrounded by green plains and snowy tops of the giant, majestic mountain wall in the distance. Alex is playing System of a down on his car radio - after a month of Russian hip hop, this is something I actually enjoy listening to. The mild, cheerful weather strongly contrasts with Sasha's mood.

We were quite surprised because he addressed us in fluent English. He tells us he has an English degree from the university of arts. Now he's jobless, though, because it's hard to find work in the region. Recently, he had to quit from his last job in a fancy mountain resort because he wasn't getting paid. But he needs money so bad because he is moving to a new house with his girlfriend. She doesn't have money either because she is 19 and a student. They are getting married next month. (He invites us to the wedding and I feel sorry we will have to already be in China on that day.)

"Is it hard to live in Kyrgyzstan?" I ask him.
Sometimes it is. The unemployment is high and the government is corrupt.
"But I like it here. We live in a free country. Our government sucks but you can say it aloud and you won't end up in jail."

I notice a bass guitar on his back seat.
"I have a metal band, you know. I'm a guitar player."
"What kind of metal do you play?" Vojta asks.
"Just metal. Any kind of metal."
"Do you have concerts?"
"Sometimes. A couple of weeks ago we had one in my village."
"Is there a lot of metal fans here?" I inquire.
"Nope. Not really. People have no taste in music."

Alex shows us some videos and pictures of his band on his phone, and also pictures of his girlfriend and their new flat.

Then we see another police car on the side of the road. They wave at us to stop, and Sasha gets out of the car.

"Fuck," he says when he gets back. "Now I have no money left at all. That was the second fine today, for nothing. They told me I was drunk, so I told them I haven't drank since yesterday. So they told me I was driving too fast - that the speed limit was 30, even though there is no sign and there has never been such limit here."
"Why didn't you stand your ground? They would give up."
"There's no point," Alex shakes his head. "They are cops. They would just ask for more money."
"I'm sorry for you. That's so messed up."
Alex shrugs his shoulders: "Their salary is shitty and they need to feed their families. So they just collect money from people on the road because they can."

Trust me, I'm an engineer

 

"At least I met you and I can chat with you. That's the only positive thing today", Alex concludes bitterly. In the distance, at the bottom of a green mountain, he points us the ski resort he used to work at. Many people from Almaty come here in winter because it's way cheaper than in Kazakhstan. 

"I will take you a bit further, I just need to switch cars first. I must move a bed to my new place, so I will borrow a bigger car from a friend."

We stop in a village that looks like any small village in Czechia. Except that in the ditches along the streets, loads of cannabis plants tall as a person grow instead of nettles. Vojta and I stare at it but locals seem to find it totally normal.

Alex meets his friend, talks with him for a while and then he sinks back on his seat.
"He won't lend me that car."
He leans against the steering wheel and puts his face in his hands. "I don't know what to do."
"You have no other friend with a big car?"
"No. And I really need to move it today."
"Is there anybody else who could lend you a luggage rack that we could put on your car?"
"No."
"How big is the bed?"
"Big."

Alex looks lost. It's clear that we just cannot let him down. We will just have to move it in any way that is physically possible.
"We will help you. We will just tie it on the roof of your car."

There is nothing else Alex can do, so he drives to his village as planned. We meet two other members of his band, parking on an abandoned lot with loud metal music on. They look like the most typical metal fans ever - and they don't seem to be particularly excited about the idea of moving furniture now. 

Sasha's parents live in another typical family house, with a small yard and a little grocery store in front (no cannabis this time). We greet his mother and his sister who also wears a metal T-shirt, and the guys squeeze the huge bed through the tiny door-frame. Then we start dragging it up the yard.

"You can't carry it, you're a woman," Alex tells me after some time. 
"Why does it matter? I'll be happy to help you."
"Oh, really?" Alex looks confused for a while, and then we carry the bed on. 

Eventually, the other band members show up as well and we manage to move the bed up on the street. It's huge, bigger than the car. Alex has no tools to dismantle it and no ropes to tie it to the car either.

First, we put the mattress on the bare roof - it's maybe a meter wider than the car. Then we put the wooden bed on top and Vojta fishes two clotheslines out of his backpacks. We open the car windows and the trunk, and tie the Tower of Babel on top of the car to anything solid we can tie it to. 

Alex looks way happier than I think he should look. "Perfect, that's great!" 

I wouldn't exactly use the word "great" to describe our engineering work.

"Alex, please, go very slowly!" I urge our friend when he, his sister, Vojta and I crawl back to the car through the spiderweb of ropes. 
"It will hold, I trust you," Alex laughs and turns on some metal music again. He starts driving down the mild slope so fast that the load on top our car is swinging there and back. 
"That's not exactly slow."
"Don't worry." 

At the end of the street, Alex swerves right, the pile of stuff swings again and inclines a bit. It is still staying on the roof, though. 

It seems that our piece of engineering is a bit too much even for Kyrgyzstan, so people stare at us everywhere we go. Alex doesn't seem to mind - his good mood is back. He turns the music up and laughs at his sister that she doesn't understand the meaning of the English quote tattooed on her forearm. He even drives us a bit further in our direction even though they have to go some 50 kilometers back with the bed. 

An hour after we say goodbye to each other, Alex sends us a picture: the bed on the rooftop is dangerously tilted but they made it home. Both he and his sister are smiling brightly.

People of Kyrgyzstan #1: Central-Asian volunteers and a young poet

If you come to Kyrgyzstan in early summer, it feels like a kitschy paradise: weather is way fresher than in the steppe, and there are green mountains everywhere. And again, thanks to coincidence, we meet interesting people on our very first day. And then again and again.

Stadium for the World Nomad Games

Staying in a school

We don't have to dig our way through the new country on our own because we have a Kyrgyz friend, Janela. Technically, she is my relative because she married my cousin. I think there isn't a word for our relation in English but I bet there is one in Kyrgyz. Janela is not in Kyrgyzstan for the moment since she studies in France but it doesn't make her any less helpful.

She connects us with her friend Urmat from Bishkek - and he is calling us three times a day to ask whether we already are in town. Bishkek is just maybe twenty kilometers from the border but getting through the customs is quite slow. There is a big queue, the officers ask a lot of questions and one of them wants Czech coins that we don't have after all these months on the road. (Or maybe he wants a bribe and we are too dumb to understand but we wouldn't be able to afford it anyway.)

Hitchhiking is quite easy if you walk a bit further from the border so that the swarm of waiting taxi drivers can't see you. Hitchhiking is a pretty much unknown concept, like in Kazakhstan, so it's important to say you are traveling without money. 

Bishkek looks like a totally normal city. It almost surprises me because I was told that it looked poor and not very urbanised. The center looks neither poor, nor unurbanised. We buy internet in a shopping mall and meet up with Urmat and his girlfriend. We were supposed to stay at his place but the plan changed and we are going to his friend's place. (Janela seems surprised but my cousin not at all - "it's a normal way of planning things in Kyrgyzstan that you never know what the plan is".) We are blocking a packed marshrutka with our backpacks for maybe half an hour, and we end up in the suburbs, on a river bank under the mountains, in a quiet place that looks like a school. In the garden, there is a young guy resting - when he sees us, he jumps on his feet. He seems to be waiting for us. Urmat introduces us to him. His name is Amanat, he speaks a bit English and seems to live here. Then Urmat has to go. Amanat shows us around and then he has to go too.

Our Bishkek home

We have no idea what this place is but it has a kitchen, a garden, a classroom, a shower and we get somebody's room and we are told we can stay three days. (We just hope the inhabitants of the room know that and won't be sad when they come home.)  

In the classroom, there are photos with some important looking people in smart clothes and some logos, so we think we are in some kind of association, but at the moment nobody is home to ask. 

In our room

The next day, we spend most of the time taking official photos for the Chinese visa. The Czech visa agency told us that the embassy in Czechia had accepted our documentation, but rejected the pictures because they hadn't liked them (even though the pictures we gave theme were way better quality than those for the Iranian visa). So we go to one of the fanciest looking photo studios in Bishkek so that they are at least able to meet all the strict Chinese requirements. The guy knows exactly what the requirements are. So hopefully it will work this time.

We also walk around Bishkek - it's full of old socialist monuments - and end up in the bazar. You can buy there pretty much anything you can think of. My favorite shops to stare at are those with traditional clothes. It's not a tourist trap - it's normal clothes, and locals buy and wear them. (My favorite items are kalpaks - tall felt hats with curly patterns, mostly worn by elderly men.) 

At night, we resolve the mystery of the school we are staying at. All the inhabitants are having a Ramadan dinner that they are cooking in a big cauldron in the garden. They invite us over. Besides Amanat, there is Maisalbek - he can speak English and he says he is from the mountains, there is a boy from Uzbekistan, a boy from Tajikistan and three or four others. There is also Azamat who is "the president". That means we were right: this must be some kind of organization.

The guys are all pretty young, and even Azamat the president is way younger than we are. They all study at the university in Bishkek. In their free time, they volunteer for the association this building belongs to - that's why they can live here. 

Spontaneous culture night in a classroom

We learn that the association focuses at education of children. When we ask what exactly they do, the guys show us photos from summer camps they organized, and take us to Azamat's fancy presidential office with flags and medals. We also watch videos of the World Nomad Games. It's Olympic games of nations with nomadic tradition, and the participants compete in traditional disciplines (it usually involves horses). Kyrgyzstan hosted the games last year and built a large stadium on the shore of the Issyk-kul lake for this occasion. The guys from the association assisted with organizing of the event. It was a big honor for them since some of them come from nomadic families themselves, and they are closely familiar with the disciplines. 

Our hosts from the association

The guys seem more than happy to present the stuff they do to random foreigners. Amanat is eager to speak English, and doesn't let us use Russian. He loves poetry and wants to become a politician - he is actually Kazakh and admires his president. The others make fun of him ("it's a dictator!", somebody shouts, and Amanat suddenly looks disconcerted).

The next night, we sit in the classroom with Maisalbek and talk. There are still many people in Kyrgyzstan who move to the mountains with their yurts and horses every summer, and in autumn go back to the village. Also his family does that. 

We then talk about music and literature and Maisalbek sings us a part of a traditional epic called Manas. It's not recited in an ordinary way - there is a special rythm to it. Vojta brings his overtone flute and we try playing it. A boy peeps in the classroom and joins us. And then another. One by one, all the students gather around. They play their music instruments and sing songs they know, and they even show us a dance. (Maisalbek wears a "modern" kalpak hat which is a bit less tall than the ones the elderly guys in the city wear.) I sing a Czech song and the guys try playing my flute. It seems that they are not familiar with it even though in Europe it's the most common and most unimpressive musical instrument you can think of. Amanat recites poetry, from Russian authors and also his own. He is good at it. And he loves it. (The others joke that he finally has an occasion to show off, and won't bother them with his poetry in the morning when they want to sleep.)

Our spontaneous art session ends at three or four AM and I am pretty sad we can't carry on. We can't complain about this introduction to Kyrgyzstan.  

Kazakhstan: 2500 Kilometers of nothing and a bit of hospitality

When you hitchhike in Kazakhstan, most of the time you are in the middle of nowhere. That's because there is a lot of nowhere in Kazakhstan, so it is quite easy to be in the middle of it. Sometimes, you at least drive on a road, though. 

How to hitchhike on a field

When our Dutch friends with the old Land Rover leave, we stay alone in the steppe on the outskirts of Beyneu. We need to cover several hundred kilometers of pretty much nothing, reach a crossroads with the road going to Aktobe, and then go through more nothing. 

We are waiting for any cars to show up on the road. It's hot and windy, and only endless steppe is ahead of us. Again, I'm a bit nervous. What if hitchhiking is actually difficult here and we will get stuck without water... Or what if we meet more zombie gorillas who will want to punch us like the ones a couple of days ago? Pepper spray wouldn't help at all in this wind. 

I don't have time to imagine more things to be afraid of because a guy stops. Time to practice our fake Russian.

"Hello, we are hitchhiking. That means we travel without money. Can we still go with you?"
"Yes but I'm only going to the next village."
"How far is that?"
"100 km."

The Atyrau-Aktobe highway

Our next car is a truck with two drivers - the one who is not driving wants to play Durak with Vojta. They ask us about our journey and want to know how much our government pays us for traveling. They are reluctant to believe that we are doing it voluntarily, for free, and our government has nothing to do with it. 

Soon, we get to the crossroads. Our friends are headed north. Locals told them the highway straight to Aktobe was bad, so they are taking a detour. 
The road looks normal, and in the map, it is drawn in red. And roads drawn in red are nice - they are big highways. So it can't be that bad, can it?

After a couple of kilometers we cover with an old Soviet minibus, the nice road becomes so full of potholes that there actually are more potholes than road. The driver doesn't bother with it and steers into the steppe. The ancient Soviet car shows to be a solid offroad. It doesn't seem to need any asphalt to go 60 km/h. 
The wide field is full of intertwining car tracks but the driver never doubts which way to take. I'm trying to keep an idea where the asphalt road is, but I sometimes can't see it as we are jumping up an down on moulds. There at least is a railroad nearby going the same way, so I hope we won't get lost and be eaten by camels. 


The driver leaves us near a Soviet monument in the middle of the field and continues to a village behind the train tracks. It seems that here, most drivers have mercy on the road and use it, so it might be a good hitchhiking spot. (Except that there are no cars.)

When there is a car, you can see it from afar. Or actually you can see a dust cloud. You watch it approaching for several minutes until you also hear the noise and eventually discover a car under the cloud - and then it goes past you as if the driver weren't surprised at all to see hitchhikers in here. It happens every ten minutes or so and it is the most interesting thing you can see around.

There is only one car which doesn't have a cloud of dust behind it. It is a white truck which is going very slowly - at first we think it is not moving at all. We watch it approaching for ages, and then it stops for us.

The driver is Iranian, doesn't speak any Kazakh or Russian and looks very much lost. We dig out of our heads some Farsi words we have almost forgotten, and he seems actually happy he met us. We spend in the truck next three hours - and cover 30 kilometers. 

The best hitchhiking spot

It is the first time the driver is going this way, and he too believed that the big red line in the map actually was a road. His car is made for nice flat asphalt. He is going 10 kilometers per hour, he sometimes tries to leave the pothole road and very often has to go back again when he comes across a bigger mould that his truck cannot climb up or down. And he is running out of his visa. 

At evening, we stop in a village (yep, there is a village. And it has internet network coverage). The driver fails to find a shop in there. He looks like he is going through a culture shock.

Camping in the steppe is quite scary this time since anywhere we go, we are technically camping on the road. So we set the camp behind an iron pole and hope that a car doesn't bump into us. It is a bit colder here than in the hot south, so the night is actually comfortable for sleeping.

A zombie camel

In the morning, we take a position at a communist monument behind the village and use it as a watch tower for finding cars. Hitchhiking is quite hard here because the road is several kilometers wide. You need to identify a dust cloud in the steppe and then run to be able to meet the car and wave at it. And you mustn't fall asleep while waiting. We miss a couple of cars because they are too fast and too far, and then we are lucky and make some 40 kilometers with a local truck at a normal speed.

There we meet our Iranian again, and we know that our fate is to suffer up to Aktobe together. I mentally prepare for three more days in the wasteland, but surprise surprise, a real road starts in the middle of the way. When we are saying goodbye to each other on the outskirts of the city, we realize that the driver also ran out of money for food, so we give him some.

It's for free, we are Turkish

1950s crane in Aral

For several days, we are making our way through the steppe. For the first time in months, we spend such a long time just going ahead, without stopping much, without meeting people to stay with and talk to. Drivers and strangers on the street are way more reserved than in Azerbaijan, Turkey or Iran. The fact that we are bad at Russian and know nothing in Kazakh doesn't help either. A lady tells me how to say "hello" in Kazakh, except that there are four versions of it according to the sex of people who are greeting each other, so I never really know which version to use. I end up saying always "salam" and hope I won't offend anybody too much.

It's hot, the steppe is endless, the constant wind is throwing dust into our faces. I'm actually happy for the wind, though, because without it, the heat would be much more annoying. And if the wind stops at evening, mosquitoes attack us. We are covered in dust and sand. In almost a week, we find running water twice: once, it is a river, once a gardening hose in a park. Finding drinking water is also hard. 

Meeting Johannes

I'm getting tired of the monotonous days, the dust and the heat. We are starting to get to each other's nerves. I'm getting annoyed by Vojta being all the time bitchy and rude and in a hurry, and he is annoyed by me not wanting to be in a hurry and telling him to stop being bitchy and rude. 

We meet Johannes, the Austrian biker, on the road on several occasions. The long way is tiring him too.

Harbour in Aral

We reach Aral, a totally uninteresting small town that used to be a thriving harbor before the Aral sea dried out. We are thinking about hitchhiking more into the desert to find a cemetery of old ships stranded on the former sea bottom, but we google that they have already been sold to China. So we at least go to the ancient port. We navigate through sandy streets, family houses and a couple of zombie-looking camels. Several locals we ask don't know where the harbour used to be, but eventually we find it. There still are a couple of puddles in the ancient marina, some desolate factories around, and especially two huge, magnificent cranes from the fifties. We climb them up a bit - from the platform, I can see the port and the sea of sand.

"Short history of the Aral sea"

The Islamic month of Ramadan has begun: Muslims are not supposed to eat or drink when Sun is up, which in this heat requires a true devotion. My new hobby is to watch our drivers and see if they celebrate Ramadan, or not. Most of them don't; they can't stop drinking water because of their physically demanding jobs, and some say that they usually respect Ramadan if it is in winter, but not in summer. Some do celebrate it, though - one of them is visibly thirsty and exhausted, and the very minute the Sun goes down, he pulls out and takes out his snack (and insists on sharing it with us even though he was starving the whole day). 

Our Uzbek hosts

As we are heading south, it is hotter and hotter. On the outskirts of Shymkent, I decide that I'm just not going anywhere without at least a bucket of water. I find a car workshop with a cafe, and the staff show me an outdoor water tap. A real water tap! With water! Real water! I squeeze underneath and pour water all over myself. The workers are staring at me: I must look like a water ghost, but I'm totally happy because it's my first shower since the gardening hose in Aral. Vojta wanted to know prices in the cafe, so I ask one of the technicians.

"For you it's for free. Where are you from?"
"Err... thanks. From Czechia. We are hitchhiking."
"Oh I see. Come have a meal." A small group gathered around me.
"Thanks a lot but my friend is waiting..."
"Where?"
"Over there. He is building a tent."
"Go and get him here, tonight you sleep here. Be our guests."

I bring Vojta and to be sure, I ask again how much a meal is in the cafe. 
"I said it's for free!" the technician, probably owner, gets almost mad. "We are Turkish!"

He gives us a hotel room and a meal and lets us use shower, a washing machine and power plugs. We wash almost all our stuff and for a while, we get rid of wind, dirt, mosquitoes and the burning sun. I realize that taking a shower is one of my dearest hobbies. I am absolutely happy.

Almaty: the fanciest city in Central Asia

Lunch with a Turkish truck driver

The little restart helped us a lot. It is even windier and hotter but we have regained some energy. Slowly, we are approaching Almaty. We meet Johannes once more and have beer with him. Jimmy and Roger are already in the city: somehow, they overtook us.

We hitch a ride with an Uzbek couple. The lady - her name is Gulnura - tells me about Uzbekistan, about winters in Kazakhstan, about Kazakh language... They also invite us for a delicious meal. Kazakhstan seems to be suddenly spoiling us.

We meet another Turk, a truck driver, and he adopts us for a while as well. We cook pasta together in his truck kitchen. Meeting Turks is nice. The world would be sadder without Turks.

Almaty

Almaty feels like a different world, and not only because there suddenly are mountains and the weather is mild and fresh. Almaty is cool, rich, fancy, fast, showy, international, modern, and mostly Russian-speaking. Everybody on the street look classy. There are big shopping malls, glass buildings, fancy attractions and expensive cars. (One of the favorite pass-times of the richest local kids is to show off with their cars at a particular parking lot. We are curious, so we go look at them: leaning against the cars and drinking doesn't look much like fun but watching them is as much fun as going to ZOO.)

We get in touch with a Couchsurfer who lets us stay with her. Let's call her Aygerim even though her real name is way less Kazakh. She also is cool, fancy and international, and speaks more Russian than Kazakh. She has no idea about all the versions of saying hi according to people's sex. She has never really been to any other Kazakhstan cities except Almaty and Astana because there is no point. Other city people hardly ever go to the west of the country either. 

We are enjoying life in civilization again - Aygerim shows us some of the fancy parks, a cable car, and we go to a swimming pool. I smoke weed with her and her friends and I get high and I'm surprised because normally it doesn't work on me. Aygerim tells us that once, her mom found the weed but Aygerim told her she only was selling it, not smoking it, and her mom was ok with that. 
 She also drives us to the Mongolian embassy and we get so far the quickest visa in our lives - a sleepy guy in the shabby building seems to look a bit surprised we actually came to the embassy for a visa. 

Aygerim studies abroad and tells us that she just wants to get out of Kazakhstan - pretty much everybody who can afford paying a school abroad do their studies elsewhere because local universities are bad. She is rather critical about the government, too.

We get in touch with the Dutch guys, their friend Denis and his wife Adisa again. Denis tells us a story about an unknown drunk dude in a traditional costume with an ax that was threatening to kill his wife for marrying a foreigner. Seems that Almaty also has some not very modern people.

We also see Karla, a girl that Vojta met at a train station in Beyneu, and she drives us to the mountains. At the beginning, there are some of the fanciest and most expensive hotels. The rich Almaty people seem to love going to the mountains dressed up, with high-heeled shoes and satin dresses, to take selfies. The mountains are tall and wild and eventually we get to a place without buildings. On the other side, there is Kyrgyzstan and the Issyk-kul lake. A guy tells us that in the Soviet times, he used to walk there on foot. We find an old observatory; Karla climbs up the rusty construction and we follow her - it's fun to see such a classy girl to enjoy urban exploring. We then spontaneously climb a mountain of 3800 meters, the highest place I've ever been to, and I again feel almost like after smoking weed. Then we have a picnic at a lake and are kicked off by some very important chieftains because we are foreigners. They probably also want us to give them money, but Karla is just being nice at them and keeps smiling and they let us go. 

Reunion with our friends

Like the previous countries, Kazakhstan also becomes too interesting for us, so we again stay longer than expected. Only after almost a week with Aygerim, we say goodbye to everybody and thumb towards Kyrgyzstan.