Our families, mountains and the perks of kidnapping people

In downtown Karakol, there is a big statue of a war leader. A particularly interesting thing about it is that it isn't a statue of Lenin.

We call the father of Janela - my friend and relative -, and he says he would meet us in a minute. After months in the Middle East and Central Asia, we are not even surprised by the fact that he is willing to interrupt whatever he is doing only to pick us up although we showed up at a random time. 

There are no rules, you can do whatever you want

 

While we are waiting on the square next to a shabby shopping center, a very young girl comes; she is distributing some leaflets and she is almost fluent in English. I keep looking around, wondering how we can actually recognize Janela's dad in such a crowded place.

It proves very easy because he looks just like Janela, except that he is older and a guy. When we are getting out of the city in his car, he says he is sorry for the dusty road with potholes as if it were his fault. We drive past a landfill, a Soviet sculpture, a brickyard where adobe bricks are made, and here we are. I somehow imagined that Janela's village was in the middle of nowhere, so I'm a bit surprised that it is just next to the main road. The wall of snowy peaks starts a bit further and it goes up to the sky.

Behind the village

Janela's mum totally doesn't look like Janela. She is plump, with a round face, whereas Janela and her dad are tiny and thin. She immediately gives us a mountain of delicious lagman and vegetables, and then another one. I'm afraid we are upsetting  a tradition because it's still Ramadan. Janela's parents eat as well, though, so we hope we aren't doing anything wrong.
We also get an entire house at the opposite side of the yard just for ourselves. Janela's dad shows us the farm with the animals and the garden. Also here, there is cannabis growing instead of nettles in the ditches. 

He also lets us into his relative's sauna that the whole neighborhood seems to use as a bathroom. On our way home, it is totally dark since there is no lighting, so we use a torch. We get a huge dinner before we even had time to digest lunch. Janela's brother then connects his phone to the large LCD screen in the living room, and we have a video call with Janela who is in France. She is worried that the latrine and the tank for well water might not be fancy enough for us. I find her worries quite funny when I imagine that not long ago, we used a bottle of water as a shower and the steppe as a toilet. She also tells us that her family doesn't do Ramadan this year. I have no idea how exactly it works but I am relieved they are not breaking their rules just because of us.

At grandma and grandpa's

Janela's dad is happy he lives in Kyrgyzstan. He can do whatever he decides to do - nobody bothers him, everything is allowed and he doesn't need any special permits to do things because nobody cares. It makes sense. So far, Kyrgyzstan seems to be a libertarian paradise - it has everything that can be done by an individual or a community, and it has little of the things that can only be done by the government or authorities, such as large roads, waste management, water or lighting infrastructure. (There seems to be reliable power supply everywhere, though.)

Vojta asks our host about fishing in Issyk-Kul.
"There are no rules, you can do whatever you want. You don't need any licence for it." 

Janela's father also says that during the Soviet times, things were developing faster and there were more jobs and more businesses. I don't have the courage to ask which era he prefers because it might trigger a discussion about the Soviet occupation times versus post-Soviet times in Czechia, and that would be too much for our Russian skills.

The Broken Heart cliff

We stay several days with my distant Kyrgyz family, and we are treated like kings. Janela calls us every few hours to know if we are ok and have everything we need.
Our hosts understand that crazy Czech people like mountains, so they take us to a red cliff that looks like a broken heart, and further up the hill to a waterfall. On the meadow, there is a yurt village. We learn that it only is a holiday resort for tourists. We see a group of kids that probably come from Bishkek; there is a huge difference between country people and them. They all have smartphones, elegant clothes, shoes inappropriate for hiking and they look so spotless that they could pose for fashion photos straight away.

A holiday resort

Arrogant tourists

 

On our way back home, we stop at the broken heart rock once more and go to see the river bank. We meet an elderly couple that looks European, so we say hi to them. They come from Switzerland and travel to a hotel up the hill with a hired guide.

Janela's dad comes and wants to shake hands with them - the man, frightened, turns away and starts walking off. I'm almost ashamed for such impoliteness even though I don't actually know these people.
"This is Mr X," I say anyway. "These are some Swiss people", I add in Russian.
"He is here with you?" the lady is staring at me in fear.
"We are here with him. He's our host," I say.
She looks suspicious: "Do you know him? Isn't he dangerous?"
"Of course he isn't," I almost retort. "He is my relative."

The lady's suspicion turns into consternation, and I am ashamed I come from the same continent as she does. The Swiss guy at least comes back and reluctantly shakes hands with our friend. 

In Uzbekistan, they were mugged by men who approached them to greet them. Since then, they seem to be scared of everything and everyone they happen to meet (except for people they pay money in advance and western-looking people, apparently). They also say that the nature around is nice but the rest is dirty and local people must be dangerous. They keep speaking to me and Vojta and don't even look our host in the eyes. I am wondering what they are actually doing in Kyrgyzstan if they are afraid of Kyrgyz people.

I tell Janela's dad (who is still looking friendly) about their bad experience, and then I interpret his answer: "Our friend says you don't need to be afraid here, Kyrgyzstan is a safe country."
"How do you speak with him? You know Russian? How come?" They seem to have inexhaustible capacity to be surprised by normal things.
I shrug my shoulders: "We learned it while we were hitchhiking."

They look as if they were about to faint. I inform them with a bit of glee that we came by hitchhiking from Czechia. Trusting people has always worked well for us and we have almost always met friendly ones - locals and travelers alike. I add the story of the two Swiss girls we met on the ship - they had come from Switzerland by land, are still alive and still trust people too.

When we are saying goodbye to each other, the tourists look flabbergasted. We have probably just disrupted their universe of wild, dangerous Central Asia they are bravely discovering. They, though, disrupted my universe of open-minded, friendly travelers. 

Mountains and 90% of assholes

 

Russian ghost hotel

War monuments in Cholpon-Ata

 The other bank of the Issyk-kul lake is a gallery of communist monuments, empty pristine beaches, dusty towns, tourist resorts and unfinished ghost hotels hit by recent Russian economic crisis. Behind all that, the omnipresent mountain wall. We have a couple of days before we meet our Czech families who will come to visit us. We spend all the remaining time making barbecue, exploring the huge abandoned hotels, messing around, being sick and drinking water with salt (just Vojta, actually), bathing in the lake and saying "this is our last stop and then we go straight to Bishkek".

The airport is so small that we can easily put up a tent at a small pond next to it and wait for our loved ones. There are maybe three flights per night, so nothing disturbs our sleep. Except for stifling heat, mosquitoes, frogs and getting up early. 

Patroglyph site in Cholpon-Ata. It is a big rocky field with hardly any signs, so you can enjoy the sense of success of a true explorer when you actually find a carved stone.

Our mums are happy to see us, my boyfriend still doesn't hate me for traveling even though I've been gone for half a year already, and there is also our friend Jana who recently had a leg surgery but came anyway with her forearm crutches. 

Valentina and Matteo leaving

It is almost summer and the capital feels like a bread oven, so we escape back to Issyk-kul. Meanwhile our friends the bikers, Valentina and Matteo, found an Italian hotel owner in Karakol. They are staying with him for free in exchange for updating his website. He lets us camp in his garden. When we inquire why he is here, we get a gloomy story about his ex-girlfriend's plots, machination of her family and a conspiracy of the authorities. He thinks low of his neighbors and is rather bitter. 

"Everywhere, there are 90% of good people and 10% of bad ones. Just here in Kyrgyzstan, there are 10% of good ones and 90% of assholes," he says plainly. He complains that people cheat on him, botch their work and don't keep promises. He dumped most of the locals and spends his time with a Belgian businessman who came here during his midlife crisis and fitted in mainly by drinking. 

Once more at Janela's

In Karakol, there is everything for foreign hikers -
even a climbing wall

Horse romance

We visit Janela's parents once more with my boyfriend Huan and my mum. She brushes up her highschool Russian and except for saying that Janela drinks ("piyot") instead of saying that she sings ("payot"), she is doing fairly well. Our hosts show us a museum of Nikolai Przhevalsky - that's the guy the wild horse is named after - and a museum of Kyrgyz writing. We learn that Kyrgyz language first used Arabic script, then the Latin one, and only adopted Cyrillic under the USSR rule. I am rather surprised there are museums in Karakol - I thought people were only interested in business here.
We go hiking to the Ala-Kul mountain lake because my cousin said it was nice in there. Janela's dad tells us how to get to the path. He has never been there, though, because what's the point. There is nothing in the mountains. Only foreigners go there. And Janela went there once with my cousin.

Janela's dad is right - we meet two Australians, a German, some Russians, a group of Polish hikers and two Israelis. Except for them, there are just Kyrgyz horses. Kyrgyz people only go to the mountains to sell stuff to foreigners. This place seems to be popular among tourists - we see way more hikers here than anywhere else on our travels, and there seems to be a whole market involving international tourists. 

Soon, a persistent rain starts. We ford streams - Jana's crutches prove especially useful - and watch a digger stuck in the middle of a strong river, fighting against the current. It's a bigger drama than gangster movies but it has a happy ending - he gets out.
The nature around is stunning and with our plastic raincoats, we look like the Fellowship of the Ring wrapped in giant condoms on their way across the Misty Mountains. At 3000 m of altitude, there is a hut with a Russian guy who sells candies, vodka and Czech beer. Vojta and his mum decide to go back because the weather is too bad. The rest of us divide Jana's gear as she can't carry a backpack because of her leg surgery, and we go on up. 

Crutches: The best piece of mountain gear

 
We camp at the Ala-Kul lake, a big eye surrounded by toothy peaks. There is a crust of ice on the water even though down in Karakol, it is around 30°C. Because of the altitude, my head is spinning a bit as if I were high. Playing Durak helps and in the morning I am fine again. I was worried for Huan because he has never been to high mountains and he has too much muscles to feed with oxygen. He is so well trained thanks to kickboxing, though, that he has enough air to run excitedly around us while we crawl up, panting. We get to a saddle at 3800 m of altitude. On the other side, there is a layer of snow. Jana decides she doesn't need her crutches anymore, so I dismantle them and use them as ice-axes. It works well. 

The thrilling story of a trapped digger

The best ice-axes

Why to kidnap people

 

A hot pool

It takes us one more day to climb down to civilization. We are tired as hell - again because of the altitude, probably - but the mountains are still beautiful and we find little bathing pools with hot source water. In the evening of the next day, we arrive to the town of Ak-Suu. We call Janela's father. But it's too dark and his headlights don't work, so he sends a young guy to pick us up. We don't go to the village we know, though, but stop at a house somewhere in Ak-Suu. A young good-looking lady greets us. She looks a lot like Janela and a bit like her mom, so we finally understand that it is Janela's sister - let's call her Bermet - and her family. We also notice her kids who are the same kids we've seen before with Janela's parents.

Bermet is very warm-hearted and seems happy to meet us even though they probably didn't expect us at all today. She and her husband make home-made pasta for us; we try to help folding the pieces of dough but compared to our hosts, we are terribly slow. 

Bermet is a teacher at a kindergarten, and she and her colleagues have recently spent their days repairing the school building. The building was in a bad condition, so the teachers collected money from the kids' parents and then did the renovation themselves. There is no other way to get things done.

Then we talk about our families.
"How did you meet?" Huan asks at one point.
"I kidnapped her to get married with her," Bermet's husband says.
"Oh."
I have heard about this illegal practice - a young man kidnaps a girl to his family's home, and this way, she is blackmailed to agree with marrying him. The society is so sexist that she is afraid she would never find another husband after being kidnapped. My friend Janela was once kidnapped too, except that she didn't really bother with traditions and just called police. "Why didn't you just propose to her?" I say.
He shrugs his shoulders: "That's the way things are done."
"Was she happy you kidnapped her?"
"I don't know."
"I got used to it," Bermet cries, laughing, from the adjacent room.

We talk about many other things that night but this story remains stuck in my head. I somehow imagined that this kidnapping practice was only done by the most creepy guys from the most remote mountain regions, and there I speak with a person who did it, and he looks nice and he is my distant relative. I roll this custom around in my head, I try to see it from whatever perspective I can think of - but nope. No matter how open and non-ethnocentric I try to be, there are things I can't digest. Such as the Iranian idea that boys can have girlfriends and girls can't have boyfriends because fuck you, that's why. Or kidnapping people because you are too lazy to ask before whether they actually want to marry you. It's just plain wrong. Like torturing puppies. Period. 

Ala-Kul in June

 

Fellowship of the plastic raincoats

 

Sometimes there is a bridge