Through the land of fences: crossing the border from Kazakhstan to China on foot

The road slowly climbs down the hills and we cross Zharkent, the last city before China. It is July 10, 2017, the starting day of our Chinese visa. Arriving at a specific spot on the planet on a specific day seems to be quite a challenge while hitchhiking, but we are now pretty good at that.

40 km and a couple of tiny villages left. The last driver finds it funny that we are hitchhikers and he takes us up to the border even though there is nothing and he is not going there. He lets us out just in front of a massive barrier. There is a booth and a couple of soldiers with shiny buttons and fancy military hats.

When I was planning this trip a few years ago, before I actually looked at the map in detail, I once had a dream about crossing to China. In my dream, there was a nice path to the border, going through lush meadows and decorated buildings with upturned roofs every now and then. Unsurprisingly, I was pretty wrong in my dream. 

There are some stands and cars and fields behind them. Except for that, just a lot of fences and barricades wrapped in barbed wire.
The driver greets the officer at the gate. ‟They are hitchhikers from Czechia,“ he laughs and turns around to go back to Kazakhstan.

Yes. The sign is upside down.

We are at the end of the world. Ahead of us, there seem to be just miles of barbed wire, fences, gates, barriers and more barbed wire. The place looks scary and I expect things to get hard. Especially since we are trying to enter China through Xinjiang, the oppressed province of the Uyghurs (there actually is no other way to enter China from Kyrgyzstan or Kazakhstan). We are required to have some special permits that put you under strict control. We obviously don’t have any because it’s too much bureaucracy and money and government control. The question is whether the border guards know we are supposed to have these permits. But we first actually need to get to the customs.

The alert area is not near

We go to the barrier and I address the officer with the most important-looking hat. It is the one our driver talked with. 

‟Excuse me, sir, which way is China?“
‟You must take a bus.“
‟Is the bus for free?“ It is the very same question my cousin asked a guard at the very same place 2 years ago. I’m expecting the very same frown followed by long bargaining.
The officer smiles: ‟Yes, it is.“ 

The bus comes. There is quite a few Kazakh-looking people waiting with us, carrying large bags, boxes and packages. The soldier tells us to follow him and talks to the drivers. They look grumpy at first but then they let us in. The bus seems to be free only if the border guards happen to like you.

It has no seats, only beds. We are squeezed in the aisle with many other people, watching endless fences flickering past. We also cross a gray river surrounded by barricades.

The bus stops. There are still fences and buildings with guards all around. We must take all the baggage and go through the check. It takes a lot of time. Then we go back to the bus and drive on. The driver wants money. We give him the few Kazakh coins we have left. Then we go through another check. There is a big crowd and a huge scanner that scans people. You must step on a moving belt and it drives you there and back through a big frame. 

A large sign on the wall under some Chinese characters says: ‟THE ALERT AREA IS NOT NEAR.“ It sounds sinister, whatever it’s supposed to mean.

A sneeky picture from the bus the officer hitched for us.

More fences and barbed wire and more checks.

‟Where are you from?“
‟Czechia.“
‟How did you get to Kazakhstan?“
‟From Kyrgyzstan.“
‟Where is your Kyrgyz entry stamp?“
‟In my second passport,“ I answer with resignation, expecting the same 4 hours rigmarole as the one we went through at the Kyrgyz-Kazakh border. The officer indeed asks us why each of us has two passports.
‟Because your rule says that we only can get a visa in our home country, and not more than 3 months before coming. But 3 months ago, we were already in Azerbaijan. So we had to send one passport home to get your visa. But we didn’t want to stay in Azerbaijan without any passport...“

They don’t understand and we explain it all over again. They call another officer, we explain it over and they call a third officer.
‟Ok, but we will search all your belongings,“ the third officer says. I am happy because it’s still two officers less than in Kazakhstan. A lady digs in my backpack and asks for my phone. I give her my prehistoric push-button Nokia. She is turning it over and staring at it as if it were a hand axe.
‟You have no other phone?“
‟No,“ I say, expecting a question about a tablet. It doesn't come. No questions about permits to the Xinjiang province either, fortunately. They also don’t ask us much where we are planning to stay, so I don’t have to show them the address of a random hotel in Urumqi I copied from the web. We tell them we continue from Urumqi across the country to Mongolia and they seem ok with that.

We probably are the very last people from the bus to have our passports stamped. But we get the bloody stamps and that means success.

We find ourselves on a vast, empty boulevard lined by flowers, decorative lamp posts and huge concrete buildings. There are some decorative carriages and a couple of people with umbrellas even though it’s not raining. After several hours, no fences or barbed wire. It’s almost unusual.

As the air is sultry again, I wash my T-shirt in one of the sprinklers, and we delve into the town.
I’m so happy that I don’t mind I don’t understand any signs anywhere. We made it. We crossed probably the most difficult border on our way. We are in China!

Behind the border

The quest for food

We expected to still be able to communicate in Russian a bit in the border town of Khorgos. We very quickly find out we were wrong. We seem to have crossed to a different world where everything is different. There also are no ATMs, taxi drivers, sim card sellers, shops with crap and all the usual stuff you find at borders. The town actually seems very quiet, clean, full of perfect lawns and flowers. A bit too perfect, maybe. Places such as something that looks like a park and something that looks like a bus station (or maybe a bank, it’s hard to tell) have security checks at the entrance. There are some people on the streets, some very quiet electric cars and some cars with three wheels. It is way less crowded than I imagined any Chinese town would be, though.

The only familiar element is a guy with a backpack, asking us directions to Kazakhstan. He is a Russian student, a hitchhiker as well. Even though he speaks Chinese, in Xinjiang he used trains because hitchhiking was a bit slow and he was running out of time. To me, hitchhiking seems still way easier than trying to find a train station, getting through the security check and getting a ticket.

Khorgos

But first, we need to buy food. We were smart enough to exchange some Chinese money in Kyrgyzstan already, so the basic condition for buying stuff is met. It is not so easy to identify grocery stores, though. When you find one, it is not so easy to identify food. There is just a lot of plastic packages with stuff inside and inscriptions you can’t read. Our attempts to ask for bread in Russian fail, as well as any attempts to ask for bread in our quasi non-existent Mandarin. We must find some other basic thing to eat instead of bread.

In the next store, Vojta discovers boxes with ready-made noodles. When we are buying them, the shopkeeper finds us funny. She finds us even funnier when we are sitting on the chairs in front of the shop, trying to find out how to use the little kits with stuff packed in with the noodles. She shows us. Then she is watching me, amused, as I am pretending I know how to eat with chopsticks. Vojta told me that Chinese food was pretty disgusting for Europeans because our taste is different. The noodles are delicious, though, so he maybe was wrong.

The lady calls her colleague to look at us. I try to tell them some things from the first page of my Chinese phrasebook. They laugh at us even more and give us a watermelon. They also let us refill our water bottles at the store. When we are leaving, they smile and wave at us. We probably made their day. They made mine.

The most unexpected ride

Our major success at buying noodles and saying hi to somebody filled me with pride and sense of achievement in our new country. We still need to find a hitchhiking spot, though. The town is actually very small and rural, so sticking to the biggest road gets us out. At the end of the town, there is a checkpoint in the middle of the road. We have no idea why it is there but nobody cares for us, so we just walk through.

There is no good hitchhiking spot because Chinese roads seem to have things like guardrails. After Central Asia, we are not used to that anymore. But we don’t know anything about traffic rules in this country and we suppose everything we do is illegal anyway. So we don’t care and just start hitchhiking and showing our sign with the name of the next town. Electric cars are passing by – the road is so quiet it almost is disturbing. We are wondering whether we should also try to wave at the slow tricycles and vehicles loaded with veggies. Cops pass us by several times and don’t care, so we conclude standing here might not be illegal.

Before we have time to get bored, a car stops.

‟Ni-hao. Nǐ qù nǎ-lǐ ?“ I try my best in my pseudo-Chinese, showing the driver our hitchhiking letter in real Chinese.
‟I know but this is a motorway, get in quickly,“ the young guy answers in perfect English.

Note: this story happened in summer 2017. The border situation might have changed considerably since then. For updated info please see the Khorgos crossing forum at Caravanistan.

To the Chinese border: the passport fun and the friendly face of Kazakhstan

The summer heat is also creeping to the green Kyrgyz hills. Our Czech families are leaving back home, and it’s time to head further east. We decided to go through Kazakhstan. The Kazakh border crossing to China seems to be a bit more hitchhikers-friendly than the one from Kyrgyzstan. At least the internet wisdom seems to say so. It still will be our hardest border and I am still on pins and needles about it. We also need to switch our passports because our visa are in our second ones.

As for Kazakhstan, last time, just a month ago, I found most of the locals grumpy and reserved. This time, we came to some other Kazakhstan. Everybody is just super friendly.

Yerlan the wrestling coach and his mum

Ala Archa: a mountain paradise

The Swiss girls came to Kyrgyzstan and spent the last weak with my family and usd (Vojta’s mom and Jana left one week before them). My mom and my boyfriend are leaving now, and I see them to the airport – we camp in the nearby wood again. When I say goodbye to them, I travel to the mountains near Bishkek to join Vojta, Kasha and Mira.

It’s the first time on this trip I’m actually on my own. Bishkek is very near, so I’m wondering whether I should take a city bus. I don’t want to chicken out of hitchhiking just because I’m solo, though. No need – a car stops before I find a thumbing spot, and the driver offers me a ride. Even though it’s early morning, the weather is crazy hot. Downtown, I manage to get the local price for a city bus to the suburbs, which seems to be quite an achievement. I continue by hitchhiking and soon I join the others in the Ala Archa valley.

When the weather gets mad in the Issyk-kul region of Kyrgyzstan.

Here, the air is mild, the river is freezing and crisp clean, and the trees are fresh and green. We hike up to the glacier and then we spend a day just camping on the river bank, learning a Kyrgyz song and watching squirrels eating our food we forgot to pack (it also peed on Vojta's mat). It feels like a paradise again, and I’m trying to enjoy every single second before we go back to the summer oven.

The journey of the Swiss girls is over. They fly back to Europe, and Vojta and I are on our own again. We camp two more nights in a sweltering Bishkek park, spending our days in the city cafés with wifi (and air-conditioning), printing vocabularies and messages in Mandarin, and trying to figure out how to get through China. There seems to be no legal way, so we will just have to try.

In Ala Archa valley

The more passports, the more fun

We meet once more with Amanat, the young Kazakh poet from the association that hosted us when we first came to Bishkek. He is going home, across the border to his Kazakh village, and he invites us to see his family. So we go with him.

Crossing the border is not so easy, though.

My boyfriend brought us our spare passports from Czechia, with the Chinese visa from the Czech agency in it. However, we came to Kyrgyzstan on a different passport – so each of us has a passport with the Chinese visa, and another passport with all the other stamps. We decided to switch the passports on the Kyrgyzstan-Kazakhstan border, so that we don’t have to do it when we will be crossing to China. The poor Kazakh border control doesn’t seem to be ready for this, though.

„Where is your entry stamp?“ the guard asks me when I show him my passport with nothing than the Chinese visa in it.
„In my second passport.“

He is staring at my two Czech passports, and it seems his brain is about to blow up.
„Whose is the other passport?“
„It’s mine.“
„Where did you get it?“
„From the same authority as the first one.“
„So the second one is a copy of the first one?“
„No“.
„So what’s the difference?“
„The passport number.“

The guard calls another guard, we have the very same conversation, then they call a third guard. They confiscate our passports and lead us to an office. We wait outside. It’s over 40°C and the stifling customs feel like a giant greenhouse. They also smell – not like a greenhouse, though. I ask the guards for water, but they can’t give us any. Poor Amanat is still with us, and his family calls him every few minutes. We are let in an air-conditioned office, then we are kicked off again and we keep waiting in the corridor. There also is a Georgian lady waiting, so we at least can chat about Georgian food with her. We go hold the entire passport conversation with one more officer and then go back waiting. After almost 4 hours, a plain-clothed guy with black glasses and a notebook arrives, takes us to the air conditioned office again and we go through the „why do you have 2 passports“ conversation once more. He ends up playing with our passports in his fingers, looking at us, then at the passports, then at us again.

„Propustit,“ he says finally. He closes his notebook and leaves again. We get a stamp and are free to go.

Amanat's home

40°C and counting

 

We arrive to Amanat’s home way later than expected. It is a cosy village house with a garden. It reminds me of my grandma’s garden long ago back in Czechia. His mother is reserved but doesn’t seem to be mad at us much. They give us a plenty of home-made food and a drink made of fermented grains. (It is slightly sour and when I first had it in Kyrgyzstan, it tasted like vomit. I started liking it now, though.) They also have a bucket shower and a small paddling pool in the garden for Amanat’s little sisters. They let us use both. In the sultry weather, the pool seems to be the best place to be in the whole village. At evening, some of Amanat’s sisters and his father come from their trip to the Issyk-kul lake, and show us their pictures. We also talk about Amanat’s school. He made an innovative theater project focused on dispute-solving in families, was in Kyrgyz news and was even invited to run the project in Kazakhstan. He would like to get into politics after school. He admires the Kazakh president and dreams of meeting him in person. He is happy about all the opportunities there are in his country now – way more than his parents’ generation had in the Soviet times.  

Our pictures from Europe seem to be interesting.

In the morning, we get a lot of food again and we say goodbye to everybody. Amanat walks us through the blazing hot village to the main road, and we part for good.

We want to avoid Almaty and try to go around because we have very little Kazakh money and don’t want to change more. We find out, though, that we actually don’t need more if we eat what we have left from Kyrgyzstan and just buy bread. (Our budget suddenly shrinks when Vojta stops buying Coke and ice-creams.)

Our driver has an air-conditioned car but if I try to touch the window, the glass is burning hot. So I just enjoy every minute we spend in a bearable temperature. Even the driver says that a weather like this is not usual here. When we get out of the car, the heat almost knocks me down. We walk along the road to find the right way around Almaty. Every time we see a water tap, I pour water all over myself to enjoy 10 minutes before all my clothes get dry again.

A Kakazkh kitten (the picture is pretty much unrelated but I put it in here because it's cute)

Our next drivers are friendly and talkative, offer us pastries and give us a bottle of ice even though we tell them we are fine. We end up at the Kapchagay lake, which is the best place to be even though there are so many fancy hotels on the shore that it’s almost impossible to reach water. A guard lets us use a paid beach for free just before it closes.

Next day, the weather is even hotter. Fortunately, the road goes through a mountain pass and we end up waiting on the very top. Here, the temperature is under 40°C, which feels almost mild, and the last car crew gave us cookies with hippos on it. I’m perfectly happy we got a bit stuck.

In a Kazakh village: barbecue, vodka and Shoqan Walikhanov

 

In the afternoon, we get picked up by Yerlan. He is a wrestling coach and finds the idea of hitchhiking through Kazakhstan quite fun, even though he tells us it will be hard in China because Chinese food is bad.

  

When we tell him our Chinese visa only starts tomorrow, he decides to show us a museum. He turns from the road to the mountains. I am wondering how there can be a museum, but the slopes are nice and fresh and we drive along a clean stream, so I don’t care. Once, we even stop at a water spring.

Yerlan first takes us to his family’s house. His parents look like characters from a fairy tale. They only speak Kazakh – no Russian. Our new friend tells us they originally came from China. His mum gives us lagman and tea and it seems like the best unexpected goodbye to Central Asia.

Yerlan's dad

In the village, there really is a museum: the museum of Shoqan Walikhanov, a 19th century Kazakh traveler and scholar. It is closed now, but that can’t stop Yerlan. He drives around the town until he finds the custodian and convinces her to open the place for us. It’s an impressive building with red carpets, and the expositions show the whole history of Walikhanov’s travels. In the epoch of European colonists who used to bother village people in other countries to „study“ them, Kazakhstan had its own Kazakh ethnographer. He died in this village when he was 29.

In the museum of Shoqan Walikhanov

We drive even more up the hill to find Yerlan’s friends. On the way, we meet a broken car stuck in a small saddle – its crew could easily star in a comedy. One of them is short and plump, the other one thin and tall. Both are drunk. They first cut out a seat belt to use it as a towline. Then they find out it won’t work, and think of pushing the car up instead. My task – as I am the smallest person around – is to drive it. They push me with the car up to the edge of the mountain slope, and I’m wondering whether its brakes work. (They do.)

The place we are going to is a little mountain pond where we can swim. Yerlan’s neighbors are finishing somebody’s birthday celebration with barbecue and some bottles. An elderly man makes Vojta drink with him and every time Vojta refuses, he gets mad. They also lend us their horses to ride them around. When the party is over, a stern-looking 12 years old boy puts his tired father and uncle into their car, and drives them home. Vojta – who normally doesn’t drink at all – is drunk too.

Party at the pond

„I’m sorry,“ Yerlan shrugs his shoulders. „I couldn’t tell them anything – they are elders, it would be impolite.“

We spend the last night in Central Asia in Yerlan’s fairy tale house. In the morning, he drops us on the main road. Only 200 km left to China.

Shoqan Walikhanov once again

Yerlan's crew

Cookies with hippos for the win

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