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Mar. 26, 2005 I see that the President of Kyrgyzstan, Askar Askayev, has fled, and that a revolution of sorts is taking place in Bishkek, the capital. This is a town that I visited briefly. In the summer of 1998, while living in China, I took a jaunt, more like an Odyssey really, from Beijing to Samarkand and back, by train and bus. I spent about two weeks in Kazakhstan, in Alma Ata (or Almaty), then the capital, and would have stayed longer, but my visa expired. So one morning I got up and took a city bus to Alma Ata Bus Station, planning there to board a cross- country bus for Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, the next destination on my itinerary. I was estimating bus fare would probably be 600 or 800 tenge, $5 or $6, for the five-hour ride. As I was strolling along the sidewalk into the station about 7 o'clock, a man in a car asked me where I was going. I told him Bishkek, and he said he'd take me for 600 tenge, so I agreed to go with him. He had two other passengers, a Kyrgyz married couple in their 40's, so I was assuming it would be all right. Once I got in the car and got comfortable though, the man tried to raise the price to 1000 tenge, so I started to get up and get out. Seeing this, he backed down to 800, and I decided just to let it go. Sure, it was a little swindle, but the people around there are pretty poor, I reasoned. It did make me a little mistrustful however. Anyway, we started rolling about 10 minutes later in his aging compact car. My three traveling companions were all Russian-speaking, Slavic- looking types, contrasting with the Turkic folk who also people the environs. As soon as we got out in the country, the driver floored the gas pedal. Whenever we had a straight run of road, he'd do about 100 miles an hour, 160 kilometers per hour on his speedometer. The terrain there is very mountainous. Kazakhstan has peaks to 23,000 feet and Kyrgyzstan to 24,400. As soon as we'd reach a hilly area, he'd slow only to about 60 or 65, so I was nervous. I was expecting a bothersome border crossing, with baggage inspection and document review, but they told me that once you're in the CIS (practically the same thing as the old USSR), there are no border checks. We just whizzed right by customs without even stopping. The highlight of the trip was our stop at a hamlet of yurts. A yurt is a nomad house made of white felt, 20 or 30 feet in diameter, with a shallow conical roof, also of white felt. On the side of the road, there was a clutch of five or six yurts, very scenic, with a rock formation and a small cliff out in front. In the rocks, the yurt dwellers had set up a grill and were barbecuing shish kebab over an open flame. We stopped there half an hour, while my companions ate. Once again in the car, as we were approaching Bishkek, the driver and the Kyrgyz couple got in a big quarrel. They wanted the driver to take them all the way to their doorstep, miles out of our way. He was very reluctant, but he did do it finally, and they didn't pay an extra penny. Making our way back to the junction where we'd left the main road, the driver drove me to the bus station near Bishkek, and I guess he expected me to get out there, but we were way out of town, as I could see, for we were still in the woods. When I told him I wanted to go downtown, he charged me 200 more tenge. So he got his 1000 tenge after all. On parting, he asked me where I intended to go next, and I told him I would go to Tashkent in about a week. He gave me his telephone number, offering to take me for $30, and I might have availed myself of his services, if he hadn't swindled me already, however so slightly. I simply didn't trust him. He could have been setting me up for a robbery, with confederates waiting along the way. Who knows? Later, I found out the bus fare to Tashkent was only $7. I spent about a week in Bishkek. At that time, there was still a statue of Lenin in town square, but it was removed in 2003, according to what I've read. Bishkek was founded in 1825 by the khanate of Kokand (Uzbekistan) as a fortress by the name of Pishpek, but was renamed Frunze in the 1920’s in honor of Mikhail Frunze, a leader in the early Communist Party. It became Bishkek in 1991. The Kyrgyz are a Turkic people who are certified to have entered history about 1000 years ago. But Kyrgyz scholars claim to be able to trace their origins to a tribe that dwelt on the banks of the Yenisei River north of Mongolia about 200 or 300 BC. Kyrgyzstan was one of 15 republics of the USSR. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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