Norman's Blog: June 2024

Tuesday 18 June 2024

Biskek

From my hotel, I walked to the corner of Kuliev Street and Chuy Avenue. Chuy is the main thorough fare through the centre of the city. Most of the tourist sights to see are all a stone's throw from this road. On the corner is a large shopping mall and behind it is the local bazaar. My thinking was that if I was ever lost, it was easy to get back to Chuy and it might be a long walk but I could find my way home.

The guide book had warned about the names of streets. The names have been changed several times so directions are not always simple. People use several names for the same street. There are no road names at the end of a street. Houses and businesses often include the name of the street and a number on a sign but you have to walk along the street to find a couple of signs that will confirm which road you are following.

I could have taken a business card from the hotel to catch a taxi but they had run out of cards. The night before, I was nearly at my hotel and I was asking for directions. No one spoke English so I reverted to Russian. Unbeknown to me, I was in the right place just 100 metres away but everyone shock their heads. Either they weren't locals or they didn't understand my accent. I had to go into another hotel to find someone who spoke English to direct me. I felt rather embaressed to discover that I was so close.

My first tourist stop was the Osh Bazaar. It is named after the country's second largest city. It was a sprawling mass of stalls and easy to get lost in. It is also a haven for pick pockets and thieves purporting to be secret or tourist police who speak your language and take you to one side to inspect your passport, phone, camera, money, cards and rifle through your rucksack and then disappear with all your valueables.

I went with nothing of value exept a few hundred local currency. The noise, the smells, the colours and the hustle and bustle all came back to me as if it was yesterday. Given the high risk of robbery, I didn't spend much time there. It was a quick and determined walk through, ignoring all beseeches from traders and making sure not to slow down or make eye contact.

The market was much as I remembered with a mass of buyers pushing past each other and all the stallholders shouting out their best bargains. I exited the bazaar and walked along the road back to Chuy.

At the junction of Chuy with Jash Gvardiya Boulevard, there is a Soviet era monument of two soldiers standing upright on a pinth, staring nto the distance. The Soviets knew how to create striking monuments. There was a plaque high up on the plinth but only in Russian. It was too far away to read and I didn't notice a date so I will never know.

On the cetral reservation in the centre of the road is an atom like piece of art. It is the Atomo, a reproduction of an atom with circulating electrons. Just next door is the Zoological Museum. The design is clearly communist era, brutalist style concrete but with some mosiacs to break up the facade.

I query its original purpose as it is quite a large building. Another view of the building but the complex is larger as the structure continues around the square to the left of the photo. Also just to the left of centre, the top of a large radio antenna is visible. No zoological museum would need such a large aerial so

On another side of a crossroads was the only pre commuist building that I found on my walk through the city. Its design suggests that it is a Slavic building which pre-dates rhe communist era. The clue is the detailed brickwork immeadiatel under the eaves.

The city is very much a communist era invention. On another cross roads is the former Russian Bank of the USSR. It is a grand building but its former occupation and the detailed communist inspired central decoration at the top of the facade give a clue to its date of construction.

My next stop was the Toktogul Satylganov Philharmonic Square. Overlooking it on the south side was Biskek City Hall. To the left of it is the Geological Museum.

On the west side is the International University of Kyrgystan.

In between the two in the corner is part of the Molodezhnyy Teatr Tunguch complex which surrounds a courtyard. The corner nearest to the square has a tower that is similar to the tower of the university.

There are flowers planted in neat geometric symmetarical patterns across the centre of the square.

The centre of the square is dominated by the Manas Statue. This is a man holding a sword and riding a horse. It celebrates The Epic of Manas. It is a very long and traditional epic poem of the Kyrgyz people of Central Asia, later versions of which date to the 19th century and contain historical events of the 18th century; Kyrgyz tradition holds it to be much older. Manas is said to be based on Bars Bek who was the first khagan of the Kyrgyz Khaganate. The plot of Manas revolves around a series of events that coincide with the history of the region, primarily the interaction of the Kyrgyz people with other Turkic, Mongolic and Chinese peoples. The government of Kyrgyzstan celebrated the 1,000th anniversary from the moment it was documented in 1995.

A little further along Chuy is the Jogorku Kenesh, the Parliament of the Kyrgyz Republic. I remembered this building due to its stark white concrete archetecture.

I passed the Monument to the victims of the April Revolution and Aksy Shooting which I remembered from my previous visit to reach the Stela of Friendship of Nation. I miht have passed this by except by chance, I met Scott and Sam nearby who were following a self guided tour of the centre.

Just across the road was another Manas Statue in a square and behind it was the State History Museum. It was another building that I remembered although my trip the first time was from the east oing west. So the sights I recognised all seemed to be in reverse order,

Prt of Ala Too Square although the rest of it was covered in scaffolding and the central square was fenced off for relaying the pavement,

The founder of Biskek.

A cinema with soviet era mosaics.

More statues of famoue people/

The GUM store. a branch of the same company that has a store on one side of Red Square in Moscow/

Victory Square.

The Museum of Fine Arts.

Monday 17 June 2024

Descent to Biskek

It had been a hot day. As we ascended into the mountains, the elevation countered some of the extreme heat. We found a bushcamp and set up our tents. We weren't sure whether the night would be mild or cold. Most of us unrolled our sleeping bag just in case but planned to sleep under a sheet on top of our blowup mattresses.

It was mild when we went to bed so some tents didn't have a fly sheet and others had left their flysheets open. In the middle of the night a thunderstorm struck. There was a bright flash followed by runblng thunder. Then there were more lightning and thunder with the noise of the thunder echoing up and down the valley. The rain started with the sound a few telltale drops hitting canvas and built up to a cresendo. There was a mad scramble to put flysheets on tents and close the flysheet flaps.

In the morning, there was low cloud cover and it was cool. The rain had eased off but it was still enough to get soaked if you stayed outside for too long. We ate breakfast on the truck out of the rain. As we ate, a herd of cows came into our little patch of grass where we had camped. They were being taken up to their summer pastures in the mountains. They were taking a break to have a few mouthfuls of grass.

The accompanying horseriders had other ideas. They rode thrugh the camp and herded then back to the road. We helped each other to pack away our tents. We were back on the road in record time. But we soon caught up the herd of cows ahead of us. We had to inch our way past the cows.

A local traffic jam.

There was still low cloud and it was raining. The windows were soon steamed up and coupled with the rain and low cloud, it was difficult to see much. Through an open window and breaks in the cloud, it would be another spectagular route through the mountains. It got colder as we got higher. We might open a window to take a photo but it was soon slammed shut again to get the cold and rain out.

We were soon above the tree line. Tere were herds of aninals grazing on the extensie alpne grasslands. There were yurts near the road, with smoke coming out of chimneys showing that they were occupied.

Rivers raged in the bottom of the valleys and animals roamed the rolling grasslands.

Higher up, there was snow on the ground. There were few animals up here and no yurts. After the pass, the road dipped but it was still at a high elevation and above the treeline.

More yurts on the rolling uplands.

A close up of a yurt.

The road soon left the grasslands and headed up the side of the valley. As the slope steepened, the road took several hairpins to gain altitude towards the next pass.

At the top of the pass there is a 3.3 kilometres long tunnel. There was a gate across the entrance and no traffic had passed us coming in the opposite diretion for some time. It was another traffic jam caused by a herd of goats who were being driven through the tunnel.

We waited for the lost goats to be herded through the tunnel and then traffic was allowed to pass through. The cars and buses were allowed through first. We inched forward in the queue for cars but were told to wait. There was the 'Are we a bus or are we a truck?' arguement again. The man in charge thought we were a truck, so we had to wait.

It was more than an hour since we had arrived and more than half an hour since the last goat had cleared the portal. Finally we were allowed to go. We had to battle with a long line of trucks to cut into the access lane to the tunnel. Finally we were through.

On the far side, there is a very steep valley. The road hairpins back and forth to descend the steep slope.

We were through and descended in low gear. We followed the river to escape the mountains. There were few foothills. It seemed that the mountains ended and we were on a flat agricultural plain with no hills. We made better time on the flat straight roads.

We reached Kara Balta on the east west road between the Kazakhstan border and Biskek. I had been along this road before. It used to be lined with old style dachas with fancy wood carvings. But even ten years ago, some had fallen into disrepair. Others had already been redeveloped and replaced with more modern buildings.

I looked hard for some of the old dachas to no avail. There had been a lot of development. There were new houses. The market gardens and vegetable allotmenys behind the dachas had been built on. There were rows of shops, supermarkets, arages and industrial estates. It was a very different approach into the centre of Biskek.