The revolution started with mass demonstrations and ended into bloodshed, which left 78 demonstrators (mainly young men) dead. The rumours say that president Bakiyev ordered snipers to shoot the demonstrators in the head, some even say that the snipers were women so that the victims could not get to paradise (according to some Muslim doctrine a martyr killed by a women is denied the place among virgins in paradise).
Guess which room used to belong to ousted president Bakiyev? In the front: pictures of the killed demonstrators, mainly young men age 18-25.
Nonetheless, the revolution happened and the old rulers were ousted. Our problem was to decide whether to go there or not. Was it safe, while the protests continued during the following weeks of the revolution? Did the flights operate in a normal way? Foreign Ministry of Finland advised to avoid travelling to Kyrgyzstan unless you had an absolute need to go there. There were even speculations about the possibility of civil war because the ousted president Bakijev was collecting his supporters in the southern part of the country. Finally, two days before we were due to take off, the (ex-) president left the country. And we decided to go in.
People paying respect with flowers to the ones who were killed. The people we spoke to, all agreed that the price (78 dead) was too high even though they were happy that Bakiyev is gone.
But of course something else came up: There was an ash cloud drifting from Iceland after the volcano erupted. The whole European airspace was practically closed. Even though the satellite pictures clearly showed that the ash was also in the Russian airspace, our flight to Kyrgyzstan was operated normally from the Moscow Sheremetova airport. Even the babushka at the check-in counter was surprised to see that my travel companion Tuija had been able to flight to Moscow from St. Petersburg. ”I wouldn’t have done it”, she said. Well, luckily the Russians authorities didn’t seem to be too concerned about the ash so we got to Kyrgyzstan against all the odds. On Monday morning 5am we landed at the Manas airport in the outskirts of Bishkek, the capital.
Some volcanic ash. Luckily we were flying towards east.
Arrival
The first thing to do at the airport was to get the visa. Luckily the Kyrgyz authorities have made it rather easy: just knock on the window of the visa office at the airport, the guy there wakes up, fill out the documents and pay 70 dollars. And just like that, the visa sticker was in your passport.
Aaro, our host, was waiting for us in the airport with a book (Täällä Pohjantähden alla) and with his favourite (?) taxi driver, Oleg. We jumped in the car, looked for seat belts, of course they didn’t exist in the back seat. Aaro, however, had one in the front and he used it. After about five minute Oleg started: ”Aaro, what is that?”, pointing at his seatbelt. ”You don’t need.” opening the seatbelt, ”In Kyrgyzstan we have different mentality”. Indeed, that we were about to learn that later. As well as other Oleg’s philosophies.
View from Aaro's window. The main street is behind the building in the picture.
Early in the morning we arrived at Aaro’s flat, located in the very centre of Bishkek. After little nap we woke up just to realize that there is no cold (?) water coming, only boiling hot. And due to the lack of cold water, the toilet didn’t work. Great. Luckily Aaro had tricks for using the toilet any way and the shower was at least warm enough. The same water problem happened again during the following week, that time only, also the hot water was switched off. Aaro was at the University when Tuija and me got up and tried to do the usual morning stuff. The lack of water forced us to have breakfast (and use toilet) in a cafe near by. But just when we were leaving, someone knocked the door. We looked through the door eye and there were two men standing behind the door. After a short moment, we decided to ask, who they were, still however, keeping the door closed. Their Russian was incomprehensible, but we heard them say ”polizei” or something like that. After that, we definitely decided to not open the door. After few minutes of knocking (banging) the door, they left. Fifteen minutes later also we dared to run out of the house. Later on, we found out, that they weren’t from the police, but tax authorities that wanted to know lived in the house. Anyhow, exciting enough, especially after the revolution.
During our one week in Kyrgyzstan we did so many various things, so I will write the blog not in choronological order but by dividing the different topics in chapters. That is all I had energy to write, but the stuff we experienced is about 100 times more.
Prosecutors office: Some say that Bakiyev himself was responsible for burning it down. Who else would have had the motive to destroy the documents there?
Nature
Before I even planned to travel to Kyrgyzstan, I assumed that the whole Central Asia is covered with deserts which are burning hot during summers and ice-cold during winters. This may be the case for example in some parts of Kazakhstan, but not in Kyrgyzstan. According to some information the ranges of mountains cover 80 per cent of the country. The Alpine fever cought us already the second day of our week in Kyrgyzstan. (First day of the holiday we spend at the Osh Bazaar in Bishkek shopping tapochkis, jurta-look-a-like hats and snow covers for our hiking boots and - pants). Luckily in Bishkek, you can already see the mountains in the horisont. So on day number 2. we jumped into Oleg's cab and drove to the nearest natural park at Ala-Archa mountains about one hour drive outside Bishkek. It was Tuesady and we were pretty much the only ones there (if you don't count a group of Dutch bird watchers) and the sun was shining from the clear sky. The conditions couldn't have been better. Our travel guidebook warned that the route we were planning to take was "strenuous" but still we considered this to be good start for the hiking season of the year. The first hour of our hike up to the mountains was heavy, the following two hours quite easy and the last two up were pure pain. But the pain was good: climbing up in the snow, sun burning your face and the thin air making it hard to breath. At the end you had to have breaks in every five meters because it was simply too hard to walk more at one time. Some water and Snickers and then you were ready to keep coing again. We did not quite reach our goal because we still had to get down before the dark and after five hours of hiking, we decided to turn back. Despite the pain and agony, the hike was so far the best I ever made!
Ala-Archa. The best hike ever.
After the first hike we were more or less exhausted (Tuija got overdoce of fresh air after breathing only dust in St. Petersburg the past year) so the following day we stayed in Bishkek and observed the devastation the revolution had left in the city. But the day turned out to be sunny and nice so the atmosphere in the city was relax and happy depsite the misery happened only few weeks earlier: people were strolling in the parks and eating ice-cream. So did we.
However, the next day we were ready again for the next adventures. We jumped into a taxi after crazy bargaining at the taxi station of Bishkek. The situation got already a bit intimidating when the drivers tryed to convince to hire them, often using loud voice and surrounding you in a group. Eventually one Kyrgyz babushka grapped Aaro's arm and took us to her son. They had the best offer and so we jumped in to the car of babushka and his son which turned out to be great choice even though it seemed the babushka violated some cartel rulers of the other drivers. After nice chat during the three hours drive to northern part of Kyrgyzstan they dropped us off in Tamchi, a tiny village at the second biggest alpine lake in the world. There we stayed over at homestay, quite common way to sleep and eat in Kyrgyzstan. Prices are resoanable, food is good and most importantly, staying at someones home is much more interesting than staying in a hotel. After nice lunch cooked by the family we jumped on the horse back and rode to the lake. It was super beautiful until the horseman for some reason wanted to show us the construction site of the airport. So the last hour of the ride we spent among the bulldozers and tractors. Anyhow, being in a horseback after five years break was amazing, espeilly when you could see the snow-peak mountains at the background!
The village was at the beach of an enormous alpine lake, Issyk-Kul that is more than 180 long and about 700 meters deep. It never freezes and but let me tell you, the water was freezing! We had a swim, or more correctly a dip, in the lake. According to a Ukrainian woman who did a manicure for me in Moscow one week earlier, swimming in this lake, which is full of minerals, would make us really fertile. Well, let’s wait and see. Maybe the crazy hot banja we went after swimming killed all the benefit we may have got from the lake, especilly the boiling-hot water drops falling from the ceiling of the banja onto our backs. I loved the feeling in a sick, twisted way, but Tuija and Aaro were cursing quite a lot when the drops reached them..
Issuk-Kyl means "hot lake" but it sure wasn't!
The next day we continued our trip to further east, to city called Karakol, which is sayed to be one of the main "tourist attractions" of Kyrgyzstan. As you can imagine, it was nothing like Teneriffa or Ibiza but touristic enough that we could enjoy nice home stay and horseback riding again. Lunch was however hard to get because the tourist season starts only on June and we were one of the first tourist there this year. Even the horses we hired for the next day had tourist on their backs previous time last summer. This time we had a bit better-built horses after the tiny ones in Tamchi (at least I looked like a monster big with my little pony) and the saddles were better. We also got two horsemen with us instead of one.
Me and my stallion. We learned that stallion is in Kyrgyz "aigr", gelding is "akt" and mare is "be". Plus they had about 30 other names for a horse. For example 1-year-old horse was called something else than 2-year-old and so on. In Kyrgyzstan horses are highly valued: according to old Kyrgyz saying, when man has a day to live, he spends half of it on a horse back. And "in Kyrgyzstan they don't ask your name, they ask your horses name: you are known by your horse". During the Soviet years crucial majority of Kyrgyz wild (and domestic) horse population was destroyed but thanks to one French woman Jacqueline Ripart, the wild population has been revived. You could also see a horse at every backyard. 
Dead end. That was an avalanche our super ponies could not cross any more.
Our plan was to ride half way up to our destination which was valley of hot springs in Altyn-Arashan at the mountains near Karakol. After three hours of riding under a burning sunshine, among cows and sheeps, after seeing a dead dog (previous day we saw a dead cat) and after getting our asses sore we faced an insuperable obstacle: an avalange. The first avalange we could cross with horses although it seemed unlikely but the next one was already too much. So down from the horseback on on our feet. The horses and the horsemen turned back and rode away. We still had four hours hike in front of us, although we had planned to ride to the point where we would have had to walk only two hours. But the view was amazing, we got water from the alpine river running next to us and the hike was easy compared to the one we did in Ala-Archa. Still after few hours of hiking (still sore and sun burned from the first three hours on the horseback) it started to feel that we will never reach our goal. Until after the steepest uphill we faced this view:
Our heavenly goal. Valley isolated from the real world. It took 3 hours on a horseback and 4 hours by foot to get there.
That was our accommondation for the night. First we jumped into the hot springs which we inside old barns (or actually we did not jump, because the water was soooo hot). Pretty fast after the bath and some noodles (yep, bring your own food) and after round of playing Yazz we were pretty much falling a sleep. The next morning we woke early and left the cabin already 7.30am. The walk down was faster and but more painful especially for poor Tuija, who suffered from crazy blisters. That was Karakol, after the hike we jumped into an another taxi and drove back to Bishkek in order to catch our flight the same night.
The nature was by far the best part of the trip but we also faced other interesting things and personalities. Meet the Kyrgyz people:
Taxi driver Oleg
Already on the way from the airport we learned that he liked to talk. A lot. Nonetheless, we decided to hire him as our driver when we headed to the mountains the following day of our arrival. During the first drive with him, he already tried to convince me and Tuija to marry Kyrgyz men and thus, built ”a bridge” between Kyrgyzstan and Spain (yep, even after 15 times of correcting him, Oleg liked to think that we came from Spain, maybe he didn’t know where and what Finland is). We tried to tell him that we would not be good wives for Kyrgyz men because we don’t care about housework. His answer was ”It is normal. The first five days the wife cries, then she starts cooking”.
The second day he started pressure Aaro to marry a Kyrgyz women, probably from the same reason (he also had a nice habit to grap Aaro’s knee when he wanted to speak with him) One of Aaro’s expats friends Silwia, a Polish girl, joined us for the hike up the mountains near Bishkek. Oleg somehow got really attached to her and wanted her to marry his younger brother. Silwia was joking along and promised to do so. But still, it was a minor shock when we came back from the hike. Oleg was waiting for us with his brother in order to introduce him to Silwia. In Kyrgyzstan they are at least effective if nothing else.
Oleg also told us, that during our hike, a ”real war” had started in the southern part of Kyrgyzstan. However, we couldn’t find any further sign of this war, not from the local not from the international media. He was also embracing Soviet Union or at least the quality of the roads made back in the Soviet era. Also Putin was his favorite. When asking who will be the next president, the answer was ”Putin will come”.
Besides driving his taxi (Mercedes Benz), Oleg was also an ex-member of militsija, a farmer and some sort of doctor - at least according to him. When Aaro was coughing, Oleg ordered him to drink strong green tea with sheep fat mixed in it. Too bad we never tried that. Our friendship got an annoying end when he charged us more that we agreed. After happily accepting our money, he tried to tell Aaro ”this is only paper, our friendship is more important”. Yep yep, nice guy, but maybe Aaro will have a short brake from him for time being.
Man and woman
In Kyrgyzstan only the mosques revealed that we are now in a Muslim country. During the week travelling around Kyrgyzstan I only saw one woman wearing a niqab (a veil, discovering only eyes). The young girls dressed like Europeans, or more, like Russians. Too revealing shirts or miniskirts, however, you could not really see.
Despite being really moderate Muslim country, there were some distinctions from European or Russian way of life. First, the girls and boys didn’t really hang out together: men or boys had their own groups and women and girls their owns. Usually men treated me and Tuija the same way that they treated Aaro, but for example once we met taxi drivers who ignored us totally while making friends with Aaro. Maybe he was being respectful and not speaking to strange women. Or maybe he was just a chauvinist asshole.
"Bread" in Kyrgyz language is "naan".
We learned that according to Kyrgyz law women are not allowed to own cattle, which causes problems especially when men leave for work to Russia. Women are left behind, often with a bunch of children. But what we saw was that the men were taking care of the housework with their wives. At one family B & B where we stayed the husband was helping with cooking and heating up banja for us (okey, maybe everything related to fire and wood are traditionally masculine tasks). You could also see men often with small children, sometimes the men were taking care of the sheeps with their children, other times just playing with them. Once in a taxi on our way back from the eastern part of the country, even the taxi driver helped the passengers with their child. When the little girl had to pee, the driver grapped her in his arms, pulled the pants down, and helped her pee. Could you imagine any taxi driver in Europe to do the same? Or in Helsinki?
Osh bazaar. For some reason they often sold bread from a baby carriage.
However, there were some duties, which were strictly reserved for men. You could hardly ever see women on a horseback or driving a car. I can imagine, that there were also some duties reserved only for women, probably inside the house. After all, in Kyrgyzstan man is the head of the family and according to my local friend Bermet, an educated young woman, ”that is okey, because it is our tradition”.
Kyrgyz marriage
In Kyrgyzstan they have this rather awful tradition of kidnapping brides. Despite being illegal, kidnappings still happen especially in the rural areas. If you wish to kidnap a bride, do as follows: A group of men jump into a car, drive to the place where the bride-to-be usually is and kidnaps her. The woman is then taken to the man’s house where his female relatives take the girl and try to place a veil on her head. Of course it is often quite a struggle, before the veil is on and the bride is marked. From this point there is now way back. It is already a shame if the bride is in the man’s house, not to speak about that she is forced to spend the night there. After that the girl’s family rarely takes her back in order to maintain the dignity of the girl.
None of us was kidnapped that sunny day in Bishkek. Even though we drank ice-cold shoro, which was supposed to make us thin, healthy, cure the hang-over + everything else you dare to wish for.
Sometimes the kidnappings are cruel; the girl is forced to go with the man into his house, where she is in worst case raped and abused. After that she is forced to marry that man and stay to live at his parents house with her new husband (according to the tradition, the youngest son stays with the parents). Thus the new bride becomes kind of house slave: she cooks, cleans, takes care of the laundry etc. And all this with the total strangers, apart from her family, because it is not very acceptable to have too much contact with your ”old” family after you get the ”new” one through the marriage.
However, there are cases in which the man and woman decide to get married and only after that the man ”kidnaps her”. And of course there are marriages, especially in the urban areas, where there are no kidnappings involved.
Despite this tradition seems old fashion and cruel, the young women have to still be afraid of the kidnappings. My friend Bermet says, that of course she is afraid of that and her mother even more. She told her mother having even nightmares about her kidnapping even though in Bishkek it is not that common. She comes from a rural area where many of her old classmates are kidnapped, in one case the girl was only 14 years old and the man 40 years. ”But the community disapproved that marriage heavily”. Of course she hopes that not to happen, but if it does, you don’t have too many options. I really do hope, that she will be left in peace, a girl of our age, having to face fear like that, seems so unfair.
Riding at Issuk-Kyl. Riding with a Kyrgyz hat was like riding with a helmet.
Society
Despite being really poor country, what surprised me, was the optimism of the people. At least the people we met were all active in their own areas. For example one lady who was our hostess in our home stay did not only run the (small-scale) tourists business of her village, but also participated handicraft exhibitions and tough the Kyrgyz style hand work for others. Maybe they are so used to that the government wont do anything for them, which is why they are self-employed.
Despite the high un-employment rate and the lack of political stability, the people still found interest to keep their backyards and houses clean and neat. The houses may have not been freshly painted but at least everything was relatively well kept. You could find some empty beer cans and vodka bottles up in the mountains, like often in Russia, but less than I would have expected from a former Soviet country.
Our room in the homestay.
Due to the Soviet past, there were also other Russian habits in the society. First, everyone we met, could speak more or less fluent Russian and they switched between Kyrgyz and Russian with no problem. (Still someone trying to say that Finland really is a bilingual country). Also the active drinking of vodka and other Soviet-inherited beverages were quite visible in this central Asian Muslim country. Also pork was available in most restaurants and like said above, hardly any woman covered her head. However, we were only at the Northern part of the country, whereas the South is told to be more Islamic and where women choose to cover their head more often.
All in all, despite revolutions etc. Kyrgyzstan is a hidden treasure of central Asia. The holiday was really interesting mainly because local people were so willing to speak to tourist about their political views and lives. Hopefully they will pull their political stuff together that the nice people of Kyrgyztsan could get better life and decent leaders. But like one of the Kyrgyz people we met said: "there is a bad habit of revolutions, it may happen again". Fingers crossed, let's hope there is no need for that!
(pictures with me in them are taken by Aaro)
Woow, what a story! I really think you can skip the next chapter, after Kyrgyzstan Paris must feel barely as exciting as Espoo.
VastaaPoistaHieno matkakertomus. Et ole vielä kirjoittanut blogia Moskovan häistä. Olisi mukavaa, että dokumentoisit myös sen elämyksen.
VastaaPoista