At the cottage of God
travel date: September 2008
At the cottage of God
Before the official visit of President Dmitry Medvedev to Kyrgyzstan, a journalistic landing party from Russia landed in Issyk-Kul. Trying once again to develop the tourism potential of this Central Asian republic, the authorities of Kyrgyzstan proposed to organize annual Kyrgyz-Russian press festivals on Lake Issyk-Kul. Director of the State Agency for Tourism under the Government of the Kyrgyz Republic Turusbek Mamashov invited the Russian press on a study tour of Kyrgyzstan.
A Russian tourist, frightened by a possible crisis, has again become interested in inexpensive holidays within the CIS, and a trip to Kyrgyzstan could be an ideal option in terms of price-quality ratio. If not for one "but". Russia and Kyrgyzstan do not have a common border, and every time a tourist will have to bow to someone: either a Kazakh or an Uzbek customs officer.
More often - Kazakh. And bow not only figuratively, but also in the literal sense of the word. If the Kyrgyz border guards asked only one question: “To Issyk-Kul? Well then, have a good rest! ”, then the Kazakhs met us as if they had been arguing with their mother-in-law for three days before starting the shift, and we also came in large numbers here. The passport is checked on all possible detectors. The border guards took the date of birth as the validity of the passport and happily informed me that my passport had not been valid since the 70s of the last century. Such a purpose of a visit to Kazakhstan as “transit travel” is perceived as a personal insult. Laptops and laptops are promised to be withdrawn due to the “threat of insider information” (I quote verbatim). In vain we laughed at the question: do we carry drugs. Although, in fact, it would be ridiculous to carry drugs not from the Chui Valley, but in the opposite direction.
Finally, for the sake of completeness, I was taken to a separate room and photographed with a digital camera in all possible projections. Apparently, for memory.
But now the circles of border hell have been passed, you can enjoy your vacation. The Kyrgyz themselves tell a parable about their country. When God was dividing the land among the peoples, the Kirghiz simply… overslept. And when they came to the distribution, then God had no choice but to give the Kirghiz his dacha. Since then we have been living in paradise. And they add self-critically: "That's why we are so lazy. " Indeed, the climate of Kyrgyzstan allows you to harvest two or three crops a year. For example, in mid-September, the third crop of strawberries ripened (the first is harvested for the May holidays), a liter jar is sold for 25–30 rubles with our money.
The country is located in subtropical latitudes, approximately on the same parallels as Bulgaria and Italy.
The northern border of Kyrgyzstan corresponds to the latitude of Rome and New York, and the southern border to Lisbon and Washington. In Kyrgyzstan, it is not as hot as in Tajikistan, but not as cold as in Kazakhstan, so the tourist season is, without exaggeration, year-round. Fans of an unusual holiday, not much spoiled by civilization, come here from all over the world. Climbers, surfers, skiers, rafters, hang gliders, paragliders, etc. The nature of Kyrgyzstan seems to be created for these sports, since nowhere does the surface of the earth fall below 500 m above sea level, and some peaks are more than 7000 m. The highest of them is Peak Pobeda (7439 m), and approximately 1/3 of the entire territory of the republics is located at altitudes from 3000 to 4000 m.
Of course, these are all unsafe sports, and therefore the famous Cemetery of the Dead Climbers, located at the foot of a very difficult five-thousander to climb - Crown Peak, will never be empty.
Just before our arrival, an avalanche came down in the Tien Shan mountains near Bishkek, and a Polish climber was found under the melted snow, who died here 26 years ago! Back in the Soviet Union. But it was dug up and identified by a token in a completely different state. In total, in the Kyrgyz part of the Tan Shan, which is called here Ala-Too (“Motley Mountains”), there are almost eight thousand glaciers, so such finds are not uncommon.
We did not tempt fate and went to the natural park Ala-Archu near Bishkek. Ala-Archa is a native home for climbers. Unlike the Caucasus, in winter there is stable weather, little snow, daylight hours are longer. Three mountain huts, located near the main peaks, allow you to walk routes "from hut to hut", which is especially valuable in winter. Ala-Archa is translated as "Mountains overgrown with juniper". Archa is a tree similar to cypress.
It has one peculiarity - how a sunflower turns its crown after the sun, so mature trees are all twisted clockwise, as if they had just come out of a meat grinder. This park is the most visited mountain region of Central Asia. For Siberians, this is like the Caucasus for Muscovites. You can meet fellow countrymen here both in winter and in summer. We met only Krasnoyarsk people who fished for grayling in the river with the same name Ala-Archa. But a huge boulder by the road with the inscription "Greetings from Novosibirsk" was very popular, and they were photographed with it as with some kind of celebrity.
blue eye of the earth
Astronauts, returning from a flight, often talk about the fact that the most unexpected object visible from space on the surface of the Earth was not the Great Wall of China or the pyramids of Cheops, but the high-mountainous Kyrgyz lake Issyk-Kul.
As cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, the first spacewalker, likes to tell, from there Issyk-Kul looks like a human eye. Later, however, Baikal was also called that. But answer honestly, where did you see eyes of a crooked Baikal shape?
The non-freezing salt lake Issyk-Kul is located at an altitude of 1609 meters above sea level and translates as "hot lake". The legend says that in ancient times two batyrs fought at this place - Ulan and Santash. They fought for the love of a beautiful Issyk-Kul girl. Trying to stop them, Issyk-Kul threw herself between them and ...spilled into a blue lake. The "fans" who watched this battle froze in horror, turning into mountain ranges bordering the northern and southern shores of Issyk-Kul. And the batyrs turned into two winds: Ulan and Santash are the main winds on this lake, which to this day do not stop their rivalry for the beauty’s heart.
The correspondent of "New Siberia" got to Lake Issyk-Kul at the height of the velvet season thanks to the invitation of the Novosibirsk "Mass Media Center". The Issyk-Kul-2008 press festival held there brought together almost 200 participants, who were introduced to the tourism potential of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan. And the pearl of this country is an alpine lake.
You can relax in Issyk-Kul all year round, but the high season falls on July-August. In September, there are many Siberians there, for whom the air temperature is 25-28 degrees, and the water does not seem cold at 20-23 degrees. But the prices are already much lower. In Issyk-Kul you can find all options for recreation and all levels of service. Payments are accepted in rubles, dollars and euros. There are so many exchange offices that it is not difficult to buy the local currency (soms). The rate is from 1.32 to 1.4 soms for 1 ruble.
An unpretentious tourist will agree to the private sector for 70–100 rubles per day.
Boarding houses that have survived from Soviet times are more expensive - 1-3 thousand per season and two times cheaper in the fall. Houses in cottage settlements for 1.5–2 thousand and accommodation in luxury 5* hotels and the all inclusive system for 6–7 thousand. Moreover, for a trip it is not at all necessary to look for dealers or representative offices of Kyrgyz hotels in Russia. You can easily travel to Bishkek by train or by plane. In the first case, the cost of round-trip tickets is about 5.000 rubles, in the second - 12.000. However, a plane ticket will be sold only with a foreign passport, while by bus or train, entry into the territory of Kyrgyzstan for Russian citizens is possible with an internal passport. A taxi from Bishkek to the lake costs about the same as from the center of Novosibirsk to Akademgorodok - 450 rubles, and a bus - 150. The Kyrgyz customs, unlike the Kazakh one, welcomes guests cordially. Prices in Kyrgyzstan are very moderate. The population is hospitable. The weather is sunny.
In general, a relaxed tourist in Kyrgyzstan spends his money with pleasure, which he does not regret at all.
We visit and develop the northern coast of Issyk-Kul more. But the southern one is more picturesque. There you can get to the Dead Lake, and to the Jety-Oguz gorge (“Seven Bulls”) with seven red rocks, to reach the hot springs. However, on the northern coast you can also go to high-mountainous waterfalls, visit the Semenovskoye gorge, which was explored by Semyonov-Tyanshansky. Although you don’t want to leave the purest lake and warm quartz sand. Brazen gulls beg for bread crumbs, squirrels store up cones and acorns for the winter, in the evenings pheasants and hares enter the boarding houses. Roses grow up to three meters (! ), and in the mornings you can see a picture that is wild for Siberians - the hotel staff sweeps away neat garbage heaps consisting exclusively of rose petals!
Where there is water, there are many water activities.
In Issyk-Kul you can rent catamarans, jet skis, boats and yachts. There are still few divers, although there is something to see: sunken cities and undiscovered treasures are still waiting for their explorers. Fishing is also possible. Not only people hunt for a small Issyk-Kul herring, but also Sevan trout, brought to Issyk-Kul and grown to incredible sizes (some specimens reach 30 kg! ). However, dried and dried chebachok is sold at every step for a symbolic 100 rubles for a discount. Good with local very decent beer.
Numerous cafes and home restaurants will not let you go hungry, for 200 rubles you can have a good lunch. Moreover, we see dishes that are eaten every day in Kyrgyzstan only on holidays: shorpo, ashlyam-fu, lagman, manti, domlama, samsa. Cuisines: Kyrgyz, Uighur, Dungan, Korean. There is also Russian, but why eat borscht abroad when such deliciousness is around?
Lying after a hearty dinner in a yurt on a quilted carcass mattress and looking through a hole in the roof - tyundyuk - at the blue-blue sky, you involuntarily begin to understand why the armies of Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan began to "slip" in these places.
The reaction of Siberians to such a warm welcome of the Kyrgyz people was best expressed by one of the members of the delegation. Going out every morning to the balcony of the boarding house, he woke up the guests with the same phrase addressed to Issyk-Kul: “I will leave the yurt in the morning ...The Chui valley is in front of me ...Oh, my homeland, my Kyrgyzstan! » And he vowed upon retirement to buy a house in Issyk-Kul and feed the swans that come from Yakutia for the winter in winter.
The capital of Kyrgyzstan - the city of Bishkek - is located at an altitude of more than half a kilometer and was previously named after the famous commander Mikhail Frunze, who was born in it. Even earlier, the city was called Pishpek, which means "a stick for whipping koumiss. "
The city was designed by military topographers as a fortress on the southern borders of the Russian Empire in the 70s of the century before last. Then the "queen of war" was artillery, so all the streets were built parallel and perpendicular to each other - so that in the event of shelling, as few buildings as possible would be damaged. In addition, in the conditions of hot Asia, with such a layout, the city is better “ventilated” by mountain winds.
Now this almost New York device with streets and avenues helps tourists save money on guides and tour guides. It is impossible to get lost in this city. In extreme cases, you can turn to any passerby. The local population is very friendly: they will be happy to show you where to go next, what transport is more convenient to get there and what else to see in the capital and its environs. Bishkek residents speak with a soft Moscow accent - slightly stretching vowels and eating endings a little.
In public transport, passengers, seeing our Slavic faces burnt in the Kyrgyz sun with peeling noses, asked where we came from, what they saw from the sights, got acquainted and shook hands, gave their phone numbers, gave rosaries and skullcaps. And having learned that we were from Siberia, we proudly told that the Kirghiz once lived from Barnaul to Irkutsk, but then migrated to more southern regions.
“You must be a Tatar, ” fellow travelers on the bus said to my companion. - Not? Well, then your wife is Tatar. Otherwise, how do you, a Russian, know that you need to address the elders “aha”, and the young ones - “bike”? It is clear - the wife taught! » In addition, in the early days we learned to call a mobile phone “hundred”, buses - “vans”, and at the end of the conversation add “Hop” (“Agreed”).
So knowledge of oriental customs helped us not only to find a common language with random passers-by, but also to bring down prices in the market and even reduce the cost of living in Issyk-Kul.
Cellular communication in Kyrgyzstan is excellent. The 3G standard, which has not yet been introduced in our country, operates not only in large cities, but also in Issyk-Kul. SIM cards cost 100-125 rubles. Call to Russia - 2.5 rubles / min. Lamb - 50-75 rubles. per kg, depending on the part of the body, a bottle of good vodka - the same amount, decent local cognac - 125 rubles, grapes - 20 rubles.
Because of the rolling blackouts in the city, traffic lights often do not work, and then Bishkek resembles Bombay: everyone drives as they want and where they want. But even if you cross the street at a red light, no one will crush you, and the driver will only lazily honk and shake his head reproachfully. Surprisingly, even under such conditions, serious accidents in a city of a million people are a rarity.
And our stories about how in Novosibirsk they famously crush people with whole stops, they took it for a joke and even started to laugh. The roads themselves are of decent quality.
We were in Kyrgyzstan during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. In many fixed-route taxis, we came across calendars with a timetable for sunrise and sunset, accurate to the second. On this post, after dawn and before sunset, nothing should be taken into the mouth - therefore, not only drink and eat, but also smoke, and even use chewing gum. You can't touch a woman either. Therefore, many wives wake up their husbands in the morning by actively kicking the bed. There is another way - to pull off the blanket from the husband. But autumn in these parts is very warm, and blankets begin to be used only in November.
In Kyrgyzstan, more liberal Sunni Islam is widespread, so most women do not even wear a headscarf-hijab, and visitors can walk in whatever clothes they like. By the way, Bishkek is one of the few Muslim cities where a crematorium will be built.
The main decoration of Bishkek is the magnificent panorama of the Tien Shan mountains, visible from any window facing south. This panorama was loved by the artist Vasily Vereshchagin, who participated in the expedition of military topographers. Bishkek is a very green city. It's hard to believe, but once there was almost a desert here. In order to turn the then Pishpek fortress into a garden city, the city government made a simple and ingenious decision: each citizen was obliged to plant at least 25 trees near the house, and each visiting merchant allocated funds from income for landscaping Pishpek.
Although the construction of the city began at the end of the century before last, many of the streets here are several thousand years old. The city arose on the site of an ancient settlement on the Great Silk Road. One of the central streets even retained its original name and is called Zhybek Zholu - "Silk Road".
In the 20th century, Bishkek, like Novosibirsk, was one of the fastest growing cities in the world: in 1885.2 thousand people lived in it, and in 2003 there were already about 1 million. townspeople - a little over 30 years. In Soviet times, it was called the "City of a Hundred Nationalities" due to the fact that not only Germans, Jews, Chechens, Dargins, Avars, Turks, Poles were exiled here in Stalin's time, but Koreans, Dungans, Uighurs. This influenced the fact that there were no serious conflicts on ethnic grounds here.
And even now everyone gets along well on 6 percent of the territory of Kyrgyzstan (the remaining 94 percent is occupied by mountains). On the streets and markets of Bishkek, just as in Issyk-Kul, we met Negroes, whom no one here calls African Americans. We were told about the famous Ethiopian Denigde Gemba Zhanno, a trolleybus driver. He came to Kyrgyzstan to study at a military school. Meanwhile, a civil war began in Ethiopia and his family was subjected to repression, then the USSR collapsed. And the Ethiopian had no choice but to live in Kyrgyzstan and learn to be a driver.
Bishkek is the only city in Central Asia where a monument to Lenin has been preserved on the central square. And next to the Government House there is a monument to Marx and Engels, which children love very much: the authors of the “Communist Manifesto” sit so comfortably on a bench that it is very convenient to crawl along their figures like on steep hills.
Many streets have retained Soviet names, and the house-museum of the revolutionary commander Mikhail Frunze still exists in its original form. Previously, schoolchildren were accepted as pioneers here. And now they just go to see how the adobe house of Frunze was transported to the city center and the museum building was already built over it. The Museum of Fine Arts is much richer than the Novosibirsk Art Museum. In addition to archaeological finds and handicrafts made of leather and felt, it has a good collection of impressionists from the early twentieth century. There is even a whole "Korovinsky Hall" dedicated to the work of the "Russian Monet" - Konstantin Korovin.
In general, Bishkek is a very cozy city. Even after the tulip revolution and the current energy problems, it has not lost its charm and is very comfortable to live in.
According to statistics, the sky over the capital of Kyrgyzstan is covered with clouds only 36 days a year, so even in the first days, visitors are covered with a beautiful pinkish-golden tan, which lasts quite a long time. The weather forecast is rather unusual. In addition to pressure, temperature and humidity, radiation levels are also reported every day.
Shopping in Bishkek is specific. There are few clothing and footwear stores familiar to us (of the well-known brands, I met only Max Mara and Bennetton). But the townspeople and tourists do not consider it shameful to shop at the Dordoi clothing market. In addition, it does not look like a Novosibirsk flea market either in size, or device, or assortment, or product quality, or, of course, prices. Knowing that Russians and other northern peoples leave Issyk-Kul in the fall, already in mid-September you can find hanging down jackets, sheepskin coats and fur coats in the 35-degree heat at a price three times lower than in Siberia.
Of course, not the whole trip, but the cost of tickets can be justified.
Gold in Bishkek is not cheap. At first sight. The average price for a good product is no less than 20–30 thousand soms (17–25 thousand rubles). But upon purchase, it turns out that "only this day and only for you" the discount is 40 percent, plus a 10 percent discount for the first purchase, plus a 25 percent discount card that is given to you even before the purchase. As a result, the total amount of discounts is 70-80 percent. Much more interesting is Kyrgyz silver - the traditional jewelry metal for these places. Centuries-proven techniques of granulation and cloisonné enamel, ethnic style, turquoise inlay with the sacred Muslim stone (coral is also common) - all this makes it possible to unmistakably distinguish Kyrgyz silver jewelry. And the price of 200 rubles allows you to buy entire collections.
Do not forget to tell the seller that you will be transporting purchases through the Kazakh border (the Russian customs are not interested in silver rings). Then a certificate will be issued for each product and a general certificate of purchase will be issued.
From traditional souvenirs, I advise you to pay attention to felt products. Not only embroidered slippers and mini boots with a short top (200-400 rubles), but also covers for chairs, bags with felt flowers of all colors of the rainbow (400-700 rubles), phone cases (170 rubles), miniature yurts, camels and cheerful peasants in skullcaps. A luxurious and expensive gift is inlaid chess (backgammon as an option) made in the form of figures in national clothes. It is not cheap - from two thousand rubles, but it looks impressive.
You can travel to Kyrgyzstan not only in the velvet season, but also in winter. Firstly, you can warm up at the same time: the average January temperature is minus 4 degrees.
Secondly, the II Santa Claus Festival will be held in Bishkek in winter. Last year, there was a report that European scientists had calculated the place where Santa Claus should start from in order to be guaranteed to have time to present gifts to every child on the planet. It turned out that this place on the map should be located in southern Kazakhstan or in northern Kyrgyzstan. The Kazakh authorities ignored the news, while the Kyrgyz authorities used it to its fullest. And if last year the festival was held in a mini-format, then this year applications for participation from 63 countries were received! And since taking a child to Veliky Ustyug is both far and expensive, the option with Kyrgyzstan can be considered.