Monday, June 23, 2014
We left Bishkek and headed east towards Issuk-Köl, the lake in the north-east of Kygryzstan. The lake is huge and we planned 4 days to drive around it, putting us back in Bishkek on Friday (June 27th) to visit the Uzbekistan Embassy to pick-up our visas.
Along the way to the lake we made a detour through the back roads to visit Burana Tower. This is a 24m high stump of a Minaret supposedly dating back to the 11th century but most of what one sees is a Soviet restoration from the 1950’s (according to the Lonely Planet). It can be climbed for a small fee. Of course Stephen climbed it. As much fun were the Turkic totem-like stone markers, ‘balbals’ dating from the 6th to 10th century, in a nearby field. Our tourist activity was completed with a visit to the small museum where the nice lady gave us a guided tour. Hard to believe this was quite the place in its day.
It was so nice to spend time on the back roads. We told ourselves we have to do more of this. Our GPS took us on a convoluted route, but it was fun. And we had time. Not soon after we joined the fast roads and were flagged down by police hiding around a corner. Unknown to us, we were meant to be driving with our headlights on. Maybe a rookie mistake, but we knew the shakedown was coming. The second mistake was handing over Stephen’s California drivers license. Clearly we have a lot to learn about dealing with the ‘Police’. The situation was resolved with a negotiated sum of 500 soms (around USD $10). The Police officer (aka thug) claimed the alternative was a fine, payable in Bishkek where we could also collect the drivers license (once paid). In hindsight, maybe we could have waited and talked ourselves out of this. Of course not everyone is driving with their head lights on (it’s about 50-50, and in some places even less with lights on) and there were no signs telling us that we must have head lights on, which made this whole process quite frustrating. Our zero-tolerance for bribery wasn’t not working out that well. The rest of the drive was painless and the mountain scenery was really quite beautiful. It was for that scenery that we came to Kyrgyzstan after all.
We took the northern road and around 3pm started to look for a place to stay. The towns along the lake were not that inspiring, the best of the bunch seemed to be Cholpon-Ata, where we stopped at the very nice ‘3 Crowns Hotel’ (Tri Koroni). Dinner was at a small local eatery where they had real trouble understanding us. But after pointing at some pictures we got bread, salad and shashlik, so we were happy.
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
The morning tourist activity was a visit to the nearby petroglyphs. The visit was pretty good, with the stones laid out in a large field. We could wander around on a mini treasure hunt looking for markings, some dating back to The Bronze Age (1500BC) but most are anywhere from 8th century BC to 1st century AD.
The rest of the day was spent driving to Karakol. Although the distances are not too far and the roads are very good, our progress was a little slow due to lots of little towns with unclear speed limits and the constant threat of Police lurking in the trees. But we made it without being stopped. The drive was very nice with the lake being surrounded by snow capped mountains.
Once at Karakol we headed to the Madanur Hotel (English site to come online later) to retrieve a Macbook Air charger left by Craig from Bermuda Rover. Getting the charger back to him would have to be sorted out later. The lady running the hotel was very nice and after having a look at the small but clean rooms, we decided to book in for the night.
Caroline found a nice coffee shop (Karakol Coffee) selling lattes. We updated our blog quickly that we were in Karakol, just in case Jennifer and Justin were passing through. Less than an hour later they sent an email and we had a small catching up. We finished the evening with a nice stroll around town and dinner in one of the few restaurants.
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
The hotel manager kindly rang the Uzbekistan Embassy to make an appointment for us. We were lucky to get an appointment for 10am on Friday (June 27th). Before leaving town we got our caffeine fix in Coffee Karakol and ended up having an interesting chat with the owner.
The drive around the southern side of the lake was a little less developed and a little nicer for it. The road was also a little closer to the lake shore which helped. Along the way we visited Fairytale Canyon. We drove up and did a small hike around the canyon. Nothing to grand, but good to break the day’s drive.
There are not so many hotels along the southern route, so we ended up in Balykchy, which is a bleak little town. It has one redeeming feature, which is a very new and very nice hotel. It turned out to be a good place to stop for the night. We had pot-noodles in our room for dinner.
Thursday, June 26, 2014
As we drove out of Balykchy the over-achieving Police stopped us, and just about ever car passing. And although we had done nothing wrong, they were clearly delaying us and looking to find a way to extract a bribe. A local stepped up and told the Police something and things got a little tense. The father of the local was clearly not happy his son was intervening on our behalf, and the local himself was visibly shaking, presumably from the stress of the situation. The whole exchange was in Russian and it was hard to tell what was happening. In the end our documents were returned and we went on our way. It was heartening to see that a local, while being hassled himself, spoke out to help us, at risk to himself. The whole Police shake-down thing gets old very quickly and leaves a really bad taste. We crawled the rest of the way to Bishkek without incident.
