Rewards of exertion

Rob McKenzie travels to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

Bishkek is the capital of Kyrgyzstan and is located on the Silk Road. It is in the Chui valley overlooked by the Kyrgyz Ala Too or Alatau mountains. (Getty Images)

Bishkek looks neither old nor new. In the harsh light of day, it can seem as if the Kyrgyz capital’s builders got about two-thirds of the way through the job circa 1972, then decided that they had something better to do. Sidewalks are rutted, apartment blocks often crumbly, builders’ rubble gathers dust; and the farther you are from the city centre, the more dilapidated it is. On the other hand the city is lush with greenery, the streets feel safe, the food is hearty and the remarkable Ala-Too mountain range rises so sharply at the south edge of town that if not for its white peaks, it would resemble a wall of shadow. My primary purpose in travelling to Kyrgyzstan was to hike in those mountains.

It is evening on Bishkek’s Togolok Moldo, a street named after a poet. I am at Chaikhana Jalal-Abad, waiting for my laghnam (noodles with meat), tandoori samsi (baked samosa) and chai. Total cost: 152 som (Dh11).

The chaikhana’s seating is on raised and carpeted platforms — ideal for lounging – with a smaller, square table on short legs at the centre of each platform. It’s almost like eating breakfast in bed.

Two local men ask with gestures if they can share my table. Of course they can. We attempt conversation. I am from Canada, I say. The first man writes down his phone number. I parry with my address. The people at the next table ask what’s going on. From the answer of the second of my new friends, I make out words that sound like “Amerika”, “turisti” and “addressa”.

The first man shows me his identity document in a red plastic booklet. I reciprocate with my Daman card. “Passaport?” the second man asks. “Health card,” I say, and make a coughing sound. “Passaport,” the second man agrees. The first man reads my name on the Daman card as: Robert Andreyev Mesken (outside Kyrgyzstan, my middle name is Andrew).

The point is not that we could not communicate. The point is that Kyrgyzstan is one of those increasingly rare places where the tourist is an oddity, and is met with interest rather than artifice.

The next day in the town of Kochkor, which was the base for my impending hike, my presence would rank as even more of a novelty. “Allo! Allo!” boys cried out from across dirt streets. When I halloed back, they burst out in giggles. A few bold lads even bicycled up to shake hands. And when I went to an unmarked shop to buy some keepsakes (the country is known for its felt carpets) I received a discount for being the first customer of the day, at 2pm in the afternoon.

The country has an innocence to it. One night, in the narrow car park at the edge of Bishkek’s Dubovy Park, three young couples waltzed gingerly as Stand By Me rose like pale smoke from the open boot of a car. It seemed a scene from a manufactured past, yet there they were.

The two-hour minibus ride to Kochkor cost 350 som (Dh24); I probably overpaid. Occupying the seat across the aisle from me was a furnace-sized orange vat marked “concentrated apple puree”, with its weight listed as “240” (kilograms, I presumed). The vat was held in place by a thin rope. This could not be good. Inevitably, the rope came loose and the barrel toppled sidelong. Fortunately, it was empty, and I did not end life as a pureed punchline.

Upon arriving in Kochkor, I walked to a travel agency called Community Based Tourism and booked a guide for a two-day hike in the jailoos, the mountain meadows. The price was 9,190 som (Dh619) including food and yurtstays – about a third of the prices I had been quoted when making inquiries from abroad.

On the eve of my trek I dined at Cafe Vizit. It was the poshest place in Kochkor (tablecloths). Menu items included Kazakh Meat, Chinese Meat and Mysterious Salad. Though normally a fan of mysteries, I stuck with the laghnam.

The next morning, a driver took my two guides (one was a trainee) and me to the trailhead. We started walking, up, up, up. It turns out that to get to the mountain meadows, you must traverse a mountain pass. The trail started at 2,300 metres and the pass was at 2,600 metres. A 300-metre ascent might not sound like a lot, but on winding paths when you are short of breath because of the altitude, and are 48 years old, it wears you down.

Eventually we reached the meadows and had a lunch of bread, water and chocolate by a stream. We drank from the stream and washed our hands in it. What a beautiful, clean feeling – the reward for exertion.

At the end of the day’s five-hour walk, we reached the night’s yurt camp at 3,000 metres. Our host family had prepared a snack of bread, jams and bowls of tea. The jams had slices of fruit in them, and my guide Almaz (the trainee) sweetened her tea with a slice of jammy apricot. The tea was about the best I’ve ever had, which must have been because of the mountain water.

The way the Kyrgyz make tea is to brew very strong tea in a small pot, pour a bit of that into your bowl, then dilute it with boiling water from a samovar. I could not get enough of this. The Kyrgyz among us were the same, and the young woman working the samovar was busy indeed, constantly taking in people’s empties, filling them and handing them back, her silver nail polish a splash of contrast against the white ceramic of the bowls. I also tried the national drink, kymys, which is fermented mare’s milk. It tasted like milk with vinegar in it.

In late afternoon the head of the family appeared on horseback, a black sheep straddling his lap. This would be dinner. At dusk, six of us went to bed under heavy blankets in the yurt – three guides, three tourists (myself plus two Swiss travelling on horseback). Only the snorer slept.

Before dinner I had asked Raskhan, my guide, which leg of the trek was tougher: the one we had done today, or the one we would do tomorrow? “Tomorrow,” he said.

The second day’s pass was at 3,400 metres. It was a winding three-hour climb from the yurt camp. We met a man from Naryn, a town farther south, who was touring the area on horseback. With Almaz as translator, he asked if I wanted to add my backpack to his horse’s load.

“I’m OK,” I said.

A few minutes later, he asked again. This time I just handed him the pack.

After a while, we stopped to drink some of his kymys. It was in a squat yellow tub that said:

DANGER

CLINICAL WASTE

SHARPS COLLECTOR

Then it had a biohazard sign and some stuff in Cyrillic. Alas, any residual biohazard was not enough to cut through the tang of the kymys.

As we rose towards the pass, we passed a lick of glacier and the wind picked up. I found it better to look back and be heartened by how far we had come than to look ahead and be daunted by how far we had to go. I never doubted I would make it to the top (what choice was there?) but at least had the sense to pace myself. By the end it was 20 paces, then stop for a breath; 20 paces, stop; 20, stop. At the top we took windswept pictures and descended into the high meadow lands where the Kyrgyz have for centuries pastured their animals in summer.

At lunch (lake fish cooked on a wood fire) in another yurt, I gave the man from Naryn my baseball cap in gratitude for his good turn. He went his way and we went ours.

Rain and hail began to fall. I remembered why I had brought the cap in the first place. It would be a handy thing to have, if rain and hail began to fall.

The second day’s hike would last eight hours in all. The loveliest moment came after the rain, when a herd of 15 horses, some of them colts, galloped past us as we walked. Such speed and grace.

When at last we reached the final yurt camp near the shore of serene Song Kol Lake, I crawled under a fat blanket, stripped free of my wet clothes and dozed.

A nap was one thing; a good night’s sleep would prove another. My heart and lungs felt enlarged, which was unnerving, and I could not find a position to lie in that did not hurt my spine and hips. It was a fitful night. I was beat. Happy, but beat.

I loved Kyrgyzstan but my next holiday will be less challenging. That trek took a lot out of me. From here on in, it’s beach resorts and bicycling in Provence (he said, and wondered whether it was true).

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