Maribibi_travels

Kyrgyzstan, like Tajikistan, is more than 80% mountains, many of them over 3000 meters high and the highest reaching over 7000m (within the Tian Shen range, near the Chinese border). Some of the hikes are easily accessible from the capital Bishkek – such as Ala Archa, where I went with Shamil the guide. (A great recommendation from the Tourist Office within the Bishkek History museum.) I only had just over a half a day available (had a ticket for the ballet that night) so we couldn’t go too far. An hour’s drive and we were in the foothills. The path was well used, if frozen and slippery, and Shamil produced a pair of chains to attach to my boots. A few yards into the walk we were welcomed by a red squirrel and a flock of very friendly tits. Shamil had brought some sunflower seeds for them and there was a feast.

On the way up we met (well, were overtaken by) a number of climbers with enormous rucksacks on their backs. They were going up to Uchitel’, one of the peaks, and were going to spend a fortnight trekking. Shamil was planning on climbing up the next day to spend some time with them.

The trip to the two waterfalls and to lake Issyk-Kul (south side) , the second highest above-sea- level inland water after lake Titicaca, was an all day trip that started at 6 am, in the dark, and snow falling. The two waterfalls were both frozen and the walk to them was a bit of a challenge through knee-high snow (and falling). Good fun though.

The Fairy Canyon is a pretty area of erosion and water shaped forms. One could easily spend hours wondering around. The Issyk-Kul lake changes colour with the weather. The beach felt muddy and cold but one could see why it was so popular with the Kyrgyz – after all, theirs is a landlocked country and Issyk-Kul the closest to what a sea offers.

The Bishkek Art Museum has been given a “starter” stock by the Soviet authorities in the 80’s – the Bradt Guide wryly comments that the St Petersburg museums were hardly going to miss any of these works. But I found I liked a few of them.

The ballet I went to see was in two parts, classical and modern, both with references to spring. Not many tickets had been sold, so a group of soldiers on national service was brought in. They clapped very enthusiastically.

ALMATY

Almaty is only a few hours by car from Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. On the advice of Shamil, my guide on the hike to Ala Archa (close to Bishkek), downloaded InDriver, an app which gives you an option to offer how much you want to pay for the car journey. It requires some knowledge of what a reasonable cost is (I ask locals) and gives you more options. (Yandex is the Uber of Central Asia and I have used it extensively. It helps being able to say you have a ride when you get out of an airport or a railway station and all the taxi drivers descend on you like vultures on a carcass.)

The quickest way across the border is on foot. Cars on a busy crossing, such as Korday, 21km from Bishkek, sometimes wait for several hours to be checked. On the Khazak side, shared taxis await. On this occasion, we were three women who decided to share the cost of the fourth person – faster than waiting for the fourth, and more comfortable.

Almaty was the capital of Khazakstan until December 1997. It is the largest city in Khazakstan (over 3 million inhabitants, to Astana’s 1,5), built in the foothills of the mountains and it has a cosmopolitan feel. Cafes and European shops are everywhere and the city has a very young vibe – lots of students.

Walking is an option, but the town is large and buses plentiful and cheap. (For the time being, one can still use cash on Almaty buses, though most people have an electronic ticket on their phone – the Kaspi app is their way of paying .) Plenty of monuments and parks and lots of cafes to rest weary feet. And, of course, the opportunity to ski right above the town.

The one trip I took outside Almaty was definitely worth getting up for early – to the Charyn river canyons. A crisp, beautiful day, a good hike down through a lovely, easily accessed canyon to where, as one tourist said, “rechka bezhaet” (the river runs). On the way back from the river, I took a shortcut up the steep hillside to get to the panorama viewpoint, and the ranger, who thought I was over ambitious in attempting the climb, sent a drone up to see I was ok. The canyon that is walkable is the oldest – some 27 million years to carve it, but the same river is still working at it and there are 2 “younger” canyons (c. 23-25 million years) we saw from above.

KARAGANDA

Why Karaganda? people ask. Because I wanted to see a place that has figured much in Stalinist USSR, the place where thousands of people had been sent to work (and perish) in the coal and copper mines, from the 1930s to 1960. Karaganda was the distribution centre for the Karlag – the Karaganda Gulags. The museum in Dolinka is housed in the former Karlag administration building and though the display is sanitised and “presented”, the horror of the concentration camp seeps through. The bleakness of the area around the building, the emptiness and the cold, the occasional heap of the open-cast mine and a chimney here and there, make it clear even today that this was not, as the Soviet rule claimed, a re-education centre.

I did manage to hear a concert in the Miners’ Culture Centre hall and had a comfortable stay in the hotel Chaika (The Seagull – as the Bradt guide puts it, it must be the furthest seagull from any sea) before heading to Astana. Chaika was the place where the astronauts would come to rest after their space flights – on the walls there are signed photos of Gagarin, Tereshkova… (I would like to have gone to Baikanur, the space port in Khazakstan, but the tours were all booked – there is a planned launch in March. Also, the area is under the dual Russian-Khazak ownership, meaning I would have needed a Russian visa.)

ASTANA

The train journey from Karaganda to Astana took some 4 hours and I had a 3rd class coupe to myself. The train tickets are cheap and the train journeys popular – certainly more comfortable (and less hair-raising) than a bus. Astana started life as a Russian fort in the 19th ct and later a Soviet administrative post in the ill-thought through Virgin Lands Campaign instigated by Khrushchev – trying to make the steppe into grain-producing fields. One of the reasons mentioned for the move (1994 – 1997) was that Almaty was very close to the Chinese border… There have been several changes of the name – Akmolinsk, Tselinograd, Akmola, Nur-Sultan… Astana means the Capital in Khazak. It has developed rapidly, with oil money being spent freely and the centre is a display of bold modern architecture. I can’t help thinking that it feels like an upstart, a nouveau riche to Almaty’s old money, all bright, angular, shiny, showing its wealth in the planned design (by the Japanese architect/planner Kurosawa Kisho) and in hiring the best architects the money could buy (including 2 major buildings by Sir Norman Foster). The Ishil river is central, with the right bank being the old part of town and the left, new.

The Khazaks are very keen to attract tourists and there is much to see and do – especially if you come in spring or summer. I just wish tourist information was more readily available – no tourist office as such, though I found one inside the Beitarek, the symbol of Khazakstan (the tree of life with the egg of renewal on top); very few places to top up your bus card – a passenger on a bus took me to purchase the card at a counter inside the circus building… And unless you have the Kaspi app, finding a machine to top up is a needle-in-a-haystack exercise.

But I really enjoyed several trips to the opera – a Khazak opera Kyz Zhybek; a traditional singing celebration of Nowruz, the Spring festival based on the Persian solar calendar and a ballet, Sherezade.

The trip to Borovoe – or Burabay resort: the Kahazakstan’s reply to a Lake district. The high season lasts for some 5 months – and March is not in it. But it was fun walking on the frozen lake and through the pine and birch woods. And I met Nazgul’ , an English teacher, as she was helping prepare iftar (an evening meal to break the Ramadan fast). Khazakstan is vast, and I have barely scratched its (icy) surface.

(I went to Turkistan, south Khazakstan, on a trip from Kyrgyzstan, and as it was a bit different, I thought it deserved its own space.)

The 2 trains from Bukhara to Khiva are the night ones that start in Tashkent or Andijan, in the east of the country. Got up at 02:30 for the 03:52 train, which I caught by the skin of my teeth – the taxi booked by the hotel turned up late and I had to run – the station entrance is a long way away from the drop off. Running with a heavy rucksack on your back may be ok if you want to join the SAS, but it’s not for me.

This train was the old Soviet stock, with a diesel engine (the line is not electrified beyond Bukhara) and old-fashioned coupe style sleeping berths. I settled quietly in mine in the dark, aware there were 2 people in the bunks opposite. (They were two brothers, in their 50s or so, returning home to Urgench from a wedding in Navoi. Their womenfolk (four) were in a different cabin. We had a nice chat in the morning over the railway- provided cup of tea and they gave me a large round of filo pastry bread (patir). Chewy and very tasty - a kind of borek with no filling.

I was, yet again, the only guest in my hotel, the Khan’s Palace. (A friend has suggested that I should call my blog “I was the only visitor”. ) All of the Old Khiva inner city, the Ichan Qala, is a museum. The thick walls surround it, and the guide says it is possible to walk along part of them – at present, very little, maybe 50 meters near the North Gate. The town thrived for centuries (and was sacked and rebuilt) and grew on the Silk Road goods travelling to and fro. As it spread, another wall was built further out to accommodate this – Dichan Qala, much bigger and having 11 gates. There are some buildings of interest there (such as the 19th century Nurallabay palace, and some of the walls are still there, but it is the Ichan Qala we all come to see. 

One of the courtyards in the palace is surrounded by the buildings of the Khan’s harem. The 4 official wives on the left, the 40 concubines on the right. Though it may not have been exactly 40 – it is a number used in muslim lore to denote ‘many’ – Alibaba and the 40 thieves, the 40 virgins being pursued by the enemy and hiding in caves…

The beautiful, original majolica tiles from the 18 ct can be recognised by their Arabic markings (to help match patterns). The new ones have the markings in latin script.

There is a timeless feel to walking along the quiet streets of the old town of an evening, minarets rising by the mosques, madrasahs and caravanserais standing shoulder to shoulder, the large, carved gates to the Khan’s palace closed for the day. 

Old Khiva is under UNESCO protection. The renovations are done sympathetically. Some madrasahs have been made into hotels – one of the biggest is the East Star hotel, next to the postcard pretty 19ct Kalta Minor minaret, the large, beautifully glazed but unfinished minaret ( 29m  – it was to be 70-80m tall, but Muhammad Amin Khan died in battle half way through the construction and the heirs did not carry on).  Several more caravanserais and madrasahs are in the process of being converted to hotels and crafts and souvenir shops. There has been a suggestion from the Presidential office that the remaining 250 or so families that still live within the old walls should be moved out and the dwellings made into tourist accommodation. Thankfully, it has not been enacted (so far). 

I’m not certain why all the culverts are left uncovered – even at pedestrian crossings. It must be a nightmare for pushchairs and wheelchair users (haven’t seen many).

I was told that the best view of sunsets over Khiva was from the Polvon Ota hotel, near the East Gate. The hotel used to be a madrasah, and access to the upper floor is a challenge – steep, spiral staircase (and no lift) – how do they take the luggage up?.  But the views over the city are rewarding. They are even more spectacular from the adjacent minaret. Even if the climb is up yet another spiral, dark, narrow, uneven staircase.  

The markets are places that permanently fascinate me. The way food and goods are displayed, the variety of merchandise, the way people behave. I have been greeted often as I wander around, asked where I was from (and, of course – how old I was), what did I think of their city… And whenever I needed help in finding a place, people have been invariably helpful – often taking me to within sight of where I wanted to go. 

The women’s footwear was another thing that caught my attention, especially the vendors at the market. They wear several layers of (hand-knitted) woolen socks and then stick their feet, or however much or little will fit in, into a slipper. Most of the time the heels are hanging free.

So many people have gold teeth. I wondered why – one explanation was that it was a hangover from Soviet times, but no explanation as to purpose – was it decorative or needed because of poor teeth/diet or poor dentistry?

I shared a dinner with the Chinese girls I had met along the walk to the taxi “rank” at Khiva station- between us we drove a hard bargain and got a ride to the old town for a third of the asking price. We were going to share the cost of the excursion to see the forts in the Karakalpak desert and the Igor Savitsky museum of disapproved 20th ct Soviet artists in Nukus, but it didn’t work out (Jing is doing a PHD in anthropology and wanted to go to 10 fortresses – I wanted to see the art).

There are some 50 forts dotted around the Karakalpak (kara= black, kalpak=hat/cap – the land of men who wear black hats) desert, though not all have been excavated or explored. The 4 I visited gave me a good idea of what they may have been like in their heyday: thick, well fortified walls, 360 degree views over the plain, room for the garrison and villagers.

The Savitsky museum in Nukus. The works collected are so varied it is now hard to see what was the objection – the socialist realism may have been the tune to which all artists had to sing, but a number of artists have been disapproved of for reasons that had little to do with art.

Bukhara is only a couple of hours away from Samarkand on the comfortable fast train (the same one I took from Tashkent). The weather changed more quickly. The rain was coming down in sheets as we arrived. I was the last off the train, covering my rucksacks in waterproofs and hoping it wasn’t too far to the transport – the Bukhara train station is not in Bukhara at all, but in Kogon, 10 km away, known as Bukhara 1. The taxi drivers were there, touting; it is not easy to drive the price down when you are getting soaked, and they know it. (Managed to get it to half of the asking price.)

The beauty of Old Bukhara was not diminished by the rain, just different. The houses are built very close and the narrow streets all seem to connect – I found several ways to get to my hotel, though at first it looked like it was in a cul-de-sac. With a 16ct hoja’s tomb in the middle of the yard/parking area. There are many old mulberry trees around, and some truly old cars – like this Moskvich.

The space around the madrasahs and mosques, forts and palaces has been cleared and paved with marble, a far cry from the dust (or, as on my first two days, water and mud) of the past.

Most of the students’ rooms in the old madrasahs are now crafts and souvenir shops. Silks, embroidery, miniatures, tat, books, gold, silver and copper, hats, ceramics. (Some old madrasahs still use the spaces for learning, but most are now given to tourist trade, an important part of the local economy. Though people are quick to point out that (new) Bukhara is a thriving town with a variety of industries and enterprises.)

Uzbek food is quite rich – lots of meat and dairy, very tasty breads, lots of pickles and dried fruit (in winter), plenty of nuts and seeds. And ubiquitous chai. Samsa, the Uzbek pasty (beef, chicken, mutton, potato or pumpkin filling with onion and spices), is available on many a corner at lunchtime: the earthenware round ovens (tandir) are fired up in late morning and the queue forms quickly once the samsas that have been slapped onto the hot sides of the oven start being scraped off.

On a day trip out of the town (very flat landscape – after all, Bukhara was an oasis in the desert), besides the impressive mausoleums and places of pilgrimage, the Khan’s lovely summer palace with peacocks strutting in the garden, there was a ceramics workshop that has been in the same family for 300 years – they somehow even managed to carry on during the Soviet era when private enterprise was not encouraged. They still use the same techniques in making the ceramics, including powering the potters’ wheel with their foot. The family is moving with the times though – they have a language school upstairs and I met a group of students learning English. Very polite and a bit shy, but it didn’t take them long to ask if I had an Instagram…

I did enjoy the hamam. Tucked away behind the giant minaret, it has been serving women of Bukhara since the 1500s. (There is also a men’s/mixed one, from the same period.) I came at the right time – no other customers – and Mahfuza took her time to sit with me and was wonderful in explaining the role of the hamam in women’s life in the past – a club where women could discuss matters freely, where young women were prepared for marriage, pregnancy and after birth care and also where Khan’s harem candidates were spotted. I took a walk afterwards, and near the Chor Minor madrasah (The 4 brothers) a girl with her grandparents asked me (in English) where I was from, how old I was, if I liked Bukhara, did I have children… she was clearly gifted – she has only been learning English for a year…:)

These last two images: one saddened me – the camel in front of the Bukhara Fort, looking out of place, muzzled, there for us to climb on and have a photo taken. The A frame ladder didn’t make it into the photo.) The other amused me – here, too, someone threw the scooter into the canal. Getting it out was not easy – too heavy to lift with one hand, so they had to go fetch a rope…)

The fast train from Tashkent to Samarkand takes just over two hours. A comfortable journey, with staff welcoming you at the door of every carriage (and checking your ticket), very much like an airline crew would. The trains get booked up very quickly, even in winter, and I dread to think what it might be like in high tourist season. Tickets are wonderfully cheap – long may it last – about £13 one way to Samarkand, then £9.60 to carry on to Bukhara. I shall also be taking a sleeper (at an ungodly 03:50, a night train that starts in the east of the country) to Khiva, a 6,5 hour trip, for £13. 

The Bolshevik revolution and subsequent Soviet rule were not a blessing. However, the railways built across the USSR, linking all 16 (former Soviet) republics, made an immense change in the cultural and economic landscape of Central Asia. The rail tracks are still in place, but a number of them are not in use and often are not maintained. Local issues, long standing fights over territory, arbitrary rules, political unwillingness, make land journeys much longer as one needs to nip back into other countries. You have to go from Turkey to Georgia to get to Armenia (tantalising, seeing the border you cannot cross), then again to Georgia to get to Azerbaijan. The next bit of toggling will be going from Tajikistan to Kyrgyzstan, via Uzbekistan.

Samarkand. Even the sound of the name has an exotic, magical quality to me. My little B&B was hugging the walls of Gur-Amir Mausoleum, a graceful building with a usual tall arched entrance, a courtyard, and the mausoleum itself where the jade tombstone of Amir Timur lies among other family tombstones. It was good to see plov (Uzbekistan rice, meat and vegetable dish – like a pilau) being prepared for lunch on one side of the courtyard of the Gur-Amir mausoleum; on the other side is the giant block of stone, thought to have been a pedestal for Amir Timur’s throne, and an immense font that would have been filled with pomegranate juice for his soldiers to drink.

Amir Timur desired to be buried in his birthplace, Shakhrabaz, but Samarkand had been his royal seat, and so others decided he would stay there. The guides tell a nice story about the way he is depicted in different places – in Shakhrabaz, he is standing – that’s where he rose; in Tashkent he is on a horse, for his victories, and in Samarkand, he sits, as this was his capital.

The Registan, with famously gorgeous buildings on its three side, the gently leaning minarets, the blue of the tiles and the intricacy of the calligraphy in stone, the geometric designs weaving seamlessly throughout, does not disappoint. The pale marble square makes the colours stand out even more. (Though there is a little problem, especially on the marble viewing platform when it snows/ is wet – it becomes very slippery and even the sweepers with their besom brooms shuffle carefully across this shiny skating rink.)

The blue tiles of Shah-i-Zinda are dazzling, the arabesques and designs whirl with colour and beauty. It struck me that the majority of the places we come to see are tombs, necropolises, mausoleums, cities of the dead.

There are a number of madrasahs, mosques and museums, that are currently being renovated – some will be ready for the season which is due to start in March, but not all. I found it interesting that a museum such as Afrasiab, “the most important museum in Samarkand” (it is a long walk to it from the Bibi-Khanim Mausoleum – about 4 km) was very much open and charging for entry, despite the fact that there were fewer than half exhibits available, workmen drilling and definitely no video explaining the frescoes (needed, as the originals are faint and missing some key parts). The archeological site of the fort (one of the largest in the world) was so muddy and waterlogged, I didn’t need to be told there was little point in going there.

Ulug Beg was one of Amur Timur’s grandsons, and well favoured (he was given Bukhara and Samarkand, among other bits, as a gift). He is known as the Astronomer King and his observatory, built in the 1420s, provided measurements so accurate that some have not been bettered until the computer age. The one part that has survived the destruction wreaked by fanatics (no change there) in 1449 is a part of the meridian arc. The radius of the sextant had been just over 40m, and the solution to the problem of having a building that could accommodate it without collapsing on itself was to sink the arc into the ground. (The Lonely Planet and Wikipedia provided the information.) One can still see the notches used for the measurements on the metal and it must have been a sight to behold when the sextant and the astrolabe were in place.

I can’t help but mention one more mausoleum – that of Daniel, of the lions’ den fame. Samarkand is one of 6 places that has the tomb of Daniel. It is a place of pilgrimage and there is a spring of water below it that is thought by many to be sacred. The legend has it that Daniel’s severed leg (could not find any reference to how it got severed) keeps growing inside his marble tomb . The tomb is currently 18m long and it is said that when the leg reaches it, “the world will surely end”.

The fog lay heavy on Tashkent as the Baku flight landed late on a Friday night. It seemed to be a surprise to everyone, including the 36 pilgrims returning from the Hajj – numerous phones were out videoing and photographing the fog. Fog aside, it makes a wonderful difference that entry into Uzbekistan is now visa free for UK and EU citizens. 

Staying with friends also makes a difference, the feel of a home rather than the impersonality of a hotel. And the weather has obliged too – it may be January, but the sun has been shining (or squinting through thin clouds) and it feels quite balmy. Having read so much about the Metro, had to go and have a look at a few stations. Tashkent has but recently introduced the Oyster type card (it costs 15000 sum = £1 to purchase, plus what you need to ride) and can be used on the buses as well. Each ride is ridiculously cheap – about 12-14p (cheaper on the card than buying individual tickets). And the stations are magnificent.

Tashkent was very much at the centre of the Silk Roads trade from the start and Chorsu market still exemplifies that. It is ENORMOUS, and if you look hard enough, you can probably find everything there, fruit, vegetables, nuts, spices, souvenirs, ceramics, fabrics, shoe repair, knife grinders, gold and silver, fur hats and shoes, meat and eggs, cheese… I still love being able to taste the wares before buying – a few nuts and dry fruits at lunchtime can stave of hunger. :))

The Hazrati Imam Complex is impressively grand (the mosque is still one of the largest around) and the area will be even grander once the Centre for Islamic Civilisations is finished. One of the oldest Qurans in the world is kept in the museum nearby, with a number of other Koranic scripts.

Also tried a local dish, a samsa – an Uzbek pasty. The fillings vary – potatoes, pumpkin, beef or mutton. Delicious and satisfying – the pastry is short, crumbly and moreish. Some good local tea to wash it down with, and all for less than £2.

The city sprawls – the 1966 earthquake, which had flattened most of the town, has also made the town planners decide to build out, not up. There are high rises, but no skyscrapers. The roads are wide, there are parks and recreation areas and plenty of trees. The Amir Timur Square is green, though the trees are very young. There had been a major outcry over the cutting of old trees in 2009, especially large chinars (plane trees) – the protesters called it “the tree genocide”. The wholesale cutting of trees took place suddenly, with no consultation, warning or explanation. When asked, the mayoralty reluctantly explained that it was done as an “aesthetic decoration” of the capital, “to make the city even more beautiful and landscaped.”

The Museum of Applied Arts showcases the intricate, painstaking work done in textile, embroidery, wood, metal, musical instruments. The detail is stunning and one can but stare at such dedication, skill and patience.

And tomorrow – Samarkand.