July 24 - We caught a plane to Bishkek, Manas Airport, on an Altyn Air flight from Dubai's small Terminal 2, poor cousin to the much more pretentiously garrish Terminal 1. We had left Abu Dhabi for the Dubai airport in plenty of time. It reminded me of adventures in Oman where I would pack for trekking and walk out the front door, catch a ride with anyone leaving campus and get a lift to the taxi stand, take a shared taxi to the next town up the road, get another cab to the next one, keep going with people driving their 4x4's home from market into the wadis, and just carry on walking up the mountain, sleep wild at the top, and come down the other side, hike to a road, and start reversing the process till I returned home a day or two later.
Now we were three, Bobbi, Dusty, and I, riding down the elevator packed for hiking in mountains, flagging a cab to the bus station, and finding transport going to Dubai airport. We had left home hours before we had to be there, and as we neared the outskirts of Dubai, it seemed we had timed it with too much time to kill at Dubai airport. But as we approached the city center, we were reminded why we needed so much time - the traffic in Dubai is perpetually snarled. It takes an hour and a half to reach the first shopping malls from Abu Dhabi and an hour to get from there to the airport, a trip that used to take 20 min. So we arrived barely within the 2 hours required check-in time.
Dubai's Terminal 1 is state of the art, garrish, but terminal two was more truly third world. Smoking was allowed everywhere, we didn't recognize the names of the airlines departing from this terminal, and there was no P.A. system announcing flights, just airport staff running about asking passengers if they were going hither or yon? Eventually we heard callers shouting out "Biskek, Departing from Gate 2!" Ground staff had eschewed the technology and organization skills that would have printed a seat assignment on our boarding cards (no telling what other corners had been cut on this Altyn Air flight) so seating on the flight was "free" which meant you had to jostle your way on board and fight for a good seat, but Bobbi managed to board quickly and save seats for the three of us together. The four hour flight took from 11 to 3 a.m. our time, but we went forward two time zones and arrived at Manas Airport at 5 a.m. in Bishkek July 25th.
The airport at Bishkek was notably relaxed. There was one immigration staff writing out visas for the dozens of foreigners who had descended on Kyrgyzstan just then, and he was also keeper of the forms for applying for the visas so that each of these foreigners had to get his attention and interrupt him to get a form and then get back in the queue, or more correctly, realize that wait a minute, this is Kyrgyzstan, there is no queue.
After half an hour managing that formality, it was on to the queues for the passport stamp, another 20 min, and then entry into the too-narrow door granting access to the apparant chaos of the baggage claim area. The door was too narrow because of all the people leaving with bags being delayed by the single tag checker who was doing such a stoically good job that there was a glut of people trying to exit with their paraphanalia, while those just coming from immigration were trying to squeeze inside. But it was a controlled chaos, our bags were on the floor piled among the others, and we were soon in the part of the airport where the money changers operated from offices that doubled as bedrooms. They were friendly and accommodating, and the taxi touts hovering at our elbows quoted consistent prices (350 som, less than $10 for the trip into town) and offered up their mobiles to contact the hotels listed in our Lonely Planet. So as not to become beholden to one of these I insisted on making the call from a telephone office. No one so far spoke any English and we spoke no Russian, but people were friendly and responsive to hand signals. Unfortunately the people at the other end of the phone line could not see my hand signals, and it became apparant that calling budget hotels from the airport was an exercise in futility, so we finally made a deal with a cab driver and piled in for the trip into town.
The airport was in the countryside, 20 min from the town. Bishkek in the early morning presented itself as a flat town with clear skies and relatively cool temperatures compared to Houston and Abu Dhabi. Mountains with snow in the distance above the straight tree-lined streets revealed the reason for the mild weather. We had requested a hotel run by a business school, and we arrived there without passing any tall buildings or making a clear distinction between town and country, so apart from the map in our LPG there were no clues in the tree-lined streets of where the center was. The cab driver made a show of claiming the price quoted was per person, not for the entire cab, but we dismissed him (where had we heard that one before?) and it was the only time anyone tried to rip us off our entire time in the country. We paid him the agreed price, thanked him, walked off, and he neither persisted nor pursued.
The business college, which our Lonely Planet said might have rooms, was quiet at that hour in the morning and according to the lady on duty, was completely full with sleeping guests, and fully booked well into August. We lingered on the couches to reconoiter our position, and then set off for the hotel around the corner, but it was full too, though we were told to come back around ten. We used the LPG map of town to wander the straight green streets, feeling like we were in a town without a center, like somewhere in Africa, to find two more hotels with no spaces before hitting on a homestay (through "an unmarked gate next to a kiosk opposite the German Embassy" = how would you find it without LPG). The proprietor showed us two rooms, spacious and comfy, his home after all, $10 a person, one communal toilet and shower for all. Dusty's room was actually the family library, and Vance and Bobbi had a big room with large windows opening out to trees full of squirrels and birds. When at night, Bobbi could not sleep, she sat at the window, listening to the peaceful sounds of birds, insects, dogs, and night noises. A good way to spend a sleepless night - jet lag probably.
We walked about town to find coffee and then sample some one-dollar beers and a greasy laghman soup before deciding to go back and crash for the afternoon and sleep off the plane ride. Then we came out to an internet cafe and started this wiki.
Eating here has been interesting - most menus are in Russian and when we do find a place with an English menu we find that maybe they don't have food anyway! Consequently, we had one awful meal of greasy noodle soup and a more palatable lunch of Russian soup, baked potato, and sandwich. At least ordering beer is straight foward, more or less, and that makes the lack of food more tolerable.
July 26 - We thought we would get a move on today and visit some sights, but we had gotten up early, showered, then went back to our room, cuddled more and slept until noon! Dusty woke us up - unheard of! - but we groggily got out of bed. Dusty had chores to do - shopping for a flashlight, writing and mailing a postcard, etc., and we wanted to visit travel agents, change money, etc. , so we spent most of the day doing business.
In the end, we decided ONE MORE DAY in Bishkek. We'll do a day hike tomorrow,and then leave for Karakol to do some more serious hiking and visit the Sunday market.
Vance's Impressions of Bishkek. We are all at the cybercafé here. Bobbi is updating the wiki. I'm working offline and will add this to what she is adding to what I wrote yesterday. A wiki is a good way to work on a family travel document. Later we can add photos here.
We arrived really tired yesterday, and we gave ourselves yesterday to relax and explore Bishkek. Today, our second day here, Bobbi and I slept till noon, which would have been 10 a.m. in Abu Dhabi and some time at night in Houston where we'd been the past three weeks.
We must have been tired. The homestay where we've based ourselves is friendly. Dusty has a room in the library (his room has a wall of books in cryllic mostly). Our bigger room with the double bed has a closet with someone else's clothes in it. It's like staying in someone's house as a guest. We leave a window open all the time to bring in fresh air. Still it's a little warm there, but the humidity is mountain low so we don't sweat. We need a sheet over us at night only to cover our ears from the occasional mosquito from the open window. In the dark a dog barks for hours at a time. In the morning there is pounding from a nearby construction project somewhere in this residential low-rise city. In the tree outside our window a squirrel jumps about unaware that we are on the other side of the glass. It's interesting to see squirrels, and to be able to sleep fitfully for hours despite these disturbances. There is something relaxing about the place.
So today we got started at noon to organize ourselves for moving on from Bishkek. This entails walking about incessantly up and down the grid of streets in the city. The town has such a pleasant atmosphere. The women are strikingly modern yet exotically ethnic. Bobbi can comment on the men. You can tell that everyone enjoys the summer respite. Snows come in October here, then the fog. Right now we can see the snowy mountains to the south, and going there is one of our options for tomorrow. We went from breakfast at Fatboy's where we came to appreciate the straightforward English items on the menu despite the insipid coffee, which we took outside under umbrellas. We went to the government dept store Zum to price local items (to get an idea of price in case we encounter them in traveling). People there were welcoming. Outside, people were drinking beer from soviet style vending machines (require an attendant) next to the shwarma and samosa stands. We warded off beggars and strolled the Chuy Prospect to get information on trekking and maps from small offices in nondescript buildings which we could only find with LPG, and armed with a program of sorts, went to drink beer by the water fountains at less than a dollar each.
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