Life in Cambodia

Issyk-Kul Lake

Getting out of Jala-bad was a little adventure in itself: dealing with back-alley taxi drivers, hotly discussing in broken Russian (Matt) and wild hand gestures (Maggie), trying to convince them to take us to Kazerman (a no-man's land type place, halfway to Naryn, our intended destination) in their dilapidated looking Ladas and Volgas for a decent price...you can imagine that didn't work out well. So, we ran through a number of other ideas of onward travel after our loss with the Kazerman drivers before settling on striking towards Bishkek; where we presumed to eventually get our Uzbek visa (which is a whole 'nother story!). So we asked around and tracked down a shared taxi headed that way the following day and made preparations for him to pick us up at the hotel. Being two, we made it clear to him that we wanted to pick up two more folks to fill the car and cut our costs. We showed up with an empty car and I was a bit worried he was just going to try and sluff the entire costs on to us. We drove around for a bit before stopping at what turned out to be his buddy's house where we got invited in to eat quite a tasty breakfast and drink tea while everyone in the house practiced their little bit of English on us. I knew it would only be time before they figured out that we didn't have any children, and shortly thereafter, mock us for that. "But you are so old, it is now too late!" and that. Anyway, turns out that we were waiting on the buddy's father and once he arrived, we were off. The driver was like a madman, squealing tires through the mountain passes; overtaking that which could be overtaken, which by and large was anything else on the road. Everyone in the car was quite pleasant, curious to know how much mutton cost in the States and tsk-tsked at the unforgivable expense of apples. The views were nice, but in short, it was a long car ride through the mountains and we were happy to arrive in Bishkek by late afternoon. We were waiting on a letter of invitation (LOI) which is basically just another bureaucratic hoop we have to jump through to get an Uzbek visa (and of course, monetary dispense). We knew it wouldn't be ready yet, so our plan was to fly past Bishkek and head out to Issyk-Kul lake for a few days before returning (when our letter was promised to arrive). As a former Bishkek-ois, I will give my thoughts on the city later in the blog, but for now, you only need to know that we stayed one night and headed out to the lake. After being cheated out of a few more bucks by the taxi driver, we arrived at the lakeside resort town of Cholpon-Ata. During the summer that place is probably rocking, but here in early Fall, it was as good as a ghost town. There are a few hotels in town, but the usual style there is to stay in a house so we just cruised around town, popping our heads in places and enquiring of prices. Some places were dirty and cheap, some were dirty and expensive, but finally we found a nice place that was willing to bargain a bit. Though we weren't right on the beach, it really didn't matter too much since it was way too cold to even think about swimming. The best we got was dipping our toes in the water. It was cool to stand there on the beach, bright blue lake in front with huge mountains towering in the distance and to think just how far away from the ocean we actually were (just about as far as you can possibly get in the world!) That didn't stop a few hardy Russians from attempting a swim; though they didn't look like they were enjoying themselves too much. It was already late afternoon by the time we settled in, so the rest of that day was kinda just checking out the town, playing cards, and basically just lolling about the rest of the day. The next day was a big hike up in the hills outside of town in search of the elusive Cholpon-Ata petroglyphs. Supposedly, the ancients had been living in the area for centuries and left behind a little something for the future tourists to oogle at (or sadly, deface.) We knew the 'glyphs were north of town, but there was a hell of a lot else north of town and its not easy looking for a little goat scratched on a rock; so we wandered about for hours, which was OK because the glyphs were secondary to just getting out and seeing a bit of the area. We knew we were getting close when a few street kids came up and offered to guide us the rest of the way (for the right price, of course). The problem was that it quickly became obvious they really didn't know where the glyphs were either; one pointing this way, one pointing that way, which degraded into a heated discussion of where exactly we were heading. After we made it quite clear we weren't paying for the service, one kid agreed to lead us part of the way and off we went into the hills. Eventually, we stumbled upon a few little petroglyps (as seen in the photos) We found about 10 little animals, and happy with that headed back down to the beach, swung through an empty resort, through the forests and back to our little home for a quick rest.

The following day, for a change of scenery, we hopped over a few towns to the village of Tamchy. If Cholpon-Ata is considered "bustling," Tamchy is rightly described as "dead," and that is just what we were looking for. Since it is only 30km away from Cholpon-Ata we arrived by mid-morning and got put up in a home stay known as the "museum." We dropped our bags, grabbed some sausage and cheese, and headed out into the town for a long hike. As soon as we stepped out, we were intercepted by a little dog short on love who would follow us around for the next five hours, almost like we were renting it for the day. We hiked through fields, apple orchards and along the water, stopped for lunch and fed our little friend. After about 3 hours we headed back and found a German guy and a French couple also staying with our sweet old lady in her 'museum-like' house. The French, Brice & Elise had been cycling for two years, covering most everything in between France & China, over 25,000km! Needless to say, we were inspired. We all had a nice (cold) night out drinking cheap beer and eating good food. Winter is definitely coming in Kyrgyzstan and we all froze our pattooties off that night but enjoyed whiling away the evening with good food, fresh bread and lots of local beer.

We all split up the next day, Brice and Elise biking to their next stop, Marco staying put and us, on the road to find a bus back to Bishkek to check on that blasted LOI for Uzbekistan. Oh, and the 'inspired' part is that Brice and Elise really have convinced us traveling by bike is the answer (they also started off as cycling novices, so we know it can be done!) and gave us all sorts of tips and info...so, get ready for Maggie and Matt by bike... our next adventure maybe in 2011 or 2012!

posted by Life in Cambodia @ 4:18 PM