Life in Cambodia

Bishkek and the surrounding hills

We've been slaves to Bishkek for the past few days as we wait for our Uzbek visas, which hopefully will be sorted out before the week is out. Despite this, we've managed to see what we've wanted to see and generally have had a good time. Bishkek is not a bad place to be holed up for a few days (though admittedly we've been here longer than both of us would have liked). Our first plan was to do day trips out of the city, returning each night. We didn't dare wander too far from the internet because we were waiting on the Letter of Invitation (via email) that would allow us to begin the Uzbek visa process. One of the places we had planned on going was to Ala-Archa Canyon (over the weekend), just south of Bishkek which is supposed to be a beautiful place to camp, trek, hike, and basically just get outside. Maggie got a bit under the weather so we decided it best for her to take it easy and we hung around Bishkek while she recuperated. Luckily, the place we are staying in Bishkek is a pretty cool place with some interesting folks in the dorm room. At any given time, there are 5 or 6 nationalities represented in the 12 bed dorm room, Korean, Japanese, Polish, Hungarian, Iranian, Spanish, Israeli, I could go on. Anyway, my point is that at least its not some boring little hovel of a hotel. Being in Bishkek though, sick or not, we have managed to eat quite well. To those not in the know, one would assume Bishkek to be some provincial Central Asian backwater with only bread and mutton. Thankfully, one could not be further from the truth. We've been gorging ourselves on Turkish pide, salads, and Kyrgyz attempts at burritos. In addition to the little bug, the weather has also been keeping us in the hut. Every day gets colder and colder, dipping well below freezing at night, though the day time is quite nice. After a few days, we managed to make a break out of town to the Issik-Ata Hot Springs, about an hour and a half away. The weather was bad, a heavy fog, but we wanted to get out of town, if only for a day. Issik-Ata is a strange place. When I lived here back in the day, we used to visit a different hot springs site, so I was interested to check out another place. As we got dropped off, we got pointed up the hill and off we went. I don't know what we were expecting, but it definitely didn't fit with what we found. As we were walking up the hill, tens of 100s of old folks are lumbering down the hill and silently filing into this decrepit old building. We asked around for the hotel or room rental (anything) and got pointed in 4 different directions; basically we went building to building asking for a place to sleep. Alas, we were unsuccessful and were wandering around aimlessly (in the very cold) until an English speaking Kyrgyz woman found us and helped us locate lodging. The place was filled up because everyone comes from Bishkek for the healing powers of the medicinal waters of Issik-Ata (which explains the old farts wandering around) . Of course, there was only one room left in the entire place (10+ buildings) and it happened to be something like $40, which is, by far, the most we've paid for lodging since we began the trip. Admittedly, it was a nice place with meals included, but there for a bit (as the large old woman in 'reservations' wasn't pleased at our attempts to discuss the price); I was seriously thinking about heading back to Bishkek, though in hindsight, am glad we didn't. We dropped our bags and headed out for a walk, though we couldn't stay out too long since it was mid-afternoon and starting to snow. We wandered around looking for the hot springs, and after motioning swimming for the 5th time, we finally found it. At first glance, one sees a big empty swimming pool, so we had to ask "vada yest?" Do you have water? The man assured us there was water and pointed to a tiny little kiddy pool in the back, which proved to be quite toasty (we only stuck our hands in) . We agreed we would return the following morning for an early dip and headed back to our place for dinner. After we were completely sated, the Kyrgyz woman who helped us earlier in the day stopped by to check that we were doing OK. Even nicer than that, she knew that we were headed to Istanbul and brought over (and gave us) a pretty hefty city guidebook to all of Istanbul. We spent the rest of the evening fighting over who got to read the book first.

It snowed throughout the night and by morning, about a few inches or so had accumulated through the valley. And needless to say, it was cold. As soon as we ate our breakfast, we walked down to the Hot Springs, only to find it closed, for reason unknown, perhaps the snow. After the requisite staring forlornly and whining, we went for a little hike into the valley behind our cottage. As mentioned, there was snow on the ground and more coming down. With the crunch of snow underfoot, we discussed just how far we'd come since we left Cambodia. We hiked along for a bit, but weather not permitting, we really couldn't see much and turned back at the thought of a hot bath in our huge bathtub before returning to Bishkek. So, back in Bishkek, medicinal waters only from our bathtub and frozen fingers and toes from the snow...we hastily jumped on the bus to the internet cafe and anticipated a nice LOI from the government of Uzbekistan...wrong. Still nothing save for a nice email from our coordinator, apologizing for the extra long wait, after all there were several unexpected public holidays and blah, blah...so we waited. Holed up in our little room, shivering as the sun went down, but kept company by the steady stream of other (freezing) travelers willing to brave the weather with us for a beer at a local spot.

AND THEN, we received the LOI on Oct. 3 in the wee hours of the night! First thing the next day, we had our guest house owner call the Uzbek embassy to make an appoint for later that day...no luck, but not bad, we were told to show on Oct. 5 at 10am and don't be late! Things are finally moving and now we'll be able to move on and see more of the beautiful country of Kyrgyzstan...with our LOI ready and appointment waiting, Oct. 4 was left open, so we headed for the hills outside of town with our French compatriots--we were 7 total and followed Matt's lead out of the city. We arrived at the foothills and started our climb to find hundreds of grazing sheep and goats, horses and a few Islamic cemeteries. More hiking further into the hills revealed the peaks of the mountains beyond, which were beautiful on this (finally!) sunny day. We pealed off the layers of jackets, sweaters and turtlenecks and kept hiking uphill until we reached a nice spot to stop for an hour of snacks and water. Matt kept up with the French speaking and we lolled around on the grass (see pictures). I headed back down for an interview (yes, job searching!) over the phone and the others hiked until you could hike no more. Weary but refreshed, we all returned feeling warmer and happier for the day out of the city. We patiently wait for our opportunity at the Uzbek Embassy and pray the woman is in a nice, kind mood and gladly hands us our visas, sans problems! more updates soon...

posted by Life in Cambodia @ 8:19 PM