Bishkek

I have been on many comfortable trips in my time. From sipping rosé in St. Tropez to being served hand-crafted sushi in Hiroshima. Comfort is something no one should be ashamed of seeking out on a restorative holiday. But every so often it’s worth asking yourself: should I go on holiday and experience high stress and notable discomfort? The answer for most of you is probably ‘no’. In case you’re undecided, this is the first of four despatches from a recent trip to Central Asia in which I caught the Russian Grippe and insulted a former CIA Station Chief’s golf handicap.

The trip began in Kyrgyzstan (a word I still cannot spell without the help of my computer). Arriving from Turkey, our Pegasus Airlines flight struggled to contend with the mountain ranges of the region and it seemed that death was inevitable. I’m sure there is a rational explanation for why plane’s keep crashing around the world, but it’s hard to focus on it when you can see your air steward crying. It didn’t help that the seats didn’t recline, on a flight that took off at 00:00 and landed at 07:00. Increasingly confident I was resilient enough to survive enhanced interrogation, we began the trip with an all-you-can-eat hotel buffet and a 4-hour nap. We then went for a walk. It was misty and the deserted amusement park was giving nuclear armageddon. I think I would have opted for the Spiderman face paint, if anyone with a paint brush was present and available.

I am often guilty of underestimating how cold destinations will be. If you are too, like and subscribe! Accordingly, tourism was put on hold as we went out to buy wooly hats. On our way to a shop, we passed many intriguing buildings. The Cyrillic script was not being well managed by google translate and so it was hard to discern exactly what went on inside these great structures. Supposedly this was a hair salon, but that did seem unlikely. The language barrier issues didn’t stop there. Inside a restaurant called Pavlin Mavlin, where we wanted more lovely cheesy bread, we were given sweaty boiled dumplings. Our meal became the perfect exercise in the law of diminishing marginal returns. The first bite of dumpling was quite enticing. By the third dumpling, I could feel my internal organs beginning to organise and consider industrial action. At the fifth doughy ball of assorted meat and vegetables, a sharp pain appeared in what was once my left kidney. The lethargic walk home took us past a war memorial and for a moment I was guilty of believing my generation’s struggle with dumplings was deserving of its own obelisk.

I remember going to see Avatar in 3D in 2009. Had Bishkekians done the same? The media freedom index of this trip resembled something of a waterslide and so we could be sure that if Avatar wasn’t available in Kyrgyzstan it was unlikely to be available anywhere else. Not that I wanted to watch Avatar, I’m just trying to make a point. Anyway the cinema was closed and honestly that may be its permanent state. Nice building though.

We didn’t go to Kyrgyzstan for Bishkek. As I was negotiating to buy a SIM card at the airport, a Brit-Kyrg told me to get out of Bishkek as quickly as possible. And we did. A man called Sergey presented us with a 2004 Toyota, a bottle of champagne and told us it was illegal to drink and drive, and with that we made for the mountains. I think the picture speaks for itself. But in case it doesn’t: here in this deserted expanse we found peace, and a deathly strain of flu. We shared the camp with the elderly couple who own it and a Russian group, who seemed surprised when I attended dinner in a full suit and ate a satsuma with a knife and fork. We asked for the stove to be lit in our yurt and it was so hot we had to sleep with the door open, despite the risk of wolves.

There were only really three activities to be undertaken in our Yurt Camp, and once we’d hunted with eagles and hiked up the only hill reachable on foot without the help of a Sherpa, we could only go down to the lake front and take stylish photos of each other. The Russian group’s fondness of us was diminishing rapidly and I wondered if the tension could only be settled with a high stakes poker game in Montenegro, followed by a good old fashioned Western shoot out. Luckily by dinner they were gone and were replaced by a nice family from Thailand who were quite afraid of the resident cat and the colour of their morning fried eggs.

There is not much to say about Bishkek city. Despite a couple of loops on foot, interspersed with the consumption of warm parcels of molten cheese and what could have been pork, we were really none the wiser about what made this place tick. It certainly wasn't road safety. Luckily, we were staying at the most popular casino in town, which everyone knew and could point us towards. This made navigation easier and also offered a sense of celebrity. It also served as a usual source of additional funds. A 4-hour blackjack stint sat between an Iranian and a Turk earned us an additional $1000 of ‘crispy’ $50 dollar bills. These would prove essential, as we made our way to our next destination: Uzbekistan.