Two Stops Past Siberia

Well, for those of you who remember my humble past as a nameless backpacker, today we’ve a letter that rivals any I’ve written before!

Last weekend I tagged along with a group of volunteers who packed up to a local village to teaching local English teachers how better to teach. My goals, however, were not nearly so altruistic: the village in question was on the cusp of the one region in Naryn oblast that I have yet to visit, and with so little time remaining, I headed out for the great beyond.

My trip started in a drafty Lada with a dangling toy rabbit instead of a rear-view mirror. I entertained myself by trying to blow smoke rings with the steam of my breath. I was heading into the Jumgal valley. This place, a picture-perfect valley in the summer, with low green hills and snow-capped mountains presented a browner, drying side in the winter. I was headed to the city of Chaek, as far by road as Naryn is from Bishkek, but only on account of its formidable mountains. It is less than half th distance as the crow flies. The region’s little villages looked like old-West ranches, big and broad and very, very brown.

The region’s capital Chaek, was unlike any I’d yet seen in country. It was built on the side of a hill, and had a small river running idyllically through it. At the top of the hill were two enormous school, and the center of town was built like the old West: there was no bazaar, but only a long row of shops. The sidewalks were mostly paved and always clean. The little restaurant I found served me lean sheep dumpling and sweet tea with milk and salt.The girls in the kitchen couldn’t stop their giggling, and when they said, “he speaks Kyrgyz like water,” it was clear this place sees few of my kind.

Jumgal region is notable for its current coal mine, and and aging uranium mine somewhere beyond the hills. That means that in Soviet times this would have been a very prosperous place, and while I was keen to stay clear of the radiation, (“when you go there, you get a headache,” my host father said knowingly), I did want to see how the town itself had evolved. This, I imagine, explained why there was not bazaar, and perhaps, why the town was so clean. Furthermore, I was treated to an exception local museum (featuring the pants and hand print of a local giant at 7 1/2 feet tall), as well as an incredibly well run library. When I walked in there, there was a flurry of commotion, and one woman ran back inside saying, “there is a foreigner here! Who speaks Russian?” A woman came out asking what was the matter, but when it became clear I only wanted to visit, she perked up and relaxed, “I’ve studied to be a librarian during Soviet times,” she said, “I’ve been be working here for 32 years!”

Beyond the incredible services, folks, I found a wide park with a giant, carnival swing set, and a horse who nibbled on my back pack.

But I couldn’t stay in Chaek forever, regardless of how much I might have liked to. While spending a night at the volunteer’s house who was hosting the training, I spoke with his host Dad, a knowledgeable old road builder who advised me to take caution of the Chinese. “If they say there are 1.3 billion of them, I bet there are more Chinese that their government has lost track of than there are in all over Kyrgyzstan!” But then he got more worried yet, “they will send their people here, not with guns or with knives. They will not attack us or kill us. They will just come and we will be friendly. Then they will join our villages and work our fields. It will not happen in one year or in ten, but many years from now, they will have repopulated our whole country, watch out.”

But even that conversation had to come to an end. The next day, it was off to an abandoned salt mine, simply called “Big Salt.” This place had seen declining use ever since the fall of the Soviet Union, and in 1999 tried to reinvent itself as a hotel. Despite there being no electricity, we got the caretaker to show us around, seeing the strange amenities, like the movie screen and bar (called Salt Bar) only with the flashlights on our phones and the flashes on our cameras.

From this surreal extravaganza, we headed out to a local shrine, one I had only heard about from an obscure travelogue. The locals called it “The Mecca of Kyrgyzstan,” and had named it Father Ram, after the name of the local town. It was a small hill, rising curiously out of a plane with nothing else around it. We found a little man there who told us to wash ourselves, in Muslim fashion, before he’d lead us on a circumambulation. The ten minute trip around feature many small paths cleared between the stone, most ending in bulbous cul-de-sacs with rock piles in the center. It was ancient Animism meets Islam at its finest.

And as much as I could keep touring the country forever, every great weekend must come to an end. The training was a success, and so were nerves, happy to be on the road, if only as a weekend warrior