Saturday, June 27th - Cholpon-Ata to Bishkek 

We had breakfast at our hotel; another great variety of eggs, bread, apricot jam, cheese, meat (bologna?), turnovers/pasties and tea.  Then we were on our way at 9 a.m. as usual

Our first stop was at the petroglyphs in a field just outside of town.  These were on rocks and boulders in the field and not in caves as I expected, and not very protected.  There seemed to be as much recent graffiti as ancient etchings.   The site is now a UNESCO heritage site so hopefully it will be controlled better from now on.

The pictures were of the local animals (snow leopard, deer, mountain goat/sheep) and how they were  hunted with pictures of hunters with bow and arrow on foot and on horseback.  The pictures were from 8th century BC to 4th century AD and were just scratched into the rock.  There was no colour involved but they were still impressive given how old they are.

To get out of the area and back to the highway quicker we turned on to an old air strip and our guide told us to buckle up and make sure our seat backs were upright and locked and our tray tables were up.  The driver then gunned it just enough to give us a chuckle.  There were some fancy dune buggies at the other end of the run way and apparently the locals race on the strip quite regularly.

For a while we drove through a flat dry plateau where there were lots of stones and boulders in the fields and definitely no crops.  To the left there is the lake and behind it high snow-capped mountains.  To the right there are some hills but it's too cloudy to know if there are still snow-capped mountains there.

We drove through small towns or villages regularly and today there seem to be more people around the homes working.  It's Saturday so I guess that's the day to do yard work.  All the yards seem to have fruit trees and the cherries are ripe right now and the trees are incredibly full of fruit.  We saw a few people out picking their cherries but we wondered what was going to happen to the others.  There were also a few children eating ice cream treats so some things don't change whatever country you are in.  The people all dress just the same as we do in Canada.  Only the older ladies seem to have the longer, more conservative dresses.  The children are in shorts and tops, the teenagers are in tight pants and tops, the men are in slacks and shirts, the young women are very dressed up in slacks or dresses.  Only outside the mosques did the men don their white caps - tall and quite unique to the area.  The women do not wear burkas and have not since 1928, which I found quite amazing.  

As for the Kyrgy features, I can't say there is anything that defines them.  They are a mix of people from the east/west/north/south due to the trade routes so you see just about anything.  Although mainly dark hair, eyes and slightly dark skin, you can also find blond hair and blue eyes, and sometimes more oriental characteristics or even arabic.  

The homes in some towns are 1 storey brick.  In other towns they are larger 2-3 storeys..  Some are very plain and some are very ornately decorated.  Some yards are neatly kept and others are quite wild - again, some things do not change country to country.  In the larger towns there are bigger shops just off the street but still small shops right along the side of the road - just little shacks but these sure seem to do a good business.

Along the road side there are small shops.  As we are very close to the lake, the first ones are racks of fish.  We stop for pictures and discover the fish (trout and herring) has been smoked - probably caught yesterday morning and smoked over night for sale today.  A medium sized fish - about a foot in total length - sold for 600 some or about $12 Canadian.  These shops were also selling jars of honey in all shapes and sizes.  A little later on there were small shops on the side of the road selling small white balls, which turned out to be yogurt balls that are really good with beer, according to our guide.  Later again the roadside vendors were selling sweet corn on the cob.  

We passed a flour mill that was huge and certainly the largest I remember seeing.  There were other huge buildings as well as we went through an industrial area.  The police were also out giving out speeding tickets and the signal is the same to warn oncoming traffic.  You just flash your lights at them.

We tend to stop at petrol stations for breaks as they always have good cheap snacks, especially water, and their washrooms are generally clean and western style.  They have BP stations over here but that is for Bishkek Petroleum not what we might suppose. 

We went through Bom Pass at about 1,600 metres and it didn't really seem like a pass at all.  However, when you went down the other side it was  a really fast drop and ears were popping.  In a few short kilometres we were down to 400 metres in elevation.  As we got closer to Bishkek, the road got much smoother and looked brand new - something our guide said was simply due to the fact that the politicians wanted it to look good around the capital.  On the green hillsides there are messages and logos written in white stone.  I guess this is their form of billboard advertising

We stopped in one of the small towns and bought some samosas and water/pop.  Then we drove to a nice shady spot and sat under a tree on the grass while we ate our lunch.  It was very relaxing and cool.  Across the road from us was our next stop, which was the Burana Tower.  These ruins are from the 9th century city of Balasagun.  Yusef Balasaguni was definitely an author and one of his books that was on display was General Knowledge, which was in English.  He seemed to be an important person but I confess I don't remember why or what he did.  

The tower itself is quite impressive as it is ornately decorated (mostly having been reconstructed) and standing in what looks like the middle of nowhere.  It is now only 24 metres high but was originally 40 metres high.  The top part collapsed in a major earthquake some time ago.  These types of towers were originally called fire towers as they were used along the silk road to show the way for the caravans by lighting a fire at the top, which could be seen for miles.  Later on they became watch towers and eventually they became minarets at mosques,  a place from which to make the call to prayer.  At this point I should add that we really haven't been disturbed by the "calls" over here.  At first I thought it was because we were not close to a mosque but we eventually found out that calls over loud speakers are banned in most of these countries.  How civilized.

You can climb the stairs to enjoy the view from the top of the tower.  Some of our group did that and some didn't.  I didn't because the stairways were very narrow (less than 3 feet wide in places) and people were going both up and down on them.  It was already dark inside as there were only two small windows in the tower to shed light on the situation, and the stairs were very uneven in height and depth and often broken in places - creating a situation that I wasn't sure that I'd be able to navigate safely   

Parts of the old city wall can still be seen and some of the old foundations for some of the buildings.  There was apparently a palace and a mausoleum in the city at one point.  Now In some places they have started building up on the old foundations so you can get a feel for the buildings in the area.  In the 10th to 13th centuries the Black Kings or Kara Huns occupied the city.  As it was a crossroads for many different nationalities, the tombstones in the area are quite amazing.  Some are Christian with cross, some Buddhist with faces on them, and some Muslim with designs but no faces.  The 12th century bulbul tombstones were the most interesting.   Some were small and some were taller but they all featured a really big face and a right arm and hand holding a cup as I guess a drink was required for the trip to the other side.  All of this was chiselled on the headstone and most of them are still very visible today - and there were a lot of them in just the one big field we visited.

At some point in our journey we saw the Kazakstan border crossing, which was just a small gate, nothing fancy.  For a wile the highway is actually in Kazakstan, which is interesting.  When the guide pointed it out we did see the rolls of barbed wire along the way indicating the actual border.  The real border is the Shuy River but in this one place  as the river meanders, the highway has to cross the river twice and you are actually in a different country for a short while.

Just before Bishkek we were in a large wide valley and very quickly we got into a lot more traffic, which is to be expected with a city of 850,000 people.  There were even some traffic jams, something we did not expect on a Saturday afternoon.  The population in Kyrgyzstan is 3.5 million.  

We checked into our hotel and had just a quick break before heading off on our city tour.  Bishkek is where we lost a day because of the screw up with the China border guards so we didn't have a lot of time to see Bishkek.  We walked to the city or independence square to watch the changing of the guard, which took on a couple of minutes but they do it every hour.  The square is very large and involves both sides of a very wide street.  There are fountains and ponds all around the area and several of the locals were cooling off in them.  We won't have time for the museum but the outside of the building was impressive.  There are parks all around the area and many local monuments.  We went to several of them.  In one spot they were just putting up a screen for an outdoor cinema.  It sounded like a great idea but we knew we just couldn't fit it in.  There were lots of large buildings in the area, many of them government buildings and they were all very impressive.  Many of them were built during the Soviet era.

We then walked to where we were having dinner and Nica, our first guide in Kyrgyzstan joined us.  It was another great meal but it seemed to take us forever to order.  Luckily they have pictures.  I ordered a hot beef and vegetable dish that looked almost like a fajita and it came sizzling just like one.  It was delicious, as was the mojito I had to drink.  I got tired of beer somewhere along the way so mojitos seemed like a nice cool alternative.  Following dinner our driver was waiting to take us back to our hotel and the end of another day.