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Quick post for some good news – my replacement barbag turned up yesterday, and my Kazakh visa was processed no problems. This means that I can get moving again! My Kazakh visa starts on the 14th, so the plan is to leave here on the 14th, hopefully get to Almaty in 2 days, and then get my Chinese visa sorted out the same week, and keep moving towards China. Will go for a 2-3 day easy loop ride for the next couple of days, try and get back into shape.

Must also make a special mention of the Pizza Party we had at Nomad’s last night. Emilie did the organisation, I just ate pizza. I don’t think I ever thought I would be having a pizza party in Bishkek, but there you go.

I’ve also uploaded a few photos of Kyrgzstan, will add a couple more from my loop to Ala-Archa in a little while.

Progress is being made! I now have a New Zealand passport, with a Kyrgyz visa valid until 2/9/07, so I am legal in this country. The Kazakh embassy accepted my application for a Kazakh tourist visa, starting 14/8/07. I should get that back on the 9th. I then only need to get a Chinese visa, and after talking to a Dutchman standing in line at the Kazakh embassy, it turns out I can get one quite quickly using a travel agency in Almaty. This means that if I have any problems getting a Chinese visa here, it should be no problem getting one in Kazakhstan. Almaty is expensive, but stopping just a few days to get the visa is OK.

The upshot of all this is that I can get moving again next week! Things will no doubt be a bit tough the first few days, after doing hardly any riding in the last few weeks. Since Tashkent there has been a lot of time hanging around, waiting for visas/parts/packages/whatever. I’m still waiting for my new barbag to get delivered here, I can only hope for the best. Although I am enjoying meeting lots of other travellers in Bishkek, I’m also looking forward to being back on the road, and heading to a new country.

For something different, here’s some of the random questions/thoughts that go through my head these days:

• Can anybody explain to me the popularity of fishing vests, like these, that I seem to see people wearing everywhere – mainly not when fishing.
• In a similar vein, camouflage clothing – I frequently see people dressed fully in camouflage clothing. For soldiers this is fine, but most of them don’t look like soldiers. My theory is that the Kyrgyz army kicked out a whole lot of Russians, but let them keep their clothes.
• Why does a 500mL bottle of vodka cost only a little bit more than a 500mL bottle of beer? E.g. a beer might cost 30 som (~$0.75), while a bottle of vodka costs 40 som (~$1). No wonder they’re all drunk on vodka
• Interestingly enough, Kyrgyz people seem relatively time-conscious (contrast with the Middle East, where time is irrelevant). But none of them wear watches. As a result, I am asked what the time is at least once per day. Yes, that’s right, I do still wear a watch. Handy to know what the date is in these countries, with visas to think about.
• The National Museum in Bishkek is rather disturbing – a whole floor is devoted to Lenin. It’s just weird walking around, looking at every book Lenin ever wrote, in every languauge it was translated into. On the ground floor was a cordoned-off section where they had a large carpet with a portrait of Stalin. I think that they never took it all that seriously in the past, so they don’t take it too seriously now. I would have loved a picture, but they were charging an extra 2 euros to take photos.

I had also been wondering about why all of Bishkek seemed to being painted/renovated/re-paved/etc. I thought maybe the Bishkekis just liked doing maintenance in the summer – but it turns out that it’s for the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, which is holding a summit here. There was talk of restrictions on movement, and more police and passport checks, but so far there doesn’t seem to be much difference. Hope it stays that way, I’ve had enough of passport checks by illiterate policemen in Uzbekistan.

Anyways, another week in this town, then on the road again! Maybe. We’ll see how it goes with visas, and at the Family Medical Clinic tomorrow (nothing major, just ongoing stomach problems).

The physical entity known as Lindsay Hill is now a legal entity once more! Yesterday morning I collected my replacement passport from the British Consul here in Bishkek. I only held it in my hands for half an hour, as I then had to go and hand it in to the Kyrgyz Consular Service, to get a replacement Kyrgyz visa. That takes 1 week, or 3 days if you pay double ($72). They got me to write a letter explaining why I wanted a new visa – reasonably obvious with my blank passport, and police report, but form must be followed.

All going well, I will be able to pick that up on Friday morning, and race out to the Kazakh embassy, and try and hand my application in. It’s a bit of a mess there, and it took me over an hour yesterday just to get through the queue to get an application form. They couldn’t understand why I didn’t have my passport. Luckily some English/Russian speakers helped a bit, but the guard was still an idiot, and couldn’t really work it out. But now at least I can pay the money to the bank in the next few days, and get the form filled in, so that when I go there, it will just be a matter of fighting through the queue, and getting my application handed in.

I then need to try and get a Chinese visa too – no idea how long that will take. I think it will probably take me up to two weeks to get things sorted out, and then I can get back on the road, heading to Kazakhstan. At least one bright spot is that it seems that the Kazakhs will give me a full tourist visa here, unlike the short transit visa I got in Tashkent. Of course, nothing certain there until I actually have the sticker in my passport.

I spent 9 days riding from Bishkek up to Issyk-Kul, and doing a loop around the lake, before coming back to Bishkek. All very pleasant, except for the main road, at least as far as the Torugart turnoff – it’s very busy, especially on a Sunday, and the road quality is variable, sometimes quite narrow. You get pushed off the road into the gravel a few times. Kyrgyz drivers don’t really understand the power and danger of speeding vehicles. At least another two decades to get any sort of cultural education of good driving I think.

The southern side of the lake was nicer, with the road frequently near the water. Camped near the water a couple of times. One day I was riding along, seeking some shelter from a very nasty squall that was coming up, when a Land Rover came by, with a Swiss couple and baby on board. I ended up camping with them on the beach, and they cooked me a lovely dinner, and we sheltered inside the car from the cold wind. Food, warmth, good company, what else could I want. And then the wind dropped right around bedtime – perfect.

The early morning swim the next day was rather refreshing, but I guess not as cold as a lake at 1600m could be. A touch salty too – that combined with the small waves, and sandy beach, made it feel like I was by the sea – quite nice when you’re thousands of kilometres from the ocean.

I stayed in a homestay in Karakol run by an old Russian woman, in an old Soviet apartment block. Very nice indeed, made to feel very welcome. The second day, when I was eating my fantastic breakfast, she even put together a special package of pancakes for my lunch that day. More than made up for the fact that Karakol is a pretty dull sort of a place. Most roads in the town were just dirt tracks, and there was little in the city that stood out.

But the people could be good – I was having dinner by myself, and got dragged over to a group of Kyrgyz Telecom network engineers, who were having a leaving do for their boss. A couple more rounds of vodka than I would have liked, and I was trying to work out how to escape, but luckily they declared that 21:00 was late for them, and it was time to go to bed. I was happy about that, as it could have started getting messy. But nice guys, with a few speaking a bit of English, and they gave me translations of the toasts, which are taken fairly seriously here.

So more time to kill in Bishkek, but it’s OK – I’m quite happy here, the place I’m staying at is nice, and I can eat all the simit I like from the Turkish supermarket.

After the trials and tribulations of the last week, I thought I would post a few random musings/observations on Kyrgyzstan for today’s discourse.

Language: Someone asked me the other day what language you use here. My answer was “Whatever I feel like”. That’s a bit flippant, but there is some truth to it. Many people here speak Russian, Kyrgyz, and in service industries, English. I know a little Russian, and a little Turkish, which happens to be related to Kyrgyz. So sometimes I use some Russian, sometimes some Kyrgyz, and sometimes English. If all else fails sign language usually works well. Most shops have calculators for telling you the price of things, that helps a fair bit. English is growing here, but it’s still from low numbers. Russian is the true lingua franca, and I wish I had spent more time trying to learn it.

Women: I have to say, this one really surprised me. Central Asian women are hot. I really didn’t expect that. It’s not just the Russian-descent women either. There are many good looking Uzbek, Tajik and Kyrgyz women around. The main difference is that the Russian women tend to wear almost nothing at all. Especially practical in the heat here, and I for one welcome it. The Uzbek women tend to dress more conservatively, but very nicely, with great traditional dresses, with a touch of style to them. The only bit I can’t work out is that the late teens/early twenties Russian girls will be walking about in a boob tube, hot pants smaller than my underpants, and heels – but they might be out with their mother, who will look like a traditional Russian babushka. Long print dress, headscarf, the works. It’s a bit odd, seeing the juxtaposition – traditional Russian values next to something presumably American-inspired . Furthermore, I haven’t decided if it’s related to economics, the lack of McDonalds, genetics, or just general lifestyle, but most young women here are slim. Not so much of the Muffin top in evidence here.

Russian couples dressing up for an evening out: This is a bit of a funny one. Around early evening, as I wander around the town, I see various couples obviously on their way out to some dinner/party/club/movie/whatever. The women obviously put in some time and effort, finding a nice, suitably short dress to wear, with heels, and makeup – beyond the usual amounts anyway. They are not looking overly different to young women in say England – although probably slimmer and better looking (see above). So what does Russian man do? Well, he finds a clean pair of jeans, the tighter the better, pulls them up as high as they can go – it’s important that your shoes and socks are fully showing – and then puts on a T-shirt, tucked in. I figure that if I lived here, and wore decent clothes when out on the town, I would either have women falling all over me, or I would get beaten up by the Russian Mafia, for moving in on their girls. Probably both.

Kyrgyz man, and underpants: It would seem that Kyrgyz man does not wear simple cotton boxer shorts. I spent ages wandering around Dordoi market yesterday, looking for simple cotton boxers. Dordoi is actually a pretty good market, but what tends to happen in these large markets is that everyone sells the same crap. I could find tight-fitting boxers, fat man boxers (honestly, I am not making this up), synthetic material boxers, but no plain cotton ones. Later I did find some cotton ones, but they came in sizes 1, 2 or 3 – what on earth do those sizes mean over here in the real world? And they were all sealed up in indestructible plastic, so I couldn’t get them out. At $5 a pair, they were too expensive also. I shall keep searching.

Drunkenness in public: You do see a fair bit of this in Central Asia. Many Russians have left, but vodka has very much stayed, and is very cheap. I walked past a pub at 8:55 this morning, and there were already people having a beer. Seeing very drunk people is not uncommon. Yesterday there was a man lying on the ground near my guesthouse, on his back, with his pants around his ankles. Thankfully he was still wearing his underpants. Riding around, you get many offers of vodka – people don’t always quite understand why you might refuse, just because you want to cover another 50km in 35 degree heat.

And now I am off to the rugby – for all those who may follow in my footsteps to Bishkek, and wish to watch international rugby, or any other international sport, try the Metro, on Chui, a couple of blocks west of Beta Stores. It’s the main ex-pat hangout. I had some trouble searching online for a place to watch the rugby in Bishkek – one of the top 10 results was an earlier post on my website. Sigh. But the Metro showed the game last week. Beer was a little expensive at ~$2/70som per pint, but that’s not as much of a ripoff as some other ex-pat bars (The Great Game in Tashkent, I’m looking at you here).

Tomorrow I will finally get back on the bike, and head to Issyk-Kul, to do a big lap of the lake. I will come back here in maybe 10-14 days, hopefully to get my passport, etc. Probably have at least another week here sorting out visas. Previously I’d never had a rest day in my tent – but here I’ve just had over a week in my tent. Nice place I’m at though, Nomad’s Home – highly recommended if you’re passing through here.