After a stressful start to my Silk Route recce (nearly refused check in at Heathrow under the threat that I’d be deported as soon as I touched down in Moscow for not having a Russian transit visa... inspite of Aeroflot strenuously confirming earlier that week that I definitely wouldn’t need one) my move from London to Kyrgyzstan took a further blow following the announcement that the Heathrow – Moscow flight was running over an hour late. This meant it was going to a very close call to make my connecting flight to Bishkek, and even if I made it my bag was unlikely to be so lucky. A tense 4 hour flight to Moscow was then followed by a 3am breakneck sprint through a dimly lit airport to make the connecting flight to Bishkek. Which also turned out to be an hour late! Aeroflot can at least be relied upon to be chronically late. Good news for me, and for my bag, as on arrival in Bishkek it was the first off the carousel. And since that auspicious start everything has gone completely to plan and I’m now at the end of my second day in Bishkek.
The ride from the airport was a great introduction to this part of the world that I’ve never been to before. Gigantic watermelons, peaches and apricots piled high on road side, decrepit Ladas being skillfully welded back to life, whirling dust storms, clattering trams, wooden shacks selling vodka and lottery tickets, and little huddles of men sitting round playing some sort of board game in the shade to escape from the balmy 36C summer temperatures – all as we whizzed along from airport to city centre. Exploring Bishkek itself I’ve been pleasantly surprised. Although undeniably a former Soviet concrete jungle and pretty scruffy in places, it’s very leafy with wide green boulevards, open air parks, gloriously gaudy memorials and fountains on every corner, and with the most spectacular back drop of the jagged snow-capped Ala Archa Mountains just 20km to the south. And with the mountain snow melt sluicing and gurgling through Bishkek’s storm drains, the city is fairly clean feeling and pleasantly dust free. Although the lack of English street signs can make things a bit tricky, the streets are laid out in a very straightforward grid, and it’s always easy to get you bearings as at every intersection you just have to look for the glittering snowy mountains to know you’re facing south.
The last day and a half in Bishkek have been hectic: visiting the supermarket and Osh bazaar to look in to food prices (it’s been 2 years since we last had teams in Kygyz, so a quick supermarket sweep to get the team essentials costed up is a worthy exercise), meeting with our in-country agents and 2 former project hosts to discuss plans for 2012 and future project work, confirming how much mobile phones and SIM cards cost and where the best places are to change money, looking in to white water rafting and helicopter availability, and trying to find suitable accommodation for the teams. Tomorrow I’m off to the Ala Archa base camp to see the area where our 2012 will undertake acclimatisation treks, and also to see the project site of one of our 2009 teams. Then in the afternoon, after a brief stop back in Bishkek to buy supplies, one of the more adventurous legs of the recce begins: a taxi ride to the Kyrgyz/ Kazakh border, another taxi ride from the border to a small town in Kazakhstan called Otar (I’ve prepared a sign in Kazakh Cyrillic saying ‘I need to get to Otar train station please to catch a train at 6pm’ just in case my scant Kazakh eludes me at the crucial moment...) and then a 20 hour train journey across the Central Asian steppe to Tashkent – the capital of Uzbekistan. So with a little luck that is where the next blog will come from.
If it comes from somewhere in deepest Kazakhstan though, then something has obviously gone a little awry with the trains... Wish me luck!
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