Whenever I told people I was going to Kyrgyzstan for a climbing expedition, I almost immediately got a slightly confused look, “Where’s that?”. After explaining that it’s west of China, north of Tajikistan, east of Uzbekistan, and south of Kazakhstan, the look rarely changed. At least I tried. Sometimes I got the follow up, “Is that safe?” if the person was up on the news. I would assure people that we were monitoring the situation closely and had contingency plans.
Bishkek, the capitol of Kyrgyzstan, is a modern city of 1 million people with Soviet roots. It was also the jumping off point for our expedition. We found the city with a few scars from the recent violence, but there seemed to be little change in the daily patterns of life. We were greeted by extremely friendly people and thoroughly enjoyed our stay.
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| The main square in Bishkek. |
Chris and I made our way through the passport control, got our bags, and wandered into a throng of people waiting at the door. We pushed our way through; we didn’t need a ride. We pushed our way right on to the doors with no sign of Matt or Jamie. Uh Oh. They were supposed to be there with our ride (courtesy of the Alpine Fund – Thank You!).
One of the taxi drivers kept pestering us, but we insisted we had a ride. He kept at it though, and eventually we were using his cell phone to call Arianna, our contact at the Alpine Fund. No answer. We decided to take another look around and luckily, spotted Matt and Jamie outside. They also had Arianna’s husband (sorry, I’m horrible at remembering names), who had brought a van to take us to Bishkek. There was an eager energy rolling through us as we made the 45 minute trip to Bishkek. It was good to be together, finally.
After getting a bit lost and wandering the backstreets of Bishkek, we found the hostel where we had arranged rooms. It was underwhelming, but we dumped our bags and headed out into the city, stomachs empty after the long journey. Looking at the map in Matt’s guidebook, the city center didn’t look far away. We soon found out that a block in Bishkek is BIG. We walked for hours, also learning that Bishkek is a late-rising city. As we walked down the main street, Chui, around 8:30, we finally found a place the appeared to just be opening. After massive language-barrier-induced confusion, we each had a weird dumpling on our plate. Hmm, not the best choice for a restaurant, but it would get better. For the most part we had great food, although most of the restaurants in Bishkek, at least the ones we frequented, offer international cuisine.
We wandered around for several more hours, eventually making our way to the ITMC Tien-Shan office where we met Asel, our logistics coordinator. We took care of some details and she arranged an apartment for us so we could get out of the tiny bunkroom that was far too small to allow us to sort all our gear. We spent the afternoon moving our gear into the apartment, amused to be so living in a Soviet apartment tower. We ate dinner at a delicious Korean restaurant before falling victim to an early, jet-lag induced sleep.
Up early the next morning (Friday), we had lots to do: more payment and logistics details to work out with ITMC, gear purchases for the Alpine Fund, and food shopping for the expedition. The first two were easy, but food shopping for three weeks for six people with no refrigeration possible, now that’s a task. We made our way to Osh Bazaar, an open-air market and one of the more popular shopping venues in the city. Having taken a sneak peak the day before, we knew what to expect. We bought 25 kilos of pasta, about 10 kilos of nuts, 5 kilos of dried fruit, some sausage, a hunk of cheese, and some other miscellaneous items. It seemed like so much as we were carrying huge backpacks through the market, but when we got back to the apartment, we realized it was almost nothing. Going by the estimate of 1 kilo/person/day for a total of about 175 kilos, we had a very long way to go.
We spent Saturday and Sunday climbing at Chon-Kurchak, a crag in nearby Ala-Archa national park, with the Alpine Fund. The complete description of the weekend can be found in the next section. Anyway, early Monday morning Arianna dropped off late-arriving (who could blame him, he had two-weeks’ notice of the expedition after Steve had to change plans) Dan at the apartment. With the team complete, we headed back to Osh Bazaar. After the taxi dropped us off, we noticed all the gates were closed. Maybe it was too early? After wandering around for a bit and buying some potatoes from a vendor set up outside the main area, we asked (more of a hand gesture/charade) a girl about the closed gates. She informed us the Bazaar wouldn’t be opening. Crap. We had 150 kilos of food to buy and were supposed to leave the next morning!
We made another run to ITMC to get more details taken care of - there are too many little things to consider when you’re heading to an infrequently visited area. Asel told us a different bazaar, Alamedin, should be open. We taxied it across the city and make quick work of getting 125 kilos of food: rice, beans, flour, ramen, fresh veggies, bread, oranges, bananas, spices, Nutella, tomato sauce, oil, butter, salt, more salt that we thought was sugar, soy sauce, ketchup, mayo, more mayo we thought was olive spread, tea, drink mix, jam, sweets, cookies, chocolate bars, more nuts, more fruit, more sausage, and more cheese, among some less memorable items. Loaded to the max (Matt’s backpack, full of potatoes, actually broke), we took a taxi back to the apartment and dumped our goods. After some debate, we calculated that we still needed more (it takes a lot of food!). Matt, Dan, and I headed back to the market, getting the rest of the things on the list just as the stalls were closing – we literally had to scramble to get out of the gate they were shutting. Chris and Jamie headed to a supermarket to get some things that weren’t available in the market: cereal, trash bags, good batteries, lighters, and some other things I can’t remember now.
It was quite a day’s work and we spent thousands and thousands of som (1$ = 46 som). At first we tried to keep track of what we spent, but it soon became too hectic as we rushed around. We later learned, as we sat around bored in the basecamp tent, that most of the food was expired, some of it by several months. Oh well, we had to eat.
If you read this far, you’re a dedicated follower. The posts do get more exciting, I swear.
Mike
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