Poking Around in Central Asia: July 2014

Saturday, July 19, 2014
Batken, Kyrgyzstan

We were meeting with the Kyrgyz delegation at 9:00 am but we had some time to relax in the courtyard of the guesthouse before the meeting. The guesthouse had four buildings surrounding the interior courtyard. Two of them were for guests, one was the owner's house, and one contained a kitchen and housing for the staff. The latticed structures shown above were dining areas or tea booths. We ate all our meals outdoors while we were at the guesthouse.

Jerry and I were just starting to get caught up on our communications. The big news was about Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, which had been shot down over Ukraine two days earlier. It was flying from Ukraine to Kuala Lumpur, in roughly the same flight path as we had taken. Our flight was less than one day before the crash. Because of spotty WiFi availability and the rush to get back on schedule, we weren't able to let everybody back home know that were already in Central Asia at the time of the shooting, of which we weren't even aware. There were a few people back at the office who were worried that we were next or perhaps had already gone down. It was later concluded by Dutch investigators that the plane had been shot down by a surface-to-air missile fired by Russian-controlled forces in eastern Ukraine. I later checked Flight 17's path and realized our flight path was parallel but somewhat further north since I knew we had flown over Bornholm in the Baltic Sea. Although we flew over eastern Ukraine we likely did not fly over the same area from which the missile was launched.

Jerry with the owner of the Altyn Beshik guesthouse and Aladdin, one of our local hosts. It isn't clear in this photo but the owner had an entire mouthful of gold teeth. This was not uncommon in Central Asia.

I was relaxing outside in the courtyard where some kids were playing. I think they were the children of the woman who cooked for the guesthouse, who lived on site. I motioned with the camera to see if they minded if I took their picture and they had no problem. The problem was stopping, They really enjoyed having their pictures taken and then seeing the pictures on the camera screen. They kept encouraging me to take additional pictures.

This little girl in particular really liked having her picture taken. I probably took dozens of photos of her and the other kids. I regretted that I didn't have any way to print some to give to them.

This photo shows the meeting with the Kyrgyz delegation of the Isfara River Small basin Council that took place in the morning. They were mainly interested in irrigation issues, especially how they could arrange to keep more of the water that originates in their country. They made sure we knew that Kyrgyzstan, unlike Tajikistan, had a national water council and a national water plan, so they were more advanced than Tajikistan. They told us it was important to be able to meet with their Tajik counterparts but the Tajik federal government was forbidding it.

They agreed that when we returned they would like to hear from us about how water is managed in the US. Someone said something like, "You are the most powerful nation in the world so you must know how to manage water correctly. Tell us how you do it." That didn't make me feel too confident about being able to help them since I knew water management in the US was a complicated mess.

About 20 people were present. Again, they were almost all older men. Two women were present and participated.

After the meeting we were treated to lunch where we had the local Kyrgyz version of plov. It was noticeably different from the plov we had in Isfara but both were quite tasty. The meat, in both cases, was lamb.

Local nuts and dried fruits were always handy. I especially like the dried apricots, which were dried with the pits and were totally different than the dried apricots that are widely available in the US.

This photo shows apricots and almonds being dried in the space between the guesthouses and the perimeter wall. I was told that the type of apricots grown in the Fergana Valley area has a seed kernel that is edible, unlike most apricots.

After lunch Aladdin took us for a tour of the Tortgul Reservoir, which was probably about eight to ten miles away. This was the reservoir that the Tajiks mentioned the Kyrgyz had no need for. It was built in 1971 and has a capacity of 90 million cubic meters. This was the typical water level for the reservoir for this time of year. Its maximum level is usually reached in March.

It supplies irrigation water for about 9000 hectares or 22,240 acres. The soil is so porous in this area that the entire bed of the reservoir was lined with plastic so that it would hold water. Despite what the Tajiks said, the water is not used exclusively in Kyrgyzstan; some is released for use downstream in Tajikistan.

(Tortgul is not to be confused with the Toktogul Reservoir, which is also in Kyrgyzstan but which is much larger.)

The view looking downstream from the top of the dam.

Photo: Jerry

Our local host Aladdin shown against the backdrop of the mostly dry bed of the Tortgul reserevoir. Aladdin was very generous and hospitable to us during our stay in Batken. He pronounced his name A la deen'.

Aladdin's car was a beat-up compact station wagon with the steering wheel on the right side. In Central Asia, although driving is on the right side of the road, there is no regulation that say which side of the car the steering wheel must be on. Used cars with right-side steering wheels were about 1000 US dollars cheaper than those with left-side steering. This was because, occassionally, the issue of requiring a left-side steering wheel has been raised. Although no action had yet been taken, there is enough uncertainty to make cars with right-side steering wheels cheaper. I'd estimate that 10 to 15 percent of the cars on the road have steering wheels on the right side. A couple times during the trip I'd doze off in the backseat and upon waking up be momentarily alarmed to see someone asleep in what I'm used to being the driver's seat.

Aladdin had some mannerisms and a sense of humor that reminded me of some Native Americans that I have met. Later, the topic came up and Aladdin told us that many Kazakhs and Kyrgyz feel an affiliation with Native Americans. Later, I read that many inhabitants of a swath of land that runs through Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, and eastern Siberia share a genetic marker with Native North Americans who speak Athabaskan languages.

I liked how someone was clever enough to use these walkway supports on the side of a hill to create a series of water level gauges in such a way that it wasn't necessary to use a tall ladder to paint them.

Our intrepid translator Sergei in front of the Tortgul reservoir. He was a great travel companion on this and the two subsequent trips. He is not a CAREC staff person but he is their favorite translator and they contract with him frequently. Besides almost always serving as the the sole translator, he was also useful at negotiating with taxi drivers (no meters, so the fare had to be negotiated up front), suggesting and ordering meals for the entire group when we were at restaurants, dealing with money exchange issues, chasing off begging children, and efficiently opening beer bottles when we lacked an opener. He also somewhat assumed the role of bodyguard--at least he seemed to be vigilant for Jerry's and my welfares. He was, however, firmly convinced that it was the US and not the Russians who shot down Malaysian Airlines Flight 17.

He is a Belarusian by birth but was living with his wife and son in Montreal. He travels frequently for work and said he once translated for former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. She asked him to carry her luggage, which he refused to do. He said that once she accepted that he was not her sherpa they got along fine.

Some scenery in the area around the reservoir. There are some high mountains in the headwater area of the reservoir and the aqua-ish color of the water may be due to suspended rock dust abraded by upstream mountain glaciers.

Another view of the area around the reservoir. The temperature was over 100 degrees while we were at the reservoir but it did not feel that hot since the air was dry.

This shows the canal that delivers water to the headwaters of the Tortgul reservoir. You can see by the high-water mark on the concrete that the volume of flow is much greater at other times of the year. The water coming in is obviously quite turbid and you could see that there was a lot of sediment deposited in the upstream end of the reservoir. A German organization had committed to do some rehabilitation of the reservoir but there was no evidence that any of the work had begun.

New housing being built in the vicinity of the reservoir. It seemed like in many places in Central Asia we would see houses under contruction but with typically no workers onsite. Many looked as though construction had been on hiatus for a long time. House building seems to be a relatively long-term project there. I never got a good explanation for the large number of partly built houses.

On the way back from Tortgul, Aladdin announced he wanted to stop at a retaurant to treat us to a mid-afternoon "snack". I had had a more than adequate lunch so I wasn't really hungry. Once we sat down though the staff just kept bringing out more and more food, which I think Aladdin had pre-arranged. It was easily as much or more than we had for lunch. The food shown on the table here was just the preliminaries.

One of the Russian cultural practices that Central Asians appear to have had no problem adopting is vodka toasting. I don't know how many bottles of vodka we went through during this trip. Not being much of a drinker these days I was a little concerned that I was going to end up being either completely sloshed half of the time or half sloshed all of the time. But, because the toasting always happened while we were eating I only occasionally felt like I was approaching full-blown inebriation.

It seemed like my shot glass was always full though and often I wasn't even aware of anyone filling it. I like this photo because I was able to document Sergei's sneaky hand at the right taking my glass to refill it while he thought my attention was occupied.

The bottle of white liquid is kumiss. Kumiss is traditionally fermented mare's milk that is mildly alcoholic. Milking mares is difficult though so commercial kumiss uses cow's milk and is non-alcoholic. It tasted much like kefir.

Quail soup from our mid-afternoon "snack."

After the snack we returned to the guesthouse. It seemed like we had no sooner gotten back than it was time to eat dinner! Aladdin had told us yesterday evening that he had tracked down a turkey and that we would be having a dinner this evening that featured the turkey. It sounded like turkeys are a rarity in Central Asia and finding one was a big deal. The dinner was delicious; however I wasn't very hungry because of the so-called snack. I felt like had had four full meals over the course of the day.

There were no meetings scheduled for the next day--it was basically just a travel day so we stayed up drinking beer, kumiss, and vodka and snacking on the food that was left over. Because I knew that almost all of the CAREC people smoked, I had brought a few cartons of cigarettes to give as gifts. Aladdin seemed to especially like having some American cigarettes. I had to ask Sergei and Sasha if they (American Spirit) were any good. Sasha kind of grunted an "eh" but Sergei said they were good, although more tightly packed than most other cigarettes and therefore harder to draw. I also brought some packets of Starbucks instant coffee, mostly for Anna, who likes Starbucks coffee a lot, although Sergei, Sasha, and Aladdin got some as well.

Sunday, July 20, 2014
Batken to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan
We had a mid-morning flight from Batken City to Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. Here is a shot of the exterior of the Batken City Airport terminal.

Aladdin seemed to know everyone everywhere--either that or he was able to strike up a conversation with strangers as if he already knew them.

Another view of the terminal, including the parking lot. The car on the right is a Russian Lada Niva, a make of car produced by the Russian Manufactureer AvtoVAZ. They stopped making cars in 2012 so there were still a lot of them on the road.

The terminal had two rooms--the security screening room and the waiting area, shown above. It got more crowded than this before we were allowed to board. Sasha said 90 percent of the people were Tajiks. The Tajiks, who consider themselves of Persian descent, tend to look more typically middle-eastern than Kazakhs or the Kyrgyz. However, there seems to be a wide spectrum of variation in looks for all of them so I don't know how anyone could tell for sure if someone was a Tajik or a Kyrgyz unless they were wearing ethnic clothing.

Our plane boarded from Gate 1 (of 1). The airport was bordered by big mountains on three sides. Despite the size of the terminal the plane was not small.

I got yelled at by one of the two people who ran the airport for taking pictures. Through Sergei he said he had already warned me once, but if he did, I had no idea he was talking to me. [1]

A view of part of the city of Batken from the air. When we were still slightly lower you could see just how many homes had apricots spread out to dry.

Photo source: Panaramio

The airport where we landed in Bishkek, Manas International Airport, was named after the Kyrgyz superhero.

Post 9-11, the US put millions of dollars in leases and improvements into this airport as part of the war in Afghanistan. Kyrgyzstan was the only Central Asian country that gave the US unrestricted military overflight rights. Manas became a major refueling hub for troop transport planes during the G.W. Bush administration. The contract for supplying the fuel was conveniently arranged with a company ran by the (then) Kyrgyz president's son-in-law.

The facility became known as the transit Center at Manas and was something of an R&R point for military personnel transferring into and out of Afghanistan. The presence of so many American troops in Central Asia was unpopular with the Russians, the Chinese, and the radical Islamists in the region. Under pressure (and with a new president), the lease eventually expired and was not renewed. The US vacated the base in June 2014--just a month previous to our visit.

A Bishkek street scene. Like Almaty, Bishkek had aryks alongside the street, except they were covered, except where the covers were missing.

We arrived early enough to have some time to spend in the city center. Anna had a favorite department store that she liked to visit when she was in Bishkek. Merchandise is much less expensive in Bishkek than in Almaty and Kazakhs make regular bus or car trips to Bishkek to go shopping.

Bishkek was similar to Dushanbe in that it only recently grew into a big city. It was a small outpost on the Silk Road and only grew into a larger city after World War II. It was previously called Pishpek and then Frunze and only became known as Bishkek in 1991. No one seems to know exactly where the name came from. I have read that it means "big ladle" or "a large churn in which kumiss is made." Why anyone would name a city after either isn't clear.

Housing is primarily Soviet-era apartment blocks. The apartments almost uniformly appeared as if they had had no external maintenance since the Soviet breakup. There were only occasional signs of new construction.

Before the Soviet dissolution more than half of the Bishkek population was made up of ethnic Russians. Now less than 10 percent of the population are Russian. The total population of the city is about 875,000.

Photo: Wikipedia

Although we did not visit it, Bishkek is home to the well-known Dordoy Bazaar. This is a huge market for household goods that are sold completely out of double stacked cargo shipping containers. The ground-level containers serve as the storefronts with the upper level containers serving as overstock storage. There are an estimated 7000 containers in the market, which are arranged into streets categorized by different types of goods.

It is one of the main points for Chinese manufactured goods to come into Central Asia. All kinds of goods are sold--electronics, clothing, shoes, appliances, furniture, hardware, car parts, toys, etc. It's not where you would generally go for food, but according to Anna, you could find just about everything else there.

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Sergei, Anna, and Sasha on the patio of the German restaurant where we went for dinner. Germans are a significant minority ethnic group in Central Asia, although their numberrs have declined steeply. In 1999, there were more than 350,000 people of German descent in Kazakhstan and about 21,000 in Kyrgyzstan. At one time there had been more than 100,000 Germans in Kyrgyzstan.

Germans ended up in the former Soviet Union in a number of ways. In some cases they were recruited during the era of the tsars for their technical and agricultural skills. In some cases it was due to shifting national borders. In 1941 the Soviet Union relocated many Germans living in the Volga region of Russia to Central Asia because of fears of Nazi collaboration.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, many of the relocated Germans in Central Asia felt less welcome and migrated back to Russia or elsewhere. Because many of them, by now, spoke only Russian, Germany restricted their migration back to Germany.

I didn't care much for the food at this restaurant which seemed to be a sampler of many types of bland sausages that were, to me, very similar to hot dogs. Everyone else seemed to like them however. The restaurant brewed their own beer though, which was very good. We had the place to ourselves.

An exterior view of the Asia Mountains 2 Hotel where we stayed while we were in Bishkek. It was a very pleasant hotel--nicer on the inside than it looks like from this photo.

Kyrgyzstan is the most open of the Central Asia countries. For many countries, including the US, a visa is not required for entry to Kyrgystan. It gets a significant number of tourists from both China and Europe. There were some German mountain climbers staying at the hotel while we were there.

I was happy that the windows actually opened so I could get some outdoor air. Then I noticed that it smelled like someone was was burning trash nearby so I had to keep the windows closed and use the air conditioner.

Monday, July 21, 2014
Bishkek to Merke, Kazakhstan
The plan for the day was to travel west to meet with the Kyrgyz delegation of the Aspara River Small Basin Council. Our drivers were not expected to show up until after breakfast. I had had a good night's sleep for once and was up fairly early before the others and decided to take a short walk in the neighborhood.

One of the relatively few places where there seemed to be any new construction going on was just down the block from the hotel where some guys were erecting a metal frame building. It appeared that the construction crew was living in this yurt while they were onsite. This was the largest and most ornate yurt I saw on any of my trips.

The metal frame construction was not typical. Most of the multi-story buildings I saw under construction used rebar-reinforced, poured concrete for their frames.

At the end of the street there was a little wooded area with water flowing in a channel. This must have been a controlled flow because when I walked in the same area again later the channel was totally dry. I wondered if the color of the water was from suspended rock dust from glacial meltwater. There are big mountains just outside of Bishkek so it was possible that there were mountain glaciers upstream somewhere. Unfortunately, it was overcast while we were in Bishkek so the mountains weren't visible.

In the same area there was a small, undeveloped patch of land. You can see where the channel runs just beyond the trees. At first it looked like a pleasant little stand of trees but then I realized that this was where people in the neighborhood bring their garbage to burn. In spots you could see the charred remains of garbage, which included plastic bottles and food scraps. One pile was still smoldering. This was likely the origin of the burning garbage I had smelled the night before.

I asked Sergei and Anna later about this and they told me that garbage pickup was available but people were not required to have the service. So, people who couldn't afford it or didn't want to pay for it found other ways to get rid of their garbage, including burning it in some empty lot. It is, apparently, something people are used to and take for granted. Sergei then reprimanded me for going on an unescorted walk.

Our drivers arrived around mid-morning and we headed west, our party split into two vehicles. Jerry, Sergei, and I rode in one vehicle and Anna and Sasha in the other. CAREC has a favorite driver named Akeem who they like to use whenever they are in the Bishkek area. So, this gave them a chance to chat with Akeem.

The road west was the M-39, which is a major artery linking Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan with Shymkent, Kazakhstan, and Tashkent, Uzbekistan, all fairly large cities. It was a busy but rough road. Because of the traffic there were lots of small businesses along the roadside. Near towns, there seemed to be wall-to-wall businesses, sometimes for miles--a sort of Central Asian version of a very long strip mall.

Once we got beyond the towns though there were some wide-open vistas. The M-39 paralleled the mountains to the south, which also ran east-to-west so the view to the south included mountains on the horizon.

To the north were steppes that looked like they went on forever.

Photo: Sergei

Me, Jerry, and Sasha with one of the members of the Kyrgyz delegation of the Aspara Small Basin Council. He is one of the ethnic Germans of Central Asia who has stayed. He is a professional hydrologist and he has invented, installed, and calibrated a number of flow monitoring gauges in the Aspara watershed.

The historically agreed allotment of water for the Aspara is that Kyrgyzstan was permitted to keep 38 percent and Kazakhstan would receive 62 percen.t However, no one really knew how much water either country was getting. Since they installed the gauges they had been able to show that Kyrygystan has only been retaining 25 percent of the flow and they are negotiating with the Kazakhs to keep more.

An objection that the Kazakhs bring up is that the Kyrgyz have diverted more than their agreed-upon share of the nearby Chu River. So, this Aspara group is more upset with their Kyrgyz neighbors than they are with the Kazaks because they feel they are being punished because the Chu River Kyrgyz use more than their share of water.

The Aspara is a tributary of the Chu River [2], which is one of the bigger rivers in the region, about 600 miles in length. The Chu eventually flows into the desert and what isn't diverted evaporates.

Photo: Sergei

Most of the rest of the attending members of the Kyrgyz delegation of the Aspara River Small Basin Council are shown above. The woman was a government public health official. She raised the issue of the public health effects of widespread garbage burning. This was the first time anyone had brought up an issue that wasn't directly related to water. She was particularly concerned about the health effects of breathing smoke and fumes from burning plastics. There were only about 10 people in attendance at this meeting.

Photo: Jerry

We met with the Kazakh delegation to the Aspara River Small Basin Council at a restaurant and afterwards stayed and ate lunch with them. Outside the entrance of many of the restaurants we visited was usually a little handwashing station like this one in Chaldovar. Everyone was expected to wash their hands before entering the restaurant, which seemed like an excellent idea to me. However, it always seemed like the shared hand towels were wet and of dubious cleanliness, so usually my hands didn't feel any cleaner afterwards.

A view of what I presumed to be downtown Chaldovar from outside the restaurant where the meeting was held. There was something about Chaldovar that reminded me of an old west ghost town. There may be other parts of Chaldovar that looked less desolate but we didn't get to see them. Chaldovar, according to the people in the basin council is growing and has a population of about 8500 people, which includes people in the outlying rural area. The open window at the left of this empty building was banging in the wind, adding to the ghost town atmosphere.

Another view of downtown Chaldovar. The wind was whipping up dust devils. For a short period of time it started to rain with huge, but widely spaced, raindrops. They left quarter-sized wet spots in the dust but then it stopped after a few minutes without really wetting much of anything. It stayed windy though.

The Chaldovar post office. This light blue color of the doors and window frames is one of the most commonly seen colors in Central Asia and, I presume, the former Soviet Union. Somewhere in Russia there must a paint factory that churns out this color. [3]

A scene at the border crossing between Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. After the meeting with the Kyrgyz delegation we left to head west so we could meet with the Kazakh delegation the next day. The border crossing was very close to the restaurant in Chaldovar where we met--almost within sight. Because this is a major highway, it is a very busy border crossing--probably one of the busiest in Central Asia. I could tell Anna and Sergei were a little tense about it.

This particular crossing is known for long lines and corruption. Although no one approached us, there are supposedly "fixers" present, who, for a fee, will get you to the head of the line or get you through with less scrutiny.

As at the much smaller border crossing from Tajikistan, it was easier to be dropped off on one side and picked up at the other. Sergei made sure that Jerry and I knew that when we lined up for luggage scanning and passport inspection that we were not to leave even a small space between us. The idea of passively waiting in line is something that the Kazakhs and Kyrgyzstan, with their nomadic heritage, have not fully embraced. Even a small gap in a waiting line is interpreted as an invitation to jump in.

There were a lot of rough looking characteris at this crossing. Some were the people who were hired on the spot to transport cargo across the border because it appeared that even bigger vehicles had to have their contents removed. This was hard work because they moved some heavy loads on small carts over rough surfaces. They looked really weathered and some appeared to be using performance-enhancing substances. There were also a lot of annoyingly persistent guys looking for people who needed a ride from the other side. I got a better idea why the CAREC people dread border crossings. In fact, I realized why CAREC had set up an itinerary that at first seemed longer than necessary. It was intentionally designed to minimize the number of times we had to cross borders.

Anna looking relieved to be on the Kazakh side of the border. The gentleman in the maroon shirt is a member of the Kazakh delegation of the Aspara River Small Basin Council. He picked us up once we crossed the border and drove us to our hotel. He was present during all three trips I made and always had pretty much the same look on his face. He must have been a local big shot. During the meetings he would occasionally tell one or another of his fellow council members to shut up.

The guy on the left with sunglasses was one of a swarm of guys looking for people who might need a ride or some other service.

The hotel was at the mouth of a canyon at the foot of the mountains south of M-39. Merke was the closest town but the hotel was probably at least 10 or 12 miles distant.

The entrance to the Hotel Aisulu. This was a family-owned hotel. The older woman who owned it was not very pleasant. Nobody slept very well at this place. More about that later.

There were a string of hotels and restaurants in the lower canyon. This gateway was just outside the Aisulu entrance looking up the canyon. It seemed to be a local get-away area.

After finding our rooms the five of us met to relax and drink a few beers at one of the picnic tables outside the hotel. This is a full beer. On the back of the mug is a 500 ml. line. It seems that, by law, the mug must filled to that line and no further. Every time we needed a refill someone had to track down the owner's son who kept moving around. I got the feeling that he didn't want to be bothered with us.

It was while we were drinking beer that Anna told us a story about the Tajik Isfara group. When we were visiting with them earlier and had first arrived she asked one of the council members how things were going and if they had made much progress since the previous meeting. He replied that yes, they had made great progress--they had recently killed four Kyrgyz. And, he wasn't joking (although the actual killing was not done by any of the old men of the basin council). I found it interesting that Anna waited a few days to mention the story to Jerry and me. I'm not sure whether she just didn't want us to be too worried while we were in Isfara or if she just needed a couple of beers before she brought it up.

Sasha ordered some qurt (or koort) for us to have with our beer. This is sort of a dried yogurt or very hard cheese depending on whom you talk to. It was very hard and very salty but fine for eating with beer. Foods in Central Asia are varied because, being on the Silk Road, different cuisines were introduced from both the east and the west, as well as from Russia. Qurt, however, was a traditional nomad food because it was portable and non-perishable. It can also be rehydrated to make a yogurty drink or broth.

I brought up the issue of solid waste management since it was a topic that the Kyrgyz Aspara basin council and raised. Sasha said there was a saying that related to the priority that most people in Central Asia associated with the issue. Sergei translatied it as, "Nothing will be done until a grilled rooster pecks someone in the ass." I wasn't 100 percent sure what he meant by that other than that it wasn't a high priority in his opinion and since no one was really pursuing it nothing was going to get done. Sasha doesn't speak any English although I think he understands some.

Another view of the exterior of the hotel. I think we were only people actually staying at the hotel. However, the owners also had a building (just to the right of this photo) that they rented out to people for parties, weddings, etc. Some local people had rented it and were doing karaoke at high volume outside late into the night. Anna and Sasha both complained to the owner who bluntly told them in an irritated manner that the partiers were local elites and she would not ask them to turn down the volume. It was horrible karoke. None of them could sing well but that didn't prevent anyone from singing loudly. Every once and a while they would take a break but just when you thought they were done for the night it would start up again.

Some of the songs were pop songs, some that I recognized but substituted with Kazakh lyrics. Others seemed to be traditional folksongs. Sasha later told us that he thought the tempo of all Kazakh folksongs matched that of either trotting or galloping horses.

The window just to the left of the entrance by the pillar was where my room was. Unfortunately, partiers, who wanted a break from the karaoke for some reason came to the table right outside my window to smoke, drink, and talk loudly. I was forced to keep my window closed and use the air conditoner, but it was still loud. The biggest challenge of the trip so far has been getting a good night's sleep.

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Footnotes

[1] Sadly, since visiting Central Asia there have been sporadic violent clashes on the Tajikistan/Kyrgyzstan border between Isfara and Batken. The worst was in September of 2022 when Tajikistan used tanks, armored personnel carriers, and mortars to shell villages in the Batken area, including the airport that we flew out of in 2014. More than 100 people were killed, mostly civilians, and more than 137,000 people were evacuated from the Batken area to safer locations. Both countries are members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a NATO-like organization of six post-Soviet countries, and are therefore theoretically allies. CSTO did not know how to respond to a situation where a conflict broke out between two member countries. Because Russia continued to have military bases in both countries after 1993, Russian troops occasionally served as a buffer to de-escalate tensions along the disputed border in the past. The escalated hostilies in this area are viewed as, in part, a by-product of the war in Ukraine since most of the troops formerly stationed in Central Asia have been moved to Ukraine. (note added July 2023)

[2] The Chu River basin is famous in the former Soviet republics as the source of an odd form of cannabis. There are large areas of wild marijuana growing in the border area of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The local people harvest it by first bathing themselves and their horses in the Chu River. They then gallop the horses back in forth in the cannabis fields, with the rider being naked. As both the rider and horse begin to sweat, the sticky resin from the cannabis adheres to the skins of both the rider and the horse. The mixture of resin and sweat is then scraped from both the rider and the horse and formed into bars. The wild marijuana is usually weak but this process supposedly transforms the final product into a more potent form--perhaps the horse sweat contributes. The Russians tried to eradicate the plants and the custom but were unsuccessful.

[3] I later learned that in the Russian language "blue" is perceived differently than in the English language. There is a Russian word for light blue (goluboy) and a word for medium and dark blues (seeney) but they are considered to be two entirely separate colors and not variations of the same color. Anna said that most women can differentiate more than a dozen "blue" colors but men usually only know goluboy and seeney. But of those dozen blues, they all have their own names and aren't categorized as types of blues (navy blue, royal blue, etc) like they are in English. Sasha added that Goluboy is also a derogatory slang word among Russian speakers for gay males.

Next: Merke to Morgantown

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