Postcard from Bishkek

They say that first impressions are important.

Well, I remember my first impressions of Bishkek … and I have to admit that they were not exactly good … although I think I fared better than Saffia Farr who describes her first impressions in her book “Revolution Baby“: the depressing and demoralizing, dark and dismal streets that welcomed her to Bishkek.

(Having said that, she too came to appreciate the idiosyncrasies of life here in Bishkek and was sad when it was eventually time to take her leave).

If she arrive in what appeared to be the dead of night, it was light and bright sunshine when I arrived.

That was in mid morning one day in July 1994.  I had arrived at Almaty in the early hours of the morning on flight from Moscow.  I wasn’t alone, I was travelling with a friend, an international lawyer who had already been to both to Alamty and Bishkek several times and knew both cities well.  He had arranged for us to be met at Almaty by someone, (a father, uncle, distant relative or friend of one of his Kazakh interpreters), and his vehicle, a Zhigulu or Moskvitch, (I forget which), was not much younger than him.

I was given the front passenger seat so that, (or so I was told), I could enjoy the countryside as we motored along – even thought my friend knew Russian and would have been able to talk to the driver on the 2509 kilometer, or four hour journey – and I didn’t, so couldn’t.   He told me that, as he already knew the road, it would be more interesting for me to sit up front.  I wasn’t fooled.  I knew that, because of the early hour and the fact that he couldn’t really do so on the plane, he really wanted to catch up on his beauty sleep.  Sure enough he curled up on the back seat and settled down for a nap whilst I settled down on what would have  been the drivers side in a British car.

The seat belts didn’t work but the old man laid it across my shoulder so that it looked like it did, (although I doubt if that would passed more than a cursory inspection and have fooled the GAI – or traffic police – thus avoiding a fine).

As it happens, once we left the outskirts of the metropolis behind us, I too fell asleep.   I woke once or twice as we trundled along.  On one occasion I drowsily noted the mountains to my left and the long open steppe to my right but the highlight was being startled to see a cow emerge from underneath some trees lining the road, chased by two “cowboys” on horseback. whooping and screaming to move it along.

I woke from my fitful slumbers as the car drove into Bishkek.   I was greeted by a dry and dusty “village street” with low rise bungalows – single storey houses – behind low rise fences and high gates … nothing like English country cottages that line the streets of villages in the Cotswolds or Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple stories  set in the village of St. Margaret Mead.  The wide boulevard came to a spacious crossroads and we turned right.  Somehow, I think that was a mistake.

Although I had assumed that he was “a local”, the driver was from Almaty and didn’t really know his way around Bishkek.  Now I know that he should have carried on straight and turned right at the next crossroads.  Once he had realized his mistake he tried to correct it and signaled to turn left.  ”Where’s he going?”, I thought to myself, as he pulled onto what appeared to be waste ground between two blocks of “high rise” apartments and we lurched right and left, forwards and backwards, tilting this way and that as he attempted to navigate the potholes.

For the record: A pothole is a type of disruption or blemish in the surface of a roadway where a portion of the road material has broken away, leaving a hole.  They can be more than a nuisance … they can actually be a real danger to cyclists and others. According to one statistic I have seen, there’s an average of one for every 110 meters of road in the UK.

We were, in fact on a side street – an “unmade” road, or what we would have called back in the UK, an “unadopted road”.  The path the road would take was laid out, but there was no asphalt … as that was the responsibility of the residents.

There are quite a lot of those roads here in Bishkek.  According to a news report this week, there are 1374 kilometers of roads here in Bishkek – of which just over half, 722 kilometers, are asphalted; the remaining 652 kilometers are classified as “gravel roads”.  Currently, only 120 kilometers are in what is called “good condition” and some 602 kilometers are in a “completely worn out” state or in need of “major repair”.

Those statistics came with a story about how the city council were preparing to start some of those major repairs.  In fact, they are planning to spend some 35 million som on repairing pot holes in the city streets – but, although that sounds like a lot, there are an awful lot of potholes.  Fortunately, in addition the city also has received a grant from China and there is a USD20 million loan from Turkey, some of which will  which also be used to help repair some of the capital’s streets.

The state of Kyrgyzstan’s roads has long been a topic of conversation.  The travel advice issued by both the State Department and the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, for example, highlight the number of potholes … and missing manhole covers … which, I have to admit, constitute a risk as well as making for somewhat uncomfortable journeys.

One review on Trip Advisor, (not one for the Silk Road Lodge – but, to be fair, it could easily have been … when we built the hotel we had the road outside made up … but over the course of time, erosion and road works have taken their toll), drew attention to the fact that:

… there were no street lights when we were there, and lots of huge potholes and open manhole covers. You have to be very vigilant where you are walking, which can be tough in the dark.

It’s not just a topic of conversation amongst foreigners.  A friend of mine tells how, when she was visiting relatives in New Zealand, they stopped the car and got out to take photographs … not of the mountains or some other fantastic scenery, but because they had come across a pot hole.

As it happens, there has been quite a lot of attention paid to pot holes here in Bishkek over the winter.

The “activist” son of the ex-President of Kyrgyzstan, Roza Otunbaeva, got so upset at the inactivity of the local authority in addressing the issue, that he and some friends bought a couple of tons of asphalt and patched up 107 potholes on sections of three of the main city streets, posting photos on twitter and Facebook.   The municipal authorities then hit back by claiming that the repairs were substandard and not according to the building codes … a factor which they stressed when announcing their latest measures this week.

Another activist has taken to posting links to websites like Fill that hole in the UK and the Report a Pothole page operated by Edmonton in Canada.

I think it will take a long time before we get to that level of service here in Bishkek, but at least something seems to be being done to address the issue …

 

Tags: Expat, Life_in_Kyrgyzstan, Reminiscences