September trip to Naryn
I have just got back from my monthly trip to Naryn. These trips are so much a part of my routine that I don’t normally write a postcard about them, but this one was slightly different, so I thought I would this time.
The election campaign is now well underway and as we travelled I saw a lot of billboards displaying adverts for different parties. There were obviously a lot lining the main road out of Bishkek, but I was a little surprised to see so many in the country. Most had the name of the party and a picture of the party leader, some displayed the number of the party on the ballot paper, (the positions having been allocated by ballot rather than being in alphabetical order), but those for one party simply had its name and logo in white on a bright red background. These seemed to be in the majority. Another party had some posters which had a simple message above its name: “Chaos or Order – Decide!” Maybe it is the cynic in me, but I wondered if that was a wise slogan. I understand that the implication was “vote for us for Order” but it could easily be read the other way.
I don’t know if this anything to go by, after all it was a very limited sample in a very restricted geographical area, but although I saw placards for about a dozen parties, most of them seemed to be for just a handful: Ata Meken, the SDPK, Ar Namys, BEK, and Respublica.
As we drove through a couple of towns I was intrigued to see that many of the shops had placards for one party or another over their own nameboards: Ata Meken on one shop, and next door the SDPK, BEK, Ar Namys or some other party. On the way up I got the impression that in one town well over half the shops displayed their political allegiances in this way, but on the way back I checked again and it although there were a lot it was less than half.
The main street in Naryn was bedecked with flags, banners, billboards and posters, but because of roadworks we had to take a detour down a parallel side street past the market and, here, there was definitely a different picture – just three election posters.
It wasn’t just in the towns, either. There were placards in virtually every village through which we passed and sometimes even in the countryside you would see ribbons or posters attached to trees, telegraph poles or electricity pylons.
Now the road to Naryn is one of the major highways in the country. There are only a few North-South roads in the country, and most of them are not passable all year round, (for example, the road from Talas down the Chatkal valley in the extreme West of the country, is closed for half the year). In fact, there are are only two that are open all year round. The main one, of course, is the Bishkek-Osh road, which crosses the Tuu Ashu pass over the Kyrgyz Range to the Suusamyr plain and then over another mountain pass to the Toktogul reservoir after which it follows the course of the Naryn River into the Ferghana valley. The other is known as the Bishkek-Torugart Road, (which passes through Naryn en route), and serves as the main corridor for carrying Chinese goods through the country to Bishkek’s Dordoi Bazaar, (Dordoi is Central Asia’s larges bazaar – not Kashgar), and beyond. As such it is a major trade route in the spirit of the Great Silk Road, (of which it once a part), and plays a vital role in Kyrgyzstan’s economy.
First of all it heads east, out of Bishkek, along the Chui Valley at the foot of the Kyrgyz Range. After about a hundred kilometres it enters Boom Gorge, (Shoestring Gorge – so named, according to tradition, because it is so narrow – but there are others which are narrower). The road emerges from the gorge at Balykchy which lies at the Western tip of Lake Issyk Kul before turning south west, past the Orto Tokoi Reservoir, to the market-garden town of Kochkor.
Actually there is a short cut between Boom Gorge and the reservoir over a mountain pass on “new” road that was laid about twenty tears ago – but more about that later. From Kochor the road climbs steadily to the lofty Dokon Pass which is over 3000 meters above sea level, then descends through one of those gorges that I mentioned to Ottuk where it emerges onto a flattish plain before finally descending, once more, to Naryn. (From Naryn it crosses another range of mountains, follows another valley South before turning East towards the Torugart Pass and China.)
The Bishkek-Torugart road is currently undergoing renovation. As a major trade route, in many places it is narrow – just two lanes – with an uneven surface. According to local regulations, the Chinese lorries are really too heavy for the road surface that was laid several decades ago. The local answer to that seems to be twofold: carry out work to upgrade the road so that it can cope with the current level of traffic and introduce regulations to enforce that only traffic that matches the current design can enter the country and travel on it.
I am pleased to say that we weren’t really held up by the roadworks but, then, we left early enough in the morning to avoid any major delays and I was glad to have the opportunity to see what they were doing. They seem to working on short stretches at various points with small gangs of labourers, (navvies), toiling away on their particular stretch of highway – rather than starting at one place and having one large site which then progresses gradually along the route.
One thing did surprise me, however. It concerns that small of road, about 26km, over a mountain pass between Boom Gorge and the Kochkor valley, thus providing a short cut, avoiding the necessity of having to go all the way up to Balykchy which, in turn, not only saves about an hour on the journey time but also means not having to pay the Issyk Kul Ecological Fee. Now, I have problem with paying an ecological fee as such but there are a couple of things about this particular one that rankles a little bit. Although I think they are very good questions, I’ll only mention in passing that there has been a lot of controversy over the years about how much is collected? and where it actually goes? Apart from these questions I am not happy about the basis of the tariff: there is one sum for a moped or motorcycle, another for cars, others for minbuses, buses and lorries. So far, so food – that’s OK and seems reasonable – I have no problem with that – but there is a further distinction which seems to me a little more qustionable. Foreign vehicles are charged more than local vehicles, (and, incidentally, vehicles from Issyk Kul don’t seem to pay anything). You can imagine how much a Chinese lorry has to pay. Why?, I ask myself. If it is an “ecological fee”, then wouldn’t it be better to base the fee on something like engine size instead of the country in which the vehicle is registered.
Anyway, this road is the obvious route for all traffic going between Bishkek and Naryn, or to Torugart and the Chinese border. Hence all the heavy Chinese lorries carrying goods to the Dordoi Market – as I said, that’s the biggest market in Central Asia, not Kashgar – tend to use it, thus avoiding having to pay the Issyk Kul ecological fee.
However, buses and minibuses are forbidden to use it. Apparently, shortly after it opened there was an accident in which several people died and that’s one of the reasons given for the prohibition. Another, at least, so I have been told, is that it has never actually been formally adopted after it was completed. Apparently, the commission was never gathered together to sign off on the construction and so the road is not technically “on the balance” of the Ministry of Transport. I suppose that means that it doesn’t officially exist. Despite that, there are road signs at either end, and also along its length, and the traffic police can often be seen sitting at one or other junction at the ends of the road collecting fines from the divers of minibuses who ignore the prohibition. What’s more, as part or the project currently underway to improve the Bishkek-Torugart road, this section of “officially non-existent road” is also being widened.
As we drove past the Orto Tokoi reservoir, (we were in a jeep – a Toyota Landcruiser – not a minibus), I noticed that the water level had dropped considerably since the last time had I passed by, two months ago. Then the water was quite high and near its maximum level. Tourists are always interested to see trees apparently growing out of the water in the middle of the “lake”. This time there were no trees with their trunks rising out of the water – they were all high and dry with their ground around their root systems clearly visible. This isn’t that unusual for the Autumn months. Orto Tokoi was the first reservoir built by the Soviet Union in Kyrgyzstan and, unlike many of the others that followed, its main purpose was to provide water for irrigation rather than for the generation of electricity. As a result the water level fluctuates greatly throughout the year and it is usually much lower in the Autumn. This year, however, it seemed much lower than usual and I couldn’t help thinking of the Toktogul Reservoir which only a year ago was perilously close to being at its lowest permissible level – they thought that they might have to turn the generators off to avoid them being damaged – but is now teetering on its maximum volume of nineteen and a half thousand million tons and they having to release water through safety valves to prevent damage.
One of things I found a little odd was the scenery was still remarkably green for this time of year. Normally in September the trees at the side of the road are festooned with different colours as the leaves take on their autumn colours and then fall off. It’s not as dramatic as in New England, but still very colourful and attractive. Although this year there plenty of shades of yellow, gold, orange and red it struck me as if there were less than in previous years – perhaps this is a feature of the milder weather and a late autumn.
In fact, the weather in Naryn was remarkably mild. Just a week ago there had been heavy snow which closed several mountain roads and cut off communities, and several shepherds still in the high mountain pastures, (jailoo), had to be rescued by the emergency services. There are reports that many of the livestock were not so lucky and perished in the sudden extreme weather conditions. The snowfall had been sufficiently heavy to break branches off some of the trees around the guesthouse, and the staff were still clearing up the debris a week later. Some of the higher peaks around the town still had a light covering of snow, although the town itself was clear. It was quite warm, especially in the sun – and I felt overdressed as I had donned lots of extra layers of clothes, just in case. It’s better to do that – it’s always possible to take a layer off, but it an be really miserable if you haven’t taken enough extra clothing in order to add a layer if the weather is really cold, and in Naryn it can get really cold. It’s supposed to be the coldest town in the country and temperatures have been known to reach minus forty in winter. I was, however, very happy that this was not the case this weekend.
This month, being the end of a quarter, there was a fair amount of paperwork to do. Once that was over and we had discussed the main tasks for the coming month, we tuned our attention to the important things: supper and fact that it’s the accountant’s birthday this week. Hey, this is Kyrgyzstan and birthdays are important. We may have had a difficult year, but life goes on and we need to think of the future. It was obvious that the fact that we had remembered and took the trouble to mark the occasion meant an awful lot to her.
Bishkek