Postcard from Bishkek

During the week I had an interesting lesson in the power of the internet.  One of my friends on Facebook posted the following status on their wall:

It’s international book week. The rules: Grab the closest book to you, turn to page 52, post the 5th sentence as your status. Don’t mention the title. Copy the rules as part of your status:

In 1955, the English linguist J.L. Austin, who had been a cryptographer in World War II, delivered a series of lectures at Harvard under the title _How to Do Things with Words_. 

Two other people had responded with:

Can they, as soldiers who attempted to assassinate their leader, be recalled as patriots?

and

Even his red-haired / beggar girl possessed / my breasts.

Anyway, I had seen a similar post last year and  taken part so I thought, OK.  Although I was tempted to go and look for something exotic, on my desk was a copy of Mountains of Kyrgyzstan which I had been using to look up something about the Toktogul Reservoir.  OK … it said “Grab the closest book to you …”, so I did – turned to page 52 and counted down 5 sentences … and this is what I found … and posted:

Its highest point is 4770m.

I also  added a brief comment about how “sometimes you get something interesting, but sometimes …”

To my amazement, I received a message in reply from a former colleague; someone that I seen for almost twenty years and who, at least as far as I am aware, has never set foot in the Kyrgyz Republic:

Something to do with Peak Chok Tal.

Now that took me aback … to be honest, I didn’t know if that was correct, or not. Hey!, it was after all  the result of an arbitrary algorithm – post the 5th line on page 52 – not necessarily something like: chose and post a meaningful, memorable or  inspiring sentence.

As it happens, the name Chok Tal is very specific and  typically Kyrgyz, so I went and checked … and discovered that, sure enough, the sentence was in the middle of a paragraph describing the mountain ranges that ring Lake Issyk Kul: the Kungey Ala Too to the North andTerskey Ala Too to the South.  This particular sentence was part of the description of the Kungey Ala Too, the highest point of which is indeed Chok Tal – the 18th highest mountain in Kyrgyzstan.

As I said, as far as I am aware my friend has never been to Kyrgyzstan and I am certain he is not a mountaineer … so how could he possibly have come up with that titbit of information – and so quickly.  The answer, of course, is obvious … “Google it” …  three of the ten entries refer directly yo Chok Tal – the others mountains it returns are in Bolivia, Peru, Tibet and Nepal.

For the record: he also added the comment: “Can tell you were a maths teacher not an english one – it’s?? ” … Well, he was also a Maths teacher … but I think I would have to give him top marks for that subject “Library Skills” – I wonder if they still teach that?.

 

Now, to be honest, I can’t say that I have ever particularly noticed or singled out the peak Chok Tal on my various visits to Issyk Kul, (but I will now make a special effort to do so in future), and I don’t have any photographs of it.  I went looking on the internet and found precious few, but there are a few interesting ones, taken by the user Strootz, posted on Panoramio.

 

(*) For the record: On peakery.com, they quote the height as 4466m

 

Tags: internet, Kyrgyzstan