It was in Bishkek that I first realized that man-hole covers were valuable.
Valuable in a sense other than full-filling their function of keeping a lid on the cities sewers and preventing people from falling into such said sewers. Purposefully designed in a circular form to prevent them from falling into the stinky sewers below yet remaining easy to remove, these little suckers in Bishkek proved too easy to remove. The jury is still out on the reason for this but made out of a material that was either useful to guys melting it down and selling it for scrap or perhaps someone in the city just has an insatiable attraction to these circular beasts there does not appear to be a single one left in the city; and considering the fact that there are at least a few people walking around the city with a tipple of vodka in their blood, I guess there are bound to be a few people smelling like shit to accompany the fact that they feel like shit!!
Here is a giant statue of Lenin pointing the way!!
Bishkek is also a leafy pleasant city surrounded by mountains and with rivers running all through it but it lacks the spark and the buzz that you feel in Almaty. We spoke with a very interesting Italian man who spends a large part of his time in Kyrgyzstan and he gave us some very interesting insights into the republic and to the recent political upheavals that removed President Akayev, who had ruled since 1991. Displaying a cynicism that only Italians can when it comes to politics (because no country in western Europe is as much of a farce politically and has been governed by such a bunch of crooks and jokers of which Berlusconi represents perhaps the creme de la creme) he gave us the street level low-down of what happened and needless to say it is not exactly in line with the official version. One day I will expand on this but I need to think things through a bit more before I delve into this can of worms.
With the Iranian visa secured, we headed off in a car that would break down no fewer than 7 times with our fearless driver/mechanic Edik in the direction of Kochkor from which we intended to go Yurt camping up at Song-Kul, a beautiful high mountain lake.
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Posted by: Alexzyb | October 02, 2007 at 10:31 PM