Silver fox on safari: October 2012

Bishkek (Krgy capital) is stuck somewhere in the 60’s early 70’s with Beatles music regularly on the radio. Yesterday I was cruising Bishkek going to meetings with our 32 year old deputy director (Nazar) who’s choice of CD’s in the car was Barry White. It’s really difficult to get around the city for the simple reason that it’s hard to read any sign because they are all in Russian which is a 32 character alphabet which for much of it does not match ours, it’s actually very isolating.

I had been complaining to Nazar about camp food and he took me to the most awesome Turkish restaurant, the first really good meal I’ve had in weeks, it was just so good, fresh and tasty compared to the bland Kyrgyis option! Despite looking Asian their closest affinities other than Russian are to west with Turkey rather than China. An interesting anecdote is that much of the road works in Kyrgy is paid and done by the chinese, with much of the labour being chinese convict (such as women who dared to have a second child!).

The politics of doing business here is crazy, there is this background of old Soviet autocracy overlain with, well, nothing else to call it but corruption. Much I could say but probably not wise in such a public forum; recently I went to one meeting where the head honcho had 2 bodyguards hanging around. Even within our own local organisation the politics are so complex with the head of our local company being an ex-KGB chief, he is an absolute fossil of the Soviet era, I have already had a run in with him and as it was happening in the back of my mind were a few warning bells as to what the backlash could be.

It has been a comparatively quiet week or two focused on work. One of the highlight is booking my homeward journey 24^th October and oh yes and we did have the wedding at the Resort. We have had another dump of snow, up to 0.5m in the mountains but which now has just about disappeared but in the process turned our roads to mud.

I have done a 12 hour round trip to look at some new sites and the country seems to be relaxing prior to the on-set of winter. It is a true peasant country revolving around the cycle of agriculture but all the crops seem to be in, most of the cattle/sheep/goat herds have been brought down from the high country and anything from summer that can be preserved or bottled now in storage. Roof spaces are for storing hay and there are quite a few people out in what little forest they have foraging for whatever can be recovered, often walnuts. I suspect our never ending supply of tomatoes and cucumbers will come to an end shortly and be replaced by root crops i.e. potatoes, carrots and turnips. In fact I have noticed a change in meals to starch with starch already.

We call our base camp the “Resort”, our hostess is Big Momma. It’s called the Resort because we have a sauna and an indoor swimming pool (but neither of them work), plus it is set up on the hill by itself with great views over the town and valley. Strange things happen here, hot water has been in short supply and when it did work it was barely a trickle but so hot that you couldn’t touch the tap. So eventually, after making sufficient noise, we got one of the showers upgraded, nothing unusual in that but I suddenly noticed an increase in people around the place, news had travelled fastand there was this trail of people in and out of the Resort with their soap and towels, I think I counted 12 people in one afternoon – I have put a stop to this as I think we were cleaning the entire village! We also seem to get periodic invasions of animals, it is not unusual to have several horses, or cows wander through munching on the lawn.

last week-end I returned to the resort to find the wedding (that had been booked for the previous WE) in full swing this WE (nobody told us). Very traditional and certainly not an abduction wedding; see the photos for some new wedding clothing options. Unfortunately I did not see much of it but the celebrations seem to move from one location to another so very shortly after I arrived, they packed up and left.