Silk Road - 29 May 2009 - Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

The breakfast at the Ak Keme Hotel was excellent, but after last nights carousing, I wasn’t very hungry.

Bishkek was originally a fort, which was conquered and destroyed by the Russians around 1860. The Russians built their own fort. They did improve irrigation and planted trees to make the city Green. There is an American University. The city appears quite modern with its traffic jams. Bishkek in the Kyrgyz language means the stock of a butter churn. Why that name would be chosen for a city is beyond me.

Those of us who didn’t want to sleep late headed to the Museum which was supposed to open at 9:00 am, but because of a Turkish fair it didn’t open until 10:00 am. We headed to a book store with an “applied art” museum, which was actually a souvenir shop with some artifacts. Unfortunately the book store had no books in English. We finally got into the museum. It was originally the Lenin Museum and the second floor is devoted to the Communist Revolution, which our guide dragged us through, and the third floor is about Silk Road history, which was what I was interested in. We got back to the hotel late. American University in Bishkek
White House of Kyrgyzstan President
Administrative Building in Bishkek
Scenery in Bishkek - Note snow covered mountains in the distance
Symbol
Street scene
Balbal near museum
Me with Balbal near museum

Then we headed up the mountains to a National Park. We were supposed to hike up the mountain, but most of us elected to remain around the base area. There were some excellent views of the mountains. We ate lunch at the park. The lunch consisted of three pieces of chicken, some salad and rice. While it was more than enough, it had no pizzazz.
View of National Park
Me in National Park

Our next stop was at the Manas airport. Manas is the national hero of Kyrgyzstan and there is an epic about him which runs about 25 times the length of the Illiad. Leaving Kyrgyzstan was no problem. We flew to Tashkent via Uzbek Airlines, which made make sure that I recited the traveler’s prayer. As we got off the plane, they checked our temperature. Going through customs was not as bad as Bora had indicated it would be. First there was passport control. Next came luggage pick-up and then finally we had to put our luggage through a scanner. The last part was the most chaotic, because there was no clear line. Everyone just pushed and shoved to get into position. We were met at the airport by our Uzbek guide who seems quite pleasant. According to Bora she will be with us for the entire time that we are in Uzbekistan.

We went out to dinner at a restaurant called Dasturhon, which in the Uzbek language means “table cloth”. On the way to the restaurant, our guide, whose name is Sanna (I think), spoke about Uzbekistan, which is one of the wealthier central Asian countries. The population of Uzbekistan is 27 million and grew by 650,000 last year. The population is young which means that the population growth can and probably will continue. There are three forms of gold in Uzbekistan; white which is cotton, yellow which is gold and black which is oil. The food at the restaurant was quite good.