Another travelogue from yours truly.
Flying east over the Caspian, British travel essayist Colin Thubron wrote something vaguely resembling: "If the world is disorganized and chaotic, it's only fitting that its center, its heart, would be a disorganized chaos." Amen, brutha.
Central Asia is a mix of mixes -- jigsaw boundaries arbitrarily drawn by Party leaders, national languages either ruthlessly enforced or methodically ignored, governments that have moved on from the Soviet system in name only (under the "democracy is spreading like a sunrise" list), and roads that make Russia's highways look and feel like smooth (Christie, Julie, and Tiff: I know you're recoiling right now.)
A disclaimer. Despite my colleague Mike's wishes, I wasn't exactly trekking through the backcountry and staying with horse farmers in yurts. I was in Almaty, Kazakhstan and Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan to oversee two conferences for work, so my knowledge of both cities consists of car trips (mostly at night), group excursions to restaurants, or small breaks when I wandered a few blocks outside our five-star Western hotels and took a glimpse of each city. That said, here are a few observations.
- Flying to a 'Stan makes you re-evaluate life several times over. I'm not talking about the whole "rich nation/poor nation" dilemma. Oh no, sitting on planes and lounges for 24 hours makes you seriously re-evaluate life. If you can survive this, you might just be ready for central Asia.
- Which brings me, of course, to Kazakh customs. Oh doctor. Just when you think "I'm on government business, what can go wrong," you get stopped by border guards wondering why you're carrying 150 burned CDs (with conference materials - but try explaning this) into their country. They said I couldn't bring in more than 10, I said fine, take them, to which they said "No, we're going to make you pay a customs tariff - how much money do you have on you?". At this point, I am worried. I'm carrying over $6K in cash for various conference expenses and make a mental note that it's interesting that customs tariffs are determined by how much cash you're carrying. Luckily, it was all resolved when my chauffeur came in and explained that I'm neither a UN spy nor a CD smuggler (that'd be funny: "yes, I flew 24 hours to sell ripped CDs for $1 each on your black market. Muhahahahaha.") All told, I arrived at the hotel with materials and finances intact. Whew.
- Almaty and Bishkek have two of the most picturesque locations in the world. Both are located at the base of the Tien Shan Mountains (or maybe the Altau mountains. I haven't quite figured it out, since maps tend to claim them as both), mighty alpine peaks which literally hover straight over the cities. That said, leave it to the Soviets to take what could be their Aspen and Vail and turn them into industrial wastelands -- in Almaty, the haze is so thick, that the mountains are either barely or not at all visible by noon. In Bishkek, it's not as bad - maybe because the city is smaller, or maybe because I hit it on a better day.
- That said, once you leave the cities, the view becomes absoultely stunning. The best way to describe it is the Rohan landscape in "Lord of the Rings" - brownish, grassy plains in front of snowy mountains. Barring the occasional smokestack spewing sulfurous venom into the air, the two locations literally look exactly the same. Fitting, then, that the Kazahs (Cossacks) are Asia's horse lords.
- Admittedly, I'd been dreading the drive from Almaty to Bishkek for months - 250 KM on Soviet highways. Save me. Then again, many of these 250 KM were "na remontye" (under repair), so we were forced into some serious offroading. If shocks and suspensions could sue, they'd have quite a market. What's worse, the roads in Kyrgyzstan are in even tougher shape, as dirt roads even make up parts of the highways.
- The conferences themselves went well. They were set up to bring commercial arbitrators from various sectors (supreme courts, private law offices, public sector, academia) to discuss the embetterment of commercial arbitration within their respective countries. Now these people are PASSIONATE about arbitration, very much in the same way Wisconsin is to the Packers. We went out to dinner (mmm...horse meat) the first night, and nearly all of the toasts were "Za arbitrazh!" ("Here's to arbitration!"). It's really a moving experience to see so many people PASSIONATE about arbitration. Because if you're not PASSIONATE about arbitration, frankly, there's nothing to be PASSIONATE about.
- This week's sign of the apocalypse: My cell phone works in Kyrgyzstan.
Where flying over was painfully long, flying back was equally as weird. In about 14 hours, I had crossed the Aral, the Caspian, the Black Sea, and the English Channel twice. I had US Dollars, Euro, Kazakh Tenge, and Kyrgyz Som in my wallet, and my first purchase was in Pound Sterling. Moreover, I am now fully convinced that turbulence in the air reflects the current state of geopolitics. Our flight from Bishkek to Baku was relatively calm - Turkmenistan, Soviet as it remains, admittedly doesn't get in anyone's face. After stopping in Baku and heading eastward over the Caucasus, the ride was continuously bumpy until the Black Sea. It only got bumpy again over the Balkans. Coincidence? Finally, we arrived at Heathrow, and I was kind of disappointed not to see love all around.
All said, I really can't compare the two countries and experiences first because I haven't seen enough of either, but also because it's easy to sit in an ivory tower (read: Regent or Hyatt) that doesn't belong in a city because it's too bloody glitzy. That said, I liked Kyrgyzstan a little better, first because it is less commercial and more Soviet (not having oil or, well, infrastructure, will do that to you), but also because it seems less westernized and a bit more genuine. It's a third-world country that (except in the Hyatt) doesn't pretend to be otherwise. Bishkek's outskirts are your stereotypical shanty villages: tin roofs atop butting dwellings, dirt roads with the occasional pedestrian, all surrounded by vast plains and impassible mountains. Throw it back 500 years, it's an ideal video game setting.
And now I sit in snow-laden Passau, Germany, where all this began and where everything and nothing has changed. My host parents are divorced and my host sisters have all grown up (this is mega- weird, mind you). But Passau's serenity will never change - and perhaps that's what keeps drawing me back here.One last anecdote: I'm sitting in an Italian restaurant in Bishkek with my group the night before we all diasporate. I'm not really saying anything when a Kyrgyz woman, a judge, turns to me and says "Vy govoritye po-russki?" ("You speak Russian?") "Nemnoshka" (a bit), I reply. She then says "Oh, well I speak English -- where are you from?" We get to talking and she mentions having done an LLM program at Harvard, blah blah. Then she says, "I was asked recently if I liked some Boston sports team -- do you know anything about that?" And then it dawned on me: 10 timezones away, beneath the mighty Tien Shan, in one of the world's poorest and most corrupt countries, the Red Sox are still champions.
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