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We left Nomad's home on Friday after lunch. Our motorcyclist friends, Robin and Keely, were heading off too, although they were actually heading for the Tourgart Pass to cross into China. It was great to meet them, but it did add to my frustration - they were part of the large motorbike group we'd been offered to join in January, but then the offer was for some reason removed by the tour agent. Hmmm… We'd conferred over the age, experience and knowledge of our Ms Liu (who was also organising the documentation for Robin and Keely's group)… still can't decide if she's evil and extorting money from us, or young and naïve with no idea how frustrating and upsetting her responses are…
We left Bishkek simply because we had to, that or lose our sanity. The passports are safely in the hands of Wang and Hana (visa service agents in London and Dublin), and all we have to do is wait… So off we went towards Toktogul Reservoir. There was a big queue to get onto the main road (only one toll booth operator) so by the time we got to Toktogul we drove straight through it, in the dark thinking it was the outskirts. No bother though, we pulled off the road and found a nice camp spot by the lake that looked like it was illuminated from underneath the moonlight was so bright.
On Saturday we had a bit of a tiff about whether to go to Sary Chelek Reserve or straight to Arslanbob. In the end, having to pay for each day and not being able to find the turn off ruled out Sary Chelek. We arrived into Arslanbob late afternoon and found the CBT (Community Based Tourism) office to arrange a homestay/place to pitch the tent. We ended up sharing the garden of Zinaida, and her extended family, with a cow and calf and a dozen chickens. It was lovely, they offered us some plov and the children were amazed at the car and trying to help us put up the tent, table and chairs! There were no men around though…
The CBT initiative is all across Kyrgyzstan and seems to be really efficient (at Arslanbob they saw us before we saw them!) Each office is run by local people who co-ordinate tours and homestays for independent travellers for a decent, but not ripe off, price. Fintan said it was a good idea, plus the women get the money - not the feckless men!
On Sunday we walked up to the waterfall north of the village - it was a pretty intense walk in the heat of the day, but the view was spectacular. From the waterfall you look down on the village in the valley and the walnut and fruit trees all around with the cold, clean mountain stream running down the centre. Beautiful.
At the top, we met a sweet young girl holidaying with her father from Germany (she'd been born in Bishkek). Not surprisingly, her family was native Russian, but we could tell that almost immediately from how inappropriately she was dressed. There seems to be a rule in Central Asia that you can never, intentionally or unintentionally, be more inappropriately dressed than a Russian on holiday. As the waterfall is a holy site and this girl was dressed in a low cut top and short demin shorts, all the young men wanted photographs with her… more surprisingly her father let them! Then she told us if we were in Jalal-Abad we should go to this spa, but you can only stay in the waters for 15 minutes, because it's radioactive! So now I'm thinking maybe her father is not a particularly responsible adult!
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