Irkutsk, Siberia: Short Stay In A Whatever Townby Randi / July 9, 2017
After three weeks of exhausting, nonstop activity in our big summer travels, we planned for four days of just pure relaxation in a presumed idyllic spot, Olkhon Island on the famed Lake Baikal, a tiny fishing village that is hard to reach and so we simultaneously assumed two incongruous thoughts: 1) that we would be two of very very few visitors (pretty true) but 2) that even so the island and village would be equipped to deal with visitors (hahah no). Can’t have it both ways. Really, parts of the island, like the lake itself and the cliffs and rocky terrain along the northern parts of the island, are beautiful, but getting there and for the most part being there is too stressful to allow for any relaxation, or, honestly, to allow me to recommend a trip here.
it’s like a little baby Azure Window! Oh Azure Window, RIP! (read the Malta posts on the main Travel page)
Through the Hostel Baikaler in Irkutsk, we booked a trip to Olkhon Island up on Lake Baikal. Most people in Irkutsk are indeed stopping there in order to venture out to the lake, which is the biggest freshwater lake in the world. The guidebook says that if all the other freshwater in the world disappeared, Baikal would be able to fill our needs for forty years. That’s a big ass lake. So the Baikaler people booked us a minibus ride to Olkhon and a 3 night stay at Olga’s Guesthouse in Khuzir, the tiny ‘town’ on Olkhon. When I say to you to never, ever use Baikaler or Olga’s people to book anything, I really, really mean it.
The best thing I saw all that day of the 8 hour minibus – our only big toilet stop
My view for an entire day – this was the best road we took. SO BUMPY
The minibus seemed nice enough, one of the nicer vehicles we’ve seen, and since we were picked up at our hostel early we got the first row which I figured would help with my carsickness (the van fit about 16 people). I was so funny thinking anything could stop the nausea on this ride, even if you aren’t prone to it. After we left, at about 9:05, we picked up a few more travelers at another hostel, before we set off and…nope, we just parked in a busy market square one block from our hostel at 9:15, the driver got off, and I watched as he joined apparent friends to smoke in the middle of the market. At 10:30 (that’s right), he got back on the bus, and we thought jesus christ are we finally leaving, an hour and a half late? Nopeeee, he drove around while on his phone yelling at people until we found 4 other people to pick up outside a stadium. I mean. WTF. I thought okay NOW we’re leaving and it’ll be fine. Little did I know.
The roads on Olkhon
After just under two hours, we stopped for a bathroom break, which is the best kind of break you can ever offer me. Five minutes later, we drove down the road to stop for lunch. It sucked that our two stops in a 7 hour bus journey were back to back; I was so nervous about having to pee, I was having palpitations. When we left the cafe in the middle of nowhere on the side of a dirt road, the real ridiculousness of our journey started. The road to Olkhon Island is not equipped for people to drive on. There aren’t roads, really, it’s just land. And we were not in a jeep or a landrover, we were in a minibus and pretty much off-roading. We felt every jarring bump and throw from the rocky paths that turned into sand dunes that you had to carefully maneuver and then back into rocky again. It was INSANE. We were all looking at each other like ‘oh my god this cannot be the way’, holding on for dear life to the handles above us or on the seats in front of us. It was like being on a roller coaster that also shook your seat violently and spun you around. I’m nauseous just remembering it. Of course that part of the trip was about 2 hours. It was the worst travel experience ever, until the return journey three days later, which was actually worse.
The town of Khuzir (after a terrible rainstorm, hence the road is a pond)
One of the two main grocery stores in Khuzir/Olkhon
When we finally got to Olga’s Guesthouse in Khuzir, it was not the fresh sigh of relief we were counting on. It was a few lackluster wooden shacks, and our room was a small, dank, windowless affair with two college dorm beds with ugly, not very clean looking bedding on them. Windowless was the worst part. We told the staffer that her colleagues who had arranged this for us months ago promised that we would be in a building with a bathroom inside it (I pee at least every 90 minutes and I cannot be walking to another building in the middle of the night that often). The staffer was like, um no none of the buildings have bathrooms, here is our bathroom — two outhouse stalls about a full minute’s walk up the road of the grounds. (One was a western toilet; the other was a beginning-of-Slumdog-style-elevated wooden floor with a hole in it. When I talk about outhouses from here on out (and I’m sure I will), I mean this latter kind.) The sinks were halfway back down the little road. I mean. No. Your colleagues told us you had a bathroom in our building, and that was literally the only reason we booked with you instead of elsewhere, and we told them that at booking, that it was dependent on that! She was just like well nope we don’t have a bathroom so that’s it. We got our stuff from our jail cell of a windowless room and hightailed it out of that shithole. Luckily, we hadn’t paid yet, and luckily the staffer I guess heard from the colleague who made all the false promises (lies, they are called lies) and gave us our deposit back. We walked about 30 minutes in the sand dunes (omg it was so hard I’ve never been that sweaty before it’s like I had some sort of fever) up the road to Hotel Baikal View. It looked like a little string of colorful motel rooms, little log cabins in three rows, but they were so much better than motel rooms and the hotel itself was that sigh of relief we needed. The bed was the most comfortable in the entire country so far, and they had a bar, and a restaurant, and lots of staffers who spoke English and there was a POOL and a SAUNA and omg it was just great. And still much cheaper than the equivalent would be in the west.
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Our multi-colored string of hotel rooms! So cute
I loved that bed. It had clean white sheets and a big fluffy white comforter. The best. And every single room had its own bathroom. I was so happy that I didn’t have to put shoes and a headlamp on in the middle of the night to pee, I didn’t even care that the cabins were full of bugs (log cabins on a lake, man!), I didn’t even care that it was too cold to swim in the pool (we did jump in after our daily sauna use though, which was bracing but amazing hot damn I love saunas), I didn’t even care that housekeeping threw out my retainer/night guard and I’ve been grinding my teeth like crazy every since. (Okay, that’s not true, I cared a lot and cried but once a one-inch piece of clear plastic is gone, it’s gone. Fuckers.) I did love that sauna, hoo boy. And our first night, all night, was the hardest rainstorm I’ve maybe ever heard. I couldn’t sleep for a few hours because I thought our cabin was going to blow away, or at least flood quickly and completely. It was unbelievable. Can you imagine if we had stayed at Olga’s and I had to go out in that to trek to the outhouse in my boots and raingear and headlamp in the pitch black five times in the night??? Thank god we left. I’m so grateful to Z money for that one. I mean he didn’t want to stay at Olga’s either, he’s not a filthy monster, but yay for finding a nice place.
We ate a few times in the restaurant at Baikal View, because it was about a mile on the sand dunes to the ‘town’ of Khuzir and we were usually so tired from our day of exploring that we didn’t feel like trekking there and back (there’s like one taxi and you have to either be very lucky and find him randomly or get someone to call him, and it usually takes like 20 minutes for him to come anyway so no). The restaurant was fine, full of all the Baikal specialties husband was supposed to get. It was harder for me, but they had a really good pickle plate and good potato dishes (I say that like I’m not just talking about French fries and potato wedges). We also tried this weird kind of pickled mushroom that was interesting. I know the deathly gray color is unappetizing but they were decent.
oh I’ll have my usual thanks I guess |
like the most colorless plate of food ever |
Then, one night, the waitress was the first one (they all only spoke Russian) who understood really what kinds of things I was looking for and tried to help me get something that wasn’t just pickles and potatoes. She said what about this soup, otroshka? I had read about that soup before, and knew that it was cucumber, potato, egg, meat, sour cream, and kvass, that beer-like soda-ish dark bready drink that I for some reason like. She said this version was vegetarian, and they could do it without the egg and sour cream. I was skeptical but excited to have a soup. Lol again.
my kvass soup I can’t believe I ate this for dinner lolol
It was literally chopped up cucumber, potato, and a shittonne of spicy radish in a bowl of cold kvass. I mean. What. We were CRACKING up. It was…not bad, but it was incredibly strange and like WHAT. Imagine cold chopped veggies served in a bowl of undiluted, unadulterated soda, that’s what it was. I mean I ate it. It was still raw veggies. I still can’t get over it. I think the waitresses were laughing at me, having dared each other to see who could get the weird Americans to eat the craziest thing. I said to Husband that it’s usually with sour cream and egg and maybe that makes it less like a soda bath of cucumber and he said actually that sounds like it would be even stranger, and truly revolting. I guess the idea of soda and sour cream and egg mixed into a broth really is disgusting oh man alive Russia.
literally main street Khuzir
We did eat several meals in Khuzir, too. There were a lot of fish shacks, and a lot of small cafes, and a few decent ramshackle places with some things I could pick out. We went twice to this hopping cafe on the main drag (the name of it was just its address, and there’s like one street, so just like…it’s there) that had salads in a glass case (not refrigerated…I am living dangerously) and so I picked out a cabbage-y cucumber-y looking salad and another carrot-yuba salad! I had that yuba salad twice at this place, I was so happy to find it again, my favorite dish of Siberia. I really hope this yuba looking stuff I keep finding in Siberia (also had some in Yekaterinburg) really is tofu skin and not just some weird part of a fish (or worse) that I’ve just never seen before. That would be bad, and embarrassing. Let’s say it’s yuba before my stomach starts to hurt.
I love that this carrot-yuba salad was everywhere in Siberia!
We also went to Kafe Olkhon on you guessed it the main drag, which I really liked the look of. It was a proper old dark wooden pub-sort of place, full of Russian people and travelers. They had a menu with pictures and some English translations, and I got a giant plate of plain kasha (love it, I’m sorry) and a carrot-cabbage salad. It was a great meal for me if totally boring and plain to everyone else. I love that kind of meal.
There were a few sad grocery stores in the town, one less sad that had a few fun chocolate treats we found. That less sad store also had a fellow customer wearing the best shirt I’ve ever seen. I tried to get a picture of her without being too obvious but I failed. Anyway, the shirt was red and in white block letters it said “Puberty Silent’. WHAT. IS. WHAT. We’ve seen the most incredible tee shirts with things in English written on them. I guess this is how Chinese people feel when they see the nonsense character-tattoos of westerners.
ate the entire bag of chocolate-strawberry things on the walk home. should have gotten two of them. yummm
Wandering through the dirt roads once with new French friends we met, we passed a house that had a ‘homemade bread’ sign out front. So we rang the doorbell , it started to pour, and the lady came out to the gate, in that order. We said ‘you have bread?” and she said yes how many? and we said um, I guess two? and she came out with two enormous loaves of bread. like, enormous. 50 rubles each, so pretty cheap. We were cracking up. She didn’t even let us in, we just bought bread from a random lady at her house on the side of the road. It was hilarious. Almost as funny as trying to break into that bread itself, which took not joking all of my strength to break apart. Inside, it was really nice and fluffy, delicious really, but that outer shell was f-ing armor.
“homemade bread” |
the bread lady’s house. she didn’t let us in |
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Okay, that’s enough about the food!
Olkhon itself is interesting. The town of Khuzir (and, consequently, the entirety of the surroundings for miles and miles considering Khuzir is the most built up touristed part, despite it being literally two dirt roads) is not really ready for tourists, at least not a lot of them. It doesn’t not have the infrastructure to support tourism. Does it even have infrastructure? That bus ride, I’m not exaggerating, it was horrendous. We really can’t recommend going to Olkhon because this ride was so hellish and it takes up two entire days. It’s just not worth it. Once there, the guesthouses all seem to be like Olga’s and the very famous Nikita’s, complexes of small wooden shacks with shared outhouses (oh p.s., the entire island except for our hotel was outhouses. The restaurants too – you were lucky if the restaurant you chose even had a key to the nearest outhouse shack down the block. It’s fine when traveling (used to it by now) but like not in the place you’re staying for days). (Nikita’s charges hourly for wifi, so glad we didn’t book there.) It’s cool to be at a place that is so remote and raw, but it really cannot handle the tourist trade in its current state. It’s a shame because parts of the island are beautiful, but I just don’t know how people can really go to see them. There is a hydrofoil boat that might go once or twice a week, saving most of the minibus ride, but then even getting around the island for the tours (which is the most important and best thing to do on the island; you’re not there to stay in the ‘town’) requires driving in minibuses on the same and even worse roads! The entire day! It’s just a mess there.
the roads we drove on for like a whole week
Let’s talk about those tours. We booked a tour of the north cape of the island, called Cape Khoboy, with our hotel. Every hostel or hotel books the same tour, with the same sort of driver and Soviet military-looking 9-person van, the same fish soup cooked for lunch by the driver (smelled great but I wasn’t going to eat even if it was vegan when we were driving all day on those obstacle sources of rocks, dunes, and tree roots), and the same collection of sights before and after Khoboy along the way. It cost 1100 rubles per person (100 of that was a random charge that we weren’t told about in advance and I kind of think was the driver and his friends tricking us but what could be do), which is like 15 pounds, so not bad for an entire day of sightseeing. And the landscape really is beautiful.
Okay, so this is a little terrible, but the name of the cape is pronounced like ‘ho boy’, a little phlegmier, but still close, so the entire week not joking (and still) Z and I were repeating to each other our favorite bit of SNL weekend update:
it’s when your whole body goes
hoo boyyyyy
Khoboy itself requires a decent amount of time for a hike down and up through all the twists of the mountain. We ran into our French friends there, which was hilarious. It was a beautiful place, which makes me sadder about how weird it is to be a tourist there. Seriously if they just paved the road and excavated the outhouses once in a while (it had been a too-long while for most of them) it would be oodles better.
All over Siberia, we have seen trees and bushes covered in scarves and pieces of colorful cloth. It’s like a shaman thing, I think. Shamanism is big in this part of the country. The trees are really fun to see.
Khoboy had an outhouse (worst condition of whole island), so that was lucky, since this was another of the three days (out of four) where I was a ball of nerves all day about having to pee. I’m so dehydrated.
The driver also took us to other outlets along the north side of the island, beautiful rocks jutting out over the lake that we climbed up and hiked down (some of the pics above are those other parts of the cape; I can’t tell which was which part). It was exhausting but really worth it, so beautiful.
But again, the roads. My god. I bet you think I’m being dramatic just for the sake of drama, exaggerating. Here is another picture I took on the route when I WASN’T hanging on for dear life.
These are not roads, and our little bus, my god, it’s a miracle that it made it through. All the tours are in identical buses and I just do not understand how they operate after driving through this. We spent almost 45 minutes driving through WOODS. Like, without a road, just making our way in the woods. In a bus. Here’s a picture of us going through the woods behind another car. The one in front of us really gives you the perspective I need you to have in order to agree with me on how insane this all is.
pretty scary right?
Another day, we went on a hike along the lake with the French people. It was a cold and rainy day, but we said hey let’s be outdoorsy. But then it started to really rain, like buckets, like pouring freaking rain, and the ground/sand was incredibly muddy and I started to have trouble making my way up without slipping backwards, which is a really scary feeling, and the ground just kept giving way instead of letting me progress and it was miserable. Beautiful, but miserable. Luckily, the foggy weather really reflected that state.
that’s a boat!
It totally looks like Japan, or a scene out of Avatar, right? That fog was insane. The farther we went, the harder it got to see where we had come from, and with the rain getting harder and harder and the ground getting wetter and wetter, we all decided to stop and head back before too long (too long for me though). Our shoes were so disgusting. Not to mention our pants. We’re just always dirty this trip, it seems.
I know right now you are like…dude…all of these nature scenes look gorgeous! Why are you complaining so much! But see it’s just because it’s been a minute since I wrote about the driving conditions. After all this beauty, we still had to get back to Irkutsk/civilization. And when I tell you that the return minibus journey was BY FAR the worst bus trip yet, I really mean it. The van was not nice this time. Instead, it was over-crowded, and the door was broken. There was no trunk area for luggage, so 20 people all with giant backpacks and suitcases had to sit WITH their luggage either on their lap or in the aisle next to them, making this the most unsafe bus ever, not to mention impossible to get on and off of. The driver was awful and refused to stop for lunch. The whole thing was so bad that, when we got to the ferry crossing (where we got out of the car) (after about 1 1/2 hours), Z and I actually knocked on the windows of every car on the ferry and asked if they could take us the rest of the way for whatever money they wanted. Unfortunately, the only ones who had room for us were not going to Irkutsk. Seriously, that’s how bad it was. Thank god we made it back in one piece. When the driver started letting people off in Irkutsk, we got off at the first opportunity even though we were like 20 minutes walk from our hostel. We didn’t care we just needed to get off that death machine.
minibus from hell
Luckily, we got off in Irkutsk right near our favorite place, Engineer Coffee (or something like that), with the best, nicest staff and the best coffee (according to the coffee drinker of the two of us). They also had clean bathrooms, free water, and good wifi. It was a godsend.
After we dropped our bags back at the Hostel Baikaler for the few hours we had until our sleeper train to Ulan-Ude, we went in search of food. We decided on the great-named Sushied, with the ‘sushi’ part in cyrillic and then the ‘ed’ added after that. So fun, and the food was decent. I needed all the vegetables and ordered a green salad, a seaweed salad, a veggie sushi roll, and a veggie noodle stir-fry (to share and granted I gave Z most of the stir-fry but still, lots of food!).
my favorite kind of salad is two salads |
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So, all in all, I guess I’m glad we went to Olkhon? Lake Baikal is beautiful, and it’s cool to be somewhere few people go. But man. The discrepancy between the scenery on the coast and the lake versus the journey there and the roads and the town, it’s drastic. If you had a private helicopter you should take that and try it out for 2 days maybe. It really is so beautiful. But what a mess it all was. Except that bed. My god I loved that bed.
the main intersection of Khuzir, Olkhon Island
that lake tho
honestly I think my fave thing about Olkhon is that they recycle. first place we saw in Russia doing it.
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Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan: A Capital Made of Statues & Stories (Go On & Tell Me What They Mean) (Part 4)
After a week in the wilderness of eastern Kyrgyzstan, we were finally on our way to the big city for a few days. Bishkek (formerly Pishpek lolololol) would bring us restaurants, cafes, parks, museums, a hotel, laundry, all the markings of civilization – plus a shittonne more people and, with other cars besides ours in a 100 mile radius for the first time, lots and lots of pollution from the exhaust. But laundry!
Catch up on the previous Kyrgyzstan posts!
Crossing the Torugart Pass; Tash Rabat
Part 1: Back in the Yurt Camps
Part 2: Issyk Kul and Kyzart Village
Part 3: Jeti Oguz, Karakol, Cholpan Ata
Crossing the Torugart Pass; Tash Rabat
Part 1: Back in the Yurt Camps
Part 2: Issyk Kul and Kyzart Village
Part 3: Jeti Oguz, Karakol, Cholpan Ata
Bishkek has almost 1 million residents in an area of 127 square kilometers. Considering public transit is really not a big thing there (most people rely on mashrutkas (which we will be talking about a lotttt in the next post) which are literally just small unmarked white vans crammed with lots of people and you just like get in???? no!), the traffic is abysmal. It took like an hour to go a mile one afternoon. Yes we could have walked faster. Because of all the cars, and all the lack of environmental regulation on said (super ancient Soviet) cars, the pollution in the city was intense. The concentrations of dangerous pollutants in the city center often exceed allowable maximums. It’s not as bad as the pollution in Beijing, but I noticed it 100x more, and smelled it. I guess different sources make different smellies. I wonder what the world will do about this sort of thing oh that’s right NOTHING.
Aside from that Bishkek was pretty nice.
There’s a good amount of green space and parks in the city center, and lots of statues and arts
Day 7
We woke up in the Chon Kemin CBT guesthouse to the wifi not working. Since this was the day we were going to actually drive to the capital city, we finally switched on the privileged yoot section of our brains that we had turned off for so long in the wilderness and righteously complained (to each other; we’re not monsters) about the lack of modern-day amenities. Entering a yurt for breakfast while totally unaware of what happened in the world overnight?! Who does that? Besides literally everyone who lives in yurts, I mean.
Breakfast was a heavy fried dough calzone type thing filled with potato, so not exactly the kind of thing that sets me off feeling great for a day. I wish I could have refused but yurt lady would not allow people to even refuse to drink tea! Old yurt ladies are not to be messed with! So I tried to eat some and pretended to drink my tea all while looking around the table for my missing friend, the watermelon. Arbus! Arbus where are you?
this field did not have my friend arbus
however it did have this giant f-ing hoe (bag)
We set out for our drive to Bishkek with a few stops on the itinerary. First stop after only a few minutes was this giant hoe in a field. I think it’s a giant hoe. It might be a giant guitar. Who knows and who knows why. Z do you remember? I mean who doesn’t like big f-ing things in the middle of fields, I guess.
Next up was a legit tourist attraction, the Burana Tower, which is a big minaret from the 9th century. The original tower was severly damaged by earthquakes over the years (omg there are earthquakes here?) and restored in the 1970s. You might be thinking that those renovations not so long ago mean that the tower was reconstructed with modern audiences in mind, but you would be wrong. Climbing to the top of the tower, which is the thing to do if you are able-bodied, is a legit shitshow. Hold on here’s a picture first.
tower of doom
First, you climb up a rickety metal winding staircase on the outside of the tower, to a platform about 2 stories up. (I don’t know how big a story is but it seemed like 2 times what I do to get upstairs at home.) We found about 4 people on the platform, waiting at the entrance/hole cut out of the tower. We were told we had to wait for everyone up at the top at the moment to come down, because the stairhole inside is only big enough for one person at a time in one single direction. And you have to climb up and down using your feet and your hands because it is so cramped and narrow and super steep. SO MUCH FUN. Like I said above, you have to be able-bodied, and more than that you have to not be claustrophobic because if you freak out inside there is literally no way for anyone to get to you. I was petrified. I almost said f it and turned back down the winding staircase to the safety of the ground, like two of the people in line ahead of us did. But I figured I would want to have done this. I guess. It’s really not a huge deal. It’s not the great wall. I don’t know if I recommend climbing up if you are not super enthusiastic about tiny ancient stone torture methods. Oh ps no one works on the tower to keep order; just another guide told us about the waiting and the narrowness so it was lucky she was there. They should have a sign or something.
Finally (we waited like a half hour) the other tourists came down, clearing the way for us to go up. You know who one of those finishing tourists was? An eighty-year-old woman. F-ing hell. I had to try after seeing her! See me above, tentatively grasping for the stair above me while I still had light? After these first few steps, they wind around so that the brick wall is right against your back and you have to climb up like you are in 2D. And it was dark. It was scary. Blech. Luckily it didn’t take as long as I feared; maybe the fear made me scamper faster. Anyway this was the view.
So, you know, not, like, gorgeous.
Going down was awful, since you couldn’t see (even if there was light, it was too squashed) what your feet were reaching for as your hands did their best not to let go. But finally we were back on solid ground. The rest of the Burana site had a few small museums with artifacts uncovered in the area and some ancient stone statues, probably for fertility or war.
Finally we made our way to Bishkek! We dropped our stuff at our hotel before Sacha took us on a tour of the city. That’s right bishes, a hotel! It was a nice little clean and modern place called Futuro Hotel and it was splendid to have my own bathroom again, even if there was a big mirror in the shower which is just weird. The only downside was that, despite being a smaller cooler not-upscale hotel, Futuro mimicked upscale hotels’ stupid stupid stupid overpriced laundry service costs, the per-item kind where it’s cheaper to just buy new clothes than to pay $4 to clean each sock. Speaking of, I had lost a sock so I was down to one clean one which really did me no good. I get that fancy hotels do this because a lot of people who stay there don’t care what it costs or can charge to businesses or something, but this hotel was clearly catering to the laundromat set who would never spend more on cleaning a tee shirt than they did on the room itself. Anyway, so we searched high and low for a laundromat. Where was my laundry babushka when I needed her? (Oh in Ulan Ude.) We found one online – one – but it didn’t have an address, only a neighborhood and a phone number that didn’t connect 99% of the time. Sacha called A LOT and they never picked up until ahhh finally they did! Where are you located, we assume he asked? And they said the name of a main street and that was it. Wtf. We drove up and down the main street 100x and there was no sign of it. Sacha yelled at every single passerby “DEVUSHKA!” (the word for girl and like waitress) and asked if they knew where the laundromat was and no one had any idea that there was one in their city. Why doesn’t every single city have a laundromat I don’t understand! It would do such good tourist business. Finally we went down an alley and then turned into another alley and found a dusty shed of a place that was a carpet cleaning business. That was it, it turned out! I felt real weird leaving all of my clothes at a carpet cleaning shop but they said they could clean clothes too so okay. It was the equivalent of like $4. We picked up the next day and everything was ostensibly clean, but smelled like horse.
yeah like that
After we got that sorted, we could finally relax and see Bishkek. Well, relax as much as possible when we were 75% sure we were never getting our clothes back. Eh I’m sick of everything I brought anyway. Bishkek was a welcome shot of modernity after the past few weeks. There were buildings and sidewalks, restaurants and museums, all kinds of signs of a real city. And like I said before, tons of horrible car exhaust to try not to inhale. Funny how traveling can make one long for London’s pollution. Bishkek had lots of important statues all around the center commemorating important state history as well as important world events. The guy on the horse above is Magnanimous Manas, one of the most important legends in Kyrgyzstan. Manas is from an epic poem that is 500,000 lines long, and while Kyrgyz people argue that that’s the longest epic poem in history and Tibetans are like naw look here, I think we can all agree it’s in the top 3. Manas’s stories contains the expected battles and invasions and his heroism in such things. He’s strong and brave, and then he has a son who is equally brave and strong and they defeat the Afghans and stuff. Rode horses.
well I’m not entirely sure if this was one of the war ones but it looks like it right, and odds are good
this one definitely looks like war stuff
this one is definitely about the war. It’s in a whole memorial square in the city center, near the arches pictured at the top
The statue pictured above, of the MAN HOLDING UP A HORSE, represents the very important guy Baatyr Kaba Uulu Kozhomkul. Hoo boy, this guy, he’s big here. He was said to be 7.5 feet tall, over 400 pounds, and so strong that he carried his horse through a mountain pass after an avalanche. Hence this statue, outside the sports stadium named after Kozhomkul, honoring his most famous Feat of Strength. Hysterical.
But of course my favorite statue had to be the requisite GIANT LENIN that every once-Soviet city must flaunt.
giant lenin giant lenin giant lenin
We walked all around the city center with Sacha to see all the things, and it was soo freaking hot. 35 degrees celsius which even I know is hella hot despite my refusal to learn celsius. There was a good deal of green space which helped give a little relief from the sun. One of the parks had my favorite thing, a moon bounce. I mean a bouncy house. I mean a bouncy castle.
why aren’t they ever for grown ups
i just wanted to share a picture of this pretty flower square I SWEAR TO MANAS that that white figure in the background in the hat was NOT there in real life wtf???
Actually since we’re on the subject of favorites and I usually have 100 favorites thereby completely draining the word of any meaning, here’s my real favorite thing about Bishkek. This square right in the city center had this giant screen sharing information, maybe news, maybe pictures of art, or maybe advertisements. I don’t actually know, because this is how the screen was when we were there – not working, on the windows desktop by accident. I am still hysterical at this. Did NO one responsible for it notice?
Someone got fiiiiired.
After our scorching hot tour of the city with Sachafierce, we had the evening to ourselves. First on my list from HappyCow was a restaurant called Social Coffee. They had a vegetarian section in the menu! I was so excited – I got hummus (my favorite), tofu (my favorite), and green juice! The hummus was good but they didn’t serve it with nearly enough bread or crackers so I had to eat most of it just on a fork which is whack. The tofu was good for not being in a tofu country! The green juice was whatever, green juice, but might be the thing responsible for my nausea later than night. Betrayed! No it was probably because it came with ice. Ugh. I was okay though it passed. I know you’re concerned.
The best thing about the Futuro Hotel was, well my own bathroom, but aside from that, the best was that five minutes up the road was a huge Globus Supermarket! (It was so big they named it after the globe!) They had amazing stuff – a giant prepared food section with wonderful vegan dishes like – of course – my favorite tofu skin and carrot salad that we had all through Siberia. AGAIN, it translated from the Russian as “asparagus salad”. If ANYONE can explain to me why they call strips of tofu skin ‘asparagus’ please let me know! Isn’t that confusing for them? Or do they not have asparagus in this part of the world so like, they just gave that name to something else? Isn’t that still confusing when like people from other (non-Soviet) parts of the world talk about asparagus? What if you’re having a conversation and someone is like “we had this great asparagus it was cooked just enough so it was still crisp” and the former-Soviet person would be like, “what do you mean still crisp? it’s never crisp, it’s stretchy.” I mean I guess the odds of this conversation happening are slim to none but still, there’s grounds for confusion and I wanted so badly to have someone work this out with me but my Russian is barely good enough to order all the asparagus/tofu skin salad. Which I did.
the next night we had a hotel room buffet dinner from Globus with this ‘asparagus’ and the potato wedges you can sort of see and a huge cabbage salad and bread literally one of my favorite dinners ever 😛
Globus also had a great bulk food section of things like nuts and dried fruit and my favorite thing – fried broad beans! Like I found in the Kashgar bazaar! Luckily, unlike those market beans, these grocery store beans did not threaten to break my teeth every time I tried to chew them. These were actually made safely for human teeth! I wish I had more ugh so good. And yes London people I know the organic shoppe up the street from me sells these from the bulk bins too but it’s not the same! This was sustenance!
The supermarket, and Kyrgyz minimarts, also had this amazing chocolate popcorn that happened to be accidentally vegan. We ate the shiiiiz out of that.
lolol ‘real American’ okay sure I’ll take it!
Speaking of ‘what Kyrgyz people think America is’, here’s the peanut butter they had for sale. CRACKING UP.
THOSE ARE TWO DIFFERENT STATES
But the real best was in the toiletries part of the store. There was a GIGANTIC section of hilarious socks. I’m obsessed. They were cheap and adorable and easy to squeeze in my pack so I bought sooo many. If we’re friends in real life you will probably be getting one of these beauts soon.
Full with TWO different kinds of protein, my bag stocked with crazy socks, beans, and popcorn, I was pretty happy with our first day in Bishkek. That first night’s sleep in the hotel was amaze.
DAY 8
For our last day in Kyrgyzstan, Sacha picked us up early to drive us to Ala Archa National Park. Forget Ulan Ude, Ala Archa is the REAL way Russians say “Alan Alda”. Ala Archa (which is pronounced, at least by Sacha, with an amazing elision so it’s more like ‘alarcha’) is an alpine park about an hour’s drive from Bishkek. It’s still part of the Tien Shan mountain range, can you believe how big that range is?! Still since China! The park is mainly the gorge from the Alarcha River and all the pretty mountains for trekking and hiking and climbing and just general wanderingment.
look at those freaking snow capped mountains! can’t get over
Alarcha is gorge-ous
always screaming about something this bish (actually sneezing is more likely)
Ala Archa was beautiful, as you can see, and also serene, feeling a lot more untouched and raw than other national parks sometimes do. We had all morning to hike around the trails and relax in nature while we still could. It’s places like this that make you forget all the troubles of the world. Well until Sacha recommended that we climb a particularly steep part of a mountain to a place affectionately known as “climbers’ cemetery”. Mmm, nah, we good.
THEEEE HIIIILLLLS ARE ALIIIIIIIVE
Still can’t believe things like this exist in this world
troubled little bridge over even more troubled water
We walked all around the park and the gorge, exploring the area around the rapids via these tiny little petrifying bridges. Luckily Sacha didn’t try to drive over this one. I love how loud the water is, when it’s the only sound you can hear in the whole world.
SQUIRREL
As ever, the signage did not disappoint.
WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? FOR THE LIFE OF ME. I CANNOT FIGURE OUT WHAT WAS INTENDED.
Regardless of how much my head still hurts from trying to figure out that sign, this was a pretty perfect last day in Kyrgyzstan. Ala Archa was lovely and reminiscent of my favorite place, the similar Jedi Oguz Geopark place from the last post. To say goodbye, Sacha took us out to a great lunch (I got TWO kinds of cabbage salads!) and gave us these absolutely ridiculous and perfect souvenirs.
They crack me up every time I look at them! So perfect. So, I know you probably wanted me to despise my time in Kyrgyzstan (it’s funnier that way FOR YOU) but as it turns out, I kind of loved this trip! I would highly recommend a visit around the country for anyone who likes natural beauty and places off the beaten path or terribly named peanut butters. Such a wonderful time.
Tomorrow we leave for Kazakhstan! Mah wife!
Dubrovnik & Montenegro: Cliff-Jumping, Kayaking, & Beaching
After spending a lot of time inland and in Bosnia & Herzegovina, I spent almost 5 days in Dubrovnik, the lovely crown jewel of the Adriatic. If coming from Mostar, like I was, you can take a pretty comfortable bus for a few hours and stop halfway through to see the sight above. How freaking beautiful is this. After the week in the mountains, it was nice to see the crystal blue water.
Old Town Dubrovnik
Dubrovnik is such an interesting little town, really unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It is entirely walled in (or at least the Old Town is, where most tourists will remain), a tiny fortress of a town surrounded by steep cliffs and the beautiful ocean. You’ll enter the Old Town by one of three gates, most likely Pile Gate, the main one from the major road outside (which leads up to the fancy Hilton). I’ve never been in such a densely touristed place.
Strolling on the Stradun
Dubrovnik is a really easy destination for frightful travelers, because it is 100% for tourists. No locals live anywhere nearby – it is all the tourist trade. It’s pretty safe, and it’s incredibly easy and manageable. Kind of like an inoffensive Disney World but with history.
The main thing to do is mosey along the Stradun, the main boulevard through the Old Town, and wander all the little streets leading off of it. You can’t get lost; you’re walled in. The streets are filled with restaurants, cafes, shops, gelato purveyors, and, of course, cathedrals and museums. People-watching along the Stradun is first-rate, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Franciscan Monastery Cloisters
One of the first things you’ll see upon walking through Pile Gate is the Franciscan Monastery Museum. It’s a pleasant little stop off the Stradun with charming cloisters, providing some calm from the throngs outside. It also houses one of the oldest pharmacies in Europe, and it’s still operating today.
My favorite activity in the Old Town was walking the city walls. For 50 kuna, you climb atop the city and stroll along the walls for a few hours, all around the city, and catch the most incredible views. I recommend going just before last call, around 6:30 pm, as it’s less crowded and you get great light as the sun sets.
My favorite activity in the Old Town was walking the city walls. For 50 kuna, you climb atop the city and stroll along the walls for a few hours, all around the city, and catch the most incredible views. I recommend going just before last call, around 6:30 pm, as it’s less crowded and you get great light as the sun sets.
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The pictures you take when walking the walls (all of the above) will pretty much be the standouts of your entire trip. You see everything and it’s all so perfect. It also helps you get a handle on the city, so it’s not a bad idea to go early in your visit.
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The guide and my boyfriend jumped off this cliff, from about where the sun hits at the top.
My other favorite activity? Kayaking! This might have been my favorite part of the whole trip because I love to be active and kick ass. And I kind of kicked ass.
The picture at left shows a little inlet that we pulled into about halfway through the ride, so we could swim. Also, the guide (and my boyfriend, because crazy) jumped off of that cliff. I know. It’s really high.
Outside Pile Gate, you’ll find tons of guys handing out fliers about kayaking trips from different companies. I’m pretty sure they are all generally interchangeable. I chose a late afternoon trip, hoping that the sun wouldn’t be as brutal. We kayaked about 3 hours, on a surprisingly far-reaching route circling Lokrum island. You kayak in 2-person boats, and most people had never kayaked before. (If you are alone, you’ll probably get paired with a guide, so that’s a plus.) It can be as easy or as strenuous as you want. I definitely recommend doing this if you can! It was pretty exhausting but so enjoyable. The company provided sandwiches (and packed fruit for me!), plenty of water, and had waterproof tubs for cameras and such. Once we were back on land, the guides opened a few bottles of wine for everyone to share while we chatted about our travels and backgrounds. We had such a great time!
The picture at left shows a little inlet that we pulled into about halfway through the ride, so we could swim. Also, the guide (and my boyfriend, because crazy) jumped off of that cliff. I know. It’s really high.
Outside Pile Gate, you’ll find tons of guys handing out fliers about kayaking trips from different companies. I’m pretty sure they are all generally interchangeable. I chose a late afternoon trip, hoping that the sun wouldn’t be as brutal. We kayaked about 3 hours, on a surprisingly far-reaching route circling Lokrum island. You kayak in 2-person boats, and most people had never kayaked before. (If you are alone, you’ll probably get paired with a guide, so that’s a plus.) It can be as easy or as strenuous as you want. I definitely recommend doing this if you can! It was pretty exhausting but so enjoyable. The company provided sandwiches (and packed fruit for me!), plenty of water, and had waterproof tubs for cameras and such. Once we were back on land, the guides opened a few bottles of wine for everyone to share while we chatted about our travels and backgrounds. We had such a great time!
View during the ride up
Another fantastic thing to do? Climb Mount Srd! Ok, not with your feet, but in a cable car – even better! (I found one of the funniest ever admonitions against doing something in the Rick Steves guidebook. It says something like, “If you are in great shape, and it’s not too hot out, you might consider taking the cable car up and walking down the mountain.” Hahahaha. So yeah, don’t try to hike up it. Also, cable cars are fun!) The cable car entrance is a bit tricky to find, about a 10 minute walk outside Ploce Gate. The view from Mount Srd is so worth this ride.
View from Mt. Srd of the Lapad peninsula, where many big hotels (and locals) live. Kind of far but a nice area. |
View of Old Town Dubrovnik. You can see Lokrum Island to the upper left. |
Buza, the beach/bar carved into the cliff face.
My last must-do thing to tell you about is Buza, a bar carved into the cliffs that doubled as a beach!
Dubrovnik doesn’t really have beaches (you go to the islands or to Montenegro for that). However, this little cliff bar-beach was even better – no sand, no hassle, just drinks and jumping into the water! So much fun! Also, the bar has one of the best drinks in the Balkans – Schweppe’s Bitter Lemon soda. I don’t usually like soda, but I loved this.
You reach Buza from the corridors near Ploce Gate. It’s a little tricky to find. Ok, a lot tricky. I don’t remember how we finally found it, but it was worth the trouble! You just sit at a table, order a drink, walk a few feet towards the cliff edge, and jump!! Then you can climb back up to your seat, relax, enjoy your drink and the view, and then jump again! Lather rinse repeat. It’s really the coolest. There were people of all ages enjoying the spot, and there are many rocks of various heights to jump off of. I was a little skittish at first, and I didn’t go very high, but I still had lots of fun.
Dubrovnik doesn’t really have beaches (you go to the islands or to Montenegro for that). However, this little cliff bar-beach was even better – no sand, no hassle, just drinks and jumping into the water! So much fun! Also, the bar has one of the best drinks in the Balkans – Schweppe’s Bitter Lemon soda. I don’t usually like soda, but I loved this.
You reach Buza from the corridors near Ploce Gate. It’s a little tricky to find. Ok, a lot tricky. I don’t remember how we finally found it, but it was worth the trouble! You just sit at a table, order a drink, walk a few feet towards the cliff edge, and jump!! Then you can climb back up to your seat, relax, enjoy your drink and the view, and then jump again! Lather rinse repeat. It’s really the coolest. There were people of all ages enjoying the spot, and there are many rocks of various heights to jump off of. I was a little skittish at first, and I didn’t go very high, but I still had lots of fun.
A shot of Buza beach/bar from atop the City Walls
The town of Kotor
Speaking of Montenegro…
Definitely go on a day trip from Dubrovnik to the Bay of Kotor! It’s beautiful, and it’s a really easy and fun side trip. There are plenty of tour companies around the Stradun, and most of them have affordable, small-group van tours to Montenegro. We drove on the famous road featured in “Casino Royale” to get to the Bay of Kotor, and our driver told us every Montenegrin hated the movie because shooting shut down this very important road for people who actually had to use it. Stupid Hollywood! The Bay of Kotor is so nice to drive around. Then we spent about an hour touring the nice little town of Kotor, during which I hit my head so badly that I thought I had internal bleeding, so that kind of colored my experience. I think it was the concierge at Hotel Vardar who helped me and got me medicine and ice, so shout out to her! Thanks for saving me! After Kotor, we played on the (painfully pebbly!) beach of Budva. Such fun times!
Definitely go on a day trip from Dubrovnik to the Bay of Kotor! It’s beautiful, and it’s a really easy and fun side trip. There are plenty of tour companies around the Stradun, and most of them have affordable, small-group van tours to Montenegro. We drove on the famous road featured in “Casino Royale” to get to the Bay of Kotor, and our driver told us every Montenegrin hated the movie because shooting shut down this very important road for people who actually had to use it. Stupid Hollywood! The Bay of Kotor is so nice to drive around. Then we spent about an hour touring the nice little town of Kotor, during which I hit my head so badly that I thought I had internal bleeding, so that kind of colored my experience. I think it was the concierge at Hotel Vardar who helped me and got me medicine and ice, so shout out to her! Thanks for saving me! After Kotor, we played on the (painfully pebbly!) beach of Budva. Such fun times!
The Bay of Kotor
And on the way back to Dubrovnik, we got to take a ferry! I don’t know why that’s so exciting!
Our group included about 7 people, including two couples on their honeymoon. Everyone was pretty cool! We ate lunch together in Budva, where most restaurants have the ubiquitous ‘vegetarian platter’ of cooked nightshades.
Our group included about 7 people, including two couples on their honeymoon. Everyone was pretty cool! We ate lunch together in Budva, where most restaurants have the ubiquitous ‘vegetarian platter’ of cooked nightshades.
I probably wasn’t allowed to take this picture.
Once back in Dubrovnik, we were lucky enough to catch an outdoor performance of the opera Cosi Fan Tutte, as part of the Dubrovnik Summer Festival. What a wonderful show! I love opera, and I love seeing it in other countries. This festival performance was lovely. The cast was really talented, and I thought it was a solid production, especially given the difficulties of performing an opera at night outside! If you are thinking of going to Dubrovnik during the summer, go during the festival!
If you’ve looked into a visit to Dubrovnik at all, you’ve probably learned that renting apartments, rather than booking hotel rooms, is the way to go. There’s a big fancy Hilton outside the main gate, but staying in the Old Town is so much more convenient and fun. We stayed in the lovely and well located Amoret Apartments, in every guide book, located near the Cathedral. It was a very nice, but I have reservations about recommending it, because the woman who runs it is kind of a lunatic. She was well aware of our expected arrival time, and we planned to meet then so we could get the keys from her, but still we had to wait nearly an hour in the hot sun, standing in front of the Cathedral with our luggage. At one point, I asked a waiter at a nearby restaurant if I could use the bathroom. I explained that we were to be staying in an apartment just above us, but the woman was keeping us waiting. He asked, “Oh, you mean Branka?” and I said, “Yes! That’s her. You know her?” He replied, “Unfortunately”, and pointed me to the bathroom. I mean, it was too late to do anything about it, but dayyyyum. We wasted a few more hours over the weekend waiting for her for various reasons, so if your time is precious to you, I recommend you go elsewhere.
However, I do recommend that you stay somewhere in the Old Town, because it’s so convenient and because crazy random things happen at night, like this acrobatic troupe performing on our corner!
If you’ve looked into a visit to Dubrovnik at all, you’ve probably learned that renting apartments, rather than booking hotel rooms, is the way to go. There’s a big fancy Hilton outside the main gate, but staying in the Old Town is so much more convenient and fun. We stayed in the lovely and well located Amoret Apartments, in every guide book, located near the Cathedral. It was a very nice, but I have reservations about recommending it, because the woman who runs it is kind of a lunatic. She was well aware of our expected arrival time, and we planned to meet then so we could get the keys from her, but still we had to wait nearly an hour in the hot sun, standing in front of the Cathedral with our luggage. At one point, I asked a waiter at a nearby restaurant if I could use the bathroom. I explained that we were to be staying in an apartment just above us, but the woman was keeping us waiting. He asked, “Oh, you mean Branka?” and I said, “Yes! That’s her. You know her?” He replied, “Unfortunately”, and pointed me to the bathroom. I mean, it was too late to do anything about it, but dayyyyum. We wasted a few more hours over the weekend waiting for her for various reasons, so if your time is precious to you, I recommend you go elsewhere.
However, I do recommend that you stay somewhere in the Old Town, because it’s so convenient and because crazy random things happen at night, like this acrobatic troupe performing on our corner!
And in the mornings, a market pops up near the Cathedral, with fresh produce, delicious candied nuts and other goodies, and lots of souvenirs. Those candied nuts were so good. Unfortunately, I ate all of mine way too quickly. (And they were supposed to be gifts, too.)
As the city is so touristy, the food can be really overpriced for the quality you get. But I did eat at two commendable restaurants, Moskar Konoba and, of course, Nishta, the only vegetarian restaurant.
As the city is so touristy, the food can be really overpriced for the quality you get. But I did eat at two commendable restaurants, Moskar Konoba and, of course, Nishta, the only vegetarian restaurant.
Most people focus an entire trip to the region on the Dalmatian coast, and with good reason. I’m so glad this trip allowed me to experience the rich history inland and in Bosnia and Montenegro, but Dubrovnik was a fantastic place to end. I’ll definitely need to return so I can see the islands, Split, and Plitvice lakes.
