Soviet Heritage
After staying in the village we went back to Shymkent where Rafael, a friend of my parents, had agreed to host us. Apparently Shymkent is famous for three things; the museum, the bazaar and the parks. Everything happens in the parks, filled with people and activities, unless it rains. And it rained…. the bazaar, the second option, had been closed due to hygenic problems, so that left the museum. This museum, the regional historical, is very well staffed, we counted at least 8 persons. Their number is probably dictated by the number of light switches inside. Every room we entered the lights would be switched on, turning dark into lesser dark and switched off when we seemed to plan to leave the room. Meanwhile we were closely watched by the light switcher. The Collection included stuffed animals, tools and weapons from local tribes and lots of documents, vague photos and books. Since everything was in Cyrillic we had no clue what we were witnessing, except for the snow leopard.
In Bishkek, a few days later, we noticed that this love for papers and vague photo’s is shared among the ex-soviet museums. The state historical museum of Kyrgyzstan is an extraordinary sight. Set on a grand soviet design square with a supersized facade overlooking the two fixated guards and the flagpole in between them. When entering you see Lenin coming down from the stairway, on your left a lady behind a table and in perfect symmetry on the right as well. The first lady has the important task to explain visitors that they are on the wrong table and should refer to the other lady. The museum is more about grand metal mural telling the heroic story of Lenin than about the history of the state, it is worth to pay the extra money required to take photographs. We were welcomed with a larger than life head of Lenin at the top end of the stairs. Apart from this and the murals the museum is filled with the usual incomprehensible papers and photos with their Cyrillic explanations. Of course there was an army of lightswitchers but since we, for once, were not the only visitors, they didn’t need to switch the light and sticked to trailing us.
Lenin is still alive..
This museum was not only thing that remained from the soviet era we found out. We had planned to apply for a Kazakh visa the next day and head for the mountains for few days of trekking. Alas, the soviet bureaucracy had not left the Kazakh embassy. We had to hand in a copy of our passport, on A4, the higher quality A5 would not do. Then we had to come back on Monday, receive a piece of paper stating the amount of money we had to pay. This payment must be done by a bank on the other side of town. Come back with loads of forms, copies and letters and get the visa on Thursday evening. Note that this involved standing your ground between pushy locals for about an hour. Having to come back every few days it proved impossible to camp out for more than one night at a time. Still, writing this down at 2500m on a rock outcrop overlooking the valley down below, it is worth it.
Camping on the rock outcrop