Saturday 30 June 2012

Kyrgyzstan: Jun 14 - 27

Irkeshtam - osh - bishkek - osh


Homeward Glances

Sometimes it's the closing in that makes you realise how far you really are.

We had raced from the border with a brief stopover in Osh. The first leg was in a hatchback so crammed we took turns lying on our panniers with feet dangling out the rear, the second in a rack-equipped stationwagon where the comfort of greater sprawl space was offset by the looping mortality song of tyres screeching around blind descents at 130 km/hr.

Both cars ran a path past Kyrgyzstan precedents. We saw snowy peaks close-up. Verdant alpine ranges and mountain-backed lakes. High plateaus dotted with dislocated old carriages refitted as homes and restaurants. Slit toilets. Red-cheeked locals boasting gold-capped teeth.

The forms were new, but the newness wasn’t. It continued this year’s pattern of predictable unfamiliarity. Even Osh, a city of some size, did little to elicit Australia or make me think that would soon change.

Then we pulled into Bishkek.

Like the Cyrillic letters plastered up and down its avenues, Bishkek had a side-on familiarity. This was new. From the world-consuming buzz of India to China’s subjugated greenery, cities had looked like many things but never much like home. Here, in a region of the world where my only pop culture reference is the endearingly bigoted journalist one country over, were tin-roofed houses and cornerstore magazines fronted with rambling patches of grass and cracked concrete paths. There were parks where you could sit, and trucks, vans and cars rolling past on tree-shaded roads. There was even, for the first time, a sizable Caucasian population.

It didn’t take long to realise it was a slippery resemblance.

A direct look was usually enough to puncture the illusion. For every Cyrillic letter that had an English counterpart, others were written backwards or summoned new or mismatched sounds. Likewise the houses, covered in shades I’d rarely see in Australia and too-thick, too-steep roofs. Trucks held evasive pedigrees,  while the minivans I did recognize were new in their role as shoulder-to-shoulder bus adjuncts. Magazines stocked everything you could need as long as that didn’t stray beyond sausage, butter, bread, biscuits, beer, vodka and a few vegetables. And the very people whose white skin underpinned fleeting feelings of familiarity remained, in some subtler way than lighter features or regional fashion, Australian-incompatible.

So I arrived at a strange destination.

Bishkek had easily been the most similar of the cities I’d visited. Compared to the gulfs separating Australian life from the other cities we’d been through, it was basically half of a checklist. Sure, these resemblances were peripheral. Still, they were persistent.

They also, counterintuitively, served to make me feel further out of place.

Maybe distinction needs an access-point to be properly gauged, some common ground or context. Who’s to say? I know Bishkek stood out because the similarities seemed to magnify the differences. Bishkek was my world, reshuffled—and in the week we were there, applying for visas, walking the city, fashioning a birthday from stacked biscuits and wrapped paper candles, all I could do was focus on the divergences.

We arrived in Bishkek after six months of travel — call it a few towns and cities. By the time we left it had managed to look the most recognisable and feel the most foreign.

Familiarity is a strange beast.

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