Where in the world is Bishkek Kyrgyzstan?

Bishkek is the capital of Kyrgyzstan. A small country in Central Asia next between China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan.

I give partial credit for my interest in traveling to the PBS TV show “Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?”, which I started watching when I was about ten. For the benefit of those who don’t fall into the Nielsen TV Ratings demographic of “mid 30s Americans whose parents closely monitored their TV consumption when they were growing up and actively encouraged watching Public Television” this was a show where nerdy pre-teen contestants pretended to be law enforcement agents on the hunt for nefarious supercriminal Carmen Sandiego. It was based on a PC game which we had on floppy disk (remember those?) and there was also a board game that we owned. Contestants were given clues about geographic locations around the world and competed with each other to identify where Ms. Sandiego was hiding in order to capture her. As a kid my parents would allow my brother and I to watch one half-hour of TV a day, a rule we followed long as they were home and paying attention. “Carmen Sandiego” had a good run there as our (mostly my) show of choice. If you want to see some good early 90s hair and fashion, old versions of the show are available here on Youtube.

Sometimes I feel like Carmen Sandiego. I move around every few days to a new spot, posting clues on Instagram or this blog. To my knowledge I don’t think anyone is following me in real life or that I’ve broken any laws (though I was just in Singapore so I may have done something unintentionally). I also not at all famous. I am however, headed next to a capital city that probably would have stumped even the most savvy Carmen Sandiego contestant: Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

Admittedly, I don’t know that much about Kyrgyzstan either. The Stans weren’t even on my radar as an interesting place to visit until about nine months ago when my buddy Dave Hoch, one of the two humans running the adventure with your dog blog Long Haul Trekkers, mentioned Central Asia and the Silk Road as a cycle touring destination. He isn’t going to make it to Kyrgyzstan with me which is probably just as well because he's vegan and so far everything I've seen has animal product in it, but after talking to him I looked at some photos of the region and checked out the fairly new Not So Lonely Planet guide to Central Asia from my local library. I was immediately intrigued. It sounds like there are beautiful mountains, remnants of the Soviet Empire, and nomadic village where you can stay with locals in their yurt. Contrary to what most Americans think when they hear Stan, including my mother who sent me a frantic text this morning asking if I was in Kurdistan, a semi-autonomous region of Iraq where about 2,000 miles away where Isis likes to hang out, it’s supposedly very safe.

Though pronunciation of Kurdistan and Kyrgyzstan may be similar the names are spelled very differently and are far from one another.

To learn a little bit more about Kyrgyzstan I just downloaded a copy of “Restless Valley” by Philp Shishkin to my Kindle. Here is the Google Books description: “It sounds like the stuff of a fiction thriller: two revolutions, a massacre of unarmed civilians, a civil war, a drug-smuggling highway, brazen corruption schemes, contract hits, and larger-than-life characters who may be villains...or heroes...or possibly both.” I’ve been pretty busy churning out blog posts lately so haven’t had much time to sit with it but so far it’s a real page turner!

It has some good information about Kyrgyzstan’s recent history too, as does the copy of the Not So Lonely Planet that I picked up in the Singapore Airport (this is the first hard copy guidebook I have purchased for this trip, until now I’ve been using the internet and an occasional e-book guidebook). Here are a few highlights:

1. Kyrgyzstan was not a country until the 1920s. Stalin created the current borders forming it, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan out of what had been the larger country of Turkestan. In doing so he divided ethnic groups of Kyrgz, Tajiks, and Uzbeks in a way that he believed would make these people easier to control should they get any revolutionary ideas. Predictably, since the collapse of the USSR relations between these neighboring countries has not been great as they squabble over land.

2. The Kyrgz people have an important folk here named Manas. He is believed to have lived around 1095 and united the Kyrgz people from several disparate tribes. There are several recently constructed statues commemorating him around the country and the airline I am flew, into Bishkek’s Manas Airport, is called Air Manas.

3. Speaking of Manas Airport, the United States military staged a significant part of its bombing campaign against Afghanistan in the early 2000s from a base next to it.

4. In the spring of 2005, as I was preparing to finish college, there was a peaceful coup in Kyrgyzstan. The President voluntarily gave up power after protesters stormed the Presidential Palace in what is called the Tulip Revolution. One of the protesters' many gripes was about corruption from government contracts related to supplying the American air base.

As I’m sure Carmen Sandiego did at times I’m getting tired of packing up and heading to a new destination every few days. I’m also pretty sure I’m going through money faster than I should be. I have managed to make a few local contacts in Kyrgyzstan in a way that will enable me to slow down a bit here. I’m planning to spend a few weeks working at one or two hostels; either in Cholpan Ata, a resort town on a lake surrounded by mountains, or Osh, an old Silk Road trading stop also surrounded by mountains. One of my aunts is also old friends with the woman who currently runs the Peace Corps in Bishkek. I’m looking forward to learning and seeing more of this region in the next month or so and sharing a bit of it with you. Now that I know where to find Kyrgyzstan on a map I’m working my way up to being able to spell it without the aid of spell check. Next I think I need to learn a few words of Kyrgz. I hear Russian is also helpful, da.

Mountains of Kyrgyzstan from the back of an Air Manas plane. Or these may be mountains of Tajikistan.