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MURRAY'S DIARY for the complete story.

Kyrgyzstan

Mar
2004-09-14 15:23:35

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to right and from right to left.

After this there is a parade of all the services funded by the government (i.e. hospital personnel, sport associations, the electricity company and the police). While we ask ourselves if the police is funded by the government or by the people. When you are pulled over by a police officer (very big chance this happens, sometimes three in one street) it’s an ‘either/ or’ story. Or you pay immediately 10 sums ($0.25) or they will find a reason to fine you for more. We just paid our taxi driver the 10 sums he had to pay to the police officer.

Next activity on Independence Day: The finals of the ‘sheep-throwing’ or Buzkashi (Russian) between Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, rugby while horseback riding while

the ball is a beheaded goat or sheep. On either side of the field there are two baskets on the ground (1 meter high and 2 meter in diameter) made of clay and decorated with lorry-tires. National teams of 6 persons try to get possession of the sheep. Apparently it is not allowed to grab the other players, but

if you grab the sheep (white spot in the middle left pic.)at one leg you can rugby around as much as possible. The admittance for the game is by invitation only. How did we get in? Yesterday we walked into, what we thought was, the tourist information office. ‘No English’ we hear the desk clerk say, somehow strange for a tourist information office we think. She leaves the offices and gets someone else to talk to us. We ask ‘can you tell us what the activities are on independence day?’. He provides us an overview and we notice the finals of Buzkashi and he immediately says ‘that’s by invitation only’. We both look sad, but continue reading. We have seen the semi-finals on TV at some locals on our way from the Kazakh border. It’s also quite hard to get tickets for the finals of European soccer. ‘Do you want to go?’ the man asks. ‘Yes of course’ we answer and he pulls out two tickets from his suit pocket and hands them to us. This isn’t the tourist information office, but the ministry of Tourism, sport and youth policy and he is the ‘assistant to the Chairman’. Independence day ends with an open-air discotheque on Ala-Too Square and fire works (where?).

We have decided to fly to Urumqi (Xinjiang province, China) and skip the couple of days through Kazakhstan. Our flight leaves the 5th of September , because we loose otherwise two weeks by touring through Kyrgyzstan (we are here already for three weeks). We rather spend some additional time in southern China and Thailand. Our plan is to cycle from Urumqi through the desert to Turpan and back to Urumqi through the mountains (600km) over a pass at 4500m. When we arrive at the airport and check in we are stopped at the check-in desk. Of course we are charged for the overweight of (in this case) 10kg. Luckily, our bicycles where a bit too big for the weighing scale and were therefore 5kg less heavy. The person of the travel agency were we booked the flight was accompanying us and arranged that the overweight was booked on a group.

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