The Amazing Kyrgyzstan in the Notes of a German Traveler: Mountain Lakes

Son-Kul. Fishermen having lunch in their yurt

Christoph Rehage is a German traveler, writer, and director. He became famous for his journey across China — over the course of a year, Rehage walked more than 4,500 kilometers from Beijing to Urumqi. The film The Longest Way, made during this journey, was listed among the top ten viral videos of 2009 by Time magazine.

In the fall of 2014, Rehage visited Kyrgyzstan and filmed a series of stunning videos about various cities in the country. He accompanied all the clips with witty travel notes about the places and people he encountered there.

Kloop.kg begins to publish translations of Rehage's stories about Kyrgyzstan.

I drove a car in Kyrgyzstan only once. It was an SUV — a solid mass of steel, glass, and plastic, and it handled the muddy puddles and potholes on the mountain roads quite well.

Once, however, I got stuck in a hole and somehow tore the exhaust pipe, after which it became unbearably noisy. Drivers on the road turned their heads because of the noise, which embarrassed me a bit. But, in any case, the car was good.

Kyrgyzstan seems like a dream country. There are long roads with panoramic views. Cows gazing into the distance. Horses and sheep. Flowers covered in ice.

When I arrived in Arslanbob, the walnut groves were covered in snow. Lake Chatyr-Kul turned out to be behind a checkpoint that required special permission and was open for visits only for a limited time. But if you get there, you can see China on the other side of a simple fence.

Osh felt like a separate country within a country. Tash-Rabat was so ancient that it resembled a haunted house. And Chatyr-Kul turned out to be the most beautiful of all the lakes.

But it was Son-Kul that turned out to be the place where my car got stuck in a hole. I was driving at night, and the hole was right in the middle of the road. By the time I noticed it, it was already too late.

The night was memorable for its cold and stars.

The next day I stumbled upon a group of fishermen who not only helped me pull my car out of the hole but also invited me to lunch. They told me that they used to be "blue-collar workers" in Moscow, but living here is much better. In the end, they returned. Once a week, they go down to the city to sell their catch.

The rest of the time, they paddle around the lake in boats in the mornings, and after that, they seem to have little else to do. Their hands have become strong from rowing. They earn enough to afford a generator for their refrigerator, but not a television. I found a couple of empty vodka bottles near their yurt.

I was curious if their life was stress-free?
"Yes," they replied. Just one word: yes.

For lunch, they treated me to fried fish with onions, bread, and caviar. The fish, like the caviar, was freshly caught from the lake. They eat part of their catch and sell the other part. Some of the caviar is given for a wildlife conservation project. In the past, someone started breeding large predatory fish in the lake, and now the other native species are struggling; they need help.

"How much do you think this caviar is worth?" one of the fishermen asked me while we were eating.

I looked at my spoon, at the orange balls of caviar. I had no idea of their value.

"In the city, we sell it for $50 per 100 grams."

Wow, I said, thinking about how many grams were in my spoon.

He smiled slyly, and his smile suggested that he was about to share with me a secret he had kept for a long time: "You know," he said, "here I eat 200 grams every day!"

I told him he was a rich man.

"Rich," he said, scooping another spoonful, "Yes, rich."

Translation: Malika Bayaz