Ok, I assumed nothing else interesting would happen in bishkek, so I went ahead and blog posted – well this has taught me a valuable lesson, I should always leave posts late and write only after I have left the location in question.
An american guy in the guesthouse of bishkek managed to get in contact with a group of enthusiastic russian snowboarders who offered to give us a lift to a ski field 1hrs drive south of bishkek. On the way we hired some shoes and a board ($10), strapped the boards to the roof and headed out to the vast white in the middle of frikkin nowhere. A sense of nostalgia hit me, memories of heading to the surfing beaches on the southwest coast of my hometown in western australia, when I was quite young we went on many trips to various beaches to feed my father’s surfing addiction – with the boards strapped to the roof. Snowboarding for the first time was of course quite different, being polar opposite temperatures, however the addrenaline rush is similar if not more intense.
We arrived at the slope and paid $10 for the ex-soviet primitive char-lift, which consists of a pole with a tiny seat that tucks between the legs, you are required to do a fast penguin walk with the metal in the crotch, then occasionally moon-jump trying to keep up with the speed of the chain rotation. This was just as hard as snowboarding, but far less dangerous.
At the top of the slope, I put on the shoes and clipped them into the board, the russians flew past me as I was getting prepared, the slope was quite steep – they zoomed past with great speed. One of them shared with me some knowledge before he went down, he said “to slow, go into snow, left right”, I made sure to heed his words. I pushed myself out and damn, It was fast, really fast; I enjoyed it and was even able to dodge trees, shrubs and other obsticles, up until the point in which I built up too much speed and thought that if I keep it up then there may be a chance of serious injury. I took the advice of the russian and cut deep into the snow to my left, instantly the board flipped and I rolled 4 times ending with my face planted into the flour-like powder snow. Battered and bruised, I took a small rest but noticed that my face was starting to freeze after i tried to shake off the snow (at first I used my snow covered gloves to wipe my face, not a smart idea). I jumped out of the snow and immediately the board gained speed after catching free, I tried to gain control but ended going down a patch to the slope of the low to the ground chair-lift – for the next 5min I dodged seats at head-height moving from the lift as I tried to get back up, various russian kyrgys shouted abuse as they penguin-jogged up the lift with snowboards in one arm, total pros – I assumed the were calling me a noob. To make it to the releative ‘safety’ of the steep slope I gave up and unclipped my shoes to walk away from the chairlift. I repeated the fast decent and rapid stop and roll about 5 times per run. Due to this, I only managed to do 3 runs for the day, my body ached all over; I felt that the result was good and that some of the rolls could have ended up a lot worse – especially one where I got stuck in a tree.
On the drive down the mountain, one of the russian snowboarders in our posse decided that it would be a good idea for him to use the car to build up speed while he is on the snowboard, then snowboard down the unprepared mountain face. At first we could see him next to us, occasionally he zoomed down the road before turning down to the unclaimed slope. We drove down the mountain for the next 20min before we realised that we hadn’t seen the crazy russian for quite sometime, we decided to turn around and asked drivers if they had seem him as they drove down – no positive answers. Arriving back at the top we looked over the mountain face, no sign of him; we called out, no response. It was getting dark. The american and I suggested that we should possibly call the police as we were driving back down to the mountain base, the others mentioned that the police would do nothing to help; they seemed oddly calm about the situation compared to us. On the road back to bishkek, at the very ground base of the mountain, we spotted a shadowy figure through the fog – with the rectangular shape of a snowboard next to it. It was the guy. He had been waiting there for 30min. I am still amazed at how quickly he managed to fly down the mountain without a scratch. Crazy mthrfkn russian.
The remaining days in bishkek were reasonably uneventful, although the drive back to osh to cross over to uzbekistan was quite the contrary. After bartering the price of a shared taxi (the only form of transport to osh) to $22 each, we hopped in and drove forth – through yet again a large and beautiful mountain range – making sure that this time the car journey was during the day and not all through the night like what we endured from osh to bishkek almost a month prior. We gained quite a good speed on the long straights, It was quite comfortable enough and before long I fell asleep… only to be woke up an hour later while in the middle of a 360 degree spin over slippery ice, we slammed into the padding of car height built-up snow on the sides of the road twice before spinning all the way around to face the correct direction. I woke up terrorfied, not knowing how long the scenario had been in action and also not 100% sure if it was real life or a crazy realistic dream. The car stopped and we were all silent, the driver got out casually and fitted chains to his tyres, the box for the chains were sealed signifying that this was the first time he has put them on – he seemed to take a long time fitting them on too, although to be honest I have no idea how long it is meant to take. The driver was
significantly more cautious for the remainder for the journey, we had two lengthy delays; the first was a bogged and turned truck, blocking the road horizontally, we waited 30min for a plow to make enough room for one way traffic. The last delay was a police blockage, a scheduled avalanche explosion in order to clear possible hazardous areas, waiting a good hour after hearing the loud explosions to make sure the snowfall did not flow down to the road.
We arrived in osh and prepared ourselves for the border crossing to uzbekistan the next day.
The 5000 Project 