27th September 2002.
The centre of Karakol looks like a frontier town in a Western film. Long, low wooden buildings with covered walkways in front line one dusty street but turn around and there is a massive shopping mall faced with brown stone and topped with metallic silver decorations that catch the sun. We roam around the shops in the huge first floor area. There is every sort of thing for sale, except food, and a small Internet cafe. Pippa and Alex buy childrens’ slippers made of white woollen felt and decorated to look like rabbits’ and cats’ faces.
We are staying in Hotel Issyk-Kul on the outskirts of town, set in a birch wood. The straight drive through a line of tall silver birches, the leaves of which are beginning to turn, is beautiful and very Russian. The front of the hotel is painted white with blue woodwork and a long balcony extending the length of the first floor. There are tidy beds of marigolds running along the front. The back of the building is unpainted with crumbling plaster revealing the brickwork underneath. This hotel is for tourists. Another building about fifty yards away is reserved for officials and government guests.
Pippa and Alex share a suite on the first floor with a large sitting room that opens onto the balcony. PJ and I share a more modest twin room. Our plumbing is unreliable. The basin is unusable as the outflow discharges onto the bathroom floor. Hot water is only available in the mornings and evenings and we need PJ’s screwdriver to turn the tap on. As is the way, after three nights we are rather attached to the place.
Our first night we decide to dine out in a Russian restaurant recommended in the guide book, while Kanat stays behind to eat in the hotel. (He later says that the food is not good.) He advises us to take a taxi and never to walk around at night; it is not safe even in Bishkek. An additional hazard peculiar to Karakol is that many manhole covers are missing.
We stay in Karakol until 30th September, going to a museum, a mosque,a Russian Orthodox church, a market and a weekly animal market where horses, cattle, sheep and goats were being traded, and have a picnic on Issyk-Kul.
