Try and take care of something in Kyrgyzstan!

So I had to pay the bills and you'd say in Bishkek it must be easy. After all, it's the capital... Unless it isn't (easy, not capital). So far, I've had similar experience in Kyrgyzstan when trying to do some official business. Things just don't work, as if they decided, on purpose, to fight your efforts.

Alright, I had no idea how to pay it, but asked a local and was told to use the прием платежей terminals. Furthermore, I was explained I had to select the proper provider, enter лицовой счет (let's call it a Customer Identification Number, CIN for short) and voilà - that's it, welcome to the club.

Or not.

My first try was right outside the Star Business Centre (that's a euphemism for a building that can't even provide an office space with elevator access - if you're a disabled, bad luck!). There was a Мобильник terminal, but I couldn't find my service provider there. Probably because I am a n00b, doing it for the first time. Like a first sex kiss. Or a first dentist visit.

But unlike dentists, I had my second try right thereafter. I went to ВЕФА, which is a famous and large shopping center on the corner of Московская and Горького. It's a useless building apart from tasty кокке in an otherwise overpriced Plus Turkish супермаркет.

Now it's not that easy as it sounds (paying bills, not eating кокке). First off, you have to have exact amount of money to pay, in cash. The terminals, however wonderful life-facilitating machines they are, do not give change. So you look up the amount on your bill, add the fee (usually 5 сом), round up to the nearest 20... and hope you've got this precise exact amount of cash in your wallet.

If not, go and buy some stuff to get change (in case they are out of кокке, you can try сникерс. Or ржаной хлеб, if you're me). No one breaks your grand for free in Kyrgyzstan, ever. They all say: "К сожалению, I ain't have no помельче..." and appear clueless.

Well, I managed to gather enough banknotes in cash (when you pay 3390 it's quite a feat) and I still had four more bills to pay - four more arbitrary sums of cash.

'Damn, there has to be a better way!' I thought. Like... on-line banking set-up automated so that it pays your bills at the end of each month? Eh, screw it, you're in Kyrgyzstan, deal with it. And with these thoughts I approached the first terminal I could lay my sight on inside ВЕФА.

QIWI (mind you, that's not Cyrillic).

A pretty respectable one.

So I found my provider (hot water and central heating) - the company was listed there, yay! - entered my лицовой счет and crossed fingers I would not make any mistake. I actually hoped that after entering the number I would see a familiar name to know that I am depositing my money into the right account. But what did I see in reality?

Lo and behold!

Yes, I moved the error dialog box around as I love to do when Windows crashes - it's a touch screen after all, isn't it?

And this one is with an added bonus of the Start menu button.

In other words, better luck next time, sucker! Well, no matter, tomorrow is as good a day as any other, right? Unless... unless you wake up, go to 7-Дней supermarket, want to pay the bills, and then a thought strikes you:
'Hey, I can actually fill up my электронный кошелек and pay it on-line!'

That instantly removes the need to have precise amounts cash, rounded up to the nearest 20, and as a bonus - no commission! Alright, I'd already had a doshcard.kg account set up - a «ДОШ» кошелек - and I knew that there was a terminal close to my place where I could easily fill my e-wallet.

Off I went back home, checked online that doshcard.kg enabled me to pay all my bills (they had the right providers listed), calculated I'd need to put in an aggregate 4000 сом and so streaked right to the terminal (no, I wasn't naked).

Happy End? Not Quite.

The terminal - I'd used it multiple times before - decided he would not work. He, because things just get concious and they try to interfere with your duties, making your life miserable in the process. I feel like I am a little inconsequential meeple in a Sims 27,654th installment, being under the command of some super-advanced pesky alien teenage brat who's simply having fun with his newest virtual reality simulation.

But no such thing as that [read: controlling my fate] can make if only a slightest dent into my resolve.

I realized I hadn't been prepared; I didn't know where to go in case this terminal did not work. Terminals here usually work... unless you really really need them. Like, really.

So I went back home and what do you know! Doshcard.kg has a convenient map showing all the 800+ locations where you can пополнить your кошелек. Aahhh, the bliss of the Internet... Everything's at your fingertips. Everything but one f@#*ing прием платежей terminal.

The map said the closest place to fill up your кошелек with some 'goodies' was the Инвестбанк «Иссык-куль» HQ. But they charge you 5 som commission. Being a pennypincher as I am sometimes labeled by my bro' I decided to dig in and walk a block further, but in the other direction. There was not one, but two Оптима банк terminals that allow one to fill one's e-wallet free of charge. Both were supposedly located inside respective Народный supermarkets.

Well, I've spent in Бишкек a bit more than a year and don't remember any Народный supermarket anywhere in the vicinity of those precise locations, but, ah, what the heck. I am not an omniscient being (as I often foolishly try to convince myself) and blindly trusted The Internet. It's written. On-line. It has to be true.

Boy was I wrong!

At the first location there was no Народный and no Оптима банк terminal, however, there was an Оптима банк ATM! Needless to say, useless for me. So I carried on to the location of the other supposed Народный supermarket (and an Оптима банк terminal), all the while feeling vaguely, if apprehensively, hopeful, because I did not know that part of Bishkek very well - there may just be a Народный supermarket, after all!

But you know, whenever you feel hopeful, it usually doesn't work out... Take a date, for example. Invariably, there is a pit inside.

Anyway half-way there I started to harbor some doubts - what if the Оптима банк terminal actually was there, at the first location? What if it was inside that government building to which the ATM was affixed?

Payment terminals like these are often found in the same places as would-be suicide bombers (like Akhmed) - wherever there is a great concentration of people. God knows, maybe this terminal was hidden in the vestibule so that it does not get rained on. My reasonable doubt was enough to convince my unreasonably hopeful reason to go back and check it out.

Of course there was no Оптима банк terminal. What did you expect? So I had returned for nought...

Well, nothing can come even close to dampening my spirits, so I set off to the other Оптима банк terminal... only to find there was no Народный supermarket and yet again no Оптима Банк terminal. Halleluiah. What now? Where to go?

I suspected there was an Оптима actual банк on Чуй and Советская intersection; but that was fairly far. My comfortable me kicked in and ordered me to go home along Жибек-жолу. 'It will work out. Some terminal will pop up on the way.'

And indeed it did. First I found Планета электроники or something like that. But there was no terminal of the brand I was looking for (either 100 платежей or Оптима банк) and so I made up my mind to fill up my e-wallet at the 7-дней supermarket close to my home, no matter the commission.

As I was walking down Жибек-жолу (the Silk Road, mind you) I literally walked into an Оптима банк branch. And they had a payment terminal inside! However, no-one in the whole bank knew a single thing about the doshcard.kg e-wallet. Least of all the terminal itself. Even though the website doshcard.kg advertises Оптима банк terminals as the ones where you can fill your e-wallet up, it... just does not work. There is no such option on-screen.

Well, back to my original plan - fill up my Dosh e-wallet at 7-Дней. I tried the first terminal - no luck, Doshcard is not among the providers. The second (Мобильник) allowed me to do this transaction - but at what cost! The commission is 2% - that's 80 som! Which defeats the whole purpose of paying the bills through doshcard.kg. For that amount, you can buy three-and-a-half сникерс in order to break your notes. I wasn't gonna feed any Snickers to that terminal.

I've had enough. I decided, right there and then, to pay the bills straight at the machine, screw the Dosh кошелек, only to find out... I left the bills at home! Aaaaarrrghhh!!! Curse you, stupid f#&@ing alien controlling my fate in this huge computer-simulation-cum-virtual-reality game!

Ok, back home. But before, I tried the broken 100 Платежей terminal close to my home again - still broken. Interestingly, one button actually worked - the button for changing the interface language. It only worked half-assedly, though - it would changes the language (label) of only one item (button). The rest of the thing seemed to be frozen - no wonder in this wintry weather.

At home I checked the map yet again and found a whole slew of terminals along my way to work. I'd stopped being hopeful long ago; nevertheless, I still made a mental note of them.

Come 5.30 I go to work. First off, I try the damn broken 100 Платежей terminal again. And again, no luck. Then I head to ЦУМ because inside, there's a shitload of terminals. And according to the doshcard.kg website, one of them is supposed to be 100 Платежей. If even this does not work, I know for sure of another e-wallet brand that has a terminal inside ЦУМ.

Of course it did not work, what'd you expect, choc chip brownies, huh? Myriad of terminals, but no «100 Платежей» there. However, I did find the terminal of the other e-wallet service there - and it was Umai.kg. 'If it comes to worst,' I thought to myself, 'I will open up an Umai.kg account and pay it through there.' It does involve some extra effort, because you can open an account only on-line and then you have to go back to ЦУМ to deposit money and then back home to pay the bills on-line, but it seemed worth the effort to me. To prove I can win, if for nothing else.

I felt like a harnessed ass that always sees a carrot right in front of him. He doesn't know the carrot is being dangled by the wagoner sitting on the very coach he's pulling - so he always believes the carrot is so close.

No dice.

It was the same deal with me. I always thought it required only a little bit extra effort to fill my e-wallet account so that I could comfortably pay the bills on-line.

Again, I coould not pay my bills straaight away because I did not have time this time around - I'd be late for work. Still, I made a mental note of setting up an account at Umai.kg and come back to ЦУМ later. After I finished my lesson, I decided to walk back home (ЦУМ had been closed already) - and on the way check up on some alleged locations where I could, as old squaws used to whisper, fill up my Doshcard e-wallet.

Needless to say, no luck. There's no terminal at Эко-исламик банк (even though the map clearly shows one) and yet another terminal on Советская was also conspicuously missing.

Then, half-way, I decided, on an impulse, to get to the nearest Народный supermarket on Токтогула street. Maybe there will be an Оптима банк terminal and maybe, just maybe, there will be an option to fill up my e-wallet. On the way I found another terminal of an unknown brand, but this b*tch asked for 30 som commission.

No.

You're not gonna get anything from me.

I'm not gonna give up now I'm that close. Besides, I needed 3091 som, so had to put in 4000 сом sharp. With the commission being 30, I'd have to round it up to 4040 and that sucks. No way. That would work out probably even more expensive than just paying the bills as they are. Besides, I just don't give up, you sonofab*tch!

So I made my way to Народный - it actually was where it was supposed to be, what a great success! And there was an Оптима банк terminal! And... you could not fill your e-wallet there. Smashin', right? You feel like the word I-R-O-N-Y with its crumbling large styrofoam letters is toppling over only to bury you in a grandiose mess. Then you break free of this trash and continue...

...home? No, not yet. One more desperately hopeless attempt at the broken 100 Платежей terminal close to my home. Somehow, deep down, I believed someone may have reported it as dysfunctional, so that an ever-present handyman would arrive to - reboot it.

Nope.

Okay. Umai.kg to the resuce.

At home I logged on to Umai.kg, pressed создать новый аккаунт button and... уважаемые пользователи, к сожалению, на данный момент регистрация новых кошельков временно приостановлена по техническим причинам. This long text perfectly translates into English as a single word - frustration.

Okay, y aside, not all is lost, if the doshcard.kg has such an unreliable список or перечень of places where you can fill-up your wallet, no problem, I'll google «100 Платежей» website and they'll surely have an up-to-date list of all terminals in Bishkek.

Or not.

As it happens, 100 Платежей appears to be some sort of Russian, not Kyrgyz, payment company based in Омск. Good luck flying all the way to Siberia to fill your кошелек. A few moments later, after a detailed look at their website (I did not find a single mention of any payment terminal locations in Kyrgyzstan, let alone in Bishkek) I surmised it's an entirely different enterprise.

Which left me wondering... how come I cannot google the Kyrgyz one, even after putting in the highly specific «100 Платежей Бишкек» string? Sure, I did get a lot of third party results (actually, all the first page results bar the first one, the Russian company, referred to the Bishkek one), but none of them was the company's official website! Don't they have one?

Damn you, stupid... gaming... alien!

I started to become agitated and that's when I lose concentration plus my attention span drastically shortens. So I went to sleep. There's a day tomorrow... if the alien decides to boot up the simulation, that is.

Next morning I re-checked the doshcard.kg website and decided to go to the «Иссык-куль» Инвестбанк HQ to pay it at the counter. After all this ordeal I'd be infinitely grateful for a commission of only 5 сом!

Or maybe there is no trace of «Иссык-куль» Инвестбанк whatsoever, HQ or otherwise. The map shows the location at the intersection of Абдымомунова and Советская, listing it as Абдрахманова 133 (for those not familiar, Абдрахманова is the post-Soviet name of Советская that no-one uses); however, the reality shows № 133 is (in a galaxy) far, far away from this intersection. Instead, there is a branch of Эко-исламик банк. All right, no matter, I'll try this one.

Closed for lunch. Irony reaching record heights.

I head back home totally pissed, but not before I, again, for just about gazillionth time, try the broken 100 Платежей terminal that is still merrily shining, using up electricity, and bringing no revenues whatsoever to its owners. If the previous attempt was desperately hopeless, this one qualifies as hopelessly desperate.

This time, however, I notice there is a phone number on it. Yay! I can actually call the company and report the issue... where's my phone? At home, damn! I forgot it, this very time, when I could actually put to some use. 'Do not give up!' tells me my inner voice which I suspect is just a little computer virus in this huge simulation thru which my personal alien-controller is ridiculing me even more.

Don't give up. Right. There's... there's the website of the company! Epay.kg! So that's why I couldn't google it under 100 Платежей! That's merely their trade brand.

OK, I come home, immediately log in to epay.kg... сайт находится в стадии разработки. So that's the real why I couldn't google it. For non-Russian speakers, the aforementioned sentence translates simply as frustration squared.

Damn, damned, damnedest! Why can't I succeed? Why is this alien guy fooling around with me as if I were the elastic band in his undies?

Last resort - I'll google «location of 100 Платежей terminal» and if that does not work, screw it! I find a slew of websites, each proclaiming different locations as the truest in the world. I pick a few most trustworthy looking ones and embark on the final crusade. If this does not help - I believe it won't - I'm gonna pay the bills directly, no matter the amount of money spent on a dentist to fix my teeth after eating all those сникерс bars I would have to buy to get the precise amount of banknotes before paying the bills.

But first I try, again, the Эко-исламик банк branch. It's finally open after the lunch break. Of course, right at this very moment, there has too be a guy at the касса depositing a huge sum of money. I wait patiently and when it's finally my turn, ask: «Можно здесь пополнить электронный Дош кошелек?»
«No, try at the service counter»
But there's another queue. I wait, patiently, only to be told «No, it's not possible to do it here».

Off I go then.

On my way to a suspected 100 платежей terminal I pass the broken one and decide to call the number posted on it. What do you know, Ms Irony herself answers. Her voice is a little bit monotone, beep-beep-beep, sounding a bit like 'busy' phone signal.

I reach the supposed location of the other terminal and - surprise surprise! It actually is there. I can't believe my own eyes. After losing all my hope. Something will go wrong, I am sure. It will not accept my crumpled banknotes and regurgitate them in a spectacular manner. It will not print the чек and won't зачислить мои деньги on to my account. It will cheat on me with my wife, just because. I will not be able to pay the bills online. Anything to destroy my plans.

Well, in the end, all came to pass (though I could never reach the «100 Платежей» company, their phone being either busy or turned off) and I paid the bills, in the comfort of my home. Still, a thought lingers. I just spent my last three days running my ass off around the city plus the last three hours writing this post and...

... an anonymous child needs money for a kidney transplant.

These are... my problems?

How to cross from China to Tajikistan

The crossing itself took about 6 tons of determination, 6 bags of persistence, and 6 days.

I started on Wednesday, July 29^th. A minivan took me to the Karasu checkpoint – actually to the back, because it was full of Tajiks wanting to cross. A soldier in the back parking lot didn’t even look at my passport and ran towards me with a big gesture of no – it is not open for foreigners.

Well, I don’t take a “no” from a simple soldier and entered the shiny building from the front. What do you know – there’s a delegation of visiting bigwigs taking pictures gloating. First I went to an officer (in blue), who repeated the same mantra, so I implored with one of the bigwigs, who actually took me all the way to the green guy who stamps your passport. His adamancy more than matched my persistence as he simply repeated several times:

“This crossing is closed for third country nationals.”

Right. So I hitched to Tashkurgan, thinking I’m not gonna give up that easily.If it’s “officially, legally” possible, then it is enforceable – i.e., possible. In Tashkurgan, I tried to call the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) number, which they had posted on their English website. After I said:

“Do you speak English?” the guy hung up.

So I asked my Chinese Canadian friend to call them but he said it would make no sense and asked the hostel proprietress to find out some information on this crossing. She said she would call her “friend” in “the office”.

All right. In the meantime I googled (sorry, binged, we’re in China :-) the Chinese text of the relevant bilateral agreement between China and Tajikistan about opening the border for international goods and passenger traffic on the Chinese MFA website (I also noticed that the number to contact MFA on this Chinese mutation is exactly the same as on the English version :-). Spoiler: This proved to be the key point of my efforts.

The lady from the hostel returned with the answer that it’s closed for foreigners, but she said by the way of consolation that it will be opened next year. Yeah, sure, it’s always supposed to be “next year”. I showed her the agreement, she confirmed that it should be open and half-jokingly proposed that I show it to the border guards.

“Fat chance,” we agreed. A Chinese border guard that just yelled at me the day before is not going to even look at that and would say something in the way of “Oh yeah, that’s a neat website of yours…”

Still, I wanted to give it a try, however small the chance might be, so the next morning (Thursday) I queued for a bus ticket to Karasu. However, the guy told me they don’t sell the tickets there, so in the distress of a long queue behind me I settled for a ticket to Kashgar, figuring the chance was negligible anyway.

In Kashgar I contacted the border police the next day (Friday), based on one of the relevant caravanistan.com forum posts. The guy there, who, by the way, spoke virtually flawless English, confirmed that the agreement says it’s open for everyone, explained to me that it’s not in their competence, sent me to the border military office, and wrote an accompanying half-page letter explaining my woes in case they don’t speak English.

The military border office is a bit out of town and they had some sort of holiday there but a few guys talked to me for an hour (via a Russian translator! You never know when your Russian comes in handy). In the end, they told me it’s not their competence and said that they had no idea whose competence it is. Back to the square one.

I went right back to the police, asking them to call the MFA in Beijing on my behalf to inquire about the status of the border. The guy refused to do it and advised me to call my Embassy, which I did. 

The staff there were exceedingly helpful. They called the MFA on my behalf – and the MFA didn’t know the status of the border crossing! They advised my Embassy to call the Foreign Affairs Office in Kashgar, where a lady said all four border crossings between China and Tajikistan are closed for foreigners. Yeah, right. Four crossings. Maybe for snow leopards. So I sent my Embassy the agreement and they promised to inquire at the MFA again on Monday.

On Monday, my Embassy (after contacting the MFA again) found out  that yes, Karasu is open for everyone, and that I should not have any problems crossing it. Well… a bunch of other people got the same statement from Beijing MFA and it did not help them a single bit. So I asked my Embassy to ask the MFA to call the checkpoint in question (Karasu) with my data (name and passport no.), so that they know. I was also ready to call my Embassy, once I would get there, for Chinese-language assistance.

Come Tuesday, 17.00, I enter the Karasu checkpoint again and a soldier first says no. Then a guy in blue uniform comes to me and gestures there is no way for me to pass – it is closed for foreigners. I shove in his face the printed out text of the agreement (by now somewhat wrinkled) and more bigwigs come out. When they number about 15, luggage checks continue. Then my camera is inspected – but obviously the guy is dumb enough to press the forward button, so he sees my 1-month-old pics of Kyrgyzstan. Then identity checks – I am asked to write my name and sign. Then I am called into the main office where the highest ranking officer talks to me via a lovely Chinese translator. Her politeness almost matches that of Japanese. The big boss actually apologizes to me that the other border officer did not let me through the past Wednesday. I can’t believe my own ears! Then they tell me that I cannot proceed, because there is no transport towards the actual border. I say, “dump me on a truck”. They refuse, allegedly because of my own safety. Then they tell me that they want to help me and take me to the Tajik side. I am afraid that it’s a Chinese way too ask for a bribe but am adamant not to give any. Still, I ask – “How much does it cost?”. They immediately say there’s no cost involved, whereupon I proceed to final checks and the (unbelievable) Karasu exit stamp.

They still keep my passport and put me in a shiny new car, with a driver and a border officer with my passport. Whoever wrote about the weather at Kulma being notoriously bad was spot-on. Even though it was sunny at Karasu checkpoint, about 500m further into the valley road that leads to Kulma Pass it started to rain and heavy gray clouds were snaking over the hills.

After the short trip there was one last check (four soldiers at the fence). I am finally given my passport and cross over to Tajikistan. Couple eyebrows are raised on that side (and a non-standard check of my laptop – I guess the border officer was looking for some prohibited material like porn to extract some bribe), but otherwise everything proceeds in a very cordial manner (partly due to my Russian, I suppose).

That’s the story, now some technicalities:

Obviously, the Chinese, even if they are aware of it being open, don’t want to let foreigners through. I suppose it’s the same reason why you have to take a mandated taxi from Wuqia to Irkeshtam (400 yuan) and an arranged car from Kashgar to Torugart (~300 USD). They are simply afraid you would run away somewhere in the no-man’s-land between the checkpoint and the actual border, where there are no cameras. Since the traffic density is understandably low at Karasu, there is no business for taxis or buses, so they would have to ferry everyone to the border themselves – and they cannot ask for money for that (I guess it’s the Xi Jinping’s drive to eradicate corruption).

I am not sure whether they let me because I showed them the agreement or because the Chinese MFA really did call them. I am inclined to the latter, because they even apologized to me, so some kind of high-level telling-off might have been involved. It’s anyone’s guess, really, whether I would have succeeded already on Thursday with just the copy of the agreement in my hand.

I think the general problem here is that a Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs signs an agreement with the Tajik counterpart, but it’s so far from the actual situation on the ground, that the border guys either don’t know about it or simply refuse to implement it (even the MFA did not know the status until I dug up the document).

Still, it’s 100% possible but I obviously went way further than anyone else in trying to get through. To anyone who wants to cross I’d suggest to bring a copy of the agreement :

Here's the agreement:

http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_chn/ziliao_611306/tytj_611312/tyfg_611314/t556634.shtml (2003)

http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_chn/ziliao_611306/tytj_611312/tyfg_611314/t947972.shtml (2011)

Machine-translated by Google

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=zh-CN&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fmprc.gov.cn%2Fmfa_chn%2Fziliao_611306%2Ftytj_611312%2Ftyfg_611314%2Ft947972.shtml&edit-text=

The crucial sentence (Google translated):

"First, the two sides agreed to open up Karasu [...] border crossings to the international road passenger and freight transport. The port is open all year round port that allows the parties and third countries (regions) personnel, transport, goods and articles immigration."

If anyone's in China (no access to Google), Microsoft translator can be used with similar results:

www.bing.com/translator

Anyone wanting to cross can either print the agreement out or have it on a tablet and to make sure, one should contact the respective Embassy in China, send them the link with the agreement and ask them for possible language interpretation service in case something goes wrong.

The fact that I crossed does not mean it is going to be easier for others, but it should definitely shorten the process as I ran up multiple dead-ends. In the end, it’s the Chinese MFA that appears to have competence over it.

An adventurous trip (not quite) to Song-Köl

I wanted to go from Kyzart (N of the lake, the closest village), which makes only for a single-day trek, perfect for little-luggage trip (no tent, no sleeping bag, food only for two days - there and back). However, the first day I had some (stomach) bug and was not in a shape to go even beyond the village. Besides, the weather sucked anyway...

The next day I felt better but it still took a lot of effort (the climb is only slightly over 1 km elevation gain), because of the aftereffects of my having felt sick the previous day. So for every 20 mins uphill walk I stopped and panted for additional half-an-hour.

One way or another, about half-way up I was joined by a local weirdo. He didn't appear to be mentally challenged, nor drunk; he was just a bit on the obnoxious side (and that's a serious understatement). First, he started whistling at me; then, talking in Kyrgyz. Next, he showed the money sign and decided to try and feel me. He got aroused when he touched my wallet. Then it was my bag. I thought I understood what he wanted - carry my bag for some reward.

"No, нет, джок," I tried to explain to him in every conceivable language he could possibly understand.

However, to no avail.  He hung around me and every time I rested he would come over and start feeling me over. Had I had a gun, he would have been gone. Had we been in America, he would have been dead.

He continued trailing me, growing to be ever bigger nuisance. I started to get an ominous feeling (apart from the physical one from him), a premonition, but kept very passive. I did not want to give him even the smallest excuse to start a fight and just passively defended myself when he got too close. Besides, I was really tired.

Then it dawned on me... since he didn't succeed in carrying my bag, he might try and shoot for the closest yurt on the other side of the pass, at Song-Kul Lake, where he would tell them of my arrival, ask them to overcharge me, and collect his commission (as someone who brings a guest - and recommends a lodging to the tourist).

But then - why wouldn't he go faster?

Because he isn't exactly an example of fitness, that's why! Had I been properly healthy, he couldn't even think of hanging on to me. The whole (rather unpleasant) encounter wouldn't have ever taken place.

'Does he want to possibly rob me?' I continue to worry in my mind

'Not really,' I realize. He would have done it much earlier. We had been alone for quite some time already.

I am now closing on to the pass and the guy grows aggressive. His smile is of the perverse kind and he now violently grabs for my backpack. I am in no shape to overtake him uphill and I hate fighting, so after I liberate my bag from his claws I just bend down for a stone. He sees it as a challenge and bends down for a bigger one. And he stands uphill... This is turning nasty.

I have a fairly sizable knife in my backpack but lack the intention to use it. If I succeed in incapacitating him (cutting some tendons, anyone?), I still have to stay there and call the police/paramedics - meaning, no lake tonight anyway. And I don't want to even consider the other possibility.

So I do one thing that, in my experience, very few people can match me in - descending. Even in my shape I am pretty confident the guy stands virtually zero chance. I am running half-pace, and very comfortably manage my distance from him, even though he - apparently haplessly - keeps brandishing the stone. Since he is wearing slippers (indeed!), he tumbles down several times and in a few moments I get rid of him completely.

What a bandit!

On my way down I meet a father-and-son shepherd pair, but shy away from them - they might be in league with this looney - and I carry on heading back to my host family in Kyzart, the only people in about 30 km radius that I now trust.

Back "home" I ask to see the police, but am told to "wait for the brother". By the time he comes, it's too late to go anywhere. Besides, the dinner's ready and for the time being the affair is pretty much forgotten.

I do get a surprise the next morning, though. On my way to Bishkek in his marshrutka he tells me that he spoke to some village elders who told him I should have gone to the local милиция (police) the very first thing. Since I am a tourist, a foreigner, they would have immediately set off with me to the mountains in search of this would-be pirate. 'Well, thank you for validating my primary concerns,' I think to myself, and continue dreaming of riding a (police) horse into the sunset all the way to the Song-Kul Lake...