More Russian than the Russians
How many small mountainous countries can you name with a population of three and a half million people and quite a few more sheep?
The Doctor exhales a pungent swirling cloud of dark Russian tobacco smoke and reaches behind him to show me something. He compares his situation to that of a white South African. As he pulls a black t-shirt out from the cupboard, emblazoned with the twin headed imperial eagle of the Romanov Tsars, and my head spins into a nicotine haze, his irony becomes impenetrable.
"More Russian than the Russians!" is his catchcry as he sips his black tea and raspberry preserves.
Really, he's not a doctor anymore. He's The Doctor and he's given up what he calls western medicine, prefering instead to prescribe Mumiyo, a potent combination of minerals and vitamins rendered down from fossilised bat droppings collected from the desert caves of Central Asia. All the same, he haggles over how much Mumiyo our antibiotics and pain-killers are worth.
We agree finally and he strokes his moustache, then offers me a cigarette.
The Doctor isn't the only one suffering cultural dislocation. I'm sensing an odd twist to that hoary old adage about how the more things change the more they stay the same. How many small mountainous countries can you name with a population of three and a half million people and quite a few more sheep? One that was colonised by an imperial European power during the middle of last century, and now has a strong indigenous population asserting their cultural rights?
You'd be right to guess Kirgizstan, once part of the USSR, now the only Central Asian state with a government not made up of ex-communist party bosses. Although the president, Askar Akayev, was reportedly embarrassed by the absence of any opposition.
An indigenous majority means biculturalism is a reality. Russians have to accept Parliament passing laws that allow for Islamic practice. many Russians, especially the young, accept learning Kirgiz is a necessity. Others are leaving for Russia. Some, like The Doctor, remain, in a world after communism that is not as they had imagined.
With scenery that resembles both Switzerland and Central Otago, but on a vaster, wilder scale than either, it's inevitable that Kirgizstan will become one of the hot tourist destinations of the 21st century. Even as the USSR was breaking apart, companies were springing up prepared to pay a 70 per cent tax on foreign income earnings just to attract lucrative western tourist dollars.
All your favourite adventure tourism attractions can be had. Whitewater rafting, mountain biking, heliskiing. You could trek through what's claimed to be the only natural walnut forest left in the world, or up into the glaciers and peaks of the Himalayan scale Tian Shan, or Heavenly Mountains. Later, you'll flake out on the beaches of the 170km long Lake Issyk Kul, munching on fabulous melons and white-fleshed nectarines.
But wouldn't it be easier just to head for Queenstown? Yes. The easiest route into Kirgizstan is still by air from Moscow. Budget travellers could catch a train from Hong Kong, or a bus from Pakistan. So perhaps heliskiing won't be all you're after.
Cultural highlight is the National Museum in the capital, Bishkek. "When it was finished a few years ago, we were very proud", grinned our Kirgiz guide. It's an overpoweringly turgid monument to late-Soviet stagnation, where dimly lit brass plated and blood red reliefs depict inexorable Soviet progress. Outside on the steps, as part of the first anniversary celebrations of independence, several Yurts, nomadic felt tents, were being built.
Insecurity, born of an incomprehension of their imperialist past, dogs many Russians in Kirgizstan. But though the past is about to be rewritten once again, one lesson at least has been well learnt.
One evening we shared tea, preserves and tobacco at the florid home of a mountain guide, Vitaly, who'd spent the summer working in the high Tian Shan for only NZ$1 a day. He quoted Lenin to justify foreign investment and a floating currency. He praised Ronald Reagan for halting the nuclear arms race. He told us how at the age of 12 he'd wept when Stalin died.
And then the television news began, showing generals, their chests covered with military decorations, their eyes barely visible between pale folds of fat. One started to justify the killing and destruction that had begun in neighbouring Tadjikistan.
"Scoundrels," snapped Vitaly. "Savages!"
– This story was published in City Voice newspaper in 1994.