Where’s the Lake?

Sometime in June or July 2002, I was invited to a conference hosted by the European Training Foundation at a hotel on Lake Issy Kul, Kyrgyzstan. My colleague Janna and I were to present the results of a European Training Foundation project we had been doing for the past two years. We had been working with a group of business schools in Ukraine and Central Asia, helping them develop means of diagnosing corporate training needs more accurately, and improving their in-company training programmes. Of course, I was quite happy to attend: the summer before, I’d been invited to spend a weekend at Issy Kul, but wasn’t able due to work.

The original plan was to leave Almaty (in Kazakhstan) around 15:00. Unfortunately, I had to get a visa at the Kyrgyz embassy, and this was delayed because of previous work, so everything took a little while longer than forecast. We finally left the Embassy around 17:00, and started driving south. I was in a quality Kazakh taxi-I think it was a Lada-and I was in a hurry.

To get to Kyrgyzstan from Almaty you drive south through miles of steppe cut by isolated, shallow valleys. The road is isolated, except for a few settlements huddled together out of the wind. If you can somehow forget the taxi and the odd telephone line cutting the horizon, it’s difficult to tell what year-or century-it is. In many spots, you spot cemeteries, stuck in the middle of nowhere, rags streaming in the biting wind, the only thing moving on the empty landscape.

Not to my particular surprise, the taxi driver didn’t have a map, had never been to the lake before, didn’t know the particular hotel where the conference was taking place. This somehow should have alerted me that the situation was, as my friend Max would say “highly sub-optimal”. But I figured he could handle the situation.

By about 20:00 we had passed the Kyrgyz border without incident, and had reached the outskirts of Bishkek. At that point, I knew we had to turn left, and start looking for the lake.

The driver stopped, got out, and asked some Kyrgyz ladies selling onions by the side of the road: “Where’s the Lake?” With my limited Russian, I understood that the lake was about 1 hour “that way” (along the road). So, we got back in the taxi, and kept driving.

By this time, darkness was falling, and I started to get worried. Not that we would fall into the lake, but if we took the south road rather than the north road (where the hotel was located), we’d be driving for several days the long way around, and miss the conference. So, I really wanted to get to that turn before we missed it in the dark.

About fifty minutes later, we stopped again at the side of the road. “Where’s the Lake?” the driver asked. “That way!” (along the road). “How far?” “About an hour!” So off we went again.

A bit later, it was 22:00, and I insisted we stop for dinner. We found one of those seedy sashlik stands along the road where you’re not sure if you’re eating chicken or roadkill, and had a quick dinner. The Lada sat right next to us, and it was at this moment that I realised the driver looked just like my crazy grand-uncle Niko. This revelation did not fill me with joy: Niko was a kamikaze driver, the terror of central Greece. His ancient red Lada had survived countless accidents, and he was very proud of it.

By that time, it was dark, really dark. The kind of darkness you get in Central Asia when you are barrelling down the road, lit only by the headlights of an old red Lada, with no other lights in sight. We drove and drove. Every 15 or 20 minutes, or whenever we saw lights, the driver would stop, get out, and ask “Where’s the Lake?” And each time, the answer was the same: “That way – one hour.”

Sometime around 01:00 we pulled up to a big DAI checkpoint. The former Soviet Union was riddled with these. Originally designed to control transport authorisations, the modern version of the DAI is essentially a big private toll booth benefiting the cops in charge of the shift. In other words, it’s a baksheesh toll booth: if you want to pass, you have to pay.

It was freezing. An icy wind was blowing down the steppe. There were cars parked here and there. The traffic barrier was down. My driver disappeared into the police station and stayed there. Ten minutes passed, then fifteen, then twenty.

At some point, the driver came out, practically in tears. “They want 6 dollars!” he cried in anguish. I handed him a tenner and told him to hand over the bribe so we could get the fuck out of there. He disappeared back into the DAI.

Another ten minutes passed, then fifteen minutes. I was starting to lose my temper.

Suddenly two Kyrgyz military police in full camouflage and AK 47s appeared at my passenger-side window. One of them opened the rear door. I stepped out of the car: “What’s going on?” I asked, in Russian. He muttered something I didn’t understand back to me. I stood with him next to the open rear door.

Then my driver appeared, accompanied by a short, squat smiling Kyrgyz man with many gold teeth and a shiny chrome suit. “Hello my friend!” he said, putting out his hand. He got into the back of the car, and didn’t say a word more. I looked at the driver, trying to decipher this latest development. He shrugged, and got in the car too.

So, off we drove. It was 01:45, and we were driving through the Stygian darkness, looking for the Lake, with a strange man in the back seat. He and the driver started talking. Luckily, it turned out he knew where the lake was, and better than this, he knew where the hotel was. Then he started speaking English!

“My name is …… I am the environmental minister of Lake Issy Kul region. I represent Kyrgyzstan at the RAMSAR convention. Are you familiar with RAMSAR?”

At this point, I should have felt relieved. In fact, I was ready to explode. It was nearly 02:00 in the morning, we were nowhere near the damned hotel, and my ear was being yakked off by a cheerful Kyrgyz government official who had just scared the living daylights out of me.

Luckily, I was able to respond politely, and soon learned everything I wanted to learn about Lake Issy Kul’s unique geology and ecology.

About 02:45, we dropped him off just outside some dark city. He assured us there was a city there: it was just that there were no lights. We were on the northern shore of Issy Kul. The driver asked him once more: “Where’s the Lake?” “That way!” he pointed into the darkness. “How far?” “One hour!”

Of course. I was wondering if this hotel actually existed, or if was a figment of a collective national imagination, like Xanadu.

About 20 minutes later, without any fanfare, we passed the entry of the hotel. “Stop!” I shouted. We backed up, turned right, and entered the hotel driveway. Ahead of us was another checkpoint. The barrier was down; another policeman in full camouflage and an AK lolled against the guardhouse.

The driver rolled down his window, and in Russian asked to pass. The guard answered something to the negative. The driver turned to me with a worried look in his eyes, and said “The Hotel is closed now, we cannot enter.”

At this point, I lost it entirely. I leaned across the driver’s side, stuck my head out the window, and started right at the guard: “You open that fucking gate right now and let us in!” I growled in English.

He didn’t need an interpreter. “Yes sir!” he saluted, and opened the gate.

The red Lada rolled into the silent hotel grounds. We drove for about 2 minutes through some kind of park, and pulled up to a vast, dark bulk. The hotel was huge. At least 10 stories high; probably 500 meters long, oriented east-west along the northern shore of the lake. The only problem was—there was no entrance. There was one light on in the darkness: it said “Nightclub.” You know—the seedy kind of nightclub where you do a special kind of dancing, paid by the hour.

“OK,” I told the driver, “turn right here and let’s drive around till we find the reception.” So we drove. And drove. And drove. The dinky little asphalt road ended, and I realised we were driving on the hotel lawn. It was 03:20 or so at that point: there was not a single light on in the entire building. We drove around the front, so that we were facing the lakefront, and kept driving, until we made a 360 degree turn around this black edifice.

Shit, I was thinking. What if the hotel really was closed? What if we came to the wrong hotel?

We pulled up to the nightclub again. The driver got out to take a look. He disappeared downstairs, came up again, and pointed to a black shadow next to the nightclub entrance. “That’s the reception!”

I looked at him in disbelief. There wasn’t a single light on: It was absolutely dark. I pulled out my Motorola, flipped the clamshell cover open, and walked into the hotel, navigating by the dim light of the phone.

There wasn’t the least sign of human habitation. Just a vast black space, stairs zig-zagging here and there, sinister post-Soviet potted plants lurking in corners. Finally, I called Janna, my colleague, who had made it earlier. “Janna, we’re here, but can’t see a damned thing!” Janna said she would call the reception and wake someone up.

The driver and I waited in the darkness for about 10 minutes. Up ahead, a light appeared, very faint and pale. It gradually grew closer and closer. Finally, a babushka appeared holding the light, dressed in her finest bathrobe and slippers and hair curlers, and said abruptly in Russian “Give me your passport!”

It was time to check in. I got my room key, got lost on my way to the room, finally found it open, and collapsed on the bed. Before doing so, I made sure the driver got a room as well: he was ready to drive back to Almaty immediately, but I didn’t want to inflict this on him.

It was 03:50. I had found the Lake. I had found the hotel. I had found my room. Three hours later the alarm rang, and I was ready to talk about human resources management in Central Asia.

Reaching Igoumenitsa

01:00 Tuesday morning--
outside three lights appear
in the darkness
where before were only black
hints of land, no stars
the utter dark of Ionian winter.

I blink at the lights:
but they are real, not reflection.
We pull silently into land
the ferry plying its massive course
amid the calm waters of the headlands
where I have been before.

Ahead the harbour lights appear:
yellow sodium, shadows and concrete waste.
Six cars huddle, some trucks,
as though seeking warmth in the winter night.

The ferry turns,
Spinning on its own length silently, inexorably;
anchors fall in muffled roar,
engines reverse,
in a moment the rear doors will open
as we reach Igoumenitsa

From Paradise to the Crusades in Geraka

I took the garbage out to put it in the bin around 14:00 this afternoon. The sun was shining, there was this marvelous quiet, and the temperature was about 20 degrees.

Along the way, I fell in with a short man in a black wool suit who was doing the same thing. “Kalimera!” I said, catching his eye. “Kalimera,” he responded.

We dumped our bags, and started walking back up the hill. Along the way, he turned to me and asked “Aren’t we in Paradise?” (Δεν είμαστε στον Παράδεισο?”).

“Actually,” I responded, “this is Geraka.”

He stopped, waving his arms a bit at the sky. “No, I mean to say, look around, isn’t this Paradise?”

“Yes, from this viewpoint, we are. If only there were fewer thieves and criminals.”

“I agree,” he responded, "these politicians are really too much." And so we got to talking. A little while later, he asked me “Why don’t you join the Association of the Cross?” (Γιατί δεν γίνεσαι μέλος του Συλλόγου του Σταυρού?”)

I reflected how joining a Crusade would look on my CV, and responded “Well, actually, I do go to Church.”

“No,” he said, “not THAT cross. This Stavros – you know, the neighbourhood of Stavros? If you don’t start screaming a bit, nothing gets done in this country.”

Well, I took his leaflet for the “Association of the Cross” (which turned out to be a neighbourhood association), shook his hand, and went back to the comfort of home. From Paradise to the Crusades in the two minutes it took to empty the garbage bags one sunny afternoon in Geraka. And here I thought work was interesting.