The Kyrgyz Taxi Ride (and Variations on the Travel Theme)

I’ve found that while abroad most of my stories inevitably revolve around two general themes: food and transportation. Since many a previous entry has been devoted to pontification on the former, I offer here a compilation of stories on the later.

But first, I feel compelled to define my subject clearly, thus a few definitions:

Taxi (tak-cee): Any moving vehicle willing to stop and pick up additional passengers for a fee. Passenger limit at driver discretion. Animals allowed for no additional fee.

Marshrutka (mar-sh-root-ka): An approximately 15-seater van, usually charging a small fee for short distance travel (i.e. within city). Cheaper than a taxi for long trips. Expect more passengers than seats available. Upwards of 25 people not uncommon. Animals allowed, usually tied under the back seats.

Autovaksal (auto-vaak-saal): Any location formally or informally designated for taxis or other transport to convene to pick up passengers. Includes random unmarked street corners. Do not expect 24-7 availability; transport to remote destinations often happen only once per day, if it all. Taxis or marshrutki leave when filled; expect delays.

To leave my village on any given day, I walk a short 15 minute jaunt to the main road, and then wait indefinitely for any vehicle going in my direction with an open seat. To give you an idea of wait times, I considered myself extraordinarily lucky to get a lift from the first vehicle that passed last time I went into town; I’d only been waiting 45 minutes. So far the most I’ve waited is 2 hours, but I’m told vehicles become even more scarce in winter. The ride’s also not cheap; the round-trip fare into the nearest major city is a tenth of my monthly salary. Needless to say, I don’t do it more than necessary.

Given the virtually pre-historic models of many a Lada or other Soviet-make vehicle I hail and the high frequency of the fender-benders in Kyrgyzstan, many taxis I’ve caught a ride in have had cracked windshields. Tape—the obviously cheaper alternative to a full windshield replacement—is the most commonly employed solution; however, a month ago I found a driver who felt simple scotch was just not enough. Over the epicenter of the fracture, he had glued a sheep’s palate, an orthodontic retainer-looking talisman traditionally tacked to the ceiling of a kitchen for luck—or in this case, the windshield.

Two weeks ago, coming back from the nearest major city, I took my usual stroll to the autovaksal (ours is an intersection just west of the bazaar) around noon to try to find a ride. Taxis (or the very occasional marshrutka) to my rayon usually leave around 1 p.m.; if you miss the time slot you’re stuck ‘til the next day. When I showed up Sunday, I was told there weren’t any vehicles heading out my way, but some investigation turned up a marshrutka heading at-least to my region, if not past my village. I walked over to the van to check it out and chat with the man in the front seat, who appeared to be the only occupant. I was therefore surprised to find a second when I walked around to the open door: a full-grown Bactrian camel sitting behind the first row of seats (the back two rows having been removed to make room).


I wish I could say that I ended up riding with the camel, but alas, after two hours the camel caravan still wasn’t leaving, and I finally was able to get a seat in the back seat of Soviet-era Latta with two other women and their three children. We crawled back to my village at a steady 30 km/hour, stopping only three times for the driver to restart the engine by hand.

In another case of unanticipated delays, on my way to the bank in the nearest town last month (a normally 30 minute jaunt up the road), I was waylaid by a wedding in an intermediary village. We stopped so another passenger (our mayor) could quickly pass on her best wishes, but of course that wouldn’t do, and the family invited us all in to join the pre-wedding day feast. This is how it came to be that I found myself obliged to take shots and give accompanying toasts to a mother-in-law I’d never met on behalf of her soon-to-be daughter-in-law I would never meet in a village I’d never visited before. Climbing back into the car, I could only laugh at the circumstances.

I said at the beginning of the entry that most of my stories revolve around food and transport. Inevitably, one had to be about a bit of both: last weekend, I joined the majority of my family in a pilgrimage up the road to pick this year’s potato harvest (my host father begin absent for what I believe was an oblast-wide volleyball tournament). We took the family car, the constant subject of tune-ups and battery-jumping in our front yard. If at any point in this story you find yourself scared for my safety, just remember that it can’t go over 40 km/hour and there is no traffic whatsoever on the road, excluding the wayward donkey.

I seated myself in the middle of the backseat, my 10-year-old cousin on my left, my host mom on my left, one of the 3-year-old twins in my lap. My 11-year-old sister held the other twin in the front passenger seat, and my uncle drove. None of us had seat belts, but no car I’ve ridden in country does (except the Peace Corps jeep).

The family farm should have been just a 20-minute ride up the road, but just 5 minutes into the ride, the uncle pulls to the side of the road and reaches into the glove compartment, pulling out a bottle of vodka and a shot glass. (For the record, there is nothing else in the compartment. No maps, licenses, flashlight…just vodka.) He then turns to me and asks “болобу?” which means essentially, “May I?” And I’m thinking, I’ve got a 3-year-old in my lap and none of us have seat belts, and you want me to condone a shot? So I turn to my host mom, who just laughs and is already reaching for an onion and a knife to cut pieces to be used as a chaser. He takes the shot and we drive on. However, I the moment for a little cultural exchange, pointing out the differences in Kyrgyz and American driving laws, safety standards, and the reasons behinds them. But no sooner have turned off the road another 5 km along, then he stoped for a second shot, and we commenced off-roading on a roller-coaster of a dirt track in our Soviet jalopy, reaching the river in no time.

So to recap, I’m ridding unbuckled with my 3-year-old sister in my lap, my uncle has been taking shots, and we’re now attempted to ford a flowing river in a Soviet rattletrap. Its the consciousness of my laughter and how none of this really surprises me anymore that makes me wonder if anything in America will ever raise my heart rate again.

Anyway, my cousin hops out to pick the best path through the current, which runs in rivulets around sandbars. Gunning it from sandbar to sandbar, we make it just fine. On the opposite side, we stop to pick up a man of some unknown relation, and he joins my uncle in finishing off the bottle before we pull up to the farm.

We worked all afternoon, digging, then sorting, then hauling the potatoes from the field into the storage room. I’m glad to say, I had a very competent cohort to work with and three shovels among us, which is an improvement upon my last potato digging experience, where as I recall, I had only a digging stick. It was completely dark when we got the last of this year’s potato supply into storage. I’d been hoping to head home shortly thereafter (anticipating my 8 a.m. class the next morning), but we were detained by an impending Kyrgyz “thank you” feast being cooked by an aunt. Thus, at 8 o’clock I found myself waiting for the reward of my labor: non-other than—you guessed it—besh barmak. We finally ate at 10 p.m., by which point I just wanted to go home and had no stomach for sheep and certainly not for sheep’s stomach. The 11 p.m. ride home was much less exciting than the morning’s, except that we now had my host brother and grandmother with us too—which left my brother in the trunk with the potatoes.

So should you find yourself in need of distraction in the next week, may I recommend the following mad lib, or rather a ‘write your own’ Kyrgyz travel saga:

Traveling to (city name) last weekend, I waited (number) hours for a vehicle to arrive. Finally, a (ancient make of car) arrived and we set off on a most (adjective) ride over the mountain pass. I road in the back seat with (number) others; the (animal) road in the trunk. Along the way we stopped for the (animal plural) in the middle of the road, to fix the (car part), and to give toasts to (person's name). I arrived (number) hours late, but no one minded; the besh barmak would not be ready for (number) hours.

The funny thing is, I almost guarantee whatever you plug in, it could happen in Kyrgyzstan. And I must be becoming Kyrgyz, because I wouldn’t have it any other way.