Some taxi drivers may try to rip you off. Others may be saints in disguise. On a trip around Central Asia’s Kyrgyzstan, Shawn Brooks Swinger learns never to judge a place by one experience alone.
The Tour Guide
A Kyrgyz music video is playing on the car’s dashboard screen. Images of men wearing fur caps and women in traditional dress fly across a field, spinning around each other’s arms, weaving in and out of the passing cattle, all to the tune of a hip-hop beat.
The driver, a man named Tair, is handling five tasks at the same time. One, flick through YouTube on the dashboard screen with his left hand to find the next video. Two, text on his phone, held in his right hand, while he’s using his right elbow to steer the wheel. Three, talk to his wife, Alina, who is holding their one-year-old son on her lap. Four, talk to me about where I’m from. And finally, number five, drive on a mountain road without crashing.
Tair has a smile that can disarm just about anyone. His tinted sunglasses hide his eyes but his exuberance hides nothing about his personality.
“Hey bro, where you from?” He asks me when I get into his minivan. “Bro” is a word that even people who don’t speak English use all the time.
Me, “America.”
Tair, “Ah, so you must be really good at riding horses?”
Me, “Not at all.”
Tair, “What? I thought at least 80% of Americans could ride horses. Cowboys.” He throws his fingers out like a gun and pretends to shoot me.
Alina, “What’s your salary?”
We talk about that and the high prices in America. The couple expresses their wish to move there someday.
Tair is 27 and Alina is 25, both fluent in English. Tair works as a travel coordinator and was the assigned driver to take me home after a three-day horse trek. Their young son was in the car with us, staring at me and pointing in laughter. They had another son – five years old – who was left with the grandmother at home.
We stop to get gas.
“Okay bro, we need to get out of the car. It’s too dangerous.”
We all get out, and I do not quite understand why.
Tair says that Kyrgyzstan is low on gasoline so we have to use methane now. I don’t know enough about how that actually works but Tair says that there’s a risk of explosion so everyone has to get out.
True to his explanation, every car at the gas station is parked in line while the drivers stand outside to observe.
The car does not in fact explode and we all can get back in and resume our journey to the capital city of Bishkek.
For most of the five-hour drive, Tair and Alina talk to each other in Russian. And for most of that time, they’re laughing hysterically; a couple in love. The baby cries and Alina feeds him a bottle of chai (tea), proving that the nation’s addiction starts early.
At one point Tair says something that upsets Alina. She snaps at him. He goes quiet. For the next 30 minutes, nobody says a word and Tair raises the volume of the music. When the baby starts crying he raises it even more.
But, nothing lasts forever, and the couple seemingly make up and start laughing again like nothing happened. Alina punches Tair on the shoulder. He makes his wife laugh. The baby contently points at my face.
The Taxi Driver From Hell
I missed my flight home on my last day in the country. I mixed up dates in my head and failed to get to the airport in time. I was at the airport at 1 AM and needed to get back to my Airbnb and plan my next move.
In Kyrgyzstan, you should never get in a taxi without negotiating first. Better yet, use a company called Yandex because they will never try to rip you off or treat you badly.
I ordered a Yandex cab and was waiting for it. A man drives by me and says, “Yandex!”
I assumed he was the driver I contacted via the application and got in the cab.
The first thing the driver—Aaly for the sake of the story—did was grab my phone without my permission. He looked at the Yandex ride I ordered and canceled it. This is something that the actual company would never do.
Aaly didn’t tell me what the price would be to go back to Bishkek. Normally, it should be about 500 som ($6) but when I asked him, he said a price that was three times higher.
I say no thank you and open the cab door to leave. He says, all in Russian, “No no no, OK we go with your price. But I want one more passenger.”
I agreed for the sake of not causing problems and wanting to get home quickly.
No other tourists agree to go with him so eventually I offer him a higher price to leave now and he does.
As we’re driving I make sure to have Google Maps on. I’ve heard stories of guys like this stopping halfway to the city and demanding more money or else they leave you stranded. Aaly smells of cigarettes and slightly of alcohol.
He asks me for my hotel. I say I don’t have one, it’s an apartment, and don’t worry I know where I am. He thinks I just arrived in the country and starts demanding my hotel name so he can call them.
I say, “No, I’m good, please just go to the address.”
I show him Google Maps for directions. He grabs my phone and puts it on his knee to look at it. He didn’t ask me for the phone and now has full control over it.
Aaly tries to raise the price mid-drive, to about five times what should be paid. I refuse. Things get tense for a second, but when I say “No thank you” in Kyrgyz his face visibly softens and he stops asking for more money.
Aaly, “I am Yandex, OK?”
Me, “Sure.”
The whole drive is 30 minutes of tension. On the airport road, most drivers obey the speed limit. There are police hiding behind corners and cameras everywhere. Aaly goes 30 km over the limit and rockets down the street.
At one point he calls a friend and the little I could understand in Russian was something to the effect of, “I have an American in the car.” This could be innocuous, or it could be sinister, and given my emotional state and the time of night, my mind goes to the worse outcome.
But we eventually arrive in my neighborhood without incident.
As I’m getting out he grabs my hand, slaps me on the back, and says, “Thank you, bro.”
He had a genuine look of gratitude in his eyes.
The Saint
Soaking wet. Shivering cold. Stranded on the side of a highway.
I’m at a horse festival in the deep countryside and caught in the middle of a hailstorm. I want to go home, get dry, and rest. The problem is, there are no taxis or buses or anything as such out here.
I walk down the desolate highway with my hand raised to pick up a ride. For ten minutes the cars zoom by me.
One stops. A young man with a goatee and thick-rimmed sunglasses, dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and sandals, pokes his head out and calls me to him.
The man, Ormon, is a taxi driver. But unlike Aaly, he doesn’t try to charge too high a price and gives me a fair deal to get to the nearest town’s bus station.
I walk over to the passenger door but there is no handle, Ormon has to pop it open from the inside. A female passenger is in the back seat. I sit down and notice two large cracks on the windshield, probably from flying rocks kicked up by tires on the highway. But every car I ever rode in Kyrgyzstan had the same spiderweb design on the glass, so I saw it as a sign that this man was a seasoned driver.
For the first 20 minutes, nobody speaks. My clothes are soaked through but I’m grateful to be out of the rain.
Ormon drops off the woman on the side of the road. With her gone, he feels bold enough to speak (in Russian).
Ormon, “Where you from?”
I tell him.
“Ah, election coming soon. Who do you love, Trump or Harris?”
Me, “I’m not really a fan of either but lean more towards Harris.”
Ormon, “Ah, but she’s a woman. I wouldn’t trust her. Trump is strong. Obama was bad. Bush was my favorite.”
Silence for a few moments. Then he picks up a bottle of “Legend” water and says, “This is the best water in Kyrgyzstan. It makes good vodka too. You should hike to Ala Archa (a famous hiking spot) and get some from the source.”
My Russian isn’t good enough to go beyond this point so we just sit in a comfortable silence until we reach the town.
Ormon drops me off at a bus station.
Ormon, “Ok bro, ask for a taxi or bus back to Bishkek here.”
I thank him, turn to face the crowds of drivers engaged in an organized chaos of getting passengers into vehicles, and have no idea where to start.
Ormon had driven away but was watching me in his rearview mirror. He saw my confusion and backed up his taxi. He gets out, walks over to a group of men, and talks to them.
“Shawn, over here. These men will help you.”
I walk over and the men put me in a shared taxi with three women and the male driver. Ormon gives me a thumbs-up and drives away.
The new driver makes sure I know where I’m going, never once raises the price or tries to fleece me, and even offers me coffee at the first gas stop we make. I feel safe, taken care of, and warm.
