Shooting. Louder, louder, closer. I am running, panting, throwing myself over bushes, like hundreds around me in a stampede. I throw myself behind a portico on the main square. The shrieks are inhuman. One terrifying thought that pushes me onto my heels again into the backstreets. "This is it." Pelting through the park I have made a mistake. The area is exposed and I can see riot police thirty metres away. I am coughing again. They have let off more tear-gas. Hundreds of men are striding in my direction. Is this all over?

"We are going to take over  the secret services, liberate arrested opposition figures, arm ourselves...the people are winning," shout the men.

The crackle of gunshot is in the distance now. An orchestra of explosions rolls around Bishkek. The voice of a revolution. Dusk is falling over the carnage. The opposition are claiming that more than100 people have been shot dead and the President's forces are still firing from the besieged White House. I can hear Mao's famous saying inside my head. "A revolution is not a tea party." There is nothing romantic about this. Trying to find my way back to the bar which sheltered me earlier, my path is crossed by looters and honking cars. My mind is filled with the stale taste of disgust at all those armchair Marxists that romanticise these bloodbaths.

The bouncer shakes my hand as I push back into the Da Vinci luxury bar, begging for water. "Brother, you are alive. We were worried. The security services headquarters have fallen." The young men sheltering there are now tucking into a full meal. The conversation is rapid and tense. One has heard that the supermarkets have been looted, others that the opposition might burn petrol stations tonight. Darkly-clad men are striding past the bar to the square. The sound of a shotgun, incredibly loud and extremely close. Those around me are chattering rapidly in shock.

"What now?"

"The Interior Minister has been lynched."

Buses are arriving from the countryside filled with rural supporters of the opposition, paid in alcohol and food.  Nobody knows what is going in this anarchy. The Prime Minister has claimed the opposition have been given a green light by Russia's President Vladimir Putin. President Bakiyev's son is reportedly in Washington. Rumours circle that Bakiyev's forces are massing in his southern strongholds to carry on the fight.

"Brother you must leave. It is too dangerous for you to be here. The night is coming and in the night they will be shooting. They will be beating anyone they find." They mean it. I have to find somewhere secure. As I walk briskly through the streets people shout names at me.  "Foreigner...!" Men are walking around carrying sacks of loot or random electrical appliances they have ripped out of seized government buildings. The parliament has fallen. Or has it?

"Come stay with me. I'm in a compound, not far from the White House."  It is the voice of Sergei, a young investment banker who woke up this morning as part of an equities firm exploring a Central Asian emerging market only to find himself in the middle of mob rule. The streets are starting to stink of gunpowder,  burning buildings and fear.

"I think we'll be safe here, but we need to work out what to do if looters jump over the wall and start pillaging the place. I think there are enough supermarkets to keep them busy." Sergei is completely collected but his colleagues are not. An American businessman is chainsmoking as he waits for a car to the airport. "I've got to get out of here while the airport is still functioning." He steals away within hours, catching the only flight out of town, to Ulan Bator, the capital of famine-gripped Mongolia.