Hello friends,
We are in Almaty, the old capital of Kazakhstan, waiting to catch a midnight train into western China. Since the last update we have divided our time between Almaty and Tashkent, the largest cities in Central Asia.
Tashkent is a beautiful city, very modern ---- street lights, manhole covers, paved roads, the whole works. After our time on the road so far, a lot of it spent in some dodgy establishments, we decided to live the cultured big city life and check into a fancy hotel. After 9/11 Uzbekistan allowed the US to build a large army base on their soil for missions into Afghanistan, which led the two countries to be on good terms. This brought a lot of large fancy American hotels to Tashkent. However, in 2005, Islam Karimov ordered the forceful suppression of a protest led by an exiled opposition party who's leaders had been jailed in the town of Andijon. The protesters were massacred by the police. The US was forced to pull out of its army base due to pressure from human rights groups. This pissed off Karimov even more, so he kicked all American NGOs, hotels, etc. out of Uzbekistan. This led to a bunch of empty fancy hotels, which were taken up by the state and had their names changed, which cannot not necessarily afford to run them properly. Since they don't have the upkeep nor do they see the business that they used to, you can go to them, ask for a discount, the reception makes a fake phone call, and you get a cheep room at up to 50% off the initially quoted rate. We stayed in a hotel that was about a 4-star hotel for 30 bucks a night.
-We were able to see an Uzbek Opera and 2 ballets in a beautiful theatre for under 5 bucks each. I've never seen an Opera or a Ballet, so this was very cool.
-Tashkent has a beautiful metro system, which is built to double as a bomb shelter.
-One day while riding the Metro we encountered one of the more strange english phrases that we have heard. A girl behind us, hearing us speaking English, said "I like to clean the garden. Would you like to clean my garden?" I am not sure if it was a pick up line or what, but when we got off the train I told her to keep her garden clean, to which she replied "Thank you."
-Uzbekistan has an absurd system of registration. Homestays are illegal in the country, and you can only legally stay in registered hotels, which give you a small unofficial looking slip of paper that say the dates that you stayed at the hotel. Theoretically you have to collect these slips and present them when you leave the country to prove that you have not slept anywhere illegally, so by the end of the trip we were carrying a stack of tiny hand-written slips in our passport. Our problem was that since we had camped out at the Aral Sea and taken an overnight bus, we did not have registration for two nights. We had heard mixed reviews on potential consequences: sometimes the border guards don't even look at your registration, and other times people had been fined up to 600$ for not being properly registered. We were able to change the date on one of our slips, and we figured we would try our luck with the other one and try to sweet talk our way out of any trouble...
The whole time we have been travelling in Central Asia, we have experienced the absurd in many different respects, to the point where it just doesn't phase you anymore. Miles and I have come to expect what would potentially really anger or frustrate many people, and have learned several key things for dealing with the Central Asian way. I mentioned previously the abosolute necessity of a sense of humor. Our transit from Uzbekistan to Kazakhstan exemplified this perfectly, and culminated in a day where everything just seemed to not work out to the point where it was pretty difficult to keep our sense of humor:
On Friday in Tashkent we applied for a Kazakh transit visa: a cheap visa that lets us stay in the country for a short period in transit between two countries. The lady in the consulate told us to come back the following day, which was saturday, at 5 PM. Knowing that embassies are closed on weekends I asked if she meant monday and not saturday, to which she replied "no, tomorrow". So we returned on Saturday, and, of course, the consulate was closed. We then went back monday morning, and they told us to come back at 5. We returned at 5 and waited outside the embassy with a group of people until 5:45, when they finally let us in, and then waited in line for another half hour. When we finally got to the reception, she said "Visa no". We asked why, and she said "no invitation", which didnt really make any sense because you do not need a letter of invitation for a transit visa in Kazakhstan (just a visa for the following country you are going to). Some guy came out from the back and said that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had not given permission for a transit visa, but that we could come back tomorrow and check. So we checked into our Tashkent hotel for another night, and went back the next morning, fully expecting not to get a visa (this wouldnt have been a huge disaster, Tashkent is a wicked city, but we need to get into China before Dec 5, and when we checked flights from Uzbekistan to China, they were all booked up until early December). Amazingly, they gave us our visa that morning, saying that we had only 5 days in Kazakhstan --- which is what we expected from a transit visa, though we asked for 7. Strangely though, they gave us validity dates for a 10 day span on the visa...
Anyways, we packed up our stuff and got ready to go to the border, because we wanted to catch an evening train from across the Kazakh border that would take us straight to Almaty, so that we would have some time to see the city with our transit visa and still get into China in good time. We saw in the Kazakh embassy a sign that said that the main border crossing into Kazakhstan was closed to foreigners, and that we had to use another one called 'Yallima'. The guy in the embassy assured us that it was close to Tashkent. We flagged down a car, and offered him 10 USD to take us to Yallima. He said he knew where Yallima was, and that he would take us there. We get in the car and fire off. First he stops to get some meat from the super market. Then he takes us to his house in the suburbs to drop off the meat and tell his wife he is taking foreigners to the border. No biggie, we are entirely used to taxi drivers with their own schedule. We then get onto the highway, and he pulls over, and asks someone where the border is. Of course he doesn't actually know where it is, we are used to this as well. Its the Central Asian way. Of course we're going the wrong way, so we do a U-turn and fly off in the other direction. We come to a police checkpoint (they are every few km along all main roads in Uzbekistan, we'd just had the luck of being with drivers that knew all the police and for the most part just flew through the checkpoints). Seeing us in the car, the police pull us over, ask to see our documents, make a bit of a hassle, come and talk to us --- 'Australia? Oh, Sydney, Kangaroo!', 'Canada? Hockey da?'. They're just wasting time, waiting for us to give them money, which we have learned quickly, that if you play ignorant and waste their time --- joke with them, shake their hands, pretend not to understand them, they eventually give up. Finally, they tell us that the border we are going to is closed, and that we have to go to a different border post, but no worries, they call ahead and let the police there know that we're coming. Great, thanks guys. So we drive off again, back the direction we'd initially come, all the way to a border post, which of course is the border post that we were initially told not to go to. We get out of the car, get mobbed by annoying taxi drivers wanting to take us across, and get told that the border is closed to foreigners. We're pretty pissed at our initial driver for bringing us here rather than Yallama like we'd asked him, but he points me into a guard house. I leave Miles with our stuff and go in, where I am told again that the border is closed. They send me to some room with some greasy guy without a uniform, who asks for my passport, and writes my name in a book. He then tells me once again that the border is closed. I told him that the other police had phoned ahead and said that we were ok, but of course they had not recieved that message. The greasy guy then motions the two guards at the door to leave the room and close the door, leaving me and him in a small room with mirror windows that you can't see out of. Knowing that this is exactly the situation that I do not want to be in, I move towards the door. The guy doesn't speak any english, but he makes it clear that if I give him money, he will give us a stamp in our passport and we will be able to cross. I'm worried that even if we get across the Uzbek side that the Kazakhs won't let us in and we will be stuck in no mans land, so I pretend I don't understand, and try to get him to just give up or present a different option. I open the door, and he immediately closes it. I say, OK, how much to get across, and he writes $200 on a piece of paper. I tell him to go fuck himself (thats the great thing about this place, you can tell police to go fuck themself and they don't know what you're saying) and open the door and leave right away before he can do anything else.
I go back to Miles and the car, which is surrounded by taxi drivers telling us that they will take us to Yallama for $100, and that Yallama is 100 km away. I get angry at our initial taxi driver for saying that he knew where Yallama was and that he would take us there. He just shrugs and points to the border, saying that we just told him Kazakh/Uzbek border (we were very explicit in making him understand that we wanted to go to Yallama). I yell at the guy telling him to take us to Yallama, but realistically there is no way he would for only 10 bucks, and I can tell that he is sweating and feeling bad about the situation. After a while hoping he would cave out of guilt, we just take our stuff out of the car and tell him to leave. Which leaves us dealing with taxi drivers all showing us how much it will cost for us to go to Yallama with them on their cell phone. They got pushy, as we were not ready to pay more than $20, so we got angry and started yelling at them. They all had a good laugh at us, and one cat started taking pictures of us with his cell phone, which made me want to break his skinny neck ----- (OTHER TOURISTS: taking pictures of people like theyre in a zoo is rude and not cool. Think of how you would feel if you were on the other side of things).
Finally some cat tells us he will take us to Yallama for $20, which we agree to, while all the other taxi drivers laugh at us. It turns out that Yallama really is 100 km away. We're now way behind and it looks like we're not going to catch our evening train to Almaty. Going through Uzbek customs was relatively painless: you fill out some pointless declaration forms, go to a useless border guard who can't read what you've written anyways: "Is your name Miles or Joseph? Why are there two names on your passport? What is Tajik Somoni (the Tajik currency that we are stuck with since no exchange booths outside the country will take it)?" and my personal favorite: "Where is the pen that you wrote this declaration form with?"
We get through this and then go to another place where they take our passport. Without even looking at the stupid registration forms that we had been collecting and worrying about the whole time, the guy says: "Uzbekistan, finish?", to which we reply "Finish!", and get our stamp and leave.
Its then a half km walk to the Kazakh border, where they take our picture, stamp our passport, give us some sort of migration card that we have to give in when we leave the country, and then we proceed. At the last police post before getting out of the border zone, a group of police say we need to do a 'passport check'. We give them our passports, which they scan, giving the same questions as all the other police. Then the guy lowers his voice and motions me close to him. 'You and you. $10 each. Tourist tax." Same routine, pretend not to understand them, then deny that there is any tourist tax (there isnt), offer them a cigarette (these ones didnt smoke, it was bizarre). Then they start saying they want a souvenir... they ask for Miles' hiking boots. Upon seeing his water bottle full of water they say "Ahhhh, vodka! Illegal!" They try the same thing with my water bottle, which is empty. Then they say they need to search for narcotics, which we say they can't do, we have no narcotics. After a while of standing around, they finally give us our passports, shake our hands, and send us through.... to another mob of taxi drivers.
Fed up with getting nailed by taxi driver, we push through to find a bus, which is monumentally less expensive, the taxi drivers just try to get you before you can find a bus. "no bus, no bus!" they say, which is usually a lie, so we ignore them and walk up the road. Problem is, since we are going through some small border post out of the way, there actually are no buses. So we go back to the taxi drivers and start negotiating prices, which are again outrageous. We finally --- I'm talking like an hour of frustrating negotiations --- get someone who will take us to Shimkent (where we are supposed to get the train from, but will likely have missed it) for $30. As we are about to throw our bags in the car, the mob of taxi drivers starts to yell at our new taxi driver and bar us from going to the car --- apparently they were trying to bully him out of letting us go for so little money. By this point we were both fed up and praying that these other guys wouldnt talk our guy into reconsidering, and at that second, a large empty bus comes through the border point with a sign saying that it was going to Taraz, a town that is 250 km closer to Almaty than Shimkent. I know that if we can get to Taraz then we have a shot at catching an late night bus from their to Almaty, so we whistle at the bus driver and get him to stop --- thanking our luck that the other cabbies had prevented us from getting into the cab just long enough for this bus to come through. However, before we can get on the bus, a mob of cabbies gets on and starts yelling at the driver. We get on and say we want to go to Taraz, the cabbies say we cant take the bus, then that we can take the bus for $30. We try to bargain, but are sick of bargaining by this point, so agree on the price, and then find that the driver wants $20 and that the cabbies will take the other $10, for some reason that I don't really understand. We say no, but no one budges. I try giving the bus driver his 20 and telling him to tell the other guys to get off the bus, but even the driver says we need to pay the cabbies. He then yells at us to get off the bus, so we cave and give the shithead taxi drivers the other 10. We then got a sweet ride in a big bus all to ourselves to Taraz. The driver liked Boney M and had that pumped, which was pretty good; we gave him a pack of cigarettes to smooth and hard feelings and he negotiated a midnight bus from Taraz to Almaty for us. After all the crap we went through that day we still arrived in Almaty pretty much when we had hoped, and almost within our budget.
Almaty, Kazakhstan, is kind of a fitting spot to end up in because its like a big Bishkek, which brings us full circle in our tour of Central Asia. Its all Soviet grid streets and big concrete buildings, except the city has MONEY. And its expensive. Things here cost the same or more expensive than Vancouver. They have tons of Western shops. The city actually reminds me of Vancouver or a European city, except everyone is FAR more dressed up than people in Van. Fur, leather, and big knee-high boots are the name of the game; everyone is dressed to the nines. The streets are full of massive land cruisers and mercedes. Borat couldn't have been further from the mark. I guess thats what happens when your country sits on the world's second largest oil reserve. Of course we are not getting the full picture of things; our bus through the country to Almaty was during the night, so we did not get to see what the rest of the country looks like, and our visa only gives us time for Almaty. I'd definitely want to come back to see the rest of the country. Tonight we catch a 32 hour train to Urumqi, China, and then we hop on a 53 hour train to Xi'an. I'm not really sure if I am looking forward to it. It'd going to be really strange to leave Central Asia behind, and I believe that I will kind of miss the Central Asian Way.
A few more things we have learned about Central Asia, in closing:
-If you need it, its never around, if you don't need it, its everywhere. This is true of taxis, ATMs, etc.
-no matter how extensive the menu is, they most likely only have Shashlyk (mutton on a stick), Manty (mutton dumplings), or Lagman (mutton noodle soup). Oh, and Shorpo, yes, shorpo is soup. If they tell you its good, its always bad. If a restaurant says they serve Plov on a particular day, they definitely do not serve it on that day.
-taxi drivers NEVER know where they are going.
I'll write again from China, and tell you a bit more about Kazakhstan, including a bit more about the Central Asian Way, which eludes me right now as my brain is fried from writing such a long e-mail, and Miles is waiting for me.
Until then, stay healthy, love,
Bryn
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Friday, November 21, 2008
Volume 9: Wedding Crashers and Environmental Disasters
Hello friends,
The last few letters have been quite long, so I might try to be a bit more brief with this one, and I MIGHT be getting a few pictures up that I can send your way to let do some of the talking.
After I wrote my last e-mail from Samarkand I went back the B and B where we staying to find Miles having some beers with our friends from the road Lachie and Helena, who we met in Kyrgyzstan and went eagle hunting with. We'd been in contact via e-mail and decided to travel across Uzbekistan together. The following day we hired a taxi across the desert to Bukhara, which alternated with Samarkand back in the day as the head city of the Khanates (the history of these places is a complex mess, I'm still trying to work it out myself, but in short and basic form we have Neolithic early agricultural societies and nomadic Scythians up north, then Turkic people come from the east, then Persians, then Greeks, then more Persians, a few Chinese people invaded, the Mongols came and wiped everything off the map in the 1200s with Jenghiz Khan, some Mongols stuck around, then Timur came and resuscitated Samarkand in 1300-1400s then there were a whole bunch of Khans shooting off and claiming various forms of legitimacy and quarelling amongst each other, then one Khan asked for aid from the Russian Tzar against invading Kazakhs, but the Russians took too long to show up and when they did the Khan decided to kill all the Russians instead, then the Russians got pissed and came and crushed the Khans, then the Bolshevik Revolution and the Soviet State, then the fall of the Soviet state in 1991 and the institution of Islam Karimov, one of the world's most corrupt dictators as 'democratic president'. Karimov looks kinda like an Uzbek Hugh Hefner, I imagine he struts around his palace in a purple velvet suit while ordering various media outlets to be banned and exiling (or boiling --- no joke) political dissidents.) After Bukhara we went to Khiva, capital of the Khorezm Khanate, and then Nukus, capital of Uzbekistan's most remote and poor region, Karakalpakstan.
-in Bukhara we stayed at a B and B run by a crazy old man named Mubinjon. He had been an Olympic sprinter back in the day, and was a trainer for the Russian team after he hurt his leg. Now he rocks around his place in a bathrobe and a bit fur hat and cackles like a mad man. When we arrived we found him up on the roof yelling at pigeons. The coolest thing about Mubinjon was that even though he didnt speak any english, he made himself very clear through series' of hilarious hand gestures, noises, and cackling. He also liked to say "psshhht, FINISH!" and "Fantastico!" a lot -Bukhara is like Samarkand in terms of historic architecture, except the old part of the city hasn't been encroached upon by Soviet buildings, which is quite nice. The same goes for Khiva, except Khiva is a city inside a massive fortress wall, which is even cooler. Once again, I'll let the pictures of these places do the talking.
-In Bukhara we went to a hamam --- an Uzbek bathhouse. The building was from the 14th c, and was a series of dark marble domed rooms, through which steam and hot water is piped. I had seen a video of Uzbek baths on the internet before leaving (YouTube: Uzbekistan No Reservations, look for the clip on the bathhouse) and had decided before coming on this trip I would never go, however, Lachie convinced me otherwise. We stripped down and wrapped ourselves in a flimsy towel and enter one of the steam rooms. Need to pee? No problem, just go piss in front of that hole in the floor on the other side of the room. Then, one by one, a sweaty uzbek man leads you to a separate room where he scrubs you, pours hot and cold water over you, and then order you to lie face-first on a marble slab. He then pulls down your towel, pours oil on you, mounts you, and pretty much beats you for about 15 minutes. My favorite move was the 'stand-on-my-bum-and-fold-me-in-half-backwards'. Then you flip over and he contorts you some more, and then rubs hot ginger all over you, which makes your skin burn. You then get sent into a steam room, and he takes the next person for his massage. As terrifying as it sounds, and as homoerotic as it is, I felt amazing after having every joint in my body cracked. Afterwards you rinse off in hot and cold water and go and drink tea. I'd go back any day.
-after dinner at our B and B in Khiva, Miles, Lachie and I decided to go and explore the city in the evening light (full moon and minarets are pretty cool). We ended up hearing some music and laughter from a chaikhana (tea house) and decided to investigate --- night life is scarce in Central Asia, so we felt it necessary to follow this up. We found the chaikhana packed with hundreds of people, with lots of people eating and dancing, and, at the other side of the room, a woman dressed up in a bridesgown. Before we could do anything we were grabbed by a man with two teeth and sat down at a table with a bunch of old men, and brought big plates of plov (national rice dish) and cabbage salads. Then, of course, the old cats started passing down bottles of vodka, to which everyone had to make some sort of toast. A note about vodka in central asia: rather than shot glasses, you drink it out of tea cups, and you must finish the whole cup or you get harrassed. This means that one bottle equals about 4 'shots'. After several (too many) toasts, and seeing no end in sight, I decided to hit the dance floor to avoid dying of alcohol poisoning. This brought masses of little kids wanting their photo taken... over and over again, with the band, with the bride's dad, with each other. Seeing the cameras got the old guys excited, and all of a sudden they all wanted their pictures taken, and they swatted away the kids and made us take pictures of them over and over again. Things were getting quite fun when - at about 8 30 PM - everyone cleared the floor and the bride got up and did some ceremonial walk to the door, hugging family etc, and then left. Everyone else followed, leaving a bunch of hyper kids, shitfaced old men, and us in an empty hall. The guy with two teeth kept trying to tell us something that seemed quite complicated, and we dispersed with the rest of the crowd. I guess the Uzbeks just like to party early...
-The next day some lady from Tashkent in a museum in Khiva invited me to another wedding: "Hello, where are you from? Would you like to come to a wedding?". Unfortunately we were leaving for Nukus that day, so were not able to attend.
-It must have been wedding weekend in Uzbekistan, because shortly after our invite in the museum we ran into a wedding procession out on the street. Some young guys dragged us out to dance in front of the bride and groom. Miles and the others were able to extract themselves from the scene, but I was cornered and was forced to do the funky arabian boogie with some guy in a wierd hat and a bunch of little kids. Any time I tried to move to the side I was dragged back in. I won't lie though, I do enjoy dancing.
-Nukus is the capital of the westernmost and poorest province of Uzbekistan, Karakalpakstan. Everything in the city is rectangular... the streets, the buildings --- its just miserable Soviet architecture to a T. People in Karakalpakstan are ethnically different from Uzbeks... and they make it known. "I am Karakalpak, not Uzbek" was the common introduction. Most of the province's problems stem from the Aral Sea disaster, which we wanted to see first hand. We were able to track down a jeep driver that would take us out to the new shore of the sea, camp with us for a night, and then drive us back to Nukus.
The story, briefly: when the Stans were part of the Soviet Union the Russians sent people in to implement various agricultural reforms to make use of the Eurasian Steppes and the more desert-like areas in the south. Local people were forced into massive cotton production projects, and water was diverted from the two major Central Asian rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya (kind of the Central Asian equivalent to the Tigris and Euphrates). Most of the states were forced into cotton monoculture, which in turn made them reliant on Mother Russia for staple imports. The big problem is that so many cotton fields were made that the diversion of the water caused to rivers to dry up and to not reach the Aral Sea. Water was even diverted from the Aral Sea. Instead of stopping expansion, more fields were made, drawing more and more water away from the sea and the rivers. The further into the desert the water has to go, the more it evaporates before it even reaches the fields. Between 1960 and now the surface area of the Aral Sea has shrunk to a quarter of its size (which means that the total volume of water left is an even smaller fraction). The shrinking of the sea caused an increase in the salinity of the water that was left and killed all the life that was there --- it had a diverse fish population, as well as water fowl, and muskrats (which are very important for the ubiquitous furry uzbek hat!). The sea was essentially dead by the 80s, and the main port town, Moynaq was entirely lost of any industry. Moynaq is now 160 km away from the present sea shore. The dried sea bed has left a white salty sand that gets blown up in sand storms (I can't remember the exact stat, but several 10s of thousands of tons of sand get blown off the sea bed annually). Apparently fertilizers and stuff have been concentrated into the soil after the irrigation channels dry up. Karakalpakstan has the highest rate of respiratory problems and infant mortality rate in the country. Crazily enough, Karimov has not cut down on cotton production in the country --- Uzbekistan is still the world's second largest cotton producer in the world after the US.
Driving out the Aral was very eye-opening. We drove to the west of it, along a plateau that used to form the western most edge of the sea, so we could look down into the dried sea bed. The landscape, though barren and flat as far as you could sea, was still very powerful and breathtaking, probably for its sheer starkness. After a 7 hour drive from the nearest town we came down off the plateau to the southwest corner of where the sea is now. and had a camp out in the dusty sea bed near the new shore. Ideas were tossed around of swimming, but it was pretty gross looking, and very cold. It was really really eerie. The following day instead of driving back on the plateau we cut straight across the old sea bed. In the middle of this, tens of km away from the shore now, there are rusty hulks of old boats laying in the sand. Several oil wells have been built out there, and we came across one place where tractors were planting twigs in the ground --- a pretty futile restoration effort, as far as I can tell. Other than that there was nothing out there. We drove to Moynaq, the old bustling port city, and found it to be a pretty depressing sight. The city just got straight up left high and dry, literally, and it just feels dead. There are more rusty boats sitting in the sand amongst shells that are 160 km from the water now. Such a haunting and truly memorable experience. Highlight of Uzbekistan so far.
Well I guess this didn't end up being as brief as I promised. After returning from the Aral to Nukus, Miles and I parted ways with Lachie and Helena, and caught a 20 hour bus to the country's capital, Tashkent, where we have decided to check into a fancy hotel and live the cultured big-city life. I'll leave the story of how this is possible for relatively budget travelers and telling you about another one of Uzbekistan's moronic bureaucratic policies, the registration system, for the next update. We are waiting on Kazakh transit visas right now, and look to enter Kazakhstan by early-mid next week, where we will just spend a few days en route to Western China.
Until next time, I hope all is well at home, keep in touch,
Брын
The last few letters have been quite long, so I might try to be a bit more brief with this one, and I MIGHT be getting a few pictures up that I can send your way to let do some of the talking.
After I wrote my last e-mail from Samarkand I went back the B and B where we staying to find Miles having some beers with our friends from the road Lachie and Helena, who we met in Kyrgyzstan and went eagle hunting with. We'd been in contact via e-mail and decided to travel across Uzbekistan together. The following day we hired a taxi across the desert to Bukhara, which alternated with Samarkand back in the day as the head city of the Khanates (the history of these places is a complex mess, I'm still trying to work it out myself, but in short and basic form we have Neolithic early agricultural societies and nomadic Scythians up north, then Turkic people come from the east, then Persians, then Greeks, then more Persians, a few Chinese people invaded, the Mongols came and wiped everything off the map in the 1200s with Jenghiz Khan, some Mongols stuck around, then Timur came and resuscitated Samarkand in 1300-1400s then there were a whole bunch of Khans shooting off and claiming various forms of legitimacy and quarelling amongst each other, then one Khan asked for aid from the Russian Tzar against invading Kazakhs, but the Russians took too long to show up and when they did the Khan decided to kill all the Russians instead, then the Russians got pissed and came and crushed the Khans, then the Bolshevik Revolution and the Soviet State, then the fall of the Soviet state in 1991 and the institution of Islam Karimov, one of the world's most corrupt dictators as 'democratic president'. Karimov looks kinda like an Uzbek Hugh Hefner, I imagine he struts around his palace in a purple velvet suit while ordering various media outlets to be banned and exiling (or boiling --- no joke) political dissidents.) After Bukhara we went to Khiva, capital of the Khorezm Khanate, and then Nukus, capital of Uzbekistan's most remote and poor region, Karakalpakstan.
-in Bukhara we stayed at a B and B run by a crazy old man named Mubinjon. He had been an Olympic sprinter back in the day, and was a trainer for the Russian team after he hurt his leg. Now he rocks around his place in a bathrobe and a bit fur hat and cackles like a mad man. When we arrived we found him up on the roof yelling at pigeons. The coolest thing about Mubinjon was that even though he didnt speak any english, he made himself very clear through series' of hilarious hand gestures, noises, and cackling. He also liked to say "psshhht, FINISH!" and "Fantastico!" a lot -Bukhara is like Samarkand in terms of historic architecture, except the old part of the city hasn't been encroached upon by Soviet buildings, which is quite nice. The same goes for Khiva, except Khiva is a city inside a massive fortress wall, which is even cooler. Once again, I'll let the pictures of these places do the talking.
-In Bukhara we went to a hamam --- an Uzbek bathhouse. The building was from the 14th c, and was a series of dark marble domed rooms, through which steam and hot water is piped. I had seen a video of Uzbek baths on the internet before leaving (YouTube: Uzbekistan No Reservations, look for the clip on the bathhouse) and had decided before coming on this trip I would never go, however, Lachie convinced me otherwise. We stripped down and wrapped ourselves in a flimsy towel and enter one of the steam rooms. Need to pee? No problem, just go piss in front of that hole in the floor on the other side of the room. Then, one by one, a sweaty uzbek man leads you to a separate room where he scrubs you, pours hot and cold water over you, and then order you to lie face-first on a marble slab. He then pulls down your towel, pours oil on you, mounts you, and pretty much beats you for about 15 minutes. My favorite move was the 'stand-on-my-bum-and-fold-me-in-half-backwards'. Then you flip over and he contorts you some more, and then rubs hot ginger all over you, which makes your skin burn. You then get sent into a steam room, and he takes the next person for his massage. As terrifying as it sounds, and as homoerotic as it is, I felt amazing after having every joint in my body cracked. Afterwards you rinse off in hot and cold water and go and drink tea. I'd go back any day.
-after dinner at our B and B in Khiva, Miles, Lachie and I decided to go and explore the city in the evening light (full moon and minarets are pretty cool). We ended up hearing some music and laughter from a chaikhana (tea house) and decided to investigate --- night life is scarce in Central Asia, so we felt it necessary to follow this up. We found the chaikhana packed with hundreds of people, with lots of people eating and dancing, and, at the other side of the room, a woman dressed up in a bridesgown. Before we could do anything we were grabbed by a man with two teeth and sat down at a table with a bunch of old men, and brought big plates of plov (national rice dish) and cabbage salads. Then, of course, the old cats started passing down bottles of vodka, to which everyone had to make some sort of toast. A note about vodka in central asia: rather than shot glasses, you drink it out of tea cups, and you must finish the whole cup or you get harrassed. This means that one bottle equals about 4 'shots'. After several (too many) toasts, and seeing no end in sight, I decided to hit the dance floor to avoid dying of alcohol poisoning. This brought masses of little kids wanting their photo taken... over and over again, with the band, with the bride's dad, with each other. Seeing the cameras got the old guys excited, and all of a sudden they all wanted their pictures taken, and they swatted away the kids and made us take pictures of them over and over again. Things were getting quite fun when - at about 8 30 PM - everyone cleared the floor and the bride got up and did some ceremonial walk to the door, hugging family etc, and then left. Everyone else followed, leaving a bunch of hyper kids, shitfaced old men, and us in an empty hall. The guy with two teeth kept trying to tell us something that seemed quite complicated, and we dispersed with the rest of the crowd. I guess the Uzbeks just like to party early...
-The next day some lady from Tashkent in a museum in Khiva invited me to another wedding: "Hello, where are you from? Would you like to come to a wedding?". Unfortunately we were leaving for Nukus that day, so were not able to attend.
-It must have been wedding weekend in Uzbekistan, because shortly after our invite in the museum we ran into a wedding procession out on the street. Some young guys dragged us out to dance in front of the bride and groom. Miles and the others were able to extract themselves from the scene, but I was cornered and was forced to do the funky arabian boogie with some guy in a wierd hat and a bunch of little kids. Any time I tried to move to the side I was dragged back in. I won't lie though, I do enjoy dancing.
-Nukus is the capital of the westernmost and poorest province of Uzbekistan, Karakalpakstan. Everything in the city is rectangular... the streets, the buildings --- its just miserable Soviet architecture to a T. People in Karakalpakstan are ethnically different from Uzbeks... and they make it known. "I am Karakalpak, not Uzbek" was the common introduction. Most of the province's problems stem from the Aral Sea disaster, which we wanted to see first hand. We were able to track down a jeep driver that would take us out to the new shore of the sea, camp with us for a night, and then drive us back to Nukus.
The story, briefly: when the Stans were part of the Soviet Union the Russians sent people in to implement various agricultural reforms to make use of the Eurasian Steppes and the more desert-like areas in the south. Local people were forced into massive cotton production projects, and water was diverted from the two major Central Asian rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya (kind of the Central Asian equivalent to the Tigris and Euphrates). Most of the states were forced into cotton monoculture, which in turn made them reliant on Mother Russia for staple imports. The big problem is that so many cotton fields were made that the diversion of the water caused to rivers to dry up and to not reach the Aral Sea. Water was even diverted from the Aral Sea. Instead of stopping expansion, more fields were made, drawing more and more water away from the sea and the rivers. The further into the desert the water has to go, the more it evaporates before it even reaches the fields. Between 1960 and now the surface area of the Aral Sea has shrunk to a quarter of its size (which means that the total volume of water left is an even smaller fraction). The shrinking of the sea caused an increase in the salinity of the water that was left and killed all the life that was there --- it had a diverse fish population, as well as water fowl, and muskrats (which are very important for the ubiquitous furry uzbek hat!). The sea was essentially dead by the 80s, and the main port town, Moynaq was entirely lost of any industry. Moynaq is now 160 km away from the present sea shore. The dried sea bed has left a white salty sand that gets blown up in sand storms (I can't remember the exact stat, but several 10s of thousands of tons of sand get blown off the sea bed annually). Apparently fertilizers and stuff have been concentrated into the soil after the irrigation channels dry up. Karakalpakstan has the highest rate of respiratory problems and infant mortality rate in the country. Crazily enough, Karimov has not cut down on cotton production in the country --- Uzbekistan is still the world's second largest cotton producer in the world after the US.
Driving out the Aral was very eye-opening. We drove to the west of it, along a plateau that used to form the western most edge of the sea, so we could look down into the dried sea bed. The landscape, though barren and flat as far as you could sea, was still very powerful and breathtaking, probably for its sheer starkness. After a 7 hour drive from the nearest town we came down off the plateau to the southwest corner of where the sea is now. and had a camp out in the dusty sea bed near the new shore. Ideas were tossed around of swimming, but it was pretty gross looking, and very cold. It was really really eerie. The following day instead of driving back on the plateau we cut straight across the old sea bed. In the middle of this, tens of km away from the shore now, there are rusty hulks of old boats laying in the sand. Several oil wells have been built out there, and we came across one place where tractors were planting twigs in the ground --- a pretty futile restoration effort, as far as I can tell. Other than that there was nothing out there. We drove to Moynaq, the old bustling port city, and found it to be a pretty depressing sight. The city just got straight up left high and dry, literally, and it just feels dead. There are more rusty boats sitting in the sand amongst shells that are 160 km from the water now. Such a haunting and truly memorable experience. Highlight of Uzbekistan so far.
Well I guess this didn't end up being as brief as I promised. After returning from the Aral to Nukus, Miles and I parted ways with Lachie and Helena, and caught a 20 hour bus to the country's capital, Tashkent, where we have decided to check into a fancy hotel and live the cultured big-city life. I'll leave the story of how this is possible for relatively budget travelers and telling you about another one of Uzbekistan's moronic bureaucratic policies, the registration system, for the next update. We are waiting on Kazakh transit visas right now, and look to enter Kazakhstan by early-mid next week, where we will just spend a few days en route to Western China.
Until next time, I hope all is well at home, keep in touch,
Брын
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Volume 8: The Hungry Police of Dushanbe and the Golden Road to Samarqand
Hello friends,
We are now in Samarqand, Uzbekistan, we arrived here from Dushanbe four days ago.
Our time in Dushanbe (capital of Tajikistan) was very enjoyable, especially after over a week without electricity and eating only potatoes and noodles in the Pamirs, followed by that 22 hour ride in the shitty Chinese minivan along the landmined 'highway' (read:river bed) from Khorog. We were extremely surprised to find that Dushanbe was an outstandingly clean, green, and beautiful city. We were able to enjoy such luxuries as man hole covers, street lights, and near-24-hour electricity.Our hotel of choice was the lovely 'Hotel Вахш' (Vaksh), which was a true gem --- high ceilings, big marble lobby, red carpets everywhere and a wicked chandelier; as well as room with an entire wall covered in mould, a shower where the water just shot with immense pressure out of the place where the faucet attaches to the wall (instead of the shower head) and launched up onto the ceiling and dripped down over the entire bathroom, and 'floor ladies' with full racks of golden teeth that continually come and pester you for the key, for you to pay ("120 Somoni. Give me."), or to do your laundry. According to our guidebook the hotel was a hideout for rebels during the civil war, but any bullet holes that were in the walls seem to have been plastered over. It was wicked. The next day we tried to switch hotels, but our other choice was full, and we were not about to stay in one of the numerous 5 Star joints in town, so we went back to Vaksh, where the lobby lady smiled knowingly at us, like she knew we'd be back. "Room 8?" she asked. We asked if it was possible to get another, and she poured over her looseleaf notebook, and said that everything was full, but we could take a 'Lux Room'. We declined and just stood there for a while, so she absently flipped through the notebook some more and finally gave in. "OK, room 313. 120 Somoni, give me." This room had a great view over the central square to the Opera House, and the only problem with it was that our constantly-running toilet flooded the room below us. It was a keeper.
It was so wierd to have a beautiful city like Dushanbe in such a poor country. It was like some sort of bizarre Tajik oasis. It is by far the nicest city we have been to in Central Asia. There is one main avenue lined with massive trees and beautful parks that are spectacularly lit at night. There are massive buildings and statues, and of course, friendly Tajiks everywhere. The city felt entirely safe, even late at night. It blow Bishkek away. We spent 5 days there relaxing and enjoying the place while we waited for our Chinese Visa (which we obtained without any hassle whatsoever!) A few other observations/thoughts:
-the president, Emomali Rahmonov, is displayed everywhere, and he has huge gaudy palaces and other strange buildings all along the main drag. the museum has large halls dedicated to him
-The city is immaculately swept of all leaves, all the time. it is like a leaf-free utopia
-there are policemen everywhere. one day, when walking around one the central statues in the city, a massive replica of Ismoil Somoni, an ancient Tajik hero, a police man blew his whistle at us, and beckoned us over. he asked us where we were from etc etc and then told us to follow him behind the statue, he wanted to show us something. he showed us some engraving of a map on marble stone behind the statue and told us to take a picture (which we didn't--- we didn't want to pull out our cameras). he then called over another cop, and introduced us, and told us it was his birthday, and that they didnt have enough money to eat that night, the only had 50 cents, could we please give them some money. we declined, and after a little bit more pushing he gave up and we walked away. we decided that it was pretty wierd having police officers beg from us, and decided to avoid them when possible. The following night, however, we were having a beer in the central park, and then walking back to our hotel, when, once again, whistles blew, and two policemen beckoned us over. They motioned us into a side parking lot behind a bunch of trees, and asked for our documents (passports) --- which were at the Chinese embassy. We handed them photocopies, which they took under a streetlight to scrutinize (they couldn't read them anyways). After a while of pretending to read them, they said "10 Somoni you, 10 Somoni you. We need piva (beer), vodka, calvos". Realizing that these guys were half cut already (and likely boldened by having a few beers ourselves), we told them no, we won't give you money, but we'll go buy more beers if you want to have a beer with us. This seemed quite alright with them, and they agreed, on the condition that we also buy them 'calvos'. We didnt know what Calvos was, and when we asked they made a motion to their mouth, which we interpreted as the motion that we had seen Tajik people use when taking this local greenish chewing tobacco type stuff. "How much calvos?" we asked, assuming they meant chewing tobacco. "1 Kilo" came the reply, which sent us laughing. We told them we wouldnt buy them a kilo of chewing tobacco, but if they came and showed us where to buy calvos we might buy them some. So one policeman took us to a corner store, where we asked where the calvos was. The clerk pointed us to the back --- to the sausage aisle. "Calvos?" we asked. "Calvos, da!" said the policeman, as he ordered a kilo of sausage and a bunch of buns. We asked him if he wanted beer or vodka, and he opted for the vodka, and left while we paid for it. We then returned to the parking lot, where the 2 police called over their other on-duty buddies and they all mowed through the massive sausage and some buns --- they must have been genuinely starving. When it came to the vodka, we weren't allowed to drink from the bottle --- one officer ran across the street and got a bowl, from which we had to drink from, in a very secretive manner --- I am assuming that somehow they figured if anyone saw them drinking from the bowl they could just say it was tea. I have never seen a bottle of Vodka go so fast. After it was all gone they shook our hands and thanked us profusely, then stumbled off back to duty. Turns out the police in Dushanbe are pretty fun.
-November 6th was Constitution Day in Tajikistan, so there was a big stage with live music right outside our hotel room. We also went and watched a special play at the Drama Theatre that was entirely in Tajik and therefor made no sense.
-There are no McDonalds' in Tajikistan (neither in Kyrgyzstan). Dushanbe did, however, have such greasy delights as 'Southern Fried Chicken', 'Big Mac', and 'Chief Pizza'
When we recieved our Chinese Visas on Friday we hired a taxi to the town of Penjikent, near the Uzbek border. The highway north from Dushanbe was immaculate --- up until the President's summer villa, which is massive (it is ubelievable how there can be such huge wealth differential between this one man and the rest of the country --- an educated University Teacher makes $175 per month). Shortly after the villa the highway degrades to shit, with some chinese road crews building bizarre snow tunnels in random places. The highlight was a multi-kilometer tunnel through a mountain (which effectively shaves 4 hours off the drive). The tunnel was built by Iranians, who apparently did not pay much attention to the water table, as water gushes in from the ceiling and the way in flooded most of the distance. Apparently we got lucky, because the tunnel is frequently closed due to too much water.
After a night in Penjikent we headed for Uzbekistan, which we entered without any problem --- some Tajiks had killed some Uzbeks near the border or something like that, so it is only open to tourist traffic, of which we were the only ones. The Uzbeks actually had a computer at their border post, which I suppose is much more effective than having my name transcribed in various dusty notebooks at checkpoints across Tajikistan. We then bombed into Samarqand, a city with much history, and a key location on the Silk Road. My second day here I was sick as a dog (I will spare you the gruesome details), and did not leave my bed until late afternoon. I have been better since, though something seems to be rotting in my stomach --- last night I spent near as much time in the toilet as I did in bed. Regardless I have been able to see a bunch of the sights and enjoy the place a bit. A few highlights and observations before I sign out:
-Uzbekistan has the most ABSURD monetary system in the world. The highest denomination bill - 1000 Sum - is worth about 0.75 US, meaning that you need to literally carry stacks of cash. My toiletry kit is full of money. The novelty of carrying fat bank rolls and feeling like you are mad bling wears off really fast. To make matters worse, there are only ATMs in Tashkent (capital of Uzbekistan), where we will not be for at least a week. Samarqand is relatively big (500 000 people) so we assumed it would be easy to get cash and did not bring any into the country. Not so. The only possibility is cash advances on credit cards, and they only do that on Visa cards (I have a mastercard). So we spent about 4 hours this morning running from bank to bank and exchange office to exchange office (most have a limit on how much you can get and what currency you can get) trying to get enough money from Miles' Visa card for us to last until we get to Tashkent. As we have learned time and time again on this trip, NOTHING is efficient in Central Asia. Never have a schedule, and never expect things to be logical. Another problem is that when you get change in Sum from an exchange office, they hand you a fat stack of several hundred bills, so you can't be fucked to count them and check to see if they give you the right amount. We learned our lesson this morning when we found that we had been shortchanged 6000 Sum (the equivalent of only about 4.50 US) --- but we will be sure to count tomorrow when we go back for more cash since the places we went had daily limits. We are also learning that some of the town we are heading to will only accept Sum while some only accept dollars, and some won't let you exchange cash. All of this hassle makes less sense seeing as Uzbekistan is considerably more touristy than Kyrgyzstan or Tajikistan (but I guess its all relative). Regardless, there were ATMs everywhere in Tajikistan, where we saw zero tourists besides the 2 American wankers we entered with, but there are Tour buses ripping around Samarqand.
-another brief example of how you cannot have a schedule in these places: on our taxi ride from the Uzbek/Tajik border to Samarqand, we picked up a guy on the side of the street, who introduced himself as a police officer. We drove several km down the road to a place that makes Samsy (baked mutton dumpling things that we learned the danger of our first day back in Bishkek). The guy picks up some Samsy, and then we drive ALL the way back to where we picked him up and drop him off there. I assume it was the equivalent of a donut run for cops back at home.
-Samarqand is renowned for its ancient Islamic monuments --- and for good reason. There are 14th and 15th century Medressahs, Mosques, and Mausoleums built by Timur and his descendents everywhere. Massive blue tiled domes dot the city line, to the point where you can just kinda follow from dome to dome and find amazing monuments nestled within the ugly soviet buildings around them. Describing these places would be kind of silly, and not do them justice, but if you cannot wait until I return and can put some pictures on the internet, I would really reccomend googling Samarqand and its monuments, particularly the Registan.
-one police man offered to let us go to the top of one of the minarets in the Registan (for a bit of pocket change of course). agreeing, he then took to a locked gate with hammer and bashed door open. the view from the top was stunning.
-We met up with our friend Robert, the German intern we met working in Bishkek, and spent a few days with him. We also went out for our second night since last time in Bishkek to some bizarre diskos. The only real highlight, besides a power outage, was a 70s-ish door lady who told Miles that he needed to shave and cut his hair. When we went to enter the place, she grabbed the top of our pants ---- for what we assumed was just goin to be a pat down ---- and hiked our pants up wedgie-style. Apparently they were sitting too low on our hips for her approval.
-The toilet paper everywhere in Central Asia --- when you are lucky enough to get toilet paper, and believe me, this is most of the time never --- is more like sandpaper. I am more aware of this fact than ever with my recent stomach problems.
----- We are still having a great time! The key to enjoying this place is just to have a sense of humor about everything and to know that a lot of stuff is not going to make any sense. Tomorrow we are catching a train to Bukhara, west of here, out in the desert, where we are promised more ancient monuments and fortresses, and hopefully some camels. We are going to work our way to the Aral Sea, the world's greatest human-caused environmental disaster, and I will write back more soon!
Until next time,
Bryn
We are now in Samarqand, Uzbekistan, we arrived here from Dushanbe four days ago.
Our time in Dushanbe (capital of Tajikistan) was very enjoyable, especially after over a week without electricity and eating only potatoes and noodles in the Pamirs, followed by that 22 hour ride in the shitty Chinese minivan along the landmined 'highway' (read:river bed) from Khorog. We were extremely surprised to find that Dushanbe was an outstandingly clean, green, and beautiful city. We were able to enjoy such luxuries as man hole covers, street lights, and near-24-hour electricity.Our hotel of choice was the lovely 'Hotel Вахш' (Vaksh), which was a true gem --- high ceilings, big marble lobby, red carpets everywhere and a wicked chandelier; as well as room with an entire wall covered in mould, a shower where the water just shot with immense pressure out of the place where the faucet attaches to the wall (instead of the shower head) and launched up onto the ceiling and dripped down over the entire bathroom, and 'floor ladies' with full racks of golden teeth that continually come and pester you for the key, for you to pay ("120 Somoni. Give me."), or to do your laundry. According to our guidebook the hotel was a hideout for rebels during the civil war, but any bullet holes that were in the walls seem to have been plastered over. It was wicked. The next day we tried to switch hotels, but our other choice was full, and we were not about to stay in one of the numerous 5 Star joints in town, so we went back to Vaksh, where the lobby lady smiled knowingly at us, like she knew we'd be back. "Room 8?" she asked. We asked if it was possible to get another, and she poured over her looseleaf notebook, and said that everything was full, but we could take a 'Lux Room'. We declined and just stood there for a while, so she absently flipped through the notebook some more and finally gave in. "OK, room 313. 120 Somoni, give me." This room had a great view over the central square to the Opera House, and the only problem with it was that our constantly-running toilet flooded the room below us. It was a keeper.
It was so wierd to have a beautiful city like Dushanbe in such a poor country. It was like some sort of bizarre Tajik oasis. It is by far the nicest city we have been to in Central Asia. There is one main avenue lined with massive trees and beautful parks that are spectacularly lit at night. There are massive buildings and statues, and of course, friendly Tajiks everywhere. The city felt entirely safe, even late at night. It blow Bishkek away. We spent 5 days there relaxing and enjoying the place while we waited for our Chinese Visa (which we obtained without any hassle whatsoever!) A few other observations/thoughts:
-the president, Emomali Rahmonov, is displayed everywhere, and he has huge gaudy palaces and other strange buildings all along the main drag. the museum has large halls dedicated to him
-The city is immaculately swept of all leaves, all the time. it is like a leaf-free utopia
-there are policemen everywhere. one day, when walking around one the central statues in the city, a massive replica of Ismoil Somoni, an ancient Tajik hero, a police man blew his whistle at us, and beckoned us over. he asked us where we were from etc etc and then told us to follow him behind the statue, he wanted to show us something. he showed us some engraving of a map on marble stone behind the statue and told us to take a picture (which we didn't--- we didn't want to pull out our cameras). he then called over another cop, and introduced us, and told us it was his birthday, and that they didnt have enough money to eat that night, the only had 50 cents, could we please give them some money. we declined, and after a little bit more pushing he gave up and we walked away. we decided that it was pretty wierd having police officers beg from us, and decided to avoid them when possible. The following night, however, we were having a beer in the central park, and then walking back to our hotel, when, once again, whistles blew, and two policemen beckoned us over. They motioned us into a side parking lot behind a bunch of trees, and asked for our documents (passports) --- which were at the Chinese embassy. We handed them photocopies, which they took under a streetlight to scrutinize (they couldn't read them anyways). After a while of pretending to read them, they said "10 Somoni you, 10 Somoni you. We need piva (beer), vodka, calvos". Realizing that these guys were half cut already (and likely boldened by having a few beers ourselves), we told them no, we won't give you money, but we'll go buy more beers if you want to have a beer with us. This seemed quite alright with them, and they agreed, on the condition that we also buy them 'calvos'. We didnt know what Calvos was, and when we asked they made a motion to their mouth, which we interpreted as the motion that we had seen Tajik people use when taking this local greenish chewing tobacco type stuff. "How much calvos?" we asked, assuming they meant chewing tobacco. "1 Kilo" came the reply, which sent us laughing. We told them we wouldnt buy them a kilo of chewing tobacco, but if they came and showed us where to buy calvos we might buy them some. So one policeman took us to a corner store, where we asked where the calvos was. The clerk pointed us to the back --- to the sausage aisle. "Calvos?" we asked. "Calvos, da!" said the policeman, as he ordered a kilo of sausage and a bunch of buns. We asked him if he wanted beer or vodka, and he opted for the vodka, and left while we paid for it. We then returned to the parking lot, where the 2 police called over their other on-duty buddies and they all mowed through the massive sausage and some buns --- they must have been genuinely starving. When it came to the vodka, we weren't allowed to drink from the bottle --- one officer ran across the street and got a bowl, from which we had to drink from, in a very secretive manner --- I am assuming that somehow they figured if anyone saw them drinking from the bowl they could just say it was tea. I have never seen a bottle of Vodka go so fast. After it was all gone they shook our hands and thanked us profusely, then stumbled off back to duty. Turns out the police in Dushanbe are pretty fun.
-November 6th was Constitution Day in Tajikistan, so there was a big stage with live music right outside our hotel room. We also went and watched a special play at the Drama Theatre that was entirely in Tajik and therefor made no sense.
-There are no McDonalds' in Tajikistan (neither in Kyrgyzstan). Dushanbe did, however, have such greasy delights as 'Southern Fried Chicken', 'Big Mac', and 'Chief Pizza'
When we recieved our Chinese Visas on Friday we hired a taxi to the town of Penjikent, near the Uzbek border. The highway north from Dushanbe was immaculate --- up until the President's summer villa, which is massive (it is ubelievable how there can be such huge wealth differential between this one man and the rest of the country --- an educated University Teacher makes $175 per month). Shortly after the villa the highway degrades to shit, with some chinese road crews building bizarre snow tunnels in random places. The highlight was a multi-kilometer tunnel through a mountain (which effectively shaves 4 hours off the drive). The tunnel was built by Iranians, who apparently did not pay much attention to the water table, as water gushes in from the ceiling and the way in flooded most of the distance. Apparently we got lucky, because the tunnel is frequently closed due to too much water.
After a night in Penjikent we headed for Uzbekistan, which we entered without any problem --- some Tajiks had killed some Uzbeks near the border or something like that, so it is only open to tourist traffic, of which we were the only ones. The Uzbeks actually had a computer at their border post, which I suppose is much more effective than having my name transcribed in various dusty notebooks at checkpoints across Tajikistan. We then bombed into Samarqand, a city with much history, and a key location on the Silk Road. My second day here I was sick as a dog (I will spare you the gruesome details), and did not leave my bed until late afternoon. I have been better since, though something seems to be rotting in my stomach --- last night I spent near as much time in the toilet as I did in bed. Regardless I have been able to see a bunch of the sights and enjoy the place a bit. A few highlights and observations before I sign out:
-Uzbekistan has the most ABSURD monetary system in the world. The highest denomination bill - 1000 Sum - is worth about 0.75 US, meaning that you need to literally carry stacks of cash. My toiletry kit is full of money. The novelty of carrying fat bank rolls and feeling like you are mad bling wears off really fast. To make matters worse, there are only ATMs in Tashkent (capital of Uzbekistan), where we will not be for at least a week. Samarqand is relatively big (500 000 people) so we assumed it would be easy to get cash and did not bring any into the country. Not so. The only possibility is cash advances on credit cards, and they only do that on Visa cards (I have a mastercard). So we spent about 4 hours this morning running from bank to bank and exchange office to exchange office (most have a limit on how much you can get and what currency you can get) trying to get enough money from Miles' Visa card for us to last until we get to Tashkent. As we have learned time and time again on this trip, NOTHING is efficient in Central Asia. Never have a schedule, and never expect things to be logical. Another problem is that when you get change in Sum from an exchange office, they hand you a fat stack of several hundred bills, so you can't be fucked to count them and check to see if they give you the right amount. We learned our lesson this morning when we found that we had been shortchanged 6000 Sum (the equivalent of only about 4.50 US) --- but we will be sure to count tomorrow when we go back for more cash since the places we went had daily limits. We are also learning that some of the town we are heading to will only accept Sum while some only accept dollars, and some won't let you exchange cash. All of this hassle makes less sense seeing as Uzbekistan is considerably more touristy than Kyrgyzstan or Tajikistan (but I guess its all relative). Regardless, there were ATMs everywhere in Tajikistan, where we saw zero tourists besides the 2 American wankers we entered with, but there are Tour buses ripping around Samarqand.
-another brief example of how you cannot have a schedule in these places: on our taxi ride from the Uzbek/Tajik border to Samarqand, we picked up a guy on the side of the street, who introduced himself as a police officer. We drove several km down the road to a place that makes Samsy (baked mutton dumpling things that we learned the danger of our first day back in Bishkek). The guy picks up some Samsy, and then we drive ALL the way back to where we picked him up and drop him off there. I assume it was the equivalent of a donut run for cops back at home.
-Samarqand is renowned for its ancient Islamic monuments --- and for good reason. There are 14th and 15th century Medressahs, Mosques, and Mausoleums built by Timur and his descendents everywhere. Massive blue tiled domes dot the city line, to the point where you can just kinda follow from dome to dome and find amazing monuments nestled within the ugly soviet buildings around them. Describing these places would be kind of silly, and not do them justice, but if you cannot wait until I return and can put some pictures on the internet, I would really reccomend googling Samarqand and its monuments, particularly the Registan.
-one police man offered to let us go to the top of one of the minarets in the Registan (for a bit of pocket change of course). agreeing, he then took to a locked gate with hammer and bashed door open. the view from the top was stunning.
-We met up with our friend Robert, the German intern we met working in Bishkek, and spent a few days with him. We also went out for our second night since last time in Bishkek to some bizarre diskos. The only real highlight, besides a power outage, was a 70s-ish door lady who told Miles that he needed to shave and cut his hair. When we went to enter the place, she grabbed the top of our pants ---- for what we assumed was just goin to be a pat down ---- and hiked our pants up wedgie-style. Apparently they were sitting too low on our hips for her approval.
-The toilet paper everywhere in Central Asia --- when you are lucky enough to get toilet paper, and believe me, this is most of the time never --- is more like sandpaper. I am more aware of this fact than ever with my recent stomach problems.
----- We are still having a great time! The key to enjoying this place is just to have a sense of humor about everything and to know that a lot of stuff is not going to make any sense. Tomorrow we are catching a train to Bukhara, west of here, out in the desert, where we are promised more ancient monuments and fortresses, and hopefully some camels. We are going to work our way to the Aral Sea, the world's greatest human-caused environmental disaster, and I will write back more soon!
Until next time,
Bryn
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Volume 7, Part 2: The Pamir Highway, Murgab to Khorog (also including: why not to pee on the Afghan side of the highway between Khorog and Dushanbe)
We've made it to Dushanbe, amazingly (this story later). I need to fill you in on a bit more background information on Tajikistan, specifically the Pamir region:
As mentioned, the Pamirs are HIGH (4 of the highest mountains in Central Asia are here: Pik Karla Marxa, Pik Engels, Pik Lenin, and, my personal favorite, Pik Kommunizm). This means that nothing grows up here. During Soviet times, the region relied entirely on exports from Russia, but when the Soviet Union fell, the people of the Pamirs were left with nothing. The region suffered from drought during the civil war, and is currently experiencing a drought right now. They are the poorest people I have spent time with in real life. Most are unemployed, those who are employed have an average annual salary of about 200 USD A YEAR. Luckily for the people, several NGOs have offered their support, the largest being the Aga Khan Foundation. The Pamiris are all Ismaili Muslims, which means that they follow a separate branch from mainstream Islam that emphasizes the bloodline of the Prophet Ismail. Aga Khan is a Swiss dude who is the 49th Imam (religious leader) in the line from Ismail. He has pumped millions of dollars into Pamir communities and has funded the establishment of the University of Central Asia in the western Pamir town of Khorog. The Ismaili Pamiris WORSHIP the Aga Khan... we're not just talking adoration, he literally IS their living god. And, unbeknownst to us, he was coming to the Pamirs for a visit...
After the first stretch of the Pamir Highway in the Volga, our first stop was the town of Murgab, in the eastern Pamirs. The town is dusty, the buildings are all made of mudbrick and plaster. As mentioned, there are no plants anywhere, pretty much everything is imported from elsewhere to its sparse bazaar. The name of the game for meals in the Pamirs is bread, noodles, and potatoes, which we have subsisted on for the past week and a bit. Upon arrival in Murgab, we walked around with our bags on (Miles and I and the 2 Americans we had shared the car ride down with). The most immediate thing we noticed was everyone's excitement to see us. People would open the doors of their homes and wave, even beckon us to come visit. One fellow ran up the hill to us yelling "No Problem! No Problem!" (it turned out to be the only english phrase he knew), and guided us to his home, where he put the four of us up for a few nights. The Tajiks are undoubtedly the most friendly and hospitable people I have ever met. For a country that is so poor, and for an area that literally has nothing, it is unbelievable how happy and generous the people are. I have trouble even here expressing how crazy this situation is, and how positive things are even in such a shitty situation. It is inspiring.
We spent a few days exploring Murgab, of which one of the activities included registering once again, paying more money, and getting another unofficial-looking document stapled into the passport (but believe me, without this document, you are screwed in Tajikistan, there are police checkpoints everywhere). Miles and I then set out to organize a driver to get us along the rest of the Highway, hopefully in a more reliable vehicle. Murgab has a very good French NGO-funded ecotourism program that coordinates local drivers and homestays for tourists, giving communities across the Pamirs much-needed employment opportunities, so we arranged a driver for five days through this program. We set off the next day without the Americans (I will spare you the rant on ungrateful and rude Americans who seem to think that travelling in other countries is a right rather than a privelege and that the world is out to serve them...) in a 4x4 Army Jeep (this time without any hitches!). Our driver's name was Tatik, and he wore orange and blue corduroy pants, a jean jacket, a black leather beret, and had one gold tooth. He also used to be a driver/bodyguard in the Soviet Army. Since then, for some reason, he had gone to Moscow to study agricultural engineering, and then returned to the last place on earth where any agriculture would be possible to be a taxi driver.
Our trip across the Pamirs was amazing. The term 'highway' should be used lightly when we talk about the Pamir Highway. The road is a pothole-filled semi-paved road at the best of times and a bumpy dry streambed type thing for the rest of the way. Most days we would pass at most 3 cars driving along. On the first day after leaving Murgab, Miles and I did a day hike across a 4700 m high pass --- now the highest I have ever been in my life. Miles had found some altitude sickness medicine, but still suffered mildly at the top, though not nearly as severely as in Kyrgyzstan. Tatik picked us up at the other side of the pass and too us to some hotsprings where we stayed in a yurt heated by the springs.
One thing the Pamirs do have: Rubies.
Tatik began asking us about precious stones, and told us about a ruby mine near Murgab where the Tajik gov't pulls out the best rubies in the country. He then says how some people from Murgab sneak into the mine at night and illegally mine the stones. He then produces a small bag of gems. "Shhhh", he says, as he shows us the rubies in the hotspring yurt. "The owner of this yurt is ex-KGB. If he comes, hide the stones." After a while of examining the rubies that Tatik has, he pulls out his prized ruby, that he claims was given to him by a mine administrator when Tatik saved his life in his taxi. The ruby is about 50 grams and he wants 5000 USD for it. I don't know the price of rubies, but I think that in reality a stone that big is worth much much more. "I cannot sell it for more" he says, "otherwise people will get suspicious."
Coming back from the hotsprings, Tatik has to drop some stuff off at his home in Murgab before we start working our way west. We are also driving a Pamiri family of 5 from the hot springs to Murgab for a wedding. On the road we stop at a small village. "I have to pick up the sheep for a sacrifice." Sure enough, a live sheep is thrown in the back of the jeep, and our bags are thrown on top of it. At Tatik's house the family invites us for lunch, and then invites us to watch the sacrifice of the sheep. So we watched a live sheep get its head cut off.
Another family wanted 'to sacrifice the chicken' in our honour, but having just eaten a massive meal of potatoes and noodles at another famil's house earlier on the road, we had to decline. Visitors are seen as blessings here, and you will literally be invited for tea or a meal just by walking around a village.
One day we went out with a local guy looking for endangered Marco Polo Sheep, which are supposedly migrating from Afghanistan through the Pamirs, but we didnt see any. That same family hooked up their solar battery so that we could watch a japanese-pirated dvd of the Batman movie with Jack Nicholson as the Joker. Our first english movie in nearly 2 months, and it was in a shepard's hut 70 km from any village.
On the third day after leaving Murgab we turned south off the Pamir highway and drove to the Wakhan Valley, of which half lies in Tajikistan, and half lies in Afghanistan. The Afghan part of the valley is responsible for 90% of the world's opium production. The Tajik half apparently has no opium due to extremely heavy anti-drug laws (apparently Tajikistan is 3rd in the world for drug seizures), but it has to get to the rest of the world somehow, and I imagine a large amount of it still passes through the Tajik side. The border with Afghanistan is literally just the river that runs parallel to the road, so we were within 100m or less of Afghanistan for 3 days of our trip. At one point we stopped so that Tatik could yell at some Afghans from a camel caravan across the river to ask how they were doing and if they knew someone from his family that lived in a village in Afghanistan. The caravan people invited us across the river for dinner with them, but we could not go across as Tatik was afraid that Tajik militia patrolling the road might catch us. The Wakhan is filled with the ruins of silk road forts, which gave me my archaeology fix, and at the end of one day we went to a hot spring in a cave and got naked with a bunch of Tajik men and boys. Bonding experience.
Tatik actually spoke very good English, so we had some very interesting conversations with him, most of which could only remind me of Borat:
"I have wife, but I want to have other lovers. In your country, is this OK?"
"What is it one should say to foreign girl to make them want to do the mate?"
When told that 2 girls could get married in Canada: "WOW. This is very interesting... but how do they... you know, make the baby?"
"One tourist I drove was very big... very big bum. Very nice. I wanted to taste her. It would have been like the elephant and the mouse. But she would have none of it."
Creepy ol' Tatik.
One thing we noticed as soon as we hit the Wakhan Valley was an incredible number of people walking west along the road. When we asked, we learned that they were walking to Ishkashim, a village at the west end of the valley, where the Aga Khan was going to be visiting on the 4th of November. These people, who had no cars, were setting out to walk about 150 km to see the Aga Khan speak. Tatik himself said that he would be driving 10 people in his jeep from Murgab to Ishkashim for the event.
When we arrived at Khorog, our final destination on the Pamir highway, and the largest town in the Pamirs, we went to check into a guesthouse. When we told the owner that we planned on staying 2 nights, she asked us where we were going to go afterwards. "Dushanbe" (Tajikistan's capital), we said. "You will not be able to leave" she replied. "Aga Khan is coming, road will be closed for a week."
It turned out Aga Khan was flying into Khorog the following day, giving a speech in Khorog the next, and then heading to Ishkashim after that. Everyone from all over the country was coming to Khorog, and apparently nobody would be leaving until after Aga Khan left. We went and asked around, and learned that we would have to get out of town the following day otherwise it would be impossible to leave. We decided to wake up early and try to find a car that would take us to Dushanbe.
At 7AM we headed downtown to find that all the roads were closed off by the police and no cars were in the city. People were out sweeping in full force, making sure that every road and back alley of Khorog was clean for Aga Khan. Groups of women had been up all night banging drums and singing, and people were hanging flags and banners everywhere. The atmosphere was extremely festive. We decided to walk to the airport, where we knew Aga Khan would be flying in, but hoping that we could maybe book a flight out for the following day. The walk to the airport was 5 km, and all along the road people were sweeping and decorating. The atmosphere was very exciting. The airport was full of people ready to greet the Aga Khan, and we learned that no flights would be leaving the city that week. Dump trucks full of people from Dushanbe were coming to the city. We realized that this was potentially going to be a very cool event, but we needed to get to Dushanbe to organize our Chinese visas. After a lot of debate we realized that we would regret not hanging around to see what would happen, and decided to stick around for the day and then try our luck with vehicles at the edge of the city in the late afternoon. We hung out with the crowd on the street for several hours, no one seemed to know when Aga Khan was supposed to arrive, and we couldnt really figure out what was going on. Finally a helicopted landed in the city, so we expected the guy to come down the street in some sort of parade, but instead a bunch of land cruisers and hummers just flew past and then everyone on the street started walking towards the town center for some reason, so we joined the mob and followed them, but in the town center people were all just kinda standing around and nobody really knew what was going on. We figured we'd better get out while we still could, so we dashed to our guesthouse, grabbed our bags, and searched for a vehicle heading to Dushanbe. It took a long time, but we finally found a guy and his son who were leaving, so we arranged to go with them. They had an 8-seater van type deal that they wanted to fill before leaving, but it turned out we were literally the only people in the city trying to get out, so we ended up just leaving, the only car heading out of town while tons of vehicles poured in towards Khorog. I still sort of regret leaving the place with so much excitement, but with our visa situation we could not afford to risk being trapped in Khorog for a week.
The vehicle we drove to Khorog in was a small Chinese minivan-type deal called a Dongfeng Yuan. The Chinese seem to have engineered their vehicles with lawnmower engines to save money. This fact, combined with the fact that the 'Highway' from Khorog to Dushanbe was actually in worse shape than the Pamir Highway (it was like a Canadian logging road that even we would hesitate to drive in pickup trucks) made the 556km journey take 22 painful hours. Add to that the fact that the father was trying to teach his son to drive... Neither of them spoke any english, but the son would keep turning around and say "DUSHANBE!!" with both thumbs up.
At one point in the middle of the night we stopped for a bathroom break. Miles got out and walked towards the south side of the road to pee, and the driver and his son started whistling and yelling at him to stop. They motioned him to pee on the other side of the road. It turned out the side of the road near the bank of the river dividing Afghanistan and Tajikistan is mined. Further along the road we saw warning signs in Cyrillic with a stick man running away from an exploding land mine. Moral of the story: watch which side of the road you piss on in Tajikistan.
To make a long story short (I am running out of time on this computer) the ride was eventful and long, but we made it to Dushanbe, which turns out to be an amazing and beautiful city that blows Bishkek out of the water. I will describe it to you more the next time I write, and I promise to write back to those who have written over the next few days as we wait for our Chinese Visa. Until then, bye for now!
Bryn
As mentioned, the Pamirs are HIGH (4 of the highest mountains in Central Asia are here: Pik Karla Marxa, Pik Engels, Pik Lenin, and, my personal favorite, Pik Kommunizm). This means that nothing grows up here. During Soviet times, the region relied entirely on exports from Russia, but when the Soviet Union fell, the people of the Pamirs were left with nothing. The region suffered from drought during the civil war, and is currently experiencing a drought right now. They are the poorest people I have spent time with in real life. Most are unemployed, those who are employed have an average annual salary of about 200 USD A YEAR. Luckily for the people, several NGOs have offered their support, the largest being the Aga Khan Foundation. The Pamiris are all Ismaili Muslims, which means that they follow a separate branch from mainstream Islam that emphasizes the bloodline of the Prophet Ismail. Aga Khan is a Swiss dude who is the 49th Imam (religious leader) in the line from Ismail. He has pumped millions of dollars into Pamir communities and has funded the establishment of the University of Central Asia in the western Pamir town of Khorog. The Ismaili Pamiris WORSHIP the Aga Khan... we're not just talking adoration, he literally IS their living god. And, unbeknownst to us, he was coming to the Pamirs for a visit...
After the first stretch of the Pamir Highway in the Volga, our first stop was the town of Murgab, in the eastern Pamirs. The town is dusty, the buildings are all made of mudbrick and plaster. As mentioned, there are no plants anywhere, pretty much everything is imported from elsewhere to its sparse bazaar. The name of the game for meals in the Pamirs is bread, noodles, and potatoes, which we have subsisted on for the past week and a bit. Upon arrival in Murgab, we walked around with our bags on (Miles and I and the 2 Americans we had shared the car ride down with). The most immediate thing we noticed was everyone's excitement to see us. People would open the doors of their homes and wave, even beckon us to come visit. One fellow ran up the hill to us yelling "No Problem! No Problem!" (it turned out to be the only english phrase he knew), and guided us to his home, where he put the four of us up for a few nights. The Tajiks are undoubtedly the most friendly and hospitable people I have ever met. For a country that is so poor, and for an area that literally has nothing, it is unbelievable how happy and generous the people are. I have trouble even here expressing how crazy this situation is, and how positive things are even in such a shitty situation. It is inspiring.
We spent a few days exploring Murgab, of which one of the activities included registering once again, paying more money, and getting another unofficial-looking document stapled into the passport (but believe me, without this document, you are screwed in Tajikistan, there are police checkpoints everywhere). Miles and I then set out to organize a driver to get us along the rest of the Highway, hopefully in a more reliable vehicle. Murgab has a very good French NGO-funded ecotourism program that coordinates local drivers and homestays for tourists, giving communities across the Pamirs much-needed employment opportunities, so we arranged a driver for five days through this program. We set off the next day without the Americans (I will spare you the rant on ungrateful and rude Americans who seem to think that travelling in other countries is a right rather than a privelege and that the world is out to serve them...) in a 4x4 Army Jeep (this time without any hitches!). Our driver's name was Tatik, and he wore orange and blue corduroy pants, a jean jacket, a black leather beret, and had one gold tooth. He also used to be a driver/bodyguard in the Soviet Army. Since then, for some reason, he had gone to Moscow to study agricultural engineering, and then returned to the last place on earth where any agriculture would be possible to be a taxi driver.
Our trip across the Pamirs was amazing. The term 'highway' should be used lightly when we talk about the Pamir Highway. The road is a pothole-filled semi-paved road at the best of times and a bumpy dry streambed type thing for the rest of the way. Most days we would pass at most 3 cars driving along. On the first day after leaving Murgab, Miles and I did a day hike across a 4700 m high pass --- now the highest I have ever been in my life. Miles had found some altitude sickness medicine, but still suffered mildly at the top, though not nearly as severely as in Kyrgyzstan. Tatik picked us up at the other side of the pass and too us to some hotsprings where we stayed in a yurt heated by the springs.
One thing the Pamirs do have: Rubies.
Tatik began asking us about precious stones, and told us about a ruby mine near Murgab where the Tajik gov't pulls out the best rubies in the country. He then says how some people from Murgab sneak into the mine at night and illegally mine the stones. He then produces a small bag of gems. "Shhhh", he says, as he shows us the rubies in the hotspring yurt. "The owner of this yurt is ex-KGB. If he comes, hide the stones." After a while of examining the rubies that Tatik has, he pulls out his prized ruby, that he claims was given to him by a mine administrator when Tatik saved his life in his taxi. The ruby is about 50 grams and he wants 5000 USD for it. I don't know the price of rubies, but I think that in reality a stone that big is worth much much more. "I cannot sell it for more" he says, "otherwise people will get suspicious."
Coming back from the hotsprings, Tatik has to drop some stuff off at his home in Murgab before we start working our way west. We are also driving a Pamiri family of 5 from the hot springs to Murgab for a wedding. On the road we stop at a small village. "I have to pick up the sheep for a sacrifice." Sure enough, a live sheep is thrown in the back of the jeep, and our bags are thrown on top of it. At Tatik's house the family invites us for lunch, and then invites us to watch the sacrifice of the sheep. So we watched a live sheep get its head cut off.
Another family wanted 'to sacrifice the chicken' in our honour, but having just eaten a massive meal of potatoes and noodles at another famil's house earlier on the road, we had to decline. Visitors are seen as blessings here, and you will literally be invited for tea or a meal just by walking around a village.
One day we went out with a local guy looking for endangered Marco Polo Sheep, which are supposedly migrating from Afghanistan through the Pamirs, but we didnt see any. That same family hooked up their solar battery so that we could watch a japanese-pirated dvd of the Batman movie with Jack Nicholson as the Joker. Our first english movie in nearly 2 months, and it was in a shepard's hut 70 km from any village.
On the third day after leaving Murgab we turned south off the Pamir highway and drove to the Wakhan Valley, of which half lies in Tajikistan, and half lies in Afghanistan. The Afghan part of the valley is responsible for 90% of the world's opium production. The Tajik half apparently has no opium due to extremely heavy anti-drug laws (apparently Tajikistan is 3rd in the world for drug seizures), but it has to get to the rest of the world somehow, and I imagine a large amount of it still passes through the Tajik side. The border with Afghanistan is literally just the river that runs parallel to the road, so we were within 100m or less of Afghanistan for 3 days of our trip. At one point we stopped so that Tatik could yell at some Afghans from a camel caravan across the river to ask how they were doing and if they knew someone from his family that lived in a village in Afghanistan. The caravan people invited us across the river for dinner with them, but we could not go across as Tatik was afraid that Tajik militia patrolling the road might catch us. The Wakhan is filled with the ruins of silk road forts, which gave me my archaeology fix, and at the end of one day we went to a hot spring in a cave and got naked with a bunch of Tajik men and boys. Bonding experience.
Tatik actually spoke very good English, so we had some very interesting conversations with him, most of which could only remind me of Borat:
"I have wife, but I want to have other lovers. In your country, is this OK?"
"What is it one should say to foreign girl to make them want to do the mate?"
When told that 2 girls could get married in Canada: "WOW. This is very interesting... but how do they... you know, make the baby?"
"One tourist I drove was very big... very big bum. Very nice. I wanted to taste her. It would have been like the elephant and the mouse. But she would have none of it."
Creepy ol' Tatik.
One thing we noticed as soon as we hit the Wakhan Valley was an incredible number of people walking west along the road. When we asked, we learned that they were walking to Ishkashim, a village at the west end of the valley, where the Aga Khan was going to be visiting on the 4th of November. These people, who had no cars, were setting out to walk about 150 km to see the Aga Khan speak. Tatik himself said that he would be driving 10 people in his jeep from Murgab to Ishkashim for the event.
When we arrived at Khorog, our final destination on the Pamir highway, and the largest town in the Pamirs, we went to check into a guesthouse. When we told the owner that we planned on staying 2 nights, she asked us where we were going to go afterwards. "Dushanbe" (Tajikistan's capital), we said. "You will not be able to leave" she replied. "Aga Khan is coming, road will be closed for a week."
It turned out Aga Khan was flying into Khorog the following day, giving a speech in Khorog the next, and then heading to Ishkashim after that. Everyone from all over the country was coming to Khorog, and apparently nobody would be leaving until after Aga Khan left. We went and asked around, and learned that we would have to get out of town the following day otherwise it would be impossible to leave. We decided to wake up early and try to find a car that would take us to Dushanbe.
At 7AM we headed downtown to find that all the roads were closed off by the police and no cars were in the city. People were out sweeping in full force, making sure that every road and back alley of Khorog was clean for Aga Khan. Groups of women had been up all night banging drums and singing, and people were hanging flags and banners everywhere. The atmosphere was extremely festive. We decided to walk to the airport, where we knew Aga Khan would be flying in, but hoping that we could maybe book a flight out for the following day. The walk to the airport was 5 km, and all along the road people were sweeping and decorating. The atmosphere was very exciting. The airport was full of people ready to greet the Aga Khan, and we learned that no flights would be leaving the city that week. Dump trucks full of people from Dushanbe were coming to the city. We realized that this was potentially going to be a very cool event, but we needed to get to Dushanbe to organize our Chinese visas. After a lot of debate we realized that we would regret not hanging around to see what would happen, and decided to stick around for the day and then try our luck with vehicles at the edge of the city in the late afternoon. We hung out with the crowd on the street for several hours, no one seemed to know when Aga Khan was supposed to arrive, and we couldnt really figure out what was going on. Finally a helicopted landed in the city, so we expected the guy to come down the street in some sort of parade, but instead a bunch of land cruisers and hummers just flew past and then everyone on the street started walking towards the town center for some reason, so we joined the mob and followed them, but in the town center people were all just kinda standing around and nobody really knew what was going on. We figured we'd better get out while we still could, so we dashed to our guesthouse, grabbed our bags, and searched for a vehicle heading to Dushanbe. It took a long time, but we finally found a guy and his son who were leaving, so we arranged to go with them. They had an 8-seater van type deal that they wanted to fill before leaving, but it turned out we were literally the only people in the city trying to get out, so we ended up just leaving, the only car heading out of town while tons of vehicles poured in towards Khorog. I still sort of regret leaving the place with so much excitement, but with our visa situation we could not afford to risk being trapped in Khorog for a week.
The vehicle we drove to Khorog in was a small Chinese minivan-type deal called a Dongfeng Yuan. The Chinese seem to have engineered their vehicles with lawnmower engines to save money. This fact, combined with the fact that the 'Highway' from Khorog to Dushanbe was actually in worse shape than the Pamir Highway (it was like a Canadian logging road that even we would hesitate to drive in pickup trucks) made the 556km journey take 22 painful hours. Add to that the fact that the father was trying to teach his son to drive... Neither of them spoke any english, but the son would keep turning around and say "DUSHANBE!!" with both thumbs up.
At one point in the middle of the night we stopped for a bathroom break. Miles got out and walked towards the south side of the road to pee, and the driver and his son started whistling and yelling at him to stop. They motioned him to pee on the other side of the road. It turned out the side of the road near the bank of the river dividing Afghanistan and Tajikistan is mined. Further along the road we saw warning signs in Cyrillic with a stick man running away from an exploding land mine. Moral of the story: watch which side of the road you piss on in Tajikistan.
To make a long story short (I am running out of time on this computer) the ride was eventful and long, but we made it to Dushanbe, which turns out to be an amazing and beautiful city that blows Bishkek out of the water. I will describe it to you more the next time I write, and I promise to write back to those who have written over the next few days as we wait for our Chinese Visa. Until then, bye for now!
Bryn
Volume 7, Part 1: The Pamir Highway, Osh to Murgab
Hello from Khorog, Tajikistan!
A little about Tajikistan to start: Tajikistan is the poorest country in Central Asia. The eastern half of the country is made up of the Pamir Mountain Range which is on average above 3500 m, and the western half is only slightly lower, until you get to the far west. This basically means that the country is nothin but mountains, which means that they have very little in terms of resources beyond rocks. The country looks like a bizarre puzzle piece, interlocking with Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, as well as Afghanistan to the south and China to the east, due to our friend Stalin's (most likely vodka-fuelled) attempts at border definitions based on ethnic (linguistic?) boundaries. (Considering that we spent the first four nights with Kyrgyz families, I'd say he fucked up). In reality, Tajikistan is home to a whole shwack of ethnic groups, from Uzbeks to Kyrgyz to Afghans to Wahkanis to Shugnanis to many others that I cannot spell. During Soviet times these people were all held together in a relative peace due to economic support from Russia. However, in 1991, when every Russian in Tajikistan got out as fast as they could, the country was left with absolutely nothing (except those mountains...) and civil war erupted. In the southwest there were Islamists siding with Afghanistan, in Dushanbe (the country's capital) and the northwest (a town called Leninabad!) there were those still clinging to the Russian way, and in the Pamirs to the east were a handful of people who were not happy with either and formed a guerilla army (this situation is simplified). The Pamir province, called the Gorno-Badakshan Pravince, unofficially declared itself as a sovereign state separate from the rest of Tajikistan. Apparently over 60 000 were killed and over a million diplaced. In the end, the Russians - fearing that Tajikistan would be overcome by Islamic extremists, and that Uzbekistan would then be encouraged in a similar direction, working its way north towards The Motherland - sent aid and encouraged cease fire/ peace agreement, which was signed in 1997. Tajikistan was only opened to tourists in 2002. Enter us.
Since the last update, Miles and I successfully obtained Tajik Visas in Bishkek, as well as GBAO permits. These permits are required to travel into the Gorno-Badakshan Province of Tajikistan (the Pamir region that tried to declare autonomy during the civil war). As soon as we got this paperwork dealt with, we got the hell out of Bishkek, catching a flight south to Osh, Kyrgyzstan's second largest city. Let me tell you, Central Asian airlines are something else, but that is another story. There is a reason they are not allowed to fly out of Central Asia due to international flight safety standards.
Osh was very different from the rest of Kyrgyzstan. It felt much less Soviet and more middle eastern... more alive and friendly. The Bazaar was HUGE and amazing, supposedly one of the best in Central Asia, and definitely the best we have seen yet. From Osh we worked to arrange transport along the Pamir Highway into Tajikistan. We met two Americans in Osh who were wanting to do the same, so we figured we woul split the cost of a ride together. The guesthouse we were staying at offered us transport to Murgab, Tajikistan for 250 USD, but we decided to look for a cheaper option. In the end we found a ride down arranged by another guy from Osh in a Russian army jeep for 210 USD, which we snagged, convinced that we could do no better. However, the next morning, when we went to meet our ride, our 'transport arranger' informed us that the owner of the guesthouse we had been staying at had paid off our arranged driver NOT to take us to Murgab. Apparently the guy we were going through used to work for the guesthouse guy and had been caught doing some dodgy dealings and was fired, so now the two were competing with each other... Annoyed and a bit anxious to get out of Osh, we put the pressure on our man to find us another ride to Tajikistan. At 11 AM he had come up with one driver will to take us south --- in a Volga Sedan (russian car, thats all you need to know. anything not made by the russian military is prone to lighting on fire at any random moment). Feeling a bit desparate, we agreed.
Our move out of Osh was slow. Apparently the Volga still needed some parts, which we had to stop at any garage along the way to look for, which of course, no one had. In the end we settled for a bit of air in the tires and headed on our way, without whatever part our driver had been looking for. It only took until the first hill that we realized we might be in trouble in the vehicle. It struggled with a slight uphill, and we knew that the Pamir Highway between Osh and Murgab climbed through a 4200 m pass and a 4600 m pass. Also, the windows didnt roll down (except the front one, which wouldnt roll up), there was a massive draft coming in from the back seat, and our driver smoked like chimney. Furthermore, and worst of all, after about an hour on the road, he through in a tape of Kyrgyz pop from what I would assume would be the early 90s which he played for the rest of the trip (about 18 hours).
We powered on. We stopped for a late lunch at some dirty Kyrgyz roadside cafe, and then hit the road again, however, when we tried to hit the road again, there was a big bang, and the whole car dropped about 50 cm. Shit. Our driver got out, winched up the rear side of the car with a rusty jack, and crow-barred out the rear suspension, which had apparently failed. He threw the springs into the trunk. Instead of any replacement, we just continued without rear suspension. On we went. On the Kyrgyz side of the border there is a 3900 m pass, which we slowly climbed, up into deepening snow. Trucks coming from China slowly snaked their way down from this pass. Near the top we saw a chinese semi flipped on its side. As soon as we hit the summit of the pass, the other side was covered in snow. All the Chinese trucks had chains, but our little Volga only had bald tires. To the left was a mountain and to the right was a cliff face down to a about a thousand meters belows. As soon as we hit the snow we started fishtailing. This was the first time this entire trip that I seriously feared for my life. Our driver remained stoic as we slid past chinese trucks and scooted down the mountain to a snowy Kyrgyz town called Sary Tash --- the last Kyrgyz town before the Tajik border. In front of us lay a frozen plain about 50 km long, and then the Pamir Mountains rose like a wall. We approached these mountains as it was getting dark, and quickly realized that it would be insane to go up into an even higher snowy pass in the dark. After a team meeting we convinced our driver in broken russian that we wanted to sleep before continuing to Murgab (a further 8 hours minimum in good conditions down the highway). To be honest he seemed a bit relieved and took us back not to Sary Tash but to a town further west called Sary Mogol, where he had family. We came to his home late at night, where we were welcomed with tea and plov, and a warm bed in a mudbrick house.
The next morning we set off again back to Sary Tash and then to the Tajik border. First off, Kyrgyz checkpoint. Cold but uneventful after 30 mins of waiting even though we were the only car there. Then several km through no-man's land to the Tajik checkpoint, at the top of the 4200 m Kyzyl Art pass. We get out of the car, give them our passports, go into a room for a bit, get sent out again where they say they need to do a customs baggage check. They pat my bag and ask me to open it, where they see a gas tank for my MSR Camp Stove. "AHHH! Torpedo!" They exclaim. "no, fuel bottle", I attempt to explain. Meanwhile, Miles opens his bag, and at the top is sitting a carton or Marlboros that we purchased before leaving North America for bribes. "Ah, Cigarettes!" The soldiers exclaim. Miles gives them a pack, and our baggage check ends right there.
We then move through some gate, where we are taken into another office for another registration operation. This time we go in one by one. When I go in and sit in front of the soldier, who is looking at my passport, he says:
"Hmmm... Canada da?"
"Da."
"Canada... hmmm.... Hockey da?"
"Hockey?" I say. "Da, da, hockey."
"Pavel Bure, da?"
"Da." I say.
"Da" says the soldier, and he waves me out.
After this, we go into another building, where the same operation goes. They transcribe my name into Cyrillic into a looseleaf notebook and send me on. If you go the Tajik border today and had access to the registration notebooks, you would find 'Bryn Letham' transcribed once in english and in twoвшаааукуте ways into Cyrillic. National Security, I guess.
So we are in Tajikistan, the Pamirs. They are STUNNING. As soon as you cross the Tajik border, there is no snow except at extreme heights... the place is an absolute desert. Rather that driving through valleys with mountains above you, were are driving through what appears to be barren plains... except the plains are at about 3500 m, and the mountains on the sides reach well above 5000 m. The landscape is surreal, and unlike anything I have ever seen before. We stop at a large lake formed by a meteor called Karakul for lunch in someone's home in a small village, then continue to Murgab. Before Murgab is a 4600 m pass. As we work our way up to it, our mufflet straight up falls off. As with the suspension of the Volga, our driver jacks up the car, gets under it, and unscrews some parts, throwing them into the trunk. We continue up the pass through the beautiful mountains (it looks like what I imagine Mars would look like) to Murgab... Remarkably, we all make it in one piece.
From here we organize the rest of our journey along the Pamir Highway, and through the Wakhan Valley, which will have to wait until the next time I get on a computer, as I have to jet now. We are trying to get to Dushanbe tomorrow, but there is a very realisitic chance that we will be stuck in Khorog for the week (long and entertaining story, will come next time). Until next time, I would love to hear from home... Happy Halloween (that doesn't exist over here)...
Will continue the story soon...
Love, Bryn
A little about Tajikistan to start: Tajikistan is the poorest country in Central Asia. The eastern half of the country is made up of the Pamir Mountain Range which is on average above 3500 m, and the western half is only slightly lower, until you get to the far west. This basically means that the country is nothin but mountains, which means that they have very little in terms of resources beyond rocks. The country looks like a bizarre puzzle piece, interlocking with Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, as well as Afghanistan to the south and China to the east, due to our friend Stalin's (most likely vodka-fuelled) attempts at border definitions based on ethnic (linguistic?) boundaries. (Considering that we spent the first four nights with Kyrgyz families, I'd say he fucked up). In reality, Tajikistan is home to a whole shwack of ethnic groups, from Uzbeks to Kyrgyz to Afghans to Wahkanis to Shugnanis to many others that I cannot spell. During Soviet times these people were all held together in a relative peace due to economic support from Russia. However, in 1991, when every Russian in Tajikistan got out as fast as they could, the country was left with absolutely nothing (except those mountains...) and civil war erupted. In the southwest there were Islamists siding with Afghanistan, in Dushanbe (the country's capital) and the northwest (a town called Leninabad!) there were those still clinging to the Russian way, and in the Pamirs to the east were a handful of people who were not happy with either and formed a guerilla army (this situation is simplified). The Pamir province, called the Gorno-Badakshan Pravince, unofficially declared itself as a sovereign state separate from the rest of Tajikistan. Apparently over 60 000 were killed and over a million diplaced. In the end, the Russians - fearing that Tajikistan would be overcome by Islamic extremists, and that Uzbekistan would then be encouraged in a similar direction, working its way north towards The Motherland - sent aid and encouraged cease fire/ peace agreement, which was signed in 1997. Tajikistan was only opened to tourists in 2002. Enter us.
Since the last update, Miles and I successfully obtained Tajik Visas in Bishkek, as well as GBAO permits. These permits are required to travel into the Gorno-Badakshan Province of Tajikistan (the Pamir region that tried to declare autonomy during the civil war). As soon as we got this paperwork dealt with, we got the hell out of Bishkek, catching a flight south to Osh, Kyrgyzstan's second largest city. Let me tell you, Central Asian airlines are something else, but that is another story. There is a reason they are not allowed to fly out of Central Asia due to international flight safety standards.
Osh was very different from the rest of Kyrgyzstan. It felt much less Soviet and more middle eastern... more alive and friendly. The Bazaar was HUGE and amazing, supposedly one of the best in Central Asia, and definitely the best we have seen yet. From Osh we worked to arrange transport along the Pamir Highway into Tajikistan. We met two Americans in Osh who were wanting to do the same, so we figured we woul split the cost of a ride together. The guesthouse we were staying at offered us transport to Murgab, Tajikistan for 250 USD, but we decided to look for a cheaper option. In the end we found a ride down arranged by another guy from Osh in a Russian army jeep for 210 USD, which we snagged, convinced that we could do no better. However, the next morning, when we went to meet our ride, our 'transport arranger' informed us that the owner of the guesthouse we had been staying at had paid off our arranged driver NOT to take us to Murgab. Apparently the guy we were going through used to work for the guesthouse guy and had been caught doing some dodgy dealings and was fired, so now the two were competing with each other... Annoyed and a bit anxious to get out of Osh, we put the pressure on our man to find us another ride to Tajikistan. At 11 AM he had come up with one driver will to take us south --- in a Volga Sedan (russian car, thats all you need to know. anything not made by the russian military is prone to lighting on fire at any random moment). Feeling a bit desparate, we agreed.
Our move out of Osh was slow. Apparently the Volga still needed some parts, which we had to stop at any garage along the way to look for, which of course, no one had. In the end we settled for a bit of air in the tires and headed on our way, without whatever part our driver had been looking for. It only took until the first hill that we realized we might be in trouble in the vehicle. It struggled with a slight uphill, and we knew that the Pamir Highway between Osh and Murgab climbed through a 4200 m pass and a 4600 m pass. Also, the windows didnt roll down (except the front one, which wouldnt roll up), there was a massive draft coming in from the back seat, and our driver smoked like chimney. Furthermore, and worst of all, after about an hour on the road, he through in a tape of Kyrgyz pop from what I would assume would be the early 90s which he played for the rest of the trip (about 18 hours).
We powered on. We stopped for a late lunch at some dirty Kyrgyz roadside cafe, and then hit the road again, however, when we tried to hit the road again, there was a big bang, and the whole car dropped about 50 cm. Shit. Our driver got out, winched up the rear side of the car with a rusty jack, and crow-barred out the rear suspension, which had apparently failed. He threw the springs into the trunk. Instead of any replacement, we just continued without rear suspension. On we went. On the Kyrgyz side of the border there is a 3900 m pass, which we slowly climbed, up into deepening snow. Trucks coming from China slowly snaked their way down from this pass. Near the top we saw a chinese semi flipped on its side. As soon as we hit the summit of the pass, the other side was covered in snow. All the Chinese trucks had chains, but our little Volga only had bald tires. To the left was a mountain and to the right was a cliff face down to a about a thousand meters belows. As soon as we hit the snow we started fishtailing. This was the first time this entire trip that I seriously feared for my life. Our driver remained stoic as we slid past chinese trucks and scooted down the mountain to a snowy Kyrgyz town called Sary Tash --- the last Kyrgyz town before the Tajik border. In front of us lay a frozen plain about 50 km long, and then the Pamir Mountains rose like a wall. We approached these mountains as it was getting dark, and quickly realized that it would be insane to go up into an even higher snowy pass in the dark. After a team meeting we convinced our driver in broken russian that we wanted to sleep before continuing to Murgab (a further 8 hours minimum in good conditions down the highway). To be honest he seemed a bit relieved and took us back not to Sary Tash but to a town further west called Sary Mogol, where he had family. We came to his home late at night, where we were welcomed with tea and plov, and a warm bed in a mudbrick house.
The next morning we set off again back to Sary Tash and then to the Tajik border. First off, Kyrgyz checkpoint. Cold but uneventful after 30 mins of waiting even though we were the only car there. Then several km through no-man's land to the Tajik checkpoint, at the top of the 4200 m Kyzyl Art pass. We get out of the car, give them our passports, go into a room for a bit, get sent out again where they say they need to do a customs baggage check. They pat my bag and ask me to open it, where they see a gas tank for my MSR Camp Stove. "AHHH! Torpedo!" They exclaim. "no, fuel bottle", I attempt to explain. Meanwhile, Miles opens his bag, and at the top is sitting a carton or Marlboros that we purchased before leaving North America for bribes. "Ah, Cigarettes!" The soldiers exclaim. Miles gives them a pack, and our baggage check ends right there.
We then move through some gate, where we are taken into another office for another registration operation. This time we go in one by one. When I go in and sit in front of the soldier, who is looking at my passport, he says:
"Hmmm... Canada da?"
"Da."
"Canada... hmmm.... Hockey da?"
"Hockey?" I say. "Da, da, hockey."
"Pavel Bure, da?"
"Da." I say.
"Da" says the soldier, and he waves me out.
After this, we go into another building, where the same operation goes. They transcribe my name into Cyrillic into a looseleaf notebook and send me on. If you go the Tajik border today and had access to the registration notebooks, you would find 'Bryn Letham' transcribed once in english and in twoвшаааукуте ways into Cyrillic. National Security, I guess.
So we are in Tajikistan, the Pamirs. They are STUNNING. As soon as you cross the Tajik border, there is no snow except at extreme heights... the place is an absolute desert. Rather that driving through valleys with mountains above you, were are driving through what appears to be barren plains... except the plains are at about 3500 m, and the mountains on the sides reach well above 5000 m. The landscape is surreal, and unlike anything I have ever seen before. We stop at a large lake formed by a meteor called Karakul for lunch in someone's home in a small village, then continue to Murgab. Before Murgab is a 4600 m pass. As we work our way up to it, our mufflet straight up falls off. As with the suspension of the Volga, our driver jacks up the car, gets under it, and unscrews some parts, throwing them into the trunk. We continue up the pass through the beautiful mountains (it looks like what I imagine Mars would look like) to Murgab... Remarkably, we all make it in one piece.
From here we organize the rest of our journey along the Pamir Highway, and through the Wakhan Valley, which will have to wait until the next time I get on a computer, as I have to jet now. We are trying to get to Dushanbe tomorrow, but there is a very realisitic chance that we will be stuck in Khorog for the week (long and entertaining story, will come next time). Until next time, I would love to hear from home... Happy Halloween (that doesn't exist over here)...
Will continue the story soon...
Love, Bryn
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