My biggest Fans

From: Bukhara, Uzbekistan

OK, I'm way behind on posts. Since the last time I wrote, I've done the following:
- spent a couple of days in the Fan mountains
- crossed into Uzbekistan
- visited the beautiful city of Samarqand
- been followed by a KGB agent in Bukhara

I'll cover all this stuff later; this post is about my trip into the Fan mountains.

There are several ways to get from Dushanbe to Uzbekistan. The most scenic route takes the M-34 north to the mountains, cuts west along some very poor roads, and ends up in Penjikent, a town on the Uzbek border.

The trip to Penjikent was uneventful by Tajik standards: no Tunnel of Death, roadblock delays less than 3 hours, minimal radiator/engine failures. I got to Penjikent in the evening. Turned out there were some American girls staying at my homestay, and I ended up joining them on a trip to the nearby Sogdian ruins and to the Marguzor lakes.

On the hills above the town are the ruins of Old Penjikent, a settlement from pre-Islamic times. Our guide explained that, with the arrival of the Muslim armies, the former residents were forced to abandon the old town and move down towards the river, where they still live today.

I'm usually not a huge fan of ruins, but these were interesting, and in good enough shape to give a sense of the former city's size. The town was built out of a combination of stones, clay and bricks, some of which are in good shape for having been exposed to the elements for over a thousand years. The ancient Sogdians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sogdiana) were Zoroastrians (members of an ancient Persian religion that worshipped fire), and you can still see the ruins of the town's fire temples:


After the ruins, our driver drove us into the Fan Mountains and dropped us off at the Marguzor lakes. There are seven mountain lakes in the system, each connected by small streams and waterfalls. We started at the second lake and hiked up to the sixth one, a several-hour walk uphill. The scenery was some of the most beautiful I've seen on this trip:


We stopped and had lunch at a picturesque set of rapids, then hiked until we reached the village of Marguzor itself. The village is remote -- an hour's drive by Jeep to Penjikent on very rough roads. The village has no shops or public buildings of any kind, just herding and subsistence agriculture on a few patches of arable land irrigated by the river. Definitely a strange place to settle, right? Our guide explained that the ancestors of the mountain dwellers had fled to the hills to avoid invaders, and their children had just stuck around. The Marguzorians are a welcoming bunch; it seemed like every kid in the town followed us until we reached the next lake:


The sixth lake (where we stopped) was spectactular and we stopped to swim for a while. Not that a lot of swimming took place; the highest lake is fed by glacial runoff so the water temperature was chilly indeed. Our driver showed up in late afternoon with a giant plastic thermos of hot tea, a welcome sight after a few plunges into the lake.


Thus were the Fans. I'll write more about Samarqand soon.

Dushanbear

From: Samarqand, Uzbekistan

I've spent a couple of days in Dushanbe. It's been a good chance to relax, eat some good food, and stock up on funds and supplies before going to the Fan Mountains.

The city itself is charming, leafy and relaxed, with the prettiest architecture I've seen yet in a Central Asian city.

The people and their clothes are interesting. Tajiks are generally European-looking, making them very distinct from Uzbek and Kyrgyz neighbors. I really find the Tajik way of dressing (at least on the women) quite beautiful. Compared to the past two countries I've seen, Tajikistan is quite conservative and more strictly adherent to Islamic customs. Most of the women here wear colorful ankle-length dresses and matching headscarves, usually tied loosely around the hair. When I walk through the bazaar or along Rudaki (the main drag), it's really something to watch.

Another surprising feature of Tajik appearance: the ubiquitous unibrow (or monobrow to antipodeans). I noticed that many of the women in Dushanbe (even younger ones) have a sort of continuous eyebrow, rather than the shaped/tweezed eyebrows that are popular in the West or the Arab world. The result is a city full of Frida Kahlo lookalikes. Odd, huh? One of my hosts explained it to me: the unibrow is viewed as something distinctive and beautiful inTajikistan. So much so, in fact, that a lot of the younger girls I've seen on buses actually have the gap between their eyebrows drawn in my eyebrow pen to create a sort of illusory monobrow. I guess tweezer sales haven't done so well in Dushanbe.

I must say, haven't done a lot here. But there are the highlights:

- Visiting the Hissar fortress

- Snagging my visa for the glorious nation Turkmenistan (not going to discuss this... I've talked about paperwork enough already)

- Meeting the RC-Kola bear

- Popping by the Museum of Musical Instruments

The remains of the capital's qala, or fortress, are about 40 km west of Dushanbe in a small town called Hissar. The original fortress was built in the 1700's by the local ruler, using the contours of hills to give the building's shape. I guess I was expecting some sort of impressive, largely-intact citadel like you would get in Scotland or something. Not so -- the Soviets blew up the entire castle when they attacked in the 20's. All there is now is a reconstructed front gate. The fortress itself is now used as a collective farm. There were some goats and cows scattered around the place:

I also saw a dozen or so women toiling in the field in long dresses, with nary a man between them. Where were the men? Doing other jobs? You'd think so, but you'd be wrong. I went down the street to a tea house and found twenty men (of all ages) drinking tea in the shade and telling stories. Tajikistan isn't a bad place to work, as long as you're male.

Now, on to RC-Kola bear. Those of you from North America will probably be familiar with the RC (Royal Crown) line of sodas, a cheaper, off-brand alternative to Coke and Pepsi. They also have RC in Tajikistan, but it's actually a knock-off of the original RC. This makes it a double-off-brand manufacturer of soda. OK, that's the context. On to the bear itself: I was walking through the park in front of my hotel when I saw an old, bearded man leading a guy dressed in a brown bear costume on leash. People were laughing and I assumed this was some sort of traditional Tajik slapstick/performance art: old man has boy in bear costume and does a bunch of tricks, that sort of thing. So I checked it out. Turns out the guy had an actual Russian brown bear on a leash! The thing was really well-trained -- its main trick was drinking RC Kola out of the bottle. The old man gave it two to drink and it finished each in a jif. Thirsty ol' bear!

What else? I also popped into the Museum of Musical Instruments, basically a bunch of rooms curiously attached to the district court. The museum is packed with instruments (mostly string, with some percussion) from around Central Asia. I love playing around with weird, different instruments so I had a blast. The curator is a traveling musician and has been all over the world (yes, even to Ottawa -- know you were wondering!) with a small ensemble from the Pamirs. He showed me how to play the rubab (a sort of plucked string instrument), and gave demonstrations on a bunch of violin-esque things whose names escape me, as well as some Turkish and Iranian flutes.

Travails

From: Dushanbe, Tajikistan

Back again. I arrived early this morning in Dushanbe, the peaceful and leafy capital of the Tajik Republic. Will write about the city later, but this post is about getting here - an interesting couple of days, to say the least.

Funny how things work out sometimes. Right after I uploaded my previous post (about my problems getting to the border), I had a major stroke of traveler's luck that took me all the way to Tajikistan. Two backpackers in my hostel -- Raduz and Violeta -- had somehow managed to find a car that agreed to take them west to the Tajik border crossing at Batkent. I bumped into them just as they were getting ready to leave, so I paid my share and jumped onboard.

The political landscape in southwest Kyrgyzstan makes travel to Batkent tricky. Armed conflicts in the past fifteen years have produced a number of isolated Uzbek and Tajik 'exclaves' within Kyrgyzstan. There are four Uzbek-controlled exclaves in the country (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provinces_of_Uzbekistan), all of them effectively off-limits to foreigners. One of them (Sokh), is unfortunately located on the major road that locals use from Osh to Batkent. We had to pay our driver to avoid drive around the Uzbek checkpoints (all of this costs extra, of course) and cut across some inhospitable, lunar-looking landscapes to the Tajik border.

The border crossing itself was completely uneventful, which in Central Asia is a good thing. Once across, we headed to Khojand, an ancient city in northern Tajikistan, and once the easternmost city in Alexander the Great's empire. It isn't exactly packed with Greek ruins, but it's a nice enough place for a couple of days.

My traveling companions had some friends in the city. One of them (a local guy, Furyk) took us out to the Karaikum Reservoir, a Soviet-scale artificial lake just outside the city. We spent the afternoon at a crumbling communist-era turbaza, or health resort:

The place was comically dilapidated, but with a little imagination, you could almost hear the voices of children on holiday from around the USSR, singing Soviet songs. It's still a fun place today: cold beers and hot shashlyk for lunch, followed by a swim in the warm water.

That night, we headed into town for some Russian cuisine. Alright, 'cuisine' might be a bit strong a word, but it was Russian food anyways. There were maybe ten customers in the place (ourselves included)... more than enough to justify a live music performance. There was a small stage with disco balls, fake palm trees and an electronic keyboard. The Tajik performer would put on a CD, play along to the music on the keyboard, and sing or lip-synch the song playing (mostly Persian pop, I think). Outstanding.

My second day in Khojand was a combination of the fun and the infuriating. We'd been lucky to meet Halim, a native of northern Tajikistan and an incredible host -- he invited the three of us to stay at his house while we were in the city. It was yet more of the intense, yet touching, form of hospitality in Central Asia. Halim had made homemade cherry juice earlier that week. Incredible stuff -- we drank almost all of it.

In the morning, Halim took us to "register" our visas at the regional government offices. The very concept of registering one's visa is absurd. The idea is that, even after having purchased a visa for Tajikistan and traveled to the country, the government needs to make sure they know where you are at all times. Enter OVIR, the inefficient and ridiculous government agency charged with doing just that.

To get registered, you need to fill out a bunch of forms, get copies of your passport, bring passport-sized photos, and (most difficult) find a local who is himself registered in the immediate district and therefore authorized to fill out the host information box on your registration form. None of the local hotels are able to do this, so I have no idea what tourists do if they don't have a Tajik friend. Even once you have the requisite forms completed, you have to run around to local banks and made overpriced, certified payments in both Tajik somoni and US dollars. Even with a native Farsi and Russian speaker, the process still took the better part of the day.

I'll write more on this later, but I find it astonishing that a country that claims to encourage tourism still uses unfriendly, Soviet-era processes like visas and registration. It's even worse if you don't register within 72 hours of entering the country: the police can easily extort money or you can be forced to pay a $100 fine when you exit.

Registration complete by late afternoon, we caught some of the city's better sights. These included a well-stocked museum covering the history of the region from Alexandrian times, a poorly-stocked museum with some broken shards of pottery, and the famous Syr-Darya river. We went swimming in the river with some local kids (mostly boys, I noticed). I usually try to avoid swimming in urban waterways, but it seemed clean enough. And I haven't developed any signs of infection (yet).

Halim, Raduz, Violeta and I at the (better) museum:

Swimming in the Syr-Darya:



Two days ago, I got in a taxi heading for Dushanbe. I knew the trip was going to be long (my guidebook billed it as a 12-hour trek), but I really had no idea what was in store.

The first leg of the drive itself is stunning, a slow, high-altitude journey along the M-34 as it weaves through the Zeravshan mountains. For most of the way, the road offers specatacular views of the mountains and the cream-colored Zeravshan river crashing through the rocks below. This picture half-captures the beauty:




In early afternoon, we came across a few roadblocks manned by Chinese construction crews. It was a little unclear what the roadblocks were for, but I guess they had to do with repairs to the M-34. The wait at each one was about half an hour, during which time all the Tajik taxi drivers (usually at least 10) would harass the poor Chinese guy working there. This usually involved a lot of waiting, and what my driver described as "talking Chinese" (the Tajiks speaking Russian with an insulting fake Chinese accent, the Chinese guy politely smiling and shaking his head).

Later on, we arrived at the tunnel through the Zeravshan mountains. The tunnel is the only way to Dushanbe, and it's here where the fun really began. A Chinese-Tajik worker crew was making major repairs to the tunnel and had stopped all traffic along the M-34 in both directions for almost 4 hours. The traffic was backed up on our end for more than 100 vehicles, including both freight and passenger cars.

At 8 pm, someone had the brilliant idea to open access on both ends of the tunnel. Eager to beat the traffic, all the drivers sped as fast as they could into the tunnel, driving in both the correct lane and the lane for oncoming traffic. When the cars from the our side got halfway through the tunnel (which is about 2 km long) they bumped into the traffic from the other end, which had also taken up both lanes. To make matters worse, the middle of the tunnel itself had been reduced to one lane because of the repair work. As the cars piled up in the middle of the tunnel, there was no way forward, and it was impossible to back up.

I've seen very few places that I would describe as "hell on earth," but being stuck in the tunnel was one of them. With cars packed into the unventilated tunnel, the exhaust from the cars built up steadily. Instead of switching off their engines to keep the fumes down, most of the drivers revved their engines out of anger and frustration. After half an hour, it started to become harder to breathe. To add to the fun, each 'side' of traffic would break into a round of honking every five or ten minutes, either out of anger, or else to convince the other side to back up. Hundreds of cars honking in a sealed tunnel isn't the most accoustically pleasant thing in the world. On top of that, the tunnel was flooded with oily water that was ankle-deep in most parts and knee-deep in others; I saw a couple of rats scuttling around on the dry patches. The water meant that we couldn't get out of our cars, which was probably a blessing in disguise, since the drivers on our side were screaming at the oncoming traffic and things could have gotten physical.

A snapshot of the tunnel, 2 hours in:

A view of the tunnel at the repair station:

After 3 hours in the tunnel, I was coughing a lot and starting to get a real headache. I decided to grab my bag and make a run for the end of the tunnel (flooding or no flooding) when the cars started to inch forward slowly. The engineers had finally found a way to direct the traffic so that one side could move at a time. Thirty minutes later, we left the tunnel, and I rolled my window down to a beautiful, starry sky and the freshest mountain air I've ever breathed. I was asleep within a few minutes.

I woke up the next morning in Varzob, a charming, hilly suburb of Dushanbe, at the house of a fellow passenger. We had a nice breakfast (although a little too early, at 6:30, for my taste) then headed to town.

Osh Kosh B'Gosh

From: Osh, Kyrgyzstan

I arrived in Osh a couple of days ago. It's the second-largest city in the country, located in the South, near the Uzbek and Tajik borders. I'll be here for a couple more days until I can figure out onward transport (read on...), but it's interesting so far.

Southern Krygyzstan (and Osh in particular) is more conservative and outwardly Muslim than the northern part of the country. Although Kazakhstan and northern Kyrgyzstan are predominantly Muslim, I had never heard even one person mention Islam, seen anyone pray or listened to the call of a muezzin while I was there. On my taxi ride from the capital to Osh, I noticed the difference immediately; all the men in my taxi wore traditional skullcaps and said prayers as the car left the station. When I reached Osh, I found the difference in dress from Karakol and Kochkor was pronounced. Women (especially married ones) tend to cover their hair and dress more conservatively than northerners. Men dress similarly, but tend to keep their hear shorter, grow their beards out and wear skullcaps. Slight differences in the architecture (more Uzbek influence than Russian) give the city a more Persian/Arabic, and less Russian, feel.

The city is famous for two things: the great bazaar (the largest in the region) and the Throne of Solomon.

The bazaar is everything a good market should be: gigantic, impressive, chaotic and loud. The bazaar stretches along the river near my hostel into the center of town. I haven't counted, but I'd guess there are well over 1,500 stalls, shops and boutiques. They don't trade in a lot of silk these days, but you can buy spices by weight, cheap Chinese electronics, food (of questionable cleanliness, in many cases), strange pamphlets ("God's Secrets Revealed"), kitchen instruments, and dozens of other things I haven't come across yet. I just finished the book I was reading (Catch-22, a fitting text given the absurdities of traveling in this region) so I'm going to head back in today and see if they stock any English-language books.

The Throne of Solomon is a large, jagged rock formation in the center of the city. It takes its current name since King Solomon (of temple-building fame) supposedly traveled here a long time ago (doubtful, given the distance to the Middle East). I took an afternoon trip and climbed to the top. The Throne offers an impressive lookout over Osh and the surrounding region. There's also a tiny mosque at the top where you can say prayers with an old man for a small fee. Strangely, there are tiny caves in the mountainside on the way up where old ladies sleep and pray on small mats.

Here is a local-history museum built into the side of the Throne:

And a view of Osh from the Throne itself:

Apart from seeing the main sights, I've had a lot of fun hanging out at the chaikhanas (tea houses that serve food) near my hostel and soaking in the city. The chaikhanas in Osh have tapchans (raised, cushioned tea beds) where you can lie down while you drink green tea or eat your meal. I had dinner last night with two Australians staying in my hostel at a nearby chaikhana: grilled shashlyk, freshly-baked bread and cold Russian beer... fantastic. On the topic of post-Soviet beer, I'm a big fan of Baltika, one of the largest export brands, since I first tried it at the Russian bar in Washington. Baltika varieties are numbered 1-9 (e.g., 6 is a dunkelbier, 7 is a pilsener, 8 is a wheat beer), although this flavor diversity is irrelevant in Osh since they only have Baltika 7. Still, it's good to know that somewhere out there, people are drinking my Baltika 3's and 6's.

There have also been a few moments of Kyrgyz weirdness/funniness. When I was walking around town early in the morning, I came across a squadron of young army recruits working on the side of the road. They each had a branch of an oak tree and were using it to sweep the sides of the street, trying to get the dust off the shoulders, I guess. Some of the officers were barking orders in Kyrgyz ("sweep faster, dammit!") and a couple were arranging flowers on a podium by the roadside. I guess some politician was going to make a speech there and they wanted him to have fresh-cut flowers and a dust-free venue. The weird thing is that the group was working to some European techno song being blasted from an army truck - "your love is what I nee-eeeed..." Nothing gets a Kyrgyz corporal working faster than German electronica.

I've ended up staying in Osh longer than I would have liked. My original plan was to head south from Osh into the Pamir mountains of Tajikistan. From what I've heard, the Pamir Highway is matched only by the Karakoram Highway in Pakistan for its remoteness, hostile weather and stunning alpine scenery. Unfortunately, changing visa regulations, incorrect guidebook info and ambassadorial ineptitude (that's you, Tajik embassy) have thwarted this part of my trip: I have the required Tajik visa but am unfortunately missing the permit for the highway itself. Since the Pamirs are the only direct route into Tajikistan, I'm scrambling to figure something out. I have a few options:
- find some way to get the Pamir permit, then find transport into eastern Tajikistan. This is pretty doubtful at this point and I'm about to give up.
- try to get to Dushanbe via an obscure border crossing at Karamyk. The road is good but the cops demand a lot of bribes and the checkpoint may be closed to foreigners.
- get a car to take me to Tajikistan another way. This option is trickiest since the main road going to northern Tajikistan crosses through tiny Uzbek-controlled enclaves (such as Sokh) that would waste my Uzbek visa and leave me stranded in a tiny pocket of the country with no way out. To get to Tajikistan safely, I'd need to pay a driver to avoid the Uzbek checkpoints and go the long way round to the Tajik border. This option is really expensive but may be what I have to do.

Neither of these options is cheap or very convenient, but I'll work something out... wish me luck!

Making you jailoos?

From: Osh, Kyrgyzstan

After arriving back at Karakol, I headed to Kochkor, a town in the mountains of central Kyrgyzstan used as a jumping-off point to adventure tourism.

Kochkor is home to Community Based Tourism (CBT), one of the most impressive and innovative organizations I've come across in the developing world. The organization aims to build sustainable, grass-roots tourist infrastructure by linking independent travelers with families who follow local traditions (typically herders and nomads). The goal is to make tourist money flow directly to the people who need it most. CBT coordinates yurtstays, horse treks, hikes and
the opportunity to participate in traditional crafts such as carpet-weaving. CBT trains local families on how to meet tourists' needs, and structures the fees so that about 85% of revenues flow directly to local families -- brilliant. I'm not sure how well this would work in non-nomadic countries, although I could see a lot of potential in Southeast Asia and Andean South America.

In the CBT office, I met a group of Peace Corps volunteers from Kazakhstan and joined them on their trip to Song-Kol, a beautiful mountain lake with a yurt camp. They were a very fun bunch of kids and (as always with Peace Corps people) I was highly impressed by their language abilities; 3 spoke perfect Russian and 2 flawless Kazakh.

Lake Song-Kol is massive and remote, a three-hour drive from Kochkor. The road up had dozens of switchbacks and weaved through stunning alpine landscapes. On the way up, we crossed paths with some yaks (the first I've seen this trip):



The temperature difference between the lake and the valleys below is incredible; it could be well over 30 degrees in Kochkor but below 0 in the mountains. The lake is also home to a 'jailoo,' or summer pasture, where local nomads take their flocks from May to September. Along the shore were a number of yurt camps run by local families. The size of the jailoo is difficult to capture with digital photos, but it's beautiful and absolutely immense, with rolling fields for miles. The jailoo where I stayed was so large that it would take 2 hours to cross the width on foot and 7 hours to hike the length.





One of the most exciting things about staying at Song-Kol was sleeping in a yurt. The yurts are mushroom-shaped, semi-permanent tents used by the nomads on the jailoo. The yurt is made up of several layers of wool or yak felt lashed onto a sturdy wooden skeleton.



Inside, the ground is covered with large, rough felt mats (like pool-table felt, but coarser), which are then covered by softer and more elaborate mats and woven rugs. The woven mats also double as blankets if you're cold in the yurt; you can wrap one around yourself while you're hanging out, eating or drinking tea. My yurt was massive, and I had it pretty much to myself, since the group I was with decided to stay in tents. The temperature dropped below zero the second night we were there, but the yurt managed to keep me warm enough.

The Kyrgyz nomads are fantastic hosts. The mother of the host family, Jukun, made incredibly filling and tasty meals for me three times a day, which I ate inside the family yurt (next to "my" yurt). Meals almost always involved some sort of homemade dairy products. Every meal included kaimaq, a sort of buttery sour-cream product made from sheep's milk. They would serve big bowls of it every meal, and you can add it to anything -- homemade bread, rice porridge or stew -- or eat it on its own. Stranger dairy products included kymys, fermented
mare's milk and a Kyrgyz delicacy. If I'm being generous, I would say that kymys is an acquired taste: smoky, a bit leathery-tasting, sour, with yellowy floating bits in it (or was that just mine?) I managed to pack away one bowl of the stuff, but that was it for me. Every meal include multiple rounds of tea drunk while relaxing on the floor mats.





Outside of meals, I spent most of my time playing soccer with the nomad kids, walking around the field, and huddling inside my yurt with the rest of the group to keep warm. On the second day, a traveling salesman in a white felt hat drove up to the yurt camp in a Soviet Lada, peddling candy, preserves and (mostly) vodka. Hilarious, really.

But I can't forget the animals -- the jailoo is full of livestock. A typical nomad family has a herd of sheep, some cattle and a bunch of horses. Ours had mostly horses and a few hairy Kyrgyz sheep dogs. I hired one (a horse, not a dog) from our host family and rode it throughout the day. I don't ride horses often, but it's always a lot of fun. The last time I tried to ride, the horse didn't really follow my instructions, and I ended up looking like an idiot while the horse trotted around in circles. This time, my horse was pretty responsive; I could steer it around, make it stop, and go faster. I didn't really have to go alone, since all of the local kids (who each have their own
donkey) would ride near me to make sure everything was ok. If you've never been babysat by a 7-year-old and his friends, it's quite an experience.

I got back to Kochkor a couple of days ago and started what ended up being a grueling trip to Osh, where I am now. The Kochkor-Osh leg of the trip was supposed to take around 12 hours, mostly driving through stunning countryside. Sounds fun, but because of a major error in my
guidebook, I found myself stranded in the middle of the country and had to take a massive 25-hour detour around the mountains. So much for careful planning!

More about Osh coming up...

Lakers

From: Osh, Kyrgyzstan

It's been almost a week since my last post, so I'm going to do this in chunks. The next couple of posts are going to be full of positives -- Kyrgyzstan has completely charmed me...

Getting down to Kyrgyzstan took a while but was a lot of fun. Because my hotel kicked me out early (who enforces a 10 am checkout?) I found myself stranded at the bus station for six hours before my bus left. Sounds boring, right? Not in Almaty, where bus stations come fully equipped with everything a traveler needs: internet cafes, snack stands, competing toilet facilities, and the world's creepiest billiard parlor:



In the morning we arrived in Cholpon-Ata, a summer resort village on the north shore of Lake Issyk-Kol. Issyk-Kol is the second-largest alpine lake in the world, and is known as the "Pearl of Central Asia." I'll reserve my judgment until later this summer, but I agree that it was a stunning sight.

North of the village is a field of glacial boulders with petroglyphs from the Scythian civilization (around 6th century BC, I think). Supposedly the field is literally covered with them; there are hundreds of burial-stone arrangements, etchings, and things like that. I hiked there in the afternoon, which took longer than expected since I had to avoid the numerous mangy, barky dogs hanging out around the farmhouses. In the end, I could only find two etchings and one pile of burial stones before I got bored and gave up. So much for archaeology:



The next day, I went to Karakol, a picturesque town of decomposing grand Russian homes at the eastern end of the lake. At my hostel, I bumped into the owner, Valentin, who recommended that I leave the hostel and go with him to his camp at Altyn-Arashan, a hot-spring camp in a nearby mountain valley. "Much more fun than this boring town," he pointed out. "Plus, hostel is out of water." I decided to join him, mostly because of how hilarious rugged he was: older, sort of grizzled-looking, a chain-smoker, dressed in beat-up trekking gear. Even that description doesn't really do him justice. Before we left, he finished loading up this hilarious four-wheeler:



Even the four-wheeler ("the quad") was pretty rugged; Valentin salvaged it from the scrap heap at the nearby Canadian-Kyrgyz gold mining operation and revived it with second-hand parts. Amazingly, the thing didn't brake down once on our ascent to the hot springs, a two-hour white-knuckle ride over narrow mountain paths strewn with boulders and through little mountain streams.

Altyn-Arashan lived up to the praise. The springs are at the bottom of a stunning and remote valley in the Tian Shan mountains. There are a few small lodges settled along the valley floor, but apart from that, it's just good old Kyrgyz wilderness. Valentin's lodge was rugged (as expected) but warm and charming.





I got to the lodge too late as it was getting dark -- too late to do any serious hiking. Still, the evening was a lot of fun. I tinkered around with a sour-sounding Soviet guitar, started a few games of chess with the Russians, drank some honey beer (way better than mead, which is bland) and had some hearty plov (filling Central Asian ricey meal). There were a bunch of other foreigners so we had a good post-dinner chat around the fire.

Before bed, our host took me down to the hot springs, run by a neighboring Russian family. He explained the process: you go into the hut, strip down, ease into the water (which is scorching) and then get out after 15 minutes. I was scrambling to find some excuse not to have to take a an intimate nude bath with Valentin, but there were enough bath-huts so we each got our own. Disaster avoided.

I rode back to town the next morning with some Swedes staying at the lodge. Method of transport: Soviet jeep, age 27. Quite a sight: all the gears and wiring were exposed and the car had to be shut off every 20 minutes. "Niet radiator," the driver explained, which is fair enough for a pre-perestroika clunker.

More later... can't upload photos right now but will get to that soon.

PS. A bunch of tough-looking Kyrgyz guys are huddled around the computer next to me, listening to Whitney Houston’s “I will always love you” song from the Bodyguard. On repeat.

Great success!

From: Almaty, Kazakhstan

Jag semes from Almaty, industrial powerhouse of Central Asia and home of Borat Sagdiev.

My trip has gotten off to a great start so far. I'm a big fan of Almaty, more impressed with the city than I thought I would be. The people are friendly and interesting-looking, with a lot of ethnic diversity: plenty Kazakhs and Russians, a bunch of Koreans and Uzbeks, and at least one Canadian.

I'd read about the recent growth in Almaty, but what I've seen here has surprised me. New housing developments are going up all over, prices are on par with the US in most places, supermarkets stock a full range of Western products, and the streets are jammed with luxury cars.

The pace of progress is also reflected in Almaty's blend of architectural styles. I've seen a lot of imposing late-Soviet buildings and sculpture -- some of them quite impressive, like this monument to WW2 heroes:





There are also plenty shiny, modern-looking buildings funded by the country's new prosperity. I've seen a few big commercial developments in the city that look like something out of Miami or San Francisco. But there are some weird buildings too, such as the miniature Eiffel Tower inexplicably placed in front of an apartment building:




What else? Well, the whole everyone-speaking-Russian-and-not-English thing has been tricky. Not that I wasn't forewarned: a few of you definitely told me to learn some Russian before I left. I just never got around to it. As a result, my current communication involves about 90% wild gesturing and 10% English and Russian. I'm trying to get the gesturing down to 80% by the end of next week. My dormmate, a Kazakh IT student, has kindly taught me a few useful phrases: ("I speak Russian badly," "I am from Canada," "the new Microsoft Windows has many errors"). Good stuff.

I met with Mohirbek, the husband of a friend of mine, for drinks a couple of days ago. We took the Kök-Töbe cablecar to the top of a mountain near Almaty. There's a restaurant and a couple of bars at the top, all with fantastic views of the city and the surrounding mountains:




Yesterday, I hung out with Timur, a friend from Boston and Almaty native. We took a taxi up to Chimbalak, a big ski resort high in the mountains behind the city. There's no snow in the summer but it's great for hiking. We took a couple of chairlifts halfway up, then trekked to the ridge at the very top. It was a tough climb, but I blame the thin air rather than my being out of shape. Definitely worth the effort, though:








We were starving after the climb back down and ate some shashlyk (a delicious Kazakh specialty consisting of mutton or pork brochettes). We also had a little horsemeat to round out the meal. It actually tasted a lot like roast beef -- nice! We headed back down the mountain to Medeu, the world's highest skating rink and former training grounds of the Soviet speed-skating team. Nowadays it's used primarily as a courtship venue for the under-18 set.



Apart from seeing the sights, I've spent a lot of time collecting visas. I've done it three places and it's the same process each time, run by officials who are as hilariously grumpy as they are irritatingly inefficient. Getting a visa involves: trekking to a well-camouflaged embassy, waiting outside a big metal door for an hour until a guard barks at you to come in, standing in front of a smudged window until an agent yells at you, passing over 'dokuments,' paying more USD than seems reasonable, collecting your passport, then leaving before someone yells at you more.

The only visa I'm still waiting on is the one for Tajikistan. The Tajik consulate looked like trouble from the start. When I showed up, a group of men was finishing an extension of the main building -- hammering pieces of metal, mixing cement and sawing bits of wood. The consul himself was in the middle of doing some roofing work. Hey, nothing wrong with a little ambassadorial DIY, but I suspect that it's taken priority over my visa application. I probably should have offered to mix cement or something to speed things along.

Once I get my visa, I'll head south to Kyrgyzstan, crossing over the Zailisky Alatau mountains. I'll be traveling through rural parts of Kyrgyzstan (sleeping in yurts and whatnot) for 4-5 days before arriving at the next big city. Will write more then!

En route

From: Riga, Latvia

The trip has begun! I left the US two days ago and have been making my way towards Almaty.

I landed in London on Friday and caught up with some very good friends. As usual, had an absolute blast. Each time I come to London, I become more convinced that it's the greatest city in the world. Here's why:


1. Delicious Indian food: pretty sure this is the best stuff in the world. OK, I admit that my experience with actual Indian Indian food is pretty limited (only meal I've ever actually eaten in India involved soggy cheese pastries in Delhi airport). Still, I'd be surprised if anywhere (India included) could make food as well as they do here. Tim and I went out Friday night to Brick Lane, London's mecca of South Asian cuisine, and we had the best Chicken Madras ever. Mind-blowingly good (and pretty spicy).

2. International flair: seems to me that non-Brits greatly outnumber the natives. Walk into any pub or club and you'll be lucky to find someone with an English, Scottish or Irish accent behind the counter. EU migration law has made it pretty easy for people from Eastern Europe to come to the UK for work, which is pretty cool.

Add to this migrant labor pool a large number of asylum seekers and a huge mass of tourists from France, Russia, and elsewhere, and you have a pretty good national soup. While I was traveling on the Tube, it's amazing how few of the conversations taking place are in English (40% or less, it seems). It's also hugely frustrating to a committed eavesdropper like me.

3. Gorgeous architecture: this city has more famous, jaw-dropping sights than any other place in the world. On Friday, I decided to indulge myself in some artsy shots of famous Thames-side landmarks. Shown: St. Paul's, the Millenium Bridge, the Globe.

Yesterday I landed in Riga, Latvia. Why here, you ask? AirBaltic, for some reason, was offering flights from London to Almaty for $300 less than other airlines. Having given this deal some further thought, I've decided not to check the carrier's air-safety record.

Riga is an interesting city with a nice, quaint old town. I liked it the last time I came (barring a disturbing anti-gay protest that I saw).

I'm struck by the city's resemblence to Paris. No, the people aren't brusque, snippy, or especially stylish. It's more of an architectural resemblance -- many of the buildings were built in a Rococo or Art Nouveau style which gives them a French look.

I got to town very late, went to a beergarden in the main sqaure and had some French fries. Not sure if this is related to the architecture, but they were some of the best fries I've ever had. I stayed for a while, watching people walk by. For some reason, all (I mean, almost without exception) of the women walking around were in pairs.

I surmised this could be one of two things:

- A strategy to reduce the cost of cab fares

- A relic of some Soviet buddy system for women

As it turns out, it was neither. As the night went on, I realized that the pairing scheme was likely a defensive mechanism to ward off the numerous groups of Stag (Bachelor) parties orbiting the town square. Low-cost carriers, delicious beer, and a 'gentleman'-oriented tourist industry have made Riga the Prague of Latvia when it comes to English Stag parties. I saw some entertaining interchanges between large groups of drunken Brits and defensive-looking Latvian women-pairs. "This city is crazy!" screamed one of the groom's companions after an unsuccessful chat with two blondes. Rock on, brother.

Perhaps to offer some daytime entertainment for the gentleman visitor, many of the hostels around here offer combat-oriented fun. For instance, my hostel offers, for a nominal fee: 'painbolling' (paintballing, I'm guessing), 'zorbing' (where you get locked in a big ball and pushed down a hill), 'big gun games' ("don't you ever see movie James Bond and say yes I shoot big bazooka too!!?"), and much more. The fact that rocket launchers and bazookas are available at low-cost to the tourist industry is a little troubling, but they ply a good trade.

Zorbing and Big Gun Games being too expensive for my taste, I walked around Riga and soaked in some of the scenery. There is a beautiful, carefully-groomed park just outside the old city. The combination of the sunlight, the canal and the trees gave it a storybook feel. There were a lot of couples hanging (making) out, some old ladies knitting, and people strolling. There was also a group of dudes playing this really loud drum. I'm not really sure why.

That's all from me. I leave for Almaty this evening... will write soon!

Logistics

I'm leaving tomorrow morning. Exciting! I've spent the past few days running around DC, visiting embassies and getting documents ready. It's starting to feel real: I now have my first two weird-looking visas (Kazakh and Azeri):



What else? I've worked out some more specific dates for my trip. Some of you have mentioned that you'll be traveling in the area. If your path is going to cross mine, drop me an email and we can meet up.

Here's the current plan:
June 5th - fly to Boston, then London
June 6th - London
June 7th - Riga, Latvia
June 8th to 12th - Almaty (getting visas; hanging out)
June 13th to 18th - Kyrgyzstan (staying in yurts; horseback riding)
June 19th to 30th - Tajikistan (traveling the Pamir Highway; doing Dushanbe)
July 1st to 12th - Uzbekistan (seeing the big Silk Road cities)
July 12th to 17th - Turkmenistan (crossing the desert; enjoying relics of Turkmenbashi)
July 18th to 29th - the South Caucasus (Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia)
July 30th to August 4th - either Capadoccia (weird underground homes) or Greece
August 5th to 8th- Macedonia and Albania (Lake Ohrid, Tirana and Shkodra)
August 9th - Travel to Split via Ulcinj, Montenegro