Greenian

From: Tbilisi, Georgia

I'm back in Georgia again. This post is about my time in Armenia and its close affiliate, the tiny Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.

I spent most of my time in Armenia in and around Yerevan, the capital. Yerevan is huge, and I haven't seen enough of it to comment fairly. Most of it seems Soviet and grey, but some of the parks (like the one near the Opera, where I've spent a lot of time) are fantastic: lots of nice fountains, dozens of cafes, and locals talking or grabbing a drink. The parks and cafes are packed at night. Even on weekdays, people are out until midnight socializing with friends and family. Also, the beer is pretty cheap.

Instead of staying in a hostel, Thierry managed to find us a place to sleep through CouchSurfing (http://www.couchsurfing.com/). I hadn't used it until this trip, but I'm now a big believer. It's basically a huge website where independent travelers can find other young people with a couch, bed or floor to crash on, in almost any city they want. Surfing is free, but there's an expectation that people who use it offer their place to others in the future. Like other social networking sites, you can send messages, references, and upload pictures -- an incredibly convenient way to find a crash-pad while abroad.

We stayed a few nights with Oscar, a really cool Lithuanian NGO worker and excellent host. His apartment was often full with other Couchsurfers, friends and co-workers from all over Europe, so it was a lot of fun. We made a couple of meals, played cards and backgammon, drank some beers and had a lot of great conversations in French, English, German and my favorite, mock-Russian.

Our only day trip from Yerevan was to Echmiadzin, the 'Armenian Vatican' and seat of the Catholicos (head of the religion). It's also a UNESCO World Heritage place. Like the Holy See, Echmiadzin is a collection of churches, shrines, seminaries and administrative buildings. They also have some pretty incredible relics, such as the Geghard Spear (the spear used to stab Christ on Calvary), although these aren't available to the public. Mary Tachar, the head church, is a medium-sized building from the 7th century:

The courtyard around the church is great: it's filled with tourists and pilgrims, both national and diasporan, as well as bearded Armenian priests dressed in their long black robes. There are also three more substantial churches in Echmiadzin, with Surp Hripsime my favorite. It was very quiet -- a great place to go, light a candle or two, and forget about everything outside for a little while. It's also a nice break from the oppressive Armenian heat. Here, the prayer room with stone tablets, towards the back of the church:

Those were the highlights of Armenia. Now, onto the NKR (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagorno-Karabakh).

The Nagorno-Karabakh Republic has a complicated and unfortunate recent history, especially given the internal war in the early 1990s. Here's the oversimplified version: the current territory of Karabakh was an ethnically mixed Armenian-Azeri region within Azerbaijan during Soviet times (although the area had an Armenian majority). Towards the collapse of the USSR, the Armenian population held a referendum to become independent from Azerbaijan, which was, of course, opposed by Azerbaijan. This led to civilian massacres on both sides and a military clash between Armenian-Karabakhtsis (backed by Armenia and Russian mercenaries) and Azerbaijan (backed by Turkey and some mujahideen). The war went on for a few years, with huge losses on both sides. The Armenia side basically won, and the NKR became effectively independent (although few other countries officially recognize its legitimacy). Almost all the Azeri population fled or was forced out, leaving NKR roughly 95% ethnically Armenian. Tiny, and with no industry, the current Republic effectively operates as an Armenian protectorate; there is only one road in, since the borders with Azerbaijan are mined and guarded.

Despite the grim events of the 1990s, the tiny republic is a fascinating place to visit; it offers stunning scenery, remote monasteries, charming villages and, for those looking for it, stark reminders of the conflict itself.

Our first stop in the NKR was Stepanakert, the Karabakhtsi capital. This is the place where everything happens in this country; with 40,000 inhabitants, it's the beating heart of the place. First things first: we had to get the registration for our NKR visas and permission to visit the different parts of the country. The process cost $0 and took all of 3 minutes. I wish that more countries in the region could be like that.

And so, registration in hand, we headed for Shushi, a once-charming walled town near the capital. Before the war, Shushi was the Azeri cultural capital in the region, and had several beautiful mosques, protected by 300-year old fortifications at the top of sheer cliffs. During the war, the city it was the main staging point for the Azeri-led campaign, and it took a lot of damage towards the end of the fighting.

Here, some semi-inhabited apartment buildings:

Fortunately, the place is undergoing some restoration. Since the NKR has no domestic income, all the reconstruction money is coming from diasporan Armenians, mostly living in the US or Russia. Two of Shushi's Armenian churches have been nicely restored and look like they're in full operation again. One of them even had a wedding going on (in fact, the third I've seen in Armenia). Here, a church assistant sweeping away the congratulatory rose petals:

We also walked around the 'old town,' which consisted of a few ruined mosques and the old city walls. Some of the mosques were very beautiful, but it's unlikely that they're going to be restored anytime soon, given that there are no Muslims living here now. This mosque lost the top of its minaret:

We ended up finding accomodation in a local village called Selo. I was introduced to a haematologist-turned-taxidriver called Ashot -- he offered to take us to his home village to see the traditional way of life, stay for the night, and have a 'free' meal.

And the meal was indeed free, but first we had to make it. Ashot gave us each our tasks. My first one was to help him 90-year-old father dig up potatoes out of the garden (what my Scottish relations would call 'houking tatties'). I must say I was highly impressed by the elderly gentleman: despite his age and the fact that he had lost an eye as a POW in WW2, he still managed to keep his garden in working shape. Here, me scooping the potatoes up:

Halfway through preparing the meal, I was asked to go get some peas from the garden. Easy, right? But as soon as I stepped onto the soil, I was aware of the shameful fact that I didn't actually know what peas grow on -- a side-effect of living in suburbs and cities by whole life, I guess. So I checked the different parts of the garden, where I discovered that peas don't grow on pea-trees or underground on pea-roots. They grow on vines. And I picked a bunch, but not before promising myself that I would learn about farming, or at least gardening, when I get back home.

The next morning, Ashot woke us up early to go to Gandzasar, Karabakh's most famous monastery. It's considered the NKR's most stunning sight, a 13th-century monastery perched high in a range of forested mountains, with a great view of the villages below. The main church there has unusual carvings on the outside walls, with randomly-placed stone slabs with Armenian script on them. We also managed to arrive early enough to catch the Mass inside the church, a very ancient-feeling ceremony: the assistant shook a rattle that off incense, lit up by a few shafts of light from the windows; the priest sang some sort of plainsong in Armenian. Very enchanting. Here's a picture of the church:

All over Karabakh are the shattered remains of former Azeri settlements. We saw several as we drove past; all of them were lifeless, with broken buildings and streets grown over with weeds. Ashot and other locals were unwilling to take us to any of those places, especially the ghost town of Agdam, near the Azeri front line. I can think of a few reasons why they didn't want to take us, and all of them are understandable given what a recent and painful memory the Karabakh war is for those living here. We did, however, get to see a tank monument just before Agdam and the mined border region. Here, a decommissioned Armenian tank, now a monument to the war.

On a less serious note, we also stumbled across the famous 'Karabakh sculpture.' This strange thing was commissioned after the war -- it's made of Armenian stone and is featured on, say, 80% of the postcards you see for Nagorno-Karabakh. Now you won't even need to buy the postcard:

After an early rise and a morning packed with sights, I was pretty exhausted. So I sat around the hotel for the rest of the day, drinking fizzy mineral water and eating Armenian gingerbread. It's like normal gingerbread but is softer and has a sugary glazing -- excellent.

Next up: not really sure. I'm heading to Turkey tomorrow so I'll probably write more from Istanbul. In the meantime, I'm going to go find some khachapuri for dinner. I'm very hungry all of a sudden, probably from writing about gingerbread.

Georgia on My Mind

From: Yerevan, Armenia

Georgia gets a lot of hype. Half the backpackers I've met in Central Asia have gone through here at some point. Almost without exception, they told me that Georgia was the best country they'd ever seen: incredible food, great people, amazing culture, striking scenery, abundant adventure. So my expectations were pretty high. This post is about my first few days in the country; so far, seems like it's living up to the hype.

My first stop in the country was Tbilisi. Thierry and I came here with another traveler -- Dan, an English guy we met in Baku. We took the overnight train and got in late morning.

The capital is charming, a large but relaxed city set over a lazy, grey river. The main drag, Rustavelis Gamziri, just south of the river, has fancy European shops, slick bars, and nice hotels. Very fun place to walk around and people-watch. North of the river, where we're staying, the city is poorer and more cluttered, with multiple houses set up around these big courtyards, just off the streets. It's very busy and charming, however, with fruit vendors and shoppers packed on the sidewalks. Also, I see a lot of expensive-looking, single-breed dogs around here -- none of the strays and mongrels that were more common in Central Asian.

Tbilisi has some stunning views. The city backs onto to a very steep cliff which is pretty dramatic. There are also a lot of old cathedrals which look amazing at night:

Another cool thing: the language. Georgian has one of the coolest, yet weirdest, languages I've ever seen. It's part of the Kartvelian language group, a collection of dialects which, like Basque, is completely unconnected to any other tongues. The alphabet is beautiful but hard to read. For some reason, nothing in this country is printed in Russian or Latin, so you have to decipher the script to use public transport. I'm trying to learn the letters, but it's slow-going. Here's an example from the subway:

Georgia is famous for more than just its capital. East of Tbilisi is the land of Kakheti (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakheti), Georgia's wine country (in fact, according to some experts, wine may have first been cultivated here). We decided to make a day-trip there; it was a long marshrutka ride to Telavi, and then we hired a taxi for the afternoon to take us around all the sights. None of us had any idea what the "sights" actually were, but we lucked out with a taxi driver who took us around all the local hotspots.

We checked out a couple of monasteries, for which Kakheti is famous. Georgia is one of the oldest Christian countries (only Armenia became Christian earlier), having been converted by St. Nino in the 4th century. There are still a lot of very old monasteries and churches in the region (mostly Eastern Orthodox), many going back centuries. We stopped at three. The first was a small working monastery up in the hills. I wasn't allowed inside since I had shorts on. Or maybe I just looked unscrupulous, which is quite possible.

The second one was a beautiful old church-monastery, further up the same mountain. Although it was undergoind repairs, there was an old man outside selling three handmade prayer candles for a lari (less than $1). I have no idea how he got up the mountain, or who he normally sells the candles to. We bought some and lit them inside the vault-like prayer room.

The last monastery we visited was called Iraklo -- it's an old and famous site close to Telavi. The original site was founded by Zenon, one of the 13 ancient Syrian Fathers (old Christian dudes from when Syria was Christian). Until very recently, it was the leading religious and philosphical academy in the country, and many famous Georgians came here to study (among them, Rustaveli, the national bard).

I was also eager to check out the wine in the region best known for it. We went to the Chavchavadze Estates (a hilariously-named place for anyone familiar with British 'Chav' culture). The C family used to be wealthy landowners, and their former home has been converted into a stately park. It also has an incredible wine cellar, with thousands of old and expensive bottles from around the world. Among the highlights: unopened bottles of pre-1900 Chateau Yquem, expensive Burgundy and even first-growth Bordeaux from the 1880s. Pretty insane to see that stuff just sitting there collecting dust.

The stuff in the estate cellars was a little more than my daily budget, so we went to a local winemaker, GWC, well-regarded for its semi-sweet whites and reds. They offered us a wine "degustatsiya" for around $7, which ended up being good value given the tremendous amount of wine they gave us.

Unlike other, more serious and snobbish tastings I've done, the Kakheti wine-tasting experience is pretty straightforward. There's no talk about mouthfeel, tannin levels, or subtle undertones of hibiscus-blossom. Instead, the owner takes a glass and fills it to the brim out of a giant wine tank coated with insulating foam. You're expected to finish the glass in a couple of minutes, by which point your next glass has already been poured. As you drink, the staff wash out your glass with a hose on the factory floor and the process starts again. We tried four wines in all, and one of them (from the Saperavi grape for which the region is famous) was delicious.

Here, the owner pouring out a generous glass of semi-sweet Georgian white:

I decided to break my Georgian trip into two parts, with a side-trip to Armenia in the middle. Will write more Armenia on my next post, and probably some more about Georgia later on.

Bizarrebaijan

From: Tbilisi, Georgia

The next bunch of posts will cover the countries of the South Caucasus. This little region sits in between Russia, the Caspian, Turkey and the Middle East -- it includes Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia and the disputed independent republic of Nagorno-Karabagh. This post is on Baku and the surrouding region.

Baku is a beautiful and charming city, a combination of bustling, modern oil-town and slow-paced, romantic old neighborhoods. The newer neighborhoods are full of stately buildings modeled after Paris, many of them tastefully refurbished with the city's newfound petrodollars. My favorite part, however, is Iceri-Seher, the rambling and atmospheric old town where we managed to find a hostel. The streets of the old town are built on the side of a hill, and are ringed in by ancient castle walls dating several hundred years.

A picturesque mosque in the heart of the Old Town:

A few of the neighborhood from the gigantic Virgin Tower (Not the Gigantic-Virgin Tower, which would have different implications):


A shady street:


A park just outside the city walls:


Baku is also a great place to explore the surrounding area. We took a couple of trips: one north to Suraxani, and one south to Qobustan.

Suraxani is a dusty and boring suburb of Baku, on the polluted and blighted Abseron Peninsula. Sounds fun already, doesn't it? Suraxani has one really cool sight, though: the Atesgah Fire Temple, built on an ancient Zoroastrian temple site dating back 2,500 years. Although the initial structure was destroyed by invading Arabs a long time ago, some Parsees from India (who worshipped the fire) came and built the current structure a few hundred years ago. There is a small community of fire worshippers who still pray at the temple. I was expecting some giant fire pit like in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, but it was really just a couple of tame fire set into the ground. No human sacrifices either.

The site was understated but cool to see. It's apparently the more impressive of only two fire temples outside of India, and it was cool to see a religious that was as old as 2,500 years. Here, the heart of the temple:



The walls of the temple had old Sanskrit and Farsi carvings, as well as rooms that were part of a caravanserai (like a motel, but older and with more charm). For your education, I have painstakingly reconstructed a typical day in the life of the Indian Parsees at the temple:



We also took a trip to the bizarre district of Qobustan. Qobustan is home to three good sights. In increasing oddness:

1. The easternmost Roman graffiti ever discovered. Some imperial soldier was supposed to be doing recon but instead decided to carve his name into the rock. This was before spraypaint, you see.

2. Cave carvings. Qobustan is home to a staggering array (over 30,000) of carvings and cave drawings by the earlier inhabitants of Azerbaijan. Some of these go back to the Upper Paleolithic period (as far back as 35,000 B.C.), a period that interests me because of my favorite book, The Clan of the Cave Bear (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clan_of_the_Cave_Bear -- you'll probably hate it, but I think it's good). There are tools and carvings from that period, all the way up until the present. Many of the carvings show giant dogs, buffalo, horses and deer.

The most intriguing archaeological finding in the caves is the hundreds of carvings of reed boats. The distinctive design of these boats matches those of early Scandinavian settlers, leading some scientists to speculate that the Vikings and similar ethnic groups may have originated in modern-day Azerbaijan long ago (the Caspian, Black and North Seas were once connected). A quick glance at actual Azeris makes me a bit skeptical of this idea, but it's food for thought.

3. Mud volcanoes. The highlight of Qobustan is definitely the chain of twenty-something little mud volcanoes clustered on a small plateau. High pressure from natural gas under the ground causes the greyish mud to shoot out of the volcanoes every few seconds. Standing in the middle of the volcanoes (they're as tall as a person), you can hear popping and farting sounds all around you. Some of the volcanoes produce big muddle bubbles that splash up into the air -- quite a show. The strange thing is that the volcanoes are completely cold. I don't know if it will upload here, but I have some good video footage of the site.

The top of a small volcano:

A river of slow-flowing mud:

Azerbaijan's people have impressed me as much as the sites. Central Asians talk more about hospitality, but the Azeris I've met have been genuinely welcoming in a very humble, understated way. When Thierry and I were coming back from Suraxani, three women saw us searching for directions to the Old City. They took us by the hand, insisted on paying for our subway ticket, took us to the right train, and told us where to go. Then, when the first thing women got off, another young lady decided to help us, and walked with us for 30 minutes out of her way to make sure we got back home. That story might be exceptional, but all the people I've met here have been incredible friendly.

Time's up for Azerbaijan, however. Because of the high prices there, I ended up cutting my time short. I'm a bit sad about that; three days in this amazing country is just scratching the tip of an interesting iceberg. I still want to se the Mountain of Languages, a series of high-altitude communities in the Azeri Caucasus that were cut off from the rest of the region for a long time. Many groups here (such as the Mountain Jews of Quba) speak languages found only in a few villages in the entire world. But, I guess that will have to wait until next time.

Next up: Armenia, probably

Exit Strategy

From: Tbilisi, Georgia

Ashgabat was one of my last stops in Central Asia. From there, it was a long trek west to the Caspian Sea and to Azerbaijan. Thierry and I parted ways with Michael in Ashgabat; he was moving on to Iran and we were heading to the Caspian shore.

The drive from capital to coast is grueling: over 450 miles in scorching desert heat, along very bumpy, unsealed roads, with (in this case, at least) a pretty sore stomach. Not that the destination is great either; the seaport of Turkmenbashi is an overpriced and boring place full of soldiers, sailors, working women, and cargo people waiting to send or receive shipments coming from Azerbaijan.

I've noticed a trend in the countries I've visited in Central Asia: they've gotten progressively harder to travel in. For instance: Kazakhstan had incredible infrastructure, Kyrgyzstan was accessible and easy, Tajikstan was bureaucratically painfully, Uzbekistan was a repressive police state with decaying telecommunications, and Turkmenistan was a logistical nightmare. The border crossings, too, have gotten harder each time.

So I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that the crossing from Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan across the Caspian was the most difficult part of the trip yet.

The crossing is hard for a few reasons. First, it's never really clear when the ferries will come in. The boats are primarily Azeri cargo freighters, and their main concern is goods coming from Asia, not passengers. Because Turkmenistan chargies heavy port fees for every hour they spend in harbor, the Azeri ships don't dock unless all the cargo has arrived from the east. If there are delays on the roads or train lines, the ferries might not dock for days. When we arrived to Turkmenbashi, there were six boats on the horizon waiting for the signal.

Unfortunately, there are often many people waiting at the dock for a few seats on the boat. Those that can't afford a hotel wait, sometimes for days, in the sweltering heat of the departure lounge with its gross bathroom. When the boats finally show up, those waiting will do anything to get onto the boat before it leaves. All this plays nicely into the hands of the dock officials, who impose extortionate bribes on anyone who wants to board.

We spent the better part of two days waiting for the right boat to come in. Our guide had placed a couple of calls to Azeri sailors who were supposed to tell us when to head to the dock.

The call came early in the morning and we rushed to the docks, paid the relevant fees and got in line with the others trying to get on board. This part is nerve-wracking, since the Turkmen officials can refuse your exit stamp, confiscate money, or otherwise make the ferry crossing not work. But we got through it, got neatly ripped off for our cabin on the ship (is this stopping in Cozumel or something?), and made it safely on board. We left a little after that.

As the boat pulled away from Turkmenbashi, I looked back at the shoreline and felt surprisingly triumphant. Four grueling days were over and had almost completed one of the trickiest border crossings in the region. On another level, I was leaving Central Asia, with its incredible sights and troublesome logistics, behind -- and sailing to a new region entirely.

The boat wasn't luxurious, but I figured that, if I just paid top dollar, I can at least pretend like my cabin is a good one. I mean, If it's good enough for the Azeri Navy, it's good enough for me. And here we were:



Maybe thanks to this attitude, I slept pretty well, and woke up to a view of Baku harbor at sunrise. We'd made it across!



Next up: a post-mortem on Central Asia; adventures in Azerbaijan

Absurdistan

From: Baku, Azerbaijan

This post is about our adventures in the capital of Turkmenistan.

I had heard only a little bit about Ashgabat before we got there, and most of it was in that way that people describe lesser-known cities with unhelpful references to better-known places. Backpackers do this a lot. For instance: Lithuania, "the Spain of the Baltics," Springfield, "the Paris of the Midwest," or, as one traveler described Ashgabat, "the Dubai of Turkmenistan." C'mon, people! Turkmenistan has, what? Three cities? I think it was justifiably skeptical of a description that included a comparison to a wealthy Emirati city.

Turns out I was wrong: Dubai-like it is. The city is full of unecessarily large structures, mostly made from white marble and inlaid with gold. The main boulevards are lined with trees and the parks have (expensively irrigated) gardens full of flowers. The streets are even clean, with small teams of traditionally-dressed Turkmen women picking up garbage and sweeping the sidewalks.



Ashgabat isn't so much a city of 'must-sees;' it's more a matter of soaking up the bizarreness that permeates the place. That said, there are a few unmissable oddities. Certainly the most ostentatious is the central Arch of Neutrality, constructed in 1998 to celebrate the Turkmen people's total support for Turkmenbashi's Policy of Neutrality (read: near-total isolation). The arch is over 80 metres tall and is capped by a giant, gold-covered statue of the man himself, which... wait for it... revolves to face the sun.



Close by and, to me, more ridiculous, is the Earthquake Memorial. In the middle of the Soviet era, Ashgabat was leveled by a gigantic earthquake that killed over 75% of the population. Turkmenbashi's mother and brothers died in the collapse, so he constructed a touching moment to honor the victims many years later. The way he chose to honor their memory, however, is pretty hilarious.

The bull presumably represents the tremor shaking the earth, upon which sits Turkmenbashi's mother, who is holding him (conveniently shown in gold). It's a little difficult to understand how the statue represents the other victims of the earthquake given that the only people in the statue are T-bashi and his mother... but there you have it.



The city, of course, has many more wonders. Among them: the Ministry of Fairness, the Ministry of Investment, the Museum of Turkmen Values, Turkmenbashi World of Fairytales (an amusement park), the Walk of Health (a 28 km-long set of steps set into the mountainside where government officials were once forced to trek annually), and... drumroll... the world's largest flagpole:



But I don't want to give you idea that Ashgabat is just some impersonal city of marble. It's also a deeply spiritual place. For around the city are many bookstores, shrines and reading rooms devoted to the Holy Ruhnama (see more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruhnama). The Ruhnama, or the Book of the Soul, was one of the many books published by Turkmenbashi when he was alive, but it enjoys a very special role in society (on par with the Qur'aan, according to its author). The book is basically the former President's fanciful interpretation of national history and a compilation of his thoughts on Turkmen values. Frighteningly, it's required reading for driving exams, high schools, medical schools and government examinations for all kinds.

I really couldn't resist buying a copy, especially when the government had so kindly subsidized my copy with its natural gas revenues (it was about $2.50, hardcover). For your enlightenment, I am attaching a few choice quotes from the Holy Book.

The Ruhnama on national identity: "I want to make the young Türkmen alert to this simple fact and to awaken his whole heart and mind to this fact. Why is the Türkmen people a great people? There are various reasons. “Ruhnama” focuses on all those great Türkmens. They are great because such great Türkmens made their own historians and foreign historians say that the Türkmen has been alive for five thousand years."

And on religion: "Allah selected the four heroes of the Türkmens – Oguz Han, Gorkut Ata, Görogly and Magtymguly - as the inheritors of the prophets. Today, Allah the Great has designated you as their inheritor. [Turkmenbashi], devote your life to maintaining the unity of the turkmen nation and to sustaining the golden life for them.” Hmm...

And on geography: "The Türkmen people has a great history which goes back to the Prophet Noah. Prophet Noah gave the Türkmen lands to his son Yafes and his descendants." Really?

So there you go: Ashgabat and the Ruhnama, an incredible adventure into the hilarious and the bizarre. Next up: escaping Turkmenistan and crossing the Caspian Sea. Adios!

Baku in Action

From: Baku, Azerbaijan

Well, here I am in Baku, a few hours after crossing the Caspian Sea from Turkmenistan. I know I'm only in Azerbaijan, but it sure feels like being back in civilization (for instance, a shower with hot water today!)

I've added phots to my last four blog posts. Some of the night shots are pretty spectacular and worth checking out.

I just uploaded a post about some adventures in Turkmenistan. More on that to come...

Barbeque

From: Baku, Azerbaijan

After our second night in Nukus, we headed from the Turkmen border. Before we left, we made a substitution to the traveling trio: James doubled back to Kyrgyzstan to meet his wife, and Thierry, a Dutch traveler I had met in Almaty, joined Michael and me.

We were all a bit nervous about the border crossing; both Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are police states with corrupt border officials, and you never know what sorts of "charges" the cops might cook up for the unwary traveler. Uzbekistan, in particular, has extremely draconian and inflexible rules: if your customs declaration is off by a dollar, or if you're missing even one hotel registration chit (which we were, thanks to the CNG incident) you could be forced to pay hundreds of dollars. I'd heard at least three horror stories of fines in the $500 range for trivial paperwork problems.

Our luck held up, however, and the crossing was painless, if slow. And there we were at last: Turkmenistan, most remote of the five regional Republics, the North Korea of Central Asia, former home of the "glorious" Saparmyrat Turkmenbashi. It's worth mentioning a quick word about Turkmenbashi, the "Father of the Turkmen People" and Turkmenistan's first post-independence leader. Much of what is alluring or worth seeing in this country is in some way related to him and his absurd beliefs and actions. You can read about him here -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saparmurat_Niyazov -- but you'll also get a pretty good sense for the big guy's absurdities through the next couple of blog posts.

ne of the unfortunate quirks about Turkmen tourist laws is that visitors are required to hire an (expensive) Turkmen guide for their entire stay in the country. Still, it can be nice to have someone to show you around. Our first guide was a very nice ex-military chap called Makhsat, who took us on a two-day trip south to the capital.

Our first stop in the country was Konye-Urgench, which contains the scattered ruins of a powerful thirteenth-century city-state: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konya-Urgench. The city was abandoned when its water source diverted, around the same time that the city was sacked by Timur (mentioned in earlier post about Samarqand). The monuments left, however, are very impressive, and show an architectural style very different from that of Uzbek cities.



Next we headed on a long drive into the Karakum (Blacksand) Desert. The desert is immense, hundreds of miles in both length and width. It makes a spectacular drive, with terrain ranging from harsh scrubland to duney areas where camels march across the road, oblivious to cars.

Here, camels marching across the road, oblivious to cars:


By nightfall, we reached the former town of Darvaza, which means 'Gates' in Turkmen. Several years ago, President Turkmenbashi visited the village and was upset that the low-income desert community didn't seem to meet the standards of his widely-touted 'Turkmen Golden Age,' a period of prosperity which began, unsurprisingly, when he assumed power. After his visit, he had Darvaza bulldozed and the residents displaced (to where, no one is really sure). So there isn't much left of the place now, just a few tea-houses and yurt camps. One of the yurts was ours for the night.

Rather than simply 'Gates,' the town of Darvaza could be more appropriately called the 'Gates of Hell'; a few miles behind the yurt camps, past a ridge of sand dunes, is the Gas Crater. The crater is, hands down, the most hell-like and spectacular thing I've seen this trip.

In the 1970s, Soviet engineers built a natural gas rig on the site of the current crater. Turkmenistan is extremely rich in natural gas, and the rig was one of several drain-the-earth style investments in the area. One day, the ground underneath the rig gave way and the rig collapsed into the pit, exploding into flame as sparks ignited the hundreds of open gas jets. The rig, and everyone on it, was quickly burned to a crisp. The giant crater left by the collapse is connected to almost limitless underground gas reserves, and has been burning for over 30 years, with no end in sight. The result is truly impressive, a flaming pit over 150 feet wide and over 100 feet deep. Here are a few shots:





We sat by the edge of the crater and watched the sunset. As it got darker, the crater became even more spectacular. Later, while we were heading back to the camp, our ancient Soviet minivan got its front wheel trapped deep in the sand. It took a while to get out. First we tried to the traditional Turkmen approach: keep flooring the engine harder until the sand gives up. It didn't. Michael, who grew up in Botswana and knew a thing or two about stuck tires, devised a plan to put plastic and strawgrass under the wheel and push the car out. That plan worked, but it had been an hour of trying by that point, and we were all hungry for dinner by the time we got back to the yurt.

Our guide woke us up early the next morning, since there were still a few hundred kilometres to go until Ashgabat. To break the trip, we stopped in the town of Jerbent, a desert village which had not been destroyed by Turkmenbashi.

The town had a couple of little wicker tea-stands, some pens for sick baby camels, and some houses and yurts. I noticed a disused corek (Turkmen bread) oven sitting in the middle of the village. Turkmen treat this national bread as holy, and they never set it upside down, feed it to animals, or sweep away its crumbs. The tandoor-like ovens used to make it are never destroyed, but are instead left to fall apart over time.

A boy with an ill camel (they tie them up so they don't tire themselves out in the desert):


Children around the abandoned oven:


I also made sure to check out the local gas station. Since the early 90s, the Turkmen government has used highly subsidized petrol and free natural gas to buy the support of the population, quite relevant given the government's widespread repression of free speech and laughable human-rights record. Turns out, at this station at least, that regular unleaded sells for $0.23 / L (around $1.00 a gallon). I asked a couple of people just to double-check, and they actually complained that the prices had gone up several times since the new leader came to power. Quite the energy crisis!

We drove south for a long time until we reached Ashgabat, the capital. As we passed through the colossal marble gates of the city, we left the desert behind and entered a bizarre world of marble and gold. More on that next time...

PS. I forgot to share a funny anecdote about the more bizarre side of traveling in a police state. Fifteen minutes after we crossed into Turkmenistan, we went to the Konye-Urgench bazaar to stock up on critical supplies such as wafer cookies and Coke. Michael and Thierry, in separate parts of the market, were taking pictures of vendors and their produce. They were each apprehended by the cops and taken (separately) for interrogation in a cafe, where the cops sat them down and demanded a Vegetable-Photography Fine so they could pay for their meal.

Just Deserts

From: Nukus, Karakalpak Republic, Uzbekistan

I'm writing from Nukus, capital of the semi-autonomous Republic of Karakalpakstan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karakalpakstan) on the edge of Uzbekistan. I knew almost nothing about the place until a couple of days ago. James, Michael and I were all having money problems in Khiva: no working ATMs, no place to get cash advances, no capable employees at the National Bank, etc. We were lamenting the situation to a taxi driver, but he reassured us: "Nukus is the capital of Karakalpakstan. Many, many investors. Money is easy to get -- US dollars, Uzbek sum, whatever." And so we set out for Nukus, world-class financial center, rival to New York and London, home to the most sophisticated investment community on the planet.

You probably won't be surprised to know that we haven't encountered any employees of Goldman Sachs in Nukus. If there is an investment community here, I'm guessing, they must trade in sand futures or sell financial instruments based on used-car parts. Quite frankly, this is one of the most hilariously bleak and desolate places I've ever gone. There's no visible industry, almost no tourists, and the streets are hot and empty.

There is one intriguing and impressive sight in Nukus, however: the Savitsky Museum. Savitsky was an artist during the early Soviet period (1920s and 30s). Among other things, he collected a large number of works that fell outside of the artistic and ideological mainstream supported by the Communist Party. Isolated in Nukus, he was able to preserve a lot of great pieces of artwork from destruction by Soviet cultural authorities -- his collection had more than 50,000 works by the time of his death. For a town like Nukus, the collection was extremely impressive, with excellent works spanning expressionism, abstract realism, Muralism and more modern styles.

We haven't stayed in Nukus the whole time, though. In search of even greater desolation, we took a field trip to Moynaq, a four-hour ride north of Nukus into the desert. Moynaq's tale is a sad and interesting one. Until the 1960s, the town was was the fishing capital of the ill-fated Aral Sea, and the area was fairly prosperous by regional standards. In the late Soviet period, the area's rulers decided to divert the Amu-Darya and other major tributaries of the Aral Sea, to try and boost cotton production in desert areas. It worked, but, with reduced inflowing water, the Aral started to shrink at an alarming rate. It's now a tiny fraction of its former size, and towns like Moynaq were cut off from the shoreline in a matter of years.

Moynaq, today, is almost a ghost town, with absolutely no local industry except a bit of cotton farming in the suburbs. At our hotel, once a large and presumably bustling place, we were the only tourists. Just outside of town are dozens of eerie, rusted ships sitting on the desert sand, over a hundred miles from the current ocean -- a sad reminder of the Soviets' attempt to play Mother Nature:

In a place like Moynaq, you have to bring your own fun. Since it was one of our last nights together, the three of us decided to have a little 'Booze Cruise' on one of the beached ships in the desert. We had a bottle of good Uzbek wine we brought from Bukhara, got some local bread (there are no restaurants in Moynaq, in turns out) and spent the evening on the hull of a rusted fishing trawler. The sunset was spectacular, and (although it probably goes without saying), we had the place to ourselves. Here, Michael and James, drinking Muscat out of plastic glasses I carved with a bread knife:

I'm getting ready to head to the Turkmen border tomorrow at Konye-Urgench. Looking forward to six days in Central Asia's most bizarre country... will write more soon.

Hard Khore

From: Khiva, Uzbekistan

We've spent the past couple of days in Khorezm, a tiny province in the West of Uzbekistan. There aren't many cities, but a couple stand out: Boston (same spelling -- weird, right?) and Khiva, the most beautiful and atmospheric little town I've seen in Asia. We've gotten up to a few fun adventures while here.

Khiva is a very compact little place, architecturally charming but a little dead -- it feels a bit like a museum. A lot of the town is reconstructed since (surprise, surprise) the Soviets blew it apart when they invaded in the 20s. Still, it gives a great sense of what the city was like at the height of the Khorezm kingdom: dazzling green towers, giant medressas, mysterious-looking mosques. The city is incredible to look at both during the day:

And at night:

At night, in fact, the city becomes totally deserted. Even the young louts you usually see hanging on streetcorners in other Central Asian cities are oddly absent. With no one around, the city starts to feel like a giant, Eastern playground to semi-adults like myself. Two nights ago, Michael, James and I grabbed a very responsible quantity of beer and climbed up on different things around Khiva: the city walls, a small necropolis, a mosque. Many of the buidings are close together and built with multiple levels, so it's possible to get onto a lot of the monuments.

Later that evening we stumbled across a few shaggy Turkmen-style hats and decided to make a little skit about Central Asia. Something to show the folks at home, you know? It will be a while before I can upload it, but the video clip is (if I may say so) pretty stellar: part Borat impersonation, part Soviet war song, part Russian dancing competition, part Turkmen nationalism. All fun... video to be uploaded later.

So yeah... today, we took a fun little trip north to the Kyzylkum (Redsand) desert, into an area called Fifty Fortresses. I'm not actually sure there are fifty of them, but there's a bunch of gigantic mud castles on mountains in the middle of the desert. The couple we saw were remarkably well-preserved. Here's a view from the main fortress of Ayaz-Qala down to an outpost:

I will say, however, that the climb up to one of them was kinda exhausting. It must have been the heat, I told myself, and also the altitude. Or maybe neither, and I've just become out of shape by eating heavy, ricey lunches and sitting in tea-houses half the day. Maybe I'm building a Central Asian physique.

But, to our tale. Our driver took us to this touristy yurt camp and camel ranch near one of the biggest fortresses. This place basically specializes in renting camels (the Bactrian kind) out to groups of tourists. Pretty cool -- it was one of the reasons we went out to the desert in the first place. Too bad the camel ranch didn't have any camels. "No camels at all?" I asked. No. Apparently they camels had wandered away in the morning ("to get their lunch") and the camel people had no idea where they had gone. The Uzbek tourist sector at its finest... We went for a swim in a nearby lake instead. I guess it was more like an oasis since it's in the desert and all.

So Khorezm has been fun, but I'm looking forward to the next couple of weeks. Tomorrow we're heading to Karakalpakstan, which is like a country with Uzbekistan and has a lot of bizarre sights. From there, south to Turkmenistan, with its gas craters, odd capital and rock formations. A week into Turkmenistan, I'll cross the Caspian to Azerbaijan on a giant Soviet ferry boat. All good stuff, but I probably won't get a chance to write about it until I reach Baku (August 19th). Until then...

Hammaming it up

From: Khiva, Uzbekistan

We spent an interesting few days in Bukhara, a beautiful city in central Uzbekistan.

There are a lot of fascinating sights in the city, but I'll stick to the highlights. The neatest sight in the city was the Ark, the former palace of the Emir of Bukhara. The citadel is large and served as the seat of the prince until the Soviets attacked and destroyed most of the building.



Nearby is the unpleasant-looking Bug Pit, where prisoners of the Emir were left to rot with scorpions, snakes and other vermin whose stock was refreshed on a regular basis. At one point, the pit was home to two British officers who got on the wrong side of the ruler.

Bukhara also has a some of stunning medressas and religious buildings, many of them spectacular at night:

The three of us took a day trip to see the buildings of the Naqshbandiyya, a Sufi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufi) order based outside of Bukhara. When I was in Senegal, I spent a lot of time studying one of the Sufi orders there, so it was interesting to see the Central Asian variety. The Naqshbandiyya were a mystical Muslim order who pursued their religious devotion through meditation, arcane rituals and spiritual ceremonies, in a way very different from "mainstream" Islam. Thanks to the Soviets, and to the recent death of the order's spiritual leader, there isn't much left in the way of dedicated followers. There was an interesting museum dedicated to seven of the Naqshbandi saints, their wanders around the world and their dress, a lot of which were stunning, with Qur'aanic verses woven into the fabric. Here, the courtyard of the main order complex:

When we got back from the Sufi shrines, we remembered it was US Independence Day -- time for some celebration. We ended up doing a private wine tasting at the Omar Khayyam House. Omar Khayyam was a brilliant Persian scientist and philosopher who spent much of his life in Bukhara. Despite the protests of local haters, he enjoyed of both women and wine -- hence, the wine tasting salon named in his honor. I was pleasantly surprised by the tasting experience. We tasted 8 wines (some whites, some reds, all with generous pours), for $6 a head. The wines weren't all great, but they were pretty interesting. Most were blends of well-known European grapes like Cabernet Sauvignon with more obscure Georgian varietals. Some of the wines were from made from "native" Uzbek grapes, which had been developed in the late 1800s in the greenhouse of an eccentric Russian nobleman, then planted in large quantities in Central Uzbekistan. Overall, very cool experience.

Bukhara also had some less pleasant moments -- specifically, an incident involving the CNG (Uzbek successor to the Soviet KGB). Everything is fine now, but it was a little worrisome for a bit. Here's what happened: we had bumped into the owner of our hotel on the street, and decided to stay with her since the accomodation was cheap ($5 a night, yeah!) She had just opened her hotel and the official registration was going to be processed in a couple of days. Technically, the hotel wasn't authorized to take guests for a couple of days, although we didn't know this at the time.

A local thief and layabout called Memin, who also works as an informant for the CNG, noticed us talking to the hotel owner in the street. Then, from what the owner later told us, he followed us back to the hotel to confirm we were staying there. He tipped off another, more senior informant, who was watching by the hotel to check what we were up to. None of us noticed the guy at any point. The day after we arrived, we went to the bazaar with the owner and her husband to buy food for dinner. We hadn't noticed, but the senior informant had been following us for about 40 minutes. When we stopped to grab a beer at the bar, he started interrogating the owners, asking them to open their bags and demanding if we were staying with them.

The owners told us to take a cab to a bathhouse in another part of the city and then tried to beat the informant back to the hotel, where they quickly packed up our bags, spirited them away to another hostel, and had someone prepare fake registrations to make it look like we were staying at the new place the whole time. The informant came by our first hotel shortly after to check for (and maybe take) our bags, but the owners beat him to the punch. A weird story, but it ended up ok in the end.

The reason that both Memin and the senior informant were after us is, of course, about the money. The fines, if they had caught us, would be $600 per person, plus fines for the owners, and the informants would have gotten a substantial cut of the $2,000 total. It was an annoying incident for us, but could have been much worse for the hotel owners. To me, it was frustrating to see hard-working, entreprising businesspeople are undermined by leaches and informants looking to make a quick buck. I guess you can't expect much more from a post-Soviet police state.

I mentioned that we escaped from the bazaar to a hammam, or bathhouse. Hammams come in two varieties: the fancy, touristy kind with clean toilets and skilled masseurs, and; the gritty, cheap, slightly dirtier kind that the locals use. "Local Banya #6," where we went, is of the second type. It was a cool experience, though: you sit for a while in a very hot and humid sauna room until you can't take it, then you head into a cooler, more humid room to wash in cold water and prepare yourself for re-entry into the sauna. You repeat the process as often as you like, and I borrowed a black pumice stone from an old man to get some of the dead skin off. Think I ended up taking off some live skin too...

This has turned into a long post, so I'm going to wrap up. Be back soon...

International Friendship

From: Khiva, Uzbekistan

My first stop in Uzbekistan was Samarqand. Before I get started here, some poetry. No respectable Central Asian travel blogger would miss a chance to quote a few tired lines of Flecker's The Golden Journey to Samarqand:

"We travel not for trafficking alone,
By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned.
For lust of knowing what should not be known
We take the Golden Road to Samarkand.

I'd have put it differently, but yes, I was excited to arrive; Samarqand has always seemed to me the most mysterious, romantic and legendary city on the Silk Road. It was the first city I learned about in the region and, in many ways, the reason I decided to travel here.

In Samarqand, I joined up with a couple of new travel buddies. The first was James, a friend of my close friend from Penn, expert in Central Asian history and fluent Russian speaker. He's been conducting research in other parts of Uzbekistan for a serious blog focused on Central Asia. We've also been traveling with Michael, a world-traveling Aussie we met at our hostel. It's been great having a bit of a travel group. Traveling alone the past few weeks has been a lot of fun, but I like having a small group. Turns out we're all doing pretty much the same itinerary in Uzbekistan, trekking west from Samarqand through Bukhara and Khiva into the semi-autonomous "Republic of Karakalpakstan."

Samarqand has the most spectacular monuments in Central Asia. There are a mind-boggling number of turquoise-domed mosques, mausoleums, medressas and forts, all largely intact since the town was never bombarded by the Soviets. The most spectacular of these sights is the Registan, a large plaza with three stunning medressas (Qur'aanic schools). Each of the buildings is large, with colorful blue-green tiles and complex 3-D geometric patterns carved into the vaulted ceilings. Together, the buildings of the Registan are awe-inspiring. It's also interesting how the Islamic world produced such stunning public buildings: since Islam forbids painting and many visual arts, Muslim creative types tended to channel their energy into poetry or architecture.

James and I headed to the Registan as soon as I got to Samarqand. We paid off a guard who let us into the closed parts of the building (everything is available for a price in Central Asia). We climbed up one of the minarets and got some good shots of the buildings.

Here, the majolica dome of a medressa:


And the interior courtyard of another:


We also checked out the Bibi-Khanyn mosque, a giant, crumbling place that I found even moreimpressive than the Registan:



It's easy to get overloaded by Samarqand's famous and imposing masterpieces. Fortunately, we also found some less-frequented and more mysterious sights. One afternoon, we managed to track down the Ishratkhana mausoleum, a ruined burial place outside of town. The place was pretty deserted, it had an underground crypt with a skylight, crumbling minarets and a few spiral staircases. Atmospheric enough, in fact, that the three of us decided to head back there at night with a couple of bottles of wine and a homemade dinner. One local we hung out with advised against the plan: "there are many places of dark magic, especially in Samarqand." Turned out ok: the only real evil was the slightly stale bread we ate for dinner. Below, me going into the crypt:



After a few days, the three of us headed to the nearby town of Shakhrisabz to explore local history. The city was home to Timur (Tamerlane -- see wikipedia), one of Central Asia's greatest conquerors. The few sights in Shakhrisabz are all related to the guy. We went to the still-imposing ruins of the Ak-Saray Palace:



After that, we visited what was intended to be Timur's crypt. He had ordered its construction some time before his death, but died during Samarqand during the winter. Since the pass to Shakhrisabz was closed, his followers decided to bury him in the capital. The bodiless crypt was still neat, though.

But enough of monuments. What trip to Shakhrisabz would be complete without a trip to the local amusement park? OK, it's not exactly Six Flags Uzbekistan, but the ride on the Russian Wheel (ferris wheel, to you non-Soviets) was actually pretty thrilling. Admittedly, mostly for safety reasons: the wheel seemed to have been constructed from sheet metal welded together by middle school students, and the movement was powered by a pair of strained motors that looked like they're been salvaged off a lawnmower. But that's not to say that Soviet amusement parks aren't high tech. Check out this short video of the propellor-powered merry-go-round: [to be uploaded later.]

After the park, we stopped and had lunch at a small tea-house. Here, I discovered yet another facet on the Central Asian jewel of hospitality. I had asked one of the young boys working at the restaurant if I could use the bathroom. He grinned led me to a wall in the back, then pointed at a spot on the wall: "here." It became kind of obvious that he wanted to go next to me, I guess in a gesture of international bonding. It's weird what will make someone's day.

Samarqand, although fun by day, also has some decent nightlife. One of the Michael's friends in a Samarqand native, so he and his buddies took us out for a night on the town. We started out with a trip to watch the Euro Cup final, a nail-biter between Germany and Spain, especially if you're a football fan. Spain won. Say what you like about Spanish football, but there's no other country who can fake injuries and whine so convincingly on the field. After the match, we headed to a nightclub for some late-night entertainment. Bizarre, one of the local guys ordered a giant fruit sculpture. Gotta say I've never been a club where seven guys were polishing off a melon-tower... guess there's a lot of ways to be a tough guy in Uzbekistan.

All in all, a good few days at the heart of the Silk Road. Next up: adventures in the holy city of Bukhara.