Saturday, November 12, 2011

Carmina Burana Tower: a Kyrgyz goodbye

My last few days in Kyrgyzstan focused around visiting the Burana Tower and really not much else.  I had done a lot in Central Asia so far, albeit not nearly as much as I had planned, but for the limited ease of access and somewhat terrible weather, I felt like I had deserved a bit of a break.  So I spent lavishly on tea at a local teahouse called “Coffee Shop”, continued to lap up lagman at the little wooden house next to the stadium, and got really sick a couple of times.  

I also did make it to the Burana Tower.  Why anyone built this this is completely beyond me but I am so glad they did because I visited it on the most beautiful day and had a full view of the valley.  It makes no sense why anyone would build such a tower in the middle of the valley.  It’s not even that tall.  In fact I feel like it was a huge waste of resources and effort, but I was really happy I got to see it.  It was actually my favourite thing in Kyrgyzstan I realized, as I sat on a mound of dirt looking at the tower and the mighty Tian Shan in the distance on a crisp and sunny November morning.  There was also a a pair of youths bombing around the rough terrain on a motorcycle with a sidecar and I eyed them suspiciously and with envy.  One day. 

It was a nice way to spend the day before my departure from Bishkek, a city that slowly grew less and less enchanting for me.  But this has always been the case with me - I have a natural bias towards Dushanbe and the Tajiks and for some reason no amount of social conditioning can fix this.  This is me, and the first step is coming to terms with it. 

Trying to the find the airport was less of a nightmare this time around because I had already practiced on my trip to Osh, so I feel like these instructions and pictures will help others in the future stand on the shoulders of giants, as it were. Actually there’s not a tonne of value I can provide here.  You just go to the central boulevard thing and look for the sign (pictured).  Asking people probably won’t help much, and if I’m honest they have probably changed the whole process since I was there.  


Upon arrival at the airport I spent the last of my Kyrgyz currency on some tea and a beer and then boarding my Aeroflot flight back towards Moscow and ultimately the still warm and ever-lovely Budapest.  

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Up In This Bish

At this point, I was ready to leave Karakul.  Between my passive aggressive host, and the beheadings, and the needlessly intricate door regime, and the recent snowstorm that had engulfed the city, I was ready to take off.  The next morning I wandered down to the marketplace, ate a plate of fresh pelmeni, and walked back to the bus station to await my chariot to Bishkek.  Sometimes there is nothing more fun and psychologically cathartic than plugging in your iPod and zooming across the central Asian steppes in a snowstorm in an old Soviet bus.  Except when it takes forever to leave because someone needs to bring on about 50 burlap sacks full of potatoes and then you get stopped outside Cholpon-Ata by the police who come on and search every male and check every ID and all the baggage.  Normally I'd be all, "Ugh, let's go!" but I did feel safer afterwards knowing that the hat-trick killer was not on the bus. 

Back in the Bish I was pretty determined to visit the Osh Bazaar, eat a final serving of plov, and try that famed Kumyz that everyone just goes nuts for.  So, I popped by the Osh Bazaar and it was closed.  Then I wet for plov in a yurt at the Dordoy Bazaar and it was…atrocious.  If there is one thing I have learned about the arduous journey of plov, it gets much less flavourful and much more tough and muttony as you go north.  This was the case in that yurt in the Dordoy and the only way I could get myself out of the situation was to intermittently shovel spoonfuls of the unpalatable plov into a plastic bag that I always carry around (a little trick I picked up from my grandmother after repeated trips to the Kelowna Mall food court) and when the hostesses returned to ask how my meal was I responded, “delicious!”  Look, I know what you’re thinking, but this food wasn’t very good but the hostesses were so lovely and I was in a yurt, and I there’s a very real chance that while I may not like Kyrgyz-style plov the 5+ million Kyrgyz do so now is not a time to exercise my white male privilege.


After the plov incident I explode the market for exotic spices and kumyz and, let me tell you, kumyz could use a powerpoint presentation or two in marketing.  If someone asked me what a bucket of _____ looked like I would probably direct them to the dairy section of the Dordoy bazaar.  What I ended up buying in bulk, however, was honey.  The old Russian woman selling several variants gave me several soup spoons’ worth of samples until I finally was so overcome with diabetic shock that I just bought whatever this sorceress was selling.  I also got some spices - mainly berberis, chilies, and some variant of cumin - and they were fantastic.  I basically barged into the spice section and screamed, “How do I make plov?!!?!” and everyone immediately bolted to attention to scream at me their own preferred method.  In retrospect, after the Dordoy-yurt-plov-plastiv bag incident, I shouldn’t be asking anyone north of the Ferghana for advice on something so delicate but I wasn’t exactly in buyer’s market so I worked with what I had.  

Monday, November 7, 2011

Door Prizes

The American went out for the evening to eat with a local Uzbek family and opted to tell me I wasn’t invited.  I mean, that’s fine, I don’t expect to be invited anywhere, really (except everywhere in Central Asia, and the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe, and almost everywhere else I have ever been because apparently I wear some sort of sign that says “Please don’t let me die” in almost every conceivable language), but was it really necessary to tell me that I wasn’t invited?  In any case, it was cold and snowy in Karakul (you’ll remember me dropping the jar of kimchi on the icy steps, though I hardly blame the ice.  I blame my attempt at trying to have it all, and having it all at once.  It can’t be done!) and I was more than okay with staying in.  I was also warned that 3 severed heads had recently been found in the area, so I was fine with hunkering down in the safety (?) of this Soviet-era apartment and making a couple pots of soup* and get down to writing these postcards I keep accumulating. 

My host had warned me about the door, and he had warned me sternly.  To the point where I don’t think he actually trusted me with using the door.  He clearly trusted me around his belongings but he did not trust me with opening or closing a door.  Sure.  That’s fine, really, I’m not too bothered.  So anyway, let’s talk about this door.  It’s really important you understand my material circumstances and the general mechanics so that the story really comes alive for you, as it did for me.  It was actually a double door.  There was a large padded metal door on the outside that clamped shut with an old-timey skeleton key that turned about 4 times to lock all the bolts.  The key hold for this was accessible from either side, which meant you had to lock it with the skeleton key from the inside once you got home.  Then there was the second door, which was wooden (or else it wasn’t, but it was certainly older) and it clamped shut from the inside.  The reason all this clamping business is worth noting is because the doors were totally sealed from either side, and there were no cool tricks you could do with a credit card to break in.  In short, no one was going anywhere.  The inside door had a separate keyhole with a proper lock contraption.  Real keys too, none of that skeleton nonsense. 

So opening and closing this door was just miserable.  It was a real pain to have to turn all the locks and as someone who is paid to find efficiencies in processes and ways of working, I felt like this was an unnecessary amount of effort to open the door.  I decided that I should just leave the skeleton key in the lock in the first door and leave the inside door ajar.  I mean, no one was getting in, I was going to be awake, the apartment was small, and I was actually worried that my host, upon returning, would be annoyed at how long it took me to open all the locks on the doors to let him in.  So efficiency won out and I left the door open with the skeleton key in the inside of the outer door.  Does any of this make sense?  So this was fine until the weight of the massive inside door forced it to slowly shut and trigger the lock to click and effectively close the door.  I tried for the knob to open it back up but I noticed THERE WAS NO KNOB.  THIS DOOR HAD NO KNOB.  OMG OMG OMG OMG OMFG THERE IS NO KNOB ON THE DOOR. 

Okay do you understand exactly what is going on here?  The skeleton key, which was on a key chain that contained the other keys to the inside door, was inside the lock and trapped in the airlock  between the doors.  And because the key was INSIDE the lock, no one from the outside with a skeleton key could open the door from the outside.  Do you have any idea what sort of panic wave flashed over me at this time?  Do you have any idea how many times I jumped up in the air tensely and hissing “OMI@&^%INGGOD I’M GOING TO KILL MYSELF!”?  I actually stopped breathing for about 8 seconds.  Seriously, a triple decapitation was preferable to this.   And while it would have been a little bit less hair raising if I had been given a whole evening to solve this, but he was due home at 9pm and it was 8:50.  I was hoping the gods of irony were smiling on me but then I realized that this situation wasn’t ironic at all. 

Now look, let’s just be clear: I’ve locked myself in a room before.  Twice.  Once was in some condemned house I lived in in Vancouver where I couldn’t stop tinkering with a lock in my room with a bobby pin and I accidentally triggered the lock to close and also break it and it had broken in the closed position and I had to send one of my roommates a frantic Facebook wall post asking her and others to come help me.  I ended up taking the door off.  The other time was in a much more modern facility at UBC when I left my keys in the outside of the door and it shut and autolocked and I couldn’t operate the lock from the inside because there was a key in it.  Durrr.  So I had to text a friend who lived nearby to come over and turn the key to open my door.  She also had like strep throat or something and this was the first time she left bed in a week.  Oh, I guess I also once locked myself in my car, and I have no idea how that actually happened but it was an American auto so who know what myriad things went wrong?  I had to scroll down the windows and shimmy out, then open the door with the keys.  Oh, and I guess I also locked myself in the bathroom at the Grand Forks Credit Union when I was 5 but, like, whatever. 

Annnyway.  Back to that Soviet apartment block in Karakul, Kyrgyzstan, where I was currently contemplating jumping out of the 3rd storey window and ending this chapter then and there.  Drawing inspiration from the multitude of times I have locked myself into something, I thought about what I know about locksmithery.  What I gleaned was that locks can be dismantled, from the inside, with a screwdriver.  So I ran into the kitchen and tore it apart looking for some sort of tool, or flat ended knife (thank god the Soviets didn’t needlessly overcomplicate their lives with all that Robertson and Phillips nonsense).  The first drawer I found contained…a screwdriver.  I just thought, “Really?  Too easy.”  WELL IT WAS TOO EASY.  The screwdriver was too big to fit into the tiny ridges of the screws on the lock plating.  I instead tried a butterknife and was able to work the screws with ease.  The plating came off and revealed a complex and intricate lock system with a square hole for where a door knob would fit into if someone ever found it even remotely sensible to install a DOOR KNOB ON A DOOR.  But before we get ahead of ourselves with these ultra modern concepts in home design, the question of the square hole was standing in the way of me opening the door.  Almost instinctively, I thrust the larger screwdriver into the squarehold and turned it.  The spring on the lock released and the door gingerly swung open.  I grabbed the skeleton key and immediately began reassembling the lock, attached the plating, and fastened the final screws.  I returned all the equipment, washed the knife, swept up any bits that had fallen on the floor, then put on a kettle for some tea and tried to calm my shaky ass down. 

About 5 minutes later I heard the buzzer and opened the door for my host, who asked how things were.  And super casually I responded, “Oh good, did some reading” while my eye caught the screws and plating on the door where fresh paint had chipped away and the screws had been put in the wrong holes so the brush strokes didn't line up and all four just seemed to glare at me, taunting me, as if to say, "We're going to tell" and I broke into a sweat thinking, "omg, omfg, he's going to see the paint chips.  HE'S GOING TO SEE THE PAINT CHIPS."  I really can't handle all this stress.  I would actually rather die than have to go through that ordeal again.**

* I told him I would probably only go get some soup to make and he had said "If you eat any of my food you will have to pay for it."  Uggghhhhh.  All I wanted was a package of chicken noodle soup from the local shop, and the shelves were almost completely barren except for some amazing Russian bean soup, so I really came out on top here.  

**I wrote this passage in 2013, assuming I’d post it shortly, but I am now re-reading it in 2016 and I am absolutely riddled with anxiety.    

Uyghur, Please!

I had a couple days to spend in Bishkek, and since you know I am actually not interested in spending another second of my life in Bishkek ever again, I decided to go to the Issyk Kul, which is a bumpin’ summer getaway for cost-conscious Russian families.  It was early November, so thankfully I wouldn’t have to compete with these Russians for places to stay so I took a bus to the town of Issyk Kul and then hopped into a marshrutka that was going around the rim of Lake Issyk Kul to Karakul on the other side.  The view out the window of the marshrutka was unbeatable, except I couldn’t see it because I was in a completely inopportune area of the marshrutka and it had curtains and I ended up talking to an American Peace Corps worker who occupied the majority of my time with conversation that was…peppered with condescension to say the absolute least.  
The Road to Issyk Kul
When we finally reached Karakul it was dark.  I had hoped he would know of some cheap accommodations and he only knew of a couple of families that took in people but it was took late to contact them (it was 5pm) and that I should probably stay with him.  I didn’t totally want to, but I figured it was a good option.  He had two enormous 5L jars of kimchi that he had just made and was bringing back, and we had taken a taxi to the apartment.  When he was helping an old lady out of the shared taxi he handed me the two jars and and i was struggling to carry it and my bags so in attempt to get a better grip on the jars and the bags, one of the jars popped out of my grip and onto the ground and smashed, sending up a heavy waft of sour, spicy garlic.  He was not happy.  I wasn’t happy, but here we were, unhappy.  

Some beautiful mountain scenery and the charming taxi economy
He gave me a room to sleep in and I hit the bed fairly hard, exhausted from a long trip.  The next day I planned to explore the city and find some acceptable accommodation that would allow me to breathe and manage my own affairs.  This wasn’t possible, as he took me to some village where he taught Korean (-?  He wasn’t even Korean.  I must admit I admire his linguistic prowess) and I was free to wander around, which I really enjoyed because Kyrgyz villages on the threshold of winter’s embrace are quite beautiful.  I met the family he had stayed with when he first moved there, and we enjoyed some tea and cookies.  I couldn’t quite understand the mothers’s Russian, no doubt a fault of my own incapabilities, but my host helped by yelling at me the same words louder and aggressively in Russian. Thanks.  I believe this is along the lines of “saying it louder and in English” in theory.  After I helped the mother pick apples and then took a walk up the hillside to survey my domains.  

Fun stove
I then met my caretaker after his lesson and we returned to Karakul.  Okay, is it weird that I say “washroom”?  Because every time I said I needed to use a “washroom” he looked at me in a strange way and said “You’re not going to find one of those here” which is totally fine by mean I will pee literally anywhere, but then after I asked again a few hours later he finally said, “What the @#$% is a washroom?”  Ugh.  
I asked to buy this but was told there is no guarantee it works and therefore the seller felt it would be an unfair transaction.

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Bishkek or Bust

I rose early after my night at the cluuub and I walked to the airport to catch my flight with Tajik Air to Bishkek.  It was a pretty decent and comfortable ride but I was one of 4 people on the plane so it felt kind of weird.  But I had the opportunity to see the Ferghana Valley from the air and also pass over the Toktogul Reservoir while I sipped my free juice-like drink. Arriving in Bishkek I immediately knew how to solve my problems and not have to murder a taxi driver by hopping in the marshrutka outside for 200 som and then getting to the centre of the city, where I walked to a different hostel this time, owned by a Japanese-Kyrgyz couple and more decently priced.  Also I think the wifi was better?  I don't know.  

After lapping up some lagman and a delicious Jibek Jolu beer (it tastes like the Granville Island Amber Ale*), that evening I went off to the Guys Fawkes Day celebration way in the south of town. The Southern BBQ was owned and operated by an American who went to Uzbekistan with the Peace Corps in 1992 and had stayed in the region ever since, originally working for British American Tobacco, and then Nestle, and then a few other organizations.  He told me that due to the Uzbek currency being made nonconvertible sometime in the late 90s, there was a bunch of nestle chocolate eggs brought into the country but because they could not convert the currency they decided that it was not worth spending the marketing dollars to actually sell them so they took the loss and left them in some warehouse.  I would love to find that warehouse.  It reminds me of the Uzbek Cotton Scandal of the late 1970s, which is one of my favourite Soviet scandals and even Brezhnev's son-in-law was implicated.  Fascinating!

I also met with a bunch of Aussie and Kiwi expats who all worked for a Canadian mining conglomerate and learned about that chocolate fiasco.  The miners gave me a ride to my hostel in their taxi and told me I was staying in the absolute ghetto of Kyrgyzstan, which I naturally liked.  They also said I had a “*&^%ed up accent” but I don’t even know what that means.  I don’t have much exposure to the Australian dialect, apart from what is consistently and evenly disseminated in the form of “good times” at literally every hostel I have ever been to.  Have you even seen the “I’m beached, bru” youtube series?  I realise that it’s Aussies making fun of Kiwis but whatever, if “”*&^%ed up” means “100% articulate and well-enunciated” then sign me up. At least my ancestors chose to come to Canada.**

*LOL do you remember the Cafe Crepe at UBC that was open for like 5 months and was absolutely BUMPIN' in 2006?  Like, it was THE place to be on campus because they served pitchers of Granville Island for $10 and everyone would go there and order beer but wouldn't get crepes and their ventilation system let out into the building our something and they got shut down because they were a health hazard and were full of drunk 18-21 year olds and they didn’t have a proper liquor licence?  Was there ever a better time to be alive than the mid-to-late 2000s?


**lol do you remember when I was a park ranger at Christina Lake and several campers independently asked if I grew up in Australia?  That doesn’t even make sense.  If you’re looking for a lack of worldliness, look no further than literally everyone from Calgary.  

Friday, November 4, 2011

Fly Like a G6

Okay so I actually did have a reason to leave Dushanbe.  I decided I needed to go back to Bishkek early was I was actually interested in meeting with some expats who worked for a publication there and they were hosting an open house night at a Southern Style barbecue in south Bishkek to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day.  So obviously I had to go for that, because if there is anything I love more than clubbing in Dushanbe, it’s…actually not Southern Barbecue, journalism, or Bishkek at all.  I’m really not sure what the urgency was about but I did it.  I bought a ticket on Tajik Air which is prestigiously known as being one of the airlines that is banned from the European Union over “safety concerns” or whatever.  Ugh, nanny state, am I right?

For my final night in Dushanbe I met up with Ashley, the Brit who was working for some UN detachment doing whatever.  No idea what people actually do, you know?  He had a ballin' pad in downtown Dushanbe and I was to sleep on his couch.  We were going to head to another British expat's place where we had shot after shot of revoltingly vile vodka chased down with a massive 5L jar of fruit juice from the market.  There were two Americans who worked at the embassy teaching English and wanted to move to Canada to take advantage of all the sexual freedoms and Tegan and Sarah concerts.  They loved Tegan and Sarah.  I told them how crazy it was when I found out that Tegan and Sarah were—at this point they were expecting me to say “lesbians” but instead I said—“Canadian.”  I was actually really surprised when I found out they were from Vancouver.  

Anyway, we hit the cluuuub hard.  Like, so hard.  We arrived at one of two clubs in Dushanbe and we danced our faces off.  Well, at least I did.  You see, the young expat community was so small that they all kind of had a bit of drama with each other as they did additional shots the drama escalated and they all sort of faded away.  I, on the other hand, only cared about the Tajikistan Top 40 selection that the DJ was playing, and when Pitbull's "Give Me Everything Tonight" came on, it was me in my trout t-shirt (from Canadian Tire) and hiking boots, Ashley, and the two American girls on the dance floor dancing and I got so caught up that I screamed "This is it!  This is the best night of my life!  This is where my life peaks!" and it's true because everything has been kind of a depressing gradual decline ever since.  Meanwhile, of course, the local Tajik elite were sitting in their booths smoking shisha and abstaining from drinking and lethargically watching with jaded eyes this exotic foreign entertainment that existed solely to please them.  Best. Night. Ever. 


Rather than go on to the next club, I knew when to bow out when I was riding high so I hitched a ride home with an Egyptian perfume salesman in a Mercedes SUV.  Ashley had given me a key so I was completely in control of my own person, though evidently walking at night alone often meant getting extorted by the local police, and as much as I love that, I wasn’t about to compromise my $150 flight the next morning.  Did I mention I paid for it in cash in an aviabillet office?  I just reached into my bag and pulled out $150 and handed it to a lady who handed me a ticket.  I don’t trust cash transactions one bit.  How on earth was that an acceptable way of reserving my ticket? How did she know how many seats were available on the plane?  How could I confirm that the ticket was even for a real plane?  Was her Apple II computer even plugged in?  So many questions. 

Everything about this video sums up the night.  I have no idea what that 5L jar of fruit juice was, but I have never felt more comfortable describing something as "sizzzurp."

You Can Do It Put Your Bac(trian Camel) Into It

Don't stop get it get it.
I have almost nothing to say about Bactria, except that going there has given me so many options regarding clever posting titles that I wish something actually interesting had happened on my time there.  I mean, I suppose once I woke up and realized the Pamirs were a non-option, I had all sorts of options available to me on my trip back to Dushanbe.  I walked towards the market where I had been dropped of and a man started hollering at me from across the street.  This is usually the best way to get my attention so I crossed and began to negotiate.  I thought he had said 300 som, but he was actually only saying  30 som, and I was just in a tizzy ready to talk him down because I had paid 70 to get there and I thought it was unreasonable.  Anyway, it turns out I was the unreasonable one and he was just trying to recoup some of his losses on his speedy trip to Dushanbe. 

Or was he?  I sat in the back seat with a young girl and there was an old man in the front.  He dropped off the young girl only a half hour into the ride and then suddenly turned off the main highway and we started travelling down a dirt road.  "Ahh, so this is where they kill me," I thought and immediately began to prepare for battle.  I put away my iPod, and secured my camera and other belongings tightly in my bag.  Then I laced up my boots and tested the amount of legroom I would require to extend my leg and boot the driver in the back of the head in order to cause enough commotion to crash the car and then leap out of it before it rolled of a cliff and exploded into flames at the base of the nearby ravine.  But then we slowed down at a bus stop outside a tiny village and woman approached and handed the old man in the front seat a baby.  They kissed, and then we were on our way, with the tiny cargo secured onboard. 

WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?

On the way to Dushanbe we stopped at a local carwash, which was actually just the side of the road where two teenagers had buckets next to an irrigation ditch and would scoop up water and dump it on the car.  The man explained to me that he was going into the big city, and you had to have a clean, fancy car.  Who was I to disagree?  The weather was warm and things seemed to be good.  In fact, I started to think more and more what a terrible idea it would be to ever leave Dushanbe.  It had almost every conceivable comfort I needed.  Why leave?


Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Klubbing in Kulob

Are you guys really into Canadiana?  I thought I was but had no idea what “CityTV” or whatever is, but apparently it’s a thing from Toronto, which is a city in Canada, and the guy who started it was born in Kulob.  I actually think that is Kulob’s main claim to fame.  Being the birthplace of the founder of a minor Canadian TV station.  I guess it’s better than being known as a world-renowned heroin trafficking point, like literally everywhere else in Tajikistan.  Anyway, Moses Znaimer was born to some Latvian or Russian or Ukrainian parents (well, obviously the dad was Latvian because Znaimer) and my first though upon disembarkation in Kulob was that a town that sired such a tech-savvy individual might have internet.  It didn’t.  It also didn’t have any banks and I was conveniently out of cash.  But even more conveniently there were herds of young men holding stacks of cash screaming “DOLLAR! EURO! ROUBLE!” at me and I absolutely love that kind of attention.   

After changing some dollars with some local entrepreneurial teenagers, I headed to the market to see if I could scrape up the remaining bits from the plov trough for a modest dinner.  I couldn’t.  You need to get to the plov trough by 11:30 or you’re not eating at all.  And if you get there too late, you get the plov that is sitting at the very bottom of the cauldron that is completely immersed in in cottonseed oil and it’s just not a good situation when you’re not totally comfortable with geolocating all the bathrooms in a 1km radius from you at all times.  I wasn’t very comfortable in Kulob, but then again not even the dregs from the plov bowl were available to me.  

Instead a small cafe above the market hall warmed up some chicken shashlik, prepared a chopped tomato salad, and fried up some of the tastiest french fries I have ever eaten.  When they found out I was Canadian, they also sent over a convoy of young women to serve me tea and ask if I had taken a wife yet.  I hadn’t.  But I was more interested in some of the cookies that they were selling on the lower level, and I’m such a sucker for super-liminal marketing practices that I even bought some of the cookies without really liking sweet foods, and without any of the cookies coming in the shape of early-2000s mobile phones, which are my absolute favourite type of cookie and if you ever see one please contact me in the comments section. 

After this tasty meal I set off to find a place to sleep, which I really should have done much earlier in the rapidly darkening daylight.  There were two hotels that I knew of.  One was going to cost $60 and I just felt like it wasn’t a good use of my money.  It looked fantastic, don’t get me wrong.  It was a massive concrete Soviet tower, looked abandoned, and had some sort of tracksuit store in the concourse level.  Totally my scene, right?  Well, similar to any respectable professional dancer I only had a few dollar bills stuffed into my boxers, so I could not afford $60.  I walked down the street and found a much more plain hotel done in plaster and pinkwash and when the price I negotiated was something totally affordable by the kicker was whether or not i would be sharing the room.  It depended on if anyone else showed up.  Considering this was probably fairly an expensive place to sleep for the average Tajik, and there was literally no other reason to visit Kulob, I decided to play chicken with the tired and humourless hotel receptionist.  I won, and ended up having the room to myself the whole night.*

That evening I took a walk around Kulob to discover that literally nothing was open.  I thought perhaps the train station was a good place to check to see if it were possible to take the train to Dushanbe.  It wasn’t.  It’s barely possible to do anything by rail in Central Asia because the Tajiks only have a couple of spur lines that are offshoots of the new-Uzbek rail system because Soviet planners never anticipated a weird alternate universe in which the nationalities they created would one day split off and impose harsh visa regimes on one another.  lol, idiots.  Anyway, at the train station, which was next to a creepy abandoned theme park, I asked the simple question of “Is there a train?” which, if you ask me, is a totally rational question.  A man demanded ID and that I go into a room with him. Hell no.  I walked away and he started shouting and demanding ID.  I said it was in the hotel and I would be right back and for some bizarre reason he believed me.  Anyway, in case you’re interested in how the story ends, I didn’t go back.  

*”The whole night” is an important time range qualifier because one I fell asleep on a Serbian train and I woke up with an old man using my ankles as a pillow.  You never know when people just pop up out of nowhere.    

** I also didn’t go clubbing at all in Kulob because I felt like the entire city was full of roaming militants and I’m just tired of that shit, you know?

Baby Got Bactria

I know that Dushanbe may as well be the be-all, end-all but sometimes it's nice to get out of the city.  So why not head to the countryside in the south, which was a hotbed of rebel activity in the 1990s?  My destination was Kulob*, for several reasons.  One is that it's on the highway to the Pamirs so I figured that I could simply catch a ride there to Khorog.  That's actually the only reason I had for going.  It is also the 3rd largest city in Tajikistan, and I had such a blast in the 1st and 2nd largest ones that why not continue down the list?  Furthermore, it was a major stronghold of Alexander the Great as the region of Bactria, and the delicious two-humped camels supposedly got their start here.  
Little in the middle but she got much back.
Taxis to Kulob left from the very south of the city and it required a taxi to get to the collection point.  In the parking lot I chatted with the taxi drivers to try to figure out the optimal rate to Khorog, and they told me it would be $100 just to get to Khorog.  I did some quick math and realized that the trip from Osh to Khorog was $250 for 4 people, so like I would have to spend around $60 minimum after that.  This was all hard to stomach because I didn't have a lot of cash on me, or access to future cash flows if I plunged myself into the Pamirs (or even if I stayed in Dushanbe, as ATMs were not exactly widespread and it seemed hard to locate hard currency).  The other deciding factor was that the drivers all told me the roads were in such bad shape due to the snowstorm that there was no guarantee of getting through.  Even a few days earlier I had met with some local couch surfers who told me that they were waiting on some French guy who was supposed to arrive three days earlier but seemed to be trapped in the Pamirs.  Who knows what happened to him?  

Anyway, I decided on Kulob because it was en route to the GBAO and I figured if I had the opportunity to hop a ride to the Pamirs I would take it and no one could stop me.  I negotiated to pay 70 somoni (and it turned out that all others would pay that too) and shared a ride with an outrageous old woman, a 23-year-old biznezman (who had like 3 kids) and someone else but the driver and the guy in the front seat were fairly forgettable.  The fact that I didn't get the front seat bothers me to this day but I got some pretty great pictures from out the window.  Like pictures of people selling apples.  And pictures of the enormous reservoir that supplies the country with something like 100% of their power 60% of the time.  

The drive was actually beautiful and I have since resolved to return to Tajikistan.  I love Tajikistan more than you may believe, and while it was glaringly obvious that much less cash was allocated to the non-Dushanbe regions of the country for simple things like roads, there was a magic to the geography, both physical and human.  Lots of apple vendors who decided to set up shop at inopportune switchbacks, and large Kamaz trucks turning at inopportune moments, and people in souped-up Ladas aggressively and impatiently passing us at inopportune and really quite dangerous places.  It was all magic, and I loved the trip.  
Dushanbe face, Qurgonteppa booty.
We stopped to pray at a town just near the turn off to Qurgonteppa (a hotspot for heroin trafficking, rebel activity, and cotton farming) and then just before Kulob we dropped off the lady and her three bags full of fresh persimmons at the market.  She thrust 4 persimmons in my hand and I said “No, please.  No.”  I am sorry but I do not like persimmons. Have you ever seen the Simpsons episode where Homer buys a farm and throws all the seeds he can on the ground and then fertilises it with radioactive waste and then tobacco and tomato seeds cross-pollinate and they create tomacco?  That is what I feel a persimmon is and tastes like.  I have no way of proving this but I don’t think that changing my mind at this stage in life is an option.  


*Okay, so in Hungarian the "ly" sound is a "y" and so in Russian I could not remember if Kulob was pronounced with a "K" or "Kh" and with a "l" or a"ly."  So you'll understand my problem when I called it "Khuyob" instead of "Kulob" and everyone laughed at me.  Get it?  No?  Okay, so Kulob is the name of a city in Tajikistan, and "Khulyob" in Russian would basically mean…Dickville.

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Hissyfit in Hissor

I really wanted to soak up the Tajik magic and get into some Zoroastrism so I went to Hissor, which is a town not far from Dushanbe and heavily banks on a local fortress as its chief tourist attraction.  It's nice and stuff, but they need to stop thinking that fixing old fortresses with new bricks is a good idea, because I like looking at old stuff, you know?  Anyway, as always I attracted a tonne of attention in Hissor because I have no idea where I am and what I am doing at the best of times and my Russian is so bad that people just laugh at me and wonder how I have made it this far in life.  The fortress was a few kilometres south of the main part of the city, so I walked from the bus depot along the main street and enjoyed the beautiful warm weather.  In the area where the bus depot parking area gradually transitions into a marketplace, a man with a large wheelbarrow walked up to me and asked me if I was from Hungary.  I said technically yes, I had come from Hungary, and he told me that he had lived there in the 1970s as a soldier.  Can you imagine how bumpin and sexually liberated Hungary must have been in the 1970s?  Especially when you are coming from the Tajik SSR?  I was kind of jealous of him because coming from rural Tajikistan as an occupying power to 70s Hungary must have been like a free passage to the West.  
Cool, casual pic at the Hissor fortress.
The grounds around the fortress were cool enough but the procurement department of the heritage restoration ministry had made some seriously ill-informed choices when they selected the brick for restoring, as it was that weird plastic-looking brick that you see in garbage suburban homes that will likely fall down in the coming years or turn into a ghetto if you’ve ever watched “End of Suburbia” at an impressionable age and since then given up on any hope for humanity and have since been preparing for the coming Apocalypse.  There were some cute kids wandering around the fortress who screaming at me to give them money, but I liked the market in Hissor the most.  It was so full of life and energy and animal carcasses and sassy young tweens yelling at me and telling me to buy these fantastic sheepskin vests and different Chinese-made that I had zero interest in purchasing.   
Cool, casual sheepskin vest.
Anyway, southwards towards Hissor two young women passed me on the street and asked me to marry one of them.  So the first thing I did was get to an internet cafe to update my Facebook status to "Rory is enjoying being a "hottie" in Tajikistan.”*  Achievement unlocked.  Furthermore, in the marshrutka coming back from Hissor a teenager kept staring at me and when I finally looked over he asked in Russian, "Are you from Moscow?” Looks like 18 years of living in Grand Forks is finally paying dividends.  


*omfg I remember the evolution of Facebook so well.  Do you guys remember when the Facebook wall was a single editable text field?  Wasn't that so strange?  And then they allowed you to start writing on your own wall, and then it became a status update in which you had to qualify something after the verb "is" (as though simply being isn't enough work for most of us) and then a bunch of intolerable people formed a group that was some sort of petition to send to Mark Zuckerberg to remove the word "is" from all status updates so as to allow people creative expression (because evidently the great unwashed weren't simply content with simply being anymore).  Then FB went as far as to allow you to comment on others' posts on your wall, and then finally not only like something, but like a comment.  All you have to do is click "like" and you're engaging in user-generated content.  You're basically in marketing.  Get you.  

Monday, October 31, 2011

Doing Dushanbe

A lot of people are constantly bemoaning the lack of culture and substance and general activity of Dushanbe.  I hate these people.  If you ever meet someone who tells you "Oh, Dushanbe doesn't really have anything to offer, it's kind of dull" then don't just nod in tacit and disengaged agreement, fight back and tell them that Dushanbe doesn't suck, but rather they suck at visiting it.  Dushanbe is the crown jewel of the Fann alluvial*, and they need to quickly figure out that problem isn't Dushanbe, it's them.  

I spent most of my time in Dushanbe thinking about where in the city I would live.  It has a lovely central boulevard lined with trees and people waiting for marshrutkas.  It seems to me that their public transportation system is woefully lacking.  I wandered up and down the main street quite often looking for good tea houses with free wifi and a decadent ambiance, but to my chagrin nothing had the Orientalist allure of the chaihanas of the Fergana Valley (or the Istarafshan Pass, for that matter) so I contented myself with the "Cafe Sahara" and took advantage of the generous wifi and general warmth and lack of patrons.  It was here I caught up on all the happenings in the world, such as Halloween, and my friend in Budapest who 2 days earlier had posted on my Facebook wall asking about how he will know an apple pie has finished baking.  I hope that worked out for him. 

There's a lot of animosity towards the Soviet Union in lots of places in the world, but to their credit they did bring ballet to the Tajiks.  And the circus, which I'm convinced consists solely of dancing bears that have been drugged into oblivion.  But culture aside they did achieve the dream of rural electrification and Dushanbe has a fairly extensive, if not consistently functioning, trolleybuses.  One such bus suddenly stopped working during one of the many, many brownouts that charmingly douse the country from time to time throughout the day, and naturally we all disembarked and started pushing the bus over the bridge until we hit the power grid again.  Everyone howled with laugher when I pulled out my camera to take a picture, as if I had never pushed a bus through downtown Dushanbe.  I still had to pay for the bus, which to me seems a bit unfair but I guess I can contact their customer service department and ask for a credit on my next ride in the city.  

I also utilized the Couchsurfing network and met up with a bunch of expats who were pretty fun and I ended up going out with them at a later date to the club but that deserves a post unto itself.  There was a rude Iranian man there who was talking about English and had said something about how it's hard to understand all English speakers because we all speak it differently and use different slang and there are different ways of saying the same same thing and I said, "yes, it's a rich tapestry." and he said, "What?" and I repeated myself and he said, "What?" and I said, "…English has lots of words" and he said, "Yes!" and a bunch of English people laughed at the unintended irony of that small exchange.  Look, maybe you just had to be there.  I'm actually pretty funny in the flesh. 

I also ate a couple of Georgian restaurants, because evidently in order to stop those feisty Caucasians from killing each other a village or two was deported to Tajikistan during the Soviet era.  There were also several Ossete restaurants in the city, which totally makes sense when you think about it because Tajik and Ossete are Iranic languages, durr.  I also took advantage of the tea service in the Fahking Hotel and when I was walking up near the Palace grounds and a young Tajik approached me and started talking to me in Russian.  He was quite a nice and educated young man and he was telling me that his parents worked in the government and that he was studying Chinese so that he could go work in China.  If you're looking for tangible evidence of the declining influence of the Anglo-American axis, look no further than Tajikistan.  This kid knew which side of his bread was buttered.  

Anyway, Dushanbe was fantastic.  I really can't piece together all the stories in an engagingly coherent way, so perhaps a photo essay will do the walking for me.  I know that whenever I am unable to find the words to talk about how I feel, simply showing pictures of Dushanbe always seems to capture my current emotional state, wherever I may be.  


*Get it?  Fann alluvial?  Alluvial fan?  Guys, I didn't struggle through first year Physical Geography not to apply this knowledge practically in everyday scenarios.  I am an active member of the knowledge economy, it's my duty to help you readers stand on the shoulders of giants.  Also, if you've ever had the pleasure of going on a road trip with me in BC, then you no doubt have been driven absolutely batshit crazy by the number of times I point out an alluvial fan.  That and the 30-degree angle of repose.  But just imagine all the times I see alluvial fans and decide against pointing them out.  

Sunday, October 30, 2011

That Fahking Hotel

The luxury suite for $50 was pretty amazing, though I can't say it was worth every penny.  I made every effort to ensure I used every penny, however, so I wore the free slippers, used the free toothpaste, pocketed the soaps and shampoos, watched Russian music videos, took a 30 minute hot shower, and then really sprawled out on the bed.  Just totalled soaked up the experience.  It was a massive room, too.    In the morning I found my way towards the lobby and when I reached the landing on my floor I noticed that there were two men in plainclothes with AK-47s sitting in the lounge furniture.  My first reaction was, "People actually sit in that furniture?  I thought it was for show" followed by "holy crap, they have AK-47s." I have no idea what they were there for, and whether or not they would have harassed me if I hadn't darted down the stairs, but it goes to show that even the fanciest of Dushanbe hotels weren't immune to the internal strife of Tajikistan's storied history.  
The circus (also guarded by men with AK-47s) in front of the Fahking Hotel
 I checked my bag with the bellhop (and learned later with chagrin that there was a surcharge to do so) and went in search of a cheaper hotel.  I decided to use the internet to search for anything that would help to indicate where I could sleep and some site or blog had indicated to me that there was some sort of hotel-like establishment called the Fahking Hotel, which was behind the circus and took in a lot of Afghan traders and wasn't too expensive.  It's vague, address-less, and wholly unsubstantiated qualitative descriptions like this that really awake the adventurer in me and I set off across the river towards the circus in search of it.  It was actually remarkably easy to find, even if people weren't very helpful when an exasperated English speaker demands of them in accented Russian where the Fahking Hotel is.  Anyway, I ended up paying around $10 for a room, which locked and had shared access to a bathroom that I had zero intention of using.  There was a TV playing Tajik comedies from the 70s and there was even room service tea for 20 cents, so I was actually losing money by not taking advantage of it.  In all, a real treat.
I never did shower in Tajikistan.  
Once I had dropped off my bag at the Fahking Hotel and attached my own lock to the door*, I was ready to take in all that Dushanbe had to offer.  The first thing I did was go to the park by the opera house and found a delicious cantina where I ate a great meal.  I had some sort of meatball with mashed potatoes.  I can't even imagine there being a more delightful thing to come across.  In fact, all of Dushanbe was so pleasant.  It really was a city I could get used to, and once again I went through the motions of imagining my life there and thinking, "Yes, this is a good place to finally hang up my hat."  

*Sorry, not to mislead you, but when I said that the door "locked" I meant that it had two metal holes that lined up and I needed to supply the lock.  But really, it had the infrastructure for attaching a lock and that's a big win if I'm honest.  

Saturday, October 29, 2011

Douchebags of Dushanbe

Aini was somewhere I had dreamed about seeing ever since I realized it was at the other side of the pass and meant that we were almost in Dushanbe.  We stopped for some food but I don't seem to remember actually eating.  I think I was more in the mood to just get to Dushanbe and put the whole ordeal behind me.  The Pamirians, on the other hand, wanted to get crunk.  Look, guys, we all want to get crunk.  But I have barely slept, I haven't eaten, I just experienced an emotionally harrowing 2 days in the mountains, and I read on Wikitravel that Tajik vodka is notoriously bad and even dangerous to one's health.  So no, I do not want to get crunk.  But that did not stop them.  They ordered a bottle of vodka from some kiosk and got some tea cups and poured shots for us.  I raised the glass to my lips and took in the lighter fluid bouquet which burned my nostril hairs.  The first sip was so vile I thought I would vomit on the spot.  Luckily my teacup had a huge chip and crack in it so I was able to position that part by my lip as a took a sip so the majority of liquid spilled out through the crack, down my chin and all over the front of my jacket.  So long as I didn't walk near an open flame or light a cigarette I wouldn't burst into flames.  

I told the Pamirians that instead of vodka I would have a beer instead so I ordered one while they finished their vodka.  Then, when all was done, the 6 year old operating the kiosk gave the total, which was something like 20 som, and the Pamirians had the nerve to say that they didn't have any money and they needed me to pay.  AHHHHHHHHHH.  Guess how I felt at this point.  I almost exploded with rage.  But then the kindly Dushanbe businessman stepped in and offered to pay and I felt so awful that he had to clean up the mess left behind by these other two drunkards that I paid for half.  Anyway, the businessman invited me to stay with him once we got to Dushanbe, but I was so distraught and tired of my traveling cohort at this point that I really needed some "me" time to reflect on what went wrong this trip, and what we could do differently.  So much.  

The trip from Aini to Dushanbe was really smooth because there is an actual tunnel between the two cities.  Evidently they are building a tunnel under the Istarafshan Pass as well, but could you imagine 20 years ago having to go through that entire ordeal twice?  Anyway, they ended up dropping us off in North Dushanbe at the collection point for all group taxis heading north.  It was at the end of the trolleybus line but it was also 11pm and no trolleys were running.  So I decided to walk.  But we were in the 2200 block and the downtown was in the, like, 0 block.  So I went against everything I believed in and I got a taxi.  I mean, the taxi got me.  I kept turning down taxi offers, and finally when I asked how much it would be and he said 10 som, I kept walking until he agreed on 5 som.  Then I got in and he stopped to pick up two more people.  

Okay, so if you're in a taxi and then the driver stops to pick up two other guys "conveniently" placed a few blocks down, do you not freak out?  Do you not, after spending two days trapped in the snowy mountains, absolutely lose your shit?  Well, I didn't, and it's a good thing because they were all actually really nice people and the driver just wanted to make some extra money.  The two guys he picked up were Kyrgyz students.  The driver took me to a hotel which was something like 70 som.  Ugh.  So then I walked and found a hotel that was $50 USD.  UGH.   But it was the hotel Tajikistan, and I was tired, and whatever, I had just saved SO MUCH money by sleeping in that teahouse the night before.  So at the front desk they told me the dorm room was like $20 and the luxury suite was $50.  Obviously the luxury suite because look at me.  I didn't look tired and gross at all.  I had just come from the Ferghana Valley.  G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S indeed.  

Chaihana Hijinks

Just writing about my feelings in this Chaihana in a mountain pass we were stranded in for the past day that I eventually ended up needing to sleep in and I kind of knew it at the time this photo was taken but I was in denial.  Guess what my feelings were.  Just guess!
Around 6am I heard some sort of commotion and everyone seemed to be coming alive.  Even the guy who slept sitting up in a plastic deck chair.  I used my traveller's instinct to deduce that the gates would soon be opening, and that I should probably get down to my taxi (you'll remember that I had already paid the driver, and he was under no obligation to deliver me to Dushanbe).  I found that one of the Pamirians had slept in my seat, and he obligingly got out when I opened the door, and I climbed in, excited for the adventure that awaited us.  I quickly passed out onto my backpack and drooled all over it, which was really gross to have discovered when the vehicle lurched forward because were actually moving, at around 9am.  It was slow process, but we managed to butt our way through, thanks mainly to the fact that my driver was such a pushy, impatient, and generally intolerable human being.  

Upwards we climbed, with several other co-travellers trying to pass us and cut corners and sliding out because these were tiny vehicles with tiny tires trying to make it through the snow.  We made it about an hour up, switchback upon switchback, and then discovered that there was another queue at the very top of the mountain.  So we pulled over as instructed, and waited.  I asked what was going on, but answering my questions seemed to be the last of everyone's concerns at this point.  So I got out and took a walk around.  It was cold.  Like, really cold.  We were way up at the top of the pass, and it was windy and snowy.  There was nothing up there too, except some bombed out outhouse.  

I walked further up and reached the absolute Apex of the pass, and saw that on the other side they were still clearing away the snow to allow the column of cars coming the other way to pass.  It looked like a generally long and arduous process.  One of the cars at the very summit was an Alfa Romeo, which I thought was a totally impractical vehicle to have brought along.  And then it turned out that the driver was the son of some sheik from the UAE who was with his friends and who had to sleep in the car overnight because it had gotten stuck and all they were wearing were thin Ralph Lauren sweaters and they had put towels over their heads and shoulders because the wind was so strong.  They spoke perfect English and explained that they had gotten stuck the night before and no one would help dig them out so they needed to sleep and nearly froze.  They asked me what on Earth I was doing there, and I thought, "What am I doing here?  WTF are YOU doing here?  I am from cold weather climate and I am wearing a wool coat with gloves, boots, and a scarf.  You are from a desert."  But it was all pretty implicit.  They were heading to Khujand and said that I could go along with them if I wanted.  I was tempted, as it looked like there was no movement happening with my ride.  But then, there was also no movement from their side either.  

As the day wore on and it looked less and less like there was going to be any progress, the woman in the very far back (hold the phone, I said, there has been someone back there the whole time!?) started wailing and asking if she could sit in the front seat because she hadn't moved in 1.5 days.  UGH, I said.  Fine.  So I hopped in the very back, and took off my boots, and quickly realized that my long legs were not meant for this sort of thing. I have a serious problem with my legs being restricted and not being able to fully extend my legs, and it creates pretty extreme anxiety on my part.  In fact, one of my biggest fears is being trapped in a cage where my knees are constantly bent.  Or being stuck in a Winnie-the-Pooh style hole on which my shoulders are stuck but my head is through so I don't have my hands to protect my head from anything that may come my way, like children who kick my face or an animal licking it.  This is actually a fear I have.  I am squirming thinking about it as I type.  
Literally my nightmare.
Anyway, my new biggest fear is being trapped in a crappy Jeep in a mountain pass in Tajikistan.*  It was absolutely panic-inducing.  I was going batshit crazy trying to figure out how I would resolve this problem.  The old woman said to me that we probably would have to sleep there again for the night, but I wasn't sleeping anywhere if I couldn't extend my legs.  We were also running out of food but the driver of a sausage delivery truck had a keen eye for capitalism and had opened up a small shop.  My own driver had offered me some of the highly processed sausage but as I looked at it, my Hungarian snobbery took a hold of me and I decided starvation was preferable to subpar charcuterie.  I nibbled on some stale bread and as cabin fever increasingly gripped my already reasonably unstable mind, I contemplated grabbing my backpack and hitting the ol' dusty trail.  Either down towards Dushanbe, or back towards Khujand.  I knew going back to Khujand I could find some farm house along the way and ask to sleep for the night.  But this would be giving up.  And going forward I had no idea what awaited me and how far down it was, and whether or not this was one of those false summits, like when I was in Georgia last summer and I just couldn't quite make it to Batumi by foot.  The alternative was staying in the car and just being miserable about the leg room situation and then possibly freezing to death in the car.  Oh, and I hadn't brushed my teeth in a day and a half, which was unbearable.  I resolved that no matter what course I took I would be unhappy, so I resigned myself to this and tackled another chapter of my book.  

Around 3pm there was some sort of signal and a slow column of cars started coming down the other lane.  One was the Alfa Romeo being towed by a large truck.  The Dubai prince saw me and yelled "Do you want a ride to Khujand?!" and I was tempted but I didn't want to give up.  I have the rest of my life to go on road trips with fabulously wealthy and irresponsible children of Sheiks, so I decided to stick it out and see this one through to the end.  And thank goodness I did because we almost immediately got the car to start moving.  We slowly inched towards the top of the hill and began making our descent through some of the muddiest and slushiest roads I have ever seen.  But it was no match for our vehicle and we made it to Aini in no time, the small village at the foot of the pass.  

*I've been stranded in a mountain pass before.  Several times.  Growing up on a large country estate in the wild mountains of British Columbia was a constant struggle.  When I was a tree planter we encountered a washed-out bridge and had to be helicoptered out.  When I was in Slovakia in 2007 I foolishly bought a ticket on a train that terminated in a small mountain hamlet and didn't have any money and ended up needing to hitchhike to Roznava.  In Kosovo I...just made bad decisions.  But in Tajikistan, I really, REALLY thought I had this on lock.  I had so little on lock.  Tajikistan doesn't even have it on lock, and they've always been so on top of their game.  

I started filming a video about my feelings in front of this abandoned building and it turned out to be an outhouse with several women going in and out of. 



Istarafshan Pass

There was nothing more exciting than hitting the open road.   There were multiple cars coming the other way with massive loads strapped to the roof racks, and as we climbed higher and higher it got less foggy and rainy and actually started to snow.  In Canada that just means be careful when driving.  In Tajikistan, it meant think nothing of it and deal with any fallout later.  We bribed about 7 or 8 cops, as I watched my $30 contribution to the ride dwindle down, and then stopped at a roadside eatery where we ate beef shashlik, bread, and tea, and where I got an apple from an old man selling honey.  Once we got back on the road we had barely travelled for 15 minutes before we encountered a lineup.  Luckily my driver did not see this so much as a barrier as he did an opportunity to see how well this terrible vehicle could fare with offroading and he drove up alongside the queue as far as he could go, which was to a toll booth/gateway to the Istarafshan Pass, which appeared to be closed and there was some commotion going on.  Some police were there and everyone was hollering, and what I was able to glean from the situation was that there was snow on the pass, so only one lane of traffic was moving, and they were clearing the road as best they could but we were not allowed to pass at this time.  Maybe later.  
I took this opportunity to get out, stretch my legs, and take in all that this valley had to offer.  It had so little to offer.  It really was just a simple tollbooth and there was nothing except a teahouse to help weary travellers before they headed up the pass.  I walked around, walked up into the hills to look down on the scene, walked among the cars and get hollered at by almost everyone, and then just waited.  I waited so long.  And I waited until it started to get dark and I started to worry.  I was worried we would be driving in the dark in the mountains and in the snow, but my fears were assuaged.  Instead, the road would not open until morning, so we all--all 8 of us--would be sleeping in the car.  What a relief to not have to drive in the dark!

I wasn't totally down with sleeping in the car.  I mean, I had the best seat, but I didn't think it would be the best sleep.  So I wandered over to the teahouse, after stuffing my iPod, iTouch, wallet, and camera into my boxers (yes, they're boxer briefs for those inquiring, and they can hold all of this stuff).  I wanted to eat something, like soup, or bread, or shashlik, and have some hot tea, and so I found myself a seat at a low table and ended up getting into a conversation with a fun crowd.  Truck drivers, students, random people.  I was given some more free apples.  Things were really happening for me.  I drank tea and pulled out my notebook to write about my feelings (imagine how I was feeling at that moment.  Just guess!).  I decided that this was probably the best place to sleep, so I wedged myself in the most comfortable position possible (which, let me tell you, was NOT comfortable at all) and tried to plug in my iPod to help pass the time and guide me to sleep.  


Friday, October 28, 2011

Eschewing Alexandria Eschate

After spending a considerable amount of time exploring Khujand by foot, I decided it was time to figure out how to make my escape to Dushanbe.  I had done a dry run to the bus depot the night before to ask a few questions about leaving times, the anticipated price, and do some reconnaissance to make this a worry-free journey.  Literally no trip I have ever made has been worry-free, but sometimes it's nice to feel like I'm on top of my life.  I arrived at the parking lot at 7am with a groggy demeanour and a taste for entitlement. This meant I wanted the front seat and I would stop at nothing to get it.  I got it.  And I apologize for nothing.  However, I had to wait until 11am for the group taxi I had commandeered to actually take off because my driver was some sort of schiester whom I totally despise but that's quite frankly not central to this story.  Getting this convoy up and running really took a long time.  There were so many people looking to go to Dushanbe, for good reasons, but there was no first-come, first-serve system to properly allocate travellers so every group taxi (and, let's just paint the visual here for you, every poorly-made Chinese imitation Jeep) was filling up in tandem, and very slowly.  
While the rain soaked window may have caused for this unsuspecting mother to be cast in a less than flattering light, I am constantly mesmerized by this photo's beauty and surprised at how, every once and a while, I take a photo that makes me wish people would ask me if I had ever taken a photography class.  
It was actually so slow, and so painful that it hurt to watch.  First a woman showed up with a stove.  A stove!  And she needed everyone to put it on the roof and then tie it down.  So that's what everyone did.  And then somehow (and don't ask me how because I don't speak Tajik and I wasn't on the steering committee for this operation anyway) they decided to untie it, bring it down and put it on another car. Guys, we're all going in the same direction.  I like to sometimes think that there is probably a reason for all this and that they had a master plan, but then I also like to think that no, it was just a make-work project and as such, here we are.  So I buried my face in my book and waited for the pandemonium to die down.  I ended up with a couple of Pamirians, a kindly Dushanbe businessman, an old woman, some young guy, and one or two other forgettable characters.  
So infuriating.  They have stoves in Dushanbe.  And they have cookies!  Stop transporting cookies between the two cities!
Finally we were up and running, which meant we actually circled the city performing some errands before we were able to hit the road.  Of course we needed snacks so we stopped at a bakery and got some fresh naan bread, and then to the convenience store to get some water.  I could have gone for a Starbucks but whatever, I had gotten the front seat so I wasn't going to start making my demands known just yet.  When we stopped at a gas station the driver hollered at me to give him money.  Essentially I had to pay him before we had taken off, which means I now bore the risk of the journey.  I eyed him contemptuously as if to say, "Alright, m**********r, we've crossed the Rubicon now.  If you try to pull a fast one on me, I have no choice but to end you."  

Khujand's Invisible Hand

The next morning I rose early and was prepared to take in all that Khujand had to offer.  Unfortunately it was cold and rainy, so I stuck to covered markets and ultimately found myself in the Khujand Bazaar which was absolutely incredible.  My first purchase was a package of cheap cigarettes that I was going to use to casually bribe police officers in the event they wanted to harass me and extort money from me.  I had seen this method work before so I thought that I could easily smooth any situation over by oooly pulling out a pack of smokes, offering one out, and taking one for myself, then lighting it and proceeding to smoke.  I have never done this before, so it took me forever to get the process down, but I had seen people do it countless times and it looked so effortless and cool, that I figured i could nonchalantly manage this.  I couldn't.  I was so bad.  I couldn't look casual or cool to save my life.  And I spent an entire day pulling out the cigarette pack and slamming on end down really hard on the table so as to pack the tobacco further into the cigarette as I've seen really cool people do at hostels, but when the time came for me to practise pulling out a cigarette to pretend to smoke, I realized I had tapped the package the wrong way and that all the tobacco had come out the other end - lolz whoops. 
I then grabbed a lunch at a fantastic outdoor plov cafe and a pot of tea that was absolutely delicious.  I witnessed a funeral procession go past my table and I sipped tea and stared ahead at a young family and an old couple that sat adjacent to me and envied the soviet chic style of one of the older Tajik men that I likely rightly assumed to be a Pamirian.  
The Panjshanbe market in Khujand was pretty bumpin'.  It was built by Stalin in the 1930s and it was absolutely incredible.  I am guessing Stalin, and the others who actually believed in the early days, had the grand notion that they could quell the rampant feudalism of the khanates of Turkestan by instituting a command economy and hiring several Soviet technocrats to give illumination to Adam Smith's invisible hand.  And yet, here we were, 20 years after the Tajiks formally opted out of the Soviet Union and decided to rekindle its love affair with a feudalist economic model and recapture its place as a queen city of the Silk Road by selling hanging meat carcasses, honey, rough-grade toilet paper, spices, Chinese textiles printed with bad English, build-your-own-iPhone kiosks, piles and piles of cookies shaped like cell phones*, and countless other bounties of the harvest and goods cheaply produced in Chinese factories.  I suppose that during the communism there would have also been a lot of great products available, but it's really amazing to see how they bounced back after an 80 year dip.  
Speaking of embrasure of the market economy, I went to the local museum/fortress where there was a youngster selling vintage postcards, which is actually my number one weakness.  I also buy packs upon packs of them and they sit in a shoebox in my room and I vow that when I am one day rich enough to buy picture frames, I would arrange them in some artistic fashion and put them up in my house because they are all so nice.  The ones I was interested in formed an incomplete set of traditional dances of the Soviet Union, printed in 1950, one card for each nationality.  Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Lithuania were missing, which is a shame and I've since vowed to track down the remaining cards.  The kid selling them fancied himself a local biznezman and could clearly tell I was a complete sucker and he was not willing to budge on price.  They were really only a few somoni and I was feeling like such an orientalist grandee that I felt any price was worth it to continue to amass a collection of miscellania from around the globe.  I happily paid and these post cards have formed a very core part of my refrigerator aesthetic ever since.  

I really enjoyed my time in Khujand, and I actually would have enjoyed staying and exploring more of the Fergie-Ferg, but Dushanbe was calling me, and I was hungry for the Pamir Highway, which is basically what everyone is really after when they end up in this part of the world.  So what stood between me and the Dush was the Istarafshan Pass, and all my research indicated to me that there was absolutely no way around it**.  I did a couple more tours around the city and ate as much amazing plov as I could, then planned for my passage to Dushanbe.  The Istarafshan Pass is something that I really had high hopes for.  Why wouldn't I?  It bridges the two largest cities in Tajikistan.  It connects the fertile Ferghana Valley with the capital district and the vast cotton fields of the south.  It just makes sense that it would be the safe bet in a country with breakaway regions and a south ravaged by civil war in the 1990s.  But instead, my journey to Dushanbe pushed me, emotionally and physically, further than I am normally willing to go.  

*I have such a sordid history with these cell phone cookies.  They are actually one of the great White Stags of my travels.  I first encountered them in a village high atop the Lesser Caucasian mountain range in a small store selling all the basic necessities.  I thought they were absolutely ridiculous because they weren't even shaped like a flip-phone (which is a strong indicator of where I was at in terms of being up to date with technology at this point) and yet ever since I have been obsessed with finding these cookies everywhere I go. 

**Okay, so there IS a way around it but the secret is you have to go through Uzbekistan and the Uzbeks and the Tajiks currently aren't talking because a bunch of Tajiks live in UZ and a bunch of Uzbeks live in TJ and the Tajiks sporadically and arbitrarily threaten to cut off the Uzbek water supply and the Uzbeks threaten to block off rail access to the Russian market.  Isn't that wild?  Have you ever been to Osoyoos, BC?  I have, like, a hundred times, and there is nothing more beautiful and inconvenient than the Anarchist Summit.  When you're driving up it you think, there must be another way around this!  Well there is, and it's through the United States.  Literally no one was thinking about Osoyoos or my commute to Vancouver from Grand Forks when they drew the border between the United States and British North America.  No one was thinking about how I would have to navigate this post-colonial world and what a burden it would be for me.  And now here I was in Tajikistan and Stalin's 1915 essay about nationalism in the Soviet Union was inconveniencing me.  Not to mention the millions of people who regularly commute between the two largest cities in Tajikistan and who are not permitted to travel via Uzbekistan where the Soviet-era railway runs to connect.  And don't even get me started on Mauritania, where French engineers had to drill into granite for several months to build a railway from the coast to a copper mine in the interior and they couldn't build around the grant deposit because the tip of it went into Spanish Saharan territory and some member of the French delegation insulted a member of the Spanish royal family at the Berlin Conference of 1884/5 and as a result the French were not allowed concession rights in that tiny stretch of land.  And now Africa has to just deal with these arbitrary borders and consequent infrastructure.  Isn't post-colonialism so interesting?  I really only notice and reflect on it when it inconveniences me, and that's always a mind-bender because almost everything about colonialism was constructed to indirectly benefit me.