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.  

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.  

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.  

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.

Hotel Leninabad

The Mighty Hotel Leninabad.

Arriving in Khujand was pretty exciting because I passed whole cotton agro-collectives and processing centres and around this time people in the marshrutka started to take clues that I needed to know where to end up.  They directed me to an internet cafe and the driver took me right up to it, and then everyone cheered me as I went out, as if I had done something for the greater good, and I also learned that this leg of the journey was gratis.  Not bad, and to be honest I had done something.  Someone had to entertain those heroin smugglers, so watching an entitled Western kid squirm uncomfortably surrounded by unprocessed drugs is probably one of the most entertaining things someone can watch.  

In the internet cafe I was delighted to learn that they also served tea and food and I was totally loving every second of it.  To my dismay there were no hostels in Khujand, and a sizeable couchsurfing community, though not exactly one with a rapid response rate.  This is hardly their fault, as I should have arranged something in advance but had no way of knowing my success rate of getting all the way to Khujand from Osh in a single day.  I found that the Hotel Leninabad was the place to go, so I eagerly paid and made my way down towards the Syr Darya river over which the old Intourist Hotel Leninabad presided.  It was quite regal and I was nervous it would cost something outrageous like $25, but it ended up costing around $15, so I was splurging.  

Once I saw the room I realized that I was balling so hard, and that it was worth every penny.  The elevator was broken so I had to take the stairs, and the stairs seemed to be uneven, which worries me when it was built in a country that boasted the greatest number of engineers in the world, but the room was absolutely beautiful with a sweeping view of the Syr Darya.   I could not to take a decadent and leisurely hot shower and then sit cross-legged on the bed and stitch a pocket into the flap of my boxers to hide the rolled up $500 USD I had been carrying around.

I then set out on the town to eat dinner and soak up the local nightlife.  I don't know what had transpired between the time I checked in and the time I emerged from the hotel but every soul had vanished from the streets and nothing was open.  I was unaware of any nation-wide curfew but I started to feel fairly uncomfortable walking around the empty, apocalyptic streets, so I wandered back to my hotel and happened to see that one little restaurant on the main street had its lights on so I poked my head in and coyly asked if they were open.  They weren't, but what elderly lady can resist my coy look of despair?  The proprietress insisted I come in and told her husband and cook to fire things up again to feed me.  They ushered me into a special dining room and brought me soup, bread, plov, and salad.  She asked me a million questions and then a knock at the door drew her attention away.  Two young men armed with AK-47s entered and they had a bit of a frantic talk, and then she brought them tea and some plov, then they left.  While I sat trying to calmly eat my soup in dead fear looking out the corner of my eye at the Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulder and pointed towards me, I was happy I had stitched all that money into my boxers, not that it would really do any good if push came to shove.

Heroin Chic

The last marshrutka out of town sat in the parking lot waiting for me.  I noticed the driver noticing me and asked when it departed.  He said it would leave when it was full.  Standard.  So I figured people were done for the day with Isfara and shopping and were ready to get a move on, so I sat in the back and waited for it to fill up.  Suddenly the doors shut and we took off, with only 4 other people in the vehicle.  I asked why were had left and he told me something that I didn't understand.  I guess what he was trying to say was, "Oh, we have to go drive behind this mosque where another van is parked and we're going unload about 30 seran-wrapped duffel bags full of heroin from that van into this one and then the guys who are escorting it will also get in the van with a bunch of guns and we'll take off for Khujand."  But, come one, I should have been able to figure that one out.  Not as intuitive as I used to be.  

Obviously I was afraid to pull out my camera at this time because they might think I'm a journalist or something and I didn't want to be silenced for good so I was only able to take these super artsy, covert photos out the window of the marshrutka, and if you ask me I wouldn't have it any other way.  

So off we drove, with me feeling particularly angsty and worried that I was going to spend the rest of my life in a Tajik prison (if I had to spend the rest of my life in Tajikistan I would have preferred that teahouse in Isfara).  I resolved that if we were stopped by the police or authorities then the driver would probably just pass a bribe, and if they asked me anything I would just become so inconsolable and irrational that they would ultimately knock me in the face with the butt of an AK-47 which would render me unconscious and I would therefore have to answer to nothing.  So the thought of this kept me calm.

This is a toilet I once used.  Number 1 only for me though.  

It was actually pretty okay ride.  I was with lots of locals and the heroin traffickers were nice people.  They offered me cigarettes, which is something I always appreciate, even if I also consider it the equivalent of rubbing a lobster on its forehead to put it to sleep before plunging it into boiling water.  Anyway, things were going well and I thought that I would be fine until we suddenly passed through a checkpoint.  There was a Kyrgyz flag flying there and I thought to myself, "No…I just came from Kyrgyzstan.  I can't go back" and it dawned on me that just like Uzbek enclaves in Kyrgyzstan there were Kyrgyz enclaves in Tajikistan.  Making a serious effort to re-swallow my heart, which had recently lept up into my throat, I shrunk down in my seat, put on my hood and iPod, and prepared myself for whatever fate had waiting for me.  Would I get arrested for drug trafficking, or entering a country illegally?  Or something new entirely?  That's the fun of travelling!

We breezed out of the next checkpoint, which indicated we were back in Tajikistan.  I could breathe again.  I thought things were going to be okay and that I had just skirted near death.  I was thinking myself pretty hardcore, when we suddenly approached another Kyrgyz flag and sandbag dugouts with barbed wire and I told myself to remain calm.  It's kind of like when you're on a roller coaster and you need to prepare yourself for each drop.  I was prepared, but not for the drop that was coming next.  Suddenly the vehicle stopped and the driver got out.  Another marshrutka had stopped up ahead and the two drivers met and started taking, then yelling and hollering and gesturing.  Suddenly the side door opened and the driver told me to get out.  The vehicle had stopped and I had to get out and stand on the side of the road in a Kyrgyz enclave that I had illegally entered.  Just guess what kind of emotions were coursing through my veins at this moment.  

I was teetering on the precipice of becoming totally erratic, and nearly required a rifle-butt to the face to calm me down, but I was ushered into the marshrutka in front, which contained more people, and considerably less heroin.  Like, 100% less heroin.  Everyone smiled at me as though they had been waiting for me, and we all happily went into Khujand, where everyone fought over the privilege of helping me find an internet cafe.  Where the heroin ended up, I have no idea, but I have used my cartographic skills to come up with a hypothesis:  Vancouver.

Batting an Eye at Batken

I always wish the threat of getting shot at the border weren’t so pronounced in most of the countries that I love visiting.  Because if I could, I would have started a Tumblr feed to rival that one about abandoned Soviet bus shelters (though I don’t think all of them are abandoned.  In any case, don’t you just hate it when someone thinks of something and then acts on it before you were even able to gather the strength to haul your lazy ass carcass out of bed and expect the world to give you an A for effort? I certainly do).  Anyway, what I mean is that I wish I had a picture of the Gulyston crossing between Batken, Kyrgyzstan, and Isfana, Tajikistan, because it was one of the most magical experiences of my life.  I'm happy the Kyrgyz-Tajik border is forever etched in my mind, but I wish I had an actual photograph to make into my desktop background so that people could ask me where it was and I could look coy and casually say, "Oh here?"   

Just past the border.  I really regret not snapping pics at that border and getting shot.

Anyway, the border was lovely, and was very utilitarian.  There were a few dugouts, a few portable containers for offices, and a gate that needed to be manually opened.  It was a very real reminder that I was about to enter the poorest ex-Soviet republic.  On the other side, however, I could not have been more pleased to discover that it was a veritable Eden in terms of Fergana Valley agricultural potential.  There were orchards, livestock, and agro co-ops as far as the eye could see, which really made the Kyrgyz dustbowl and their stupid apricots look like total wimps. 

Isfara's central tea house, which is where I am currently planning on working for the rest of my life. 

We immediately reached Isfara, which is where my journey (in life) really should have ended.  I have never felt more at home than in this amazingly beautiful and hospitable heroin-transit hub.  Suddenly, everything was going my way.  People were so kind and friendly and as my co-travellers started to usher me into the marshrutka to take me to Khujand I held fast and said, "No, this is where I belong."  They shrugged and abandoned me to my fate remarkably quickly.  I guess 8 hours of Pitbull meant nothing to these people. 

Honey Doin It!

But it was okay because I had Isfara now, and Isfara will forever have me.  Being still so foolish about the state of rail in central Asia, I decided to take a walk to discover if the train station was open and if trains to Khujand were running.  From what I later learned, they weren't.  I never made it to the station but had a hoot trying to find it.  Bakers, watermelon vendors, old women, and casual toilers stopped at nothing to either help me or talk about me loudly.  Money changers loved me.  Melon vendors loved me.  Cookie merchants loved me.  This was MY city.  I changed some cash with some young people on the street (obviously ATMs don't exist in Tajikistan and obviously these 12 year olds know the exchange rate) and went to the teahouse in the centre of town to eat some plov, drink some tea, and recalibrate my plans. 

If there's a more hedonistic repose, I'd love to see it.*

I had made it a lot further than I had expected to this day, and I was a little exhausted from moving.  Couldn't I just stay in Isfara, possibly forever, and just relax?  I talked with several people in the cafe and determined that there either was or wasn't a hotel (I'm sure sleeping in the cafe would not have been a problem) and ascertained that maybe it was the best for me to take the last marshrutka out of town to Khujand, where a bed presumably awaited me at a real hotel.  In hindsight, a year of work really had turned me into a doughy office drone.  Beds are for rich people.  

*Oh, you must be referring to Hedonismbot?

G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S*

Literally nothing was more glamorous than the 7 hour taxi I took across the dusty Fergana Valley.  I don't care what anyone says - I'm still real.  

Alright, instead of waxing philosophical about the Fergana Valley, maybe I should just shut up and talk about what I actually did when I was there.  And if you're thinking that I was flying first class up in the sky, and poppin' champagne, then yes, I was.  I was livin' the life.  I was straight flossin'.  I mean, give or take.  The old Soviet bomber jet I took to Osh didn't exactly have a First Class lounge, but they did give me free juice and as far as I was concerned that was pretty good for Kyrgyz Air.  And the taxi I hired to take me from Osh to Batken didn't exactly move in the fast lane because I had to path him extra to drive around the Uzbek enclave on a section of highway the Kyrgyz started building 20 years ago and just haven't quite gotten there yet.  So, no, there was no fast lane.  In some sections there was no lane.  But there's nothing I would change about my glamorous time in the Fergana Valley.  

Just outside of Osh I could see the beautiful Fann mountains in the distance, and this is where I learned how amazing the pop music scene of 2011 was with that CD the Kazakh teenager had burned and brought along for the 7 hour drive.

After we departed Osh we drove along pretty decent highway until we hit a rough patch when we had to turn off the road because of the Uzbek border.  Dealing with the Uzbek border is an inconvenience I've since had to learn to live with, as it is always interrupting my enjoyment of life.  At this point (I had been relegated to the centre of the back seat because of whatever reason and there were two Kazakhs that I sat next to and a Tajik in the front.  Look, I get it, Kazakhs are basically Kyrgyz and Uzbeks so they can just go anywhere they want, but Tajiks and Canadians are of the same breed: we can't just enter Uzbekistan at our own whims.  So when we reached the city where the junction was, the two Kazakhs got out and two Tajik women got in and we were off on the ol' dusty trail. 

Open Road.  This is the part that was paved.  Pretty good!

Rereading that last paragraph leads me to believe that you, dear reader, have no idea what I am talking about.  What's important to note is that I had no idea what was going on, and I rarely do in the best of situations, least of all ones involving Uzbek enclaves.  To give a quick history lesson, when the borders were drawn between the various Soviet republics they selectively left large swaths of people outside their borders, but also created enclaves that were jurisdictionally part of the neighbouring country.  For example, the entire Fergana Valley is primarily Uzbek but large portions with large Uzbek populations were given to Kyrgyzstan, whereas small pockets located inside Kyrgyzstan with Uzbek populations were inexplicably given to Uzbekistan.  This wouldn't be a problem for me if all the main highways happened to casually pass through these enclaves and create serious visa problems for me and the Tajiks.  Me, because I'm of the West, and the Tajiks, because they keep threatening to turn off the water supply to Uzbekistan at their enormous dam.  

I wonder if I will ever get into those mountains which are controlled by Uzbekistan.  I met a guy who "knew a guy" who could get me in but I suppose we never really cleared up whether this get guy could also get me out.

Anyway, we did a switcheroo and I was able to finagle myself into the front seat to take lots of pictures of the passing scenery.  When we set off on the dusty highway, we realized that we were now out of music.  The Kazakhs were gone, and with them, their magical CD which had Pitbull's Give Me Everything Tonight (yes, the one where he rhymes Kodak with Kodak) on loop.  I told them all that I had "Amerikanskaya Muzika" (meaning…more Pitbull) on my iPod but I was dismayed to learn that the USB port into the radio thing in the car didn't work for my iPod.  We were all disappointed.  I don't remember what we ended up listening to, but it wasn't as good as Pitbull. 

omfg am I kidding?  Nothing is as good as this.  

The Fergana Valley was so dusty.  So dusty.  And eventually my batteries died and I regretted not pulling out new ones when we had stopped at the junction.  What I remember is breathtaking landscapes with dunes and dry rivers, and red hills, and old men sitting cross-legged on those amazing outdoor terraces in dusty villages, and pyramids of watermelons.  We rolled into Batken and then I got shunted into another taxi and whisked off to the Tajik border.  Everyone was in such a rush that I didn't even get to enjoy all that Batken had to offer, which is apparently loads and loads of apricots.  I don't even like apricots, but I love to opportunity to refuse them when they are offered to me, and this taxi driver robbed me of my choice. 

They had been building this road since 1993, and if I'm honest things haven't really improved much since then.    The Chinese are also building it now, and they have brought in their own equipment, materials, and labour, and once they are done they are leaving the labour behind because according to all my sources China is desperate for a population pressure valve.

  *Oh, you didn't anticipate that my entire time in the Fergana Valley was going to be a montage of references to Fergie's 2007 album?  It's like you don't even know me. 

Ferganalicious

I get it now.  She's singing about the allure of the Fergana Valley as a historical crossroads for silks, spices, and learning, the desire of control for which (cue MacKinder) led the "boys" (British and Russians during the Great Game and  the Soviets during the Cold War, and Uzbeks, Kyrgyz and Tajiks) to "go loco."  T-t-t-t-t-tasty, tasty!

I don’t know whose sick idea it was to put Fergie on my iPod* but joke’s on you because it provided the perfect soundtrack to my long trek across the Fergana Valley.  And since my camera batteries died halfway through the trip, I have very little timestamped on my brain from this great traverse aside from Fergie repeatedly telling me that “[Fergie-Ferg] will love [me] long time.”  If you've never heard of the Fergana Valley then let me assure you there is nothing more reassuring than the prospect of a warm embrace when you're in some of the most desolate parts of Fergana.  And if you've heard of the Fergana Valley then it can be deduced you've never actually listened to, nor heard of, Fergalicious.  Just so we're clear, I felt pretty smug and self-aware about being the sole occupant in the centre of this Vehn Diagram** as the dusty landscape breezed past.

Let me just be real here for a second: I love the Fergana Valley.  This is a very special place full of amazing cultural and bio-diversity, so it’s no wonder that when the Russians invaded in the mid-19^th century they embarked on a wholesale rebranding of the region by making everyone grow cotton in the interests of a domestic supply for northern mills choked out by the global stranglehold on cotton during the US civil war.   They also wanted to flex their World Island muscle in the face of the advancing British during the Tournament of Shadows.  And, if we’re honest, they could. They could subjugate a people, reorient an economy, and pit tribal nomads and khanates against each other, so why not, right?  And so, what was and is easily one of the most inaccessible places on the planet was once again dredged up and made to perform the Orientalist*** sideshow we have all come to know and love. 

I actually have so much to say about the Fergana Valley that I don’t even know where to begin or what to say.  Instead I think I will just make casual references to things throughout my posts and let you Wikipedia them at your own volition if you so choose because just thinking about the Fergana Valley sends me into a tizzy and my thoughts are so disjointed that that I couldn’t possibly articulate myself in a coherent manner and end up forgetting what I was actually talking about in the first place.  Which is probably the most accurate analogy for the political situation in the Fergana valley at present. 

looooooool now I get why they call Kyrgyzstan the "Switzerland of Central Asia" because this place looks like Swiss Cheese. (Do they call it that?  I think my mom once referred to it as that years ago and I just believed everything she said because that's what you do when you have a mom.)

*seriously, who did this?

** in the marketing biz they call this the "double bubble" ;)
***I actually know very little about Marco Polo and from what I do know he didn’t actually pass through the Fergana Valley.  And with good reason.  First of all, it is a bowl-shaped valley**** with no outlet to the east.  Second, there were many silk roads, and I believe they are calling them “routes” now, so he had so many options.  When I was little I thought there was one long highway either lined with or entirely composed of silk and I was thinking, “Yeah, no wonder it no longer exists” but then discovering that the phrase was figurative and that there wasn’t even one simple road has ultimately led me to resent growing old and the entire institution of learning altogether.

**** You might well ask, "Find me a valley that's not bowl-shaped."  Touche.  

Osh Spice

I walked a short while and then caught a local marshrutka presumably heading for the centre of town.  Whether this is where we were heading I had no idea and had no idea of verifying but I was just feeling adventurous and why not, right?  Why not get into an unmarked vehicle in southern Kyrgyzstan?  #YOLO didn't exist yet, but that doesn't mean I wasn't living life to the fullest.  It turns out the marsh was going to the centre but I started to panic when more and more people piled into the Daewoo van* and I was actually at the point where my face and body was squished into something (either the side of the van, another person, a seat, my backpack, or all) and I actually found it hard to breathe.  This was one of those moments where I thought, "Okay, so if I die, I guess it's my fault" because I was about as smothered as can be.  Suddenly the marshrutka ground to a halt for me to decide that enough time had elapsed for it to be possible I had reached the centre, and also that I needed to breathe and could afford another 10 cents to pay the next marshrutka that came by in case I still needed to go further.  

This is Osh in the morning.  The drunken crowds of men who were fighting in the streets the night before had given way to angry crowds of old ladies trying to catch hot deals at the bazaar and not afraid to fight each other for it.  

When I emerged from what had become a veritable cocoon I noticed the driver was also out on the street and was engaged in an altercation with the driver of the marshrutka in front.  They started screaming and then suddenly started beating the shit out of each other.  I took this as my cue to leave walk and I realized that I had actually passed my stop.  I walked back in the direction I came to an intersection with a major road and asked the shopkeep for directions.  The woman directed me up the road to where the Aeropag store was (evidently my hostel was behind it.  Worst directions ever) so I walked and found it with remarkable ease.

The receptionist at the hostel told me that there was no room.  I thought this was ridiculous because I had been in email communication with the hostel and they told me they had a bed reserved.  They ended up giving me one of the beds the staff normally sleeps on and then told me that my proposed route to Tajikistan was bollocks and I could remain in Osh for a couple of days for another group planning on taking the Pamir highway and that it would be something like $250 to get me to Khorog.  As soon as I heard the price tag I did a pretty good spit-take and begged his pardon.  At that point I knew that maybe I should not be arranging these sorts of things through hostels and that surely it would be cheaper to just try my luck on the street.  

The next morning I woke as early as possible and headed towards the centre where I was told the group taxis left for Batkan.  I figured Batkan was my best shot because maybe I could go the opposite route and start on the Pamir Highway from Dushanbe.  So I found the starting point for the taxis and was able to not-so-shrewdly negotiate a trip to Batkan that didn't involve a bifurcation of the Uzbek enclave that inexplicably stood in the way of me and my goal.  For a price tag far above what I thought was reasonable, the driver agreed to take me and two Kazakhs along the "northern route" which circumvented the enclave.  We also brought a Tajik, or someone who also wasn't totally keen on going through Uzbekistan because he also wasn't allowed.**  While I didn't trust my taxi driver, I trusted the fact that, if need be, I could easily overpower him and take control of the vehicle, so I was ready to get er done.  

This mural of Mischa from the 1980 Olympics was on the side of a building down an alley in Osh and it kind of reminds me of this picture of me riding a rocking horse in 1987. 

*LOLz, I know, right?  Daewoo.  Like, wow.  Where did that come from? I think my biggest takeaway from travelling to Central Asia is that Daewoo still exists and there is a market for them.  

**Okay, is now a good time to talk about Central Asian politics?  Is ever a good time?  Holy crap.  I don't even want to talk about it because I feel like so few people in the world actually care and I have no interest in educating anyone who doesn't care enough to at least read the Wikipedia page so the only thing I will say, once again, is holy crap.