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?"
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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?
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