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.