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?
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