And so it’s home again, home again jiggety jog, but not without thoughts blasting their way into our minds as things keep coming back from our 35 day odyssey through time. Some memorable moments:
Most impressive scenery – Carol: The Tian Shan mountains with their expanses of snow covered peaks. We saw them from the ground, we saw them from the air, and we were awed by the views. Jim: Coming down the Torugart pass, lurching and jerking our way down the abysmal road with the Tian Shans all around us and the barrenness of the landscape. It was an incredible experience. One that the books talked about, and it did not disappoint.
Most memorable people, Carol: Besides the members of the group that we traveled with for 28 days I will remember the big, burly Kazak who paid the park photographer to take a picture of us with his group and without any English was able to make us understand that one copy was for us and we would have to wait till it was processed to pick it up. Jim: This is a tough one. We met so many people on this trip and each with their own stories. We tried to make contact with the Karakalpak lady from whom we could have learned much. I thought her to be a very interesting person. But the person whose memory will stay with me the most is Mari, the shop girl in Bukhara. She was one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met and just had a kind demeanor about her that was very becoming. If more people in the world were like her, we’d have a lot less problems. I know we’ll be friends even though we’ll be half a world away.
Biggest surprise, Carol: The number of people who wanted to have pictures taken with us, and the fact that it ran the age gamut, from pre-teen boys and girls to men and women our own age. Jim: The number of German tourists in Uzbekistan, and sitting at the restaurant with Asiya and Tina in Tashkent and seeing all the obviously Russian faces go by the window.
Biggest disappointment - Jim: Only one night in Samarkand. I would have loved to have a day of just soaking up the place. Carol: The food in China. It was just so repetitive.
Most visually impressive – Carol: The Bingling grottos and Mogao caves in China with carving after carving and cave after cave that were so important to the people in the past and have been carefully preserved so we can still see them today. Jim: The Sand dunes at Dunhuang with the Crescent Moon spring in the middle. It was exactly what I had always envisioned it would look like: sand everywhere with a small, verdant oasis sitting all by itself in the middle of it all. We’ve seen dunes bigger and more isolated, but these just fit what I always thought the Silk Road would be. The camel rides that most of the group took only added to the overall picture. And I have to add the color of the women’s clothing. It was continuously visually stunning.
What we’d come back for- Carol: To become more familiar with the fiber arts of the people: the silk and the cotton including the silk mill in the Fergana valley, and the felt art and weaving work in Kyrgyzstan. Jim. Easy to say another day in Samarkand and more time in Kyrgyzstan, but what I’d really like to come back and see in a few years is how the lives of many of the kids we met along the way have turned out. They have such potential and yet things are very difficult, and achievement and success isn’t always determined by ability in the Stans. I think in China the system accelerates the upward swing, but not in the Stans.
Most confusing day, Jim and Carol: The day we couldn’t go to Xiahe and visit the Labrang monastery because of the “Excitement” in the Buddhist area. We never found out what the deal was. It was like we fell into some informational black hole. Was there unrest? Were there riots? Was there a crackdown the authorities didn’t want to get out? We’ll probably never know. It really showed us that no matter the talk of the “New China,” in many ways, it ain’t that different.
Strangest day – For both of us it was the Border crossing between China and Kyrgyzstan. We just didn’t have a clue as to what was happening or going to happen, and it was such a looooong day.
Best food: The Stans, without a doubt, for both of us. The variety of salads and the tastiness of the meat made this part of the trip so much more enjoyable. Because they were so repetitious in China, it got to the point where meals were not even looked forward to. It was just feeding “Vol” as in a Star Trek episode.
Most unusual day – Jim and Carol: Leaving Urumqi for a two hour drive to get to the railway station only to arrive at this frontier town that was filthy, polluted, and parts looked like they were Chernobyl throwaways. Then waiting four hours for the train to arrive only to get to our compartment on the train and find dirty linen. We all slept in our clothes that night.
Most amazing sight – Carol: The Heavenly Lake, or the Tian Shan lake. We had been through so much desert area and then the ride culminated with this beauty spot of nature. Jim: The incredible line which stretched over half a mile to see Mao’s enshrined body and the obvious rural character of the people in that line. It was definitely a very big deal to them.
Most surprising facts – Carol: That Tashkent was the 4th largest city in the Soviet Union, after Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kiev. Jim: The number of Koreans in Tashkent, and the fact that they know nothing of Korea.
Strangest sight – For both of us it would have to be the mouths full of gold teeth that we first encountered in Khiva and continued throughout Uzbekistan.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
10-9-8-7
Well, things are starting to get really nasty. At noon we have to be out of our room, then our airport transfer is at 6 p.m. Our flight from Tashkent to Seoul leaves at 9pm. Our six hour flight arrives at 7 in the morning. We have a 12 hour layover in Seoul and then a 10 hour flight to Seattle. Two hours to clear customs, immigration and then a one hour flight to Portland. From the time we leave here we’ll be 34 hours in transit. Best that I send these things today before I get really gnarly.
Our vodka search turned out to be a non-adventure. It’s not too hard to find a liquor store around here. Sirdar had told us yesterday that there are a lot of men who just drink all day and then sleep on the streets at night. We haven’t seen that, but I don’t doubt him. We experienced the same thing in Russia a few years back. There are those who just haven’t made the adjustment from having a lifetime no -work job, to having to be accountable in their work.
We went back to Lyalya’s restaurant for lunch. She wasn’t there, but they called her and she rushed down to see us. Photos were taken, emails were exchanged, promises to keep in touch vowed, and we’re supposed to go back and say goodbye tomorrow. I’m now her unofficial grandfather, and she called Carol Grandmother when introducing her to the owner of the restaurant. The same 15% service charge was again offered, a free banana split (pieces of banana totally gooey with melted chocolate) was delivered to our table, and the owner came over to tell us how much they appreciate us.
We have been struck over and over again by the outpouring of warmth and affection from the people. We have been hugged, snuggled with, kissed on both cheeks, shaken more hands than a politician running for election, and smiled at more than on any trip we can think of in our past.
You always try not to come with stereotypes of cultures, but we never got this kind of warmth in Russia. We always talk about the pouty Russian females, and the surly officials taking tickets at the museum and the cold stares we got on the street. So we more or less expected the same here. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Uzbeks are an open, gregarious people who openly display affection between themselves and with those they meet. Men walk hand in hand with men, girls lock arms as they walk together, and you see a lot more public affection between boyfriends and girlfriends than we have anywhere else on the trip.
They are not a cold people in any respect. They are open with their opinions, even though it’s not too smart to do so a lot of times. They have great love for Americans and the image of the United States has not been sullied by our recent history, even though in many parts of the Muslim world we’re seen as anti-Muslim. They still believe in the idea of the American dream. John put it well, I thought, in a conversation after most of the group had left. He said it was very important that America succeed, because if democracy and an open society can’t work in America, it can’t work anywhere. We still have the best chance to make an ideal society where people respect each other and people work towards a common good. I just can’t say enough about how much I like and enjoy the people of Uzbekistan.
We went to the museum of fine arts. While walking around, a young woman came up and asked us the usual questions. She was a guide and offered to take us around, not a money thing, but she didn’t have anything to do and was happy to show us the museum. We didn’t want to occupy her time and the potential to make some money with a tour, so we declined. I told her that I could see tapestries on the next level and that’s where Carol could be found. Later on she was guiding an Uzbek group and saw us. She abandoned the group, came downstairs, and gave Carol some printed material on textiles in Uzbekistan. Photos were taken, Emails………………well you certainly know the rest by now.
And so it’s over. I hope you’ve sensed the wonder of it all. Thanks for bearing with my ranting, but that just gives it some perspective, I suppose . I’m not the best of travelers at times. I get pissed, small-minded, judgmental, and just downright short-tempered. But through it all, the overall glorious picture forms and I’ve tried to convey that to you. It’s a wonderful world and one which I hope to continue to explore. W. C. Fields notwithstanding, I would not rather be in Philadelphia.
Our vodka search turned out to be a non-adventure. It’s not too hard to find a liquor store around here. Sirdar had told us yesterday that there are a lot of men who just drink all day and then sleep on the streets at night. We haven’t seen that, but I don’t doubt him. We experienced the same thing in Russia a few years back. There are those who just haven’t made the adjustment from having a lifetime no -work job, to having to be accountable in their work.
We went back to Lyalya’s restaurant for lunch. She wasn’t there, but they called her and she rushed down to see us. Photos were taken, emails were exchanged, promises to keep in touch vowed, and we’re supposed to go back and say goodbye tomorrow. I’m now her unofficial grandfather, and she called Carol Grandmother when introducing her to the owner of the restaurant. The same 15% service charge was again offered, a free banana split (pieces of banana totally gooey with melted chocolate) was delivered to our table, and the owner came over to tell us how much they appreciate us.
We have been struck over and over again by the outpouring of warmth and affection from the people. We have been hugged, snuggled with, kissed on both cheeks, shaken more hands than a politician running for election, and smiled at more than on any trip we can think of in our past.
You always try not to come with stereotypes of cultures, but we never got this kind of warmth in Russia. We always talk about the pouty Russian females, and the surly officials taking tickets at the museum and the cold stares we got on the street. So we more or less expected the same here. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Uzbeks are an open, gregarious people who openly display affection between themselves and with those they meet. Men walk hand in hand with men, girls lock arms as they walk together, and you see a lot more public affection between boyfriends and girlfriends than we have anywhere else on the trip.
They are not a cold people in any respect. They are open with their opinions, even though it’s not too smart to do so a lot of times. They have great love for Americans and the image of the United States has not been sullied by our recent history, even though in many parts of the Muslim world we’re seen as anti-Muslim. They still believe in the idea of the American dream. John put it well, I thought, in a conversation after most of the group had left. He said it was very important that America succeed, because if democracy and an open society can’t work in America, it can’t work anywhere. We still have the best chance to make an ideal society where people respect each other and people work towards a common good. I just can’t say enough about how much I like and enjoy the people of Uzbekistan.
We went to the museum of fine arts. While walking around, a young woman came up and asked us the usual questions. She was a guide and offered to take us around, not a money thing, but she didn’t have anything to do and was happy to show us the museum. We didn’t want to occupy her time and the potential to make some money with a tour, so we declined. I told her that I could see tapestries on the next level and that’s where Carol could be found. Later on she was guiding an Uzbek group and saw us. She abandoned the group, came downstairs, and gave Carol some printed material on textiles in Uzbekistan. Photos were taken, Emails………………well you certainly know the rest by now.
And so it’s over. I hope you’ve sensed the wonder of it all. Thanks for bearing with my ranting, but that just gives it some perspective, I suppose . I’m not the best of travelers at times. I get pissed, small-minded, judgmental, and just downright short-tempered. But through it all, the overall glorious picture forms and I’ve tried to convey that to you. It’s a wonderful world and one which I hope to continue to explore. W. C. Fields notwithstanding, I would not rather be in Philadelphia.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Well, hell. Another throwaway day
Well, we’ve still got three more days here. What are we going to do? We decided that we’d try the history museum, but the concierge just rolled his eyes when I told him. He said you know about history. It is what the people in power decide it is. Uzbekistan has been ruled since before independence and while probably not on the scale of the Tunisian ruling family, it ain’t far behind in many respects. He suggested the museum of applied arts.
So off we went. Along the way we met a boy playing cutsy on a park bench with his girlfriend and he greeted us and naturally a conversation ensued. His girlfriend was more shy and sat there and smiled while he was on his feet and having a good time with the banter. He is a student at the Irrigation and something else institute and I asked him if he was going to figure out a way to put the water back in the Aral sea. He said he was studying, but I reminded him that he didn’t have any books out from which to study, and he was really more intent on studying his girlfriend. We had a fun conversation. He was agile of mind and quick with a response. Reminded me of all the times I used to banter with Lisa Gluskin during her lunch at good old LSE. She was so quick with a comeback and NEVER missed a trick, no matter how obscure I might try to make it. Surprisingly, he didn’t want us to take a picture of him. This was the first time we’ve been in Uzbekistan that a young person didn’t want his photo taken.
Further on there was a little pen with rabbits in it. Naturally we had to stop for the photo op. Moms and toddlers were oohing and aahing as was my wife. A policeman at a corner, there is always a policeman at big intersections, wanted to know where we were from and got that great smile that “Amerika” always brings. A lady going home to her two children, from work-I assume, directed us the last little confusing part of our journey.
We arrived at the museum to the strands of Uzbek music coming from inside. A dazzling Uzbek beauty in full regalia from the top of her head to the soles of her shoes was posing and dancing in a doorway while a very professional crew with lights and reflectors and sound grips and all the other accoutrements of film were doing their bit. When she was through working her magic, I noticed a small band of folk instruments watching us. I went over, said my greeting, shook hands with each of them, and the whole conversation: “Where are you from……………” etc began again. They were very interested in us and genuinely warm and welcoming.
We wandered around the museum and when we were through, Carol checked out the fiber in the gift shop and I fled, both in fear that she might buy more stuff and dread because I’ve already seen it all ad nauseum (sp). Besides inside the main hall, the music was playing and the dazzler might be there. Instead it was a folk singer lip syncing to a folk tune. Camera rolled, lights were adjusted and the whole process continued. After this, the band wanted photos so I did the photo routine. Then I filmed them and they played. I learned later that as I was filming, Carol did a little strumming in the background, and that’s when they began to play. The dazzler returned in a different but still stunning outfit, so naturally I had to have my own photo op. She posed next to me and I got a little video as well. Tough job, this.
We walked the couple of miles back to the hotel and rested for a bit. I still hadn’t had my haircut and was running out of time. I told them at the front desk of my desire to get it cut on the street, and the concierge said that nobody works on the streets anymore, and many people get their hair cut at home because of the cost. The people are poor and it is money that is better spent on food. He has his hair cut by his wife. Hmmm, sounds familiar except for the poor bit. But a kid behind the desk said that he knew of a barber shop which was indoors but not the ritzy type you find in the fat cat hotels and salons. His name is Sirdar and it turns out that he was an exchange student in Rapid City S.D. He was one of 500 who applied at the U.S. embassy which was awarding 17 scholarships to 16 year olds for a year as an exchange student. He didn’t like the big city very much and moved to a small town with one grocery store, two gas stations and a video shop. I reminded him that he was from a city of 3+ million and Rapid City hardly qualified as a big city. But it was an unfriendly place, he felt, where people drove and didn’t walk, and nobody knew anybody. In Newell (?) there were 135 kids in the school and he loved it. There were also a German and Danish exchange student at the school, but he was the only one from Asia. Naturally, with the wonderful geography students we have (no offense, Jerry) they only asked him intelligent questions about Uzbekistan. Like: “Do you all ride donkeys? “Do you ride camels to school?” amongst other sophisticated queries. He had a great year and got to take part in all the senior rituals like going to prom with his girlfriend riding in a limousine with friends and the whole enchilada.
He was at the hotel doing some stuff even though it was his vacation because he didn’t have anything else to do. I tried to explain to him that that’s not how it’s supposed to be, but he just laughed. He walked with us to make sure we found it. The shop was in the bazaar and it was open. I got a very professional cut by a real barber who sort of reminded me of my buddy Brock who became a barber. I moved before I got to have Brock cut my hair, but I did think of him today. Snip, snip, snip, all with scissors. No clippers, no razors. He was fast, efficient, and good. Probably the best cut I’ve had in all the places I’ve had it done. Carol took some pictures, and Sirdar translated back and forth. I told him to make sure the “Barber” behind him could see so that she could take notes. He was good-natured, and got I got a big laugh out of him when he cut the hair out of my ears and I told him I could hear again. The whole thing cost $2.50 and I felt really cheesy by only tipping the guy 50 cents, but even that is not normally done here . The girls at the front desk got a big kick out of the fact that I’d actually had it done. They’re not used to such behavior out of the guests. We had a thoroughly engrossing conversation with the Concierge about the history of Uzbekistan. For example, he worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs during “The Soviet times,” (There’s that term again.) The whole department only had 10 employees. The Soviets used it as a way to get extra votes on different councils, but everything was controlled by Moscow.
Back in our room at the hotel we had to figure out what to do for din-din. Our show dinner was fully booked up by a wedding party, so we’ve got reservations for tomorrow. But I noticed a little place next to it that looked like a restaurant so we went back there to see. It turned out to be a Georgian restaurant with a little 17-year-old. Her name was something really long and she said it fast. We just looked and she said: “My nickname is LyaLya which means baby.” As she was trying to explain the menu to us, she’d stop, use her phone, call her sister, ask her a question, and then tell us: “It’s in gravy.” Oh, okay, that sounds good. We had a nice meal, and she wanted us to come back tomorrow for lunch. She was so delighted with us and her conversation, that she even got the 20% service reduced down to 15%. It was just a really sweet gesture and was quite touching. We asked her what we could have for lunch and she was back on the phone. She said that it was chicken with potatoes, but beyond that she wasn’t sure. She went back on the phone and then asked us: “You know what is a cauldron?” “Yes,” Carol Answered. “It’s a big pot.” She got a big smile on her face and said: “Yes.” From Rimma in the background came: “It’s chicken with tomatoes.” “Oh, yes,” LyiLyi said. “Tomatoes. Chicken with tomatoes.” She had a really innocent look and was trying so hard to please, we couldn’t help but promise to return.
We returned to the hotel exhausted from all our walking, and with the nagging thought that tomorrow might just be another day just like today. Oh, the agony of it all. Oh yeah, tomorrow we go in search of Vodka to take home. That oughta be fun.
So off we went. Along the way we met a boy playing cutsy on a park bench with his girlfriend and he greeted us and naturally a conversation ensued. His girlfriend was more shy and sat there and smiled while he was on his feet and having a good time with the banter. He is a student at the Irrigation and something else institute and I asked him if he was going to figure out a way to put the water back in the Aral sea. He said he was studying, but I reminded him that he didn’t have any books out from which to study, and he was really more intent on studying his girlfriend. We had a fun conversation. He was agile of mind and quick with a response. Reminded me of all the times I used to banter with Lisa Gluskin during her lunch at good old LSE. She was so quick with a comeback and NEVER missed a trick, no matter how obscure I might try to make it. Surprisingly, he didn’t want us to take a picture of him. This was the first time we’ve been in Uzbekistan that a young person didn’t want his photo taken.
Further on there was a little pen with rabbits in it. Naturally we had to stop for the photo op. Moms and toddlers were oohing and aahing as was my wife. A policeman at a corner, there is always a policeman at big intersections, wanted to know where we were from and got that great smile that “Amerika” always brings. A lady going home to her two children, from work-I assume, directed us the last little confusing part of our journey.
We arrived at the museum to the strands of Uzbek music coming from inside. A dazzling Uzbek beauty in full regalia from the top of her head to the soles of her shoes was posing and dancing in a doorway while a very professional crew with lights and reflectors and sound grips and all the other accoutrements of film were doing their bit. When she was through working her magic, I noticed a small band of folk instruments watching us. I went over, said my greeting, shook hands with each of them, and the whole conversation: “Where are you from……………” etc began again. They were very interested in us and genuinely warm and welcoming.
We wandered around the museum and when we were through, Carol checked out the fiber in the gift shop and I fled, both in fear that she might buy more stuff and dread because I’ve already seen it all ad nauseum (sp). Besides inside the main hall, the music was playing and the dazzler might be there. Instead it was a folk singer lip syncing to a folk tune. Camera rolled, lights were adjusted and the whole process continued. After this, the band wanted photos so I did the photo routine. Then I filmed them and they played. I learned later that as I was filming, Carol did a little strumming in the background, and that’s when they began to play. The dazzler returned in a different but still stunning outfit, so naturally I had to have my own photo op. She posed next to me and I got a little video as well. Tough job, this.
We walked the couple of miles back to the hotel and rested for a bit. I still hadn’t had my haircut and was running out of time. I told them at the front desk of my desire to get it cut on the street, and the concierge said that nobody works on the streets anymore, and many people get their hair cut at home because of the cost. The people are poor and it is money that is better spent on food. He has his hair cut by his wife. Hmmm, sounds familiar except for the poor bit. But a kid behind the desk said that he knew of a barber shop which was indoors but not the ritzy type you find in the fat cat hotels and salons. His name is Sirdar and it turns out that he was an exchange student in Rapid City S.D. He was one of 500 who applied at the U.S. embassy which was awarding 17 scholarships to 16 year olds for a year as an exchange student. He didn’t like the big city very much and moved to a small town with one grocery store, two gas stations and a video shop. I reminded him that he was from a city of 3+ million and Rapid City hardly qualified as a big city. But it was an unfriendly place, he felt, where people drove and didn’t walk, and nobody knew anybody. In Newell (?) there were 135 kids in the school and he loved it. There were also a German and Danish exchange student at the school, but he was the only one from Asia. Naturally, with the wonderful geography students we have (no offense, Jerry) they only asked him intelligent questions about Uzbekistan. Like: “Do you all ride donkeys? “Do you ride camels to school?” amongst other sophisticated queries. He had a great year and got to take part in all the senior rituals like going to prom with his girlfriend riding in a limousine with friends and the whole enchilada.
He was at the hotel doing some stuff even though it was his vacation because he didn’t have anything else to do. I tried to explain to him that that’s not how it’s supposed to be, but he just laughed. He walked with us to make sure we found it. The shop was in the bazaar and it was open. I got a very professional cut by a real barber who sort of reminded me of my buddy Brock who became a barber. I moved before I got to have Brock cut my hair, but I did think of him today. Snip, snip, snip, all with scissors. No clippers, no razors. He was fast, efficient, and good. Probably the best cut I’ve had in all the places I’ve had it done. Carol took some pictures, and Sirdar translated back and forth. I told him to make sure the “Barber” behind him could see so that she could take notes. He was good-natured, and got I got a big laugh out of him when he cut the hair out of my ears and I told him I could hear again. The whole thing cost $2.50 and I felt really cheesy by only tipping the guy 50 cents, but even that is not normally done here . The girls at the front desk got a big kick out of the fact that I’d actually had it done. They’re not used to such behavior out of the guests. We had a thoroughly engrossing conversation with the Concierge about the history of Uzbekistan. For example, he worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs during “The Soviet times,” (There’s that term again.) The whole department only had 10 employees. The Soviets used it as a way to get extra votes on different councils, but everything was controlled by Moscow.
Back in our room at the hotel we had to figure out what to do for din-din. Our show dinner was fully booked up by a wedding party, so we’ve got reservations for tomorrow. But I noticed a little place next to it that looked like a restaurant so we went back there to see. It turned out to be a Georgian restaurant with a little 17-year-old. Her name was something really long and she said it fast. We just looked and she said: “My nickname is LyaLya which means baby.” As she was trying to explain the menu to us, she’d stop, use her phone, call her sister, ask her a question, and then tell us: “It’s in gravy.” Oh, okay, that sounds good. We had a nice meal, and she wanted us to come back tomorrow for lunch. She was so delighted with us and her conversation, that she even got the 20% service reduced down to 15%. It was just a really sweet gesture and was quite touching. We asked her what we could have for lunch and she was back on the phone. She said that it was chicken with potatoes, but beyond that she wasn’t sure. She went back on the phone and then asked us: “You know what is a cauldron?” “Yes,” Carol Answered. “It’s a big pot.” She got a big smile on her face and said: “Yes.” From Rimma in the background came: “It’s chicken with tomatoes.” “Oh, yes,” LyiLyi said. “Tomatoes. Chicken with tomatoes.” She had a really innocent look and was trying so hard to please, we couldn’t help but promise to return.
We returned to the hotel exhausted from all our walking, and with the nagging thought that tomorrow might just be another day just like today. Oh, the agony of it all. Oh yeah, tomorrow we go in search of Vodka to take home. That oughta be fun.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
The end of the road
For his last supper Jesus made dinner reservations for 13. We had 14 in our group and it was a far more convivial get together with probably more vodka at this one. We all survived the trip with relatively limited ruffled feathers and stayed pretty good friends throughout. Peter, the professional photographer, did a slide show of some of his best photos and the man is a wizard with the camera and photoshop. Really amazing shots. He has a fine eye for someone who is totally oblivious to everything else around him, but more about that at another time.
Seven of the group left this morning. The boys leave tomorrow night for a three day train trip to Moscow – sounds like a super trip Lise, Saci, and John are staying two extra nights and Carol and I have four extra nights.
As I mentioned earlier, we had planned on taking the bus back to Samarkand. Intellectually and spiritually I really wanted time to just explore leisurely, sit around and soak up the atmosphere, and get my haircut. I thought it would be cool to have Samarkand on my list of haircut places. But the flesh just wasn’t willing. Carol and I talked about it and the thought of getting back on a bus which would mean lugging the suitcases into and out of taxis and buses, then retracing our steps over the bumpy road then getting to a hotel would basically take a full day’s travel just to have a free day and then doing the whole thing over again to get back to Tashkent. So we just said: “It would be cool, but it ain’t gonna happen. We’ll spend our four days here and certainly find things to do with our time.
For one thing, there were all these hulking bodies lounging around the lobby of our hotel and we found out that the Asian Wrestling Championships are being held here. That might be cool to see just as a cultural thing.
We were able to stay in our hotel for two extra nights but we’re not sure about the last two. It’ll all work out. If we have to move we move, but the girls at the desk are working hard for us. Dilshot told me that one was a Korean. I greeted her in Korean and she just looked back with a blank stare. It seems that there is a substantial community here. She was born here and knows nothing of Korea. I showed her pictures of Jeff and An Jin’s wedding and it was just foreign to her. I teased her about being so uninformed about her heritage and when she gets married to an Uzbeki it will be even more lost. She asked me if I had any more sons.
We waved good-bye to the bus as it pulled off and came back inside. For the first time in 28 days our time is our own. True to the slow withdrawal of the group the remaining seven of us agreed to have dinner tonight together. Ha, it’s hard to say good-bye.
We left the hotel and simply walked. We retraced our steps from our stop here a week ago. Last time there was one swan in the pond, now there were two with a couple of cygnets hovering between proud mom and dad. Of course, we went through the requisite photo sessions.
We passed a couple of young lovers sitting on a park bench and he smiled at us and so I greeted him with the Uzbeki greeting. He responded and got up to shake hands which was a very common gesture. He is a student as is his girlfriend. Photos were taken and he wanted us to send him a copy, to which we agreed. His girlfriend was so diminutive. She was very shy, but we couldn’t get over how tiny she was – certainly shorter than 5’ and small boned. Not skinny or emaciated, just really small.
Next was a very sophisticated woman walking with her mother. She said hello and asked where we were from. She works for the Chamber of Commerce and is of the ethnic background, Karakalpak, which we’d never heard of before. Carol knew about Karakal sheep but she didn’t know the origins of the breed. The woman’s face didn’t seem to match any genetic profiles which we had built up in our travel data base. She was very well spoken. I think anyone who speaks seven languages certainly qualifies as that. Her mom has 12 grandchildren and we chatted for a while before agreeing to send her a copy of the photos. We thumbed through our books upon returning to the hotel and found that Karakalpakstan is an area up by the Aral Sea and naturally has been devastated by that disaster. The name Karakalpak means “Black hat people.” . The mother probably in her mid 50’s has such a soft, kind face and raised six children. The daughter translated for mom and she smiled through her gold teeth and seemed such a sweet lady. This world is just soooooooo fascinating. It’s a never-ending source of amazement and wonder. All the different peoples of the world all with the same hopes, desires, and dreams. How could we not want to see it all. A group of school girls giggled and tee-heed their way across the fountains where one can walk through the water since they have built a walk about four inches below the water line. Shoes come off, pants get hiked up and the kids love to walk across. They engaged us and giggled and tee-heed their way through conversation. They were just irrepressible. One of them had been a student in Tennessee. Her parents are still there but the girl came back. Carol and I could only imagine the reasons why. They might be very above board, but we couldn’t help wondering.
A middle aged group of men and women passed us and the man greeted us and wanted to talk. A big burly man wanted us to know that he was Kazak, not Uzbek. Carol remembled that when we were in Mongolia that whenever we saw a really big man, our guide Anya always said: “He’s a Kazak.” After conversation we started to wander off when we were called back by the Kazak. There was a photographer who would take photos of people in front of the monument and then print them off. The Kazak wanted a photo of the group and paid for an extra copy for us. We tried to say that we had our own camera and didn’t need a copy, but he really wanted to do so, and naturally we complied. We also took one with our own camera.
We wandered our way back to the hotel just to rest and recharge. We all met for dinner and went to a lovely restaurant which turned out to have a folk show later in the evening. We didn’t stay, but may go back since we have the time to do what we please. It was a restaurant in the Russian style and looked like it might be a room taken directly from the Winter Palace. The food was excellent and when they brought us the bill, our tab was 35,000 Som. So here we are with a wad of bills counting out 35 1,000 som notes. It looked so ridiculous, this massive pile of bills which in the end only amounted to about 15 dollars. They do an Uzbek folk show later in the evening, and we might go back and check it out. We’re not exactly spinning our wheels, but we do have lots to time to do what we want since we decided not to go back to Samarkand.
Thursday morning we took the underground out to an area we had visited by bus to a shop we particularly liked. The boys, Saci and Lise were there yesterday, and when we talked to the lady she was so happy that we came back to her shop. It was rather funny because the boys, Saci and Lise had gone the day before and we talked with her about how they too had waited to come back to Tashkent and find her shop again. While we were there a German woman came in and she also had returned to Tashkent and found this same shop. The shopkeeper was naturally thrilled that all the chickens were coming home to roost. As she said, there are more than 250 boutiques in Bukhara alone, and for everybody to wait and come back made her very happy not to mention a little bit better off financially.
And then there were none. The boys left today, John, Lise and Saci are all at another hotel and leave tomorrow and so it’s just my bride and myself for the last two plus days. Things could be a lot worse.
May 20th. Woke up this morning with a “Happy Anniversary” greeting from the sweet lady beside me. 33 years ago today, or tonight, if you take into consideration the 12 hour time difference between Tashkent and PDT. Where would I be if she hadn’t entered my life? My mother shudders at the thought.
Seven of the group left this morning. The boys leave tomorrow night for a three day train trip to Moscow – sounds like a super trip Lise, Saci, and John are staying two extra nights and Carol and I have four extra nights.
As I mentioned earlier, we had planned on taking the bus back to Samarkand. Intellectually and spiritually I really wanted time to just explore leisurely, sit around and soak up the atmosphere, and get my haircut. I thought it would be cool to have Samarkand on my list of haircut places. But the flesh just wasn’t willing. Carol and I talked about it and the thought of getting back on a bus which would mean lugging the suitcases into and out of taxis and buses, then retracing our steps over the bumpy road then getting to a hotel would basically take a full day’s travel just to have a free day and then doing the whole thing over again to get back to Tashkent. So we just said: “It would be cool, but it ain’t gonna happen. We’ll spend our four days here and certainly find things to do with our time.
For one thing, there were all these hulking bodies lounging around the lobby of our hotel and we found out that the Asian Wrestling Championships are being held here. That might be cool to see just as a cultural thing.
We were able to stay in our hotel for two extra nights but we’re not sure about the last two. It’ll all work out. If we have to move we move, but the girls at the desk are working hard for us. Dilshot told me that one was a Korean. I greeted her in Korean and she just looked back with a blank stare. It seems that there is a substantial community here. She was born here and knows nothing of Korea. I showed her pictures of Jeff and An Jin’s wedding and it was just foreign to her. I teased her about being so uninformed about her heritage and when she gets married to an Uzbeki it will be even more lost. She asked me if I had any more sons.
We waved good-bye to the bus as it pulled off and came back inside. For the first time in 28 days our time is our own. True to the slow withdrawal of the group the remaining seven of us agreed to have dinner tonight together. Ha, it’s hard to say good-bye.
We left the hotel and simply walked. We retraced our steps from our stop here a week ago. Last time there was one swan in the pond, now there were two with a couple of cygnets hovering between proud mom and dad. Of course, we went through the requisite photo sessions.
We passed a couple of young lovers sitting on a park bench and he smiled at us and so I greeted him with the Uzbeki greeting. He responded and got up to shake hands which was a very common gesture. He is a student as is his girlfriend. Photos were taken and he wanted us to send him a copy, to which we agreed. His girlfriend was so diminutive. She was very shy, but we couldn’t get over how tiny she was – certainly shorter than 5’ and small boned. Not skinny or emaciated, just really small.
Next was a very sophisticated woman walking with her mother. She said hello and asked where we were from. She works for the Chamber of Commerce and is of the ethnic background, Karakalpak, which we’d never heard of before. Carol knew about Karakal sheep but she didn’t know the origins of the breed. The woman’s face didn’t seem to match any genetic profiles which we had built up in our travel data base. She was very well spoken. I think anyone who speaks seven languages certainly qualifies as that. Her mom has 12 grandchildren and we chatted for a while before agreeing to send her a copy of the photos. We thumbed through our books upon returning to the hotel and found that Karakalpakstan is an area up by the Aral Sea and naturally has been devastated by that disaster. The name Karakalpak means “Black hat people.” . The mother probably in her mid 50’s has such a soft, kind face and raised six children. The daughter translated for mom and she smiled through her gold teeth and seemed such a sweet lady. This world is just soooooooo fascinating. It’s a never-ending source of amazement and wonder. All the different peoples of the world all with the same hopes, desires, and dreams. How could we not want to see it all. A group of school girls giggled and tee-heed their way across the fountains where one can walk through the water since they have built a walk about four inches below the water line. Shoes come off, pants get hiked up and the kids love to walk across. They engaged us and giggled and tee-heed their way through conversation. They were just irrepressible. One of them had been a student in Tennessee. Her parents are still there but the girl came back. Carol and I could only imagine the reasons why. They might be very above board, but we couldn’t help wondering.
A middle aged group of men and women passed us and the man greeted us and wanted to talk. A big burly man wanted us to know that he was Kazak, not Uzbek. Carol remembled that when we were in Mongolia that whenever we saw a really big man, our guide Anya always said: “He’s a Kazak.” After conversation we started to wander off when we were called back by the Kazak. There was a photographer who would take photos of people in front of the monument and then print them off. The Kazak wanted a photo of the group and paid for an extra copy for us. We tried to say that we had our own camera and didn’t need a copy, but he really wanted to do so, and naturally we complied. We also took one with our own camera.
We wandered our way back to the hotel just to rest and recharge. We all met for dinner and went to a lovely restaurant which turned out to have a folk show later in the evening. We didn’t stay, but may go back since we have the time to do what we please. It was a restaurant in the Russian style and looked like it might be a room taken directly from the Winter Palace. The food was excellent and when they brought us the bill, our tab was 35,000 Som. So here we are with a wad of bills counting out 35 1,000 som notes. It looked so ridiculous, this massive pile of bills which in the end only amounted to about 15 dollars. They do an Uzbek folk show later in the evening, and we might go back and check it out. We’re not exactly spinning our wheels, but we do have lots to time to do what we want since we decided not to go back to Samarkand.
Thursday morning we took the underground out to an area we had visited by bus to a shop we particularly liked. The boys, Saci and Lise were there yesterday, and when we talked to the lady she was so happy that we came back to her shop. It was rather funny because the boys, Saci and Lise had gone the day before and we talked with her about how they too had waited to come back to Tashkent and find her shop again. While we were there a German woman came in and she also had returned to Tashkent and found this same shop. The shopkeeper was naturally thrilled that all the chickens were coming home to roost. As she said, there are more than 250 boutiques in Bukhara alone, and for everybody to wait and come back made her very happy not to mention a little bit better off financially.
And then there were none. The boys left today, John, Lise and Saci are all at another hotel and leave tomorrow and so it’s just my bride and myself for the last two plus days. Things could be a lot worse.
May 20th. Woke up this morning with a “Happy Anniversary” greeting from the sweet lady beside me. 33 years ago today, or tonight, if you take into consideration the 12 hour time difference between Tashkent and PDT. Where would I be if she hadn’t entered my life? My mother shudders at the thought.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
The city of Tamerlane
Well, we made it!
The whole trip I’ve waited for Samarkand and everything has been a prelude and a little tease to the big grand finale and it didn’t disappoint.
When Carol was reading the Lonely Planet book about Central Asia and read the part about Samarkand and Tamerlane she experienced a reverberation of interest bringing back memories of poetry she read in her youth about “The Golden Road to Samarkand” and the life of the magnificent Tamerlane. She can’t remember if it was Tennyson or Kipling, but no matter the recollection was there and it thrilled her to finally see what her mind’s eye had always imagined.
What a wonderful place it is. It just oozes history with its own special buzz. We saw great mosques and medrassas and mausoleums in Khiva and Bukhara, but the whole Registan square is so massive and majestic that everything else pales in comparison. Our hotel is, of course, located away from the main area so walking around and exploring is not really possible. We only have one night here which is a real shame, but Carol and I plan on coming back here after we finish the tour in Tashkent, so we’re not too stressed about it.
We have a local guide, a Ukranian woman who is very knowledgeable about the city and has a lot of inside information which is interesting, but we’re really on information overload at this point, and some simple wandering on our own would be nice. But she does take us to areas that we might miss otherwise and that’s very cool. Little alleys that lead to a beautiful mosque which could be arrived at by a larger avenue make it all worthwhile.
Samarkand is one of the world’s oldest cities and yet at about half a million inhabitants has all the bells and whistles of a major city. Like Khiva and Bukhara, Samarkand is definitely a Central Asian city. Tashkent was so European that it’s easy to forget where you are, but Samarkand still has the sense of the ancient. You’re just surrounded by it in the old part of the city. Tall blue-tiled minarets and arches beckon and just sitting in front of the Registan was awe-inspiring. Naturally we all had to pose for photos with the kids, but that’s just part of the drill these days.
Samarkand was the economic and cultural center of Central Asia. Amir Temur, or Tamerlane, as he’s know in the trades, built this city to reflect his power and sense of organization. It later became the political head of the entire area as well, but because it was the intellectual center it drew the best minds from all of Central Asia. This is where it was happening. This is where you needed to be in the 13th-14th centuries. Apparently it was of near mythical status.
The Silk Road’s divergent paths all joined here. Different routes could and would converge on Samarkand like the spokes which stretch out from Place d’Etoile in Paris. Like all major cities of the empires throughout the ages, Rome, Athens, St. Petersburg, Samarkand had that type of status and drawing power. Alexander came here and set up shop long before Tamerlane, but even then it had that kind of draw and pull.
The restoration of the ancient buildings to resemble the actual structures of the 13th century is very impressive and, surprise, surprise, surprise, the Soviets restored many of them with great care and dedication to reflect the history is certainly commendable on their part, and since the breakup the Uzbeks have continued the great work. The city wasn’t totally trashed by the ravages of time and history, but when you look at photographs taken in the late 19th and early 20th century you can see how badly time treated the city after the fall of the Mongols.
I won’t dribble on and on about the city, but if you get online and look at some photos of the Registan and of Samarkand in general, you’ll see what I mean. Suffice it to say that Carol and I truly saw Samarkand as the highlight of the trip. Who knows, maybe it has some pull from a past life but I really had a sense of completion after being here.
We toured the city for about five hours and were pretty tired, but we had made arrangements to meet with a Servas host. We weren’t looking for accommodations since we already had our hotel, but some local contact and understanding about what we were seeing was certainly helpful. Anatoly and his wife Irina were affable hosts. Anatoly is wholly and totally dedicated to the cause of peace and has formed a Peace network here in Uzbekistan. He developed a peace museum which reflects the world’s conflicts and shows how they could be resolved by forward thinking people. His displays show the devastation that war brings to people’s lives, and he is one of the most admirable individuals we’ve met through
Servas. Our hosts in Namibia were of the same ilk.
We watched a presentation he had developed on the peace movement, had tea and coffee and just chatted for a while. Irina doesn’t speak English so Anatoly did the translations back and forth. They had asked us if we wanted to stay for dinner, but we declined saying that we’d had a big lunch and the tea and cakes they served were sufficient. After chatting for a time we started to make our farewells and Irina came in and announced that dinner was almost ready and did we want rice or noodles? We were really tired, it had been a very long day on a non-air-conditioned bus followed by five hours of touring, and we just wanted a shower and some time out. We felt badly, but we had said we didn’t want anything to eat. She looked very disappointed and I don’t know if it was a language thing or what, but we left a little sad about the mix-up.
We said goodbye to our little Japanese birder. She seemed disappointed that we wouldn’t run into each other again and almost knocked me over with her big hug. It just reinforces my belief that we really are all one in this world and I just don’t get this nationalism and border thing that seems to predominate in culture and society.
I think we’re all just wearing out. Alan got sick with the you-know-what and stayed back at the hotel for our final morning tour of Samarkand. We had time off in China and it was great to have an afternoon where we could rest, stroll, sit and people-watch, and just do what our minds and bodies wanted/needed. But since the day we left Kashgar, when was that 2010? We’ve been on the run. No time to relax, no time for reflection, no time to recharge the batteries, literally and figuratively, and it’s beginning to wear a little thin on us all. Lise and Saci have been hacking their way across Uzbekistan, and John’s got something for the second time on the trip. Carol continues to recover, but even she with all her strength of character and body is feeling it.
So with a mixture of “Here we go again,” and also wonderment we went back out with our local guide, and visited more spots. Everyone knows that we’ll not see the likes of this again and is game to get on with the program, but there’s a general feeling that we do not have enough time in the Stans. Most feel we had too much time in China and not enough here. It feels extremely rushed. The Silk Road starts in Xi’an and since it’s an Aussie company and this kind of a trip is not the sort of journey that people do for their first time on foreign soil, most of them had already been to Beijing. The feeling is: start the trip in Xi’an with the same amount of days scheduled for this trip, and if people want to do Beijing, do it as an add-on at the beginning. Basically that’s what Carol and I did by flying in two days early. But nobody’s happy about the rush we’ve been experiencing.
Our bus took us to the sights and guess what? The a.c. didn’t work. Now you’ve seen nothing until you get a look at overly tired travelers on too tight schedule being rushed around in 90 degree heat and no way to cool down. A mini riot was about to ensue until Dilshot told us that he had informed the company that if they couldn’t fix the bus we had to have another one. I think he worried about his personal safety at this point. He was told that they just had to get one part and it would be taken care of. Okay, everybody was saying, then why wasn’t this part taken care of before? At any rate, while we were walking from sight to sight they supposedly were fixing the bus. Well, at noon when it was time to hit the road we were told that they only needed one part to make it all right. Is this Yogi Berra time? Déjà vu all over again? We sat on the curb while they worked on the bus. We were told it would be ready in five minutes. The most prevalent mechanical method seemed to be a hammer consistently banged on a certain part of the engine. No computer read out here. After about 20 minutes, we were told that it would be ready in 3-4 minutes. Smart ass Jim said that was improvement, since we were down from five.
Eventually it was pronounced fixed and grumbling about our prospects we got on the bus and while it didn’t work well, it worked well enough and we were off to Tashkent for our last night’s dinner and our last night as a group.
The whole trip I’ve waited for Samarkand and everything has been a prelude and a little tease to the big grand finale and it didn’t disappoint.
When Carol was reading the Lonely Planet book about Central Asia and read the part about Samarkand and Tamerlane she experienced a reverberation of interest bringing back memories of poetry she read in her youth about “The Golden Road to Samarkand” and the life of the magnificent Tamerlane. She can’t remember if it was Tennyson or Kipling, but no matter the recollection was there and it thrilled her to finally see what her mind’s eye had always imagined.
What a wonderful place it is. It just oozes history with its own special buzz. We saw great mosques and medrassas and mausoleums in Khiva and Bukhara, but the whole Registan square is so massive and majestic that everything else pales in comparison. Our hotel is, of course, located away from the main area so walking around and exploring is not really possible. We only have one night here which is a real shame, but Carol and I plan on coming back here after we finish the tour in Tashkent, so we’re not too stressed about it.
We have a local guide, a Ukranian woman who is very knowledgeable about the city and has a lot of inside information which is interesting, but we’re really on information overload at this point, and some simple wandering on our own would be nice. But she does take us to areas that we might miss otherwise and that’s very cool. Little alleys that lead to a beautiful mosque which could be arrived at by a larger avenue make it all worthwhile.
Samarkand is one of the world’s oldest cities and yet at about half a million inhabitants has all the bells and whistles of a major city. Like Khiva and Bukhara, Samarkand is definitely a Central Asian city. Tashkent was so European that it’s easy to forget where you are, but Samarkand still has the sense of the ancient. You’re just surrounded by it in the old part of the city. Tall blue-tiled minarets and arches beckon and just sitting in front of the Registan was awe-inspiring. Naturally we all had to pose for photos with the kids, but that’s just part of the drill these days.
Samarkand was the economic and cultural center of Central Asia. Amir Temur, or Tamerlane, as he’s know in the trades, built this city to reflect his power and sense of organization. It later became the political head of the entire area as well, but because it was the intellectual center it drew the best minds from all of Central Asia. This is where it was happening. This is where you needed to be in the 13th-14th centuries. Apparently it was of near mythical status.
The Silk Road’s divergent paths all joined here. Different routes could and would converge on Samarkand like the spokes which stretch out from Place d’Etoile in Paris. Like all major cities of the empires throughout the ages, Rome, Athens, St. Petersburg, Samarkand had that type of status and drawing power. Alexander came here and set up shop long before Tamerlane, but even then it had that kind of draw and pull.
The restoration of the ancient buildings to resemble the actual structures of the 13th century is very impressive and, surprise, surprise, surprise, the Soviets restored many of them with great care and dedication to reflect the history is certainly commendable on their part, and since the breakup the Uzbeks have continued the great work. The city wasn’t totally trashed by the ravages of time and history, but when you look at photographs taken in the late 19th and early 20th century you can see how badly time treated the city after the fall of the Mongols.
I won’t dribble on and on about the city, but if you get online and look at some photos of the Registan and of Samarkand in general, you’ll see what I mean. Suffice it to say that Carol and I truly saw Samarkand as the highlight of the trip. Who knows, maybe it has some pull from a past life but I really had a sense of completion after being here.
We toured the city for about five hours and were pretty tired, but we had made arrangements to meet with a Servas host. We weren’t looking for accommodations since we already had our hotel, but some local contact and understanding about what we were seeing was certainly helpful. Anatoly and his wife Irina were affable hosts. Anatoly is wholly and totally dedicated to the cause of peace and has formed a Peace network here in Uzbekistan. He developed a peace museum which reflects the world’s conflicts and shows how they could be resolved by forward thinking people. His displays show the devastation that war brings to people’s lives, and he is one of the most admirable individuals we’ve met through
Servas. Our hosts in Namibia were of the same ilk.
We watched a presentation he had developed on the peace movement, had tea and coffee and just chatted for a while. Irina doesn’t speak English so Anatoly did the translations back and forth. They had asked us if we wanted to stay for dinner, but we declined saying that we’d had a big lunch and the tea and cakes they served were sufficient. After chatting for a time we started to make our farewells and Irina came in and announced that dinner was almost ready and did we want rice or noodles? We were really tired, it had been a very long day on a non-air-conditioned bus followed by five hours of touring, and we just wanted a shower and some time out. We felt badly, but we had said we didn’t want anything to eat. She looked very disappointed and I don’t know if it was a language thing or what, but we left a little sad about the mix-up.
We said goodbye to our little Japanese birder. She seemed disappointed that we wouldn’t run into each other again and almost knocked me over with her big hug. It just reinforces my belief that we really are all one in this world and I just don’t get this nationalism and border thing that seems to predominate in culture and society.
I think we’re all just wearing out. Alan got sick with the you-know-what and stayed back at the hotel for our final morning tour of Samarkand. We had time off in China and it was great to have an afternoon where we could rest, stroll, sit and people-watch, and just do what our minds and bodies wanted/needed. But since the day we left Kashgar, when was that 2010? We’ve been on the run. No time to relax, no time for reflection, no time to recharge the batteries, literally and figuratively, and it’s beginning to wear a little thin on us all. Lise and Saci have been hacking their way across Uzbekistan, and John’s got something for the second time on the trip. Carol continues to recover, but even she with all her strength of character and body is feeling it.
So with a mixture of “Here we go again,” and also wonderment we went back out with our local guide, and visited more spots. Everyone knows that we’ll not see the likes of this again and is game to get on with the program, but there’s a general feeling that we do not have enough time in the Stans. Most feel we had too much time in China and not enough here. It feels extremely rushed. The Silk Road starts in Xi’an and since it’s an Aussie company and this kind of a trip is not the sort of journey that people do for their first time on foreign soil, most of them had already been to Beijing. The feeling is: start the trip in Xi’an with the same amount of days scheduled for this trip, and if people want to do Beijing, do it as an add-on at the beginning. Basically that’s what Carol and I did by flying in two days early. But nobody’s happy about the rush we’ve been experiencing.
Our bus took us to the sights and guess what? The a.c. didn’t work. Now you’ve seen nothing until you get a look at overly tired travelers on too tight schedule being rushed around in 90 degree heat and no way to cool down. A mini riot was about to ensue until Dilshot told us that he had informed the company that if they couldn’t fix the bus we had to have another one. I think he worried about his personal safety at this point. He was told that they just had to get one part and it would be taken care of. Okay, everybody was saying, then why wasn’t this part taken care of before? At any rate, while we were walking from sight to sight they supposedly were fixing the bus. Well, at noon when it was time to hit the road we were told that they only needed one part to make it all right. Is this Yogi Berra time? Déjà vu all over again? We sat on the curb while they worked on the bus. We were told it would be ready in five minutes. The most prevalent mechanical method seemed to be a hammer consistently banged on a certain part of the engine. No computer read out here. After about 20 minutes, we were told that it would be ready in 3-4 minutes. Smart ass Jim said that was improvement, since we were down from five.
Eventually it was pronounced fixed and grumbling about our prospects we got on the bus and while it didn’t work well, it worked well enough and we were off to Tashkent for our last night’s dinner and our last night as a group.
Friday, May 20, 2011
The road to Samarkand
We got an early start since nobody believed them when they said the A.C. on the bus was fixed, and it turned out to be a prophecy well in tune with reality. The five hour ride was hot and bumpy. Uzbeki roads leave a lot to be desired in terms of comfort. They do provide, however a real glimpse of life along the way. We’re out of the desert areas and each side of the road is lined with farms and small gardens seemingly very productive. There are some motorized farm vehicles on the large parcels, but still the majority of the work is done by humans working with their hands, with hoes, and sickles seem small-minded and picky. All along the way we saw donkey carts pulling loads of grass, mulberry limbs, and a variety of greenery which couldn’t be identified from the passing bus.
All along the route we’d pass kids coming and going from school. You could always tell which because when going to school the little knots of kids got bigger and bigger whereas coming home they continued to diminish in size until the last disappeared down some dusty lane which led to their homes. The boys all have backpacks and are boys all the way kicking rocks at each other, chasing, grabbing and jostling with other boys. The really adventurous ones walk on the 4 inch flat top of the concrete barriers between the lanes of traffic as if it were some continuous Olympic balance beam. Cars alternatively whizzed by just a foot or so from them or crawled by, depending upon condition of the road.
The girls all walked very orderly in order to facilitate conversation. They wore their school uniforms of light blue dresses with white aprons, and white knee stockings. Their little chiffon bows tied at the back of their heads made the scene quite attractive. They seemed to be giggling and laughing all the way, and they do walk a long way. We’d see these groups for miles before we actually passed the school. These kids were not high school age, but kids my grandsons’ ages. In many cases, their back packs seemed bigger than they were.
It’s silk worm production time and the little buggers have a voracious appetite. The mulberry tree is very ubiquitous throughout the area and when they harvest the shoots for the cultivation of the larvae, the trees look like grandma’s pin cushion. Each year the shoots are cut, and each year they send out more shoots, so that when the harvest takes place, there are maybe 20 or 30 pointy little shoots where they have been cut back very close to the main trunk.
The cotton fields are starting to take shape with the plants beginning to grow in the late spring heat. The production of which has led to one of the world’s great ecological disasters, namely the draining of the Aral Sea. Soviet central planners consistently raised the quota for cotton production in Uzbekistan to support the burgeoning Russian textile industry which meant cultivating in areas not previously suitable to farming. Hence more and more water was needed, and it had to come from somewhere, that looking at a map there was this great big inland sea and, hey, why not tap that. It’s big. The result was that cotton production did rise but the ground was not suitable and the soil parched throughout history so it just sucked the water into the ground and sucked the life out of the Aral Sea to the point where it is probably irreversible. There are ships which are now just beached on the sand 100 miles from the sea shore. It’s changed the climate in the area dramatically and the life hundreds upon hundreds of miles away as the dust bowl like winds have blown the soil away. I won’t go on and on about it, but there are ample articles about the situation for those interested in reading further.
The temperature has been running in the high 80’s and low 90’s, and we can only what the furnace must be like in the late summer. Temps run up into the 130’s. No problem growing tomatoes here. The heat index, however, does really show the pollution along the road. Up in Khiva and Bukhara, we had clean air and blue skies. As we travel back into the heartland of Uzbekistan we get back to another type of reality, that of the history of Soviet, don’t give a shit attitude towards the environment. Certainly, the U.S. has been a huge contributor to the world pollution problem, and the naysayers of the Bushy-apologists are still denying any global warming, but here it was institutionalized. Coming across China we saw gigantic wind farms, larger than anything I’ve ever seen before stretching literally for miles. The road would seemingly pass through a tunnel with the turbines whooshing on both sides of us very close to the road. No such thing here in Uzbekistan. Dilshot says that Soviet planners rejected any technology that wasn’t theirs and hence continued with the low-grade coal fired plants that to this day spit filth and poison into the air. It’s just awful! The Uzbekis, we understand, are doing what they can but Dilshot says that they’re playing catch-up and it will take decades before they get there. Independence from the Soviets has been a great thing for the Stans, but it didn’t come easily and without severe repercussions. Let’s just say that the Soviets took more out of these places than they put into them and now they’re paying for that.
We passed through one area where the pollution is so bad that the Uzbek government gives workers a substantial bonus just for working in the factories and acts as an inducement for people to move into the area. They give free annual trips to the mountains where they have health spas and sanatoriums for those workers. Great, it makes the short run a lot easier to bear, never mind that they’re all gonna die very early. And as Cat Stevens would say: “Where do the children play?”
When we got back to the hotel I noticed that our Japanese birder lady was in the restaurant with her group. I told Carol I wanted to say hello and we went in. She had her back to us, and as we approached, some of her friends said something to her and she turned around and was so happy to see us. We had told her that we were staying at a different hotel (so we thought) and so she was really surprised. She just got this really great smile on her face and almost danced up and down. She’s almost five feet tall if she wears a lot of socks, and just is so full of joy and energy. She cupped a magazine to her mouth like it was a megaphone and said quietly that she was 85 years old. I told her I was 70, and without a moment’s hesitation she shot back: “Oh, then you can be my son.” and laughed her embarrassed little laugh. She is so much fun, I wish I could have the opportunity to talk to her more. I know she’d be really forthcoming. I’d be curious what it was like for a girl of 15 ,living in Tokyo when WWII started to see the whole thing unfold. Tomorrow breakfast will be my only opportunity and war stories aren’t necessarily breakfast fare. But again, just meeting people like her in a seemingly coincidental moment are the things I’ll take back home with me.
John continues to be a source of fascination. He is so calm in his speaking and thought, and yet…..this morning at breakfast they had some hot dogs cut up into pieces and I remarked in my most sincere voice. “Oh boy, hot dogs.” He replied: “Dodger dogs.” I looked at him and he reminded me that Rupert Murdoch used to own the Dodgers, and the only games he’s ever seen have been from the president’s box. Every time Tommy Lasorda would come to Japan, he’d look John up and give him another autographed baseball. John would think, what do I want with another of these, and he made a tossing motion like he was throwing the garbage out over his shoulder. I told him it was just another reason not to like him, and if my son found out, he’d accuse me of consorting with the enemy.
All along the route we’d pass kids coming and going from school. You could always tell which because when going to school the little knots of kids got bigger and bigger whereas coming home they continued to diminish in size until the last disappeared down some dusty lane which led to their homes. The boys all have backpacks and are boys all the way kicking rocks at each other, chasing, grabbing and jostling with other boys. The really adventurous ones walk on the 4 inch flat top of the concrete barriers between the lanes of traffic as if it were some continuous Olympic balance beam. Cars alternatively whizzed by just a foot or so from them or crawled by, depending upon condition of the road.
The girls all walked very orderly in order to facilitate conversation. They wore their school uniforms of light blue dresses with white aprons, and white knee stockings. Their little chiffon bows tied at the back of their heads made the scene quite attractive. They seemed to be giggling and laughing all the way, and they do walk a long way. We’d see these groups for miles before we actually passed the school. These kids were not high school age, but kids my grandsons’ ages. In many cases, their back packs seemed bigger than they were.
It’s silk worm production time and the little buggers have a voracious appetite. The mulberry tree is very ubiquitous throughout the area and when they harvest the shoots for the cultivation of the larvae, the trees look like grandma’s pin cushion. Each year the shoots are cut, and each year they send out more shoots, so that when the harvest takes place, there are maybe 20 or 30 pointy little shoots where they have been cut back very close to the main trunk.
The cotton fields are starting to take shape with the plants beginning to grow in the late spring heat. The production of which has led to one of the world’s great ecological disasters, namely the draining of the Aral Sea. Soviet central planners consistently raised the quota for cotton production in Uzbekistan to support the burgeoning Russian textile industry which meant cultivating in areas not previously suitable to farming. Hence more and more water was needed, and it had to come from somewhere, that looking at a map there was this great big inland sea and, hey, why not tap that. It’s big. The result was that cotton production did rise but the ground was not suitable and the soil parched throughout history so it just sucked the water into the ground and sucked the life out of the Aral Sea to the point where it is probably irreversible. There are ships which are now just beached on the sand 100 miles from the sea shore. It’s changed the climate in the area dramatically and the life hundreds upon hundreds of miles away as the dust bowl like winds have blown the soil away. I won’t go on and on about it, but there are ample articles about the situation for those interested in reading further.
The temperature has been running in the high 80’s and low 90’s, and we can only what the furnace must be like in the late summer. Temps run up into the 130’s. No problem growing tomatoes here. The heat index, however, does really show the pollution along the road. Up in Khiva and Bukhara, we had clean air and blue skies. As we travel back into the heartland of Uzbekistan we get back to another type of reality, that of the history of Soviet, don’t give a shit attitude towards the environment. Certainly, the U.S. has been a huge contributor to the world pollution problem, and the naysayers of the Bushy-apologists are still denying any global warming, but here it was institutionalized. Coming across China we saw gigantic wind farms, larger than anything I’ve ever seen before stretching literally for miles. The road would seemingly pass through a tunnel with the turbines whooshing on both sides of us very close to the road. No such thing here in Uzbekistan. Dilshot says that Soviet planners rejected any technology that wasn’t theirs and hence continued with the low-grade coal fired plants that to this day spit filth and poison into the air. It’s just awful! The Uzbekis, we understand, are doing what they can but Dilshot says that they’re playing catch-up and it will take decades before they get there. Independence from the Soviets has been a great thing for the Stans, but it didn’t come easily and without severe repercussions. Let’s just say that the Soviets took more out of these places than they put into them and now they’re paying for that.
We passed through one area where the pollution is so bad that the Uzbek government gives workers a substantial bonus just for working in the factories and acts as an inducement for people to move into the area. They give free annual trips to the mountains where they have health spas and sanatoriums for those workers. Great, it makes the short run a lot easier to bear, never mind that they’re all gonna die very early. And as Cat Stevens would say: “Where do the children play?”
When we got back to the hotel I noticed that our Japanese birder lady was in the restaurant with her group. I told Carol I wanted to say hello and we went in. She had her back to us, and as we approached, some of her friends said something to her and she turned around and was so happy to see us. We had told her that we were staying at a different hotel (so we thought) and so she was really surprised. She just got this really great smile on her face and almost danced up and down. She’s almost five feet tall if she wears a lot of socks, and just is so full of joy and energy. She cupped a magazine to her mouth like it was a megaphone and said quietly that she was 85 years old. I told her I was 70, and without a moment’s hesitation she shot back: “Oh, then you can be my son.” and laughed her embarrassed little laugh. She is so much fun, I wish I could have the opportunity to talk to her more. I know she’d be really forthcoming. I’d be curious what it was like for a girl of 15 ,living in Tokyo when WWII started to see the whole thing unfold. Tomorrow breakfast will be my only opportunity and war stories aren’t necessarily breakfast fare. But again, just meeting people like her in a seemingly coincidental moment are the things I’ll take back home with me.
John continues to be a source of fascination. He is so calm in his speaking and thought, and yet…..this morning at breakfast they had some hot dogs cut up into pieces and I remarked in my most sincere voice. “Oh boy, hot dogs.” He replied: “Dodger dogs.” I looked at him and he reminded me that Rupert Murdoch used to own the Dodgers, and the only games he’s ever seen have been from the president’s box. Every time Tommy Lasorda would come to Japan, he’d look John up and give him another autographed baseball. John would think, what do I want with another of these, and he made a tossing motion like he was throwing the garbage out over his shoulder. I told him it was just another reason not to like him, and if my son found out, he’d accuse me of consorting with the enemy.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Nothing bad ever happens
Bukhara is the second of the ancient Silk Road cities that still maintain the sense of the road. As I’ve mentioned, in China we were told, this was an important Silk Road city, but nothing remained of that aspect. It’s all been bulldozed and decayed and simply lost to the rubble of history over lo those many centuries ago. Our hotel was a downer. It’s a 15 minute walk to the old city whereas in Khiva we were just outside the city wall. They charge $4 an hour for internet whereas we had it free everywhere else, and since Carol needed new batteries for her camera and couldn’t wait to delay until we got to a market, the price was $15 for four AA’s, plus they only serve instant coffee. What’s this all about?
But nothing is totally lost. We became friends with the shop girl, Mari, we call her because as gringos, we can’t properly pronounce her real name Marhabo. She is a very sweet thing and who wanted our email address to keep in contact with us. We met a little Japanese lady in the elevator who was here on a birding trip. She’s about our age and was really cool. We saw her last night as we were all coming back to our rooms and she was in the lounge area on our floor. She was there with a couple of other birders and we had a nice conversation. John and the boys, as we all call them, came up in the elevator and I introduced John, with his fluent Japanese, to them. When we were all leaving to go to our rooms, I told John to tell her in Japanese that she had a very kind face. He did so and she put her head in her lap in embarrassment. John said she loved it, but they have to appear as if they don’t. This morning in the breakfast room, I heard: “On yea ah say oh,” the Korean greeting. I turned around and a little lady was there. I greeted her with the same words and she looked very surprised. Conversation ensued. I had my computer with Jeff and Anjin’s wedding pix on it and they were delighted and astounded. They live in D.C. now. So even though we thought the hotel was a bust, good things always happen. I always say that nothing bad ever happens to me when I travel, and this was just another example.
Bukhara is the second of the three Unesco world heritage sites we visit here in Uzbekistan. Khiva was the first, and Samarkand awaits. The city walls remain here although not with the same completeness as in Khiva. True they were very restored in Khiva, but it was cool that you could walk around the town in less than an hour with the wall totally intact. The silk road here in Uzbekistan as I’ve mentioned before is not just an asterisk in the guide book. It’s a living entity, not just a historical fact. Large medrassas, or learning centers, abound here, both from a historical perspective and a present day reality. The medrassa has a bad connotation in modern militant Islam, but that’s certainly not how they are used here now or in the past. They were just what they purported to be, learning centers.
Tall, blue-tiled minarets rise high above the limited skyline of the city. Khiva was a city of 50,000 with just 3,000 living inside the city walls. Bukhara is a much larger city with about 400,000 inhabitants. Hence, it lacks the intimacy of Khiva and since our hotel was not near the old city, it made the historical part of the city more remote. We walked the old parts and had a pleasant afternoon, but then went back to our hotel and it seemed like we’d been on a museum trip rather than living it in the midst of it. It seemed like a fast-paced modern city rather than a silk road museum like Khiva did.
The most impressive part of our old city tour was the Citadel which is part of the old city walls. We walked up the single ramp into the interior and it was very impressive. It was Sunday and all the women were out in their Sunday finest. The men are all pretty western, i.e. mundane, in their dress. Trousers and open necked collared shirts. But the women….talk about colorful. Our waitress in Khiva was bedecked in her traditional clothing instead of her “work” clothes when we saw her later in the day. We thought she was a novelty. But here in Bukhara they were everywhere, and it was a colorful feast for the eyes.
It’s usually a dress of varying length from mid-thigh to mid-calf with a matching pair of pants making it a shoulder to toe ensemble. Think of a color and think of any other color and that combination was worn by somebody. It truly was a kaleidoscope of color and design. Lines, swirls, patterns, random blending of colors, all were prevalent and displayed. Some were iridescent and just jumped out while others were muted tones which sort of just blended in and got lost in all the colorful displays around them. We were given the explanation as to why the women wear such bright colors and have the gold teeth. One of the ancient religions to predominate in the area was the Zoroastrians. They believed that man was good but that all humans had an evil eye and the bright colors repelled that evil. The same with the gold teeth. By flashing gold from their mouths, the women warded off evil spirits and were able to lead good lives.
Because it was Sunday, the people were out in force. Thousands crowded into the citadel, and we were, again, a source of interest and attention. We must have had our photos taken 30-40 times during the couple of hours we were there. School boys were very open about wanting the photo op, while school girls were more hesitant but eventually got up the nerve. On several occasions we saw that we were being observed and talked about with the girls poking each other encouraging one to go up and ask for a photo. Nothing would happen, but because we were all in the same place at the same time, we’d run into them again. Again the nudging would take place and eventually one would be brave enough to ask for the photo and when they say how accepting of the concept we were the flood gates would open and they all wanted pictures. Women of all ages got into the swing of things and their flowing robes swished as they scurried to involve themselves in the feeding frenzy.
We went down and had a bite to eat later in the evening. After a large lunch like we’ve been having, a big dinner is very far from our minds. Carol and I went looking for an internet café and a place to call our grandson on his 5th birthday. In the area of our hotel, there weren’t any restaurants and since I was in a pissy mood about our hotel, I wasn’t going to give them any of our money at their restaurant. We found a little place that had a picture of a hamburger on the signboard on the storefront, and so we went in and asked for one. “Hot dog?” came the response. “No, hamburger,” we responded. “Hot dog,” came the response. This time it wasn’t in the form of a question, but rather a factual account of the options. “Fine,” we said,” hot dog.” It came on a big Kaiser bun slathered in mayonnaise and catsup. There were cucumbers, shredded carrots, tomatoes, and maybe shredded onions all totally overpowering a skinny hot dog hidden within the bowels of the Kaiser bun. It was a bit sloppy, and we asked for napkins. The guy just looked at us and finally said, “Ein Moment,” and raced off out of sight. He reappeared with two tiny napkins. Anybody whose ever watched me eat anything juicy with my mustache and beard knows that one little 6x6 inch piece of paper ain’t gonna do it. Carol, being far more decorous than I offered hers in support of her slovenly husband. I still managed to get a combination of the catsup and mayonnaise all over me but at least we got some veggies out of it.
The next morning meant another bus ride, this time to Samarkand. This is what I’ve been waiting for on the the whole trip. Did I mention that the A.C. didn’t work – again. There’s gonna be blood on the bus soon if they don’t get this taken care of.
But nothing is totally lost. We became friends with the shop girl, Mari, we call her because as gringos, we can’t properly pronounce her real name Marhabo. She is a very sweet thing and who wanted our email address to keep in contact with us. We met a little Japanese lady in the elevator who was here on a birding trip. She’s about our age and was really cool. We saw her last night as we were all coming back to our rooms and she was in the lounge area on our floor. She was there with a couple of other birders and we had a nice conversation. John and the boys, as we all call them, came up in the elevator and I introduced John, with his fluent Japanese, to them. When we were all leaving to go to our rooms, I told John to tell her in Japanese that she had a very kind face. He did so and she put her head in her lap in embarrassment. John said she loved it, but they have to appear as if they don’t. This morning in the breakfast room, I heard: “On yea ah say oh,” the Korean greeting. I turned around and a little lady was there. I greeted her with the same words and she looked very surprised. Conversation ensued. I had my computer with Jeff and Anjin’s wedding pix on it and they were delighted and astounded. They live in D.C. now. So even though we thought the hotel was a bust, good things always happen. I always say that nothing bad ever happens to me when I travel, and this was just another example.
Bukhara is the second of the three Unesco world heritage sites we visit here in Uzbekistan. Khiva was the first, and Samarkand awaits. The city walls remain here although not with the same completeness as in Khiva. True they were very restored in Khiva, but it was cool that you could walk around the town in less than an hour with the wall totally intact. The silk road here in Uzbekistan as I’ve mentioned before is not just an asterisk in the guide book. It’s a living entity, not just a historical fact. Large medrassas, or learning centers, abound here, both from a historical perspective and a present day reality. The medrassa has a bad connotation in modern militant Islam, but that’s certainly not how they are used here now or in the past. They were just what they purported to be, learning centers.
Tall, blue-tiled minarets rise high above the limited skyline of the city. Khiva was a city of 50,000 with just 3,000 living inside the city walls. Bukhara is a much larger city with about 400,000 inhabitants. Hence, it lacks the intimacy of Khiva and since our hotel was not near the old city, it made the historical part of the city more remote. We walked the old parts and had a pleasant afternoon, but then went back to our hotel and it seemed like we’d been on a museum trip rather than living it in the midst of it. It seemed like a fast-paced modern city rather than a silk road museum like Khiva did.
The most impressive part of our old city tour was the Citadel which is part of the old city walls. We walked up the single ramp into the interior and it was very impressive. It was Sunday and all the women were out in their Sunday finest. The men are all pretty western, i.e. mundane, in their dress. Trousers and open necked collared shirts. But the women….talk about colorful. Our waitress in Khiva was bedecked in her traditional clothing instead of her “work” clothes when we saw her later in the day. We thought she was a novelty. But here in Bukhara they were everywhere, and it was a colorful feast for the eyes.
It’s usually a dress of varying length from mid-thigh to mid-calf with a matching pair of pants making it a shoulder to toe ensemble. Think of a color and think of any other color and that combination was worn by somebody. It truly was a kaleidoscope of color and design. Lines, swirls, patterns, random blending of colors, all were prevalent and displayed. Some were iridescent and just jumped out while others were muted tones which sort of just blended in and got lost in all the colorful displays around them. We were given the explanation as to why the women wear such bright colors and have the gold teeth. One of the ancient religions to predominate in the area was the Zoroastrians. They believed that man was good but that all humans had an evil eye and the bright colors repelled that evil. The same with the gold teeth. By flashing gold from their mouths, the women warded off evil spirits and were able to lead good lives.
Because it was Sunday, the people were out in force. Thousands crowded into the citadel, and we were, again, a source of interest and attention. We must have had our photos taken 30-40 times during the couple of hours we were there. School boys were very open about wanting the photo op, while school girls were more hesitant but eventually got up the nerve. On several occasions we saw that we were being observed and talked about with the girls poking each other encouraging one to go up and ask for a photo. Nothing would happen, but because we were all in the same place at the same time, we’d run into them again. Again the nudging would take place and eventually one would be brave enough to ask for the photo and when they say how accepting of the concept we were the flood gates would open and they all wanted pictures. Women of all ages got into the swing of things and their flowing robes swished as they scurried to involve themselves in the feeding frenzy.
We went down and had a bite to eat later in the evening. After a large lunch like we’ve been having, a big dinner is very far from our minds. Carol and I went looking for an internet café and a place to call our grandson on his 5th birthday. In the area of our hotel, there weren’t any restaurants and since I was in a pissy mood about our hotel, I wasn’t going to give them any of our money at their restaurant. We found a little place that had a picture of a hamburger on the signboard on the storefront, and so we went in and asked for one. “Hot dog?” came the response. “No, hamburger,” we responded. “Hot dog,” came the response. This time it wasn’t in the form of a question, but rather a factual account of the options. “Fine,” we said,” hot dog.” It came on a big Kaiser bun slathered in mayonnaise and catsup. There were cucumbers, shredded carrots, tomatoes, and maybe shredded onions all totally overpowering a skinny hot dog hidden within the bowels of the Kaiser bun. It was a bit sloppy, and we asked for napkins. The guy just looked at us and finally said, “Ein Moment,” and raced off out of sight. He reappeared with two tiny napkins. Anybody whose ever watched me eat anything juicy with my mustache and beard knows that one little 6x6 inch piece of paper ain’t gonna do it. Carol, being far more decorous than I offered hers in support of her slovenly husband. I still managed to get a combination of the catsup and mayonnaise all over me but at least we got some veggies out of it.
The next morning meant another bus ride, this time to Samarkand. This is what I’ve been waiting for on the the whole trip. Did I mention that the A.C. didn’t work – again. There’s gonna be blood on the bus soon if they don’t get this taken care of.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
The what? desert
I remember my parents subscribing to Saturday Evening Post as a kid and I always enjoyed a little feature they had entitled “Where are you?” They’d have some little cut out from a map with numbers of highways and town names and you had to figure out, of course, where you were. I’d pour over atlases until I could figure it out. So, I’ve always been a map junkie and feel like I know a fair amount about geography, even if I call Longitude, latitude occasionally. But, I’m telling you there are names of deserts and areas in this part of the world that I’ve never had any clue about. Our latest find was the Qizilqum desert. Hell, I can’t even say it much less pronounce it correctly. As we crossed it yesterday, John said that there were now at least 10 people in Australia who knew where it was because he texted the name to friends and talked about it. It’s just one of the literally hundreds of places that never get noticed on a map because the world is so wonderfully complex and we are so finite in our little corner of it. It’s actually a really good feeling for me to remember when I’m traveling just how unimportant I really am.
We left Khiva at 7:30 because we were told it would that the 250 mile ride would take us a minimum of nine hours to cross the Qizilqum and so we opted for the early departure. The earlier we leave, the earlier we get there sort of thing. The first two hours or so were pretty standard. We wove our way along another map place I’d never heard of the Amu Darya river, or the Oxus River as they call it. When the snow melt is in full flow it can be up to a quarter mile wide and wider in areas where the terrain is really flat. The river nourishes the land beside it and it’s a prime agriculture area. Good rich earth and a hardy people make a good environment for sustainable life.
We got to a train bridge where the tracks are on one side of the bridge and the one lane for trucks runs alongside the tracks. When we arrived, the bridge was closed. We were told that for safety reasons, they didn’t let vehicles cross when the train was on the bridge. Not a comforting thought, I must say. I got off the bus and started wandering around as I am wont to do. There were cars parked in line, trucks with who knows what kind of cargo hidden inside, and a few buses. On one of the buses, there were nothing but elderly women and a few kids. A boy of about 10 smiled, I pointed my video camera at him, he smiled more broadly and I filmed. A little girl of about eight appeared and I gave her a “Thumbs up,” which she returned, and I filmed that. I put the camera up to the window of the bus to show them what I had taken. That’s always been fun for us to do. They break out into the most wonderfully happy faces. I filmed some of the women in the bus until this big, burly, brusque man came up to me and gruffly said something, obviously in Uzbeki.
I said: “Salaam a leikum” and put my right hand on my heart as is the custom, but that brought nothing in response. He looked like Mr. Clean on steroids, except that he wasn’t nearly so clean. He was bald and spoke roughly. Naturally, I didn’t have a clue as to what he was saying, but eventually I thought I heard the word “Cuba” spoken with an Uzbek accent. I asked: “Cuba?” trying to speak it as he did, and he again repeated Cuba. I said: “Cuba good.” I asked: “Militar?” he made like a machine gun and went: “Rat-tat-tat.” Scowling he looked for a response from me.I finally figured out that he served in the Soviet army in Cuba and was showing his displeasure at the U.S. so I simply said: “Cuba si, yankee no.” Well, that did it. A huge smile broke out on his face, his gold teeth glistened, he gave me a big bear hug, turned me around to show me to all his friends as if we were long lost relatives who just found out we had the same grandfather. He shook my hand which disappeared somewhere inside his and we were best buds.
After a little bit more “Conversation” I was shown that it was now okay to resume my filming. The ladies came off their bus since it appeared that the train was not immediately coming and I began to film and show them their video. There was a wonderful old face. A woman who obviously from the shape of her gums had no teeth, but the warm, gentle face of a woman who had probably seen far more than I could ever comprehend. Another elderly face with equal character seemed ready to be filmed and then another and another, all of which provided some great video.
It turned out to be a women’s group on some sort of Uzbeki cultural trip just for women. The little girl with the big smile was hugging her mother and it made for a great shot. Everybody else on our bus just watched me as if I was really crazy as I wound my way through the group. The ladies posed and postured enjoying every moment. All the men from the cars and trucks just watched very much amused at the whole scene. Our group just looked like I was nuts.
A car full of men smiled and I went over and said the customary: “Salaam.” They returned the greeting and a conversation occurred. One said something which I didn’t understand, but he put the numbers 45 on his cell phone, pointed to the boy and put 10 on his phone and looked at me. I figured out he wanted to know how old I was and I put 70 on the phone. He didn’t believe me, so I got out my passport and showed him the 1941 birth date. But that wasn’t nearly as interesting as the American passport which was passed about. I kept a keen eye on where it was, but it was no problem. One wanted my phone number, but I thought he was offering to let me call home so I dialed in my daughter’s home phone. If she gets some strange call one of these days it will just be her phony father’s doing.
The women now discovered that I was an American and now they wanted photos on their cameras and phones, so here I am posing with a bunch of past-middle-aged women all by myself with everybody, Uzbeki, Aussies, Canadians all just trying to figure out what this was all about.
I know I looked crazy to everybody standing in the middle of 20 or so Uzbeki old ladies having fun and everybody saying things that those on the other side of the conversation had no clue what was being said, but I was really having fun. It was just human contact and these are the moments I’ll always remember. I’ll never forget how Mr. Cleans face just broke out into the most delighted look when he realized I wasn’t the enemy. I’ll always remember the little 8 year old girl hugging her mother so sweetly it crossed any cultural barriers that politics and borders can create. When I was traveling at 19 and all by myself crossing the Syrian plains these moments were all I had as far as human contact, and so I cherish them still. They are just a part of who I am. John later gave me a supreme compliment when he said: “Jim talks well with strangers.” But the thing is that I can’t/don’t/won’t tap into that aspect of my personality when I’m home where I’m far more stand-offish. y I’m more critical of behavior I see and sit back and observe rather than participate. I’ve never understood why it’s so easy for me to involve myself on the road and yet keep my distance when I’m at home.
It was finally decided after an hour or so that the train was not coming, the guard blew his whistle, and everybody scrambled for their respective vehicles. We played leap-frog with the old lady bus for a while. They’d stop for their break, and we’d pass them. They’d all wave as we went by. Then later on we made our potty stop and they zoomed by, all waving from the bus as I stood beside the road and waved. Much later we made our lunch stop, and they had made the same stop except they were 30 minutes ahead and so were all getting back on the bus. I saw the driver and his cohorts standing at the doorway and waved to them. They smiled and waved back. I went up to the side of the bus and waved to the women inside. You could see them turn their heads saying: “IT’s the crazy American,” as they all scrambled over to the side of the bus and waved and smiled and laughed. Then almost like she was surfing above the crowd came this sweet little face who made her way to the window and gave me the thumbs us with the most wonderful little smile. If Max wasn’t already engaged, I’d have arranged a wedding on the spot. Maybe Alex likes older women
The weather became stifling hot, and guess what, the AC went out. We were then told that the Koreans were building a new road, and nobody could figure out why they tore up the old one just to build a new one beside it. Anyway, our hot, muggy ride became a bumpy, lurching, hot, muggy and very slow ride. The road was as bad as our Torugart Pass road with the exception that we weren’t careening down mountain roads in the dark.
Dilshot, our guide, came down the aisle of the bus with a backpack of money to “Exchange” our dollars into Uzbeki Som. The exchange rate is 1,700 to one US, but that’s just the official rate. The going rate is 2,200 to one. The basic currency is 1,000 notes and so when we exchanged $100 worth we wound up with 220,000 worth of Som. We had two bundles of pre-packaged notes like you see in all the drug flicks, and we all felt very rich. If you exchanged $470 worth you were a millionaire.
Our ride took us 11 hours and 30 minutes, more time than it took to fly from Seattle to Beijing but we finally arrived, hot, tired, jerked around, but safe and otherwise sound. I personally had a better day than any of my travel mates just because of our rail bridge stop. It was really fun and even the moments of discomfort with my new best friend was one of those experiences I’ll never forget. I’ve always said that language is an artificial barrier to be crossed by people willing to make it happen. Just another day in a series of really cool days. We’re running out of time, but it’s all been worth it.
[ed. Jim is back to being able to post his own blog entries... so I take no responsibility for typos and grammatical errors from here on out. ;-)]
We left Khiva at 7:30 because we were told it would that the 250 mile ride would take us a minimum of nine hours to cross the Qizilqum and so we opted for the early departure. The earlier we leave, the earlier we get there sort of thing. The first two hours or so were pretty standard. We wove our way along another map place I’d never heard of the Amu Darya river, or the Oxus River as they call it. When the snow melt is in full flow it can be up to a quarter mile wide and wider in areas where the terrain is really flat. The river nourishes the land beside it and it’s a prime agriculture area. Good rich earth and a hardy people make a good environment for sustainable life.
We got to a train bridge where the tracks are on one side of the bridge and the one lane for trucks runs alongside the tracks. When we arrived, the bridge was closed. We were told that for safety reasons, they didn’t let vehicles cross when the train was on the bridge. Not a comforting thought, I must say. I got off the bus and started wandering around as I am wont to do. There were cars parked in line, trucks with who knows what kind of cargo hidden inside, and a few buses. On one of the buses, there were nothing but elderly women and a few kids. A boy of about 10 smiled, I pointed my video camera at him, he smiled more broadly and I filmed. A little girl of about eight appeared and I gave her a “Thumbs up,” which she returned, and I filmed that. I put the camera up to the window of the bus to show them what I had taken. That’s always been fun for us to do. They break out into the most wonderfully happy faces. I filmed some of the women in the bus until this big, burly, brusque man came up to me and gruffly said something, obviously in Uzbeki.
I said: “Salaam a leikum” and put my right hand on my heart as is the custom, but that brought nothing in response. He looked like Mr. Clean on steroids, except that he wasn’t nearly so clean. He was bald and spoke roughly. Naturally, I didn’t have a clue as to what he was saying, but eventually I thought I heard the word “Cuba” spoken with an Uzbek accent. I asked: “Cuba?” trying to speak it as he did, and he again repeated Cuba. I said: “Cuba good.” I asked: “Militar?” he made like a machine gun and went: “Rat-tat-tat.” Scowling he looked for a response from me.I finally figured out that he served in the Soviet army in Cuba and was showing his displeasure at the U.S. so I simply said: “Cuba si, yankee no.” Well, that did it. A huge smile broke out on his face, his gold teeth glistened, he gave me a big bear hug, turned me around to show me to all his friends as if we were long lost relatives who just found out we had the same grandfather. He shook my hand which disappeared somewhere inside his and we were best buds.
After a little bit more “Conversation” I was shown that it was now okay to resume my filming. The ladies came off their bus since it appeared that the train was not immediately coming and I began to film and show them their video. There was a wonderful old face. A woman who obviously from the shape of her gums had no teeth, but the warm, gentle face of a woman who had probably seen far more than I could ever comprehend. Another elderly face with equal character seemed ready to be filmed and then another and another, all of which provided some great video.
It turned out to be a women’s group on some sort of Uzbeki cultural trip just for women. The little girl with the big smile was hugging her mother and it made for a great shot. Everybody else on our bus just watched me as if I was really crazy as I wound my way through the group. The ladies posed and postured enjoying every moment. All the men from the cars and trucks just watched very much amused at the whole scene. Our group just looked like I was nuts.
A car full of men smiled and I went over and said the customary: “Salaam.” They returned the greeting and a conversation occurred. One said something which I didn’t understand, but he put the numbers 45 on his cell phone, pointed to the boy and put 10 on his phone and looked at me. I figured out he wanted to know how old I was and I put 70 on the phone. He didn’t believe me, so I got out my passport and showed him the 1941 birth date. But that wasn’t nearly as interesting as the American passport which was passed about. I kept a keen eye on where it was, but it was no problem. One wanted my phone number, but I thought he was offering to let me call home so I dialed in my daughter’s home phone. If she gets some strange call one of these days it will just be her phony father’s doing.
The women now discovered that I was an American and now they wanted photos on their cameras and phones, so here I am posing with a bunch of past-middle-aged women all by myself with everybody, Uzbeki, Aussies, Canadians all just trying to figure out what this was all about.
I know I looked crazy to everybody standing in the middle of 20 or so Uzbeki old ladies having fun and everybody saying things that those on the other side of the conversation had no clue what was being said, but I was really having fun. It was just human contact and these are the moments I’ll always remember. I’ll never forget how Mr. Cleans face just broke out into the most delighted look when he realized I wasn’t the enemy. I’ll always remember the little 8 year old girl hugging her mother so sweetly it crossed any cultural barriers that politics and borders can create. When I was traveling at 19 and all by myself crossing the Syrian plains these moments were all I had as far as human contact, and so I cherish them still. They are just a part of who I am. John later gave me a supreme compliment when he said: “Jim talks well with strangers.” But the thing is that I can’t/don’t/won’t tap into that aspect of my personality when I’m home where I’m far more stand-offish. y I’m more critical of behavior I see and sit back and observe rather than participate. I’ve never understood why it’s so easy for me to involve myself on the road and yet keep my distance when I’m at home.
It was finally decided after an hour or so that the train was not coming, the guard blew his whistle, and everybody scrambled for their respective vehicles. We played leap-frog with the old lady bus for a while. They’d stop for their break, and we’d pass them. They’d all wave as we went by. Then later on we made our potty stop and they zoomed by, all waving from the bus as I stood beside the road and waved. Much later we made our lunch stop, and they had made the same stop except they were 30 minutes ahead and so were all getting back on the bus. I saw the driver and his cohorts standing at the doorway and waved to them. They smiled and waved back. I went up to the side of the bus and waved to the women inside. You could see them turn their heads saying: “IT’s the crazy American,” as they all scrambled over to the side of the bus and waved and smiled and laughed. Then almost like she was surfing above the crowd came this sweet little face who made her way to the window and gave me the thumbs us with the most wonderful little smile. If Max wasn’t already engaged, I’d have arranged a wedding on the spot. Maybe Alex likes older women
The weather became stifling hot, and guess what, the AC went out. We were then told that the Koreans were building a new road, and nobody could figure out why they tore up the old one just to build a new one beside it. Anyway, our hot, muggy ride became a bumpy, lurching, hot, muggy and very slow ride. The road was as bad as our Torugart Pass road with the exception that we weren’t careening down mountain roads in the dark.
Dilshot, our guide, came down the aisle of the bus with a backpack of money to “Exchange” our dollars into Uzbeki Som. The exchange rate is 1,700 to one US, but that’s just the official rate. The going rate is 2,200 to one. The basic currency is 1,000 notes and so when we exchanged $100 worth we wound up with 220,000 worth of Som. We had two bundles of pre-packaged notes like you see in all the drug flicks, and we all felt very rich. If you exchanged $470 worth you were a millionaire.
Our ride took us 11 hours and 30 minutes, more time than it took to fly from Seattle to Beijing but we finally arrived, hot, tired, jerked around, but safe and otherwise sound. I personally had a better day than any of my travel mates just because of our rail bridge stop. It was really fun and even the moments of discomfort with my new best friend was one of those experiences I’ll never forget. I’ve always said that language is an artificial barrier to be crossed by people willing to make it happen. Just another day in a series of really cool days. We’re running out of time, but it’s all been worth it.
[ed. Jim is back to being able to post his own blog entries... so I take no responsibility for typos and grammatical errors from here on out. ;-)]
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Back to Reality
May 15, 2011
We got our first taste of the fact that we were back on the tourist map in Bishkek when we saw a group of Canadians and Yanks who were doing a “Stan” trip and a French group doing what we know not. What we didn’t know was that was just a taste of what was to come.
Our five a.m. wake-up call came as a startling reminder that we had an early flight to Tashkent, followed by a late afternoon flight to Urgench where we would catch a bus to take us to Khiva our final destination of the day. With our one hour time change, we landed in Tashkent, Uzbekistan at 9:30 a.m. and headed into town. What a really nice surprise Tashkent turned out to be.
Bishkek was a pretty unremarkable city as capitals go so we didn’t know what to expect but it is a lovely city, full of wide boulevards, modern, interesting architecture and the same warm, friendly people we had found in Kyrgyzstan. It’s a very European looking city, one you might find in France or Germany. Even the population seemed very Euro rather than Eurasian. Following the devastating earthquake in 1976 they redesigned everything and I must say made it an easy city In which to get around. The lack of cars and the wide avenues seem not to go with each other, but certainly to our advantage.
We continue to be the objects of interest to people, particularly teenage types. School boys in their pressed black pants white shirt were very curious and friendly but stood off. Not so the girls. There was one gaggle of 5-6 of them who were posing for their own photos, when Saci took a photo of them while they were in their posing mode. That was all it took. Next were questions about where we were from, did we like Tashkent, what do we do for work. All this in semi-broken English. Good enough to understand and be understood, but still some confusion about details which had to be repeated in different ways to get through. We’d say bye-bye and walk on only to have them reappear suddenly just where we were and it was as if they had decided as a group what and how to ask their next set of questions. Again we went on our way, and again they reappeared as we were walking by the bronze tablets listing the 600,000 Uzbeks who lost their lives in WWII. One of the girls took me aside and wanted me to know that her grandfather was on the tablets and showed me where he was. Just as we were walking back to our bus the the designated questioner came running up to me and gave me a fridge magnet she had bought for me. That brought on another round of photos and we finally ended that portion of “Stan” friendliness. It was a sweet gesture and totally unexpected, but seemed totally in character with all our experiences. It has been a constant theme here. They are genuinely interested in us, and enjoy practicing their English.
A lovely lunch – did I mention that the food was good :-) - brought our first Tashkent stay (we end our trip here in a week). At the airport there was the same group from the airport in Bishkek heading with us to Urgench and to Khiva, plus another group of westerners. After another hour flight followed by a 30 minute bus ride which turned out to be an hour and a half when the diesel was so fouled that they had to stop and clean the filters put us into our hotel about 10:00. As we pulled into our Khiva hotel there were six big tour buses and we knew we were back on the grid.
The next morning’s breakfast brought a cacophony of different tongues all eating in the large dining hall. This is a group that has had breakfast entirely to ourselves for almost four weeks. The Chinese didn’t get up that early to eat and we didn’t see any other western tourists, and then to suddenly get hit with this all at once was a little disconcerting. There must have been over a hundred tourists having breakfast. Carol and I finally found an unoccupied table and sat down only to have two ladies in their 60-70’s ask if they could share the table. Of course we said yes, and since I had already heard them speaking German and when they asked permission to join us their accent came through and we wound up having a nice conversation over breakfast. Turns out they are doing eight days entirely in Uzbekistan. It’s almost a day trip for them. Less flying time than JFK-SFO and the same time change three hours. It’s really easy for them to come. They were headed for Bukhara and we agreed to look for each other and share a breakfast table should we be at the same hotel.
And now for Khiva. It’s as if everything we’ve done so far has been in preparation for this. We’ve followed the Silk Road west and seen remnants of what was, or were taken to places where we were told this is where it used to be, but in Khiva, it’s here. The thousand year old city wall of mud and straw still stands in it’s entirety. Yeah, it’s crumbling in places, and it’s cracked in others, but it’s still there even though the gates have been restored with modern brick. The entire old city is enclosed within its 1 ½ mile circumference. It’s like a living museum, old streets remain as they were with beautiful Muslim buildings. When the Soviets ruled the place they basically shut the doors on everything, so it was as if everything was just held in storage for independence. We heard tours given in Italian, French, German, Portuguese, and naturally in English. It’s not an unknown gem, it’s just a gem. You can’t get lost, you’re never more than a quarter mile from the city wall. Just keep on going and you’ll find where you are.
A really fascinating aspect to village life, and Khiva is essentially a village of 50,000 compared to Tashkent’s 3 million is that it seems so incredibly different. Tashkent was so modern and upscale and Khiva seems to have changed so little in its 2,500 year old history, with the exception of a few hundred gift shops willing to give tourists a good price. Anyway, the fascinating aspect is that many/most women have their entire upper teeth in gold. It seemed unique at first, then it seemed a trend, then finally it was the de facto method of presenting themselves. Our waitress for lunch was a very pretty woman of about 25 and when she smiled here entire mouth was gold. For us westerners it really seems to take away from their looks, but guess what. They don’t do it for us, they do it because it’s their custom, their tradition. It is considered high fashion for village women and a sign of wealth and individuality, as it were. Members of our group couldn’t get over talking about how it detracted from their looks all the time their snapping as many photos of them as was possible. The women didn’t mind. They smiled broadly and showed off their own personal self-esteem.
The weather was quite warm in Khiva and we all fled back to our hotel after a late lunch, only to venture back out to the old city after the heat of the day had passed. The streets were no longer clamoring with tourists and it had a really relaxed feeling. It was the first time we’ve really felt we could imagine the old silk trade exactly as it was because we were walking in their exact footsteps. It felt almost palpable. We’ve been working our way here for so long it seemed and here we were. While the men's dress reflects 21st century, the women seem to have stepped back in time, or rather not to have changed. Like Kyrgyzstan, they are not devout Muslims here. Although technically about 85 % of the people are Islanic, apparently only about 5% are practicing Muslims. Hence, although women cover their heads with shawls, it seems more a fashion statement rather than a religious one. We don’t see men wearing the skull caps that we saw in the Uighur area for example.
We stopped for an ice cream outside the restaurant where we had taken lunch and our waitress appeared from somewhere. Now out of her waitress attire, she was a Uzbeki woman. Her dress was a bright blue satiny material. It was short, coming to mid thigh and she wore matching pants. Her clothes were of good material, she was nicely made up with cosmetics and he was still very pretty, and then she opened her mouth and smiled when she recognized us from lunch. Again, that mouth full of gold is something that still takes me aback. It just seems to change the entire look, but as I said, it’s not about us.
We’re on the short list now and things are happening quickly. Our days are filled and passing quickly. Just two more cities and four more days and it will all be over. It’s been a great trip, but I can honestly say that Khiva was what I had hoped to see- something that really looked and felt like the Silk road. Just like Cordoba has for the past 50 years, the sense of Khiva, the feel of it, will remain long after I’ve gone.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Living Up to Expectations
May 14, 2011
Since we were all so ready to leave China and so happy to get into Kyrgyzstan, it might have been easy for the country to disappoint once the bloom was off the rose. Not so! It has lived up to all our hopes and expectations and the only question we have all been left with is: “Why so little time here?” Tuesday again held out the promise of a good day and again it came through.
We headed up into the mountains to a national park Ala-Atche for a morning of quiet solitude and reflection after two grueling days on the road. It was literally and figuratively a breath of fresh air. The polluted poisoned air of China seems a long time in the past as we’ve been treated to actually seeing the sun and the blue sky behind it. Cumulous clouds seemingly as tall as the mountains they silhouette blossomed white and billowy as they blew in and then hid behind the mountains only to appear again just as magnificent as before.
It was only an hour out of Bishkek by bus, but seemed a lot further as it was so very isolated that urban life seemed a distant blur. We walked in the mountains along a rushing and tumbling river, milky white from snow melt but otherwise clean enough from which to drink. A bridge across afforded a moment’s adventure as several of the 2” branches which formed the walkway were missing and a five foot gap of emptiness gave a new perspective of the roaring water below. I don’t want to sound too dramatic, the drop was only about 10 feet. Hell, I’ve fallen out of trees higher than that. [ed. NOT funny!!] But with water roaring below as it cascaded over the rocks dropping dramatically it did give one a thrill. Holding on to the hand rail and walking the edges to the middle gave a perspective of the river that was worth it.
I climbed up river alongside the river bed until it got really narrow and rose steeply and decided I didn’t need to go any further especially since I was alone. No need to get hurt out in this wilderness. We wandered back down the road to lunch at a hotel on the grounds of the park and had another very filling meal for the stomach and the head. These people do know how to feed tourists.
After lunch a three piece folk ensemble entertained us with local music. They are part of a larger troupe but for our purposes they were perfect. They played and sang a medley of songs using a variety of instruments. The woman of the three was exceptional. First of all she came out bedecked totally in traditional dress and looked absolutely gorgeous. She simply walked through the door and everybody broke into applause. She could have played: “Oh Susanna” on the spoons and been warmly received. A lot of times these things can be very hokey and we’ve rolled our eyeballs often in the past, but this seemed so genuine. Again expectations were met and exceeded. Thankfully they brought several CD’s of their music and they were grabbed up like freebies at a trade show. The music was beautiful, they were great musicians, the costumes authentic and we all left feeling we had seen something genuine.
Our ride back to Bishkek was uneventful. They had planned a “City tour” for us. Luckily we had another option. Bishkek is nothing to write home about as a tourist destination. A city of about one million, it is a new city, being built in the late 1800’s. Therefore, it has no historical monuments of great importance. No tall buildings with architectural creativeness, and nothing to really recommend it as a destination like some of the great cities of the world.
We were able to hook up with a couple of Kyrgiz university students who are members of Servas, the organization we belong to which helps bring people from all around the world together. Regina, our guide, said that we wouldn’t be missing anything if we didn’t do the city tour. Saci later told us that the best part of the tour was the statue of Lenin which was in the main square, appropriately named in the “Soviet times,” as, Ta-da – Lenin Square. This tall statue of the founder of the empire stood with his right arm extended in the direction of Moscow, showing Kyrgiz the direction they should follow for enlightenment and progress. But since independence they renamed the square to independence square and moved the statue to the back where his right arm is pointed directly to the American University of Bishkek. Saci said he laughed so much because it was as if he was now saying: “I was wrong, this is the way.”
But we went back to the hotel and waited for our day hosts to arrive. They were university students and came when their day was over. We only had a couple of hours together but it was a delightful interlude. Asiya and Tina were perfect as a beacon of hope to Kyrgyzstan’s future. They were bright, energetic, thoughtful and just really sweet kids. Asiya is 19 and studying history, while Tina (don’t know if this is her real name or just an adaptation for the gringos) is 22 and studying the same.
They both grew up in Naryn and so were familiar with our two day trek over the mountains. They moved to Bishkek for family reasons, and both the young girls lost their father to illness in the last few years making it doubly hard for the families to provide. Asiya is one of five girls with no sons in the family, while Tina is one of four children. Tina doesn’t speak English as well as Asiya, but with clarification and getting general hints as to the general drift of the conversation we did just fine on the communication level. Asiya is very short while Tina is taller and more slender. Their look represents the difference in Kyrgiz society as Tina has a more European look while Asiya is definitely Central Asian. Both girls are very pretty and each shows the diversity of the culture at its best. We really enjoyed our time together. It was just great getting a chance to ask questions about life in Kyrgyzstan and its people rather than reading Lonely Planet or making our sometimes uneducated guesses based on what our limited contact and time here provides.
But sadly our time in this charming country came to an all too quick end. There wasn’t anybody who sai d they wouldn’t come back and all genuinely agreed that they would talk up this place with whomever would listen. We’re back on the tourist trail somewhat. We had other groups at our hotel for the first time since Xi’an which seems ages ago. The word is, in fact, getting out that the “Stan countries” are pretty cool places. Tomorrow we fly to Tashkent and on to Urgench the same day for the beginning of our final portion- Uzbekistan. If Kyrgyzstan is just a preview of the good things to come, we all say: “Bring it on.”
Friday, May 13, 2011
Glinda's Magic Wand
May 13, 2011
When Dorothy and Toto landed and Glinda was there with her magic wand, she opened up a whole new world to the Kansas kid. So it seemed to us dropping into Kyrgyzstan. It’s a wonderful place so off the tourist radar that we often had to explain the what and where when asked where we were going on this trip. “China, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstgan.” “Krig – what?” was the response. But it’s an untapped gem full of spectacular scenery and warm, friendly people – the best that Central Asia has to offer can be found here.
After arriving in Naryn so late, we had an early departure since another long day lay ahead. Saci, Lise and I went out for an early walk since our body clock had not changed, even though our digitals had. Out on the street about 7:30 we passed school kids on their way to class. Boys dressed in suit and tie as if they were going to Sunday mass, and little girls with their black dresses, white knee socks and little chiffon-like bows tying up their hair in the back. They look delightful and their sweet smiles saying: “Good morning,” followed by a giggle couldn’t help but make our morning start off well. The boys were far more serious, but pleasant all the same.
Morning breakfast brought rolls with jam, cereal and yogurt, cheese (Cheese? What’s that? We never saw ANY in China) and cold cuts, real coffee or tea, chocolate éclairs and cakes. We thought we’d all died and gone to some epicurean staging area. We had to hit the road at 9:00 and we dragged our tired bods onto the bus for the next stage.
The road went from awful to bad to tolerable, a far cry from the misery of the day before. The scenery didn’t disappoint even as the road improved. Kyrgyzstan is 90% mountains and we continually went up and over one pass, only to descend on the other side and seeing the road stretch out before us, we knew that there was more of the same ahead. They call it the Switzerland of central Asia, but I’d never heard of that before.
The most predominant eye candy on the ride was the ever-present Kyrgiz herder sitting astride his horse tending his flocks. The people are called a “vertical nomads,” since the land is so up and down. They spend the winter in the lowlands and head up into the green pastures of the mountains as the spring brings the thaw and fresh grazing.
Flocks of sheep, cashmere goats, yaks, and small herds of horses continued to dot the landscape. Ranging from a few head mostly for personal consumption to large flocks, the sheep and goats roam freely across the range under the ever-watchful eye of the herder, looking so solitary on his horse.
Spring comes late to the high Tian Shan mountains. Ice and snow speckled the land and it actually snowed on us when we stopped for a photo op. The grass worked hard at poking through the winter snow and the herds were on a continuous move. Heads down and moving together as if in a dance, they worked their way across the landscape.
Along the way a lone trailer left over from the “Soviet times,” as they are called, showed smoke coming from the chimney indicating that although it looked like it should have been abandoned long ago, it was, in fact, still home to somebody. We stopped at one where a herder was fixing a barrel used for some purpose. Hospitality is such an integral part of the Nomadic peoples, whether in Mongolia or where ever they tend their herds, and so it was here in Kyrgyzstan. The Kyrgiz equivalent to Mongolian Airang was brought forth and offered to these travelers who stopped. It’s actually fermented mare’s milk, and tastes like a cross between butter milk gone bad (is that possible?) and battery acid with a kick that brings a shudder to even the most experienced vodka drinker.
A red-faced woman appeared at the small window of the trailer holding a round-faced baby of about six months in age. She wouldn’t come outside but posed for photos through the window which she opened. Shutters snapped, oos and ahs filled the air, and we all got back on the bus wondering what life must be like for this family all alone on the cold of the mountains where all their earthly goods are stacked up around and under the trailer. Like the Harry Chapin song says: “You’ll never have too many neighbors. There’s you and me and God.”
The scenery was simply spectacular as the mountains kept on coming until we dropped into a wide valley and an actual town appeared where we stopped for lunch. Unlike our “Uighur family” lunch, this was an authentic Kyrgiz family who is part of a system developing in Kyrgyzstan called “Community Based Tourism.” It is a female based organization started by some Swiss company to help families which have really been hit heavily by the Soviet pull-out. We were greeted by three women in their 50’s in local dress, which we saw lots of and is not just a gimmick, who sang a song of greeting while a boy of 10 or so played a three-string instrument which looked like a skinny guitar. As they sang, they offered they offered a fried bread which was dipped in homemade butter.
This is a family operation with five generations members all pitching in – well the three month old didn’t do much except bring out the mommy instinct in all the women on the trip. A quiet girl of 14 or so bustled back and forth serving food, darting back and forth between the eating area and the preparation area which was outdoors.
A demonstration of felt making was given, and it was anything but the high-tech mass produced “Handicrafts” we had seen previously. They beat raw wool with metal rods to get the stickers out then pulled pieces off the fleece to begin their design. Other colors were added to the design and then the piece which was about 3 feet by 3 feet was rolled up in a wicker floor mat. Hot water was poured over the round roll, canvas covered the outside, the whole thing was tied up, and dragged across the courtyard for about 20 minutes with members of our group stomping on it continuously. I thought the process looked like how I do my laundry when traveling, but in the end a felted floor mat was produced. It was really a very natural, perfectly honest reflection of how these women do their fiber thing. Several of us bought one of the finished products at $7 a pop.
Lunch was delicious, A diced beet salad, chicken noodle soup, plov, which was rice with beef pieces and bread with jams and honey. We all rejoiced in what we considered real food. Saci says he’s never again eating from a round table that spins. It was a delicious introduction to Kyrgiz food and such a change from our last three weeks that Kyrgyzstan quickly etched its way into our hearts.
If the food wasn’t sufficient, the genuine warmth of the people certainly would have done it on its own. They were the first Soviet state in Central Asia to gain independence and although the Soviet pull-out left the country in a real economic hole from which it’s just now, 15 years later, pulling itself out. It’s a poor country mostly of nomadic herders who live off the land and move about with the maturing of the grazing land. The people seem so simply honest without affectation that every stop seemed to reinforce the feeling that we weren’t in Kansas any more.
When we would drop down out of the mountains and into a valley we’d find villages where the houses ranged from very shaky to decent. But the continuing feature was the ever-present garden. Each home had one, ranging in size from a few hundred square feet to maybe an acre. Larger plots in open fields were obviously commercial enterprises but all seemed to be farmed by hand. Not once did we see any tractor or motorized farm device.
Cows grazed beside the road seemingly undaunted by the buses and trucks whizzing by ever so close. They seemed very road savvy. A few goats and sheep might be fenced in beside the gardens and everybody seemed to have some critters. The valleys were very lush and green, providing fodder for animals and the soil seemed rich and productive.
We never saw any houses that would qualify as representing a family that is well off. Everybody seems to be struggling, but doing so with a pleasantness about them that belies their financial woes. How common, we’ve found, that the poorest people seem to always find warmth and generosity and friendliness. While the more wealthy…………………well, you know where I’m going with this one.
We looked across the river and “Saw” Kazakstan on our roll into Biskek. A stop at a beautiful lake over 60 miles long brought home the realization of the struggle of a country still working its way from under the Soviet yoke. There is a small “Playground” area with swings and little ferris wheel type play equipment that is in such badly-need repair it makes you realize there’s just no money for this sort of thing. There are no big condos lining the shore, no fancy houses where the fat cats come to play for the weekend. Just a shore line with the waves lapping upon the rocks and the emptiness of the scene. The Kyrgiz never developed a written language. Nomadic herders had no need of such a thing, so the Russian Cyrillic alphabet is now the de facto written word. In part because of the connection on the silk road and partly because of the Russian presence, there are distinct ethnic looks about the people. Biskek, in fact, is almost 50% Russian and only 1/3 Kyrgiz. In the mountain areas on the way in from Kashgar the look was definitely Central Asian, but in Biskek itself it was not unusual to see blond individuals pass with definite Caucasian features. I personally think the Central Asians are beautiful people. The men have strong faces and features. Centuries of weathering the cold and working hard with the herds can do that to a people. The women seem almost like a cross between Asian and European. There was an old computer program which came out in the 80’s called Morph where you could take two photos and blend them together and it would be a completely different look incorporating elements of both. Interestingly enough, the people don’t have that weathered complexion that we saw in Mongolia and Tibet, where the skin almost has a cracked look about it. A lot of time in the sun and wind can do that to a face. Maybe the centuries of mixing European blood to the Asian plays into that, I’m not sure.
We rolled into Bisket at 9:30 p.m. Another long day. We all felt rushed with two days of hard travel, but it was not without its delights. It wasn’t JUST hard travel. We are delighted to be in a new and exciting stage of the trip. Great food, wonderful people, fabulous scenery soft beds and soft pillows. Did I mention the food is good? We’re all saying to ourselves, “Why don’t we have more time here?”
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Crossing Over to the Other Side
May 12, 2011
Monday broke sunny and very polluted and we were all ready to get out of Dodge. We left the hotel at 10 and made our way north and west heading for the Turagart Pass. It’s a legendary crossing from the Valley of Kashgar to the trade routes of the west. This little corner of the world is home to several countries: China, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and the ex-Soviet bloc nation of Krygyzstan, our destination. We climbed up out of the pollution and were happy to see clear,clean skies for the one of the few times of the trip. They say China is cleaning up their act in air quality, but they’ve got a tremendous way to go, and from my western eyes, not a lot to show for it.
Small Uighur towns dotted the way as things got more and more isolated until finally there was nothing in front of us but the Tian Shan mountain looming and waiting for us to cross. The roads were excellent. Nicely paved, wide, and easily traversed. Everything was uneventful. We’d been forewarned that it isn’t always the case, and we needed to be prepared for some difficulty and might not arrive at our destination, Naryn, until very late. We made it to the first Chinese checkpoint where they took our temperatures (who knows), scanned our luggage, looked through various photo SD cards, stamped our passports, and sent us out the back door. That meant that we were officially out of China even though there was another 100 kms of territory before the actual border. We stopped again and had our passports checked. An army official came on the bus and made sure the mug on the passport matched the butt in the seat. The mountains got more jagged and we climbed above the snow line through a narrow pass where you could tell that when the water flowed, it came charging down with a ferocity and determination. Large cuts in the rock opened up and the width of the gap would sometimes be 100 yards wide, sometimes a half a mile. Finally, we reached the actual border for the transfer to the Krygiz vehicle which would officially mark our departure out of China. We finally got to change our watches to reflect the position of the sun, and not the position of the central committee. Two hours change made it 12:30, not 2:30 p.m. Everything was perfect, so you know where this is going, right?
Guess what? The Kyrgyz vehicle wasn't not there. Okay, what does that mean? Our guide said that last time he did this the vehicle was there, but he’s had to wait all day at other times. After an hour of waiting at this mountain summit where there was very little traffic coming from Krygyzstan, and nothing from China, our guide decided to call his office to have them call the Krygiz office to call the people with the bus. Sounds’ good, but there was nobody home in Krygyzstan. Another hour passed, and finally contact was made with the Kyryiz, it was a holiday so the office was closed. It was determined that the bus left Naryn at 4 a.m. and nobody knew nuthin’. Finally cell phone numbers were exchanged and it was discovered that the bus had broken down. Okay, now what?
A truck coming from China agreed to take a message to the Krygiz border people that there was a group of stranded people on the cold, windy mountain top. A while later, a truck coming from Krygyzstan came with the message that the Krygiz border guards had a van and would come get us in an hour. Fine. Oh, not so fine. The Chinese closed the border. Trucks started lining up on the Chinese side and nobody knew what was going on or what was going to happen. After a awhile the Krygiz people did show up in a large van. They somehow found the invisable Chinese border guards who had closed the border and then disappeared. They not only found them, but got the border back open. I'm betting they've been through this drill before. The Kyrgyz van was big enough for the group, but not for luggage. So we talked to the driver of the lead truck which was waiting at the locked border gate and he agreed to take the luggage in his cab, and someone needed to go with him. I volunteered, but our guide nixed that idea. I guess he thought I was too old or something, and so he chose john to go with him. However, not all the luggage fit, so we hauled the rest of it into the second truck and I did go with him.
The Kyrgiz couldn’t have been nicer or more accommodating. You think of officious border guards in general, and when you throw in the x factor that they’re ex-Soviet guards and you're prepared for some grumpy, cold ill-tempered individuals. Therefore, we were not prepared for not only their kindness in coming and getting us, but also their hospitality once we arrived. We lurched our way down the mountain in what was to be a little prelude to coming events. The road was “Dramatically” different from the Chinese side, but when we got to the border post, the Kyrgiz made us comfortable in their little room, took our passports, made us tea, and brought us bread. FINALLY, the bus appeared, the group visa was secured, and after four-and-a-half hours of waiting we were off.
The road had three main characteristics: Abysmal, atrocious, and awful. We had four hours of lurching, careening, bouncing, rocking and rolling on a road that could barely be called that. It had potholes the size of IED craters, and ruts so deep that the sides of the truck scraped and the undercarriage of the bus bottomed out. This had been the problem. Three days of torrential rain had left the horrible roads in near impassable condition and they had gotten stuck for five hours having to dig themselves out. We got to the spot where they had become stuck on the inbound leg, and tried to figure out what to do. They thought of having us walk beyond the problem spot since it was dangerous and the bus, it was feared, might roll over. Finally, they got out some 6x6 posts and some planking material and made their own roadway which was sufficient and they got through, the creaking and scraping of the bus, notwithstanding.
The scenery was, however, magnificent. The mountains were full of jagged peaks knifing their way to the sky above. There was a still frozen lake of about 20 miles long and 5 miles wide which added a pristine atmosphere to the whole scene. Everything was white on all sides. While the actual ground at our level was clear of snow, apparently it hadn’t been like that for long. Our guide said it was snowed over on that morning. It was truly one of those isolated places of the world. We saw no homes, no yurts, no animals, nothing.
The light began to finally fade which made the trip more perilous. The driver couldn’t see the potholes with the clarity of before and then it began to rain again and heavily, which made the lights of the oncoming vehicles refract on the windshield and gave a blinding white sheet of light that somehow had to be seen through to avoid the next crunch. Sleep was impossible. It was all we could do just to remain in our seats without being thrown from them. It was that severe. It took us 7 ½ hours to make the 120 miles and you don’t have to be a math major to know that’s pretty slow going.
Mercifully, we arrived in Naryn just at Midnight, local time, 2 a.m. body time. The World Expedition people had it right. It required patience and a lot of quiet understanding that it wasn’t anybody’s fault. It’s just adventure travel, and by definition, you never know what will happen. You know you’re in an ex-Soviet territory when you put your bags in your room, go downstairs and vodka is served up-liberally. A small salad and soup were offered up, and we dutifully ate it, but our heads were still rattling around and our bodies needed down time, so Carol and I headed off to bed as soon as we could.
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