New tent!

For reasons I won't bore you with I have invested in a tent. Bishkek may be a capital city, but it doesn't appear to have a huge selection of tents: I found this one in a sports clothing store. I know little about tents, and so I enlisted the help of Tim, one of our crew, to assist in the decision making process. We ended up pitching the tent in the middle of the shop floor whilst the two lady assistants anxiously looked on at the strange foreigners wrecking their store. They were good sports though, and eventually joined in the assembly of the tent. When finished, it seemed to be a good 'un, so I bought it.

The box and instructions were all in Russian, so hopefully it didn't say anything like "not to be used outdoors" or "will melt on contact with water". Time will tell!

Kyrgyzstan and its eccentricities

As soon as we crossed the border, the feel of the country changed. We spent two nights in a homestay/guesthouse in Osh, in converted ex-Soviet apartments, and we met our local guide for Kyrgyzstan: Asel, who is accompanying us for the time we are spending here.

Some of the most interesting stories about Kyrgyzstan have come from Asel, she is talkative and well informed about most subjects that we tourists ask about, and many that we don't. One "custom" which she tells us about is the high rate of kidnap of women here, the purpose of which is to force the woman into marriage. She says that one of her friends was kidnapped whilst walking along the street with her, and when she called the girl's mother, she was really happy about it! Happy because kidnap means marriage and this is a good thing here. In fact, Asel's mother was herself kidnapped by Asel's father, and has a remarkably philosophical attitude to it.

Another unusual custom is the Kyrgyz national sport: goat polo. This is a game which plays pretty much how it sounds: two teams of players on horseback try to get the carcass of a goat onto a goal to score a point. The goat is specially killed for the game, and after the game is finished the goat is given to a poor family for food.

We "sponsored" a game (i.e. we paid for a goat and some prizes) and two teams of eager locals assembled the following day to play. The locals don't get to play often because a goat is too valuable to kill regularly, so they were really pleased to get another chance. The various inhabitants of the yurts near where we were camped all appeared nearby with eight or so arriving on beautiful horses to play the game. One was carrying the head and footless goat, we had been spared the actual killing but it apparently involves blessing the goat first. A pad about a yard in diameter is placed on the ground to act as goal, and the players divide into teams. And that is pretty much it for the rules. There are no boundaries, linesmen or referee, and it seemed that anything was permissible in the course of the game including whipping the opponent's horses or even the opponents themselves. The spectators frequently have to run away from the rampaging teams and play often veered through our camp. Only one tent got trampled during the game, and it survived remarkably well.

It sounds really brutal when viewed from a Western perspective, but when you are watching the game without the bias afforded by a television screen it just seems to be a logical extension of their culture. And it is surprisingly good fun to watch: audience participation is high in goat polo.

I was able to visit the yurt belonging to the local bigwig after the game, and since it was his goat which was used, he had the head cooking in the pot. Unfortunately, I chose to visit just as the head finished cooking, and was invited to eat with him and his extended family. Now don't get me wrong, boiled goat head soup, bits of aforementioned head, and noodles mixed with the remains of said head are reasonably tasty, but not as a three course meal with nothing else. All the food was very greasy, and quite difficult for my soft Western stomach to handle, so thankfully Asel managed to excuse me from eating it all. Apparently it is considered rude to offer anything but meat dishes to guests, hence the lack of other foodstuffs. As an aside, here the male dominated hierarchy was blindingly obvious with bigwig sat at the head of the table, other guests, and male relatives nearby, and women towards the far end, with the youngest furthest away.

Kyrgyzstan officially has a population of around five million, but two million of those live overseas. Even our local guide, who is from Bishkek, lives in Almaty in Kazakhstan. This can only be due to the economic conditions, as the country itself is beautiful.

Pics are Kyrgyz scenery and an imported can of Sprite. Try to read where it was manufactured!

Uzbekistan part two

Samarkand was our next stop here, another historic Silk Road city, with its share of ancient monuments and bazaars. I, unfortunately, was unable to see all of the city tour given by our local guide, Mansur, due to a bout of dodgy restaurant disease. It wasn't all bad though.

The night before, I had ventured out for a meal at the aforementioned restaurant, and whilst walking back to the hotel, two companions and I were accosted by a security guard at the Registan Square complex. This area has three of the most impressive madrassas in Samarkand, and probably in the country. The guard told us that if we were to return at 5am and pay the entrance fee of 4000 som, we could climb one of the minarets and see the sunrise over the city. For some reason this sounded like a great idea, so we went off to bed and got up at 4.30am to visit the minaret. The guard we met this time wanted 10000 som entrance fee, a bit steep, but he was haggled down to 6000 som.

The minaret turned out to be a very unofficial stop on the tour. We had to walk through a building site to get to its base, then climb lots of dodgy 15th century steps, and finally clamber out onto what can only be described as a tiny tin roof nailed to the top of the stone minaret. Needless to say, there were no safety features of any kind, and a long drop to the ground below. The view was fantastic though, and worth bribing the guard to see.

We had assumed that our payment would get us only into the minaret and were moving to leave the area, but surprisingly the guards rushed about to show us almost every nook and cranny of the place, which was all the more pleasant due to the lower temperature and the lack of other tourists milling about. Unofficial it may have been, but it was the better for it.

We only had one night in Tashkent, which wasn't enough to see anything, but the next day we had a new mode of transport: the private car. Due to local politics the truck wasn't able to go over the pass to Fergana, and so it had to drive the long way through Tajikistan. We, however, piled into a fleet of seven Daewoo Nexia cars, and raced off over the pass. In the picture you may be able to see the cracked windscreen of the car I was in: this appeared to be standard equipment on many Uzbek vehicles. Our journey was quite interesting for two reasons: the driver of our car spoke broken English and told us a bit about the area; and we stopped to visit the largest traditional silk factory in Central Asia.

I had no idea that making silk was so fascinating. The guide at the factory showed us all the different stages of making the silk, from growing the cocoons to extracting the silk to weaving the fabric and several others besides. At this particular factory the work was still done almost completely by hand, and each stage had different types of worker: old ladies, young teenage boys, twenty-something women, amongst others. We were given reasons for this, such as one stage required strength, so only young men could do it well, whilst another stage had to be done by young women because it required good eyesight, dexterity and small fingers. Something I personally found endearing: the looms which the young ladies used to weave the fabric were all covered with photos of their pop idols and actors, really cute.

Again only one night in Fergana, we stayed in an old Soviet hotel which attracted a, shall we say, varied clientele, and had payphones in the lobby which only accepted kopeks. And were therefore useless.

Kyrgyzstan next, and a whole different kettle of fish.

Uzbekistan part one

One thing that Central Asia is famous for, or perhaps infamous for, is the Aral Sea. This used to be the world's second largest inland sea, after the Caspian, but has been receding continuously for the past 40 to 50 years due to the rivers which feed it being diverted to irrigate crops.

Moynaq is a small town we visited which has a monument to this: it used to be a fishing port employing 50000 people but now is over 120km from the sea. There are rusting ships lying in the sand of the new Aral Kol, or Aral Desert, where they were abandoned after the sea left. The remaining Aral Sea has apparently changed from fresh to salt water, and the chemicals used for farming have become concentrated in the water thus killing all the fish which used to live in it. The lack of the sea has changed the local climate, the winters are very cold now, and the dust storms in the summer cause respiratory problems for the people living nearby, again due to the high levels of agricultural chemicals left behind.

All this was started in the Soviet era, when irrigation canals were dug to water the cotton crops. The big issue now is since the dissolution of the old USSR there are several different countries affected by the Aral Sea, and no international consensus on what to do about it. And, frankly, no money to pay for it either.

Which is mildly ironic when you know just how much money people have to carry around here. Uzbek money is called Som, and comes in bills up to 1000. This sounds like a lot, but 1000 Som is worth about 50 pence, so when you change, say, a 50 dollar bill, you get 78000 Som back. This does not fit in any normal wallet, and even pockets can be a struggle. I asked our local guide, Mansur, how people carry all their money around and he said that they pay someone else to carry it. I think he was joking.

We have now visited two Silk Road cities: Khiva and Bukhara. Central Khiva is one big museum, with 2000 or so people still living within the old city walls. It is pretty much as it was in the 19th century, which was the last time the city was burned down in an attack. It is small, which made it pleasant to walk around and see the sights, and still not quite as touristy as Bukhara.

Bukhara is more the bustling city, with the centre geared up for extracting money from tourists and the locals' areas further out. It does happen to have two nightclubs, and it being Saturday night when we got here, some of my fellow travellers and I decided to try one out. Clubbing in Bukhara is an experience, especially when you don't know where you are going. So after getting mildly lost, asking directions from a very drunk van driver, and much walking of dark alleyways, we arrived at the club. The music was a seemingly random assortment of Russian and Uzbek hits, some sounding very Western, some definitely not. The clientele were all locals, who were polite enough not to stare too much at the woefully underdressed tourists. The taxi back to our hotel was an improvement on the Kazakh ones, in that he actually took us where we wanted to go. He did hike the price up once we had arrived though, the dirty chancer.

One odd thing about these cities, is that they don't feel as exotic as they look in photos. Even looking back at my pictures of Khiva, they look very mysterious and enticing, but being here just feels like another city, albeit with different architecture and more heat.

Pics are of a boat in the Aral Sea, and US$100 in Uzbek Som.

Change of plan

On our original itinerary we were due to travel to Turkmenistan, but the Turkmen government have closed the border completely due to swine flu. We are now going to Kazakhstan, where we will travel along part of the old Silk Road to Uzbekistan, and pick up our original itinerary again.

Miraculously we have managed to catch the ferry from Baku to Aktau only one night after our arrival in Baku. This is miraculous because the ferry has no set timetable, it leaves every seven to ten days, if the weather is good, and the border officials are antagonistic at best. Our crew, Tim and Cheryl, worked overtime to get us on this boat. The customs people initially were happy to let the truck on the ferry, but not us. They insisted that we would have to get the next boat, in a week's time. After a day and a half of arguing, begging, bribing and pestering, Tim finally got us tickets for the ferry at 4pm on the day of departure, the ferry left at 8pm.

The ferry itself is not as bad as it could have been, we had heard stories about some really rough ones but this was comparatively luxurious. There was one functional, if repulsive, toilet, a cold shower, a bloke to buy tea and soft drinks from, and passably comfortable four berth rooms.

In fact, the ferry journey itself was the least offensive part of this leg. What was interminably worse was arriving in the vicinity of Aktau at 4pm, weighing anchor and waiting for the next ten hours to get into the port. Then, once we had disembarked (one hour), we waited for a further three hours in border control. Then, for a further six hours for the truck to clear border control. Total time taken to dock and drive away: 20 hours. Total ferry journey time: 20 hours. Gah!

Pics of the ferry port at Aktau, and a guy's bag on the ferry.

Kazakhstan

I'll get it out of the way now, I didn't see Borat, or any mention of him in Kazakhstan. What I did see were the first oriental looking people on my journey, and quite a large number of them too.

Aktau feels like a wild west town, with wide boulevards arranged on a grid and cars instead of horses. It features an Irish bar with high prices, shops, hotels and little else. It seemed that every local with a car was automatically a taxi driver as well, judging by the number of offers of lifts we got. I used these taxis twice, and both times got driven miles away from where I wanted to go, and once we got pulled over by the police as well. Interesting, but not particularly useful.

The main road from Aktau to Beyneu was fine for around 120km, but it is 400km long. The rest of the road was a rutted muddy track, which took far too long to traverse. This was compounded by the truck failing several times due to a shoddy batch of diesel, each time necessitating a ten to twenty minute stop for Tim to fix it.

Two days later we limped into Beyneu, a town with a deficit of tarmac and seemingly a surplus of nothing, except psychotic guesthouse owners who terrorise their customers. It was a town with no apparent reason for its existence other than the railway junction there. By now the train was looking pretty attractive as a means of travel, with the awful state of the "main" road. And we were going to be driving on a minor track the following day! It will be terrible, with sand drifts, mud pools, monsters, bandits and foreigners!

Actually, the track turned out to be much better than the main road: virtually level, and nothing to impede our progress. We reached the Uzbekistan border quickly, and passed through in only two hours! Trust me, that is really quick for this part of the world. On the Uzbek side the road got even better, with passable tar in places. We reached Qonghirat that night.

Just one photo, I can't remember whether it is Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan because it all looks like this. Yes, really!