After another lengthy spell away from computers you now have the dubious pleasure of wading through more diary transcripts. This first one mainly covers Turkmenistan, an odd country to say the least, which we covered in a mad dash as we were only eligible for a transit visa. It was a fascinating country that while difficult at times (both in terms of the country itself and the speed at which we passed through) was also hugely rewarding, from the well-sacked ruins of Konye Urgench in the north, through the vast Karakum desert, to the insane megalomania of Turkmenbashi's capital Ashkabat.
26-Mar-07
Returning from Samarkand we are back in Tashkent with Farrukh and his sister. It has been a red letter day for administration as we received both our visas: the Iranian 21-day and Turkmen 5-day. Not only were these the 2 most complicated, lengthy and in the case of Iran most expensive ones so far, they were also the last 2 we will need on the whole trip, so goodbye bureaucracy, hello adventure! After some restocking of suppliers, including dollars as we will not be able to withdraw any until Turkey, one month from now, we finally managed on the third attempt to eat at an Indian restaurant Taj albeit by candle light due to a lack of electricity. Delicious but expensive.
27-Mar-07
Little to report: woke late and spent a final few hours with Farrukh before gettng our overnighht train to Khiva. Our cabin was shared with a really nice guy from Urgench with whom we pooled our food in good Russian style. He really looked after us actually including organising us a taxi to Khiva itself (train only goes as far as Urgench, some 35 kms away) and refusing to let us pay.
28-Mar-07
A nice young man we bumped into in Khiva found us a great hotel, and negotiated the rate down from 25 dollars each to 20 in total, making it actually affordable. Khiva itself is a fantastically interesting ancient desert city, known for centuries as Central Asia's slave market and run by a series of cruel and sadistic khans - all very Conan the Barbarian. We spent the day exploring the unbelievably well preserved old town, winding our way through a maze of alley ways and stumbling upon treasure, most significantly the huge, wide yet comically stumpy Kalon minaret (one of the crazed khans ordered that the largest minaret in the world be built for him, and looking at the proportions had it been completed it would've easily succeeded. Luckily for the builders he died mid-way through the project and little prompting was needed for tools to be downed). In the evening our hotel cooked us many courses of delicious, largely Ellen-friendly Uzbek food which we partially walked off by strolling around the town again by moonlight, very atmospheric as the shadows and shapes loomed and spun across our path. It was suddenly all too easy to imagine the gruesome past of Khiva and we are delighted to have made it to this frequently overlooked outpost of the silk roads.
29-Mar-07
A morning taxi took us to the quiet Turkmen border, whereupon we were surprised to find ourselves inside an immigration office full of kind smiles and laughter - could this be the same Turkmenistan that we had read so many sinister things about? A few formalities later (including one of the customs officials looking me in the eye and proclaiming earnestly, "I love you", very sweet) we were on the Turkmen side embroiled in a tug of war with rival taxi factions seeking our passage (2 hours to Konye Urgench). It all got a bit physical but we managed to settle on a not too outrageous fare and sped off.
Understandably, Turkmenistan is not big on internet usage, and Hospitality Club members are a bit thin on the ground. There is one hotel in KU but it is universally condemned in the books and Internet so having nowhere to stay we headed for the bazaar of this very interesting yet hard done by capital of the area Khorezm, most of which is still in Uzbekistan and all of which is very Uzbek culturally. It was an important staging post on the northern leg of the silk road, especially for those caravans heading around the north of the Caspian rather than the more traditional route. It has been on the receiving end of dictators' ire for centuries having been thoroughly sacked by Genghis Khan, and subsequently 5 times by never to be out-done Timur, and remains to this day a broken back-water that never really recovered that does nonetheless contain some rather beautiful ruins.
The bazaar itself was full of modern day hustle and bustle, and as soon as we entered we got shaken down by the militzia - half an hour of perfectly charming yet boringly bureaucratic questions and document processing which served as a reminder that this is still a police state. We did manage to leave after much laughter and hand-shaking, virgo intactus, and headed straight for the bazaars main chaikanna (cafe with endless tea). 5 dumplings later, and still unwilling to submit to the dubious pleasures of the one, only, and grim hotel in town we cobbled together n broken Russian and extravagant gesticulations the message that we were after a bed for the night to anyone in the cafe who cared to listen, and let the jungle drums work their magic. Soon enough an entirely square young lady appeared and before I could drain my tea we were whisked off in a taxi bound for a forgotten Soviet block-house outside of the arse-end of this desolate neglected town, and so it was with some surprise that we walked into what was essentially a very welcoming yurt. The bungalow was adorned with rich carpets on the wall and the low furniture was laid out in the one central room in the communal way, just as if at the end of the season this family would pack up, brick by brick, and follow their herd to some other patch of wasteland.
We met the family, drank more tea, and were amazed to find that they had arranged a taxi to come for us to take us around the historical sites, Rosa's brother acting as guide. Incredibly touching as ever when people with nothing to speak of extend such a generous hand to us, and we spend the afternoon visiting minarets (including the tallest in Central Asia), medressas, a huge ruined library that also served as the locals' last stand against GK, and a mausoleum with really complex geometry that served as a huge 3-D calendar. The area sacked by Genghis has a very strange atmosphere, like walking through the land of the dead: salt deposits cover the dying soil, scrubby black saxul attempts growth sporadically, the still partially unrestored buildings stand frozen in time, and human bones are liberally scattered in testament to the blood shed here repeatedly.
We returned eventually to find an absolute feast of Turkmen delights: mutton and potato stew, fresh flat-breads, really tangy tomato chutney, salads, and far, far too much vodka which I'm just not used to any more after travelling through Muslim lands. A dozen or so triple-measured toasts later and my head was spinning and the room seemed to be full of laughter and shared ideas, amazingly special and it was terrific to have landed into the lap of the region's hospitality straight away. Sadly later in the evening we were reminded again that this is still a paranoid police state: the family were getting increasing nervous about harbouring foreigners in case neighbours reported them and the police came (strict rules about this kind of thing, and in any case foreigners are very much a rarity anywhere in Turkmenistan, let alone this outpost). In the end Nargul, staunch granny head of the house disappeared to seek council, and returned with the sad news that they just couldn't risk it (maybe they caught word of a police raid?) so we were bundled into the back of a taxi and much to my drunken pleasure I found us being ferreted away in the dead of night across a totalitarian state, taking round back alleys to avoid police road blocks. We eventually came to, yep, the one hotel in town, said our farewells to our wonderful and apologetic hosts, and entered the most fantastically awful establishment encountered so far. So wrong, in so many ways, that I was mighty pleased for all that vodka after all.
30-Mar-07
Waking up hung over in Hotel Bastardo was not a pretty sight, but soon (Ellen reckons I was 4 minutes from the alarm going off to being fully ready to leave) we were in a magnificently chaotic bus station haggling over a fare to Darvaza, slap bang in the middle of the country and therefore the epicentre of the Karakum desert which accounts for 90% of Turkmenistan's area. We knew nothing about it really except that it was about half way between the north where we were and the souther capital Ashkabat, and that there were some famous gas craters nearby that blaze continuously.
Rmembering the bonhomie in the immigration office it occurred to me that the protagonists were mostly Uzbek, coming into the country like us. The trader faily we spend yesterday evening with also, it turns out, were Uzbeks, and they stand out from the Turkmen by dint of a relatively wealthier appearance and propensity to smile: the Turkmen come state-hardened with a paranoid nervous disposition that makes for a more introverted, shifty group that rarely smile and find eye-contact difficult. The monotonously regular road blocks and random police checks and their pointlessly lengthy document processing reinforce the message every hour of every day. Even though we have seen no sign of corruption or criminality, and are treated well by the officials (who I guess are just doing their job) the atmosphere here is palpably thicker and more oppressive than in Uzbekistan.
The drive to Darvaza took 6 hours under a bleak sky over bad roads. Often the land was part barren marshland, part desert, wholly unlovely but as we went further south the desert took sway and a kind of harsh beauty emerged: dunes flanked us interspersed with wonderfully twisted artemesia bushes and the odd dromedary, some obviously domesticated and some perhaps wild or at least feral. Eventually we came to a chaikanna yurt in the middle of nowhere and with the help of the bus driver negotiated a night's accommodation, a trip to the crater, meals, and assistance in the morning finding a ride south to Ashkabat. It was so good to be inside a yurt again (this time with my preferred curved roof design), away from towns and close to the land. The family are clearly very poor and we have no common language at all, but we smile together and get by amiably. The yurt itself forms the cafe: our accommodation turns out to be, for want of a better expression, a small hoe in the ground. Actually a very practical dwelling and typical in this desert, some steps lead down to a small doorway through which there is a cubic, mud-walled room perfect for insulation during cold nights and coolness during the desert heat, with a stove in the centre that gets the room really toasty. Happy to be there we drop our bags and race up the nearest dune and gaze out for miles and miles, as far as the eye can see, over the Karakum, the hottest desert in Central Asia. I've never stood on a proper sand dune in the desert before and am mesmerised by the light and shade patterns snaking out forever. Far from barren, our dune was a haven for wildlife if you looked for t: sprays of small yellow flowers under the Artemisia, the occasional larger pink star-shaped flower and I'm sure plenty more that we missed. It is home to many species of birds, beetles, spiders and snakes although the only tracks we saw were fro goats and dogs. We retired for a late afternoon round of Desert Munchkin and now wait for the dark so we can go to see the crater at its most impressive.
Crikey: anyone who enjoyed Tolkein (Dante would do at a push) could not help to make allusions at the gas crater, so alike is it to Mount Doom. This was amplified for us as we spent yesterday trudging over a marshy field of bones, today driving through an endless and cruel barren wasteland and finally taking an unbelievably reckless off-road ascent over the desert in the darkness (in an Uaz jeep. Good because its my all time favourite vehicle especially for off-roading. Bad because it is flashback-inducingly similar to the machine we totalled in Mongolia). All this to reach The Crater: a huge inferno big enough to take several football pitches and deep, really deep, a blazing inferno pulsing red and gold of Lucifer, never-ending and lighting the sky for miles around. If we had a ring we would've thrown it in; if we were Christian we would've pledged ourselves to good deeds forever more. The place was terrible, awesome, beautiful and horrific all together presenting a vision so elemental it called to the very depths of my soul and my fear. We stood at the edge of the world at the end of time where all things are unmade and all resolve seduced for good. Frankly, it scared the shit out of me.
31-Mar-07
Beginning the day by trying to catch a ride out of Darvaza I reflected that the middle of a desert, let alone the least hospitable one in Central Asia, presented certain challenges to the would-be hitch-hiker and as we waited I was glad that i such a notoriously hot place we had chanced upon one of the few times it got a bit damp and chilly (typical, we can't do anything straight). After a couple of hours someone did in fact drive by and offer a lift south and so it was that we completed our traversal of the Karakum in good time: our boy racer managed to do the five hour trip in about three and a half.
After some tricky negotiating around the capital we came to our hostel, a cheap and eccentric place overrun by gibbering octogenarians and hordes of chaos-pigeons (I think the 2 things were related), leaving us just enough time in the day to head back out into the countryside to a farm in the shadows of the mountains to the west and south, to a place that breeds the very special Akhal-Teke horse, elegant long limbed lithe creatures built for speed that for the basis of both the Arabian and the Thoroughbred. Ellen took an albino stallion out with a very competent guide who used to be a horse acrobat with the circus and they set off through magnificent canyons that seemed to my so wonderfully lush after our time in the desert. I declined a horse on the grounds that they are agents of Satan with a contract out on me (all of them) and had some wonderfully solitary walking until dusk came.
Tired we returned to what must be the most sinisterly bizarre capital in the world: Turkmenbashi, prior to having the good grace to die before driving the nation irredeemably into the ground, built colossal structures throughout the city, in some cases smashing entire districts that got in the way, all in proper mad dictator gleaming white marble and in a style somewhere between Stalinist classicism and fairy tale. Enormous, imposing and mostly empty they reflect a grandeur born out of his megalomania and it goes without saying that the monuments are used as government ministries, palaces, or luxury hotels rather than schools and hospitals. The contrast with the rest of the country, impoverished neglected and hopeless, is thoroughly obscene, no more so than with respect to the huge number of extravagant fountains that pump water day and night while the population goes thirsty. The guy has his portrait on every building, in Mao-style proportions, and countless gold statues to him by him litter the capital. This is certainly the most extreme personality cult I have seen and makes both the papacy and the Thai royal family seem positively well-balanced. I look forward to exploring this crazy place in more detail tomorrow: both macabre and fascinating it cannot be denied that there is a certain beauty here but at a cost that is too hard to bear.
1-Apr-07
Not too much to add to yesterday's entry, except that walking around this city in the day confirms that it really is unremittingly crackers not least with regard to the 12 metre tall polished gold statue to Turkmenbashi, magnanimously open-armed, that rotates during the day to always greet the sun. Sheer bloody madness.
The morning was great spent exploring Tulkutchka bazaar, described very aptly as Central Asian market courtesy of Cecil B De Mille. It was huge, with camels and carpets stretching out across the desert to the mountains, and despite being there all morning we only saw a small corner of it. It was full of the exotic delights, chaotic hustle and bustle, strange sights and heady smells that make these places so vibrant and essential, a much needed contrast to the sterility of Turkmenbashi's brave new world.
2-Apr-07
1 year on the road to day! Quite an accomplishment for a bumbling pair of old hippies like us and the adventure has been incredible.
Woke up with a fever (bad) but to a breakfast of fried duck and chips (good). We took a taxi to the Iranian border at Bajgirhan at the top of a snow-capped mountain just south of Ashkabat; it was eerily quiet and deserted but still took a long time tog et through - mostly waiting for the Turkmen to find a keyboard for the passport control computer (not may use this border, me thinks). This after a drive through the widest no-man's land we have encountered so far - 20 Kilometres - then a fast and efficient pass through Iranian customs. We were in Persia at last - the land of dreams!
