Journey Along the Silk Road

At long last I'm posting about our trip to Uzbekistan. There were a lot of pictures to get through. And given that this was a five day trip, there are a lot of stories. I'm going to try to stick to the basics but have broken the post into daily sections to make it easier to digest. Here again, if you want to skip to the pictures, click the link below.

Uzbekistan 2010 JPGS

Day 1: The Incredible Journey

Logistics would have been simpler if we were driving in a vehicle with diplomatic plates. Since neither we, nor our friends had a trip-worthy vehicle, we had to get creative. We hired a driver to pick us up early in the morning and drive us to the border - about 1.5 hours away. Due to political tensions between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, it's very difficult for locals to cross the border, so we decided to walk across the border on foot and have another driver pick us up on the other side.

When we reached the border, the first checkpoint was just two guys sitting outside at a desk. I asked if I could take a picture and they didn't seem to mind, but I ended up nearly causing an international incident. Another guard came out from a building and sternly demanded that delete the picture. No problem, but then he made me give him the camera as well. Now, if you know me, you know that in my mind, I'd rather not go on a trip at all than go without my camera. Suffice it to say I was rather anxious. But in the end, the guard gave it back and shook his finger at me half jokingly and we enjoyed some friendly banter before heading on our way.

The border crossing is almost a kilometer long and consists of around six checkpoints combined between the Tajik and Uzbek sides. The first I already mentioned. The second one was just a guard who glanced at our passports and waved us on. At the third one, we tried to show the guard our visas, but he scoffed and said "For what I want to see your visa? You're diplomats!". So on we went.

I think the next one was when we finally entered Uzbekistan and was rather odd. This guy in a doctor's uniform stopped us and pointed a device at our foreheads, which clicked, (the device clicked, not our foreheads), before passing us along. I assume it was a thermometer, but it could also have been a thought stealing device. Then at this same checkpoint, another guy slowly tried to read our names aloud as he typed them into a computer. Stephanie's gave him the most consternation and came out Step-hanny, which delighted us each time it happened, which was every time someone tried to read it.

The fifth checkpoint required some ingenuity as there was a long immobile line of people trailing out of the building. Fortunately, we'd been warned about this sort of thing and I knew to go in and announce that we were diplomats, which got us somewhat expedited. We still had to wait for all of our passport information to be entered into a book by hand, but it was far better than waiting for everyone else to go first. By the time we passed through the final checkpoint (another guard who waved us through), we had spent about 45 minutes. Not bad considering that some of our non-diplomatic friends reported waits of up to 2.5 hours.

With that adventure behind us, we located our driver on the Uzbek side, Naim and loaded our things into the car. Naim was a great driver and guide, our only complaint being that he brought a four passenger sedan for five people. Naim informed us that he had never driven from this border crossing before and that we would have to stop periodically for directions. He also told us that our American english was very hard to understand.

The drive itself was amazing, just some really spectacular scenery. There were places where it looked like walls of rock were just sticking up in the air.

As we passed between them we could see that it was the result of entire plateaus tilting up in the air due to plate tectonics.

It was really amazing. The temperatures were in the mid-80's so we rode with the windows down, taking lots of pictures of the passing scenery,

And sometimes stopping to pose...

The trip from the border to Samarqand was over 8 hours long, so of course we needed to stop for lunch. Naim pulled off at a likely looking place. We had a long conversation trying to explain to him that he needed to roll up the windows because our belongings were in the car. We thought he didn't understand our 'American english', but as we talked, the windows rolled themselves up automatically. Naim laughed and said, "Are you from America, or Uzbekistan?" Apparently, seven months away from the U.S. is long enough for us to be behind the times.

As it turned out, the 'restaurant' was actually a mosque so we got back in the car and continued on until we found an actual restaurant that served excellent shashlik. We got stopped at several checkpoints on our trip and at one, this ancient looking old woman was yelling a stream of what Naim told us were profanities at the guards. Most of the guards just glanced at our diplomatic passports and waved us through.

After a long day of driving, we took a stretch break in the last mountain pass,

and were on our way down into Samarqand. We saw some impressively packed cars,

and Naim stopped to buy some meat for dinner,

because he invited us to his house that evening to celebrate Navruz.

Once in Samarqand, we checked into the hotel, which was very nice,

and gave Naim some money to exchange for us. While we waited for him to come and get us for dinner, we walked around a bit and took in some of the sights around the hotel, which was very near some of the major sights of Samarqand like Amir Temur (Tamerlane)'s Mausoleum, and the madrassas of Registan Square.

When Naim came to get us, he brought our exchanged money. The $300 we exchanged got us almost 700,000 sum. Needless to say, it was fun having such a large pile of cash, even if it wasn't worth all that much.

In Uzbekistan, there are two types of currency exchange, the bank rate, which is about 1600 sum to the dollar, and the black market rate, at about 2300 sum per dollar.

I don't really understand how that works except that the bank rate is basically a way to rip off tourists because the banks only buy dollars at that rate, but don't sell them back. Everyone in Uzbekistan uses the black market rate so if you exchange at the bank rate, you're paying a lot more for things. Luckily, Naim was an honest guy and got us the black market rate!

Dinner at Naim's was great, a real feast.

After lots of snacks and salads, his wife brought out home-made plov. This plov was chock full of vegetables and much less oily than the kind they have in Dushanbe. It was delicious. We also had a traditional Navruz dish called sumalac,

made from a boiled grain - I think something similar to sorgum. On the way back to the hotel, Naim took us to see some of the sights lit up at night.

And so, after a very long day, we retired to our hotel to rest, but not before we discovered that the curtains in our room weren't big enough to close. We improvised and tossed the bedspread over the curtain rod. Problem solved.

Day 2: Samarqand

The second day started with a delicious breakfast at the hotel, the highlight of which was these amazing mini-pancakes. They were crispy on the outside and soft on the inside and so buttery-delicious. We spent the second day of our journey with an excellent tour guide who was able to explain just about everything we saw in amazing detail. Don't worry, I won't relate the history of every monument. If you want to know more, try wikipedia.

We started our day by walking around some of the old streets of Samarqand,

until the Mausoleum of Amir Temur opened and we could go inside.

I think the pictures can speak for themselves. Some lady tried to charge us money for taking pictures so we asked our guide if we should pay. She seemed rather indignant about the whole thing and said stiffly, "I think not!" and stormed out with us in tow.

Our next stop was a more detailed tour of Registan Square, which was built by Amir Temur's grandson, Ulug Beg.

In addition to more beautiful architecture, we got to see a pottery craftsman at work and also bought some local ceramics.

From there we paid a visit to Ulug Beg's observatory, which was responsible for some of the most important advances in astronomy of its time.

Then we took a break for a nice lunch and had a hilarious moment when we tried to interpret the dessert menu. Our guide said it was a "banana screwed in the balls" and then quickly recanted the statement when she saw our expressions. No one ordered the banana screwed in the balls, so I don't know what it was. We exited the restaurant to a surprising sight...SNOW!

It was snowing really hard, which was quite shock after it had been so hot the day before. But we continued on unhindered and visited the necropolis, which is full of beautiful tiled mausoleums.

We ended our tour at the Bibi Khanim mosque, which was built for Amir Temur's wife, Bibi Khanim.

We finished up our day by warming up at a nearby restaurant and then turned in so we could get up for an early start to Bukhoro the next morning.

Day 3: On to Bukhoro

After stuffing ourselves with more mini-pancakes at breakfast, we were off to Bukhoro.The drive was uneventful and blessedly short. Upon arrival, we checked in at our hotel, which had a very nice courtyard,

and headed out for lunch. We found a great place called Labi House, right on one of the city's ancient water basins.

The weather had warmed up a bit and it was sunny. Perfect. Our table was adorned with the traditional symbol of Navruz (first day of spring celebrated as the new year in Central Asia, a small circle of spring grass - this is apparently the stuff from which they make Sumalac.

The best part of lunch was the lagman. In Dushanbe, lagman is a delcious noodle soup. In Bukhara it was a scrumptious (needed a word better than delcious) plate of noodles topped with a fried egg.

It was so good I broke one of my cardinal rules of traveling and at the same thing at every meal while in Bukhoro. Of course, I tried other things, but always with Lagman. After lunch, we spent the rest of the afternoon mostly getting a little lost. But it was worth it since I finally saw one of the fabled "big ass" sheep up close and personal. I think the picture explains the descriptor perfectly well. That is some real badunkadunk.

Later in the afternoon we found our way back to the old city and took in the sights,

and browsed some shops, like this one where we saw a guy weaving scarves.

We stopped at a tea house to warm up and then went up to the roof for the view.

For dinner, we all went to Labi House to enjoy the view at night and the ridiculously priced food.

Our meal for the four of us was $12,000 sum, or about $5.31. Amazing. We were also entertained by a couple of guys who had apparently celebrated Navruz too much and could barely walk, much less eat shashlik off a sword. Again, we had trouble deciphering the dessert menu. The chocolate roullette sounded good but we joked that it would turn out to be ho-ho's. Lo and behold, the waiter brought out a package of what looked like ho-ho's. We felt bad to have laughed so hard, but it was just so funny. We also didn't buy the ho-ho's, but returned to the hotel to get some rest.

Day 4:Bukhoro

We were tickled to discover that our hotel in Bukhoro also served mini pancakes for breakfast and departed for the day's excursion in a fine mood. The weather was also a bit warmer, but not much.

The day's sights began with the mausoleum on Ismoili Somoni.

Some of you may recognize the name as the national hero of Tajikistan - and the enormous statue erected in his honor in Dushanbe. From there we toured the Friday Mosque,

and the ancient citadel of Bukhoro,

and many of the mosques and madressas we passed the day before.

After lunch we headed back over Labi House to meet our driver. On the way we passed through the ancienc covered bazaars and saw a Mosque dating back to the first arab conquest of the area in the 8th or 9th century. It was particularly neat because it was about 9 feet below street level.

Our guide explained that many old sites are below street level because over time the streets and newer buildings are built higher. So going down to the older sites is like walking back in time. From there it was off to the Summer Palace for a quick tour and gawking at the peacocks.

We returned to the old city for an afternoon of shopping. Stephanie and I drove ourselves to distraction trying to figure out what we wanted to buy. Even having gotten the market exchange rate at the beginning of our trip, we were being offered unfavorable rates to change back to dollars so we determined to just spend all of our money. In the end we accomplished this goal, but it was hard work!

After my last plate of lagman at Labi House, Stephanie and I stopped at a 600 year old synagogue near our hotel.

The man there told us they have a torah dating back almost 1000 years, a couple of centuries after the first Jews settled in Bukhoro.

We dropped our stuff off at the hotel and then headed out to try to meet up with some of our friends who also happened to be traveling in Bukhoro. We weren't having much luck following their directions when, suddenly, the lights when out in the old quarter. We abandonded our search and made our way through the narrow winding streets to our hotel, where we were provided with a candle that lasted just until the power came back on. It was really neat seeing the sky full of stars from the courtyard.

Day 5: The Long Road Home

Given that Bukhoro was about 3 hours further west of Samarquand, we were skeptical when Naim told us it would only be 8 hours back east to the border (remember it took longer than that to get to Samarqand). So we started our journey around 7am.

Again, the drive was pleasant (albiet a bit crowded) and uneventful. It was interesting to see how precipitation over the weekend had made the countryside even greener. Leaving so early in the morning, we got to see the morning fog lifting off the green hills.

It was really spectacular.

We only stopped once at a bazaar to try to spend off what remained of our money. It was the most ridiculous thing I ever saw. No one was selling anything but candy, toilet paper, and soap! I had to walk about 15 minutes down the road to find other things and ended up just buying around 6.6 pounds of almonds. I was able to negotiate for 34,500 sum, exactly what we had left.

True to his word, Naim dropped us off at the border almost exactly 8 hours after we left. We made our way back through the gauntlet of border control with litte incident until we got to the Tajik side and a guard asked where our exit stamps were. I explained about the guy who said he didn't want to see our visas and the guard asked me again where the stamps were. I told him that was a good question. Fortunately, he thought that was funny rather than smart-mouthed as I intended and stamped our passports and sent us on our way.

Our driver on the Tajik side picked us up right on schedule and we were home by 5:30pm. All in all a great trip. Here's the link to the rest of the pictures again. Hope you enjoyed!

Uzbekistan 2010 JPGS

The Change

This week has been mostly consumed with orchestrating a switch in mobile phone service providers at the embassy, a rather exhausting process, but I found time for a few other activities while I was at it.

This week we managed to both sell our junk-mobile and buy another car. We are now the proud owners of a 2006 Volkswagen Jetta GLI. We won't be able to take it offroading, but we will be able to have fun with it. The final hurdle is to get the Jetta registered, which could be painful, but we're optimistic we can get it done by the end of next week.

Last night, (Wednesday), we had a management team dinner at a shashlik restaurant perched on a hill just under Victory Park - about a mile from our house. We got there a little early and took in some great views overlooking the city at dusk.

The weather has been amazingly warm, with highs in the upper 70's and low 80's. Spring is in full swing in Dushanbe and, as you can see in the pictures, many of the trees are in bloom. It's very nice.

The shashlik (grilled meat) was some of the best we've had since we've been here. The music... was interesting. First, they played music videos that didn't match the songs. For example, there was "Macho Man" with a bunch of scantily clad women dancing on the screen. And they played "Cotton Eyed Joe" with a lone Tajik woman dancing around. They even played a song I haven't heard since I was a kid - "Star Trekkin'", it's a goofy song that was on a compilation of weird songs, like "Flying Purple People Eater", called Dr. Demento. Bizarre doesn't even cover it.

Also in bizarre news, was an odd request during the mobile phone transition. Of course, there were many issues and requests throughout the process, but one of my colleagues approached me to ask if we could switch his number with one of his local staff's number. The reason was because the number had '666' in it and the employee believed it would be unlucky. However, when I went to make the change, the last 4 digits only had two 6's, not three.

I asked my colleague about it. Apparently this particular employee is under the impression that anytime you have more than one 6 is a bad sign. No, that's not a local superstition, I asked around. Of course, we went ahead and made the switch. But it's interesting how superstitions can get twisted around through cultural translation.

Fortunately, my week is over. we're taking Friday off to head to Uzbekistan with some friends for the long weekend. We're planning to visit the ancient cities of Samarqaand and Bukhara. Monday and Tuesday are local holidays so I get a nice 5 day vacation to recover from a rather long week.

BUZKASHI!!!!!

This is the story of our journey to Garm to see our first Buzkashi match. If you want to know what Buzkashi is, you'll have to read on. It's a longish tale, but I think it's also a good one and hope you enjoy...

(If you want to skip to the pictures, click the link below)

Garm Buzkashi 2010 JPGS

We set off from Dushanbe in the wee hours of Saturday morning - around 5:30am - with three of our friends. Garm is a small town to the east of Dushanbe. It's only around 115 miles away, but due to some of the road conditions, it takes 4-5 hours to get there.

Fortunately, the first 80 miles or so are on good roads, although we did get a little nervous when we passed through an area still covered in over 2 feet of snow early in our trip. Garm is at a much higher elevation than Dushanbe and, since we were camping, that much snow could be difficult. As it turned out, there was no snow on the ground once we got to Garm.

We took our first rest break just after we left the good roads,

and had a hilarious moment when one of our friend's dogs, (a Maltese about the size of a football), decided to attack a passing goat. She literally scared the pee out of the goat before we could retrieve her. Luckily, the goat's owner also found the situation funny.

The next 30 miles or so took us about 2.5 hours. The roads were sometimes little more than mud pits and we were all thoroughly tossed about. There were steep cliffs, and bridges that looked barely passable.

We also passed the ongoing construction for the Tajik government's huge project - a hydroelectric dam that will flood most of the area we drove through.

This project has also been a reason for bleeding an already poor population of what money they have through a campaign to have everyone buy shares in the project. Both the idea that the investment is voluntary and that shareholders will ever see a return are laughable - but enough politics.The scenery we passed through was amazing - which made it a little sad to think of it all being flooded. I think the dreary weather even added the the dramatic affect. There were times, driving past the red, muddy rivers and desolate cliffs, that it felt as if we could have been on Mars.

Much of the time, we were traveling along flat plateaus dropping off on one side into river-carved canyons, with snowy mountains rising up on the other side.

We could see the signs of the enormous landslides that plague Tajikistan and sometimes had to drive around or over them. Then, without warning, the horrendous roads gave way to a smooth paved road that took us straight into Garm.

I know the sign looks like it says 'FAPM', but that's how they write 'Garm' in Tajiki.

We stopped in town for a quick lunch and then made our way out to the Buzkashi match. Getting there was no simple task. The directions took us out of town and then into the riverbed. After passing through deep mud and boggy areas and fording a branch of the river, we came to the impromptu parking lot.

We all paused for a bit to examine the variety of colorful rocks that have been washed down and deposited by the river over time.

Our next challenge was crossing a swaying wooden footbridge that was shockingly close to the rushing water- quite thrilling

(you can watch this very short video, no sound is needed, it's only me commenting on how bouncy the bridge is).

Then we picked our way over rocks, fishing baskets,

and mudslides along the river's edge to get to the plateau overlooking the part of the riverbank where the match was held.

Buzkashi is an ancient game that dates back to the time of Ghengis Khan. It's played on horseback and there's no limit to the number of players, and no real boundaries. The idea is that each player tries to drag a goat carcass from the starting point to a goal on the other end of the playing field.

Whenever someone has the goat, all the other players try to beat him with their horsewhips until he drops the goat.

It's a very tough sport - rugby players have nothing on this - and very dangerous. We saw some nasty spills, but fortunately no players - and no horses, were hurt.

The game reminds me of American football in the sense that the players often get bogged down in one spot trying to gain control of the goat.

Then every so often, a player will break out with the goat and charge towards the goal in a burst of excitement. It was a lot of fun to watch, and of course there are many more pictures in my Picasa album.

Of course, foreigners always get a lot of stares here, especially outside of Dushanbe and especially women. But there was this one creepy kid at the match who stared at Stephanie for easily a half hour. It wasn't just that he was staring, it was the way he was doing it. He had his shoulders hunched up and was sort of glaring balefully at us. He was still staring when we headed back toward the car - but that wasn't the last we saw of him...

So we made our way back along the river, across the scary footbridge,

through the mud and back into town, where we warmed up with a hot meal before setting out in search of a camp site. It took us a little while, but finally we found a suitable spot on a small ledge overlooking the river valley. It was really a great location. You can't see it so well in the picture, but the ledge we were on was a good 50 feet high, with great views.

As we were setting up camp, the clouds broke up a bit in the west and we were all surprised to see that behind what we thought were the high mountains, was a ridge of even higher ones.

It was really hard to comprehend the size of them.

We had picked up some wood in town, but building a fire turned out to be a Herculean task. We had kindling and everything, but the wood did not want to light. We ended up scouring the relatively bare area for twigs and even pulling sticks out of a fence to try to keep the nascent flames going long enough for the wood to catch. Stephanie generously donated her magazine to the cause as well. I amazed even myself with my lung capacity as I repeatedly blew on the flames for almost an hour trying to keep it hot. The other guys helped as well when my hands went numb from lack of oxygen and at one point we even resorted to using a tire pump like a bellows.

It was puzzling as there was plenty of heat and the wood seemed to be catching, but the fire remained recalcitrant and refused to burn. Finally we gave up and retired to the tent for some snacks and card games. Suddenly, there was a burst of light outside - the fire spontaneously combusted. It was hilarious after all the effort we put in.

A short time later, we were all tired and decided to tuck in. I was quite warm in my sleeping bag and ended up giving my feet warmers to Stephanie because they were cooking my feet. Stephanie had to put on about 7 layers before she was warm enough to sleep. I had a bit of a hard time drifting off because of this annoying noise that we thought was a distant car alarm, but turned out to be the mating calls of some of the local fauna. I slept pretty well, but was awakened in the night by the fire coming back to life and raging for a few minutes despite intermittant rain.

We had been hoping the weather would clear for the second day of Buzkashi, I really would have liked to see more of those higher mountains, but were not so lucky. As we were getting up, it started raining harder than ever. By the time we finished breaking camp we were so cold and wet we decided to head back to Dushanbe rather than stand in the rain for more Buzkashi.

On the way home, we had several interesting experiences. An old man gave us what one of our friends told us was a 'death curse' when we passed by. That was strange enough, but then we saw the creepy kid from the day before standing on the side of the road! This was some distance from Garm - probably a good 15 miles - but it was definitely him. After the old man cursing us, the whole thing felt distinctly horror movie-ish. We laughed about it, but I'd be lying if the laughter wasn't at least a little uneasy.

It was amazing to see how quickly conditions change on the roads in this part of the country. There were places with new landslides

or where more of the road had collapsed away, but for the most part it was pretty much the same as on the way there. One small problem was trying to find a gas station. We saw this one, managed by a young girl, but getting gas from plastic bottles didn't seem like the best idea.

We stopped for lunch at a little roadside place and had some very good plov and shirbo (a local soup).

We ate inside because it was warmer, but it was too dim for good pictures. Before heading on we braved a rather revolting outhouse perched precariously on a cliff. I didn't realize how precarious it was until I looked down through the hole in the floor and saw the sheer drop down to the floor of the canyon.

The inside was really abysmal. I couldn't bring myself to take a picture of it.

Continuing on, we enjoyed some more great scenery,

passing the occasional livestock jam, and finally made it back to the good roads. Just before heading back the snowy area, we got some gas.

This boy delivered it with a funnel, but at least it wasn't stored in plastic bottles.

At one point we had to slow down because the road had split in half and was starting to sink on one side, but other than that it was uneventful.

As we neared Dushanbe, it was neat to see the snow give way to bright green fields.

It was too dark to appreciate this when we left and I can't really explain why there would be so much snow so close to Dushanbe and none at the higher eleveations of Garm.

Finally, we drove through the east gate of Dushanbe and made our way home for a relaxing afternoon.

All in all, it was a great adventure and I really enjoyed by first Buzkashi. This is the sort of thing I joined the Foreign Service for.

If you've read this far, I'll reward you by placing the link for pictures here as well so you don't have to scroll all the way back up!

Garm Buzkashi 2010 JPGS

Ooh-Eee, Ooh-Aah-Aah, Ting-Tang, Wallah-Wallah-Bing-Bang...

As you might expect after a week away at a conference, it’s been a ridiculously busy week back at work. But a lot is getting done and the time passes quickly, so I’m not complaining. Plus, this week was a four day week, next week will be a four day week (because we’re leaving on our jaunt to Uzbekistan), and the following week will be a three day week due to a couple of holidays. Yes, the United States has a rather spare holiday schedule and most other countries put us to shame. Fortunately, to respect our local colleagues, we close for both local and U.S. holidays.

I don’t know if I mentioned it before, but Stephanie took a tumble down the stairs while I was away. Fortunately, she wasn’t seriously hurt – she was able to check in with the embassy health practitioner - but she did give her ankle a good twist. I was getting pretty concerned though, because the swelling on her ankle wasn’t going down. Lucky for us, Stephanie’s Tajiki instructor apparently dabbles in voodoo.

Stephanie told me that she looked at it, waved her hands over it a few times, and made some brushing movements over it. Then she pressed on some points on Stephanie’s hands and drew a symbol before continuing their lesson. Whatever she did, it certainly didn’t hurt because the swelling and pain have started to go away. There’s a nasty bruise, but it seems that the Tajik magic did the trick.

For this weekend we’re going to try to see our first Buzkashi match. It’s apparently like polo, but with a dead goat instead of a ball. Whoever carries the goat across the goal wins. It’s a very ancient sport and we’re excited to witness it. Of course, there will be pictures…