Trip Report: the STANS (p1)
02-20-2018
, 08:19 PM
Are trip reports still a thing here? Well I’ve got one for you guys on a more off the beaten track destination.
Last summer I spent a few months travelling around Central Asia, starting in western China and working my way through Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Then I spent a few days in Georgia before finally flying back home.
Before this trip started I was grinding in Phnom Penh, so I hopped on a cheap flight to Bangkok, stayed long enough to catch a sunset, eat some green curry, and get a blowjob and then it was back to the airport with a redeye flight to Urumqi, which is the capital of the Xinjiang province in Western China. When I was back in States I had already gotten my 10 year multiple entry visa for China, which is pretty sweet as I can basically just come and go as a tourist without dealing with all the normal visa crap that China puts you through.
view over Bangkok's Lumpini Park
Xinjiang is an interesting province. A lot of Chinese refer to it as the wild west. Even the name itself means ‘new frontier.’ Besides it’s rugged and remote location part of the reason people believe its so wild and dangerous is: the scary muslims! About half of the province is inhabited by the Central Asian looking, Turkic speaking Uyghurs. The Uyghurs (pronounced we-gur) and the Chinese government don’t exactly get along too well, and with pretty good reason. A lot of their rights have been stripped under the guise of combating terrorism and the police keep them on close tabs. If I think of one word to describe traveling around Xinjiang, it’s checkpoints. They are everywhere! Seriously it’s nuts. There’s also like a police station like every two blocks in all the Uyghur areas. It’s pretty wild to see, and is totally disproportional to the amount of ‘terrorism’ there has been. The police state can make Xinjiang a pretty annoying place to travel - and somewhat depressing.
they have these police boxes everywhere
Lucky for me I had a friend in Urumqi, a girl named Mila, who I had traveled through Southwest China with about 5 years ago, and she was happy to show me around a bit. Although now she is engaged, so no extracurriculars this time around, unfortunately. She picked me up from the airport and I always have to laugh when I hear her talk because even though her English is pretty good, she just has such a goofy accent. We went out to eat some laghman or Xinjiang noodles as she calls them, and I got myself checked into one of the hotels that allows foreigners. The reception spoke zero English, so I had to step my Mandarin game quickly! It was never good, but I used to be able to get around China easily enough, ask basic questions and have simple conversations. Now, not so much. Mila also got me a SIM card which was cool, as they don’t let foreigners buy them in Xinjiang.
bowls of laghman
I was there midweek so Mila had to work during the day, and I would explore on my own, and then we’d hang out at night. Mila had to make sure I’d meet her sisters irl, as they had friended me long ago on WeChat and I’d text with them every once in a while. Kind of strange I guess, but not really for China. So we went out to eat at an Uyghur restaurant the first night and then made dumplings for dinner the second night, which is always a fun, communal type activity. My technique could be described as unorthodox!
As for sightseeing, Urumqi isn’t particularly interesting. It’s mostly just your standard big, crowded, Han Chinese city, with the small Uyghur part of town down south. If it wasn’t for the Uyghur neighborhoods, Urumqi would be incredibly boring. For tourists, the only real things to do are the market and a museum, and some hill to hike up. And they didn’t even let me into the damn museum because I was wearing sandals. Argh.
downtown
the iconic minaret at the uyghur market
random mosque
So I spent three nights in Urumqi, which is more than enough, and then took the bus to a desert city called Turfan. Mila was annoyed that I was leaving so soon, but we weren’t hooking up anymore, so no real point in staying.
Turfan is hot. Like crazy hot. I thought Vegas was hot. Not like this. I checked into a hostel and then walked around for an hour without water and nearly died. Fortunately when I got back no one else was in the dorm room so I could take the fan and blast it right at my face while I took a nap. I set up my alarm for 8:30pm (!!!) to wake up and go watch the sunset over the ancient city that’s just outside of town. The sun doesn’t set till around 10pm or something ridiculous. That’s because all of China has one time zone so things get kind of screwy in Xinjiang. The locals actually have their own time, which is two hours ahead of Beijing time, so if you’re planning something you have to make sure to verify if it’s Xinjiang time or Beijing time!
I liked people's doors
nobody is here because it's 115 degrees outside
some of the streets
So I flagged down a taxi and he dropped me off at the visitors center for Jiaohe ancient city. Closed! I knew I should have asked about the times. I hate it when photogenic places close before sunset! BUT there was a group still going through and some guy offered to sell me a discounted ticket to join them on the ‘Jiaohe At Night’ tour. Eh, sure, why not. Of course when I caught up to the group it was all Chinese and the tour guide was speaking in Mandarin, so it looks like I would be educating myself via Wikipedia on my phone. Interestingly this tour turned out to be not just any old night tour, but an elaborate, orchestrated performance. We were led through the ancient city with a king and queen, their body guards, handmaidens holding torches etc. There was a guy singing some stuff. At some point there was a dance routine. I had no real idea what was going on, but it was pretty cool!
the king's flag bearers!
dance routine
When the tour got out around midnight there were no taxis to be found. I was stuck out in the middle of nowhere in the dark on some small ass road with almost no cars on it. Shiiiiit. Eventually I found my way to the police outpost thing (thank goodness for the overwhelming police presence!) and the police dude called up some motorcycle dude who eventually got me back into town (for a hefty price I might add!). So it was an interesting first night in Turfan.
The next day I met some other travellers to share a taxi to see some more stuff outside of town: another ancient village, some caves, and sand dunes. We were literally stopped every 10 minutes at police checkpoints, but we made it to all the stops in due time. The desert landscapes were very picturesque.
tatooine?
caves
cool village in the desert
dunes
weird plastic temple thing they decided to put out in the dunes. Why? I don't know. But very China-esque!
Next up was a train ride. I was headed to the defacto Uyghur capital of Xinjiang: Kashgar, which is a 24 hour train ride from Turfan across the desert. I decided I would break up the journey with a stopover in a city called Korla, about halfway in between. I met some youngish Chinese guys on the train and they had me come with them to the one travellers hostel in Korla. Only problem was that this place didn’t take foreigners! Aghgh. Stupid Xinjiang and it’s stupid rules. Apparently I had to stay at one of the big hotels. At reception they asked me a zillion questions about why I was staying in Aksu, for how long, where I was coming from, where I was headed to, work history in China, etc – all through google translate. I feared they might ask for my dental records at some point, but eventually they handed over my keycard. $25 for a pretty nice room with pumping aircon, not bad.
please read the hat, lol
The main thing to do in Korla is head out of town and see Xianjiang's version of the Grand Canyon, the Korla Grand Canyon. I headed to the bus station to see if I could catch a bus out there, but no luck. Looks like it would be off to the taxi stand to negotiate with the taxi drivers in broken mandarin, my favorite!
The place was 70km outside of town and we arrived in a light rain. I tried to buy a ticket, but the man said I couldn’t. Somebody was nice enough to translate for me that there was a flash flood danger. Arrghgh. I waited around with a few other people for an hour and eventually the rain stopped. Soon enough one guy started raising hell to the ticket man and after that we were able to buy our tickets and head into the canyon! It was a pretty cool place and there were little waterfalls in places thanks to the recent rainfall. It was worth the wait!
After another police interrogation I was back in the city and had some time to wander around and eat some excellent shashlik (shish kebabs). The Uyghur parts of town are just so much more lively and interesting than the Han parts. Also much poorer! I didn't stick around much longer as I had a night train to take. I shared my 4 bed cabin with a young Uyghur couple and their children, which wasn’t exactly ideal, due to some baby crying. And the other kids would not stop staring at me, heh. It was a little creepy. We did have something in common though, we all sucked at speaking Mandarin! And they did hook me up with some candies so we were cool.
some photos from the Uyghur neighborhoods
grillin that shashlik
girl on the train
So the fun thing about Kashgar is that a large chunk of it is the ‘old city’. But of course it’s China, so the old city is actually not old, it’s actually very new, they just knocked a bunch of it down in the 2000’s and rebuilt it – apparently with little input from the residents themselves. But even so, it is very enjoyable to walk down all the seemingly antiquated streets and take in the Uyghur daily life with its mosques and markets and bakeries. You certainly don’t feel like you’re in China!
Fortunately for me, I was to be there on a Sunday, which meant I’d get to see the largest livestock market in the region! And it was a pretty damn cool experience. All these guys come streaming in with their trucks full of sheep, goats, and cows and then unload them and put them on display. The potential buyers come around and feel up all the animals while haggling over the price the whole time. If they end up striking a deal it’s sealed with this big, over-the-top type handshake. Then the animal(s) are loaded up and driven off. It’s funny because it appears as if the two sides are getting into the type of argument that precedes a fist fight, but it’s all good natured! Or so I was told.
After spending enough time there I actually had to hitchhike home, as the government decided to shut down every single ATM the evening before (standard Xinjiang shenanigans) and I didn’t have enough to pay for a taxi. Surprisingly an older Chinese woman ended up picking me up and dropping me at a different market just outside of town, but then started yelling at me because she was expecting payment. Oops! After attempting to explain the ATM situation and profusely apologizing she suspiciously accepted my wrinkly $1 bill as good faith gesture. I did have enough coins to hop on a bus into town though, thank god.
have you ever seen this many watermelons in one place before?!
So next on the list of things to do: find a group of people wanted to share transport together to get across the border into Kyrgyzstan. There’s really only two hostels that foreigners stay at and they have message boards, so eventually I ended up finding a Scottish couple, two Kiwis and a Japanese guy. We’d all heard this border crossing was a massive pain in the ass, so it’s a good idea to have some strength in numbers. We all met each other over some beers and planned to depart in two days. And a pain in the ass it was!
You have to take a van taxi as far as they let civilians drive, then stop, unload and reload all the stuff into a different vehicle that takes you to the border, all the while going through meaningless checkpoints and bag scans. When you finally get to the border the Chinese guys are taking a lunch break for a couple hours, so you just gotta wait till they decide to open up shop. Once you’ve made it through the Chinese side you then have to walk 2km in no-man’s land with all your stuff to get to the Kyrgyzstan border! Then it finally got easier. We piled in a shared taxi headed to the city of Osh. The beautiful country of Kyrgyzstan up next!
Last summer I spent a few months travelling around Central Asia, starting in western China and working my way through Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Then I spent a few days in Georgia before finally flying back home.
Before this trip started I was grinding in Phnom Penh, so I hopped on a cheap flight to Bangkok, stayed long enough to catch a sunset, eat some green curry, and get a blowjob and then it was back to the airport with a redeye flight to Urumqi, which is the capital of the Xinjiang province in Western China. When I was back in States I had already gotten my 10 year multiple entry visa for China, which is pretty sweet as I can basically just come and go as a tourist without dealing with all the normal visa crap that China puts you through.
view over Bangkok's Lumpini Park
Xinjiang is an interesting province. A lot of Chinese refer to it as the wild west. Even the name itself means ‘new frontier.’ Besides it’s rugged and remote location part of the reason people believe its so wild and dangerous is: the scary muslims! About half of the province is inhabited by the Central Asian looking, Turkic speaking Uyghurs. The Uyghurs (pronounced we-gur) and the Chinese government don’t exactly get along too well, and with pretty good reason. A lot of their rights have been stripped under the guise of combating terrorism and the police keep them on close tabs. If I think of one word to describe traveling around Xinjiang, it’s checkpoints. They are everywhere! Seriously it’s nuts. There’s also like a police station like every two blocks in all the Uyghur areas. It’s pretty wild to see, and is totally disproportional to the amount of ‘terrorism’ there has been. The police state can make Xinjiang a pretty annoying place to travel - and somewhat depressing.
they have these police boxes everywhere
Lucky for me I had a friend in Urumqi, a girl named Mila, who I had traveled through Southwest China with about 5 years ago, and she was happy to show me around a bit. Although now she is engaged, so no extracurriculars this time around, unfortunately. She picked me up from the airport and I always have to laugh when I hear her talk because even though her English is pretty good, she just has such a goofy accent. We went out to eat some laghman or Xinjiang noodles as she calls them, and I got myself checked into one of the hotels that allows foreigners. The reception spoke zero English, so I had to step my Mandarin game quickly! It was never good, but I used to be able to get around China easily enough, ask basic questions and have simple conversations. Now, not so much. Mila also got me a SIM card which was cool, as they don’t let foreigners buy them in Xinjiang.
bowls of laghman
I was there midweek so Mila had to work during the day, and I would explore on my own, and then we’d hang out at night. Mila had to make sure I’d meet her sisters irl, as they had friended me long ago on WeChat and I’d text with them every once in a while. Kind of strange I guess, but not really for China. So we went out to eat at an Uyghur restaurant the first night and then made dumplings for dinner the second night, which is always a fun, communal type activity. My technique could be described as unorthodox!
As for sightseeing, Urumqi isn’t particularly interesting. It’s mostly just your standard big, crowded, Han Chinese city, with the small Uyghur part of town down south. If it wasn’t for the Uyghur neighborhoods, Urumqi would be incredibly boring. For tourists, the only real things to do are the market and a museum, and some hill to hike up. And they didn’t even let me into the damn museum because I was wearing sandals. Argh.
downtown
the iconic minaret at the uyghur market
random mosque
So I spent three nights in Urumqi, which is more than enough, and then took the bus to a desert city called Turfan. Mila was annoyed that I was leaving so soon, but we weren’t hooking up anymore, so no real point in staying.
Turfan is hot. Like crazy hot. I thought Vegas was hot. Not like this. I checked into a hostel and then walked around for an hour without water and nearly died. Fortunately when I got back no one else was in the dorm room so I could take the fan and blast it right at my face while I took a nap. I set up my alarm for 8:30pm (!!!) to wake up and go watch the sunset over the ancient city that’s just outside of town. The sun doesn’t set till around 10pm or something ridiculous. That’s because all of China has one time zone so things get kind of screwy in Xinjiang. The locals actually have their own time, which is two hours ahead of Beijing time, so if you’re planning something you have to make sure to verify if it’s Xinjiang time or Beijing time!
I liked people's doors
nobody is here because it's 115 degrees outside
some of the streets
So I flagged down a taxi and he dropped me off at the visitors center for Jiaohe ancient city. Closed! I knew I should have asked about the times. I hate it when photogenic places close before sunset! BUT there was a group still going through and some guy offered to sell me a discounted ticket to join them on the ‘Jiaohe At Night’ tour. Eh, sure, why not. Of course when I caught up to the group it was all Chinese and the tour guide was speaking in Mandarin, so it looks like I would be educating myself via Wikipedia on my phone. Interestingly this tour turned out to be not just any old night tour, but an elaborate, orchestrated performance. We were led through the ancient city with a king and queen, their body guards, handmaidens holding torches etc. There was a guy singing some stuff. At some point there was a dance routine. I had no real idea what was going on, but it was pretty cool!
the king's flag bearers!
dance routine
When the tour got out around midnight there were no taxis to be found. I was stuck out in the middle of nowhere in the dark on some small ass road with almost no cars on it. Shiiiiit. Eventually I found my way to the police outpost thing (thank goodness for the overwhelming police presence!) and the police dude called up some motorcycle dude who eventually got me back into town (for a hefty price I might add!). So it was an interesting first night in Turfan.
The next day I met some other travellers to share a taxi to see some more stuff outside of town: another ancient village, some caves, and sand dunes. We were literally stopped every 10 minutes at police checkpoints, but we made it to all the stops in due time. The desert landscapes were very picturesque.
tatooine?
caves
cool village in the desert
dunes
weird plastic temple thing they decided to put out in the dunes. Why? I don't know. But very China-esque!
Next up was a train ride. I was headed to the defacto Uyghur capital of Xinjiang: Kashgar, which is a 24 hour train ride from Turfan across the desert. I decided I would break up the journey with a stopover in a city called Korla, about halfway in between. I met some youngish Chinese guys on the train and they had me come with them to the one travellers hostel in Korla. Only problem was that this place didn’t take foreigners! Aghgh. Stupid Xinjiang and it’s stupid rules. Apparently I had to stay at one of the big hotels. At reception they asked me a zillion questions about why I was staying in Aksu, for how long, where I was coming from, where I was headed to, work history in China, etc – all through google translate. I feared they might ask for my dental records at some point, but eventually they handed over my keycard. $25 for a pretty nice room with pumping aircon, not bad.
please read the hat, lol
The main thing to do in Korla is head out of town and see Xianjiang's version of the Grand Canyon, the Korla Grand Canyon. I headed to the bus station to see if I could catch a bus out there, but no luck. Looks like it would be off to the taxi stand to negotiate with the taxi drivers in broken mandarin, my favorite!
The place was 70km outside of town and we arrived in a light rain. I tried to buy a ticket, but the man said I couldn’t. Somebody was nice enough to translate for me that there was a flash flood danger. Arrghgh. I waited around with a few other people for an hour and eventually the rain stopped. Soon enough one guy started raising hell to the ticket man and after that we were able to buy our tickets and head into the canyon! It was a pretty cool place and there were little waterfalls in places thanks to the recent rainfall. It was worth the wait!
After another police interrogation I was back in the city and had some time to wander around and eat some excellent shashlik (shish kebabs). The Uyghur parts of town are just so much more lively and interesting than the Han parts. Also much poorer! I didn't stick around much longer as I had a night train to take. I shared my 4 bed cabin with a young Uyghur couple and their children, which wasn’t exactly ideal, due to some baby crying. And the other kids would not stop staring at me, heh. It was a little creepy. We did have something in common though, we all sucked at speaking Mandarin! And they did hook me up with some candies so we were cool.
some photos from the Uyghur neighborhoods
grillin that shashlik
girl on the train
So the fun thing about Kashgar is that a large chunk of it is the ‘old city’. But of course it’s China, so the old city is actually not old, it’s actually very new, they just knocked a bunch of it down in the 2000’s and rebuilt it – apparently with little input from the residents themselves. But even so, it is very enjoyable to walk down all the seemingly antiquated streets and take in the Uyghur daily life with its mosques and markets and bakeries. You certainly don’t feel like you’re in China!
Fortunately for me, I was to be there on a Sunday, which meant I’d get to see the largest livestock market in the region! And it was a pretty damn cool experience. All these guys come streaming in with their trucks full of sheep, goats, and cows and then unload them and put them on display. The potential buyers come around and feel up all the animals while haggling over the price the whole time. If they end up striking a deal it’s sealed with this big, over-the-top type handshake. Then the animal(s) are loaded up and driven off. It’s funny because it appears as if the two sides are getting into the type of argument that precedes a fist fight, but it’s all good natured! Or so I was told.
After spending enough time there I actually had to hitchhike home, as the government decided to shut down every single ATM the evening before (standard Xinjiang shenanigans) and I didn’t have enough to pay for a taxi. Surprisingly an older Chinese woman ended up picking me up and dropping me at a different market just outside of town, but then started yelling at me because she was expecting payment. Oops! After attempting to explain the ATM situation and profusely apologizing she suspiciously accepted my wrinkly $1 bill as good faith gesture. I did have enough coins to hop on a bus into town though, thank god.
have you ever seen this many watermelons in one place before?!
So next on the list of things to do: find a group of people wanted to share transport together to get across the border into Kyrgyzstan. There’s really only two hostels that foreigners stay at and they have message boards, so eventually I ended up finding a Scottish couple, two Kiwis and a Japanese guy. We’d all heard this border crossing was a massive pain in the ass, so it’s a good idea to have some strength in numbers. We all met each other over some beers and planned to depart in two days. And a pain in the ass it was!
You have to take a van taxi as far as they let civilians drive, then stop, unload and reload all the stuff into a different vehicle that takes you to the border, all the while going through meaningless checkpoints and bag scans. When you finally get to the border the Chinese guys are taking a lunch break for a couple hours, so you just gotta wait till they decide to open up shop. Once you’ve made it through the Chinese side you then have to walk 2km in no-man’s land with all your stuff to get to the Kyrgyzstan border! Then it finally got easier. We piled in a shared taxi headed to the city of Osh. The beautiful country of Kyrgyzstan up next!
Last edited by cardsharkk04; 02-20-2018 at 08:34 PM.
02-22-2018
, 07:56 AM
02-24-2018
, 09:38 PM
We arrived at the Kyrgyzstan border in late afternoon anxious to put all our bags down after walking with everything for the last 25 minutes or so. This is not a good border to cross for people aren’t in halfway decent shape! The building was kind of what you’d expect, a big ugly looking concrete structure. Everyone was fully decked out in green/brown camo gear and carried AK’s. While they looked a little intimidating, everybody we talked to was very friendly and the man at the stamp counter was happy to demonstrate that he know how to say hello in everyone’s native tongues. The nice thing about Kyrgyzstan is that it’s visa on arrival, and it’s free! They’re leading the push for tourism in the region. So we all got our 30 days stamped in and moved on past the outer gates where the taxis were waiting for us.
One of the buildings on the Chinese side
There’s not a whole lot of bus transportation in the country, so the majority of travel is done with shared taxis. We negotiated a price to Osh, which is the biggest city in southern Kyrgyzstan at $25pp for the 4 or 5 hour ride. We piled into a beater of a car with a big ole cracked windshield and quickly pulled over to get some gas. There is just one settlement near the border, which looks something like a soviet housing block. There’s no gas station, we just pulled into the courtyard and the driver knocked on some guys door and he came out with the canister of fuel. Our driver put on some Russian club/dance music and we were off!
Well not really, soon we ran into a gate manned by some military guys in a shipping container and handed over our passports. “ahhh, Vy iz Amerikanets!” Then they huddled together looking at my passport and joking something about Americans before letting me go. After the trunk was inspected the gates lifted and now were actually on our way!
The scenery in Kyrgyzstan changes extremely fast once you get over the pass from China. The dry, red, rocky outcroppings turn into nice lush green rolling hills with some whitecapped mountains in the distance. It’s a very picturesque drive. Along the road you pass plenty of small camps with converted trailers and yurts. Livestock is everywhere. At one point our driver and the other taxi stopped at one of the camps to buy a 5 gallon jug of kumis, which is the fermented horse milk drink that they love. “Kumis makes you strong!” our driver exclaimed while flexing. This guy was also like 6’2” 165 lbs, ha.
Green!
We didn’t try any of the kumis this time, but we would soon enough! It’s fun being in an entirely new country and experiencing an entirely new culture. I honestly knew very little about central Asia before I left. All I knew was that Kyrgyzstan is mountainous, they have yurts, it’s former USSR, Russian is usually the second language, the people are muslim, and uhhh, that’s about it. Well at least I knew how to spell it (thanks sporcle!). I wasn’t even sure what the people would look like – if they would look more Russian or more Asian (they look Asian btw). But so far everything in Kyrgyzstan was different and interesting and I liked it almost immediately.
We arrived at our guesthouse around 8pm – a solid 14 hour travel day. We had some time to walk around the 2nd biggest city in Kyrgyzstan, not a whole lot going on at night, but we did manage to find a good restaurant. I was glad I learned some Russian ahead of time though because the menu was only in Cyrllic and the waitress didn’t really speak English. The food was surprisingly good and amazingly cheap. A big bowl of borsht – less than a dollar, beer - less than a dollar, kebabs with large cuts of good meat – a dollar, a beefsteak with fries - $3, hell yea!
We had one day to explore the city (we even got on TV!) and then the two kiwi guys, the Scottish couple, and myself agreed to get a shared car up to a mountain village called Arslanbob. Back story on the kiwi guys, they had just finished motorbiking around Pakistan for a few weeks before I had met them in Kashgar. The Scottish couple was in Tibet before Kashgar, and before that they were actually working in Phnom Penh! So that was kind of a funny coincidence.
Mount Suliman
getting wild on the rock slide
gotta love the hats
carnival rides galore
Some excellent taxidermy
Annie get interviewed by a Bishkek TV station about why we are in Osh and how we're liking it. I'm just in the back in the green looking awkward.
Another nice thing about Krygyzstan is that have these CBT (community based tourism) offices all around the country, so whenever you’re in a new place you can stop in and organize homestays, tours, a guide, whatever. You pay a bit more than if you’d organize things independently, but when most of the country doesn’t speak much English and you don’t speak much Russian, this makes things much easier. So we booked a homestay in the village for 2 nights. They take you up there by jeep because the roads are just horrendous.
So Arslanbob (what a goofy name!) is a pretty small, friendly town and it’s got some waterfalls you can check out and is famed for it’s walnut groves. Well it wasn’t walnut season when we were there, so the groves just kind of looked like any other forest would look. It was however melon season, so you could get fresh juicy watermelon or cantaloupe for next to nothing. There’s not a ton to do in town, but all the locals are friendly and curious and you get a lot of kids waving hi, so it’s pleasant. Apparently there are some really nice multiday loop hikes, so it’s also a good base for that. As I’d learn, you can find nice hikes basically everywhere in Kyrgyzstan.
Arslanbob
My route in Kyrgyzstan
Next up: Song Kul Lake. This place took us a solid day and a half of driving to get to! Some places can look close on a map (as the crow flies) but driving around whole mountain ranges on constantly winding roads takes time! At least the car we hired only broke down once! Once you’re in the village outside the lake you can either hike in or take horses, so me and the NZ guys took horses and the Scottish couple decided to walk. To be honest I’m not a big horse guy. I mean I like being on a horse for an hour or so and letting it gallop around a bit, but this was like a 6 hour thing. And I wore shorts like a tard. So after a couple hours my calves were chaffing, my back hurt, my ass felt like it had bone deep bruising, and my nuts kept bouncing on the saddle whenever the horse went into a trot. Plus it drizzled for half the time. Pretty awful! The scenery near the lake with all the yurt camps was great though!
cabelleros
these kids grow up on horseback
everyone here is a mechanic
yurt kids
Plus we faired better than the Scottish couple who decided to hike in (w/o an adequate map I might add), who we realized were not gonna make it after it got dark and there was still no sign of them. So we were a bit worried about them, but they managed to find a small house somewhere in the valley to shack up for the night and came stumbling in the next morning. Turns out the family they stayed with was super welcoming, made them a huge meal, and they had a great time! This is what’s cool about Kyrgyzstan, the people are just very warm and really do care about tourists well-being.
Once you’re at the lake there isn’t a ton to do, just kinda wander around and observe daily life in the yurt camps, lounge around and read, maybe go for a quick dip in the ice cold water. You’re away from everything and it’s nice. And the host family makes you three meals a day. The Kiwi guys were on a pretty tight schedule, so they ended up heading out the next afternoon. That was a bit too rushed for my liking, so I stuck around with the Scots, but I had the guys take my horse back to the village so I could just hike out the next day. No way could my ass handle another 6 hours on the horse!
inside of the yurt for dinner
The next day I was about ready to go, but the Scottish couple just wanted to chill at the lake longer, so unfortunately it was time to part ways. On the way out I got invited into two different yurts to drink – did you guess it? – Kumis!! The sour weird tasting fermented horse milk. Yay! If you ever get invited into a yurt you always hope they’re gonna bring out tea, but usually it’s kumis. And they’re very proud of their kumis, so you better like it! And drink all of it! I can pound down one glass just fine, but man, the second time was rough. But of course it’s always a good experience when someone is inviting you into their home to have a drink.
kumis
So I made my way out and ended up hitchhiking into the main town, getting picked up by some early 20’s dudes. Hitchhiking is pretty easy in this country, it’s the conversation once in the car that’s the difficult part. I’ve got enough Russian down to ask and answer some very basic questions, then it’s Google translate time! The Google translate voice feature is pretty damn good these days. And just like in China, everyone always asks how much money you make! It’s like clockwork. Anyway they dropped me off in some medium size city and I tried to offer them some gas money, but they weren’t having it. Nice guys.
interesting shipping container house
walking around town
The next day was onto Bishkek, the capital city. I was pretty curious to see what it would look it like with the Soviet era buildings and all. Me and a british guy from the hostel hopped on a bus into the city to check it out. The downtown was actually much nicer and cleaner than I was expecting! And of course it had the big government buildings with the imposing granite columns along with a nice square and water fountains. Plus the requisite Lenin statue. And I must say, this country loves carnivals! In both Osh and Bishkek they have large parks filled with all sorts of carnival rides and carnival games and fast food and soft serve ice cream. A cone costs around 15cents, not bad!
Also the dress is noticeable different. Not as much for the guys, but definitely for the girls. The women dress fairly modestly in the countryside, but here in Bishek it’s much more modern; you’ll see girls in skirts and heels, tank tops and booty shorts etc. And the girls are pretty hot! I like that Eurasian look! Me and Mark (the Brit) decided that we were going out to the clubs that night. For dinner we hit up Obama Bar N Grille and reminisced of old times when USA #1 didn’t have a POS president. Then we hit up an Arabic shisha lounge while pounding cheap Russian vodka shots. We then found our way over a highly rated club (according to the internetz) but after getting passed the surly bouncer dudes it was totally dead inside. Well it was a Wednesday. Plus $10 drinks, meh. But the bar down the street had some good action with lots of younger Russian girls and some beer pong going on. So it was a good night out. If I wasn’t in go-go-go traveling mode I would have liked to spend a bit more time there, plus I heard there are poker games somewhere. Ahh next time.
Kyrgyz girls from the internet
Next up is Kyrgyzstan’s most popular attraction: Lake Issyk Kul. It’s a large alpine lake that never freezes because of it’s salinity or something. It’s popular spot among Kazaks and Russians for a holiday. The north part of the lake is the touristy part and south part of the lake is more remote with small villages and some yurt camps.
I spent most of my time on the far eastern edge of the lake in the town of Karakol, which is a good base for doing some hiking. I’d been carrying my tent, sleeping bag, stove etc, so it was about time I used it. The most popular trek is the one to Lake Alakul, a gorgeous alpine lake. If you’re in shape it’s a 3d/2n type of hike. Most people set up camp before the steep ascent up to the lake, spend the late morning at the lake and then camp down on the other side. But screw that, I wanted to camp at the lake, so I put in a solid 1500m of altitude gain that first day and got a pretty solid dose of altitude sickness the top (the last hour was insanely hard) but eventually I made it! Not that I enjoyed it much because I ate dinner and then passed out in my tent for 11 hours. But the lake is pretty spectacular.
It looks turquoise in the sun
Next day I hiked around the lake and camped at some hot springs popular with Russian offroading groups, and then was back in Karakol the next day. I spent another night staying in a yurt camp on the south part of the lake and then it was down to city called Naryn to get to – take a guess – another lake!
Offroading Russian style
I found another British guy named to do this with. We took a taxi out to another yurt camp located in a really pretty valley in the mountains. We did the day hike out to the lake Chartyr Kol and back, which was a solid hike, minus the rain and hail storm at the end. I tried to convince him to go with me another lake, kol suu, which is supposed to be one of the best in Kyrgyzstan, but you have to buy this dumb permit because it’s a special border area with China and its $100 and he didn’t want to pay for it. Well I was doing it anyway!
Me and my driver headed off the next day. You need a 4x4 to get anywhere near this lake as the roads are all ****. Well our jeep was **** too and it broke down about half way there, in the absolute middle of nowhere. It took about 3 hours just for another vehicle to pass, and I guess my driver knew this guy, so we hopped in and set off for another few hours over roads with entire sections wiped out, finally getting dropped off at this old house with some yurts outside, just as it got dark. It was pretty far into the mountains and was cold as hell even during summer, I don’t know what the hell these people do in the winter, it must be miserable.
The next morning I woke up at 5am to piss and decided to just start hiking out the lake then. The hiking route was showing up on the maps.me app so I thought I’d give it a go and try and get to the lake around sunrise. (If you guys travel – download the maps.me app. You can download the offline version of wherever you’re at and it has everything on there. Main roads, unpaved roads, and even hiking trails, it’s great) So the early start was a pretty good decision! It was a full moon so after my eyes adjusted I didn’t even need my headlamp anymore. Hiking while the trail and the whitecapped mountains were lit by nothing but moonlight was pretty surreal. Soon enough the sun came up and made its over the mountains while I scrambled up the path cutting its way between two rocky outcroppings, and then there it was: a long skinny lake surrounded on all sides by massive rock walls – pretty impressive! There was even a boat chained up there that would have been amazing to take out into the lake, as you can only see a small fraction of the actual lake from the shore. Alas. But it was pretty sweet having the whole place to myself.
pre-dawn scenery
the way up to the lake
lunch
towing the car on the way back. pretty interesting. I thought for sure that rope was gonna snap.
Ok, I feel like this part is getting a bit repetitive, so I'm gonna fast forward here. As you can tell there are lots of really nice alpine lakes and hiking opportunities in Kyrgyzstan! After this lake I made a two day trip back to Osh and now it was time to look for some people to rent a car and driver with for an excursion down into Tajikistan. Apparently Eastern Tajikistan is very remote so you really don't want to count on any form of public transportation. So that's what's next: Tajikistan and the Pamir Highway!
One of the buildings on the Chinese side
There’s not a whole lot of bus transportation in the country, so the majority of travel is done with shared taxis. We negotiated a price to Osh, which is the biggest city in southern Kyrgyzstan at $25pp for the 4 or 5 hour ride. We piled into a beater of a car with a big ole cracked windshield and quickly pulled over to get some gas. There is just one settlement near the border, which looks something like a soviet housing block. There’s no gas station, we just pulled into the courtyard and the driver knocked on some guys door and he came out with the canister of fuel. Our driver put on some Russian club/dance music and we were off!
Well not really, soon we ran into a gate manned by some military guys in a shipping container and handed over our passports. “ahhh, Vy iz Amerikanets!” Then they huddled together looking at my passport and joking something about Americans before letting me go. After the trunk was inspected the gates lifted and now were actually on our way!
The scenery in Kyrgyzstan changes extremely fast once you get over the pass from China. The dry, red, rocky outcroppings turn into nice lush green rolling hills with some whitecapped mountains in the distance. It’s a very picturesque drive. Along the road you pass plenty of small camps with converted trailers and yurts. Livestock is everywhere. At one point our driver and the other taxi stopped at one of the camps to buy a 5 gallon jug of kumis, which is the fermented horse milk drink that they love. “Kumis makes you strong!” our driver exclaimed while flexing. This guy was also like 6’2” 165 lbs, ha.
Green!
We didn’t try any of the kumis this time, but we would soon enough! It’s fun being in an entirely new country and experiencing an entirely new culture. I honestly knew very little about central Asia before I left. All I knew was that Kyrgyzstan is mountainous, they have yurts, it’s former USSR, Russian is usually the second language, the people are muslim, and uhhh, that’s about it. Well at least I knew how to spell it (thanks sporcle!). I wasn’t even sure what the people would look like – if they would look more Russian or more Asian (they look Asian btw). But so far everything in Kyrgyzstan was different and interesting and I liked it almost immediately.
We arrived at our guesthouse around 8pm – a solid 14 hour travel day. We had some time to walk around the 2nd biggest city in Kyrgyzstan, not a whole lot going on at night, but we did manage to find a good restaurant. I was glad I learned some Russian ahead of time though because the menu was only in Cyrllic and the waitress didn’t really speak English. The food was surprisingly good and amazingly cheap. A big bowl of borsht – less than a dollar, beer - less than a dollar, kebabs with large cuts of good meat – a dollar, a beefsteak with fries - $3, hell yea!
We had one day to explore the city (we even got on TV!) and then the two kiwi guys, the Scottish couple, and myself agreed to get a shared car up to a mountain village called Arslanbob. Back story on the kiwi guys, they had just finished motorbiking around Pakistan for a few weeks before I had met them in Kashgar. The Scottish couple was in Tibet before Kashgar, and before that they were actually working in Phnom Penh! So that was kind of a funny coincidence.
Mount Suliman
getting wild on the rock slide
gotta love the hats
carnival rides galore
Some excellent taxidermy
Annie get interviewed by a Bishkek TV station about why we are in Osh and how we're liking it. I'm just in the back in the green looking awkward.
Another nice thing about Krygyzstan is that have these CBT (community based tourism) offices all around the country, so whenever you’re in a new place you can stop in and organize homestays, tours, a guide, whatever. You pay a bit more than if you’d organize things independently, but when most of the country doesn’t speak much English and you don’t speak much Russian, this makes things much easier. So we booked a homestay in the village for 2 nights. They take you up there by jeep because the roads are just horrendous.
So Arslanbob (what a goofy name!) is a pretty small, friendly town and it’s got some waterfalls you can check out and is famed for it’s walnut groves. Well it wasn’t walnut season when we were there, so the groves just kind of looked like any other forest would look. It was however melon season, so you could get fresh juicy watermelon or cantaloupe for next to nothing. There’s not a ton to do in town, but all the locals are friendly and curious and you get a lot of kids waving hi, so it’s pleasant. Apparently there are some really nice multiday loop hikes, so it’s also a good base for that. As I’d learn, you can find nice hikes basically everywhere in Kyrgyzstan.
Arslanbob
My route in Kyrgyzstan
Next up: Song Kul Lake. This place took us a solid day and a half of driving to get to! Some places can look close on a map (as the crow flies) but driving around whole mountain ranges on constantly winding roads takes time! At least the car we hired only broke down once! Once you’re in the village outside the lake you can either hike in or take horses, so me and the NZ guys took horses and the Scottish couple decided to walk. To be honest I’m not a big horse guy. I mean I like being on a horse for an hour or so and letting it gallop around a bit, but this was like a 6 hour thing. And I wore shorts like a tard. So after a couple hours my calves were chaffing, my back hurt, my ass felt like it had bone deep bruising, and my nuts kept bouncing on the saddle whenever the horse went into a trot. Plus it drizzled for half the time. Pretty awful! The scenery near the lake with all the yurt camps was great though!
cabelleros
these kids grow up on horseback
everyone here is a mechanic
yurt kids
Plus we faired better than the Scottish couple who decided to hike in (w/o an adequate map I might add), who we realized were not gonna make it after it got dark and there was still no sign of them. So we were a bit worried about them, but they managed to find a small house somewhere in the valley to shack up for the night and came stumbling in the next morning. Turns out the family they stayed with was super welcoming, made them a huge meal, and they had a great time! This is what’s cool about Kyrgyzstan, the people are just very warm and really do care about tourists well-being.
Once you’re at the lake there isn’t a ton to do, just kinda wander around and observe daily life in the yurt camps, lounge around and read, maybe go for a quick dip in the ice cold water. You’re away from everything and it’s nice. And the host family makes you three meals a day. The Kiwi guys were on a pretty tight schedule, so they ended up heading out the next afternoon. That was a bit too rushed for my liking, so I stuck around with the Scots, but I had the guys take my horse back to the village so I could just hike out the next day. No way could my ass handle another 6 hours on the horse!
inside of the yurt for dinner
The next day I was about ready to go, but the Scottish couple just wanted to chill at the lake longer, so unfortunately it was time to part ways. On the way out I got invited into two different yurts to drink – did you guess it? – Kumis!! The sour weird tasting fermented horse milk. Yay! If you ever get invited into a yurt you always hope they’re gonna bring out tea, but usually it’s kumis. And they’re very proud of their kumis, so you better like it! And drink all of it! I can pound down one glass just fine, but man, the second time was rough. But of course it’s always a good experience when someone is inviting you into their home to have a drink.
kumis
So I made my way out and ended up hitchhiking into the main town, getting picked up by some early 20’s dudes. Hitchhiking is pretty easy in this country, it’s the conversation once in the car that’s the difficult part. I’ve got enough Russian down to ask and answer some very basic questions, then it’s Google translate time! The Google translate voice feature is pretty damn good these days. And just like in China, everyone always asks how much money you make! It’s like clockwork. Anyway they dropped me off in some medium size city and I tried to offer them some gas money, but they weren’t having it. Nice guys.
interesting shipping container house
walking around town
The next day was onto Bishkek, the capital city. I was pretty curious to see what it would look it like with the Soviet era buildings and all. Me and a british guy from the hostel hopped on a bus into the city to check it out. The downtown was actually much nicer and cleaner than I was expecting! And of course it had the big government buildings with the imposing granite columns along with a nice square and water fountains. Plus the requisite Lenin statue. And I must say, this country loves carnivals! In both Osh and Bishkek they have large parks filled with all sorts of carnival rides and carnival games and fast food and soft serve ice cream. A cone costs around 15cents, not bad!
Also the dress is noticeable different. Not as much for the guys, but definitely for the girls. The women dress fairly modestly in the countryside, but here in Bishek it’s much more modern; you’ll see girls in skirts and heels, tank tops and booty shorts etc. And the girls are pretty hot! I like that Eurasian look! Me and Mark (the Brit) decided that we were going out to the clubs that night. For dinner we hit up Obama Bar N Grille and reminisced of old times when USA #1 didn’t have a POS president. Then we hit up an Arabic shisha lounge while pounding cheap Russian vodka shots. We then found our way over a highly rated club (according to the internetz) but after getting passed the surly bouncer dudes it was totally dead inside. Well it was a Wednesday. Plus $10 drinks, meh. But the bar down the street had some good action with lots of younger Russian girls and some beer pong going on. So it was a good night out. If I wasn’t in go-go-go traveling mode I would have liked to spend a bit more time there, plus I heard there are poker games somewhere. Ahh next time.
Kyrgyz girls from the internet
Next up is Kyrgyzstan’s most popular attraction: Lake Issyk Kul. It’s a large alpine lake that never freezes because of it’s salinity or something. It’s popular spot among Kazaks and Russians for a holiday. The north part of the lake is the touristy part and south part of the lake is more remote with small villages and some yurt camps.
I spent most of my time on the far eastern edge of the lake in the town of Karakol, which is a good base for doing some hiking. I’d been carrying my tent, sleeping bag, stove etc, so it was about time I used it. The most popular trek is the one to Lake Alakul, a gorgeous alpine lake. If you’re in shape it’s a 3d/2n type of hike. Most people set up camp before the steep ascent up to the lake, spend the late morning at the lake and then camp down on the other side. But screw that, I wanted to camp at the lake, so I put in a solid 1500m of altitude gain that first day and got a pretty solid dose of altitude sickness the top (the last hour was insanely hard) but eventually I made it! Not that I enjoyed it much because I ate dinner and then passed out in my tent for 11 hours. But the lake is pretty spectacular.
It looks turquoise in the sun
Next day I hiked around the lake and camped at some hot springs popular with Russian offroading groups, and then was back in Karakol the next day. I spent another night staying in a yurt camp on the south part of the lake and then it was down to city called Naryn to get to – take a guess – another lake!
Offroading Russian style
I found another British guy named to do this with. We took a taxi out to another yurt camp located in a really pretty valley in the mountains. We did the day hike out to the lake Chartyr Kol and back, which was a solid hike, minus the rain and hail storm at the end. I tried to convince him to go with me another lake, kol suu, which is supposed to be one of the best in Kyrgyzstan, but you have to buy this dumb permit because it’s a special border area with China and its $100 and he didn’t want to pay for it. Well I was doing it anyway!
Me and my driver headed off the next day. You need a 4x4 to get anywhere near this lake as the roads are all ****. Well our jeep was **** too and it broke down about half way there, in the absolute middle of nowhere. It took about 3 hours just for another vehicle to pass, and I guess my driver knew this guy, so we hopped in and set off for another few hours over roads with entire sections wiped out, finally getting dropped off at this old house with some yurts outside, just as it got dark. It was pretty far into the mountains and was cold as hell even during summer, I don’t know what the hell these people do in the winter, it must be miserable.
The next morning I woke up at 5am to piss and decided to just start hiking out the lake then. The hiking route was showing up on the maps.me app so I thought I’d give it a go and try and get to the lake around sunrise. (If you guys travel – download the maps.me app. You can download the offline version of wherever you’re at and it has everything on there. Main roads, unpaved roads, and even hiking trails, it’s great) So the early start was a pretty good decision! It was a full moon so after my eyes adjusted I didn’t even need my headlamp anymore. Hiking while the trail and the whitecapped mountains were lit by nothing but moonlight was pretty surreal. Soon enough the sun came up and made its over the mountains while I scrambled up the path cutting its way between two rocky outcroppings, and then there it was: a long skinny lake surrounded on all sides by massive rock walls – pretty impressive! There was even a boat chained up there that would have been amazing to take out into the lake, as you can only see a small fraction of the actual lake from the shore. Alas. But it was pretty sweet having the whole place to myself.
pre-dawn scenery
the way up to the lake
lunch
towing the car on the way back. pretty interesting. I thought for sure that rope was gonna snap.
Ok, I feel like this part is getting a bit repetitive, so I'm gonna fast forward here. As you can tell there are lots of really nice alpine lakes and hiking opportunities in Kyrgyzstan! After this lake I made a two day trip back to Osh and now it was time to look for some people to rent a car and driver with for an excursion down into Tajikistan. Apparently Eastern Tajikistan is very remote so you really don't want to count on any form of public transportation. So that's what's next: Tajikistan and the Pamir Highway!
Last edited by cardsharkk04; 02-24-2018 at 09:52 PM.
05-04-2018
, 01:04 AM
Back to the STANS
So next country on the list: Tajikistan. The poorest and most remote of all the Stan countries I was planning on visiting. Fortunately the visa was easy to do online, although there are two parts to the visa, one for Tajikistan and the other for the eastern half of the country, which is an autonomous region called Gorno-Badakhshan. GB makes up half the country's size but only 3% of the population. Therefore getting public transportation on the Pamir Highway in this region is no easy task, which is why the vast majority of people traveling here go with a hired 4x4 and a Tajik driver. Fortunately this is fairly easy to arrange in Osh (southern kyrgyzstan). The two main hostels both have message boards for people to post when they want to go so you can form a group.
Without too much difficulty I was able to meet up with a few people looking to make the trip, all solo travelers. We had Joe from the UK, Caitlin from USA, Anastasia (Stas) from the UK, Chaz (girl) from AUS, and me (USA), so five total. This was a little more crowded than ideal as someone would always have to have the flip down seat in the back of the 4x4, but we figured we would make it work. Right from the getgo, you could tell there might be a little tension on the trip as the Australian girl was obsessing over all the small details of the itinerary, asking nonstop questions, and constantly haggling over the price, even after we had it down to a point that we had already pre-agreed was acceptable to the group. Then you had the British girl who was a very adamant vegan, in a region where vegans don't exist. So we'll see what happens!
We loaded up the 4x4 and off we go! We still had one more day and night to spend in Kyrgyzstan and then we'd be in Tajikistan the day after that. We spent our night in a remote yurt camp near the foot of mount Lenin, which apparently is the most accessible 7,000m+ peak for climbing. We were able to to do a little bit of hiking around the area before it got dark. Seriously everywhere in Kyrgyzstan is just gorgeous. We then ate dinner in a trailer that must have been 40 years old. The other group there was eating what looked like a nice meat dumpling stew, while our group was served potatoes and cabbage. Sigh...
The views from near our camp. Not bad...
The next morning we were off early because we that the border crossing and a lot of driving to do. How quickly the scenery changes when you get up the pass and get the border post!
Can you read Cyrillic? Tajikistan!
The border crossing was actually a piece of cake. Driving on the Tajik side looked like some sort of barren lunar landscape.
our not-so-trusty jeep
Lake Karakul. Shockingly blue
We stopped for lunch in a crappy little town (outpost?). It was hot and in the middle of the day so the town appeared to be deserted. There were remains of junked cars and old oil barrels just scattered around the streets. This was a place where you get kidnapped and murdered in the movies.
a couple humans scurrying around
When we hit the road it was hours and hours of dry rocky outcroppings and not a single living thing around. I don't think a single car passed us going the other way the entire time. You're really on your own out here. By late evening we finally made it to our destination, the largest town in Gorno Badakhshan, Murghab. What a dreary place!
kind of beautiful in a post-apocalyptic way though
In a place like this you only get generator run electricity from 6pm - 10pm so we made sure to get all our phones and batteries charged. Electricity would be scarce in the next few days! We got to bed early (you're always getting to bed early in these parts, ha) for a solid day of hiking the next day. 12 hours worth! And a scree scramble at the top of the pass. It kicked everyone's ass, but we got down in one piece.
Yurt camp at the trailhead
ants
yurt dogs are good dogs
Also we got a really nice sunset that night in Murghab!
The next morning was drama time! So it turns out there was a problem with our jeep. Or they told us there was a problem the jeep. Anyway they wanted us to change jeeps and drivers. The new jeep was basically the same size and same quality and the other one and the new driver spoke better English than the other one (the other guy basically never talked), so this was no big deal for me and Joe. The girls, and in particular the Australian girl, were just absolutely furious. How could they do this to us in the middle of the trip?! We want a refund! We need to write on tripadvisor that this company is sham! They were madly trying to get in touch with the guy back in Osh who organized to no avail. But realistically what were we gonna do? The guy is a thousand miles away now anyway. We paid up front, there's no way we would be getting any money back no matter what happened. Eventually after the huge hissy fit they finally realized there was absolutely nothing we could do about it, and after a bunch more sulking and complaining we finally packed up the new jeep and headed onwards.
And hell the new driver was much cooler! His name was Bobish, he was like 25, and even though his english wasn't good, he at least had a sense of humor. He would also treat us to hours on end of the same Tajik, Persian, and Russian pop pop music...
Ok more to come later. Here's another nice looking desert lake
So next country on the list: Tajikistan. The poorest and most remote of all the Stan countries I was planning on visiting. Fortunately the visa was easy to do online, although there are two parts to the visa, one for Tajikistan and the other for the eastern half of the country, which is an autonomous region called Gorno-Badakhshan. GB makes up half the country's size but only 3% of the population. Therefore getting public transportation on the Pamir Highway in this region is no easy task, which is why the vast majority of people traveling here go with a hired 4x4 and a Tajik driver. Fortunately this is fairly easy to arrange in Osh (southern kyrgyzstan). The two main hostels both have message boards for people to post when they want to go so you can form a group.
Without too much difficulty I was able to meet up with a few people looking to make the trip, all solo travelers. We had Joe from the UK, Caitlin from USA, Anastasia (Stas) from the UK, Chaz (girl) from AUS, and me (USA), so five total. This was a little more crowded than ideal as someone would always have to have the flip down seat in the back of the 4x4, but we figured we would make it work. Right from the getgo, you could tell there might be a little tension on the trip as the Australian girl was obsessing over all the small details of the itinerary, asking nonstop questions, and constantly haggling over the price, even after we had it down to a point that we had already pre-agreed was acceptable to the group. Then you had the British girl who was a very adamant vegan, in a region where vegans don't exist. So we'll see what happens!
We loaded up the 4x4 and off we go! We still had one more day and night to spend in Kyrgyzstan and then we'd be in Tajikistan the day after that. We spent our night in a remote yurt camp near the foot of mount Lenin, which apparently is the most accessible 7,000m+ peak for climbing. We were able to to do a little bit of hiking around the area before it got dark. Seriously everywhere in Kyrgyzstan is just gorgeous. We then ate dinner in a trailer that must have been 40 years old. The other group there was eating what looked like a nice meat dumpling stew, while our group was served potatoes and cabbage. Sigh...
The views from near our camp. Not bad...
The next morning we were off early because we that the border crossing and a lot of driving to do. How quickly the scenery changes when you get up the pass and get the border post!
Can you read Cyrillic? Tajikistan!
The border crossing was actually a piece of cake. Driving on the Tajik side looked like some sort of barren lunar landscape.
our not-so-trusty jeep
Lake Karakul. Shockingly blue
We stopped for lunch in a crappy little town (outpost?). It was hot and in the middle of the day so the town appeared to be deserted. There were remains of junked cars and old oil barrels just scattered around the streets. This was a place where you get kidnapped and murdered in the movies.
a couple humans scurrying around
When we hit the road it was hours and hours of dry rocky outcroppings and not a single living thing around. I don't think a single car passed us going the other way the entire time. You're really on your own out here. By late evening we finally made it to our destination, the largest town in Gorno Badakhshan, Murghab. What a dreary place!
kind of beautiful in a post-apocalyptic way though
In a place like this you only get generator run electricity from 6pm - 10pm so we made sure to get all our phones and batteries charged. Electricity would be scarce in the next few days! We got to bed early (you're always getting to bed early in these parts, ha) for a solid day of hiking the next day. 12 hours worth! And a scree scramble at the top of the pass. It kicked everyone's ass, but we got down in one piece.
Yurt camp at the trailhead
ants
yurt dogs are good dogs
Also we got a really nice sunset that night in Murghab!
The next morning was drama time! So it turns out there was a problem with our jeep. Or they told us there was a problem the jeep. Anyway they wanted us to change jeeps and drivers. The new jeep was basically the same size and same quality and the other one and the new driver spoke better English than the other one (the other guy basically never talked), so this was no big deal for me and Joe. The girls, and in particular the Australian girl, were just absolutely furious. How could they do this to us in the middle of the trip?! We want a refund! We need to write on tripadvisor that this company is sham! They were madly trying to get in touch with the guy back in Osh who organized to no avail. But realistically what were we gonna do? The guy is a thousand miles away now anyway. We paid up front, there's no way we would be getting any money back no matter what happened. Eventually after the huge hissy fit they finally realized there was absolutely nothing we could do about it, and after a bunch more sulking and complaining we finally packed up the new jeep and headed onwards.
And hell the new driver was much cooler! His name was Bobish, he was like 25, and even though his english wasn't good, he at least had a sense of humor. He would also treat us to hours on end of the same Tajik, Persian, and Russian pop pop music...
Ok more to come later. Here's another nice looking desert lake
05-04-2018
, 10:04 AM
05-05-2018
, 02:21 AM
Thanks VegasVilla!
Holiday: I've already got my Tajikistan photos uploaded so I'm just gonna go with those, but I'll resize for Uzbekistan. I too am struggling with all these big photos on Cambodian internet!
As for the Tajiks, umm I've never really interacted with many back in the States so their reputation is unbeknownst to me. But like most countries that don't get much tourism, they were generally friendly and happy to see foreigners. But due to the language barrier and the fact that it's a pretty conservative country, interactions with the locals is somewhat limited. The ones that know English are certainly happy to chat you up though! I certainly did not get the impression that they were scamming, thieving, crooks however!
As for the next part of trip, more driving driving driving! Rocky desert scenery with a smattering of small villages and small lakes. We stopped in one of the small villages for lunch and began our old song and dance routine of trying to explain that Chaz (the Aussie) doesn't eat meat (usually not too difficult), and that Stas (the Brit) doesn't eat any animal products at all (quite a bit more difficult). I was the only one who spoke any semblance of Russian (besides our driver of course) so unfortunately I usually had to be involved in these interactions.
In Central Asia the main foods are Shashlik (shish kebabs) Manti (meat dumplings) Plov (pilaf with spices onions and usually lamb), and some forms noodles or noodle soup. Unfortunately for vegetarians these things are normally cooked up in big pots and cooked with meat, so you can easily eat vegetarian if you're willing to pick out the meat, if not you're SOL. Well Chaz wouldn't eat anything cooked with meat, so she'd usually go back in the kitchen and investigate to see if things were being cooked with meat. She normally ended up ordering eggs.
A plov dish that looks much more appetizing than one on the Pamir Hwy would!
manti
For Stas, she just had to hope they had a purely vegetable dish (unlikely) so she normally ordered hot water and put instant soup in it. A couple times they felt bad and brought out eggs for her too, understanding she didn't eat meat, but not all animal products, which was met with awkwardness on both sides. Imagine trying to understand a vegan diet if you grew up in Tajikistan! You basically can't eat any of their staple foods besides bread. So anyway, mealtime could sometimes be a particularly frustrating event! And even with meat, the food just isn't very tasty to begin with!
So for the days activities we checked out a really picturesque, completely untouched alpine lake and then made our way to the next village to settle in for the afternoon. We stopped at a guesthouse where our driver knew the owner, but Stas and Chaz didn't like it, so they walked to the other couple of guesthouses in town while the rest of us had tea, and they chose a place down the street. Our driver didn't seemed pleased. All of these places are basically just rooms with mats on the ground anyway, but I guess they thought this place had a friendlier owner. Not gonna argue with these girls!
Some photos from around town. I can't even imagine what they do all winter when it's basically snowed in.
Our trusty jeep in background!
Dust storm incoming!
After dinner we procured some Russian vodka and played cards (that's all there really is to do at night!). Although Stas and Chas don't drink, so they just stayed in their own room and read their books. This kind of divide would linger around for the rest of the trip unfortunately.
The next day it was time to venture off the Pamir Highway to a detour called the Wakhan corridor. The road, which was at least paved on the highway, deteriorated into a bumpy gravel track. This road was cut high up in the mountains along the valley that separates Tajikistan from Afghanistan. According to Tajik military there are ISIS groups about 20 km away, but they don't normally come near the border. There is also a market in between Tajikstan and Afghanistan that allows both sides to enter, but they haven't been allowing tourists to it for the last year or two due to terrorist concerns. Weak.
This road is not for the faint of heart! If you're sitting on the driver side of the jeep you're in for a treat looking down. We had to tell Bobish to drive more in the center of the road a few times, because he seemed to love to hugging that left hand edge. He might have done it on purpose just to mess with us, ha.
working our way up
Joe getting on the edge of his seat
Afghani village on the other side
So it was an exciting afternoon! After clenching our buttholes for a few hours up on the side of the mountains we finally worked our way down into the greenery of the river valley where we'd spend the night. It was a nice little town, nothing to do of course, but some of the rooms in the guesthouse even had real beds. Not mine, but some did! There were actually a couple different groups of travelers at this place, so it was nice to hang out with some other people and swap travel stories.
some kids in town
This part of the trip actually has a couple of tourist attractions! Hot springs, some piles of rubble that used to be forts, and a Wakhan history museum.
The hot springs are kinda funny, they're all fully nude (like they won't even let you in with any clothes on) and lots of very chatty old Tajik guys. There was one younger guy who spoke good English who seemed to have no problem lathering up his balls in front of us while in mid conversation. Another wanted a picture with us. It was little awkward! Turns out Caitlin wouldn't even go in the women's one because she doesn't like being nakey in public. American prudishness!
Guy playing this instrument for us at the museum
fort from the 13th century
Another day later we were in the town of Khorog, which signified the end of our Jeep excursion through Eastern Tajikistan. It certainly was interesting! We weren't the most cohesive group at times, but we managed to keep it mostly (mostly!) cordial, getting through one of the more desolate regions on earth in one piece. We celebrated by going out to the one Indian restaurant in town. No more bland noodle soups and stale manti! Wheee!
Of course then we got into another argument over tipping with the Americans wanting to tip considerably more than the others. We asked him how much he makes for this trip, and it really is a pittance. I just slid Bobish more cash on the side rather than try to get people to tip more than they wanted to. I know I know, yanks ruining tipping expectations in other countries, blah blah blah.
But we weren't done with each other yet, we still had to get over to Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, and it is still a looooong way away!
the red part is our jeep route
Holiday: I've already got my Tajikistan photos uploaded so I'm just gonna go with those, but I'll resize for Uzbekistan. I too am struggling with all these big photos on Cambodian internet!
As for the Tajiks, umm I've never really interacted with many back in the States so their reputation is unbeknownst to me. But like most countries that don't get much tourism, they were generally friendly and happy to see foreigners. But due to the language barrier and the fact that it's a pretty conservative country, interactions with the locals is somewhat limited. The ones that know English are certainly happy to chat you up though! I certainly did not get the impression that they were scamming, thieving, crooks however!
As for the next part of trip, more driving driving driving! Rocky desert scenery with a smattering of small villages and small lakes. We stopped in one of the small villages for lunch and began our old song and dance routine of trying to explain that Chaz (the Aussie) doesn't eat meat (usually not too difficult), and that Stas (the Brit) doesn't eat any animal products at all (quite a bit more difficult). I was the only one who spoke any semblance of Russian (besides our driver of course) so unfortunately I usually had to be involved in these interactions.
In Central Asia the main foods are Shashlik (shish kebabs) Manti (meat dumplings) Plov (pilaf with spices onions and usually lamb), and some forms noodles or noodle soup. Unfortunately for vegetarians these things are normally cooked up in big pots and cooked with meat, so you can easily eat vegetarian if you're willing to pick out the meat, if not you're SOL. Well Chaz wouldn't eat anything cooked with meat, so she'd usually go back in the kitchen and investigate to see if things were being cooked with meat. She normally ended up ordering eggs.
A plov dish that looks much more appetizing than one on the Pamir Hwy would!
manti
For Stas, she just had to hope they had a purely vegetable dish (unlikely) so she normally ordered hot water and put instant soup in it. A couple times they felt bad and brought out eggs for her too, understanding she didn't eat meat, but not all animal products, which was met with awkwardness on both sides. Imagine trying to understand a vegan diet if you grew up in Tajikistan! You basically can't eat any of their staple foods besides bread. So anyway, mealtime could sometimes be a particularly frustrating event! And even with meat, the food just isn't very tasty to begin with!
So for the days activities we checked out a really picturesque, completely untouched alpine lake and then made our way to the next village to settle in for the afternoon. We stopped at a guesthouse where our driver knew the owner, but Stas and Chaz didn't like it, so they walked to the other couple of guesthouses in town while the rest of us had tea, and they chose a place down the street. Our driver didn't seemed pleased. All of these places are basically just rooms with mats on the ground anyway, but I guess they thought this place had a friendlier owner. Not gonna argue with these girls!
Some photos from around town. I can't even imagine what they do all winter when it's basically snowed in.
Our trusty jeep in background!
Dust storm incoming!
After dinner we procured some Russian vodka and played cards (that's all there really is to do at night!). Although Stas and Chas don't drink, so they just stayed in their own room and read their books. This kind of divide would linger around for the rest of the trip unfortunately.
The next day it was time to venture off the Pamir Highway to a detour called the Wakhan corridor. The road, which was at least paved on the highway, deteriorated into a bumpy gravel track. This road was cut high up in the mountains along the valley that separates Tajikistan from Afghanistan. According to Tajik military there are ISIS groups about 20 km away, but they don't normally come near the border. There is also a market in between Tajikstan and Afghanistan that allows both sides to enter, but they haven't been allowing tourists to it for the last year or two due to terrorist concerns. Weak.
This road is not for the faint of heart! If you're sitting on the driver side of the jeep you're in for a treat looking down. We had to tell Bobish to drive more in the center of the road a few times, because he seemed to love to hugging that left hand edge. He might have done it on purpose just to mess with us, ha.
working our way up
Joe getting on the edge of his seat
Afghani village on the other side
So it was an exciting afternoon! After clenching our buttholes for a few hours up on the side of the mountains we finally worked our way down into the greenery of the river valley where we'd spend the night. It was a nice little town, nothing to do of course, but some of the rooms in the guesthouse even had real beds. Not mine, but some did! There were actually a couple different groups of travelers at this place, so it was nice to hang out with some other people and swap travel stories.
some kids in town
This part of the trip actually has a couple of tourist attractions! Hot springs, some piles of rubble that used to be forts, and a Wakhan history museum.
The hot springs are kinda funny, they're all fully nude (like they won't even let you in with any clothes on) and lots of very chatty old Tajik guys. There was one younger guy who spoke good English who seemed to have no problem lathering up his balls in front of us while in mid conversation. Another wanted a picture with us. It was little awkward! Turns out Caitlin wouldn't even go in the women's one because she doesn't like being nakey in public. American prudishness!
Guy playing this instrument for us at the museum
fort from the 13th century
Another day later we were in the town of Khorog, which signified the end of our Jeep excursion through Eastern Tajikistan. It certainly was interesting! We weren't the most cohesive group at times, but we managed to keep it mostly (mostly!) cordial, getting through one of the more desolate regions on earth in one piece. We celebrated by going out to the one Indian restaurant in town. No more bland noodle soups and stale manti! Wheee!
Of course then we got into another argument over tipping with the Americans wanting to tip considerably more than the others. We asked him how much he makes for this trip, and it really is a pittance. I just slid Bobish more cash on the side rather than try to get people to tip more than they wanted to. I know I know, yanks ruining tipping expectations in other countries, blah blah blah.
But we weren't done with each other yet, we still had to get over to Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, and it is still a looooong way away!
the red part is our jeep route
05-05-2018
, 09:54 PM
05-08-2018
, 11:58 AM
05-09-2018
, 02:58 AM
Coca: Ahh I said ISIS when I meant the Taliban. But even with the Taliban being that close I don't think it's as dangerous as it sounds. If the Tajiks had any inkling of a threat they'd just shut down the road for foreigners.
Also the new pictures coming have been resized, I didn't realize how slowly this page would load!
Mr. A: Yea it was certainly was not the most ideal group, definitely no sexual chemistry whatsoever, but really not that bad. At least everyone spoke English! I signed up for a 3 day 2 night hiking trip once and it turned out that everyone else in the group was French. Man was that lame.
Kazakh girls are hot! But yea they like to dress to the nines around town so the materialistic part isn't too surprising to me.
Robin: Thanks! It's nice how the white background brings out each individual color of the girls' outfits nicely. A lot of the kids clothes just look like they got picked out at random from a leftover clothes bin!
Back to Tajikistan...
So we had some time in Khorog to explore and figure out how we were going to get to the capital, Dushanbe. We did one day of hiking and one day of relaxing. They even have a public swimming area in town, which was pretty unexpected! Of course it's only males that use it with the exception of small children, the women just hang in the grass nearby. Pretty standard for muslim countries I guess. But all in all it was a reasonably nice town. Still nothing to do at night though.
crossing the bridge on our dayhike
I was hoping that I would be able to fly to Dushanbe as it's not a long flight and the views are supposed to be spectacular, and this way you avoid driving all day on the shoddy, winding roads. Unfortunately the flights are irregular and when we stopped at the tiny airport we were told that next flight probably wasn't going to be for a few more days. Hmmm.
We ended up booking a jeep to make the trip. More fun times in the car together! This trip was supposed to take 12 hours, but the road we were hoping to use was shut down due to rock slides, so with the change of course it ended up being a brutal 17 hour day to get into Dushanbe. The last hour was actually scary as hell. Everyone else was asleep in the back, and I was up front watching our driver chug redbull, but could tell he was kinda losing it, and we were on dark, meandering mountain roads. I kept trying to talk to him and he kept saying he was fine, but god damn I almost grabbed the steering wheel for him more than once when he drifted too far over the center line. Buuut we made into Dushanbe just fine at like 1am or something and crashed pretty hard in our hostel.
Dushanbe feels like a whole nother world after being in Eastern Tajikistan for so long. A nice modern city, lots of parks, surprisingly green leafy boulevards, and of course the smattering of soviet looking government building and statues. The local dress was noticeably more conservative than in Bishkek however. We hit up a rooftop pool at one of the nice hotels during the day and strolled around the parks in the evening. And some of us were very keen to check out the nightlife! We didn't do any clubbing, be we found a pretty cool expat type bar and ended up pounding vodka shots with a friendly group of Russians, as well as finding a shisha joint. I liked Dushanbe! Lots of other travelers hanging around too.
At this point our group would be breaking into different directions, probably for the best. I ws itching to do some hiking in the Fann mountains to north, after hearing lots of good things from other travelers about this region in general. The Brits, Joe and Stas were also heading this way, so we agreed to to split a car up to one of the big lakes in the area, where they would stay one night and I would use as a starting point for a multiday hike up into the mountains. This is why I like having all my hiking and camping stuff with me!
To get to the lake we had to take a gravel road on the side of a mountain (like everywhere else in this country) when the car starting having problems. It would die and not restart right away. But if he let it roll backwards downhill a bit he could get it up and running again. This is pretty ****ing nerve wracking when when you're on a gravel road on the side of a cliff! But like always we made there okay. The lake was gorgeous actually, during the mid day sunlight it looked extremely green. I don't know why this is, but it was cool. The water was absolutely freezing but that didn't stop us from taking a few dips. And the stars at night, my god!
Stas and Joe inspecting this iron overlook
Can you trust it??
The next day the Brits would continue onward towards Kyrgyzstan, and I would hike around the lake and continue on the trail that leads up into the mountains. The hardest part about hiking in this area is finding good information about the hiking trails. I couldn't find any good topos, so I would just make do with the maps I printed out plus the maps.me app which is extremely helpful as it uses the phone's GPS and has hiking trails (even ones in the middle of remote Tajikistan) clearly marked.
As expected the scenery was gorgeous and there was not another soul around. Just endless hiking opportunities in this country! Of course I would run into more difficulties than expected, as I spent about two hours trying to figure out how to make a river crossing and almost had to turn around. I ended wading about halfway across the river then hoisting myself onto a large, low overhanging tree branch to get over the deeper section. Fun stuff!
little ice cave
The following day getting over the high pass was probably some of the sketchiest hiking I've done. The trail had disappeared and it turned into a steep uphill over loose scree, where I'm on all fours climbing my way up, and each step I take I'm setting rocks loose and sliding back down. Exhausting. The big loose rocks eventually turned into more like gravel on hardpan, where if you take a misstep you might find yourself sliding back down 5, 10 or 20 feet. Pretty scary!
the view from the top of the pass over the other side. The way down was STEEP
The way down was just as bad if not worse, as it was the same type of gravel on hardpan surface, where you just have to be so incredibly careful every step you take to not slip and slide down further. I went down most of the way on my butt. Then the valley below was all iced over! There is no trail you just have to find your own way through the rocks, snow and ice. Then there is a huge boulder field with all sorts of loose ones waiting for you to step on the wrong way and roll your ankle. Oh and I had torn apart my hiking shoes scree running a week ago, so this was all done with normal running shoes. Yipes. Finally I scrambled down into a dried out lake bed with a little waterfall to make camp. I had scrapes all over my hands arms and legs from all the little falls I'd taken. Dehydrated beef stroganoff for dinner, aww yeahh. Sleeping was easy that night!
The next day hiking was the total polar opposite, an effortless downhill stroll on a smooth dirt trail, yay! Eventually you make it down to a big lake popular with Russian campers. Great for a post hike swim! Around midday I made it into the Russian climbing camp, which would be my exit point. Of course there are no taxis and no cell phone service or any way of getting transportation out of the mountains. I didn't plan this aspect of the trip very well! I talked to one guy who said he could do it for like $100. Oh **** off.
So it was off down the road on foot. I bought some more food and water so if I had to I could just camp along the road that night. But fortunately that wasn't necessary as I was able to hitch a ride a few hours later with the same god damn guy who wanted to me to pay him $100. He was going down the mountain anyway! This time he wanted $50. I told him $20 is all I'm willing to pay and he took it, the bastard. In fact I almost wish I would have hiked because the whole way down was filled with picturesque little mountain villages that I didn't get a chance to take photos of
Once on the main road I was able to catch a shared taxi back to Dushanbe, arriving just after dark. Another long day! But it's days like these that are kinda cool, because you just never really know what is gonna happen. Will I find a ride out of the mountains or have to camp on the roadside, or maybe end up in a small village? Who knows?!
Back in Dushanbe I had to get my visa for Uzbekistan. If you apply at the consulate without a letter of invitation, this could take a week or two. Fortunately I had already applied and received my LOI from an Uzbek travel company, so I could apply in the morning and pick it up in the afternoon. But at $150 for the visa (for Americans at least) and $50 for the LOI it ain't cheap!
And the day after that I was off to Uzbekistan! Before I had even walked into the bus station some guys honked at me on the side of the road wondering where I was going. Turned out they lived in the border town and they'd be happy to take me along. Works for me! Most Tajiks who speak good English are very happy to chat up a foreigner when they can. This guy kind of had ulterior motives as he said he'd like to come to America, but he'd also need some sort of letter of invitation type thing, so maybe I could be that guy! I looked up online afterwards and it sounds like a pretty terrible idea (for me that it is), but can't fault him for trying! He and his buddy dropped me off at the border crossing and that was all for Tajikistan. Interesting place!
Uzbekistan coming up...
Also the new pictures coming have been resized, I didn't realize how slowly this page would load!
Mr. A: Yea it was certainly was not the most ideal group, definitely no sexual chemistry whatsoever, but really not that bad. At least everyone spoke English! I signed up for a 3 day 2 night hiking trip once and it turned out that everyone else in the group was French. Man was that lame.
Kazakh girls are hot! But yea they like to dress to the nines around town so the materialistic part isn't too surprising to me.
Robin: Thanks! It's nice how the white background brings out each individual color of the girls' outfits nicely. A lot of the kids clothes just look like they got picked out at random from a leftover clothes bin!
Back to Tajikistan...
So we had some time in Khorog to explore and figure out how we were going to get to the capital, Dushanbe. We did one day of hiking and one day of relaxing. They even have a public swimming area in town, which was pretty unexpected! Of course it's only males that use it with the exception of small children, the women just hang in the grass nearby. Pretty standard for muslim countries I guess. But all in all it was a reasonably nice town. Still nothing to do at night though.
crossing the bridge on our dayhike
I was hoping that I would be able to fly to Dushanbe as it's not a long flight and the views are supposed to be spectacular, and this way you avoid driving all day on the shoddy, winding roads. Unfortunately the flights are irregular and when we stopped at the tiny airport we were told that next flight probably wasn't going to be for a few more days. Hmmm.
We ended up booking a jeep to make the trip. More fun times in the car together! This trip was supposed to take 12 hours, but the road we were hoping to use was shut down due to rock slides, so with the change of course it ended up being a brutal 17 hour day to get into Dushanbe. The last hour was actually scary as hell. Everyone else was asleep in the back, and I was up front watching our driver chug redbull, but could tell he was kinda losing it, and we were on dark, meandering mountain roads. I kept trying to talk to him and he kept saying he was fine, but god damn I almost grabbed the steering wheel for him more than once when he drifted too far over the center line. Buuut we made into Dushanbe just fine at like 1am or something and crashed pretty hard in our hostel.
Dushanbe feels like a whole nother world after being in Eastern Tajikistan for so long. A nice modern city, lots of parks, surprisingly green leafy boulevards, and of course the smattering of soviet looking government building and statues. The local dress was noticeably more conservative than in Bishkek however. We hit up a rooftop pool at one of the nice hotels during the day and strolled around the parks in the evening. And some of us were very keen to check out the nightlife! We didn't do any clubbing, be we found a pretty cool expat type bar and ended up pounding vodka shots with a friendly group of Russians, as well as finding a shisha joint. I liked Dushanbe! Lots of other travelers hanging around too.
At this point our group would be breaking into different directions, probably for the best. I ws itching to do some hiking in the Fann mountains to north, after hearing lots of good things from other travelers about this region in general. The Brits, Joe and Stas were also heading this way, so we agreed to to split a car up to one of the big lakes in the area, where they would stay one night and I would use as a starting point for a multiday hike up into the mountains. This is why I like having all my hiking and camping stuff with me!
To get to the lake we had to take a gravel road on the side of a mountain (like everywhere else in this country) when the car starting having problems. It would die and not restart right away. But if he let it roll backwards downhill a bit he could get it up and running again. This is pretty ****ing nerve wracking when when you're on a gravel road on the side of a cliff! But like always we made there okay. The lake was gorgeous actually, during the mid day sunlight it looked extremely green. I don't know why this is, but it was cool. The water was absolutely freezing but that didn't stop us from taking a few dips. And the stars at night, my god!
Stas and Joe inspecting this iron overlook
Can you trust it??
The next day the Brits would continue onward towards Kyrgyzstan, and I would hike around the lake and continue on the trail that leads up into the mountains. The hardest part about hiking in this area is finding good information about the hiking trails. I couldn't find any good topos, so I would just make do with the maps I printed out plus the maps.me app which is extremely helpful as it uses the phone's GPS and has hiking trails (even ones in the middle of remote Tajikistan) clearly marked.
As expected the scenery was gorgeous and there was not another soul around. Just endless hiking opportunities in this country! Of course I would run into more difficulties than expected, as I spent about two hours trying to figure out how to make a river crossing and almost had to turn around. I ended wading about halfway across the river then hoisting myself onto a large, low overhanging tree branch to get over the deeper section. Fun stuff!
little ice cave
The following day getting over the high pass was probably some of the sketchiest hiking I've done. The trail had disappeared and it turned into a steep uphill over loose scree, where I'm on all fours climbing my way up, and each step I take I'm setting rocks loose and sliding back down. Exhausting. The big loose rocks eventually turned into more like gravel on hardpan, where if you take a misstep you might find yourself sliding back down 5, 10 or 20 feet. Pretty scary!
the view from the top of the pass over the other side. The way down was STEEP
The way down was just as bad if not worse, as it was the same type of gravel on hardpan surface, where you just have to be so incredibly careful every step you take to not slip and slide down further. I went down most of the way on my butt. Then the valley below was all iced over! There is no trail you just have to find your own way through the rocks, snow and ice. Then there is a huge boulder field with all sorts of loose ones waiting for you to step on the wrong way and roll your ankle. Oh and I had torn apart my hiking shoes scree running a week ago, so this was all done with normal running shoes. Yipes. Finally I scrambled down into a dried out lake bed with a little waterfall to make camp. I had scrapes all over my hands arms and legs from all the little falls I'd taken. Dehydrated beef stroganoff for dinner, aww yeahh. Sleeping was easy that night!
The next day hiking was the total polar opposite, an effortless downhill stroll on a smooth dirt trail, yay! Eventually you make it down to a big lake popular with Russian campers. Great for a post hike swim! Around midday I made it into the Russian climbing camp, which would be my exit point. Of course there are no taxis and no cell phone service or any way of getting transportation out of the mountains. I didn't plan this aspect of the trip very well! I talked to one guy who said he could do it for like $100. Oh **** off.
So it was off down the road on foot. I bought some more food and water so if I had to I could just camp along the road that night. But fortunately that wasn't necessary as I was able to hitch a ride a few hours later with the same god damn guy who wanted to me to pay him $100. He was going down the mountain anyway! This time he wanted $50. I told him $20 is all I'm willing to pay and he took it, the bastard. In fact I almost wish I would have hiked because the whole way down was filled with picturesque little mountain villages that I didn't get a chance to take photos of
Once on the main road I was able to catch a shared taxi back to Dushanbe, arriving just after dark. Another long day! But it's days like these that are kinda cool, because you just never really know what is gonna happen. Will I find a ride out of the mountains or have to camp on the roadside, or maybe end up in a small village? Who knows?!
Back in Dushanbe I had to get my visa for Uzbekistan. If you apply at the consulate without a letter of invitation, this could take a week or two. Fortunately I had already applied and received my LOI from an Uzbek travel company, so I could apply in the morning and pick it up in the afternoon. But at $150 for the visa (for Americans at least) and $50 for the LOI it ain't cheap!
And the day after that I was off to Uzbekistan! Before I had even walked into the bus station some guys honked at me on the side of the road wondering where I was going. Turned out they lived in the border town and they'd be happy to take me along. Works for me! Most Tajiks who speak good English are very happy to chat up a foreigner when they can. This guy kind of had ulterior motives as he said he'd like to come to America, but he'd also need some sort of letter of invitation type thing, so maybe I could be that guy! I looked up online afterwards and it sounds like a pretty terrible idea (for me that it is), but can't fault him for trying! He and his buddy dropped me off at the border crossing and that was all for Tajikistan. Interesting place!
Uzbekistan coming up...
Last edited by cardsharkk04; 05-09-2018 at 03:05 AM.
05-21-2018
, 06:03 AM
Uzbekistan: Known for it’s history, Islamic architecture and being a pain in the ass for tourists. So after spending $200 and jumping through a bunch of hoops I was now at the border with my Uzbek visa. I had heard from other travellers that when you go through immigration, they don’t mess around. And they were right! They took out some stuff in my bag and searched around, but what they were most concerned with what was on my camera, my external hard drive, and my computer. The lady looking at my camera was annoyed because I only had a few photos on there, and she wanted to the know where the rest were. Well on my computer of course. I had let the battery die on my computer in the hopes that they would see that it was dead and just decide it wasn’t worth their time. But nope!
I had to plug it in, show them where all the photos were, which is amusing because I have tons of folders of jpegs and then thousands and thousands of unedited RAW files on there. They saw they were all travel photos and moved on to the movies. The guy even clicked on a couple to see if they were legit. I had already moved the porn folder to a more hidden location of course! Then they did more snooping around on my external HD, which has more of the same stuff. It’s such a dumb process and time consuming process! It sounds like their mostly looking for political stuff, terrorist sympathizer stuff, and uhh porn. For most western tourists they’re basically looking for porn, lol. Wouldn’t want to corrupt the minds of the young Uzbeks by allowing that smut into the country!
Anyway the border crossing took a couple of hours before I could get across and find a taxi. These taxi guys are really annoying because they quote you a price, which is actually the price per person if the taxi gets filled up with people, so then you sit in the passenger seat and say “let’s go!” and they’re all like no, no, no the price to leave now is herpderpderp (5x the price you were quoted) meanwhile, not attempting to get anyone else into their cab. So anyway I prob paid quite a bit more than I should have, but after that long border crossing I was ready to get outta there.
I ended up staying in a smallish town for the night, one that doesn’t get many tourists. I got a lot of attention on my walk around. Lots of photos with the locals. Some guys even gave me a melon! I didn’t know what to do with it (I didn’t even have a knife capable of cutting it back at the hotel, but I couldn’t throw it away!) so I ended up just strolling around town with a big ass melon under my arm. Good bicep workout! I also bought some ice cream later on and they wouldn't let me pay for it. Friendly town!
Cantaloupe season
Another thing you have to take into consideration in Uzbekistan is you have to document where you stay each night (which is supposed to match up with your planned itinerary that you submit to the travel company that gives you your letter of invitation). So you have to make sure to get a slip from the hotel and not lose it! So the next morning I got my slip and was off to a place called Sharisabz. I forgot to save the exact location of my guesthouse offline, so the guy dropped me off at some big nice hotel, which I’d use the wifi to get to my actual guesthouse. I ended up meeting a young guy who worked there named Jazurbek, who really REALLY liked meeting foreigners apparently (there’s not many in Sharisabz). When I told him I was American he nearly pissed his pants, as he’d never met a real living, breathing American before. Anyway, he wanted to meet up later that night to show me around town, which I reluctantly agreed to.
So the town itself is actually pretty cool, it’s the birthplace of Amir Timur (aka Tamerlane) who created a massive empire in central asia in the 1300’s, mostly by slaughtering everyone in his path. According to wiki his campaigns killed 17 million people or 5% of the world population at the time. My guide Jazerbek showed me all the statues as well as the old mosques and madrassas around town. It turns out Jazurbek is enrolled in a school in the capital, Tashkent, that helps their students work visas in other parts of the world, and he is dead set on America. Although he was very upset because his parents coughed up a whole bunch of money on this school and he was already rejected on his first attempt to get a US visa. I think he was kind of hoping I would be able to help him out in some way, like if I knew anyone who was hiring for random unskilled jobs – and possibly looking to hire a nice hard working Uzbek for 6 months. But I kinda had to let him down on that front, as I honestly don’t know anyone hiring temp workers.
Some photos from around town
We ended up eating at a popular shashlik restaurant before parting ways. But then we met up again the next morning because he wouldn’t let me go to the market alone to change money, so I wouldn’t get ripped off. In Uzbekistan you can’t use the ATMs you just have to bring in dollars and exchange them. But the thing is the government rate is about half of what you can get on the ‘black market’. If you go to a bank to change money you will be getting owned. So you just have to go the market and find the money changer guys, which isn’t as shady as it sounds. Although the biggest note is only worth $1 or 2 so have to walk around with these big ass stacks of bills, which is kinda funny. Jazurbek got the going market rate and then helped negotiate a shared taxi for me to Samarkand. Nice guy! He also wanted to know if I wanted to meet up with one his friends in Samarkand who also liked to meet foreigners. I was a little hesitant, but turns out it was girl, so I agreed.
Uzbek Som.
I arrived in Uzbekistan’s second largest city that afternoon, and like everywhere in Uzbekistan, it is hot during the day. Most of the country is desert afterall. I had a chance to wander around that evening. There’s a lot of cool stuff to see in Samarkand! You just have to wait for the sun to get low. The central plaza, called the Registan is truly spectacular. It’s surrounded on three sides by massive madrassas and really is something to see. One of the guys working there let me know that for $10 I could watch the sunrise from the rooftop of one of the madrassas, just gotta show up at 5am. Definitely something to consider! The town also has a bunch of other very impressive mosques and cemetery with some very ornate ancient tombs.
The Registan at night
I did end up waking up at 5am to do the sunrise thing. You have to climb this narrow dusty carved out spiral staircase in one of the turrets to get up to the top. There were maybe 10 other tourists up there, and of course it was really nice watching the sunrise over the Registan, blah blah blah.
That evening I met up with the Uzbek girl, Zamina, who is friends with Jazurbek. She’s like 26 and lives with her parents, very outgoing, and frustrated with how conservative life is in Uzbekistan. She was telling me that her and her friend sometimes host couch surfers at her friend’s place and do things that most Uzbeks wouldn’t approve of. Eyebrow raise.jpg. So anyway we walked around for a little bit and then she wanted to take me to a popular restaurant. The place was like a massive banquet hall, where everyone was dressed up in button downs/slacks and dresses/high heels. It was type of place you’d have a big group to celebrate a birthday or whatever. They had dancing performances on stage and in between the performances there was a DJ and people (mostly the women) would get up onstage and dance. Being American it’s weird to see a party atmosphere like this with almost no drinking involved!
We ordered food and after a while she wants to know if I want to go dance. Dancing sober is awful to me, buuuut I got up there anyway. Plus I’m the only foreigner there, so everyone is looking at me, and I already feel like a shmuck wearing shorts and t-shirt. She was enjoying it though! But a few songs was all I could take. I was also getting texts from Jazurbek telling me not to stay out late, because he knows Zamina’s mom, and he’s going to be in trouble if she’s not home at a reasonable time.
We headed out soon afterwards, and she wanted to know if I wanted to go somewhere else. There was a café right across the street from my guesthouse that I said had good coffee (it didn’t) so we hopped in a taxi. It was very clear where this was going, so soon we were headed up to my room so I could show her my travel photos…
She couldn’t stay long however because her mother was going to be very upset with her for staying out so late. It wasn’t even midnight! I have to wonder if her parents knew she was sleeping with a foreigner, what would happen. I texted her the next day and she said she couldn’t go out that night. 26 years old and getting grounded by your parents for staying out too late. Ouch. That’s Uzbekistan for you. But three nights in Samarkand was plenty for me, so I was on the train the next day to a place in the desert called Bukhara.
Sorry, no photos of the girl. Just more of Samarkand.
I had to plug it in, show them where all the photos were, which is amusing because I have tons of folders of jpegs and then thousands and thousands of unedited RAW files on there. They saw they were all travel photos and moved on to the movies. The guy even clicked on a couple to see if they were legit. I had already moved the porn folder to a more hidden location of course! Then they did more snooping around on my external HD, which has more of the same stuff. It’s such a dumb process and time consuming process! It sounds like their mostly looking for political stuff, terrorist sympathizer stuff, and uhh porn. For most western tourists they’re basically looking for porn, lol. Wouldn’t want to corrupt the minds of the young Uzbeks by allowing that smut into the country!
Anyway the border crossing took a couple of hours before I could get across and find a taxi. These taxi guys are really annoying because they quote you a price, which is actually the price per person if the taxi gets filled up with people, so then you sit in the passenger seat and say “let’s go!” and they’re all like no, no, no the price to leave now is herpderpderp (5x the price you were quoted) meanwhile, not attempting to get anyone else into their cab. So anyway I prob paid quite a bit more than I should have, but after that long border crossing I was ready to get outta there.
I ended up staying in a smallish town for the night, one that doesn’t get many tourists. I got a lot of attention on my walk around. Lots of photos with the locals. Some guys even gave me a melon! I didn’t know what to do with it (I didn’t even have a knife capable of cutting it back at the hotel, but I couldn’t throw it away!) so I ended up just strolling around town with a big ass melon under my arm. Good bicep workout! I also bought some ice cream later on and they wouldn't let me pay for it. Friendly town!
Cantaloupe season
Another thing you have to take into consideration in Uzbekistan is you have to document where you stay each night (which is supposed to match up with your planned itinerary that you submit to the travel company that gives you your letter of invitation). So you have to make sure to get a slip from the hotel and not lose it! So the next morning I got my slip and was off to a place called Sharisabz. I forgot to save the exact location of my guesthouse offline, so the guy dropped me off at some big nice hotel, which I’d use the wifi to get to my actual guesthouse. I ended up meeting a young guy who worked there named Jazurbek, who really REALLY liked meeting foreigners apparently (there’s not many in Sharisabz). When I told him I was American he nearly pissed his pants, as he’d never met a real living, breathing American before. Anyway, he wanted to meet up later that night to show me around town, which I reluctantly agreed to.
So the town itself is actually pretty cool, it’s the birthplace of Amir Timur (aka Tamerlane) who created a massive empire in central asia in the 1300’s, mostly by slaughtering everyone in his path. According to wiki his campaigns killed 17 million people or 5% of the world population at the time. My guide Jazerbek showed me all the statues as well as the old mosques and madrassas around town. It turns out Jazurbek is enrolled in a school in the capital, Tashkent, that helps their students work visas in other parts of the world, and he is dead set on America. Although he was very upset because his parents coughed up a whole bunch of money on this school and he was already rejected on his first attempt to get a US visa. I think he was kind of hoping I would be able to help him out in some way, like if I knew anyone who was hiring for random unskilled jobs – and possibly looking to hire a nice hard working Uzbek for 6 months. But I kinda had to let him down on that front, as I honestly don’t know anyone hiring temp workers.
Some photos from around town
We ended up eating at a popular shashlik restaurant before parting ways. But then we met up again the next morning because he wouldn’t let me go to the market alone to change money, so I wouldn’t get ripped off. In Uzbekistan you can’t use the ATMs you just have to bring in dollars and exchange them. But the thing is the government rate is about half of what you can get on the ‘black market’. If you go to a bank to change money you will be getting owned. So you just have to go the market and find the money changer guys, which isn’t as shady as it sounds. Although the biggest note is only worth $1 or 2 so have to walk around with these big ass stacks of bills, which is kinda funny. Jazurbek got the going market rate and then helped negotiate a shared taxi for me to Samarkand. Nice guy! He also wanted to know if I wanted to meet up with one his friends in Samarkand who also liked to meet foreigners. I was a little hesitant, but turns out it was girl, so I agreed.
Uzbek Som.
I arrived in Uzbekistan’s second largest city that afternoon, and like everywhere in Uzbekistan, it is hot during the day. Most of the country is desert afterall. I had a chance to wander around that evening. There’s a lot of cool stuff to see in Samarkand! You just have to wait for the sun to get low. The central plaza, called the Registan is truly spectacular. It’s surrounded on three sides by massive madrassas and really is something to see. One of the guys working there let me know that for $10 I could watch the sunrise from the rooftop of one of the madrassas, just gotta show up at 5am. Definitely something to consider! The town also has a bunch of other very impressive mosques and cemetery with some very ornate ancient tombs.
The Registan at night
I did end up waking up at 5am to do the sunrise thing. You have to climb this narrow dusty carved out spiral staircase in one of the turrets to get up to the top. There were maybe 10 other tourists up there, and of course it was really nice watching the sunrise over the Registan, blah blah blah.
That evening I met up with the Uzbek girl, Zamina, who is friends with Jazurbek. She’s like 26 and lives with her parents, very outgoing, and frustrated with how conservative life is in Uzbekistan. She was telling me that her and her friend sometimes host couch surfers at her friend’s place and do things that most Uzbeks wouldn’t approve of. Eyebrow raise.jpg. So anyway we walked around for a little bit and then she wanted to take me to a popular restaurant. The place was like a massive banquet hall, where everyone was dressed up in button downs/slacks and dresses/high heels. It was type of place you’d have a big group to celebrate a birthday or whatever. They had dancing performances on stage and in between the performances there was a DJ and people (mostly the women) would get up onstage and dance. Being American it’s weird to see a party atmosphere like this with almost no drinking involved!
We ordered food and after a while she wants to know if I want to go dance. Dancing sober is awful to me, buuuut I got up there anyway. Plus I’m the only foreigner there, so everyone is looking at me, and I already feel like a shmuck wearing shorts and t-shirt. She was enjoying it though! But a few songs was all I could take. I was also getting texts from Jazurbek telling me not to stay out late, because he knows Zamina’s mom, and he’s going to be in trouble if she’s not home at a reasonable time.
We headed out soon afterwards, and she wanted to know if I wanted to go somewhere else. There was a café right across the street from my guesthouse that I said had good coffee (it didn’t) so we hopped in a taxi. It was very clear where this was going, so soon we were headed up to my room so I could show her my travel photos…
She couldn’t stay long however because her mother was going to be very upset with her for staying out so late. It wasn’t even midnight! I have to wonder if her parents knew she was sleeping with a foreigner, what would happen. I texted her the next day and she said she couldn’t go out that night. 26 years old and getting grounded by your parents for staying out too late. Ouch. That’s Uzbekistan for you. But three nights in Samarkand was plenty for me, so I was on the train the next day to a place in the desert called Bukhara.
Sorry, no photos of the girl. Just more of Samarkand.
05-21-2018
, 09:18 AM
05-21-2018
, 02:45 PM
