Sep 2009

We made it to the border and were glad to make it across with all our dollars, as there aren't any cash machines for foreigners in Turkmenistan, and no hassle for our artwork. Across the border, we met Timur, our guide/driver - foreigners aren't allowed in Turkmenistan without paying for a driver and car every day, as the government doesn't want just anyone walking around their country(?!). We set off immediately down to Konye Urgench - another silk road city! This one was slightly different as the main sights are all set out of town, surrounded now by desert as the river changed it's course and the city was abandoned. It was slightly disappointing to have come all this way and for the main sights to be locked as they are trying to erradicate a pigeon problem. But it was interesting to see how all these buildings look without the zealous restoration efforts that we'd seen in Uzbekistan.

It was amusing to watch the Turkmen women undergoing an ancient fertility ritual that involved donning a thick coat and rolling down a hill! It looked quite painful so Fi chickened out!

We set off through the Karakum desert to the Darvaza gas craters....these are the results of Soviet gas exploration in the 1950s. There are three of them....one filled with bubbling water, another with bubbling mud and the last which was to be our campsite for the night is alight.

It was quite a sight when we arrived in the middle of the afternoon....40m in diameter and depth....and flames everywhere! It was quite hot to stand next to....and we made sure not to stray too close to the edge! As the sun went down....it started to glow....it really was an amazing sight....and we had to agree with our guidebook which describes it as the gates to hell. It really was quite quite an astounding sight....and we were able to see the glow all night through our tent!

The next day was a long desert drive south to Ashgabat, the capital. We had loads of fun spotting the camels at the side of the road......Timur had said a few times that they were really dangerous for drivers as despite it being a straight desert road....the small dips and hills means that sometimes people don't see them in time. It turns out that people let their camels roam free in the desert for up to 4 months before they head after them, on motorbike, asking at local villages when their camels were last seen!

Sure enough though, we sadly came across an accident that had probably happened 20 minutes previous. It was shocking to see the driver of the car hadn't made it.....not likely with 300kg of camel crashing into his windscreen.

We arrived into Ashgabat and got settled into our Soviet era hotel, complete with moody babushka on each floor. Definitely one of our more downmarket establishments...complete with scampering mice that died each night in our bathroom! Ashgabat was the jewel in the crown of Dictator Niyazov's regime...and something his successor is keen to build on. It really is quite something.....gold self-obsessed statues interspersed freely in between the gleaming white marble buildings - everything in the centre of town has to use Italian marble. They were very proud of having the biggest flagpole in the world....well done them!

There were public parks everywhere but no one seemed to use them!

Everyone drives everywhere as gas is so cheap but like the parks there were far too many roads for the number of people using them....

It quickly became a little freaky and seemed like some sort of cross between 1984 and the Stepford Wives. It seemed a little odd that the only people on the streets were ourselves, the army of streetcleaners and the military policemen stationed on each streetcorner. Not many photos because the police won't allow it! People seemed to act a little like zombies, their laughter and chatter kept behind closed doors. To be honest the whole place seemed to lack any real soul - the central pedestrian areas of European cities and the hustle and bustle of Asian cities were non-existant. The powerful nanny state actually made China seem pretty soft. On the other hand, it is similar to China in that the people are not used to anything else so what they don't know won't hurt them? The free gas, free electric and practically free petrol keep people pretty happy.

Our feelings of unsettledness deepened as we were randomly refused entry to a couple of markets by plain clothed policemen....only to enter moments later unhassled by another entrance! Enough was enough for Fi though, as we set off one night to find a reccomended Chinese restaurant and after 30 minutes walk a plain clothed cop tried to usher us off the road! Fi, worrying that she was about to be kept from her Chinese feast, demanded to know what was going on from this rather ambivalent/unfriendly cop....thankfully, someone came to our aid and said we only had to get off the main road for 10 minutes while the President's calvalcade came whizzing by....before we could proceed to our Chinese restaurant! Dumplings....Mmmm.

We whizzed round the main sights in Ashgabat....going up the arch of neutrality, complete with a gold statue of their man Niyazov - which spins round every day to ensure he's looking directly towards the sun.

Bryn then enjoyed the rest of the time in Ashgabat viewing every Turkmen carpet in the city and conducting a thorough price/quality comparison.

Enough was enough though of toy town Ashgabat and we were thankful to hit the desert road. Our first stop was the ancient site of Gonur where the current excavations have been dated back to a staggering 3000 BC!! Despite having had our reservations at looking at a pile of sandy mounds in the middle of the desert we really were gobsmacked at what we saw. There were pottery shards everywhere and the foundations were in pretty good nick. We saw ceramics kilns, shashlick ovens, water purification works, the royal palace and even a drainage system! They are still uncovering stuff and we were able to go and have a look at what they were currently working on....no need to cordon off the area etc....we were able to get right in and see what they were up to! We saw the burial tombs where the royalty were buried alongside their horses.

The most staggering thing we saw though was a human skeleton complete with a bronze bracelet and ring still in situ!

Back at the entrance we got chatting with one of the local archaeologists who'd worked there for the last 20 years.....it was amazing watching him undertake what must be the world's most complicated jigsaw puzzle as he restored an ossuary. I don't think they get too many visitors....before we knew it we were being ushered over to meet Viktor Sarianidi...the 79 year old Russian/Greek lead archaeologist. He'd discovered the site 50 years ago and had led the excavations twice a year since then....considering the heat, dust and bumpy journey over the dunes to get there we thought this pretty good going. He thought that this year would be his last though. We got to ask him loads of questions and uncovered that funding was a big issue for them....it turned out that he'd sold his Moscow flat to pay for the excavations.

We also visited Merv....which only dates back to 600 BC, and with many of the remains being dated much later - it's actually a succession of cities spread over about 1000 years. Over the years they'd played host to many of the world's major religions Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. They've only excavated about 10% - so we needed a better imagination than in Gonur, and often what they had excavated had been fairly comprehensively restored which somewhat destroyed the magic of the place.

We then drove 700km through the desert to the SE corner of the country, right next to Afghanistan. We visited the dinosaur plateau in search of the footsteps of Turkmenosaurus Rex who came this way 155 million years ago. The dinosaurs had left loads of footprints on the bed of a muddy lake....which had then dried rock hard in the sun, there was then a volcanic eruption which covered the lakebed in lava sealing the footprints for us to view all these years later. We'd been quite sceptical about this...until we saw it.....it's not just one footprint....we were able to track where the dinosaurs had been heading all over the rock face!

We also visited the Kyrk Gyz cave where we were welcomed by the local mullah who kindly said some prayers for us.

We were then given a bit of cloth each and we had to throw it, and make it stick to the roof of the cave....achieving this would grant us a wish.

They weren't specific about whether we'd still get our wish if we weren't successful on the first attempt....

All that was left to do in Turkmenistan was another long desert drive to catch our $21 flight all the way across the country back to Ashgabat. And then onwards back to India

We arrived into Tashkent, Uzbekistan and headed for the train station hotel which surprisingly enough we'd heard good things about. The train station is super clean and like everywhere in central Tashkent - full of police - whom we tried hard to steer clear of as corruption is rife. We felt quite dodgy, trying to avoid the cops, as we changed money on the illegal black market. Especially as in Uzbekistan the largest note is only worth 50 cents, so you end up counting bank robber-style wads of cash and carrying it all off in shopping bags. Heaven knows how they pay for something like a car!

We didn't do a whole lot in Tashkent.....it's a Soviet city complete with wide roads, lots of nice shady trees and plenty of cafes serving us tasty shashlick and beers. We visited the national history museum and went off to the massive main market where all manner of fresh and dry produce is for sale. The guidebook had told us of whole rooms full of flour etc which we hadn't really believed until we found the onion warehouse!

One night we came across the Gasthaus, hidden behind the train station, which was really quite bizarre. As the night went on we got quite confused where we were.....were we really in Uzbekistan?? The waiters and waitresses were in typical Bavarian costume, we were eating fantastic german sausages and drinking great cloudy microbrewery beer. Had we been transported to Bavaria for the night?

Being at the train station, we of course had to depart by train and we had a very pleasant 4 hour ride to Samarkand, the first of our silk road cities. The sights here really knocked our socks off.....the Registan, the centre of Timur's 14th century capital, was absolutely magnificent.....it's a massive square surrounded on three sides by medrassas (Islamic religious schools), all decorated with stunning turquoise mosaic tiles.

90% of the sights in Uzbekistan are massively restored....and although there were some dodgy Soviet restoration attempts, on the whole the result is impressive. Walking round the Registan in the evening was quite spellbinding....

As we ticked off some of the smaller sights in Samarkand we realised that after 10 months of travelling....we were the subjects of yet another scam! Arriving at a very minor sight, and hearing the quite high entrance price we walked off....and were surprised to hear the lady calling after us "Student discount? Only 2000 then? 1500?" From this point on, we wised up and played hard-ball with the smiling middle aged ladies writing any price they fancied on the tickets.

We moved onto Bukhara which was a nice change to Samarkand. Although, Bukhara is a typical tourist town it at least has some sense of 'ye olde worlde' to it. In between the sights in Samarkand are immaculate squares, manicured gardens and gleaming shops.....in Bukhara you get more of a feeling that camel caravans really did come through here once upon a time....

We went to the Ark - which was a fortress occupied right from the 5th century until the Soviets invaded in 1920. We visited the prison where, in the 1840's, two British envoys, Stoddart and Conolly, were kept for 3 years in the 'bug pit' before they were marched to their deaths....all because Queen Victoria hadn't personally replied to a letter from the Emir.

We cheated death on the Soviet era fairground wheel....which seemed to sway alarmingly in the breeze....

And of course more mosques, minarets and medrassas! We had fun going in a medrassa that was actually closed to the public as it hadn't been restored yet. We paid for our 'tickets' to some local pensioner who keenly showed us round and yabbered away in Russian to us We had fun scrambling up the stairs into crumbling rooms, taking care to avoid the sheer drop offs and up onto the roof.

By this stage in our central Asian experience we were having food issues..... Bryn was laid up in bed and Fi was sent out to find acceptable food items. For 4 weeks now, we'd pretty much survived on a diet of salty shashlyck, bread, and tomato salads. They really don't seem to eat much else in restaurants despite having the finest array of fruits and vegetables that we'd seen on our trip so far!

Soon we were in Khiva, another silk road city, which is a pretty compact version of Bukhara. Literally every building, is a medrassa, a mosque or a minaret. Bryn being laid up in bed again, Fi went up the ancient minaret solo, dodging teenage Uzbeks making out in the narrow, dark, winding staircase! The view was pretty good though...

As the sun went down it was pretty special as the tour parties cleared out and the sunset cast everything in a soft orange glow. Sadly Fi had to enjoy the romantic vistas on her own!

We moved on from Khiva up to Nukus, right next to the Turkmenistan border. The main reason for visiting Nukus is to visit the art gallery which contains a massive collection of artwork, banned in the Soviet period. We had a great time wandering round and it made a nice change to silk road sights. They had a great shop with artwork for sale and soon we were off to the market to change our dollars and count our giant wodge of notes to procure a couple of nice pieces.

After a 12 hour bus transit from Almaty, Kazakhstan we finally arrived in Cholpan-Ata, Kyrgzstan at 9pm....ever so slightly worried where we were going to stay the night. We needn't have worried....we were met off the marshrutka (minibus) by a friendly babushka (grandma) who led us off down a dark dirt track to our 'homestay' which turned out to be one of the more simple places we'd stayed.....the facilities being past the potatos and right at the blackberry bushes. Cholpan-Ata is set on lake Issyk-Kul - a massive freshwater lake at 1800m. There were numerous beaches around town where Russians, Kakakhs and Kyrgyz all flock during the summer to sun (sunburn) themselves, including pregnant women wearing g-strings! We made it down the beach but after a quick dip in the freezing glacial waters we went for some lunchtime shasklyk and beers instead!

Moving round the lake we arrived in Karakol - the trekking capital of central Asia. We stayed in a lovely homestay courtesy of Babushka Fatima. Her daughter-in-law spoke good English which was a real help and made asking questions about Kyrgyzstan and the USSR much less painful. It was interesting to hear how the people really struggled to cope without socialism for many years as they had never had to think about their careers or generating money. They were suffering an almost institutionalised mindset that was difficult to break free from. Only now are they starting to get used to trade and entrepreneurialism and starting to see the benefits.

Kyrgyzstan is full of two types of vehicles - Ladas and German-manufactured cars from the 1980s. I did not know it was possible for these cars to still be on the road, I thought they went to a little car heaven in the sky when we got rid. Now I know different. Most of the cars we went in had 500,000 miles on the clock BEFORE the mileometer stopped working! I wonder why we cannot be more sustainable in the UK and repair and reuse like here? Although, to be fair, I am, not sure that even 5% would pass a UK MOT.

We were lucky to be in Karakol on a Sunday to see the second largest animal market in central Asia....where we arrived bright and early at 6am! Lots of horses, sheep and cows.....and men in felt hats whom Bryn had a particular penchant for photographing with his long lens....

Not quite the same as in the UK...no pens for the animals so you had to watch out for the bucking horses and we did see a few sheep being stuffed in the boot of a Lada for the journey to their new home!

We had resolved that for our trek into the hills we didn't want another 18 year old 'guide' accompanying us so we set off round town in search of some camping equipment to rent, which is surprisingly difficult as most the operations who have equipment only rent it out as long as you hire a guide/porter/cook from them. However, after a couple of days we had sorted our gear and got in our bright blue Lada taxi (Bryn very excitedly hand picked this) which whizzed us up to Jeti-Orguz the start of our trek, undaunted by our 18kg packs.

The first day was pretty easy ambling up the beautiful valley in the baking sunshine. After a couple of hours walking we spied a yurt that agreed to bring us some chai.....what we didn't bargain on was that in Kyrgzstan, tea is never just tea....you simply must eat as well. So there we were....with a beautiful view down the grassy valley....tucking into a cream tea that would have gone for good money in central London....the homemade blackcurrant jam was the best we'd ever had! Grudgingly, we set off in search of our campsite for the night.

Day 2 was actually an easy day but for some reason we made rather slow going. We were walking up narrow alpine valleys full of grass, streams with big tall green conifers everywhere....all very Soviet. However, it was very pleasant walking mainly....apart from fording a couple of glacial streams where we needed to take our boots off. We'd done this a lot in Borneo but hadn't quite realised quite how cold the glacial meltwaters would be - people must have heard our swearing 20km away!

It started to rain just as we reached our campsite....we got our tent up pretty quickly and spent the rest of the afternoon cowering from the rain. Just before bedtime an inquisitive and insistent cow herd decided that they wanted to become friends and several times we had to shoo away a snuffling snout that was trying to get into our tent!! After living in fear of the cow shadows outside the tent all night , we generated the courage for a stern face to face dawn showdown....

We also spotted some interesting looking orange scurrying fluffy things that later turned out to be marmots.

Day 3 we got up a little late due to more rain and set off for the first high altitude pass of the trek.....this was where it turned out that the maps we had weren't exactly Ordance Survey quality. We missed the path and ended up doing most of the 1000m ascent up the river course....at one point going up some pretty steep sections as we got pelted by hailstones. This wasn't exactly the summer walk we'd planned.

Luckily, the weather got better as we approached the 3800m pass and there were some pretty stunning views as we trekked across the barren plateau.

Going down from the pass was a lot of fun as we got to ski down about 400m.....ok no poles or actual skis....but we made it down in record time and thankfully no broken bones in this remote place!!

At this point, we thought we'd done the hard work....but oh no....our crappy maps made it a tough afternoon for us. First we trekked one km too far down one side of the valley before realising that there was no way through due to some nasty looking morraine piles....so we had to head back up to where we could actually cross the river.....then we headed too far down the other side of the valley...and ended up having to descend about 400m down an extremely steep track through pine forest.

We had another equally tough day to follow - made even harder by the fact that our legs were wooden from the previous day - pretty difficult to motivate sufficiently to wriggle out of our sleeping bags! After a lot of slow trudging and a picturesque stop for tea at 3,000m....

....we were finally at Ala-Kol Lake (3500m) for a late lunch just as the hail starting to pelt down again! It was really quite scary walking round the lake as the heavens ominously rumbled. There were hardly any trekkers, no where to pitch a tent and we were dressed in summer gear as slowly everything started to turn white!

We made it to the pass at 5pm, definitely not on schedule.

Our jubilation at having finally made it up quickly evaporated as it was snowing heavily (covering tracks) and starting to get dark. Unfortunately, because of this, we could not locate the path down from the pass. We searched for around one hour, including one near fatal descent investigation! At 6pm we really thought we would be those silly trekkers who disappear after going off on their own into the wilderness - it was too late to go back to the last place a tent could go, too cold and exposed to stay on the pass and no route down! Finally we see something resembling a slighter gradient and decide to go for it - after sliding down on our bums for 30 mins we were down and thankfully still in one piece. Shortly after it started to thunder and hail so we erected our tent in record time and as we looked out later we were surrounded by a foot of snow! We decided we needed to celebrate our survival through a tough day - what better way than a fine chilled vodka and caviar supper. Perfect.

An easy half day walk followed to our end point, Altan Arashyn, where we were able to go in a butch lady's shed for a hot spring bath - perfect recovery. The mutton knuckle soup wasnt anything to write home about though! Only one vehicle was due to make it's way back into Karakol that day so we waited around until the departure time of 6pm. 3 hours later we were still waiting as the driver had decided that fermented mares milk in the hills was a much more appealing propsect. Our spirits started to slump as we realised that we weren't going to be having our celebratory beer and shashlick feast that evening Then we saw a jeep revving its engines and hollared the locals in our best russian to give us a lift. After a bit of negotiating we were on our way. This was the roughest track we had ever been on - it took over 2 hours to go 20km - at one point we all had to get in the total darkness and walk down while the jeep skidded down the worst bits! A flat tyre didn't help matters....but at least our head torches came in useful as they tried to change the tyre by mobile phone light! We were very happy to arrive back late, and safely, in our nice homestay where they invited us to join them for a supper - bread, jam and tea.

After a day of laundry and recovery (i.e. more shaslyk and beer!) we headed off around the lake to Kochkor, the land of rolling green pastures, in contrast to the more rocky snow-capped mountain scenery at Karakol. This was where we did our 'Life of a Shepherd' horse trek wedding present, courtesy of the Centric boys, Chris, Sean, Andrew and Pete. Thanks lads. This was great fun. With no riding experience we were a little nervous, but then, as we mounted our steads, we realised these were friendly chaps. We were quickly learning the Kyrgyz horse language e.g. "Tcho" and a kick to the gut to go faster. But there were no real worries as our mounts were certainly no sprinters! Bryn, in fact, had a particularly flatulant mount and was regularly scorned as he moved upwind of the group. It was a great experience staying in the traditional yurts. They are so warm, and the families make you feel so comfortable and serve endless food - "more cream tea anyone?" Another girl, Nona (American), came along with us and she proved to be quite a mean card player!

There was a cute little puppy at one of the yurts who'd had his ears and tail cut off! It turns out that they do this all across central Asia so that the dog has less problems when it gets older and starts fighting!

At the end of day two, our horses were starting to turn asthmatic and sweat heavily so they were glad that we dismounted for the final time. Our guide departed back to the yurt from the previous night where he had been exchanging glances with a sweet sixteen, and we relaxed by the glacial lake at 3500m. A really good trip.

We just spent two nights in the capital, Bishkek, as no real sights and no cheap hotels. We did appreciate our bathtub and separate living room in our $40 hotel for a treat though! We wandered the leafy streets and had a final meal out with Nona, before beginning our 2 day overland journey back through Kazakhstan to Tashkent, in Uzbekistan. It was disappointing that as we got off a matrushka in Kazakhstan that Bryn was surrounded by a group of jostling men, one of whom kept making repeated attempts at his pocket.....for his 'wallet' which thankfully was just a wodge of toilet paper. A difficult situation as they were all in on the scam and we were trying to get our bags off the bus at the same time before it drove off....

2 days, 3 countries, 1 randomly shut border crossing for foreigners only due to a power cut!, 2 borders successfully crossed. Uzbekistan here we come!

We arrived into Almaty at 3am and at that time in the morning there was nothing to do except wait it out at the airport until the city got going. It's a tough place for backpackers as people speak little English and prices are more aligned to Europe than Asia. We felt lucky to find a room in our price range at the very Soviet and soul-less Hotel Saulet where Bryn was promptly propositoned by some Kazakh chap looking for a 'foreign acquaintance' for his rather ropey looking 40 year old 'girlfriend'. Bryn was pretty happy to be able to point at his wedding ring.

Almaty is definitely the most European place that we'd been all trip and we felt quite at home walking along the wide tree-lined streets. It's a pretty affluent place...so it was a surprise for Fi one day to be walking along, without her bodyguard Bryn, and have some little Kazakh chap make a pickpocketing attempt on her rucksac. Not too sure who was then most surprised by the reflex reaction right hook that landed on the left side of his face. He didn't get anything But it was a reminder to us to start using those money belts again!....particularly as Fi had just withdrawn $1000 from the cashpoint!

There's not really loads of key sights in Almaty but having been in 40 degree Delhi for 6 weeks it was a bit of a novelty for us being able to walk around without triggering undue perspiration. It was wierd for Fi, after 2 months in India being starred at for exposing any flesh, now being starred at for quite the opposite reasons. It's definitely not wrong in Kazakhstan to wear 6 inch sparkly heels for a stroll in the park.

We went up the cable car one day for a pretty hazy view over Almaty and were amused to find the Beatles at the top with all the Kazakhs queueing for photos.

We got tickets to the circus one afternoon, and despite out initial horror at realising that we were the only adults in attendence who didn't have children with us, actually had a great time watching all the performers. We then headed out for a slap up central Asian feast...mouth watering lamb shashlik...yum. This, and the circus, was all courtesy of another wedding present - thanks to Great Aunt Tillie for all of that!

Dog school was actually pretty funny

And as for the giant orange skipping fluffball...

We headed out to the Charyn Canyon for a day trip on a bus full of Kazakh/Russian tourists. Charyn Canyon is definitely not the Grand Canyon but we had fun wandering through all the sandstone formations.

We also headed out into the mountains just 10km from Almaty to stretch our legs. We headed to Medeu where they are currently refurbing a massive ice rink in preparation for the Asian Winter Games. We set off on our Lonely Planet walk and were disappointed for it to finish 10 minutes later as we'd actually only walked along a BMX track.
Undeterred we set off up a small path leading straight up a steep hill. We quickly gained height heading up through the trees and stubbornly kept going as the path got narrower and narrower. We did wonder whether we actually were on some sort of animal track as the vegetation closed in further around us......careful what you wish for.....round the next corner there was a massive hole leading into the earth......a bear's lair!!! We beat a hasty retreat.....we didn't feel quite so confident without our jungle guide. We headed further up the hill into a lovely Alpine type clearing full of flowers and aromatic herbs...however, by now there really wasn't a path and our mountain was getting steeper and steeper.

We realised we had to head back down and as the heavens started to rumble we realised it was the right one. We felt quite elated to be back down at the road as the rain was really starting to come down, so we found somewhere to shelter with a load of Kazakhs. These were Kazakhs on holiday and despite their lack of English and our lack of Russian - they wanted to be friends. We all posed for photos and then the vodka bottle came out and before we knew it there we were, in the middle of the afternoon, doing shots of vodka with the locals in the middle of the beautiful mountain scenery.

Ok, off to Stan number 2.....