The dusty road through the dusty heartland around Yazd is not untrodden by tourists, but without the lure of significant sights they are disinclined to linger. No more so than today when an actual sandstorm is blowing out of lowering black clouds, obscuring otherwise photogenic mountains and thwarting a thousand potential photos. But this unprepossessing landscape has not thwarted the dreams of a surprising number of budding entrepenurs. Just look at our lunch stop, a huge caravanserai enthusiastically renovated only recently despite its location beside a 3000 year old village abandoned some 50 years ago when its water dried up. Could it be not ‘despite’ but ‘because of’?  Yet if this is the case their business model is even more opaque – Yomadic, with its off-the-beaten track ethos is the only tour in Iran likely to find the set-up at all compelling, and even we have turned down the opportunity to spend the night, a decision instantly validated by a quick trip to any of the bathrooms. The sole other visitors – a car load of more than usually haughty French and their guide have even brought a picnic to eat outside and only reluctantly buy tea to wash down the dust.

Caravanserai number 1: Even the chairs are not quite ready for prime time

One look at the tea arrangements and the French dissolve in panic.

But the 3000 year-old abandoned village is suitably photogenic

I make my way down to an aqueduct that looks suspiciously Roman (the Persians had other ways of moving water) but no-one knows anything about it.

I

On the other side of Yazd yet another caravanserai enterprise is in the process of failing even more precipitously. In preparation for our planned overnight Nate and Vahid have been calling ahead regularly to remind management of our needs for a towel each as well as clean bathrooms; maybe too assiduously for they have stopped returning our calls. All is explained when we arrive at the ancient ruined fort they are also promoting, for in addition to being padlocked the fort’s doors are sealed up with tape informing anyone interested that the electricity bill is well and truly in arrears (presumably the phone is also cut off). Only a sad and underfed donkey marks the ambitious ‘zoological park’ advertised to circumscribe the moat. Fortunately long experience with rural entrepeneurs has ensured the existence of plans B and C. Plan B suffices and we spend a cozy night at the only renovated caravanserai in Iran with a feasible business plan: reasonably comfortable beds and pillows, crisp, clean sheets and cozy blankets, heaters, a towel each and excellent food. Only the fact that the (impeccable) toilets and showers are at the opposite end of the building is somewhat of an inconvenience when it becomes my turn to get the 24 hour stomach bug that has been passing around the minibus.

The fort looks fascinating.

Pity about the utility bills.

Only the donkey remains from the wildlife park

Our plan B caravanserai, at 4am during one of my trips to the other side of the building. Note the dinky sleeping cabins.

Not surprisingly, absence of opportunities in the environs has led what tourists there are to descend on Yazd, which is coping only fitfully with this somewhat ill-deserved popularity. Yazdis are described as ‘shy’ which translates to gloomy, and they are less inclined to effusive friendliness on the street. Still Yazd is ripe for other night-time adventures  – Nate leads those inclined off to sneak into and up a poorly secured minaret for a bird’s eye view over the town, narrowly escaping detection by the security guards. A good time is had by all, especially those of us who turned down this very potentially once in a life-time opportunity.

Another once in a lifetime experience in Yazd. Synchronized calisthenics. Vahid represents us splendidly.

They start off with literally 100 pushups.

Vahid poses happily for pictures once the ordeal is over.

But is less excited when Sam (our Australian marathoner) outdoes him even in a headscarf

Yazd is rather more famous for its Zoroastrian Towers of Silence where corpses were left for vultures to pick off the meat.

The practice ended about 50 years ago when the city started encroaching on the smell. There are still bones (hopefully not human) inside, but the vultures have left.

Persepolis! Words can’t begin to describe. We are told bitterly that most of the good bits are in the British Museum.

The tombs of the kings, note scale

Springtime in Shiraz

 The stereotypes are right! Shiraz really does have it all. While its architecture is not as absolutely gorgeous as Isfahan and it is not as full of significant sights, we are by now totally mosqued out so it really doesn’t matter. While its artisans are not as ostentatiously skilled, the bazaar at half the size is so much more approachable and if possible even cheaper. While its streets are not as wide they are as clean and well-cared for plus they are replete with cozy hipster cafes serving hipster food, which we devour as ravenously as though we haven’t eaten anything for 10 days rather than vast traditional Persian meals twice a day. Best of all its gardens are a marvel and its citizens, knowing they have a reputation to uphold, treat us with such solemn and benign kindness, sprinkled so liberally with many sincere invitations (even our taxi driver to the train station wants to take us home for dinner and insists on giving us his business card so we can avail ourselves next time) that if we accepted them all they would be cooking for a week.

One last mosque. We get here at 7:30am to witness the sun rising through the stained glass windows and strong arm the self-absorbed selfies out of the way to get the full effect.

The last inevitable school trip is taking it far too seriously to crack a smile for us.

Shiraz is all about the elegance of flowers.

Hipster culture means we are spared another Persian meal.

Of course no wrap-up would be complete without a mail experience, and here Shiraz too, outdoes itself. Somewhat optimistically I suspect, I am hoping to divest myself of some of the weight associated with the remainder of my warm clothes (I can only imagine US customs interest in a package from Iran mail). Unfortunately Vahid’s confidence in where the post office is located, is not shared by a number of the people bustling around the area he has vaguely indicated, none of whom (unusually) speak English. Trying to interpret fish-like movements of the hands and equally vague ‘about 2 or 3km’ pronouncements gets me nowhere and in desperation I bring out my long-neglected GT in order to accost the little man on the corner innocently reading the newspaper.

Success! After a quick cell phone consultation he leads me purposefully to his car. This after all is Shiraz so I hop in thanking him profusely, and imagining another of the ‘and guess what it was just around the corner’ stories I have been hearing sporadically all week. But no! it is not around the corner, nor is it anywhere near Vahid’s vague gesticulations. Neither is it on this side of the bridge, nor in the upscale suburbs on the other side. A little later along the highway signs for the airport appear. ‘Not airport?’ I inquire a little anxiously fearing a misunderstanding; ‘Post, Post’ he assures me with the satisfaction of having acquired his first English word. Sure enough after about 30 minutes he deposits me with a flourish at the front door of the massive regional post office just before it closes for the weekend, firmly brushes off my attempts to pay him a legitimate taxi fare and tootles off, presumably back to the center of town to finish off his newspaper. I complete my transaction and hop on the sparkling new subway for the return journey.

My own expert parcel packer tells me I can track its progress on their website, but has no suggestions about what to do if it doesn’t arrive.

It is our last evening and we are ending our tour at the garden tomb of Shiraz’s most famous son, the Sufi poet Hafez. Tout Shiraz is here to commune with the poet, smell the roses, eat ice-cream and meet their friends. Vahid tells us Hafez’s story and quotes some of his most famous verses. Even without translation there isn’t a dry eye in the house. ‘if you want to help us’ he says at the end. ‘Tell your friends that we are not terrorists and that Iran is a safe country, ask them to please come to visit’.

Hafez’s tomb. I am just trying to remember the last time I was in a community that had gathered together spontaneously because of poetry.

Dave and I squeeze in one last overnight train trip back to Tehran. They conveniently overlook that it is illegal for us to travel unescorted.

I am so, so sad to leave Iran. They are not terrorists, they are the kindest and most friendly people I have met in this whole trip and it is such a safe country I don’t think twice about leaving my purse on a seat while I go to the bathroom or hopping into a car with a stranger. I can’t wait to come back again. I am sure by then they will have discovered sushi.

Au revoir Tehran

 

There is probably more than one road from the sleepy market (or more appropriately bazaar) town of Khasan to Isfahan; the one we have chosen, a two lane highway which will allow us to visit the even more sleepy village of Abyaneh, goes directly past the infamous nuclear enrichment facility conveniently located a mere 4-hour straight shot from Tehran. Given the escalating rhetoric it is comforting how little seems to be happening on the other side of the six-ish foot walls. Presumably it is all underground and presumably also the distant row of mountains marching down the opposite side of the road are conveniently disguising a phalanx of missile batteries since the single policeman outside what must be the main gates is lounging with his feet up rather than standing armed against potential infiltration. Even so when Nate pops up to tell us quite firmly to put away cameras and cell phones until the second left turn –  taking ‘Sorry no photos’ to a whole new level, and his single directive of the whole trip – we all snap to it a bit nervously. Clearly there is more to Sgt. Sudoku than meets the eye since it is unlikely that the sheep, the only other sign of life, are providing the high level security vigilance necessary to detect a clandestine photo from inside the minibus.

Scenes from village life. All Iranians love Khasan even if they’ve never been there. It occupies that place in their hearts where delightfully sleepy little towns hang out.

We surreptitiously climb up onto the roof of the bazaar to catch the sun going down.

The bazaar is pretty sleepy too.

Should you ever need it, don’t worry, he has it.

Or he does

A pot for every chicken

Still waiting for customers

S

Our sleepy hotel is pleasant too.

Hipster coffee culture hits Khasan.

On our way out of town, a perfectly lovely merchant’s house from the 17th century

Notwithstanding its proximity to what could easily be the next ground zero, Abyaneh is undergoing a second home renaissance for congestion-weary Tehranis. But the orchard blossom is finished and apart from hopeful renovations there are no major sights to see so our main goal besides lunch (we are coming to the sad realization that in Iran tourists eat the same thing every day, and so our anticipation is rather less eager than it was yesterday) is to stretch our legs for a while in the photogenic hills, and have a wander round the charming streets where the old ladies drape themselves decoratively in the sunlight but then ruthlessly demand we buy their tasteless dried apples in return for a photograph. We find it all very pleasant.

Abyaneh, too close to ground zero for comfort.

How the old ladies could look if they weren’t so belligerent.

Sadly they are. Note, this is after she called me over and asked me to take a picture of her.

Only the donkey is up for a photo op

Not so the ebullient gang of teenage girls on a school outing to the underwhelming mosque, who have no interest in dried fruits and who, as a consequence are experiencing both extreme disappointment and acute boredom (as they tell us in impeccable idiomatic English, they are from a gifted school). To compensate and notwithstanding their demure uniform hijabs (their ring leader sports a gangsta baseball hat labeled ‘Baby’ in serious bling on top of hers which seems more like it) they pursue us raucously, jostling for photos until their furious principal descends in a chadored-whirl like an exhausted avenging angel, gives us the side-eye and packs them off back to the bus. ‘So, whatever’ says Baby as she flounces off in well-choreographed disgust.

Butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths when they first arrived. Even their dragon lady principal on the right is looking forward to a nice day out.

It doesn’t take long for it to all fall apart. Baby puts her hat on and all bets are off. Nate and Deborah can never pass up an opportunity to wind things up.

Sometime in the last couple of thousand years every town in Iran has acquired a specific stereotype that everyone now perpetrates. So Tabriz is universally patronized for its slightly simple citizenry while Khasen is universally loved, even by people who have never been there. Likewise everyone disapproves of Isfahan, where we are headed next. Sure its architecture is absolutely gorgeous and it is full of significant sights, sure its streets are wide clean and well cared for, its food is good and its artisans are the most skilled in the whole of Iran but ‘I have never, ever met a nice person from Isfahan’ Vahid tells us solemnly. ‘Once I thought I might have, since the guy at the coffee shop is OK, but it turns out he’s from Shiraz’. Every single Iranian we ask tells a similar story. Sadly, Isfahan seems to be the Wall Street of Iran.

This is rather unfortunate since we are all desperate to exchange money. Ordinarily we would have three options: a bank (legal); an exchange office (also legal and preferred since it inexplicably offers a higher rate than the bank) and the black market (illegal). However the day before yesterday the government intervened to prevent collapse of the rial and halted all legal rial/dollar exchanges, catching us all on the hop. So first order of business is to find the black market in Isfahan. Luckily, just as we are admiring the glorious sunset over the Shah’s mosque in the main square, the black market comes loping out of the shadows and finds me. In the way of black markets everywhere he has a huge wad of cash in his left sock, but rather than dragging me down a dark alley (the usual M.O.) he cheerfully fishes it out in full sight of the several hundreds of his townsfolk picnicking in the garden, and gives me 20% over the official bank rate, definitely raising questions as to his Isfahan origins. Even the policeman idly watching us out of the corner of his eye leaves us to it, suggesting he too is probably not from around here.

The fabulous main square in Isfahan. The black market goes into hiding during the day,

The Shah’s mosque. The cupola is carefully designed so the light falls onto the ceiling in the shape of a peacock.

Just in case you missed it

A subtle symbol of power for the Shah to contemplate as he prays: The tree of life arising from Noah’s Ark.

An acoustically sophisticated ceiling in the Shah’s palace

Exquisite artisanal objets in the bazaar

 

Not all Isfahan folks are Gordon Geckos. This mister heard Jill and I speaking English and promptly closed up his shop so he could squire us around. He was crushed when we pleaded a previous engagement.

 

 

I am now so inured to taxi drivers the fact that this one (the only one on this trip who has not at least tried to rip me off) needs to check in with every member of his extended family in order to verify the route from the airport comes as no surprise. And when it also becomes clear he has taken three passes round Tehran to find the hotel it seems not only reasonable but also actually a relief (the third time round had made Tehran seem impossibly huge). Impossibly huge it may not be but it is impossibly chaotic and congested and thanks to the Farsi script almost completely incomprehensible. It is lucky then that 99% of the population have committed themselves to ensuring we feel welcome and supported. In fact we have to develop defensive avoidance strategies, so difficult is it to set foot outside the hotel without being invited to coffee, lunch or even just a protracted chat.

Feeding cats in Tehran. This particular Harvard grad (’68) wanted to take me to lunch just because I asked him whether I could take his picture.

Tehran

‘Yomadic’ promises us an off-the-beaten-track tour of Iran (one of their other enduringly popular alternative destinations is Chernobyl) and starts it off with a bang at the nest of spies AKA the former American Embassy now repurposed as a museum by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard in their latest iteration as hipsters. We make our way gingerly down an allée of this year’s winners of the ‘Anti-American poster of the year’ competition (for budding high school artists only) and into the embassy itself so our creepily chipper IRG guide can gleefully point out the sights – the Faraday cage to isolate encrypted signals the US helicoptered in when everyone was out of Tehran for the New Year holiday; the dreadful mustard shag pile carpet squares in the Enigma room; the fading photographs of hostages miserably pretending to enjoy Christmas dinner). Sadly he is conveniently is called away before we can muster any probing questions leaving us with our reflections. The two bona-fide Americans in our group of 10 remark cattily that unless the Russians are derelict in their espionage duty their embassy must surely look the same, while the Australian majority look a bit smug that their government has managed to keep its nose relatively clean at least in this respect. The lone English representative looks thankful that UK imperialism has been upstaged on this one occasion, while the outliers (one Irish milenial who is a real sport to come on vacation with essentially her parental demographic, and the as yet inscrutable Icelander, try to look sympathetic). To cheer us up Vahid (our own trusty guide) shows us that the ‘Death to Americans’ wall of shame down the road has been re-translated to suit our PC era.  Thankfully, if somewhat surprisingly, the Tehranis loitering outside the museum and in front of the wall continue to profess undying admiration of Americans as well as unlimited invitations to coffee.

And this year’s winners are:

The nest of spies, always better with a diorama

Death to America now made PC. Actual American looking a bit anxious. Thanks to Dave for those pictures, I am too traumatized to take any.

The Goleestan Palace: Just another day on the Peacock Throne. Shah at this stage optional

Just another day in one of the many anterooms, no longer occupied.

Determined to upstage the plaster Shah

In fact why use one decorative theme when six do just as well?

The smallest teashop in the world, Tehran bazaar version: location, location, location.

Another take on take out at the famous Moslem Restaurant. Orders are passed down through the ceiling.

And now for something completely different: Fabulous modernist architecture at the Asari tower.

Impossible to take a bad photo

We visit a shrine for practice. Spot the tourists. Clue – the curtain fabric chador.

Then a quick hop up into the mountains out of the congestion for tea. Where it is snowing.

Qom

 Not surprisingly Qom, where the revolution was conceived, is one of the most religious cities in Iran. No surprise also that despite us ladies assuming full slipcover chador, and notwithstanding the rumored fatwa to the contrary (apparently fatwa merely means decree, just like jihad merely means community endeavor) none of us is allowed to actually set foot in the revered shrine. Instead we are assigned our own mullah to show us round and answer the most probing of questions, a commendable goal seriously stymied by his meager English vocabulary. Not that there is a lack of mullahs. There they go, strutting to and fro, sporting that 1000 yard stare perfected by irrelevant bureaucrats everywhere. And the faithful from everywhere are certainly here, perkily advertising their origins with headscarves and flags – Indonesians, Lebanese, Azerbaijanis (not taking it too seriously) even a few bona fide Sunni Arabs trying rather unsuccessfully to blend in since they seem to be remarkably tall. Qom has invested a lot into getting the faithful here efficiently: from the 22^nd century elevated monorail from who knows where right to the doorstep, to the piles of 21^st century aircon tourist buses, this is serious religion taken seriously. We wander around taking it in and no-one pays any attention at all unless we catch their eye at which they offer words of welcome and demand a photo (except for the mullahs who appear not to be selfie addicts).

Just another day out at the shrine. Chador not optional

Only our millenial Deborah can rock the curtain chador successfully.

Hard to quiz the mullah when you’re dressed like a slipcovered sofa.

Mullahs galore

The faithful contributed 22kg of gold to make this possible.

We aren’t allowed in the good bits. This isn’t even the anteroom

 

The way in is unfortunately obscured by the ‘Happy Birthday Ayatollah sign’.

Trying unsuccesfully to blend in

And now for something completely different – just down the road.

 

 

Oh how those Silk Road traders on their way between China and the softer, gentler south must have hated Kyrgistan! The awful mountains, that awful climate, those awful nomad protection racketeers squeezing them for every penny with the awful specter of disembowelment always at the end of their swords. No wonder they put their heads down and scuttled through post haste leaving nothing behind. So Kyrgistan is a tougher nut to crack than Uzbekistan: not only are there no sumptuous remains to admire and no public transport to speak of, there is also no southern-style hospitality culture. Ah yes, those fierce nomads are still here alright, unhappily housebound, their hearts still up there on horseback in the wild, wild hills.

An unwelcome sight on the Silk Road memorialized here: nomad extortionists promising safe passage for a fee.

And so, Urmat (or as he likes to refer to himself in emails Urmat!!!), who will hopefully reveal this impenetrable country to me, but who currently defines a new low in even my lax standards for research. Discovered indirectly in the bowels of the LP forum archives via an Australian lady (of about my age) who reported in 2014 that he had taken her on a nice trip, he has no verifiable internet presence. Nonetheless, we are soon planning our own 5 day adventure to include age-appropriate hiking and a visit to the last caravanserai standing, up in the Tien Shan mountains at the Chinese border.

The Tien Shan mountains, our final destination

Still, during the protracted wait for my baggage at Bishkek airport (I have elected to pass up the opportunity of a 17 hour shared taxi ride over the mountains from Osh for a mere 40 minute flight on Manas Air  – the only Kyrgiz airline the British Government approves for its employees, and then only in absolute emergency) I have plenty of time to reflect on the many different ways spending 5 days in a car with someone I’ve never met could be a very poor idea.

Manas Air: It was probably most concerning when they started taking cell phone pictures of the inside of the engine.

I needn’t worry, despite his unprepossessing exterior Urmat has all the attributes necessary to make the trip a blast: He is an adept driver (even though the steering wheel on his 4 wheel drive Nissan is on the right side (as is driving in Kyrgistan) a double whammy which he confesses makes him “very frightened indeed”); an adept conversationalist (especially when bolstered by GT); a convivial joker (the first funny story he tells me, on the way from the airport, is of his 6 year old son pleading for “Minecraft” for his computer, except Urmat hears ‘Mein Kampf’. “I was very, very worried” he tells me shaking his head. Critically he is also a foodie.  No wonder he has effectively cornered the market with solo ladies of a certain age.

Urmat is proof that you can’t judge a book by its cover.

Bishkek to Cholpon Ata

 We take off from Bishkek on the Chui route of the Great Silk Road, first stop the 9^th C. Burana tower, the last remaining artefact from Balagasun, capital of the vanished Sogdian empire, and later capital of the Kara-Khanids, which I have been determined to see. Unfortunately it seems that when the top half fell off in an earthquake in the 15^th century the locals carted away the bricks, so the Soviets couldn’t ‘restore’ its full glory.  As a result it is totally underwhelming and despite a smattering of old graves and petroglyphs (any actual treasures having been hauled off long ago to St Petersburg) there is absolutely no palpable evidence of its historical importance, whatever the internet would have us believe. They don’t even charge admission. U. has clearly heard these complaints before and tactfully raises the contribution of Photoshop.

The Burana tower is most disappointing. The lure of Photoshop is obvious given the benches out front and the steps up the side.

Underwhelming gravestones

A 5th century BCE petroglyph, but why on that rock particularly?

As a consolation we drive through Tokmok, where the notorious Tsarnaev brothers were raised. It is still home to about 1000 Chechens (none of whom are out and about). After seeing the village, it is easy to imagine the anger after failing at the American Dream.

Lake Issy Kul. No beach resort looks its best off season

We are soon circumnavigating Lake Issy Kul. Enormous and slightly saline, Issy Kul never freezes and in summer its north shore is heaving with Russians and Kazakhs all simulating a full-on beach vacation, karaoke included. This time the internet is not wrong, and its epicenter, Cholpon Ata, is indeed hideous.

Because no Soviet era beach paradise is complete without its statue of Lenin

This will be wall-to-wall sunblock in July and August

But it is out of season and everywhere for the next 200km except the optimistically named ‘Sunny Paradise’ is closed, so we are forced to check in. The unlikely rate of $6 per room is a reduction from last year when it was 10. U. hypothesizes she is being squeezed by new hotels (however the fact they are closed makes this theory less persuasive).

My $6 ‘suite’ at ‘Sunny Paradise’ wasn’t too bad apart from the all-night poker game next door.

Fortunately the local fish restaurant is open and fortunately too someone has caught some fish (not the Kyrgiz, fishing is not in nomad culture).

Superb lake fish especially with a beer. Not shown, the first of many liters of Kazakh Coca Cola, U. will polish off since he doesn’t drink alcohol at all.

Cholpon Ata to Karakol

 Fortunately U. loves to drive. He especially loves to drive off piste and is never happier than when chugging up (or down) some impossible gorge at 2mph. First order of the day is therefore to circumnavigate two: Grigoryevskoe and Semyonovka – up one and down the next. There is however a small matter of the 6000+ foot pass at the top. From tire marks the one person who has been up this year also had to return – but yesterday or a month ago? Happily the shepherds hurtling towards us in a Soviet era UAZ (extreme off-road jeep) give the thumbs up: (They have been putting together their yurt camp for summer grazing; in a couple of weeks they will move their flocks up into the mountains until the fall).

The Grigoryevskoe gorge. This is the road, not beside the road.

The pass at just over 6000 feet is just round the corner and relatively free of snow

Indeed the top of the pass does have little snow, but as we start to descend it becomes clear why they were so skeptical of our tires: the road is solid mud from the snow melt, and at exactly the worst pitch. U. tells me to get out. Apparently my first hike will be to meet him at the bottom of the 4km. steep bit. He takes off, sliding from side to side, and I try not to look. Later, he explains laconically “If I drive off the mountain with you it is two problems; I always prefer to simplify”.

Fortunately the car is still on the road when I reconvene with Urmat at the flatter bit.

Unlike the Grigoryevskoe side which was jagged, stony and narrow, Semyonovka is a stupendous bowl, Wyoming on steroids.

The Semyonovka basin. One photo can’t do it justice but I haven’t figured out the pano mode. Note the summer yurt in preparation.

It will be a site of the biannual Nomad Games this fall. Surprisingly an American team competes in the goat-head polo event; less surprisingly they aren’t very good. Is it difficult to practice hitting a goats’ head around in the USA U. wonders?

The road out of the Semyonovka basin.

I have been alerted to the can’t miss experience of the rock pools beside the lake that advertise themselves as a hot spring, so I am prepared with a swimsuit, but not unfortunately with the fur coat necessary to reach them from the changing room unfrozen, nor as it turns out, with an adequate towel. Nonetheless, while U. retires to the car for a nap, I spend a pleasant hour and a half in the toasty water chatting with a Spanish/Romanian couple circumnavigating the world in a tiny camper. They are desperate to unload their horror stories of sleeping in Russia in March (-15°, ice on the inside) and to wax lyrical about Iran. Their 12 year old daughter seems decidedly less enamored of the whole enterprise

With a population of 60,000+ Karakol, tonight’s destination, is Kyrgistan’s 4^th largest ‘urban’ center, and, with a 9 month season geared to both skiing and summer trekking much more prosperous than Cholpon Ata, which sees tourists only in July and August.

The wooden church in Karakol from back in the day when it was 50% Russian

The guesthouse, run by U.’s Dutch friend and his Kyrgiz wife, is a cut above. For $8 the bed and the breakfast (home – made bread and honey with the eggs) are a dream. A map in the living room confirms the major visitor demographic as Russian, Kazakh and European. Just one pin from New Jersey a few from Michigan, and mine, the first from Boston.

The view from my window at the perfectly lovely Dutch/Kyrgiz B & B.

Sadly though, no beer to go with the traditional lagman noodles at the hole in the wall dinner. Even more sadly there will be no more beer for the rest of the trip.

The best lagman noodles in Central Asia. They look like pasta but are much more chewy. Unfortunately any meat that looks like beef is usually horse.

Karakol to Kochkor

 It turns out that Karakol is also the Alamanov ancestral seat, and so we make a quick detour into the wilderness to the family graveyard and U. adds another wreath of artificial flowers to his mom’s grave.

The view from the Alamanov family cemetery.

Next to a bank to transfer money to a friend whose father has just died, so he can buy a horse. When I inquire as to the ‘so’ I learn that the death requires the family sacrifice a horse for the mourners to boil and eat. On further inquiry I also learn (with a quick demonstration) that every Kyrgiz knows how to kill a horse for sacrifice. Horses being expensive U. has planned ahead – his father’s horse-to-be is already getting fat (but also old and presumably tough) in the backyard.

Funeral horses en route somewhere unpleasant

Today is to be a major hiking day, and since U. doesn’t hike and I prefer to hike alone, we should both be happy except I have failed to factor in his abiding paranoia about my well-being. Fortunately the NYM hitchhiker we have picked up and he has coerced into taking me by hand to the top of the mountain and I manage to foil that bogus plan; as soon as we are out of sight I shoo him off. Upward he scampers and luckily enough goes further than me so he can rejoin me on the descent in the nick of time; and so we emerge innocently together into U.’s line of sight (albeit not hand in hand).

Some age-appropriate hiking after I ditch the millenial

On the descent the millenial forces a photo just as it is starting to snow. I am wearing 7 layers, unfortunately the 8th, waterproof, one is 3000 feet below where Urmat said I wouldn’t need it.

The second hike of the day couldn’t have been more different even apart from the weather: the south side of Issy Kul.

Urmat allows me to do it without an escort but forces me to take my mac.

Tonight we must stay part way into the high mountains. Unsurprisingly Kochkor village, pop. about 100, has no guesthouses. Fortunately U. has a favorite homestay with a grandma who unusually for a nomad will be both cheerful and friendly. But no! disaster has struck! Number 1 son, an erstwhile policeman has been arrested for corruption and fled to Russia. In order to pay the massive bribe that will allow him to return unmolested Grandma has had to sell all their worldly goods, and in spite has also turned off the heat and canceled the internet, much to her grand-daughter’s distress (with reason: her ambition is to earn a Presidential scholarship so she can study at the American University for free then escape to the States, neither of which can be accomplished without web access).

Mean grandma cut off the heating and the internet

The living room, like the rest of the house, was absolutely freezing, I was too cold to take a picture of my bedroom.

The saga continues at the only restaurant where we must eat dinner. I am struggling to cut up my chicken breast with a spoon (knives are not a restaurant feature, presumably for obvious reasons) when the waitress rushes over and cuts it up for me so energetically that the macaroni and cheese I hadn’t ordered (I had actually asked for black rice) shoots off the plate and onto the plastic tablecloth. No worries! She scoops it back immediately. U. is outraged and berates the hapless staff about how they will need to up their service game if they want to attract tourists or even other customers (apart from us the restaurant is empty). The staff are puzzled by both concepts and later as they all sit down to polish off the massive amount of food that hasn’t sold today, we see why.

At night I pile my bed with every blanket I can find, but it is still too cold to sleep well. I give granny $10 to pay for the internet as well as my room but U. wields GT for the Russian equivalent of ‘good luck with that’ (he speaks Russian much better than Kyrgi). The American University has 20 free places a year, a success rate of 0.0001%.

The American University in Bishkek. Tuition is $6000 per semester so only the very rich can afford it.

Kochkor to Tash Rabat.

 On our final day we will drive quite far up into the Tien Shan mountains almost to the Chinese border. But what a surprise! We pull out of Kochkor and the China tributary to the Ferganian route of the Great Silk Road has been well and truly one belted. Seriously, this road into the bowels of China is the very best I have seen in all Central Asia and the trucks plying it assiduously show the 21st century Silk Road is alive and well.

One belt one road

Predictably U. hates it and determines to approach our target Caravanserai the back way, no doubt up horrible craggy gorges, over heart-stopping river passages and through snow enrobed passes. Fortunately or not today’s complement of jailoo shepherds, already beginning to move their flocks upwards, firmly nix the idea; the pass is still too full of snow.

Of course Urmat  finds us a suitably hair-raising alternative

The jailoo shepherds are having none of it and turn us back.

U. sadly turns the car round and once back on the dream road to China suggests hopefully that I surely must want to drive for a change.

On the dream road to China through the Tien Shan valley

But the caravanserai, about 15 km up a side road, lives up to expectations. U., a Game of Thrones fanatic, insists I send a picture captioned Westhill Castle or something to Jim (I proudly treasure being the only person in America who has never watched Game of Thrones, so I willfully forget the name and don’t, to his bitter disapproval).

En route to the caravanserai

The photo I refused to send to Jim. What’s the name of that castle again?

Probably a better view

Originally an early Christian church it morphed to a travelers’ stopover and then to a winter sheep barn where over the years the shit hit shoulder height. It has been cleaned up now, but not attracting visitors today.

The caravanserai was originally an ancient church

The accommodations rival last night’s effort in Kolchor

There’s always a prison

Note the stone that rolls on top with the neat little hole for food and drink

U. permits me to walk back through the gorge alone provided I take my hiking pole in the unlikely eventuality there will be dogs. “It would make me feel better” he wheedles plaintively.

Of course there aren’t any dogs but I do meet a frantic shepherd on horseback who has lost his yaks. Fortunately I have spotted them further up and therefore save his job, or more probably his life.

The shepherd brings his kid for a photo-op and meanwhile loses his yaks.

Fortunately a herd of yaks are hard to actually lose.

In Naryn our destination for the night, U. (no doubt feeling guilty about last night’s accommodations) insists we spring an extra $2 for a real hotel with en suite bathrooms and shower curtains (no heat, however they do supply space heaters which is clearly a false economy since they are quite full).

A celebratory goat dinner for a job well done. The guys in the back room are drinking vodka.

It was delicious. Note the knife (but still no beer for me).

Naryn to the Kazakh border

Our last day en route to the Kazakh border passes uneventfully except for that second speeding ticket (130km/hr in a 90km/hr zone). Unlike the first one, which could be palmed off with the standard 100 som (10c) ‘consideration’ this time U. comes back with an official form that promises he will be arrested if he doesn’t pay a more substantial fine within a week. Evidently in each 5 hour shift the police work 4 ½ hours ‘for themselves’ and only ½ hour for the government, so it all comes down to bad timing.  “You asked me how corruption can be stopped” he says philosophically “This is how. If I break the law, make me pay the government”. He shrugs. We have been round this issue of deep-seated corruption many times. Tellingly the problem is compounded because Kyrgistan is a functioning democracy. A strong man ‘reformer’ like those who did the trick in Kazakhstan and now in Uzbekistan is not in the cards.

Finally blue sky, but on the way to the border

The trip comes to an end. Over the last 5 days we have talked about: Nomad culture ( a lot); Kyrgi politics and corruption (a lot); sheep husbandry (a lot but we do have a mutual interest); socialism and the end of capitalism; Syria; the Rohinga; #Me Too; Black Lives matter; child rearing; our families; religion in the 21^st century; the geopolitical alignments of Central Asia; and many movie-related topics including whether Eddy Redmayne is the legitimate successor to Daniel Day Lewis.  I have taught Urmat several useful words like ‘hangry’ and ‘high maintenance’. He has taught me some poetic Russian phrases like ‘so many winters, so many summers’ (said when meeting an old friend after some time) that I may find less useful. When we have got fed up talking we have listened to his music that besides Kyrgiz pop (which isn’t bad) includes Motown, Sinatra, Irish step dance and once, surprisingly, ‘Hava Nagila’. We have agreed much more than disagreed except we have failed to find common ground on the subtle yet important difference between ‘horrible’ and terrible’. Without Urmat, Kyrgistan would have made no sense at all. At the border we promise to keep in touch and I refuse to promise to watch Game of Thrones. Then we part with a handshake, but although he grasps my hand with both of his there is no bear hug; honorable Kyrgi men will never touch a woman other than their wives.

On to Iran

A hop, skip and a jump and I am back in Almaty. In my absence the Iranian embassy has undergone an upgrade. The doors are locked tight and I am ogled by several cameras before being pinged in. The ugly plastic-covered furniture has been changed out for ugly non-plastic covered furniture and instead of a 1950s slide show the TV is playing the English version of ‘This Old House’ dubbed in Farsi. The only other person waiting is a Kazakh government lawyer, who presses his business card on me while fervently hoping I won’t need it. But Dr. Jekyll has run out of options and he knows it. “Have a nice trip” he intones reading from his “How to appear human” training booklet (according to the Iranians from Samarkand this actually exists) as he passes back my passport, knowing there is nothing he can do to stop it.

 

Tourists usually ‘do’ the Fergana valley as a hectic day trip from Tashkent; even the Belgians from Samarkand who have sieved gold from the most unlikely places echo LP: “There’s nothing there”. I can be forgiven then, in anticipating the couple of days needed to move through Fergana to the border with Kyrgistan at Osh will be uneventful….

Revisiting Jahongir B&B in Tashkent en route felt like coming home. Upgraded to a softer mattress and favorite pancakes for breakfast. Then Feruza takes me down the road for a $6 haircut (not shown).

Adina off to college. The Turkish-style hyper-hijab is all the rage this spring (with or without inappropriately short uniform skirt).

Part 1 Kokand

It was never going to end well. The daily evening train from Tashkent to Kokand leaves at neither of the two different advertised times for departure (on the official website or the ticket) but rather 43 minutes early. This feint, as I have come to realize, is an enduring feature of Uzbek rail, and has been anticipated by all passengers, who have arrived an hour and a half in advance and are now milling around anxiously since there are no notice boards – the platform it will depart from is spread by word of mouth. So it is somewhat disappointing when we slow down to walking pace for several hours (more effective research might have revealed that this newly established route which avoids the otherwise inevitable detour through Tajikistan takes us through a 20 kilometer mountain tunnel, but not that a man on foot with a lantern appears to be guiding us much of the way). The upshot is it is pushing midnight when I arrive at the Hotel Istiqol (another only show in town option). Its resemblance to a state penitentiary making it  unlikely that the last Trip Advisor review (in 2015) contained even a smattering of truth. Even the taxi driver looks apologetic.

Cast of characters: a disheveled receptionist awakened from her lobby nap and (apparently) cursing the state of her mascara in Russian. Me.

Me: Is this a non-smoking room? I booked a non-smoking room. Why is there an ashtray?

The Guard: Why is there an ashtray? Does it smell? (of course right now it smells of odious room deodorant, it will be a different story later).

Me: OK then. It needs a top sheet.

Her: It needs a top sheet. What needs a top sheet?

Me: OK then, I need a top sheet.

Her: (Brings top sheet). Go to sleep.

Morning.

Her (still):  What you want to eat, toast?

Me: What do you usually serve for breakfast?

Her: Toast.

Me: OK then, toast.

From close inspection of the plate of sausage (the solitary component of the ‘buffet’) the last time anyone ate breakfast here was indeed around 2015.

The cell in question, from my bed. Note the cunning TV placement.

The sausage in question. The photo angle doesn’t do its curliness justice.

Kokand wasn’t totally a bust. The Shah’s palace was over the top as usual.

Lots of exquisite decorative touches.

 

This does look atmospheric. On closer inspection he was surfing the web.

Part 2 Fergana

It seems unlikely but the best show in Fergana is a $24 hostel located above a pharmacy opposite the hospital. But what a hostel! The private rooms are decorated in authentic minimalist style and have unbelievable luxuries like bedside lights that can be switched on and off from bed and new satellite TV (the owner, Efrazar, proudly shows me BBC news on channel 16). Next day as we consult about options for getting to the border about 100km away (evidently there are two: expensive ($12) involves hiring a taxi [he wrinkles his nose with disapproval at such profligacy] or cheap ($5) involves two sequential buses but with a 500m walk in between) I allow that I am going to splurge since it’s my birthday and dragging my roly bag along a stony road [it will be stony] in 80° sunshine is remarkably unappealing.

What could this be? Some even more exotic mimosa?

All is revealed as I pass by again after dinner.

Fergana prides itself on its Wild West vibe. But these guys are definitely getting scammed.

No takers for the photo-op.

Its famous traditional silk factory

Fergana is the vegetable basket of Uzbekistan. Spring produce at the pleasant, and massive, regional market.

Along with other more unusual merchandise.

Later there is a discreet tap on my door and Efrazar not only presents me with a lovely Ikat scarf as a birthday gift, but also proposes I spend the evening with his cousin and family who would like to practice their English. This delightful family and I eat dinner, stroll in the park and then pile onto the bumper cars at the fairground for a few energetic rounds in celebration of my turning 66.

The perfectly delightful Mamatov family. He is a policeman, she (unusually) an engineer. Their daughters  Ezoza and Shukrona bundles of energy

Ushering in 66 with style

Next day Efrazar drives me to the shared taxi stand, negotiates a bargain ($10) price  then checks in with the driver constantly while we are en-route to the border.

Moving through the Fergana Valley, all the fruit trees are in blossom

Part 3 Osh

If the Kazakstan/Uzbeki border was the end of six lane highways then its Uzbeki/Kyrgistan equivalent sees the end of asphalt itself. Nonetheless it too fails to live up to its Internet hype: the Uzbeks are anxious to expedite my leaving (I have to stop them stamping my Indian visa) while the Krygis simply seem mildly amused I have chosen their country as a vacation destination (I am the only Westerner in sight). At the ‘unofficial’ currency exchange the witches have morphed into prowling gold-toothed wolves and although I only have about $5 worth of Uzbeki sum left I need to change it for the taxi on the other side. This time my unexpected Sir Galahad is one of the notorious Uzbek security services, who forces them to hand over the final 30c they had planned on pocketing, while shooting me a sardonic wink.

Once safely into stony asphalt-free Kyrigstan the inevitable taxi dilemma rears its ugly head: neither the drivers nor I know where my Airbnb is located and since I have no cell phone access until I can buy a local SIM, they will have to phone the host for directions, meaning I have little leverage. We are just squaring off when an NYL and her mom insert themselves between us, insist I share their taxi, tell me it’s a 144 (Uber equivalent) so I can’t help pay, and take me door to door.

The kindness of strangers.

My AirBnB is a spacious apartment with all cons (mod and otherwise) including a complete set of Tolstoy in the bedroom and their own honey in the fridge. Welcome to Kyrgistan!

There is a Heartbreak Hill* in every trip. Last year it was cycling round 25 square miles (or was it 75) of Pagoda ridden Burmese desert on a bike with flat tires in 90° heat. This year it’s the temperature hitting 94° in Bukhara and the relentless desert wind depositing sand into every orifice and developing either a brutal allergy or a brutal cold or most likely both. A year older and wiser, I give up the ghost immediately and retire to the sofa on the shady upper terrace at my B & B with a nice soft toilet roll, a couple of liters of tepid water and a good book. Mine host, Nazira, sends the resident millenial up with tea on an hourly basis and the next day the temperature has dropped 40° and the wind has given up and I am fully restored.

* A notorious feature of the Boston marathon whose name speaks for itself.

A shady terrace oasis when its 94° outside.

Nothing like a restorative tea with meringues to keep the blood sugar up.

Its just as well because in terms of Silk Road romance Bukhara has it all. Of the more than 140 monuments ‘of significance’ only about 20% have been restored so there are plenty to go round. The faithful get their working medressas (I sneak into one by attaching myself to my very own grandma gang. The mullah charges 1000 sum (15 cents) each to sing at us while we assume the praying position with our hands, and then won’t let us go all the way inside after all, eliciting much grumbling. Later Gulnoza (our milenial) says it’s just as well I didn’t tell him he has a lovely voice).

My very own grandma gang is also staying at the B & B. They spirit me off on the abortive medressa adventure, out for dinner – a bowl of lamb bone soup (they thoughtfully skim the fat off mine) and then shopping. The pink lady “Hayat like the hotel chain” is from the Uzbeki restaurant in Brooklyn Olivia and I had lunch at last November.

The less than faithful get de trop gilding as a background for their selfies and the (regrettably many) French and German purists can still stumble across a derelict monument where the janitor will open the padlock for an exorbitant 10,000 sum ($1) so they can commune in solitary and significant satisfaction with the piles of bricks.

In the age of Genghis Khan this minaret was the highest structure in Central Asia. He was so impressed he left it standing for a change. Whoever decided to rebuild the medressas didn’t have a good plumb line.

The oldest monument in Bukhara has Zoroastrian elements from 5 BCE inside. Right now it is  repurposed as a carpet museum ‘sorry no photos’.

The Ark of Bukhara – the Khans’ then Emirs’ fort (the inside looks just like any other Welsh castle).

Negotiating for a camel ride. He never does get his pensioner’s discount.

The infamous Zindon Prison: It is the era of the Great Game. Colonel Stoddard has been sent to reassure the Emir that the British intend to stop their invasion at Afghanistan. Unfortunately he has neglected to bring appropriate gifts. What’s an Emir to do except throw him in the Bug Pit? Three years later and Captain Connolly arrives to plea for mercy. Not hard enough, and down he goes too. Later the Emir beheads them both outside the Ark.

A ghostly shadow down the Bug Pit which appears to have been cleared of the bugs, scorpions and vermin thrown down there to keep them company.

My own unrestored Bukhara. Mister accosts me in the street and demands 1000 sum (15c) to see his ‘house museum’. Who can resist?

The salon.

He is particularly proud of his oven. I give him $1 and he is thrilled, but renovations may take a while at this rate.

No walls or parkland in Bukhara, it has put its energies elsewhere, or to be more accurate it has kept its focus: Let’s not forget that the purpose of the Silk Road was to introduce consumerism to the world, and in that enduring tradition friendly little merchants are perched in every available alcove (and there are many) willing, no determined, to show off their wares and force us to open our purses to their inevitable profit. The Grandma gangs (who vastly outnumber the grandads and are therefore without oversight) sensibly leave the praying for Samarkand in favor of going toe to toe for a bargain. It is only slightly frenetic and a good time is had by all (apart from the French and Germans who are appalled how Bukhara has been despoiled by commerce).

A nice little mosque emerging from the neighborhood; Bukhara doesn’t bother walling things off.

Four rather underpowered minarets, one for some reason sporting a fake nest of storks.

No commercial opportunity shall be passed up.

Madam the master and her apprentice teach me a brilliant new way to do chain stitch.

The original Silk Road trading halls are still in business.

The bona-fide house museum belonged to the guy who conspired with the Bolsheviks to topple the Emir. His glory was short-lived: Once Stalin arrived on the scene he was murdered in a trice.

Another teenage bride arrives for her wedding photos like a lamb to the slaughter.

Bukhara also loves a dance party, and so we launch into 3 full days of merriment in honor of that goof-ball Mullah Nazruddin, who exists to be the butt of all jokes but then inevitably saves the day with the killer bon mot. All the troupes are embraced most enthusiastically no matter how amateur. Mullah wannabes in performance are justifiably met with considerably less enthusiasm. The three flavors of police are an extensive yet stoic presence, but the only guns are wooden and carried by the little boys, none of them are armed with more than a stick.

All Bukhara loves a dance party.

A mullah band with donkey (baseball cap optional)

The stage moms are cropped out.

Stylin’ Tajik girls.

Then there’s always the likely lads.

Its not a party without food (and evidently a donkey). I skip the Uzbeki sushi.

Thanks to ‘One Belt One Road’ Bukhara will soon be forced into the future. Back in the day this whole area was renowned as a fertile plain. Then, in an ill-considered effort to thwart the pre-Soviet and even pre-Great Game Russians, one of the Emirs dammed up the Aru Darya wantonly turning it all into a desert. Releasing the dams years later had little effect; unforeseen silting made the massive river into a delta with an ineffectual dribble of meager tributaries. The Chinese, manifest at my B & B by Lina and Lena, are here for the long haul and taking the irrigation problem firmly in hand. But will this attempt to damp down the mean desert winds come too late? There was very little snow again this year and all the rivers whatever their size are running depressingly low.

Lena and Lina (or Lina and Lena). One Belt One Road comes to Bukhara.

On my way out of town back to Tashkent I am eagerly anticipating luxuriating in my 1st class compartment (seats only 2) for the 7 hour journey.

But here comes Ekaterina, and she has two friends, Svetlana and Evgenia, and they have brought dinner for 4. So the party goes on, and the train, of course, is late.

How on earth does Samarkand live up to ten centuries of hype? And yet here we all are, lapping it up: friendly gangs of gold-toothed Uzbeki grandmas taking all the opportunities a pilgrimage offers for a few days away from the kitchen; equivalent numbers of severe Uzbeki grandads comporting themselves importantly, prayer hats all firmly set – let it be understood they’re not here to have fun; multigenerational Uzbeki families with shell-shocked teenage brides clutching at their newborns – their talisman against mom-in-law, the usual imperious grandsons and experienced aunts smoothing things over with ice-cream. And every single one of them wants to be photographed either with me or by me.

The grandma gangs are all out for a good time.

Grandads take it all more seriously but can sometimes be persuaded to crack a smile. Uzbekis are always laughing. They rapidly sober up in the presence of a camera lens.

Where would we be without the aunt willing to give mom a break.

The more mobile green grandma comes hurtling across the path and insists I take their photographs, twice (the first one doesn’t pass muster). Unfortunately she doesn’t have an email address I can send it to.

 

Internationally, uptight Russians muttering bitterly to each other about how things were and could still be; a smattering of supercilious Turks – the women caked in makeup with elaborate couture hijabs; a few officious Pakistani mullahs having the way cleared; invisible Kazakhs, Tajiks, Armenians. Here and there an Italian or two, some Dutch, no English and certainly no Americans.

Samarkand handles us all so sensitively: The magnificent monuments are swathed in manicured parkland that takes care of the logistics of shuffling us from one to the next just beautifully. The odiferous old city has been tactfully walled away, and the modern city, where life is actually lived, is kept at a respectable distance behind the trees. It is all very relaxing but not at all redolent of centuries of romantic Silk Road history. In fact romance is the last thing on Samarkand’s mind, and it becomes clear how the purists’ lament of the blurred line between restoration and renovation is so much more complicated in such a place of active worship.

The three monuments of the Registan, note the scale.

Ulug Beg Medressa

No you weren’t imagining it, this is Uzbekistan’s answer to the leaning tower.

Tila Kari (Gold covered) Medressa

Sher Dor (Lion) Medressa

Shockingly the Sher Dor Medressa has pictures of both animals AND humans

Just a short parkland stroll away, the Bibi Khanym mosque.

 

And its domed roof seen through the trees.

The Mosque containing Timurlane’s tomb. Mullah for scale.

The way to the Shah-i-Zinda (Avenue of Mausoleums) goes through the cemetery. The faithful aren’t amused by the pictures plastered on the graves, and especially the pompous sculpture up top.

The stunning Shah-i-Zinda (Avenue of Mausoleums) note the ice cream.

The blurred line between restoration and renovation.

Samarkand is also key to Uzbek national pride; established by the local hero Timur Amir (Timurlane) as the original capital when he set the area to rights after the Mongol devastation, it holds a place in their hearts Tashkent, with its Soviet overtones, can only aspire to. The only non-religious monument is his grandson Ulug Beg’s. Ulug Beg, polymath and avid astronomer (the astrolabe he designed was later ripped off by the moguls in Rajahstan) and a star in his own right –  calculated the exact length of a year with such admirable and unique precision his was the go-to text right up to the Age of Enlightenment. Its ruins and the usual incomprehensible museum are packed to the gills with an audience so bursting with pride and yet so flummoxed it is clear that the loss is not simply in translation.

Our local hero Ulug Beg in photocopy. There is some confusion about how a photograph works; many people evidently believing that it itself dates from the 15th century.

This $25 find – Antica B & B – is a particularly convivial caravanserai despite being run by a couple of irascible sisters who truck no nonsense from us mere guests. Its two houses are in the old style – rooms opening out onto a central courtyard. One is set up for us, the other – down the lane – houses the family and serves breakfast.

Spring is springing in our courtyard, from my room.

Dawdling in the courtyard, Portuguese brothers-in-law Luis and Jose –  my age – who traveled everywhere in the 80s, another, Spanish, Luis, who traveled everywhere in the 00s, a couple of Belgians, who are traveling everywhere right now, and two delightful Iranians. Silk Road fanatics with forty years-worth of combined travel horror stories between us and we bond instantly. At the house dinner the others get the short straw (a bottle of the local wine) while me and the Portuguese go for quality over quantity and elect to share the single bottle of beer. The food is famously inedible so the sisters usually have no problem throwing their guests out at 10. No such luck! It is well after midnight and we still cannot agree on the best route to Kashgar.

Courtyard views at the Registan medressas. Students’ cells, none currently occupied by students.

Some particularly sumptuous interiors from the Gold Medressa.

The Bibi Khanym mosque is done up differently

But the prize for (unrestored) tile-work goes to the Avenue of Mausoleums.

Scenes from village life firmly walled away from more glamorous Samarkand. Our street, taken 3 minutes apart. Some of us are destined to do the bucket run, while others get dressed up to go to school.

The smell of gas coming from these particular installations (in yellow) was indescribable. Alarmingly I was the only one who could smell it.

All that is left of the Jewish community in Samarkand: The remains of the mezuzah on the shuttered synagogue door.

The bazaar: Nothing is going to make these end of season potatoes look good.

The cheese ladies making sure its really fresh. The lap incubation is key to flavor.

Opinions are being passed on the pomegranates

Really rocking that apron lady!

Comings and goings on the avenue. The stressed teenager on the left is the mom.

More ice cream

Timurlane’s tomb. After a suitably pugnacious life he ended up dying of pneumonia.

And from the outside, a full 100 steps (and through the gate in the wall) from my $25 a night B & B.

The Amyru Darya river delta takes the edge off the harshness of the Kyzylkum and Karakum deserts that sandwich Khiva, the last intact Silk Road town. Agriculture is possible and since it is now officially spring any field not yet washed with a fuzz of green is rapidly acquiring precision furrows. Grumpy old men and their hyper-focused bandy legged wives provide most of the action while grandchildren resolutely shirk their responsibilities: Sulky teenage girls stare off into the distance, longing for a better present, a different future; younger brothers, kick balls or each other, neither use nor ornament.

The sheer romantic impact of the vast adobe mud walls, here since the 5^th century, is marred somewhat by a pervasive and alarming smell of gas (A Turkmenistani engineer staying at my B & B explains the rather ad hoc appropriation of domestic gas from the over ground main line encircling the town (seen in the photo); his wife and I open our windows before we go to sleep). The rich remnants of 600 years of Islamic architecture are solid evidence of Khiva’s significance well into the 19^th century.

Layers of history at the in-town necropolis.

Except that Khiva is not quite what it seems: We are seeing the fruits of the rigorous Soviet renovation that shored up the buildings while divesting the nearly 100 (each) of mosques and medressas of their religious roles.

Some 10th century columns are still standing, the others are renovations. We can tell because the older columns were soaked in chicken shit for 5 years to smooth the wood. The Russians didn’t bother.

The inevitable middle schoolers

And awkward bridal party.

Still, the citizens adapted and even though the Soviets are long gone the call to prayer remains anemic.

But Khiva has its eye on the future as well as the past. A quick sortie outside the East Gate (in search of crackers, my single line of defense against the ubiquitous fatty food) reveals a bomb site.

The East gate with gas line

The future is being planned outside the walls

Madame and daughter of the cracker shop.

More iconic views of Khiva, first from my hotel roof

The Sacred well medressa.

‘Three coins in the fountain’ is a different proposition when all the currency is in notes.

The museums are always vaguely disappointing

Inquiries to the millenial-behind-the-desk reveals big plans for the future – a new bazaar! (the current one is a mere shadow of its Silk Road self although when I hear a Russian guide tell his group “Don’t buy anything it’s all made in China” it feels like plus ça change); more hotels! (land can’t be bought and sold inside the old city, only inherited, and most inhabitants it seems are content with their cows and sheep, at least for now); a fast train! (2 hours instead of 18 from Tashkent is coming this year already). Khiva clearly has theme park aspirations.

Hotel Zukhro’s milenial at the desk (the heir apparent) is only 14 but already has well formed social opinions. He will go to Korea to study English at university, while his sister will stay confined to the house. At breakfast I learn she has other plans.

These book stands are still made on site. The master, Hasan Bey, can trace his ancestry through 18 generations. He shows me how they’re carved from a single piece of wood and insists I take a video of how they can be opened (nine ways).

Plus ça change indeed.

Hearts and minds folks.

I swear though, Uzbekis are the chat masters of the universe! No sooner are they all sat down than  favorite stories are brought out to rapt attention and just the right quota of encouraging questions. A long train journey is the perfect crucible and this one is my last overnight of the trip from Khiva to Samarkand (the worst possible, I failed to notice we only stop briefly and at the ungodly hour of 2:45am – it will be impossible to sleep soundly).

My compartment mates  – a nice young cardiologist who is a dead ringer for a young Barack Obama, and an enormous old guy with a full set of gold teeth who prays enthusiastically as soon as he sits down but then puts away his hat and pretensions for the duration) and the inevitable shy Tajik on the top bunk are soon frustrated by our lack of shared words (Google translate [and the internet] gives up half an hour after departure as usual, just when the cardiologist has used it to announce ‘I am Mexican’ to everyone’s confusion).

Barack Obama

My fat friend saved our bacon with dinner (so to speak) but refuses to open his mouth for the photo op so his magnificent dental work goes unreported.

The redoubtable Russell. Goldman Sachs class of 2020.

We are saved by the appearance of ‘Russell’ the milenial (of course) a student of finance at Singapore University with aspirations to a distinguished career at Goldman Sachs. He speaks impeccable English. As soon as news of a bona fide translator spreads, the compartment floods with inquiring minds. It is standing room only and I am forced to become an expert on both Western Europe and the Americas. We segue from economics to politics to soccer (briefly) and on to medical horror stories. Poor Russell is run ragged for 6 hours with a brief break for dinner (hard boiled eggs from the Tajik, bread and delicious sausage from fatty, tea from Barack Obama, cookies supplied by me) before we all collapse with exhaustion. I get up quietly at 2:30 and at 2:40 fatty lumbers up from his bunk opposite and insists on carrying my luggage the 20 feet to the carriage door. He has put on his hat so he can bless my travels.

Uzbeki humor

 

I have made the sensible decision to reduce my stay In Turkestan to only night, but visa considerations mean I now have to be in Shymkent (of which Lonely Planet opines ‘there is little here to interest the tourist’ – an almost criminal exaggeration) for three. The customary amble on day one is pleasant enough –  I stumble on the Museum of Soviet Repression which explains handily why Soviet history is so hard to find and why when I cheerily ask the waitress whether our GT conversation will be ‘Russkiy o Kazakh’ she puts her head down to hiss ‘Russkiy’ in my ear, but by 6pm and despite the balmy weather I have exhausted all options and retreat to my Airbnb to binge watch McMafia.

We get the message at the Museum of Soviet Repression

A monument to the 145,000 Southern Kakahs who died in the Second World War. Not mentioned: a significant number of others defected to the Germans.

Spring is trying hard to arrive in Shymkent

Sheer desperation on day 2 forces me into a tortuous 2 hour bus ride to Sayram in an effort to locate the area’s only Silk Road ruin that survived the Soviets, presumably because they too walked right past it. Still Shymkent serves its purpose,  I finish McMafia and am raring to get on the road again.

The 30 foot Silk Road minaret that the Soviets missed. According to LP one can ‘climb to the top to get a view of the mountains’. Omitted: on your hands and knees.

Downtown action in Sayram, ignored by the Soviets for all the right reasons.

The transition from Shymkent to Tashkent involves an international border awash in internet hysteria – the Kazakhs will scrutinize my passport for the correct number of stamps (I’m one short thanks to my lackadaisical military friend on the train from Russia) and documentation of registration (don’t have it, aim to play the dementia card) while the Uzbeks will comb my luggage for anything they deem offensive (they are apparently easily offended). Visions of internment in no-man’s land disturb my sleep, however the day starts off well: The NYP (nice young people) who have rented me the apartment convey me to the gladiator circus where the 2 hour shared taxi rides to the border are transacted and negotiate me a coveted front seat for the local price ($3). The road to the border is a swish 6 lane highway. We arrive tout de suite.

A straight shot to the border

Uzbekistan is a resolutely credit card and ATM free zone, and its currency (som) is closed so I will need to carry my whole 3 week Uzbeki budget as well as a buffer for entering Kyrgistan in the boondocks, in cash. I can’t top up dollars in Shymkent but the NYP reveal an ‘unofficial’ option for changing Kazakh Tenge to som at the border. I land up on the highway median where Macbeth’s witches with gold teeth huddle into the wind. Calculators are whipped out. Cash is stuffed into grocery bags (my hastily acquired Tenge will transform into about 1,800,000, the largest note is 10,000). Simultaneously, duplicate forms are being filled out in Russian declaring all cash, assets and strangely, medication (antibiotic, antidiarrheal and ibuprofen). Huddled into the wind myself, It is all very disorienting and ripe for a scam. Later, when I realize I am $20 short I console myself with the thought that they could have given me plain paper and in the moment I wouldn’t have noticed.

As calculated, in light of the massive bundles of who-knows-what being energetically ‘imported’ in both directions, the border officials have bigger fish to fry than me. They are in no mood to engage in GT conversations to confirm I am demented, and my reading material, luggage and medications are of no interest. Sadly, once safely in Uzbekistan I must tackle the gladiators on my own. My taxi driver is so irate I am only willing to pay 1½ times the going rate ($3) for the hour ride to Tashkent he refuses to take me further than the Metro station and I am reduced to collaring a random pedestrian to phone my B & B for directions. They send their 12 year old son who manfully shoulders my roly bag. All in all a very successful day.

Salaam Tashkent

 Jahongir B & B is in the old town, an area so residential that the predominant nocturnal noise is the sheep the neighbors evidently keep in their courtyard.

Jahongir B & B. There are definitely sheep behind one of those walls.

Another $25 bargain, especially now I’ve wheedled an extra pillow.

Mine hosts are an extremely traditional Uzbek family – all females headscarved even indoors (daughters up to their elbows in laundry or scrubbing the stairs) and no evidence of dad except for his singlets drying on the washing line. But mom is speaks fluent English and is eager to explain the new president’s goals to open Uzbekistan to the world (visa reform! ATMs! Credit cards! Faster internet! Massive ugly building projects!) while simultaneously trying to justify why her daughters will be just as well off getting married as going to university. Beneath the polished sweetness a spine of steel.

Muhammed and his sister Alazira. He wants to play for Real Madrid, and practices daily in the lane. She wants to be a doctor and only ever leaves the compound to go to school.

But LP is so wrong about Tashkent, its civic architecture is astounding! I emerge from the Metro to a city center in which glorious pre-Revolutionary and Soviet buildings have been deployed in extensive parkland packed to the gills with flowering trees.

The previous president’s vanity project with my photo-taking friends. Old folks don’t do selfies.

Pre-revolutionary home of one of the Romanovs.

Another glorious opera theatre

The story behind the negotiations behind this plaque would be worth hearing.

A Soviet favorite

Don’t expect a warm welcome at the Uzbekistan Hotel.

There has to be a Lada

The Russian second hand book market. Samizdat is out. Test prep and text books are in. Russian schools are still the pathway to higher education. Striver Uzbeks grit their teeth and suck it up.

No takers for the Soviet memorabilia still for sale.

On the run-up to Nowruz there is little traffic only decorous families wallowing in the opportunity to be out eating ice-cream in their winter clothes (it is 70° today, it will be 115°C in the summer).

Bad art for (almost) everyone.

Not overwhelmed with customers today

If only the megalomaniac previous president hadn’t cut down all the plane trees in Republic Square we could have checked out the chess players too. In the absence of shade they have taken themselves elsewhere.

Republic Square. At a time when it wasn’t cool a (luckily anonymous) dissident castrated the horse to protest cutting down the trees.

He cut them down so we could all see his building behind.

The chess players have moved elsewhere.

A 5-hour stroll takes it all in and then another execrable dinner of fatty shashlik and an inadvertent mayonnaise salad in the restaurant across the road. Uzbeki cuisine begins to take its toll. Off to Khiva on the night train tomorrow.

The overnight train from Almaty draws into Turkestan just after dawn, frightening the birds hoping for an early start on the sheets of standing water left behind by the snow.

The animals are out too – compact woolly cows toughened up from the winter, burly brown and black steppe sheep and the inevitable hairy, neurotic goats. Their shepherds will catch up with them later on horseback, or less ideally, on donkeys. The sky is leaden and the wind is damp. There will be no sun today.

Crows’ nests. It is exactly as dank as it looks.

Hotel Edem, the best budget option in town (there are no non-budget options) is unfortunately already living up to its mixed reputation, but as usual there is a NYL at the desk prepared to bond over my passport: ‘Wait, you’re the same age as my MOTHER!’ her GT tells me. She hustles me off for breakfast, checking in to make sure I’m eating enough protein. No tourists in the bustling dining room, and the notorious nightclub seems to be located outdoors; surely no all-night disco in March?

One of the many design flaws at Hotel Edem. The gate is padlocked. Getting onto the entrance stairs involves sidling around the banister.

In this case the design flaw is not, as you may think, that there is no way to keep the water within the shower, it is that concreting over the drain means it has no place to go once it is on the floor.

But I have scored famous room 215!  – the farthest room from the notorious all night disco. Of course I have to pay for the privilege ($30).

In a rare flash of prescience I have given myself only one day in Turkestan, so a car and driver are needed post haste. NYL will find me one. It will be twice what I’d pay if I go out on the streets and negotiate myself, but I’m willing to forego the extra $10. In short order I am introduced to Roma, my driver to be, another hulking Uzbek. Roma has selected ‘business casual’ for our excursion and I am so transfixed by his natty blazer and sparkling shoes, I neglect due diligence on his car, which I will regret later. I myself am swaddled in many of the clothes left after mailing my Siberian wardrobe back home, somewhat prematurely it seems.

Our destination is an hour and a half out of town through the relentless steppe, scarred here and there by dry river beds – the snow just melted, will they ever run full? A couple of villages, a tiny town. Texas on steroids.

Though Irkutsk too stood at a trade route crossroads between west and east, Sauran is my first official Silk Road site,  its crumbling city walls pierce the flatness like a mirage.

It is so flat any topography is due to ruined walls and buildings.

One of very few surviving ancient ruins in Kazakhstan, Sauran was built in the 12^th century, developed strong diplomatic and trading ties with China, survived Genghis Khan and eventually become capital of the White Horde, only to be abandoned when the nearest river abandoned it a couple of centuries later. The walls encircle a huge mound of rubble more than a kilometer in diameter.

The virgin ruins weep exquisitely decorated pottery fragments .

Only one house has been excavated.

I amble round, completely alone except for birds and a shepherd on a pony more than a kilometer away. I am studiously ignored.

The shepherd is also circumnavigating the walls.

The brickwork melts into the landscape.

After nearly 2 hours I spot Roma fastidiously picking his way over the debris and agree reluctantly to call it a day.

We have achieved Sauran via the main road west out of Turkestan, a well-maintained four lane divided highway crawling with police presumably to protect the flocks meandering from side to side, or the shepherds who like to share their lunch on the median, since there is little traffic. Motorists warn each other with complicated hand signals and Roma responds by slowing to a crawl. But wait, why he is actually leaping out of the car, surely we can’t have been nailed? In a manner of speaking: one of the four mismatched wheels has a serious flat. Fortunately he has a spare. Less fortunately nothing else.

Roma’s tool box does not bode well for actually changing this flat tire

Fortunately again many of the sporadic cars stop to offer assistance. Less fortunately, most also lack the necessary combo of jack and appropriate wrench. A car passes every 3 minutes or so, about one in three stops, and we hit the jackpot when the lucky number of stops is seven. The wind has come straight from Siberia and Roma has had to remove his best jacket. I can huddle in the car, at least until the wheel change is imminent.

Our Sir Galahad is deeply skeptical of the whole endeavor.

When we are on our way I firmly turn the heat up and the Uzbeki pop songs off.

Next up the most famous monument in Kazakhstan, the mausoleum of Kozha Yasaui, still an important Sufi mystic.  Designed and built on a visionary scale by Tamurlane, he died in 1405 before he could complete it. There are no tourists today, only a couple of Sufi groups making furtive pilgrimages (their Sufism is controversial). They are pleased when I leave them alone.

The Yasaui mausoleum: Figure on left for scale.

The unfinished front.

The back.

The tile above the door is much more free-form than I expected.

I finish the day with a whistle-stop tour of the Turkestan museum. A fine display of pre-history artefacts from 10,000 BC but interestingly, the whole Russian and Soviet era is completely elided. Outside, for the first time in Kazakhstan, the call to prayer.

The guide loses interest in me at the 12th century so I can surreptitiously snap this ‘Turkestan of the Future – mock up’ despite the stern no photos warning.

Dinner at the best restaurant in town (Hotel Edem where else?) is shashlik advertised as beef, but from its texture, patently horse.  The disco sputters into life at 11, but pulls the plug at 11:15. I sleep like a log and Roma comes the next morning to drive me to the bus station, more appropriately dressed as a car mechanic and with a sheepish grin.