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Karakul Lake – Trouble in Paradise

Karakul (Lake), some four hours south of Kashgar in China’s Xinjiang Province, is quite simply one of the most beautiful places we have ever been.



Situated at 3600 meters, and hours from the nearest city, Karakul is isolated and pristine, yet easily accessible from Kashgar by regular bus service on the Karakoram Highway. Not only is it a place of natural beauty, but a visit to the lake offers ample opportunity to interact with the local Kyrgyz–in some ways it offers an even better experience (and certainly in a more beautiful setting) than similar destinations in the Kyrgyz homeland of Kyrgyzstan. It has all the makings of a world-class attraction.

Except that the current situation at the lake is totally fucked up.

It is well-established practice among travelers–has been for the last ten/twenty years at least and is described in every guidebook–to stay on the shores of Karakul in yurts set up by the local Kyrgyz. The yurts are there for tourists, and so it cannot be said to be a fully authentic yurtstay, but the Kyrgyz keepers are from the nearby village and the yurts themselves are authentically and well constructed. The Kyrgyz ask for RMB 40 (USD 6) per person for dinner, lodging and breakfast, which is frankly a very good deal, especially when compared to yurtstay rates in Kyrgyzstan which cost about three times as much. And all this in, again, a drop-dead spectacular setting.

After arriving at the lake by bus from Kashgar and dropping off our bags in a yurt, we were simply ecstatic. The weather and lake were gorgeous, the yurt beautiful and our Kyrgyz host terrific, offering a level of formal hospitality that was warm and sincere. We were to share the yurt with two young Frenchmen, a total of RMB 160 for the host which isn’t a bad take, either. After having some bread and tea, we set off for a walk and ended up hiring horses to go around the perimeter of the lake. Other than my horse choosing at one point to lay down (with me still on it), everything was perfect and according to plan.

The first sign of trouble came when a couple people came around with ticket books, trying to charge us RMB 50 (USD 7.50) each for being at the lake. We thought this ridiculous. Here we were, at a natural lake in the middle of nowhere. There is no way in which the lake has been “developed” nor is there any kind of fence or other barrier to the lake. Worse yet, the people charging the tickets were from the ugly hotel nearby–an eyesore if anything–with which we had had no contact, and frankly didn’t want any contact. Not even knowing whether the tickets were legitimate, we refused to pay, as did many of the other tourists present.

The ticket sellers backed down, but a few hours later proceeded to make a circuit of all the tourists in their yurts, forcing people to buy the tickets. Our host told us that it was in fact required (if you come within 10 kilometers of the lake), and that we could not stay at his yurt if we did not have the tickets. We were pissed off–if it were earlier in the day we would surely have just moved on south to Tashkurgan instead of staying at the lake, and we initially said that we would then just leave. But given the uncertainty of finding transportation at that hour, we finally relented and after some negotiation paid RMB 25 (around USD 4) for student tickets–it was simpler to just consider it part of the cost of the yurt (even at RMB 65 per person not a bad deal) and stay. We didn’t know that the situation was going to turn much worse, much uglier.

We had dinner in the yurt–freshly made laghman–and were settled in for sleep. Our host’s wife set up an impossible platform of quilts–real princess-and-the-pea stuff–in which the four of us were to sleep side-by-side, in what I thought was sort of 19th century style. We were already partially undressed and in bed, chatting, when our host suddenly came in. “Problem. Police are here, problem. You have to be very quiet for the next hour.” We of course had no idea what was going on, although we assumed that it had something to do with our host’s legal ability to take guests. We were, frankly, annoyed, but followed his instructions. Which didn’t deter what would happen next.

About 12:30 AM (although far out west in Xinjiang it did not feel so late), several men in military fatigues barged into our yurt with flashlights. Shining it in our faces, they counted “yi, er, san, si” and left. A few minutes later, they came back in with our host, who explained that we couldn’t sleep in the yurt, and had to go over to the hotel.

We were furious and refused. We had no idea that there was any legal situation involving yurtstays (given that every guidebook says that it is done, there are no signs warning people against it and there are actual yurts surrounding the lake whose sole purpose is to house tourists). We were foreign tourists who were already undressed and in bed. It was past midnight and military had barged into our room shining flashlights in our faces. After the ticket incident, we suspected that the hotel was responsible. It was simply an outrage, and we did not see why we should comply. Derek, standing in only his underwear, screamed as loudly as he could while alternately pressing his wrists together and pointing to the door, saying, “Arrest me or get the fuck out! Arrest me or get the fuck out!” Finally, our Kyrgyz host said that he would be fined a huge sum of money unless we left, and we reluctantly marched to the hotel. Outside were some 12-15 foreign tourists, groggy from having been woken from bed.

There was no way, however, that we would let this end so easily. Our instinct told us that this was the hotel’s doing. The greedy proprietors of the hotel were not only charing RMB 50 tickets for the lake, but pushing everyone to stay at their hotel instead of the local yurts. We walked into the hotel and found a few military officers sitting in one of the rooms along with the manager, in what was set up as a sort of a command post for the operation. Derek started yelling. The hotel people knew, from having collected money for tickets earlier in the day, that there were all these people in the yurts. The police station/military post was less than a kilometer away. If they wanted to enforce the law, or whatever it was, they could easily have done so earlier in the day (or put up signs preventing people from trying to stay in a yurt in the first place), but instead waited until we were all settled in, when there was no possibility of travel away from the lake, presumably so that we would all be forced to pay for rooms at the crummy hotel.

The manager’s attitude was infuriating. She said that she too had yurts (fake cement ones, that is), as if that was something that any of us desired. She lied and said that she had nothing to do with the military crackdown (confirmed as a lie not only from circumstance but by local residents the next morning). The officer said that the move was for our own safety, as if any tourist had ever been harmed by a Kyrgyz yurt-host, and offered some lame excuse about the Olympics, in what is probably the place in China most distant from Beijing.

Using the assistance of a domestic tourist who spoke English, we told the officer in charge that what he was doing was completely unjustifiable, and asked what he thought China’s reputation would be if it became widely known that the military had invaded the lodging rooms of dozens of overseas tourists, shining flashlights in their faces and evicting them in the middle of the night. We asked why, if actually illegal, the yurts have remained in place for ten/twenty years. We had decided that if our experience, our peace was robbed, we would make the night equally troublesome and memorable for the officers and the hotel man
ager. We persisted and, in fact, the officer had little to say to defend himself.

Derek proposed to end the conflict by having all of return to our yurts with a promise that our hosts would not be fined for having us as guests that night. The officers seemed relieved and accepted. The officer apologized and allowed all of us to return to our yurts, while providing sincere assurances that the Kyrgyz hosts would not be in any way penalized for taking us as guests. Derek was thanked by both local Kyrgyz (it seems that the Kyrgyz yurtkeepers are having something of an ongoing battle with the hotel, which is Han-Chinese run) and a fellow tourist, for taking a stand.

We don’t know what’s going on at the lake now. The last we heard, the enhanced security concerns during the Olympics were resulting in tourists being turned away at a checkpoint between Kashgar and the lake, told that they could not go any further toward Pakistan without an intent to cross the border. But we were told by our host that the military harassment was a frequent occurrence (which actually annoyed us, since this meant that the Kyrgyz were taking customers knowing full well that there was a good chance that the military would come to throw them out). Our guess is that the hotel manager wants to keep the yurts in place because they attract tourists–if the yurts were totally disassembled, and that information out, most people would probably visit the lake only on a daytrip from Kashgar. What should tourists do? I don’t know what the actual legalities are surrounding Karakul, but if the law actually does not permit the Kyrgyz to operate yurts and the law really requires tourists to pay RMB 50 to the hotel for doing absolutely nothing, I think the best answer is that you should visit the lake only for so long as you can get away without paying for admission, and then leave. Well-written letters to well-placed people may not hurt, either. In the end, it is a true tragedy that such a beautiful location with such potential is so wasted by what seems like extreme greed and petty, low-level corruption.

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China photo

Kashgar

“Just another Chinese city” is what we were expecting. Yes, the name is exotic; yes, it is in the furthest reaches of western China; yes, it is populated largely by Uyghurs and not Han Chinese. But we knew that we were arriving many years too late. We had heard that the Sunday market is nothing like it used to be, now housed in purpose-built buildings. We heard that the Chinese economic miracle had reached this far, and along with it settlement (colonization?) by Han Chinese. Our expectations were low–not that we have a low opinion of Chinese cities, but we’ve seen many before, and didn’t expect to see much that was new or exciting in Kashgar.

While Kashgar is definitely part of 21st century China, the city proved a much more colorful and interesting destination than we imagined.

Perhaps obviously, the greatest factor in making Kashgar so unique, so different from the rest of China, is its Uyghur population. The most obvious difference is simply visual–the Uyghurs don’t look Chinese. In fact, even though I knew that the Uyghurs were a Central Asian Turkic people, I was surprised at how un-Chinese, un-east Asian they look, especially compared to their western neighbors the Kyrgyz, who look for the most part Chinese/Mongol. Moving east from Kyrgyzstan to Xinjiang, it is jarring to see how un-Chinese, how “white” if you will, Uyghurs are in appearance. It is a constant reminder that you’re not in the China with which you are familiar. [Additional portraits to come in a post on faces of Muslim China.]


Of course, the distinctive Uyghur identity is not merely facial features, but culture and lifestyle. What is visible everywhere in the Uyghur parts of Kashgar is a vibrant Central Asian culture, similar to what you see in the most traditional parts of Uzbekistan or Tajikistan, and somewhat more traditional than what you see in the other Central Asian republics.

Men hang out in teahouses, drinking tea and chatting with friends.

Like in other parts of Central Asia, melons are everywhere. In Kashgar, they are conveniently sold by the slice.

Religious observance was suprisingly visible as well, here in Communist China. We saw women on the street in levels of cover greater than in the Stans, and numerous mosques and shrines.

Id Kah Mosque

Abakh Hoja Tomb

Tourism has supported crafts such that the art of Uyghur instrument production is clearly thriving, possibly to a greater extent than ever before.

Uyghur cuisine is essentially identical to that of the rest of Central Asia, although infinitely better prepared and tastier. (See post of 7.5.) The prints that appear on the local fabrics are identical to that seen in other parts of Central Asia. When we showed a local man pictures on our iPod, he clucked his tongue in appreciation just like the hosts of our Bukhara bed and breakfast. It almost makes you wonder–how did these people end up becoming Chinese?

Admittedly, much of Kashgar has been destroyed and rebuilt in recent years. The area immediately surrounding the Id Kah Mosque, for example, is a distastefully and sadly Disneyfied vision of Uyghur architecture. However, just a few blocks away lie genuinely old neighborhoods–if not ancient at least still in their traditional layout and form.


The center of the commercial part of the old town

The best preserved portions of the old city, now admission-charging tourist sites, but still real neighborhoods nonetheless

One thing that preserves the foreignness of Kashgar, I think, is the segregation between the Han and the Uyghurs. In the old town, there is often not a single Han Chinese in sight, while in the newer parts of town one sees few Uyghurs. The newer, Han areas of Kashgar do indeed look like “any other city in China.”


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Kyrgyzstan photo

Kyrgyz Cemeteries

Unfortunately, I have not been able to do any research on Kyrgyz burial practice, but Kyrgyz cemeteries, seen not only in Kyrgyzstan but also in Kyrgyz areas of Tajikistan and China, are among the most interesting we have ever seen. Located usually in an open scenic setting, each plot is built up with mudbrick into a structure that looks like anything from a mosque to a fort to sometimes a church. Some pictures:






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faces Kyrgyzstan photo

Faces of Kyrgyzstan

Let us start with Kyrgyz in a proper traditional Kyrgyz setting–a yurt. We took these pictures around (Lake) Song Kul, a popular destination in central Kyrgyzstan.


Look at those suburnt cheeks!

A Packers fan!

More urban Kyrgyz


Selling ak-kalpaks, the traditional Kyrgyz hat

As with the other Central Asian republics, Kyrgyzstan has a substantial population of ethnic minorities, including especially Uzbeks in and near the Fergana Valley. We met Uzbeks not only in Osh, but also in the Uzbek village of Arslanbob nearby.

At a market restaurant in Osh. Osh, by the way, has some of the best food in Central Asia (although we did not try the odd concoction pictured).




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food Kyrgyzstan photo Tajikistan Turkmenistan Uzbekistan

Food of Central Asia

Central Asia is, simply put, not a culinary destination. While there are some regional dishes of note, which when well-prepared are tasty, none would rank among the world’s most delicious, and restaurants offering a truly high standard of skill and quality are quite rare. Sheep fat is the predominant recurring theme. So often do we find ourselves longing for the edible delights of China, or Thailand, or almost anywhere else in the world… sigh.

First, some classic dishes served all across Central Asia. (Given the common Turkic background of most of the Central Asian ethnicities, and with surprisingly little variation in Tajik areas, the cuisine is fairly similar throughout the region.)

The food most dear to a Central Asian’s heart, I think, would be shashlyk, or meat on a skewer. Now, it may almost be a stretch to call this a “dish,” but it is definitely one of the most common foods eaten out (as in Iran and Turkey, I suppose, although the Central Asian variety is decidedly inferior). Shashlyk is usually chunks of lamb meat, and not the ground sort that is called kofte in Turkey and kubideh in Iran, sometimes alternating meat/fat/meat/fat. The fat is especially prized by Central Asians, although we usually just spit it out after taking a nibble for flavor–in fact, we often do the same with the bits of meat because it can be impossible to separate it from the fat.

With roasted vegetables (not too common)

A common site–a man fanning a shashlyk fire

Plov, the national dish of Uzbekistan (derived from Iranian polo, I suppose), is available in other parts of Central Asia as well. The plov pictured here, from Bukhara, was surprisingly good–often, plov is way too greasy (on the upside, no chapped lips!).

In pan, a mountain of plov next to a pool of fat

Served up, topped with sweet stewed carrots, reconstituted raisins and meat

Dumplings exist across the entire stretch of Asia from Korea to Turkey, and are even called by the same name (mandoo in Korea, manti in Turkey as well as in Central Asia, both derived I believe from the Chinese mantou). Central Asian manti is generally filled with bits of lamb, lamb fat and onions. This picture probably makes them look more appetizing than they are (not only chapped lips, but glossy cheeks!).

The younger brother of the manti, chuchvara, which are really quite similar to Chinese wantons. Chuchvara are similar to (Russian) dumplings called pelmeni, which are sometimes served in soup.

Just as manti exist horizontally across Asia, samosas exist vertically from the Indian subcontinent into Central Asia. One of the most common snacks, somsas can be triangular or square. Here, some huge ones sold at a bus station.

In the oven (called a tamdyr, similar to the Indian tandoor)

My favorite Central Asian food, although one that really varies in quality. Generally, laghman (from the Chinese lamian, I believe) is better the closer to China you are. In an Uzbekistan homestay I once had it made with instant noodles, another time with spaghetti–a travesty, really. In Kyrgyzstan it was often delicious. [Addendum: Laghman as served in Xinjiang China has become one of my favorite foods in the world.]

One is often served basic soup, or shorpa (similar to Indian shorba). This soup has some stuffed vegetables, or dolma (just as in the Mediterranean)

A simple but tasty stew that we were served at a guesthouse. We think that this (in contrast to shashlyk) is close to what Central Asians eat on a day-to-day basis at home.

Everything of course is served with bread. Big and beautiful, bread (generally called nan, as in India) is central not only to the meal but to the hearts and cultures of all of the Central Asian nations. The patterns are made with special stamps.

On display in Bukhara

Most famous (although in my opinion not most delicious), the nan of Samarkand

Just as important as bread is the local beverage of choice, tea. Tea in Central Asia is surprisingly high quality, and you often have the choice of black or green, although green is more common. You are usually served tea with a plate of snacks and copious amounts of bread.

Moving on to country-specific specialties:

Shirchai, tea with salt and yak butter eaten with chunks of bread torn in, was described to us as the “national food” of the Pamiris. We believe that this is similar to other salty buttery tea drinks served in high altitude areas such as Northern Pakistan and Tibet.

Breakfast in the Pamirs or in Kyrgyzstan was usually a rice porridge, sometimes served with an odd sauce that looked like vegetable oil. It tastes like it looks, although Derek liked it with butter and sugar added in.

The Kyrgyz, living as they do among milk-producing animals, always have on hand all sorts of dairy products, some of which are better than others. Some butter and cream served with bread.

What to do with all the dairy? Some of it is dried into little cheese/yogurt balls sold throughout Central Asia. People often snack on these, and like to hand one to visitors, which puts one in an uncomfortable situation because the balls are often quite difficult to eat–hard as a rock, chalky and extremely strong-tasting. But good with beer, we are told!

Another Kyrgyz specialty, the “national dish” if you will, is beshbarmak, which is noodles with lamb. The concoction tastes more or less like sheep fat, a flavor we have become quite accustomed to at this point. The second is beshbarmak Kazakh-style, which is apparently made with much wider noodles and soupy.

In addition to more purely local food, Russian and even Korean food is often available in Central Asia. The Korean food is generally served by ethnic Koreans, who were forcibly relocated by Stalin from the Russian Far East (near Vladivostok near Korea) to Central Asia because he was afraid of their possible allegiance to Japan (which seems like a rather quacky idea to me).

What I believe would be described as goulash, with various salads, served in Osh

Food served in a Korean restaurant in Uzbekistan. As you can see, it’s not what a Korean from Korea would consider Korean food (it was served with bread!), but it was tasty nonetheless.

Perhaps more recognizably Korean is kykcy (from Korean guksu), which is a sort of Russified/Central Asianized naengmyun.

Finally, can’t forget the fruit! Central A
sia has a wealth of fruit, especially melons and apricots/peaches/plums. Much of this is available in dried form, along with a variety of seeds and nuts well in excess of what you can find in most other parts of the world.

Cherries

Apricots

Watermelon for sale

Dried fruit and nuts

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Kyrgyzstan photo Tajikistan Turkmenistan Uzbekistan

Cars of Central Asia

One area in which the Soviet era has left a very visible mark on Central Asia is its cars. There are many vehicles in Central Asia that are not often seen in the West, and I thought it would be fun to do this post. As I do not know much about cars, not much commentary.

A Lada Classic

A Lada Niva, the most basic 4WD transportation

Russian UAZ Minibus, a durable 4WD and used all over Tajikistan as public transit

Russian UAZ Jeep. We were amazed by the maneuverability of this car over impossibly rough terrain.

Russian Moskovitch

A few newer (non-Russian) cars, revealing recent trends in each of the Stans that we visited.

This Russian-Turkmen team in Turkmenistan was driving a new Nissan SUV from the Turkmen-Iranian to the Turkmen-Uzbek border, one step in a car import route from Dubai to Kazakhstan. All the newfound wealth in Kazakhstan (as well as Turkmenistan) must mean many new automobile imports–the trouble of going through the additional borders on this route must preferred to the additional land distance of the routes through Russia or China.

Almost all cars in Uzbekistan are Korean, the result of a partnership called Uz-Daewoo that I believe operates a factory in Uzbekistan. The small cars are all Ticos, the sedans all Nexias and the minibuses all Damases. [Korean interests have established quite an outpost in Uzbekistan–post on Korea’s footprint in Central Asia likely to come.]

While Korean economic and cultural imports into Central Asia are significant, it is China that hopes to establish itself as a dominant power in the region, along with Russia and the U.S. We’ve seen dealerships for Chinese automobiles in various countries but Tajikistan is the first country other than China in which we’ve seen a significant volume of Chinese cars on the road. Driving on the main roads of Tajikistan, one often sees huge convoys of Chinese minibuses, sometimes filled with other Chinese goods. These cars, which we were told cost as little as USD4000 in China, are driven over the Qolma Pass and the Pamir Highway into Tajikistan. We were told that the influx of these vehicles is having a very positive effect on the availability of shared transportation in the country, with people able to establish minibus businesses for themselves with relatively little capital investment. [post on Chinese exports to come]

For some reason, Kyrgyzstan has one of the highest concentrations of German cars in the world. The most common are Audis (almost every other or third car is an Audi, it seems), but there is a fair number of Benzes as well, especially considering the relative poverty of the country. It is not uncommon to see imported used cars from car-producing countries, which often incentivize people at home into changing cars frequently, but in Asia we have been more accustomed to seeing used Japanese and Korean cars. If someone knows the historical or economic reason for these German cars in Kyrgyzstan, please let me know!

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faces photo Tajikistan

Faces of Tajikistan

The Tajiks were right up there with Syrians and Iranians (the latter, their kin) in terms of friendliness and warmness to foreign visitors, and we will remember the country very fondly. These portraits are in the order of western lowlands to eastern Pamirs, the direction of our travels.

A beautiful young girl from Penjikent

Elderly Uzbek man, Penjikent. Uzbeks make up some 15% of Tajikistan’s population, living predominantly in the west and north. Tajiks were quick to point out that the ethnic Uzbeks of Tajikistan live much more freely than the ethnic Tajiks of Uzbekistan. [See my post of 6.21.]

Some photographs from Dushanbe. Dushanbe, being the largest city and the capital, contains many different ethnic groups, but the people pictured here appear to be Tajik.


Heading into the mountains of eastern Tajikistan, one encounters the Pamiris, who are an Iranian people like the lowland Tajiks but have a distinct (and ancient) culture. I have read it speculated that they are descendants of the ancient inhabitants of Central Asia, the Scythians, who were reported by many historical sources as having light hair and eyes. Pamiris, having lived in mountainous isolation, retain valley-specific idiosyncratic languages and ancient pre-Islamic customs. [See my post of 6.23.]

A Pamiri family living near a high pass, tending livestock for the summer.


Other portraits of Pamiri Tajiks. Note how light some are in coloration.







Along with the last picture, the following were all taken on the high plateau of the eastern Pamirs. The Murgab District is largely Kyrgyz, Tajikistan’s second largest minority group. I was generally shocked at how “Asian” Kyrgyz look–I could certainly pass for one!



Two members of a rather beautiful family that we met while out on a hike


Cheeks astonishingly burnt by sun

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photo Tajikistan

Mudslide, or From Jalang to Osh

This post can be read as a continuation of a series describing our route through Tajikistan–please refer to my posts of 6.18, 6.20, 6.23, 6.24, 6.25 and 6.26.

***

From Jalang it was off again, to see geoglyphs in an even more distant place called Shurali and a meterorite crater. In one of the most remote (and beautiful) settings we met again (after seeing them first in Uzbekistan–tourists’ routes are often surprisingly well-established) a Swiss couple that was driving their two dogs and a very high-tech looking RV that looked something like a souped up waste management truck from Switzerland to Siberia. We stayed the night in a homestay by the lake of Karakul. A chip error has sadly deprived both you and us of the images from much of this segment of the trip.

Karakul, in the background the Alai Range, which forms the boundary between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan

We came down from the high Pamirs of Tajikistan and crossed the Kyrgyz border into the small crossroads village of Sary Tash, all without event in our hired Russian Jeep. After saying goodbye to our Kyrgyz-ethnic driver and having a lunch of instant noodles and fried eggs at the local cafe, we were able to flag down a Murgab-Osh minivan, a Russian 4×4 vehicle that was almost filled to capacity but generously allowed us to board, with many children ending up on the laps of their parents. We expected the trip to Osh, Kyrgyzstan’s second largest city sitting at the end of the Uzbek-ethnic Fergana Valley, to take about 5-6 hours.

The drive was gorgeous–from the desert of the Pamirs we entered lush green mountain valleys, dotted with yurts and livestock, including horses and chickens that we had not seen in the Pamirs. The people living on these mountains were Kyrgyz, just like their brethren in Tajikistan across the border, but the land around their homes was so much more welcoming and fertile.

About two and a half hours into our ride, as the road entered a narrow gorge, we began to pass cars that were stopped on the side of the road, seemingly unable to go any further. The guidebooks warn about traveling in the mountainous regions of Central Asia in early summer, due to snowmelt that can flood roads and make river crossings impossible, but we weren’t quite prepared for the series of mudslides we encountered. The first two rock- and mudslides were easy–our tough vehicle easily made it past. But then we came upon another that was much larger–and apparently fairly recent–just as the road entered the narrowest part of the gorge. We stopped, unable to go any further, and other cars started piling up.

Of course, no-one spoke English, and we had no idea when the road would be cleared and we would go forward. With hand gestures, we seemed to get various guesses, from 3 to 10 days. Tourists also began to pile up, as this is one of the only routes through the region. We met a Swiss couple and a Swedish man from other vehicles. The Swedish man, whom we had met earlier in Murgab, had told us that he was on a five-week vacation, a week of which was unexpectedly eaten up in Dushanbe waiting for a visa. The man then proceeded to stall for three or four days in Murgab unsuccessfully waiting for tourists to share vehicle hire expenses with him, to do some touring in the region. His vacation was clearly cursed, and we found some malevolent comic relief in his predicament–unlike most tourists in Central Asia, who had more time than anything, he had tickets for a flight out of Osh.

All of the vehicles turned back to the last village before the mudslide, where there was a very basic inn. Everyone rushed in, but, not speaking Kyrgyz or Russian, we couldn’t really figure out what if any rooms were available. The woman behind the counter showed us one large communal room, but the thought of sleeping in refugee-like conditions made Derek start searching for an alternative. We ended up procuring the prayer room of the inn, by far the sweetest accomodations of any of the stranded. We unpacked and pondered our next move.

Things weren’t so bad. The village, while little more than a few houses along the side of the road, was set in a beautiful location. Our room, while basic (no bathroom, though not too far from the outhouse and conveniently near the water tank, where we were late at night able to do some light bathing), was comfortable and we even had intermittent electricity (something of a novelty coming down from the Pamirs), permitting us to catch up on some photo and blogging work. At dinner, we found that the food served at the inn was surprisingly good (goulash and roast chicken), and we had the company of fellow tourists to chat with, including not only the Swiss couple and Swede, but also a Belgian couple and an Australian girl who pulled up later.

We learned that we were in a much better situation than the others. The part of Kyrgyzstan we were in was completely isolated from the rest of the country by the mudslide. Since the road forward, which connected to Osh, Bishkek and the open borders with Uzbekistan, was closed by the mudslide, the only options were the road south to the Tajik border and the wilderness of the Pamirs (with over 24 hours’ drive to Dushanbe, the only city of size in Tajikistan) and the road east to the Chinese border. The Belgians and the Australian had just come from China, did not have a valid visa for either China or Tajikistan, and were headed to Uzbekistan, and so had no choice but to wait. The Swiss and the Swede had just come from Tajikistan and did not have a Chinese visa, and so also had to wait. At least we could, if the road didn’t clear promptly, call Kyrgyzstan quits and flee to the modern comforts of China.

We were ready to do just that, but, because it was the weekend and the Chinese border was closed anyway, we decided to hang out and wait. We were sad when the power cut out, but we still had the benefit of a private room (the Australian girl had to sleep in a car with its driver, who kept coming onto her all night), good food and pleasant weather. The very next morning, we heard rumors that we would be moving forward that very afternoon, that the mudslide had been cleared in the space of about 24 hours. We were incredulous, but packed our bags and got back into our van, to find that all the vehicles were indeed making it through. While the road itself had not been cleared, an alternative path closer to the river had been made. By sunset we were in Osh–the end of the Pamir Highway.

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photo Tajikistan

Tajikistan Hardships

Tajikistan, as a tourist destination, is not quite ready for prime time. That is not to say that we didn’t enjoy it–it will, we are certain, be one of the highlights of our trip, and in large part thanks to the lack of other tourists and tourist infrastructure. But it is not for everyone. Of course, our deprivation was only for several days–what babies the comforts of modern life have made us–while the local people manage to survive day in, day out. The things we had to go without, in the high Pamirs in Tajikistan–travel isn’t always so easy:

Electricity. You may have heard last winter about the bitter cold (colder than usual!) and fuel shortages that the Pamiris suffered. Obviously, traveling in summer we had no risk of freezing to death, but, as I hope to describe at some point on a post on traveling with technology, we have quite a few gadgets that require regular charging. In the ten or so days that we were in the Pamirs, we spent only two nights in places with usable electricity. Some places had weak generators or solar powered batteries that could be used for dim light bulbs, but not for our electronics–requiring very careful planning and conservation of battery power on our part.

Toilets. We’ve been around the world some, and know the various forms in which facilities come in. That nowhere we stayed in in the Pamirs had actual modern plumbing goes without saying (although the bigger towns do contain some buildings that do have them), but, to our surprise, two of the places we stayed, both homestays in fairly large villages, had no bathroom at all! In one, we were told to walk into the thorny bushes to the side of the house, while in the other we were told to walk to the edge of town, where there was a huge field of animal and human waste. Who thought a pit toilet would feel like such a civilized blessing?

Good drinking water. Now, you may point out that we were in the wilderness, with fresh snowmelt and springs all over. To an extent that is true, but with the amount of livestock being herded by the Kyrgyz in the Pamirs, even water in what seems like pristine wilderness is likely not safe, leaving us to drink tea, as the locals do. But sometimes you want a glass of cold water. The only bottled water available in the region is either the Pamir brand, which is a rather unpleasantly minerally carbonated water bottled locally, or Jalalabad brand from Kyrgyzstan, which is equally unpleasant in taste and carbonated and also seems to suffer from poor filtering–particles are quite visibly suspended when you hold the bottle to light. I found myself craving often a glass of simple uncarbonated neutral tasting water. An attempt to drink soft drinks as a substitute was met by what must have been counterfeit Mirinda–it tasted awful.

A shower. This was a slight point of frustration, because local people must have a way of washing. But with no plumbing and often little privacy, and a lack of desire to taint natural sources of water with soap (even if the locals do so), it was usually easier to forego washing and just feel dirty, until the next shower three or four days away. The weather was cool and dry enough not to feel too filthy, but long dusty jeep rides did contribute to a high level of grime.

Communication. Tajikistan having been part of the former Soviet Union, the class of people who would in other countries have some knowledge of English only speak Russian, and the tourist who doesn’t speak any Russian is essentially totally unable to communicate. This includes not only the random locals you meet, but also the drivers that you hire, who comically try to interpret for you but of course cannot. We got by, and very rarely we would meet someone who speaks English (including, in a very remote Kyrgyz yurt encampment, one Kyrgyz woman whose father had been a mountaineering guide), but for the most part it was total deaf/dumbness. This made homestay experiences (there are essentially no hotels in the Pamirs) at times a bit awkward, with hours of sitting around with nothing to say and limited means to express gratitude.

Car problems and fuel shortages. The condition of the roads being what they are, and the country as a whole being poor enough to have to rely on fairly old vehicles in varying states of (dis)repair, car problems are an ever-threatening part of any trip in Tajikistan. We met our first problem, thankfully minor, on our 22-hour trip from Dushanbe to Khorog, when the luggage rack of our SUV malfunctioned, forcing us to fit all of the luggage in an already crowded passenger cabin. The more threatening car problem, by far, however, was in the last day of our trip from Khorog to Murgab–see my post of 6.24.

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photo Tajikistan

The Kyrgyz of Jalang

This is part of a series describing our route through Tajikistan–please refer to my posts of 6.18, 6.20, 6.23, 6.24 and 6.25.

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To get a sense of how remote Jalang is, if you have not read the posts leading up to this one, it is at least 16 hours from Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, to Khorog, the capital of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast, along a very rough 4×4 road. From Khorog to Murgab, the capital of the Murgab District of the Eastern Pamirs, it is another eight hours or so along a mediocrely maintained paved road. From Murgab to Jalang takes another five or six hours, much of it on an unpaved track that leads off straight into total wilderness and some of the most desolate scenery in the world.

The largest ethnic minority in Tajikistan is the Uzbeks (some 15% of the total population), who live in the west and north of the country, but almost equally visible, despite their much smaller numbers, are the Kyrgyz, who dominate the population of the Murgab District (roughly 13,000 out of 16,000 total population of that district). The Kyrgyz are semi-nomadic, living in settled villages in the fall, winter and spring but moving to their yurt encampments in the high valleys in the summer, where their livestock graze on the relatively meager grasses that grow in the high plateau.

Jalang itself had, we would guess, about six families. Surprisingly, one woman spoke quite respectable English (her father was a mountaineering guide in Kyrgyzstan), and told us that outside of the summer they live in the village of Karakul, which lies on the Pamir Highway between Murgab and the Kyrgyz border. She grew up in Kyrgyzstan and found yurt life in the Pamirs difficult, with no lowland pleasures such as fruit, no electricity outside of a solar powered battery and strained hygiene: “Life is hard here.”

But to us the picture was an idyllic one. As we arrived in the afternoon, the animals were just returning home, along with the young men and boys who were herding them, the sheep going to their pen and the yaks chained up for the night (the calves a good twenty feet from their mothers so that they wouldn’t drink all the milk). In the late afternoon light we saw balls of cheese drying on the rack and women weaving traditional kilims–we were told that it was to be a present for a daughter who was about to be married.



The yurts themselves were grand and comfortable, with a dung-fueled stove in the middle and plenty of cushions, bedding and quilts for a comfortable rest. A stream flowed nearby, and presented plenty of water for tea, food and washing. Thankfully, and possibly only because these yurts were prepared to accept tourists, a couple pit toilets had been built a hundred yards away.



As an afternoon snack they gave us a huge plate of fried, home-made noodles, delicious but also supergreasy in the way that almost all Central Asian food is. For dinner it was soup. As usual, every teatime and meal were served with huge pieces of bread torn by hand. Everyone, including especially the young son, liked looking at our pictures of New York, though they liked even more looking through the pictures in our Tajikistan guidebook.

We awoke to the sight of the ladies milking yaks, baby yaks standing by looking sad and hungry, and all of the menfolk shearing sheep. Breakfast was the usual rice porridge, eaten with ample butter and sugar. Derek made his 3-in-1 coffee. The father of the house guided us on a short hike to see some petroglyphs nearby–a solar symbol, a man with a bow, and an elk.

Payment was handled with more grace and class than it had been anywhere else–just as Derek started to fumble for money, the father left the yurt leaving Derek and his eldest daughter behind. She accepted the money and put it away without counting, thanking Derek.

From Jalang we were off to see some ancient geoglyphs and then, after a night at Karakul (Lake), the Kyrgyz border.