On the map above: the purple line represents the actual route we took to get to Khorog. “1″ represents the approximate location of the There Will Be Mud article, “2″ is the location of Qala-i-Khumb, “3″ is the approximate location of the “Forty Bodies Teahouse,” and “4″ is the approximate location of the Hot Springs (Garm ChashMA!). The orange line is the approximate route that we used to get into Uzbekistan.

It’s a been a week now since I returned from my Central Asian vacation, and it’s time for me to stop backdating my entries and set the clock on the blog properly. I’ve been doing some rereading and poring over my old travel entries from my time in Britain in summer 2007, and noticed that they were all much shorter, and without pictures. That probably explains why I was able to easily keep up with day-to-day activity then – in the time since then, my blog has just had its second birthday, and my family and friends’ expectations for my blog has increased. It’s a photography-based internet out there, and 500-600 words of text just won’t cut it anymore.

Besides that, I felt like I had an honor and a duty to uphold to Tajikistan. As the previous blog entry mentions, I’m now an unofficial “Son of Tajikistan” and I want to make sure that this small, proud, and beautiful country gets the recognition that it deserves on the national scope. There are so many opportunities for business and tourism waiting in those mountains and forests; all it needs is a financially-responsible guiding hand a government that embodies the wishes of the people – progress, health, education, and technology. It’s my pleasure to write these copious blog entries in the hopes that readers searching for more information on Tajikistan in particular, or Central Asia in general, can receive an in-depth picture of the area. This means I tried to make my writing honest to my opinions on the country: strong, beautiful people with a fervent wish for progress in their new country, but a corrupt and ineffective executive government that takes the worst aspects of Communism and Capitalism and twists them into a beast in which change and hope die in their infancy.

Speaking of me being a “Son of Tajikistan” – below is a scan from Farahnush of the newspaper article they wrote about me. Of course I’m unable to read it but apparently it was entirely unchanged from what I said – the good and the bad alike. I can’t believe they wrote so much about me, and at the bottom of the second page (which is located here) I’m told it says “to be continued,” I guess they really liked what I had to say.

Ман фарзанди ТоҶикистонам: I am a Son of Tajikistan

And, you know, this is happening all over the world. Dozens of countries around the globe suffer daily with outrages and injustice, media suppression, taxation, and emigration snafu. Certainly, Tajikistan isn’t in the same league of difficulties as Palestine, Iraq, the Congo, Darfur, or North Korea, to name a few. But therein lies the problem. A good dictator like President Emomalii Rahmon knows that the key to a successful power consolidation is to be low-key and non-expansive. As long as he doesn’t try to overstep his boundaries of the little country, he can get away with essentially anything he likes and the International Community will overlook it, remaining more concerned with other things. I didn’t speak with a single citizen of Tajikistan who felt that their president had their best interests in mind, or that Tajikistan was seeing the post-Communism changes that it deserves. But most remain hopeful that their future could get brighter if governmental changes were made – not just in Tajikistan, but in many of the former-Soviet countries. For example, President Rahmon has been able to remain in power indefinitely so far thanks to his modification of the constitution that allows him to run, and rerun. He imprisons or exiles political competition when it appears. Such things are apparently so common to the jaded eyes of the United Nations that this isn’t even worth investigating. Yet here the United States is, continuously pouring money into a war into a war in Iraq that Obama cannot control (his military staff says one thing to him, then under their breath says another) and working as Israel’s lapdog to fund a slow but steady genocide against the people of Palestine. Your tax dollars at work. If a large percentage  of that was put not into war, occupation, and weaponry but instead research, unbiased news, foreign aid, and diplomats to help Tajikistan and all the others like it, I think a lot more people could sleep more soundly at night. Okay, I’ll get off my soapbox – for now.

So what are some of the differences, similarities, and things that surprised me in Tajikistan?

• The offensive gesture. Farahnush had informed me of this last year when she was in America, but I needed to be continuously reminded of it while in Tajikistan to make sure I wasn’t going to accidentally give someone The Bird (equivalent). Too often I found my hands just naturally did this as I was reading or focusing on something else. The problem is that the offensive gesture in Tajikistan looks a lot like the game we play with children in the USA….Got your nose!
  

  Whatchu say 'bout my mother?!

• The hospitality. Living in Jordan means that I’m always being asked to come over and have dinner or tea with friends, coworkers, and random people who see me on the street. If I had come to Tajikistan straight from America, I might have found highly hospitable, pleasant Tajiks much more different, but instead I’m starting to now see instead that the USA and the Western World in general just isn’t as friendly as Arabs, or Muslims in general. The style of eating in Tajikistan is much like the Arab world – everyone sits around a communal selection of food and often eats by hand. In Tajikistan, though, the presentation is top-notch – we’re talking crystal decanters, beautifully-painted dishes, and brightly colored table coverings and napkins. I mean, no offensive America and Britain, you’re doing perfectly all right for yourselves in other ways but the East has got us beat by a long shot in this department.
• The similarities of Tajik to Arabic. I knew before I arrived that the Tajik language was similar to Farsi and Russian, but from my previous experience with it last year when Farahnush was with my family, a lot has changed, namely my ability to communicate in Arabic. I would chat with Malik in Arabic occasionally, and the rest of the family would look up suddenly if I said something that had an identical or similar meaning in Tajik. According to estimations, Tajik has as much as 60% vocabulary sharing from Arabic, and even 80% from Farsi. The problem though is that the grammar is entirely different, which prevented me from being able to completely use my Arabic skills for easy communication. Darn!
• The beautiful dresses. It’s interesting that you can find peafowl – peacocks and peahens – here in Central Asia, because the sexual dimorphism between the clothing of men and women here is similar. Men there wear Western-style slacks, trousers, and button-down shirts, but the women – the colors and the fabrics are astounding! Like something out of Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat, you can find the long, flowing one-piece dresses called koorta everywhere you go in the country, and in the Silk Road region of Uzbekistan too. Malik explained to me that Central Asian men used to wear Persian robes and turbans as well, but after the Soviet takeover, the men where gradually forced to adapt to a style that used pockets by necessity.
• The golden teeth. I was a little worried about putting this one up here, because I wasn’t sure if it would be considered embarrassing or insulting to bring up, but Farahnush assured me that it was perfectly normal to talk about. But I was surprised and curious to see the amount of golden-capped teeth in Tajikistan – in most adults you could expect to see at least two or three such teeth, but for some people, especially women that I saw in the south and the east, their entire mouths were a solid plate of gold. I was told that the simple explanation for this was that for a long time, gold was a cheaper method of fixing teeth than enamel coverings, which with gold now at almost $1000 per ounce now seems pretty ironic.
• The pleasant social drinking. Coming from Jordan and the strict Muslim world, I thought that Tajikistan, which is also a Muslim country, would be the same: drinking alcohol is haram (forbidden) and is not the norm. However, the decades of Soviet influence and cheap vodka imports has apparently made drinking a much more acceptable thing for the average person to do with friends after work. And those prices just cannot be beat – the lowest I’ve ever seen.
• The toasts before a shot. Unlike drinking in America where a shot is merely preceded by the bartender telling you to pay up, a round of vodka shots in Central Asia must first be eloquently toasted by a member of the group, who in turn describes his happiness with the evening, the good company of his fellows, his hope for the health of their families and for many happy returns. I personally did three or four of these spoken toasts myself, of which one was in Tajik (but it was so badly done I can’t reproduce it here). You mustn’t drink your shot until it has been properly hoisted and toasted!
• The beer in 2-liter bottles. ‘Nuff said here. I was pleasantly shocked when Malik and I went out to dinner in Panjakent and we were served strong Samarqandi beer merely by our waitress setting a 2-liter plastic bottle on our table. America, seriously – what is taking you so long to get on this?

And lastly, for your amusement:

• Goats with odd anatomy: This is a breed of goat I’ve never, ever seen before in America, and I’m from a goat farm. Can anyone tell what type of caprinae this is? I’m suspecting that they’re bred for a particular kind of meat section, but I just can’t figure out which section!edit: my mother points out that it’s actually a sheep, not a goat, but it looks like a Nubian breed more than anything else, which is why I was confused. It’s either a “Turki” sheep or a “Tyrol Mountain” sheep.
  
  

  What the heck?

Trip statistics

• Total Pictures taken: 1,288
• Total Pictures taken of me (mostly by Malik and the elder Akbar): 140
• Total Pictures deleted because they were blurred from the bouncing, rollicking Niva: 18
• Total beers consumed: 11? (It depends on it we’re measuring by pint or by two-liter bottle)
• Total shots of Russian or Tajiki vodka: 15
• Total toasts to travel, family, business, and friendship: 15

• Cost of flight with Turkish Airlines: 716 Jordanian Dinar ($1010)
• Cost of Tajik Tourism Visa: $15
  • Actual cost paid by swindling airport attendant for “Commercial Visa”: $56
• Cost of Uzbekistan Tourism Visa: $159 + $40 express charge = $199
• Cost of two-person tourism to Samarqand and Bukhara with Elaina Tours: $550
  • Actual cost paid by me after Elaina Tours realized they had horribly screwed up and not sent the right documents to the border, preventing Malik from entering Uzbekistan: $450 ($100 of which was graciously provided by Malik, even though he wasn’t going, because he wanted to make sure I had enough to get by alone)

So what to do? Thanks to my mother’s advice while I had been in Tajikistan and the remarkable online guide to everything in Turkey, I knew that there was a subway/metro transport system, somewhere in the bowels of the airport, that for about 2.8 lira could get me all the way to the Sultanahmet’s vicinity, and the same fare would take me back to the airport as well. A slightly better deal than the 90 lira “deal” that shifty Murod and Co. had whipped up for me two weeks previously. If I had seen any of that group on my way to the lower levels of the airport, I would have gladly taught them a few choice Arabic phrases.

In Istanbul, they know how to make their mosques: icicle minarets, domes galore, stack 'em high

The clearly-marked, clean metro rail smoothly carried me exactly where I expected to go – the Eminonu bridge just beyond the Sultanahmet Mosque and the Hagia Sofia. I wandered across the wide bridge, cars and metros buzzing past next to me. Just like the previous time, I was in awe of the towering, majestic mosques with their flying, no, soaring buttresses and domes that are built so close together that it’s almost like they’re on top of each other. I stared into Bosphorus Strait at the specks of buildings in the distance and pondered the best way to find a boat across that wouldn’t cause me to go over my self-imposed budget. As I looked around for inspiration, I caught a glimpse of a tall, interesting-looking tower in the distance on my side of the strait. Shouldering my pack, I started up the hill for it.

What could it be?

It turned out to be an ancient watchtower, the Galata Kulesi, billed as the “oldest tourable tower in the entire world.” Whether you’re counting the original wooden structure built in 528 AD as a lighthouse or the stone tower built in the same place in 1348 makes a big difference though, I suspect. I paid my 10 lira entry fee, noting with wry amusement the now-familiar ploy of non-English-speaking tourist locations to write out the price numerically in English (”This is 10 lira entry”) but above it literally spell out the price, in Turkish – in this case, beş, or “besh” as we’d say it, which means “five lira.” I got used to this technique in Petra, where the price for people who read English is 22 dinars, but for Arab-reading nationals of Jordan, 1/22 of that price. As far as I know, America has never charged different prices for different nationals for tourist locations…has it?

The view from the top was great, although a little cramped. The little walkway around the top had been almost entirely removed during renovations, which I cynically believe was to make room for the bar and nightclub that now occupy the top floor. Something tells me the Turks can make a lot more money from selling 8 lira glasses of beer and 20 lira glasses of wine in an evening than selling their tickets. But no matter – I was happy to be able to walk in a full 360 degree loop to see the cityscape laid out for me. One moment, I was looking into Asia, the next moment, back into Europe where I was currently standing. The experience was slightly marred by some American tourists, a group of maybe a half-dozen college-aged women who continuously complained to their guide that their feet hurt, that the air smelled funny, and that they wanted to go back to the hotel and watch TV. What a long way down to fall off the side of this tower, I mused thoughtfully.

I left the tower and its expensive refrigerator magnet souvenirs behind, and meandered back towards the Golden Horn Strait (the Bosphorus’s little brother that I had just walked over). A street vendor offered me a gyros/schwarma-like sandwich stuffed with lamb meat, which I thought I was accepting for three lira but found that the price written on the wall behind him had magically become 4 lira in the 15 minutes while I sat and ate. Rolling my eyes, I paid the man – I figured I had walked into that one and I should have expected that to happen to me here in Istanbul.

Checking my watch after lunch, I saw that I still had a good 3 hours left before I should try to return to the airport. I paid another 2.8 lira for two ferry tokens, the basic transport ferry which left every half hour. Frankly, that was the best part of the day right there – I rode up the Bosphorus for 45 minutes, snapping pictures of the luxurious houses and villas along the coastline on both sides, and under the huge steel suspension bridge with tiny beetle-like cars flitting over it high over our heads. If only I had brought my sweater with me, it would have been perfect; the air got quite chilly for me in my t-shirt.

Yes, those are some fine villas on the strait's coast.

When we arrived with a bump at the Çengelköy port on the Asian side of the strait, I stretched happily and offhandedly mentioned to a woman nearby me that it was the best lira and a half that I had spent. She snorted and said, “Not such a good deal if you paid 60 lira.” I gaped at her while she explained that she and her husband and daughter had each paid 20 lira to take the scenic guided tour along the coast, but at the dock the handlers had (apparently) directed them onto the wrong ferry and now their dated tickets had expired. They were understandably displeased, and as I chatted with the three of them, we realized that we had all detected a palatable level of distaste for Americans here in Istanbul. I was surprised, almost dumbfounded – in all my months in the Middle East, I had never felt like I was disliked just because of where I came from, but here in the European cultural center of Turkey, I realized that these three tourists were right – there was a careless, generalized dislike of Americans that I could see in everyone’s eyes. Sure they liked our money, but it was a case where few would help you or give you advice if you were about to, say, waste 56 lira by climbing onto the wrong ferry. I sadly sipped at a 2 lira can of Coca-Cola and stared out across  the strait back at Europe. I missed Jordan, Tajikistan, and America all at the same time, and felt very alone.

Waiting for the ferryboat to be ready, with the suspension bridge in the background

After half an hour of watching the boats glide across the water, the same ferry that had carried us few passengers across in the first place was ready to head back. I used my second ferry token and joined the three Americans for the return trip, where they sat somewhat morosely and sipped at tea served by a jovial attendant. I bought a 5 lira can of beer from him, and drank it slowly while I read my Dune book, the chilly wind playing with its pages. The boat was almost empty: like the vendor in the Kaplicharshi had told me two weeks earlier, this was the dry season for tourism and there were few tourists or natives willing to bother with the scenic ride when there was a bridge right over our heads.

Same as it had that morning, the ride back to the airport in the metro was smooth and uneventful: a good end to an action-packed two week trip through three different countries, and along the river bordering a fourth. Checking through my wallet and funds, I was pleased to see that I had succeeded in my financial goal: I had spent 29.60 lira for the day’s activities, staying under my goal by 40 kuruş (cents).

I was tired enough that I requested coffee several times on my last flight back home back to Amman, but I made good on my (other) promise to myself to finish the last book in the Dune trilogy somewhere over the Mediterranean Sea. I was entertained by my seatmate, a buoyant young Danish archeology grad student who was on his way to Jordan with his classmates to study the ruins of Jerash, who was overjoyed when I shared my photos from my previous trip with him and was practically dancing in his seat, exclaiming in his accented drawl that he couldn’t wait to land and get started. Suddenly, he got a worried look in his eyes, and he leaned conspiratorially towards me over the armrest and whispered, “What do you think the gay scene is like in Jordan? Am I going to be okay, or are people going to try to beat me up?” I assured him of his safety and helpfully tried to give him the names of a few gay bars in Amman, trying to remember them as the ones that Haitham had once told me “NEVER GO IN THESE PLACES.” Just like the fact that there’s no drinking age in Jordan because the government refuses to acknowledge that anyone drinks alcohol in Jordan, there is no official policy on gay bars either because people prefer to put their fingers in their ears and sing loudly when the topic comes up.

At around half past ten, the plane touched down in Jordan and I was home, back in my familiar desert with my familiar procrastinating bus system that took another two hours to send a bus to the airport to pick up the assembled crowd: me and one other person. The owner of the company had even driven to the airport, apologized to me personally for the wait, and proceeded to yell obscenities at his drivers through his mobile while shaking my hand repeatedly and thanking me for coming to Jordan. Ahhh, Jordan. Lord knows you drive me bonkers sometimes but I love you anyway. It’s good to be home.

The last couple days of my stay in Tajikistan were bittersweet. The previous day, after my return to Panjakent to the joyfully exuberant Raouf and his company of friendly archeology employees, Malik and I went hunting for pheasants and drank even more vodka with Russian businessmen who were visiting Raouf. We got a tour of the archeological sites themselves, 4 small squares of uncovered earth protected by huge metal shields erected over them. The shields guard ancient buildings made of mud and early brick, estimated to be between 6000 and 5000 years old. Raouf, as the curator and chief archeologist, showed us the pots and weapons over the dinner of cooked pheasant with osh, and laughed uproariously when I wore a 4000 year old cracked piece of jar on my head. Perhaps we had had one too many toasts of vodka, but the brotherly fellowship of drinking in this part of the world is just too welcoming to turn down. I drank what was offered to me, mindful of the fact that in just a few days I’ll be back in Jordan where the strongest drink easily at hand is in a teacup with an extra Lipton bag in it!

It's hard to be taken seriously sometimes.

When we returned from Panjakent late that night with Shirehlee, I knew that this would be my last day in the country and I wanted to spend it with my little sister. Without her, I’d never have had the slightest of chances to spend this much time here in Tajikistan, and with so much care and kindness. At my suggestion, Farahnush took me to her university a few blocks from home so that I could meet her friends and see what things were like. She was initially shy about about it, but I pointed out that I completely understand that this is a country that was only recently released from the grip of civil war and Soviet rule, only about 15 years ago – I wasn’t expecting to see Yale! Interestingly enough, I was given permission to attend her class on International Business, where I watched one of her classmates give a presentation, in English, about creating a motivational class for underclassmen. He introduced the lecture with, “Thank you for attending, to my teachers, my fellow students, and our guest from America.” I tried to imagine myself giving a speech in Arabic or Tajik, much less in front of people, and found my mind boggling at that sort of guts. I’m just too lazily comfortable with speaking in English, and having Wamidh as my translator, I guess.

Farahnush shows off the main courtyard for her school, the Technological University of Tajikistan (TUT)

Farahnush’s classmates were very friendly and polite to me, although some did give me some curious stares, and the administration obviously thought that she was trying to sneak her boyfriend into the school and shot disapproving looks at us as we walked about the campus. I mean, I clearly wasn’t biologically related to Central Asia, although I mused about how I’d fit in if I just tanned a little bit more and dyed my hair black. But there were no problems getting into any of the classes that Farahnush took me to, and indeed several of the students thanked me for coming. Of course, it was my pleasure – I only wished that the school’s administration gave these young adults more credit for their intellectual ability. Several times, it seemed to me like the students were more likely to show up and do their job than the teachers were, which is a disservice to the hard work that the students are trying to put in.

After the university visit, Malik and Farahnush took me for the interview, followed by a stop at the famous statue of King Ismoili Somoni, one of the earliest kings of the emirate of Central Asia who originally hailed from Tajikistan (which, as previously mentioned, used to contain Samarqand and Bukhara and the surrounding area before they were engulfed by Uzbekistan). Ironically, I was rather rudely treated by the local militia lounging around the statue, who shouted at me to get away from the statue and stand at least 30 meters away. I was quite irritated by their treatment, and if I could speak Tajik any better, I would have told them sarcastically that they shouldn’t have a big walkway that leads right up to the king’s foot, with differently-colored tiles in the plaza that clearly says “I’m a pathway; please walk on me.” Farahnush darkly told me not to bother, saying that they could barely speak Tajik, much less English. She explained that if it had been her or any of her friends, they could have done anything they wanted – but because I was a foreigner, the militia felt that they had free reign to do what they pleased. Unfortunately, this happened after the interview in the News Building, or else I definitely would have included it as the most ridiculous thing that had happened in the past two weeks. I love Tajikistan, but its ridiculous government needs a firm shakeup to make it more friendly towards outsiders (and our tourist currency). I’d say more here, but I’d rather that their government didn’t censor my blog so that Farahnush, Malik, and any other Tajiks can continue to read it.

If the militia has a problem with me posing like King Somoni, then there should be signs posted saying "Do Not Attempt To Be Kingly"

My flight left Tajikistan at 5:30 in the morning. I didn’t sleep at all – too busy carefully packing away the many precious gifts from my family, from the Silk Road, and from the Pamirs away in my bulging suitcase, thankfully at least a little lighter from having given the keffiyehs and baklava I brought from Jordan to my adopted sisters and mother. Although my bag was light, my stomach was full; Malik, Farahnush, and her elder sister Shazoda had taken me to Dushanbe’s greatest teahouse, the city’s pride and joy and the oldest in the country. The inner woodworking and painting definitely reminded me of a much more massive, much older version of the teahouse in Boulder, Colorado that I wrote about last year. Although I wouldn’t have minded eating inside under that beautiful canopy, the weather was too fine for us to ignore and we spent the last hours of daylight under a columned white portico, dining on our kebabs, soup, and salads.

The authentic, original Dushanbe teahouse that all others are based on

Reyhon, Farahnush, and Shazoda came out to the car to bid me farewell, eyes shining as the sun broke over the mountains in the distance. Dear, sweet Reyhon had become very attached to me and gave me a huge, tight hug, patted my face and called me “Zach-Jon,” which means “Dear Zach.” In return, I called her, “Oji-Jon,” or “Dear Mother.” This just seemed to make her cry harder, which made me want to cry too, but she managed a pleased smile at my usage of Tajik and hugged me again. That rare smile was one of the few that was to be found there as we stood around the car saying our goodbyes, like when I had said goodbye to Farahnush in summer 2008 when she left America, now I was doing the same as I left Tajikistan. What words can possibly describe the kindness of this family? Here I had just dropped out of nowhere for two weeks, and they took me in as their own and took complete care of me, setting aside their own tasks and responsibilities to make sure that I wanted for nothing. There’s no way I can ever repay kindness like that, and in true Tajik custom, for me to try would be an insult.

Malik drove me through the dark streets of Dushanbe for the last time, a similar path to what we had driven two short weeks ago. I looked out into the dim early morning light at the streets that in such a short time had become almost familiar to me, and with a lump in my throat realized that this was it.  I had to leave here, my third home, to return to my second home in Jordan, away from my first home and family back in Wisconsin that I hadn’t seen in 5 months, and won’t see for 5 more. Malik quietly asked me what I had liked best about my trip, and I truthfully told him: More than any one experience or any blue-tiled building, more than any mountain range or roaring river, I had loved being part of a family again, as a Son – and Brother – of Tajikistan and its people.

On our way out of town, I asked Akbar to take me to Emir’s summer retreat, the simply-named “Summer Palace” that he used to escape from the invading Russians when they stormed Bukhara, by using an underground passageway from the Arq, his main palace. Although I didn’t see or find this passageway (as most of the place was unfortunately closed to tourists) I did see a dozen beautiful peafowl, completely accustomed to human presence that allowed me to get within a meter or two of them before haughtily stalking off. I had first heard their loud, haunting calls while walking through the main hallway of the palace, which reminded me strikingly of my trip to Versailles over six years ago when I was in high school. A guard followed me about closely; it was early enough in the morning that I was actually the first tourist to arrive and he was curious about me. He was doubly surprised and curious when I spoke to him in my bad, heavily accented Tajik. I think the Bukharans and Samarqandis figure that most tourists would try to speak to them in Uzbek instead of their colloquial language of their ancestral homeland, but I had the advantage of my native family back in Dushanbe.

This fellow couldn't have cared less that I was standing in front of him; how very regal.

It wasn’t until we drove through the main street of Samarqand two hours later that I realized that I had been here the previous day. I stuck my head out the window into the warm morning sunlight (those precious few hours before it starts baking like apparently everywhere else in Central Asia) and stared at the round, lumpy mass of the Guir-Rukhabad, or “Grave of the Little Soul,” a brown ziggurat that held the remains of a famous Islamic scholar from the region, and supposedly a single hair from the head of the Prophet Mohammad himself. We didn’t stop here; not yet at least. Akbar wanted to get me to my hotel, another boutique which although as not as old nor fancy as the Komil was larger and even had air conditioning. Air conditioning! This is not a commonly used thing either in Jordan or Central Asia, and I spent five minutes just standing in front of it as I dropped my bag off in the room.

I went back to the lobby to meet my new guide for the city, a bespectacled, respectable, white-haired gentleman who coincidentally was also named Akbar like my driver. “Greater and greater!” I said, in reference to the Arabic translations of their name: Akbar means the biggest or the greatest. Akbar had been a tour guide for about 30 years, and before that a reporter, so he knew his way around Uzbekistan like it was written on his eyelids. The two Akbars drove me to the center of town to the most famous and picturesque location in Central Asia: the famous Registan Square which holds three famous 700-year-old madrasahi. After we left the young Akbar behind with the car and a soft drink, the elder Akbar and I toured each one of them in turn, taking pictures everywhere as always. Akbar was delighted to hear that I was from Jordan and that I could speak a little Arabic, but seemed even more excited to think that I would have friends who could read the hundreds of intricately written words set in tile on the walls of each building, and urged me to take as many pictures of them as I could for later translation.

Madrasahi from left to right: the Ulegh Bec, the Tillya-Kori, and the Sher-Dor

I noticed right away that these three madrasahi had very small entryways everywhere, not just because people were shorter 700 years ago but also because the architect preferred that people would have to bow their heads in order to enter a room, a sign of respect to those already present. Inside, the recently-restored rooms were neatly whitewashed like they would have been then – any sort of decoration would have been distracting to their meditation and contemplation of the Holy Qur’an. Inside one of the buildings, I was allowed to climb one of the minarets (for a small fee of course) and poke my head and upper body out through a hole in the roof, 40 meters above the ground, to give me a bird’s eye vantage point on the other two madrasahi. I sat up their for a while, photographing the panoramic spread before me and the silver lids of the city’s houses in all directions, but the burning sun had turned the silver lid I was sitting on into a hotplate and I couldn’t sit up there too long before I had to retreat back into the cool darkness of the minaret’s rough stone walls. My best shots were of the ridged domes of the Sher-Dor (Having-Tigers) Madrasah to the right, which were so vibrantly colored and shiny that they looked like electric blue popsicle, glistening in the sunlight. Not the most respectful description, but on a day that hot I definitely meant it reverently.

I can't help that it looked like a popsicle, or ice cream. It was really hot out!

All three of the buildings were laid out the same way, and had been built within 100 years of each other. The insides were not nearly as interesting as the outsides – the same pretty internal courtyard with large mulberry trees and vendors setting up shop inside the rooms that had once been the student dormitories. Where were the classrooms, though, I asked. Akbar gestured around the inner courtyard and said, “this is it!” It made sense – because of the high heat, it wouldn’t have been practical to be in a roasting classroom all day when they could just teach outside and students could just sit around their scholarly masters. Each madrasah of course had its own mosque at the back of the building, in various levels of restoration completeness. By far the most beautiful one, however, was in the central madrasah, Tillya-Kori which conveniently had been more of a mosque than a school. They had used 5 kilos of gold to restore the gilding inside the dome’s roof, and it had taken them several years just to complete the relatively small 20-meter high space because it was so complex. A Russian women in the Tillya-Kori sold me some Uzbeki silks, which made sense to me since were on the Silk Road, after all.

I asked Akbar if they were worried about the gold being stolen, but he told me it was all at the top of the dome and would take quite the ladder to reach it

After I picked up some postcards and ridiculously cheap postage (300 saum per stamp, the equivalent of about 21 cents), the Akbars took me a local carpet-weaving factory to see how handmade Persian rugs were assembled. Ironically, as the elder Akbar and I were entering the building, guided by a young English-speaking woman named Zaynaab, we were directly behind a group of Saudi Arabian businessmen, looking to invest in the Silk Road region. I had fun translating the limited bits of Arabic I heard to Akbar, who listened with rapt curiosity to the language which most Central Asians only experience in the written form. As always, my translation ability was nowhere near 100% or even half of that, but basic dialogue about colors, prices, and the men’s opinions on those subjects were easy for me to pick up. Zaynaab led us upstairs to a bright, sunlit space, filled with dozens of young women and their looms, who giggled and blushed at our entry, leaning to chat with their friends and giving me sidelong glances. Zaynaab explained that the carpets their factory created ranged in size from prayer rug size (about a meter by a meter and a half) to 5 meters square – or large for custom requests. I learned that it wasn’t the size that mattered, but the number of knots that went into the weave per square centimeter. Although it was a weekend, many of the young, unmarried women really love the work and come in whenever they can for socializing and the extra money. The video below shows a couple of the women at work.

As Akbar and I were leaving, we watched the Saudi delegation relaxing in the showroom, filled with long sofas covered with beautiful rugs. Akbar had never seen so many Saudis in one place before, and was astounded to see them pulling out stacks of hundred dollar bills from their pockets and handing them over in exchange for three or four rugs. Remember, dear readers, that the largest denomination of the saum note is 1000, and that equals about $.75. Exchanging a single hundred dollar bill for its equivalent in saums would be a stack 10 centimeters thick. But the Saudis, sipping tea provided by their hosts and chatting amicably about stock prices, didn’t even hesitate in their purchases. The owner, who I recognized from a picture on the wall of him with Madeline Albright, was beside himself with happiness, leaping over rugs all over the room to shake hands with all his valued customers and cracking jokes. All business was transacted in English, of course – the Samarqandis couldn’t speak Arabic, and the Saudis couldn’t speak Tajik in return. If you’ve ever wanted a handmade Persian rug by some of the best in the business (which I judged they were, based on the photographs of the boss with various world leaders, like Abdullah the potter in Bukhara), check out their website – they deliver!

That evening, I mailed my postcards from the hotel’s friendly front desk, and sampled some more Uzbeki beer. Like the postage, I couldn’t believe the prices on beer in Uzbekistan – 1000 saum for a 30 oz bottle, an unheard of price in Jordan. I never drink very much on vacation though; too much to see and I needed to get up early the next day for my final day of sightseeing in Uzbekistan. Akbar was waiting for me in the lounge when I came from breakfast, wearing his formal black suit and white dress shirt. Our first stop of the day was the Guir-Rakhabat and Guir-e-Emir, the two mausoleums in the center of town that I had seen yesterday during my entry into the city.

I had heard so much about the famous emirs Timur and his grandson, Ulug Bec, from both Bibi Khanum and Akbar over the past two days that it was actually very exciting for me to enter their tomb. These were the men that had created a vast empire that had extended over all of Central Asia between 600 and 700 years ago, descendants of the Mongols who had brought power and prosperity to thousands of people. Originally, the Guir-e-Emir had been intended by Timur for another one of his grandsons as a gift, but after Timur’s own son betrayed him and had his father ambushed and executed during a campaign, it first became his own tomb first. Over the decades, it became a group tomb for Timur’s entire family, including Timur’s favorite teacher and a descendant of the Prophet Mohammad. Timur’s tombstone was easy to pick out – it was covered with a solid block of green jade and set apart from the others in his family. Like the dome of the Tillya-Kori, the interior of the tomb was decorated lavishly with gold and carvings. I’ve been told by friends that this is the style of the Persians; one of the differences between Persian Shi’a and everyone else (Sunni) is how they treat ritual and funeral proceedings.

Next, we saw the Bibi Khanum Mosque Complex – a group of restored buildings that had been named after the mausoleum of Timur’s favorite wife, Bibi Khanum. After Akbar explained who she was, I understood my tour guide Bibi’s joke from two days earlier – apparently, Bibi Khanum is a common name for Uzbeki women, like Ahmad or Mohammad are common in the Arab world. The mosque next to the mausoleum originally had no name beside “Grand” or “Central” mosque, but when it was being excavated it gradually just came to be known as the “mosque near Bibi’s tomb” and eventually just the Bibi Khanum mosque. Its claim to fame is that it is the tallest in Asia, its main facade standing 55 meters tall. However, it’s a complete reconstruction – a combination of earthquakes, sloppy construction and materials, and Russian invasions essentially demolished it in the 19th and 20th centuries. I joked to Akbar that it seemed like the greatest enemies of Uzbekistan’s history were earthquakes and Communists.

The tomb itself is a small dome, sitting unassumingly across the street from the massive structure that bears its name, and is simply ornate with white walls, stalactite carvings, and a deep uncovered pit in its center which exposes the underground gravestones of Bibi and her female relatives. We didn’t spend too long at the complex, as Akbar wanted to make sure that I had time to see one of his favorite sites, the Shah-i-Zinda necropolis.

The Shah-i-Zinda means “Living King,” in reference to a legend about Kusam ibn Abbas, the cousin of Prophet Mohammad whose tomb occupies a position of honor in the necropolis. Apparently, legends say that after he was beheaded in the 7th century, he rose up and continued preaching Islam to the people of Samarkand – a living, undying caller for Islam. His tombstone is very important to the Muslims of the region, so much that the necropolis and a still-used local cemetery sprang up around him: everyone wants to be buried next to the cousin of the Prophet himself. The blue-walled crypts looked down us solemnly as we climbed the 63 stairs representing the years of Mohammad’s life. People were leaving small gifts, 500 to 1000 saum, on the tombstones, and in the final resting place of Kusam, many donations were given to the young turbaned man who sang/hummed an Arabic chant every few minutes. I didn’t go into the actual room with the tombstone itself (only Muslims allowed, like in Mecca) but I stood on the other side of the stone lattice from it and watched the Muslim visitors enter and stand respectfully nearby, some laying a single hand on its cold stone surface.

The monolithic tombs of the Shah-i-Zinda necropolis keep ancient watch over tourists

One thing that I had been anxious to try before leaving Uzbekistan was Plov, which is where we get the word “Pilaf” from. In thanks for the service from my two Akbars, I took the two of them out to lunch: all they had to do was pick the restaurant. Since they were both from the city, this wasn’t a problem, and the younger Akbar selected one of his favorite haunts for some authentic Samarqandi plov. The regulars looked at our group curiously as we entered, but after that delicious plov was set in front of me, all else was forgotten and I dug in. The spices were great, and the meat was just tender enough without being ribbed in fat. Between mouthfuls, I exclaimed to Akbar “This is a lot like the osh I had in Tajikistan!” He replied with a smile that they were very similar dishes (and Farahnush told me later that they were actually the same thing, just different names in Uzbeki and Tajiki).

Akbar and I after eating our plov/pilaf/osh lunch. He's not unhappy; he just always has a concerned look on his face.

The younger Akbar dropped off my tour guide in the downtown before heading back to the border, less than an hour away. The younger Akbar handed me my bags at the checkpoint station and rolled away in a cloud of dust, leaving me desperately hoping that I would be able to get back into Tajikistan. There had been some problems because I only had a single entry/exit visa for the country; a mistake that we had made back at the airport the previous week without realizing it. Of course I should have realized that Malik would have me taken care of – he skillfully and shrewdly bribed the guards at the border for my entry, and met me at the gate with an embrace and huge smile. He had been staying with Raouf at the archeological site in Panjakent for the past two days, and was overjoyed to see that I had made it without any problems. I assured him that if I didn’t have any problems, it was all because of his excellent care, and together he, Raouf’s quiet driver, and I walked to the car that was waiting in the tall grass by the side of the road.

So ended my trip of Uzbekistan’s Silk Road territory, the beautiful blue land of huge mosques and madrasah. It makes me wish that Jordan and the Arab world had more buildings like that still surviving and in that sort of shape, but on the other hand the uniqueness of the ancient architecture makes me appreciate it all the more.

P.S. – in case you’ve got sharp eyes and noticed why I added these past two entries to the “Tajikistan” category instead of creating an “Uzbekistan” entry, it’s because like any good Son of Tajikistan, I consider those two cities to be part of Tajikistan’s original boundaries and wrongfully taken by Uzbekistan after the Soviet dissolution. Take that, Tashkent!

The light and shadows through the rebar tunnel construction made for some interesting mountain scenery

When we at last rumbled into Panjakent at close to midnight, we were enthusiastically greeted by Rauof, the director of the Panjakent archeology facility and a very close friend of Malik’s. He entertained us late into the night with stories about his years working in Paris with such joviality and camaraderie that I thought for the first hour that he must have been Malik’s old university roommate or something. He poured us shot after shot of vodka, downing them all joyfully and with exquisite toasts to our health and families, his fluffy mop of salt and pepper colored hair bobbing erratically, giving him the look of a Central-Asian Andrew Jackson. His driver sat near by, a quiet young man who worked at the archeology excavation site just a few kilometers outside the city limits of Panjakent. Rauof and Malik offered him drinks, which he quietly declined – probably best for his employer’s safety on the ride home!

Our intention was to enter Uzbekistan by 9 in the morning, meet our tour guide at the border, and be in Bukhara just after lunch. However, disaster struck us at the border: the Uzbek guards refused to let Malik enter the country, saying that his official visa pass was not enough and in order for him to use this particular border entrance, he needed to have special faxed documentation for a travel necessity – random tourism of Bukhara was apparently not enough of a necessity. The problem is that the Uzbeks and the Tajiks dislike each other on principle, and the governments of each country even more so. The two border facilities on each side of the no man’s land, for example, weren’t even on speaking terms with each other. To make matters worse, the southeastern corner of Uzbekistan that contains the most famous cities and landmarks is essentially a part of Tajikistan because the majority of the people there identify as Tajik, including speaking Tajik instead of Uzbek languages! This is a sore idea for the Uzbek government which enjoys receiving loads of tourist money from these cities and certainly has no intention of returning the region to Tajikistan just because the inhabitants are Tajiki. It passed laws on those borders saying that neither Uzbeks nor Tajiks can cross that particular border there. Malik didn’t know for sure, but he speculated that it was because the Uzbek government is trying to prevent nationalist feelings of uprising or secession in their Tajiki holdings by limiting their access to Tajikistan, and vice versa. Whatever the case, I knew that I couldn’t just throw my $200 visa away – we still had our tour guide waiting for us, after all. I bid Malik a sad, worried farewell and took my first unguided, untranslated steps into Uzbekistan alone.

I was met by a thin, dour-faced young man named Akbar, a Samarqand native who would be my driver for the next four days. He spoke only a little English, and was a little put-off by the fact that I arrived alone, fact he communicated to me with his questioning sign printed with Malik’s name. Although Malik had written a note for me in Tajiki (which all Samarqand natives speak) for him, he still needed verification of this from the tour guide office before we could begin our four-hour drive to Bukhara.

Here so close to the border with Tajikistan, the villages and towns our white Chevy sedan passed through were quite similar to those that I’d seen for the past week, but the obvious differences were in the language – the official language of Uzbekistan uses the Roman alphabet instead of Cyrillic, and in fact looks and sounds a lot like Turkish. Good thing I’m now an expert on Turkish after my one day in Istanbul. The other very noticeable difference was in the mountains or lack thereof: after moving away from the border, the land quickly flattened out until everything looked like Wisconsin farmland as far as the eye could see, the mountains merely vague shadowy pillars on the horizon behind us.

By far the most surprising stop we made was in the middle of Samarqand, where Akbar got out, instructed me to wait a moment, and returned with a stack of money so large that I assumed he had robbed a bank and I was now an internationally-wanted criminal. It wasn’t until later that I learned that the Uzbek form of currency, the СУМ (or as we’d pronounce it, the saum), is extremely unwieldly, and goes by a base of 100 saum, with their largest note being only 1000 saum. This means, of course, that a lunch might be 7,000 saum, and a hotel room might be 30,000 saum – which would mean 7 or 30 notes. That 15 centimeter stack of notes that Akbar stuffed into the glove compartment next to me would only last a few days.

Before reaching the city, we stopped briefly at the workshop of the famous ceramic, pottery, and linencraft artisan, Abdullah Narzullav, who solemnly led me around his workshop, firing kiln room, and of course provided Akbar and I with fresh tea, berries, and nuts in some of his handmade ceramicwork. I learned that his family had been working in pottery for 6 generations, and when I looked over at his wall of photographs, I saw pictures of him presenting Queen Elizabeth and First Lady Hillary Clinton with half-meter wide plates, as well as a signed letter of thanks from Ms. Clinton. There were many other royalties there, like a prince of Saudi, but no one else I could name off the top of my head. I looked at the quiet, sedately-smiling Abdullah with new respect, and bought a few small items that I could fit into my luggage.

Abdullah with two of his beautiful potteryworks. It's like meeting a Ceramics Celebrity!

In only a half hour more, Akbar had deposited me at the front door of the Komil Boutique Hotel with a promise that he would pick me up the next morning at 8. The owner of the hotel was aptly named Komil, a young man only a little older than myself. Apparently, this hotel had been his family’s house for generations, and after he became the man of the house, he decided that the home’s beautiful carvings, both in stone and wood, were too beautiful to be kept to himself. Check out some of the pictures from his website, and definitely keep them in mind if you’re ever in the area. Komil told me he had called my guide and she was on her way here, giving me a half hour to shower and change after my long car ride.

I was met in the hotel’s reception room by my guide, a young woman named Bibi Khanum (”like the Samarqand princess,” she laughed, a comment I wouldn’t understand for another couple days) who was dressed in Western style, plus a colorful scarf and large East-coast sunglasses.  She escorted me through Komil’s large wooden doors, and began the tour instantly by talking about the central part of the Old City, where we were now walking. Children ran about us, playing ball in the streets under the afternoon sun and the shadow of the low stone buildings surrounding us. She called a taxi for us, which transported us about two kilometers away to the northwestern part of the city to see the first stop on the tour, a large, extremely Middle-Eastern-looking castle made of sandy-colored stone, named simply Arq, or fortress. I paid a few thousand saum to enter the building, as Bibi chatted amicably with the vendors in the cool shade of the entrance hall. Of course she had seen them a hundred times before, and she confirmed that she had been to the Arq only two days earlier with another tour group. Because of the lateness of my arrival, many of the tourists had already left and several of the museums inside were closed, but Bibi was a good storyteller and did an excellent job describing the bloody, womanizing Emirs that had lived in this building throughout the centuries until the Soviets took over. I did some research after I returned to Jordan and found that, amazingly enough, there is a color photograph of the last emir, all the way back from 1911. Check it out; it looks like it was shot last week with a digital camera – that’s some excellent Russian technology for you. The emir looks exactly as Bibi described him – a corpulent, lustful slug of a man who brought nothing but taxation and fear to his people.

Speaking of cameras and photographs though, make sure to bring some extra currency with you when you’re in Central Asia; just like in Russia you are required to pay an extra fee for the privilege of taking photographs inside their monuments. I was a little put off by this at first because I felt it was a tourist trap – but then realized that of course it was a tourist trap, but at least they were being upfront about it. The admission prices were never more than 6,000 saum (about $4) anyway, so I didn’t mind an extra $.75-$1 to take some good photographs.

The two of us continued down the quiet streets of the Old City in a diagonal fashion until we reached the Po-i-Kalyan central mosque and madrasah, the largest single territory of monuments in the city. We weren’t allowed to go into the madrasah, which is still active and in use 700 years after its creation, but I stood in the inside gate and took some pictures of its exterior, which like most famous buildings on the Silk Road is liberally coated in brilliant ceramic tiles and artwork. Both Bibi and Abdullah had pointed out an interesting feature on all of the animals drawn or sculpted in Central Asia – because Islam forbids portrayals of living humans or animals, each creature is drawn or sculpted with its throat slashed, symbolically informing the populace that this artwork is not meant to depict something that is alive. It’s hard to see most of the time (purposefully kept small so as not to mar the artistry) but this small line or cut is on every animal painting or sculpture made in Central Asia. Scroll back up and check out the picture of the animal-shaped whistle in Abdullah’s right hand.

The hanging-stone style of the architecture in ancient Persia is fascinating

Between the mosque and madrasah is the solitary Kalyan Minaret, impressive in its height and ornate “stalactite” covered dome. This minaret had lasted longer than either of the other two buildings, said Bibi, because during the Mongol invasions led by Genghis Khan in the 12th century the legend goes that when Khan rode up to it while surveying the city, he supposedly looked around at the mosque and school, then up at the 48 meter tall minaret. As he did so, his turban fell to the ground from his head, which caused him to laugh aloud, proclaiming that this minaret had caused him to remove his hat in its presence and therefore it was to be spared from destruction.

Inside the large, almost empty mosque, the quiet whitewashed halls were almost maze-like in their uniformity and blankness, all facing inwards towards the large central courtyard with its single mulberry tree, a commonly seen sight in Central Asia as a symbol of life and family (and also for its oft-consumed tasty berries). As we examined the mi’hreb niche on the back wall towards Mecca, a small group of men finished their prayer in the inner chamber and exited, waving and “salaam”ing politely towards Bibi, who they probably saw every few days as part of her guiding duties.

Bibi at the entrance to the Mi'hreb niche at the back of the Po-i-Kalyan mosque. Behind her, the name of God - الله - is carved into the stone

Bibi led me through the local Trade Domes of the city, of which five still remain in use, still selling their wares as they have for centuries, coming from all corners of Asia and Europe for business. Except now the sellers are too often bored-looking young people selling refrigerator magnets, and the buyers are merely tourists like myself, more interested in taking pictures than doing business. I wish it was possible for me to see what places like the Trade Domes used to look like during the heyday of the Silk Road – my romanticized mental image of it probably can’t do it justice. Bibi encouraged me to poke my head into one of the last few remaining hammams (Turkish baths) in the city, where a young man wearing nothing but a towel and a wide smile told me that they were open 24 hours, 7 days a week, for a full body oil massage for just 35,000 saum. “Maybe next time,” I said; the smell of spices and incense in the room made me a little dizzy and I banged my head on the low door frame on the way out.

With the sun sinking over the horizon, I regretfully realized that it would be impossible for me to take any further pictures of the city, which also of course meant that any further sightseeing would be impossible, too (hey, me and my camera are a team; I can’t leave him out of the action!) – that, and I hadn’t eaten all day since that morning with Rauof and Malik. Bibi kindly took me to a plaza in the center of the old city, containing a pool and rounded with 400-year-old gnarled mulberry trees and open air kebab-selling cafes and bars. Coincidentally enough, we happened past her mother and two of her aunts as well who were out for an evening stroll. The three of them didn’t speak English, but I told them through Bibi’s translation that she was doing a wonderful job and I was writing everything down later. The stars winked in and out through the branches of the mulberry trees, and I was assisted by my helpful guide with ordering kebabs, salads, and soup – of course washed down with a local Uzbek brew, Sarbast. My soup was mouth-meltingly hot at first, but Bibi informed me that the Chaka, the bitter sour cream that came with the salad, had more uses than just a dressing (or apparently a shampoo stand-in; it’s apparently strong enough to remove dirt from hair) – mix it into the soup and the heat drops quickly to slightly more edible temperatures.

My touring day a success (although it was a bit rocky in the morning), I bid my wonderful tour guide goodnight at around , and returned to the Komil, getting pleasantly lost in the now-empty Trade Domes several times along the way. I let myself into the quiet hotel and was about to fall asleep on my large bed when I realized that there was a hard lump of something pressing into my hip. With a chuckle, I pulled out a thick wad of saum, about 50,000, and tossed it on the nightstand. If I wanted to, I could be a millionaire here!

Before Malik and I left for Uzbekistan the next day, I wanted to go and see Dushanbe’s technological pride and joy – an internet cafe that was gifted to the city from their sister city in America, Boulder Colorado. I saw the 20-year-old gift from Dushanbe last summer while Farahnush was living with my family, which is an ornately carved and beautiful teahouse built by master Tajiki craftsmen. The new internet cafe was scheduled to be opened in late 2008, and was indeed the subject of a grand opening party in September, but it continues to sit empty of computers and customers. Farahnush confided in me that as usual, lack of communication between the government and other parties involved (or the necessity for bribes) had stalled the project.

The cybercafe was tidy and brightly lit by massive window panels along all the walls. As we entered, a single man, surrounded by empty bottles of vodka and a hunting knife, rose from one of the two tables in the main room and greeted us. As Farahnush translated for me, we learned that he was a Russian building guard who had been watching the place for months. Upon learning that I was an American, he plaintively asked me whether I knew how to connect solar panels, or whether anyone could find out for him if he was going to get paid again. Apparently, he hadn’t received a paycheck in months and was going through a couple bottles of vodka a day (as we could tell; he was having difficulty standing and it was only 9 in the morning). However, he was happy to have someone to talk to, and explained how the building would be functioning, if it had electricity. Apparently that was the main problem: no one knew how to connect the large solar array outside the building, to the panel down in the basement that was supposed to feed the plugs for the computers. The state-of-the-art computers themselves were nowhere to be seen, but the Russian assured us that they were “in a safe place,” which we can only assume meant in the basement and behind his large, extremely effective-looking knife.

Within the cafe, a guard awaits any intruder with a vodka-powered hunting knife

Not only is there the internet and cafe sections of the building, but behind the central island pictured above, there’s also space for a small library, complete with comfy-looking black overstuffed chairs and cozy little nooks under low-hanging ceilings. There’s also a meeting room beyond that (close to the small window pictured to the right) that perhaps could be rented out to organizations looking for a good place to discuss things that need a handsome, brightly-lit environment.

The guard told us that some members of the Tajiki government and business had offered to buy the beautifully modern-looking building and turn it into a bar. However, the Americans in charge of the project had of course, refused, at which point Farahnush interrupted her translation with a “thank God.” I definitely agreed – a building like this would be excellent for Tajikistan’s burgeoning young population as a friendly hangout and place for them to have a high-speed connection with the rest of the world. However, it was sadly obvious that no one besides the guard and the occasional tourist had paid much attention to the place in the intervening months since September 2008; weeds and grass grew wildly through the cracks between slabs of new concrete outside, and the infinity-shaped pool in the back sat dry and dusty. Hopefully the Tajiki government finds a skilled electrical contractor and gets those power panels hooked up soon.

Come on, Tajikistan! This beautiful place needs power and some customers!

UPDATE: Breaking news from the Boulder-Dushanbe sister cities program! Apparently they just found an operator for the internet cafe and it will be opening up in only a few weeks! Details here from a local Boulder newspaper.

Everything seemed to be going fine until just as we were leaving the mountains behind and turning away from the Panj at last, around 11:30 in the morning. We came across a line of cars, then trucks, and finally were forced to grind to a halt as we surveyed a vast sea of mud covering and blocking the road that certainly hadn’t been there before. On the other side, we could see a similar line of vehicles stretching back and along the road we had been hoping to take, their drivers sitting restlessly on the rocks around the road. One man was trying to cross the mud as we watched; it came almost up to his waist, an ugly brown paste that seemed like it might drag him down and under at any second. There was no way that any one of these vehicles, even our trusty Niva, was going to make it across that morass.

Saeed and Malik consulted with some of the other assembled men on our side of the mudslide about what to do. Many had been waiting all morning already, but they had heard that the local government was sending out some tractors to come and push the mud off the road. No one seemed angry or upset about their blocked progress – mostly just bored. I realized that many of them make this trek several times a year, if not more, and roadblocks like this become common in the spring and summer as the mountains shed their winter snow coats into the streams, rivers, and roads below. I settled down to wait in the tall grass by the side of the road as Malik and Saeed began tinkering with the Niva. It seems that after five days of beating it with boulders it was finally showing some signs of stress – a slight grinding noise from the right front wheel, or a ticking noise from the left. Upon seeing people working on a car, other men left their cars and families and drifted over, bringing extra carjacks, advice, and other tools. Meanwhile, Farahnush sat higher up on the hill with some of the Pamiri women in our little convoy and conversed with them, although their accent was so different that dialogue between them was limited. She learned though, that they were from the Darvoz region we had just passed through, and that they become friends with Afghani women that lived on the other side of the river, communicating with each other like pen pals. It’s very different than the borders we’re accustomed to in America, and sad to think that because of the laws (and landmines) imposed on that border, they will never get to actually meet their friends that they can see, only 30 meters away.

We didn’t have to wait long before our cavalry arrived – an old, tired-looking blue and white tractor with a front-end loader attachment chugged up the road a half hour later, driven by a middle-aged man in a polo shirt. He told us that another tractor was on its way “in just a few minutes,” and immediately set to work on the mud. He used his front scoop to push it around, somewhat ineffectually, and nearly got himself stuck several times as a meter of thick goop slid over his small front tires and threatened to roll him right off the road. Meanwhile, Farahnush and I stood with the men, who were by this point smoking, chatting like old friends, or smoking. Farther up the newly-created stream, some people were carrying their possessions, slogging through the mud in their boxers with their pants carried over their heads to keep them clean.

The first tractor begins its futile work, mud sliding back down around it

After an hour of work, the poor tractor had barely moved the mud and we were forced to admit that we’d need something larger to do the trick. Malik and Saeed, having done all they could for the bent front axle here in the wilderness, drove our group into a nearby village back the way we came. We were invited in for lunch by a sympathetic man and his family, who served us heaping bowls of traditional soup with bread and listened intently as Malik described the problem and situation to him, waving off any money offered to him with a firm smile. By the time we made it back out to the road, it was almost 5 in the afternoon, and now a few people had gotten the initiative to start using shovels and try to dig the road free under their own power. Even an old sheikh, his white beard shining with sweat and pale legs covered with mud to the thigh, was working with a couple younger men as the crowd around the road grew ever larger with people.

Tajiki citizens labor to shovel mud off the road, since no official help is coming

I couldn’t stand the sight of that old man working that way while I was sitting on the sidelines doing nothing. I started to remove my wristwatch and shoes with preparation to join them, and Farahnush translated for me to a group of bystanders my hope that at least 20 or 30 of us could work together and at least have the road partially freed by the time night fell. My wish was met with skepticism; this was not the time for idealism, not when a tractor was on its way. “But there was a tractor coming here 6 hours ago and it still hasn’t arrived!” I retorted. “If I let you go out there and dig mud, my mom is going to kill me – this is supposed to be your restful vacation!” Farah told me. At this, Malik told me he was going back to the village to go look for a local tractor who would help us – for a price. I remembered, though, that the government was supposed to be paying to send out local tractors to blocked roads – shouldn’t they be paying for this? My questions were met by the group with knowing, cynical smiles.

Within another hour, the road rumbled with the sound of an approaching bulldozer, a huge tank-like machine with treads that was easily twice the size of our previous tractor. Upon the driver’s arrival, his first order of business was collecting gasoline for his bulldozer and his fee – 10 somoni per vehicle waiting for a total of about 650 somoni. He had brought a friend with him who moved in among the cars, collecting the bills and change from the families and truck drivers. As I stood nearby, a thin man sauntered up to Farahnush, eyed me up and down, and murmured something to her. Her eyes grew wide and she quickly led me away from the area, explaining that if the driver saw me, and recognized me as an American, he’d raise the price for everything if he thought he could get away with it. No one seemed surprised by that thought, and Malik agreed that there was a good chance he’d do that. As the bulldozer easily cut through sun-dried mud, I watched from a distance, behind everyone else in an attempt to remove even the possibility of becoming a problem. A man with one leg supported himself with crutches and observed the proceedings nearby, and asked Farahnush if things like this happened in America, to which she replied that natural disasters like floods and mudslides happen everywhere, but in America they probably would have responded to it faster than 7 hours. I mentally corrected her – the Tajiki government, the “they” in question, still hadn’t responded to it. The border guards and БДА police crouched uselessly nearby. They had watched the elderly Tajiki man struggling in the mud without even lifting a finger in his support. And now everyone was forced to pay out-of-pocket for this bulldozer, since the government had never sent one. If Malik hadn’t been lucky enough to find one willing to drive out, who knows how long this convoy would have waited.

Rock (and) rolling: now THAT's what we needed 7 hours ago.

Suddenly people realized that their 7 hour imposition was about to be removed and the other side of the river was emptied of people, doors slamming as they climbed back into the cars. The bulldozer was almost finished with a small path when the first car, a white Niva like our own from the other side, daringly raced over the mud without waiting for an “all clear” sign. With a loud squishing noise, he promptly got himself stuck in the muck next to the tractor, raising a low, schadenfreudic chuckle from the crowd. “And the first shall be last,” I quipped, while Farahnush and Malik agreed that because of the driver’s impatience, no one was going to go out of their way to help him unstick his truck. A few minutes later, the other side started to proceed through the narrow gap in the mud, and people from our side shouted angrily at them – why were they going first? Personally, I agreed that the other side should go first…it was almost dark now, which meant that they’d be traversing the steep, landmine-covered slopes over the river with nothing but headlights and they’d have no place to stop and rest until Qal’ai Khumb, four hours down the road. Our side, on the other hand, would be out of the mountains soon and on our way to Kulob. Just my opinion on things.

The dull blue glow of the afternoon was just disappearing over the mountain as our Niva pulled through the gap, one of the leaders of our side of the river due to our early arrival. The bulldozer driver and his friend stooped on the bank, watching the proceedings with satisfaction. I wondered how often they had been found by desperate drivers, and commented that next time, the government should hire them for their bulldozer instead of the broken down little tractor. I thought it would be an easy ride from here, but apparently we weren’t “out of the mountains” yet – the road was closed up ahead, probably due to more mudslide damage, causing us to detour down the cliff towards the river towards a small town, which I saw only briefly before the darkness swept over the valley. On the edge of the village our convoy came across a pack of young women, probably between the ages of 14-18, standing on the sides of the dirt road. They were laughing, holding up vegetables and juice, and enjoying the proceedings like it was a party. To my surprise, they chorused to us, in English, “Buy something!”

Within 15 minutes I found myself wishing they had been selling antacids, because we had entered The Alluvial Plain From Hell, a ridiculous stretch of boulders the size of basketballs, no discernible path, and the bumpiest ride we had yet experienced. In the darkness, our line of vehicles, 40-long, searched blindly for some way to find the backroad that would connect us with the highway again, almost getting completely lost several times. I found myself literally praying for the car’s survival as we banged over the rocks, hearing the poor Niva groan as we pushed its offroad ability to ridiculous limits. I knew that if we broke down here it would be almost as bad as if we were still in that mountain pass. But at long last our headlights finally shown against a dusty road rising back up again to connect to the main road.

The Niva continued to get worse, making more and more horrifying noises as we lurched out of the mountains and back onto a paved road. Finally it got to the point where Malik didn’t want to risk his daughter and adopted son, so he called another one of his friends in Kulob and found a place for us to stay. Khudo ba shukur – Tajiki for “thanks to God” – for Malik’s numerous friends! It’s amazing the hospitality of the Tajiks – the bearded young sheikh that invited us into his home three hours later at midnight had mattresses, dinner, tea, and a place all prepared for us like we had made reservations a week in advance.

Thankfully, the pills seemed to do their trick, and I felt much better as we pulled into the same little roadside teahouse we had stopped at three days earlier by the river, where we were greeted as old friends by the waitress and served Beef Things With Onions, which besides their unusual appearance, were quite tasty – but at that point, I was happy to have some digestible food in my stomach. I asked Farahnush what the cafe’s name meant – “Cheel Tan,” to which she replied, “It means ‘forty bodies.’” This made my stomach somewhat more queasy again, and I excused myself to go check out the hydroelectric plant above us on the hill, which powered the nearby village of Rushon. Who names a cafe “Forty Bodies” no matter what language it’s in, anyway?!

Lounging at the Forty Bodies Cafe. Careful, Farahnush...don't lounge too comfortably or they may "collect" you...!

We returned to Kalai-Khumb as the sun was beginning to set, only to find the Homestay hostel we had stayed in previously was completely full. In a town this size, this did not bode well and we were afraid that the Niva might end up being our cottage for the night, but luckily Malik was persist in his search for alternative housing, and he found a new homestay house which was just nearing its completion. He came back out to us in the truck, reporting that the inside was clean, new, freshly painted – but the running water hadn’t been hooked up yet. The toilet was of the “rustic variety” – a metal, roofless shack next to the river out back. I suddenly found myself very grateful that my illness’s unpleasant symptoms had ceased. The place had electricity though, and oddly enough, an unplugged old ice cream machine in the front parlor (no ice cream though, darn it). I would have happily spent the evening writing up more blog entries for posting upon my return to Dushanbe, except that a fast-moving thunderstorm blew over for 20 minutes and completely knocked out the power to the entire village.

This was of no matter to the residents of KK, though – of course, they had existed here in this village for thousands of years without electricity or running water, and until the lines were fixed again, a day without it didn’t matter one bit to them and it was business as usual. We had our dinner by candlelight, and Farahnush and I decided that we wanted to climb the interesting-looking mountains to the north of the village (or more specifically, I wanted to climb them and Farahnush decided to go with me to make sure I didn’t do something crazy). I had tried to climb one of them the morning of our previous stay, but had run out of time before we had to continue – I figured, if there’s mountains to be climbed, I wanted to be in on this! So we hitched up our trousers and hit the slopes, to the shock of the children playing in the playground below, who clustered about us as we headed towards our chosen rock-covered giant.

It didn’t take long for this to turn into a somewhat questionable idea. As before, the sun vanished quickly over the mountains, leading us with a hazy blue glow to the west which did less and less to illuminate our rocky goat path as the minutes passed. “Are there bears in these mountains? We are next to Russia, after all,” I asked. “You know, these are questions you should have thought of earlier,” Farahnush retorted. Wisely, she elected to wait for me on a rocky outcropping while I bravely told her that I expected to reach the top in 30 minutes or so, and be back in an hour. “Don’t do anything crazy, okay?” my sister pleaded as I scrabbled up the rockslide on all fours, bypassing the goat path entirely in my quest to use every last moment of light available to me. I peered down at the ground me as Farahnush’s head disappeared below me. The children, who had been previously playing energetically with a soccer ball in the field which spread before me like a rocky patchwork quilt, were now quiet and still, clustered together near the edge of the mountain and staring up at us.

"At least he looked cheerful before he died of exposure," they'd say about him.

I can’t resist an audience, unfortunately, and this goaded me to climb even faster. After 15 more minutes of climbing, I suddenly realized that if I kept climbing, there would be a good chance I would either die, or at least have to spend the night on the top of the mountain. The slick, now almost invisible rocks beneath my hiking boots were wet from the recent rain, and I had no water, no light, and Malik and Saeed didn’t know where we were. I took out my camera, switched it to video mode, and composed a touching, heart-wrenching eulogy about myself with instructions to distribute my possessions upon the recovery of my body from the top of the mountains, which shan’t be published here for the sake of my remaining dignity. Then I tucked in my shoelaces and kept climbing.

After another five minutes, and the realization that the children were now shouting for help below, I realized I was being an idiot and I turned around and started to pick my way back down the mountain. I called out for Farahnush as I descended, telling her to go on without me and that I’d meet her at the house, but I heard no response. It was now almost completely dark and I dug out my trusty iPod and switched its brightness to maximum, holding it in front of me like a index card-sized torch. I signaled with it every few minutes, waving and calling for Farahnush to assure her I was stupid, but alive. I slid down the steep mountain, but thankfully those goats had a few more brains than me, making their path narrow but safe. I’d never been more glad to have those hiking boots than at that moment, and finally, 20 meters from the ground, I barely made out the dark shape of Farahnush waiting for me at the bottom, where she explained that she had almost fallen off, but one of the children had come up to lead her back down. “You know, they told me that some tourist died in these mountains in the village last year,” she told me severely. “Good to know; we’ll have to try earlier in the day next time!” I replied enthusiastically. I’ll probably never learn. But I just love climbing mountains.

Malik and Saeed were waiting for us by the house when we returned, worried about our safety but amused by my description of my bravely stupid adventure. Farahnush’s feet had gotten extremely muddy during the journey, her father helped her start to wash her feet with buckets of water in the otherwise useless bathtub, with me holding a lighter for them to see.

He's quite tiny, even kind of adorable. Maybe I would have tried to keep him as a pet if he hadn't ended up on the bottom of Malik's shoe

As the water ran down the drain, I idly moved the light around the room, exploring it in the darkness. I glanced a yellow leaf in the bathtub, then realized that leaves aren’t supposed to move or have legs. I looked more closely, then straightened up and said as calmly as possible: “Farahnush, don’t panic or make any sudden moves, just move your feet out of the tub immediately.” As she obeyed, I shined the light back into the tub, revealing the small yellow scorpion that was a dozen centimeters from her left foot. Farahnush let out a small noise, and I noted the small size of its body, pinchers, and striking tail. It was still moving towards the drain when Malik leaned in with his slipper and bashed it twice, leaving it mangled and twitching. Farahnush decided that her feet were clean enough, and I warned her as we were adjourning for the night that she should check under her bed and cover her shoes before sleeping. I sure did.

This may turn out to be a bad idea.

We checked into our hostel, which was excellently located on the very edge of one of the tributaries of the Panj, close enough that when the host served us tea in our bedrooms, you could dump the dregs of it directly out your window, straight down into the river. We didn’t spend too long at the hostel; we wandered through the local park, filled with tall, stately poplar trees and tall, windswept grasses. I picked up some authentic Pamiri handicrafts, made by local women, and sampled some “Cola,” which at first I thought was Cola-Cola (as it had the same logo) but was informed that it was an Asian equivalent. And you thought that fake iPods were the only hoaxes that came out of China, you silly fellow!

The highlight of the evening was meeting with Malik’s friend and colleague Booribek, who ran an NGO in the area and had worked with Malik and the American embassy for years. The four of us were invited at Booribek’s insistence to a local Pamiri home, where we were fed enormous amounts of delicious food by our hosts, who spoke a little English and were thrilled that we had come to visit. The meal probably had four or five courses to it, including soups, vegetable platters, pastries, and grilled yak with a mushroom sauce. I had never tried yak before (that I know of) and we were told of its nutritional value and its extremely low cholesterol level, apparently about 6-7%, compared with beef’s 25%. Our little group talked long into the night as we ate, discussing the historical significance of the teahouse, which was designed in the original style of the Pamiri people as a pentagram as part of their Zoroastrian faith. We talked about similarities between Christianity and Islam, and our hosts asked me how I liked the Pamirs so far. Full of yak and vodka, I replied that they were beautiful and the hospitality couldn’t be beat. Booribek and Malik were interested in investing in tourism for the region, and wondered if I had any pointers for them, at which I replied truthfully that they needed to embrace the rituals and customs of Tajikistan and the Pamirs and serve more food like this – they’d have no problem making happy customers. The Tajiki currency, the somoni, is equal to about about $.25 at the moment, so I estimated the full meal, service, and detailed explanations of the building at being worth at least 120 somonis per person.

And this is just the first course, which was on the table when we arrived!

We slept soundly that night with the gentle sounds of the small river below us and the creaking of our stout old wooden hostel, awakening early to visit the local botanical garden, which is famed for being the second highest in the world at 2,320 meters above sea level. Our guide, another one of Malik’s friends, showed us around for an hour, explaining that the different sections of the garden were filled with trees from 3 different continents, including North and South America. He also dryly pointed out the construction site for President Rahmon’s new “vacation home,” a multi-million dollar venture that struck me as a disgusting when large percentages of his populations are missing modern toiletries and communications. Farahnush and I sampled a local plant that he told us was an edible medicine for the Pamiri people (or at least I think he did; Farahnush was translating for me) but quickly spat it out. Like most medicine, just because it was edible didn’t mean that it tasted even remotely pleasant.

The day’s main journey was farther south along the Panj to the Garm Chashma, the Russian word for Hot Springs. It took about two hours to slowly traverse the usual rocky roads, but I noted that the river here had changed color from muddy brown to a light, almost tropical-looking blue, for which no explanation could be found. I speculated that perhaps that this was the natural color of the water, but it was slower moving here and therefore less likely to be filled with mud stirred up from the rapids found farther west. We smelled the strong sulfur of the springs before we saw them, but arrived momentarily at a large white gate which greeted us with the traditional Tajik greeting: “Хуш Омадед!” – Khoosh Omaded, which is the equivalent of “Pleasant Welcome!”

The springs sat high upon their huge white mount of sulfur deposits, forming the usual stalactites and vapor spilling out into the chilly mountain air. Trenches had been dug up and down the mountain, feeding the almost-boiling water into bathhouses and the nearby resthouse. A small pool had been dug as a reservoir for the freshest, hottest water, but Saheed, Malik, and myself couldn’t go in there – it was apparently the hour for women, so the three of us lounged in the men’s bathhouse, which we had to ourselves. The water glowed eerily from reflections from the corrugated tin roof above us – tin roofs are by far the standard out there in the rural areas of Central Asia; they’ve practically turned their use into an art form – and I dangled my feet into the water and poured the water into my hair. I wanted to go up and take some more pictures of the main collection pool, but by that time a group of large, naked Russian men had decided it would be a good time to use the pool, causing me to quickly vacate the area within moments and join the others at the resthouse for tea and Nescafe. I tried to find out the name of the Hot Springs so I could locate it later on a map, but the resthouse keeper misinterpreted Farahnush’s question and thought she was asking for the word in Tajik. “Garm chashMAH! chashMA!!” he told her repeatedly, and we retreated with our question unanswered. Interestingly enough, both eastern farmers and the border guards often mistook Farahnush for a foreigner or American because of her clothes and how easily she spoke English with me. I wondered if she gets that a lot since her return from the USA. Even now, I haven’t yet been able to discover the name of the place, although I located it on Google maps.

This is probably the only appropriate picture I can show you of the hot springs. *shudder*

The final event of our trip to Khorog was dinner with all of Malik’s friends together at a local restaurant, where we had Pamiri beef and of course, vodka. Malik’s friends, all from around or in the Khorog area, presented the four of us Dushanbe city-folks with gifts to commemorate our visit; hand-made stockings with color designs on them, perfect for those cold Jordanian nights and the tile floor back at home. The food, vodka, and constant elaborate toasts to each others health and journeys were excellent – but how can any food compare with the deliciousness that is yak? I’ll be convincing my parents to start a yak farm as soon as I get back to America, that’s obvious. Hopefully they get along with goats!

Oddly though, my stomach was starting to feel kind of funny. And not funny in a good way…

The guests receive colorful stockings as gifts from their Pamiri hosts. My hair only looks like that because it's filled with sulfur from the springs

We left early on Saturday morning in Saeed’s truck, and headed for the mountains in the south, a series of beautiful green rolling foothills that went on for kilometers, vibrantly green and with almost no trees on them. Surprisingly, they lack any trees, which made the morning sunlight catch every fold and curve in the earth in a pattern of shadows, making these low mountains a sun-warmed blanket of gently waving grass, thrown over giants sleeping below.

I can't help being this poetic. Just call me Rudaki.

One thing you definitely have to look out for in Tajikistan is potholes in the road. And lots of them, some of the size that could break a sedan’s axle in half if you’re traveling at the right speeds. We weren’t worried about that in the Niva, but for everyone’s health and well-being, Saeed did some pretty amazing maneuvers to avoid the worse of them. Clearly a man who knows his way around Tajik highways. The other thing to look out for is the Tajikistan “БДА” – which is pronounced “Bee Dee Ah” and is the spectacularly corrupt road police force, stationed every dozen kilometers on major highways, which checks documents, passports, registrations, and anything else that could possibly not be 100% perfect, so they can extract a bribe from you to ignore it. The combination of potholes and police made the trip a little slower than it would have been otherwise, but I didn’t mind that much as the fantastic scenery more than made up for it.

Our party stopped briefly in the city of Kulob for lunch, meeting up with one of Malik’s friends in the area and visiting the tomb of one of the famous Iranian Sufi intellectuals. Farahnush and I checked out a mysterious golden monument in the center of the city, which thanks to her translation for me from a gardener, we learned that it was dedicated to the Kulob’s 2,700th birthday from a few years ago. Fairly amazing when you compare the age of a city like that to anything we have in America, or even in the most of Europe. On the way out of town, I asked Malik if we could pick up a map of the area – like the majority of foreigners, I had absolutely no idea how the country was laid out or where we were going. The only map we could find on short notice was a large, laminated wall map, but the advantage of this was that I could mark it up with a sharpie to keep track of our route. This would be our last major city for several days as we traversed the wilderness between Kulob and Khorog, our final destination, so we filled an extra gas tank to put in the trunk; better to be safe than sorry. For the first time, I saw a less modern way to fill a car’s tank – attendants dragged buckets of gasoline over to the car, and poured it through a funnel directly into the tank. It seemed pretty large risk of flammable danger to me, and the smell of raw gasoline fumes exposed to the air were quite potent, causing Farahnush to wrap her head with her new red keffiyeh until we were done outside. “Don’t worry, we use fuel pumps like everyone else in Dushanbe,” she pointed out.

Well, I suppose it was done like this for decades in America...

We left Kulob behind and the road went from “usable by your average car” to “possibly dangerous” within a matter of minutes, and the amount of traffic dropped to a trickle. The brilliant afternoon sun shone into the car brightly and the snow-covered mountains in the distance grew ever closer as we bounced along over the boulders in the road, finally coming to a roadblock and sign telling us we were entering the risk zone along the Panj river, the border and only separation between Tajikistan and Afghanistan. I was required to give up my passport for a few minutes so they could register me in an archaic, dusty green book that looked like it had been used by the Soviets (and in fact, it probably had been). The others had their passports glanced at briefly as well, but mine was the main interest – the bored guards flipped through it curiously, as American tourists in this part of the country are extremely rare.

Within fifteen minutes we came in sight of the mighty Panj – a roaring muddy brown torrent that rages for a thousand kilometers before emptying into the Aral Sea far behind us. At this particular point, the river looked quite wide, and very dangerous as well – about 20 meters of rapids crashing against huge rocks below us. Cows grazed unconcernedly in the road as our white truck barreling past them, and farmers wearing the traditional toqi hat casually flicked long sticks at them to move them higher into the rocks. I squinted over the river towards the sunny cliffs, realizing that I was looking into the infamous country that was the site of the original “War on Terror” started almost a decade ago. In the media, we hear of the death and destruction in the south, around the capitol of Kabul – but nothing could be further from what we saw here. Nothing but cows, grassy fields, and broken cliff-side, stretching away in all directions. If you didn’t mind the distance and lack of more westernized amenities, you couldn’t ask for a more picturesque place to live.

Except for the landmines. I was drinking from my seltzer water bottle (which is the norm in Russia/Central Asia instead of the regular uncarbonated variety in America and Jordan) and almost choked on it when we passed an angry-looking yellow sign with a descriptive drawing of someone’s leg being blown off at the knee. I couldn’t read the Russian lettering on it but the meaning was clear – don’t get off this road, and don’t go down to the water. Malik explained to me that during the slow collapse of the Soviet Union, the area was seeded with landmines along the border to prevent migration between the countries. The area of land is just too large to cover with a fence or with guards – although we did occasionally see border guards, groups of three with machine guns patrolling the road every few dozen kilometers. Instead, the threat of death or maiming by mines had to serve the intended purpose of warning civilians that to go to the river is to gamble with their lives.

Uh...I'll keep my knees intact, thanks.

We continued to see the signs, placed every couple of kilometers, for about 30 kilometers. I would occasionally see gaping holes in the road, 5 meters deep at least, surrounded with crude rock barriers to prevent cars from nosediving into them during late night drives. I joked that they were landmine blasts, but it was more likely that it was the result of landslides or sections of the mountain collapsing. The river roared hungrily below us, sometimes 2 meters away, sometimes 40. No guardrails here besides distantly-spaced concrete blocks with faded Cyrillic on them: there would be no AAA, no quick response; nothing to save you here if you suddenly slid from the road into the mighty Panj.

In the video below, we’d come to a waterfall, which looked small from a distance, until I realized it was still a kilometer away when first glimpsed. As we drew even nearer, I realized that we weren’t just going to go past it – we were going to go under it. Apparently I hadn’t sealed the door quite properly: I got splashed down my right side as we drove through the torrent.

As we traveled, we came across many springs and streams flowing cheerily through the rocks. Some of them were safely under the bridges that had been built during the Soviet era, but newer streams rapidly turned into rivers and in some places threatened to make the entire road impassable. “Especially in this region, people have very fond memories of the Soviets,” Malik told me. They built roads, schools, and broad modern technology into a region which previously had never seen the outside world. Compared with the current government, led by Emomalii Rahmon, the Soviets were bright beacon of hope and progress. Now however, the roads are over a half-century old and their future repairs are unknown. However, we did pass by a large-scale road construction crew two hours into the mountains, complete with air jacks blasting away at the rocks, dump trucks and trailers transporting materials, and piles of iron rebar. Did I mention that these roads were very dangerous – and that’s in a small truck! The thought of anything larger veering around these corners over the river is incredible, by which I mean insane. At one point we came across a small sedan, stranded in the middle of a 10 meter wide river as two men pushed futility at it, knee-deep in the water. A woman stood on our side of the river watching the proceedings, fretfully wringing her fingers together. After our Niva easily crossed the blocked path, Saeed and I joined the two men with a rope tied to the front bumper and together we pulled the car slowly from the mud and onto the far bank. I gave the pull count in Tajik, calling out “yak, du, sey! yak, du, sey!” which means “one, two, three!” The family gratefully thanked us repeatedly and invited us to their house for dinner, which we politely declined, knowing that we wanted to make it to Khalai-Khumb, the largest village in the Darvos region with almost 2,000 people, before we were driving these roads by nightfall – not recommended. Malik told the family that I was a visiting American, at which the older man, a sheikh with a long white beard and cap perched precariously on his head, shook his head in pleased amazement and told us he couldn’t believe an American of all people would be out here, much less helping him with his family’s car!

This could have been a problem if we hadn't come by with our trusty Niva

We neared Khalai-Khumb, but we weren’t out of the mountains yet, so to speak – ridiculously enough, we came across a БДА station, complete with a gate and police officers with machine guns. We went through the usual song-and-dance of registration, but there was a new “request” from the men: transport one of their own to Khalai-Khumb to the barracks there. You don’t deny the БДА a request, so what could we do? The young man squeezed into the back seat with Farahnush and Malik, shoving his machine gun barrel into my jaw as he did so. I was sincerely glad I had watched him remove the clip from it beforehand. Through Malik, I asked him if all traffic police carried machine guns, or whether it was just him – he replied that it was because they were on the border with Afghanistan and they needed to prevent terrorist attacks. The БДА elsewhere would just have pistols and nightsticks. Raising an eyebrow, I gazed across the river at the utterly peaceful slopes of the mountain. Compared with the villages, power lines, telephone poles, and roads of the Tajik side of the border, the Afghanistan side was lucky to have a single dirt road and mud houses. In the past 4 hours, I had seen many 5-6 people, all of them farmers leading donkeys or flocks of sheep to the river (apparently un-landmined). But hey, if the БДА wants to play it safe, that’s their business. With only a couple dozen kilometers left before reaching the village, the road opened up into a blissfully paved stretch, and I realized my rear parts had gone partially numb from the bouncing. One thing’s for sure – I’ll never complain about American or Jordanian roads again!

Oddly enough, I don't feel horribly threatened by this Afghani mudhouse village.

We reached Khalai-Khumb at around 7, dropped off our silent friend at his barracks, and found a hostel to stay at, a cheery blue-and-white building labeled “Homestay” on a sign by its gate. The owner, a white-haired older gentleman who enthusiastically welcomed us, led us to our rooms and whipped up a simple but tasty dinner of soup, bread, and vegetables within 20 minutes. Darkness quickly fell over the village as the sun was swallowed behind the clifftops surrounding us, and the peaceful sound of the river lulled us to sleep. Tomorrow, we should be in Khorog, the capital of the southeast territory of Tajikistan, where we’ll spend a couple days before heading back along a new route.