After the 8 hours spent along the banks of the Panj River waiting for a mudslide to be cleared, I should have expected that there would be a good chance I’d see more of the same, and I was right. Malik and I were on our way towards the Tajiki city of Panjakent with our hired driver Shirehlee (yes, it is very close to how we’d say “Shirley”) through the snow-covered northern mountains when we were waylaid by a Chinese road construction team for four hours, joining yet another convoy. I thought I would be done with convoys! But such is life – the problem is that the Chinese building group had no idea when they’d be done, or when they started, or when they might stop, and even worse is that this isn’t communicated through any centralized radio network that a driver can tune into. As it was just the two of us and Shirehlee, Malik stretched out in the backseat and napped and I read the final chapters of the last book in the Dune Trilogy that I had gotten for Christmas, six months earlier.

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.

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After arriving back in Dushanbe in the early afternoon and being fussed happily over by Reyhon who was happy to see us safely arrived home, Malik and I went to the Uzbekistan embassy in Dushanbe to pick up our visas for entry to Tajikistan’s neighboring country. Because of some changes in my travel dates, I needed to request “rush” processing (which means they stamped it right away instead of waiting for a day and then stamping it) which at an extra ~$40 brought the total cost to exactly $199. Ouch – Uzbekistan is not a cheap place for an American to visit! Malik and his Tajiki passport, however, only had to pay the extremely reasonable $8. One thing’s for sure, I’ll never complain about Jordan’s 10JD (about $15) ever again!

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.

The next morning, before breakfast, I discovered not one but two dead scorpions in the bathtub, where Farahnush had apparently crushed one herself before I had awoke. I speculate they were living in the small gaps around the ceiling, but much later, after reading up on the toxicity of scorpions of Central Asia, I have to admit that they probably weren’t that dangerous, and probably would have given the equivalent of a bad bee sting. I was feeling much better; positively rejuvenated in fact after the adventure of the previous night. Therefore, I was all for forgoing the БДА’s warning that the road north along the Mountain Highway was closed because of Islamic militants that had moved in a few days ago and were occupying the region – militants? No problem! However, I was obviously outvoted by clearer heads, and we continued along the Khorog-Kulob road that we had taken several days before, enjoying the same huge waterfall and scenery from a different direction.

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.

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I awoke in the early morning with extreme stomach pains and diarrhea. It seems that the pain I had started feeling the previous day had gotten worse, and I found myself regretting drinking that appetizing-looking mountain stream water, which I should have realized was filled with somewhat less-appetizing bacteria which were now having a party in my intestine. Malik provided me with pretty little yellow pills, which I eagerly gulped down with some ever-ready tea, and prayed that the road would somehow magically feel less bumpy.

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.

We arrived in Khorog in the middle of a sunny afternoon on the following day. The city isn’t the capital of the country, of course, but of the Gorno-Badakhashan province, which makes up almost 50% of Tajikistan’s entire landmass, as well as many of its most beautiful mountains in the Pamirs. We were greeted by cheerful stone signs in both English and Arabic posted high up in the mountains above us, large markers formed by rocks that looked like pebbles from our vantage point far below, but each must have been at least a meter in diameter. After leaving that morning from Khali-Khumb, the trip progressed beautifully uneventful. We only stopped twice – once to get lunch at a small cafe/teahouse by the side of the road near the village of Rushon, and once to take a drink from a picturesque little mountain stream. Hmm. More on that later.

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

On the second day of my time in Tajikistan, I was taken out of the city to see some of the sites around it, like the lower mountains over the roaring Varzob River and its teahouses, and the ancient earthen castle in the village of Hissor, Malik’s hometown. However, our main plan was to take me to the far eastern reaches of Tajikistan, into the Pamir Mountains. On Friday evening, I was introduced to Malik’s friend Saeed, who would be joining us in our trip with his all-terrain, Russian-made Lada Niva truck. Saeed was a tough-looking Tajik with a steely eye and crew cut, but he was quick to laugh and was always interested to have Malik or Farahnush translate what I was saying, or have me try to teach him a few words in English. After a delicious dinner of homemade Osh (pilaf) from Rayhon, we went to bed early, with Saeed sleeping on the floor in the living room on a mattress which looked a lot like an Arab farsha.

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.

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