For a solid year I lived and breathed Central
Asian history and culture.
The trip was all the introduction to complex, far out traveling, that I had never fully expected.
It also reminds you to wear your seat belt.
Central Asia opened my eyes past my paper and touched a part of my soul.
It connected me to my family, the earth, and to new people.
In fact, the city of Samarkand, Uzbekistan was celebrating
its 2750th birthday while we were visiting!
Nomadic
tribes traveled over the land herding sheep and oxen on horseback.
The
yurt, is a Central Asian place of dwelling.
While the Central Asian races are similar, they all hold proudly to
their ethnic differences.
Islam is also a common religion for the ethnic
Central Asians and lives peacefully along side Christianity.
For most of
the Republics, religion, whether Islam or Christianity, is secular.
The whole family all flew from different locations on different days,
for many different reasons.
But before we could even leave the United
States, months of preparation had to be done stateside first.
Each of
the countries requires a separate visa and the visa requirements differ a
little per country.
They would then
be leaving from Almaty again at the end of the trip.
The
Washington DC Kazakh embassy is very Soviet in nature.
An unhappy woman works the other end with very little motivation
to assist you.
(Note: the Uzbek and especially the Kyrgyz visas
were far easier to obtain).
Finally, assuming that all family’s are
legally ready to leave, our journey began.
Part Two:
Scott
and I left for Uzbekistan first.
Flying first to Istanbul, Turkey via
Washington DC.
Sleeping wasn’t an option.
We arrived in Tashkent,
the capitol city of Uzbekistan, around two in the morning.
The cab seemed nicely spacious to Scott.
Our
first stop on the drive through the dark was a moment at a cookie stand.
you’re going to need a lot of bills.
For instance, headlights are not used for seeing, but for
communicating.
The rest of the time was dark.
Thus, large
holes are left gaping randomly in the streets for cars wheels to be
sucked into.
and never found the
ride too frightening.
The sun kept rising
as we drove further south to Samarkand.
An arid plane stretched out far
until butting into mountain far to the east.
It is a beautiful and quieting
image.
It
was not yet mid morning when we pulled up to a beautiful, yet well
guarded hotel.
The
ceilings were at least 20 feet tall, with floor to ceiling windows
covered in richly colored wrappings.
Complete with television and a
western toilette, this was the clearest definition of Central Asian
decadence.
Not
unexpectedly, breakfast resembles nothing like what is served in the
United States.
In fact, a breakfast of eggs, toast, bacon, pancakes,
etc.
seems to be a distinctly American practice.
Breakfast was a light
collection of cold cut meats, tea, juice, and melons.
Uzbekistan grows
remarkable melons.
Tall trees line the boulevard and a large
statue/fountain of Timur the Great stands proud in the center.
It was
at the fountain that Scott and I had stopped for a moment.
Within
moments a group of young men, students of the university, had come up to
us.
Their English was very poor but they were very interested to speak
with us.
Where are you from?
How old are you?
They were proud of their rich history, curious of ours, and
wanted to show us their city.
A standard Central Asian meal known as
plov, or pilaf as it has become known since leaving region.
Also served was a very traditional
Central Asian drink that we had read about called Kumis.
You
see, Kumis is a local drink made of unpasteurized, fermented, mare’s
milk.
Oddly,
upon coming out we came across my parents who were touring with the
doctors group.
We said farewell to our new friends and returned to the
hotel with my parents.
Dinner later that night was traditional Central
Asian cuisine.
Manti is oil and mutton filled
steamed dumpling.
Usually eaten by biting off an end, sucking the oils
out, and then consuming the rest.
Lagman is like mutton spaghetti while
shashlik is literally a shish kabob.
Any correlation with language
there?
Not sure, but it sounds close.
Central Asia was really ahead of the time
when studying astronomy and sciences.
Mosques and mausoleums are plentiful in Samarkand, each with their own rituals and superstitions.
At the Shah-i-Zinda mausoleum, one must count the steps all the way to the last building.
If you counted an even number of steps, you will have good luck.
It is a place regularly visited by local residents as a place of quiet walking and family outings.
Fore I had another attack from the Kumis and was in a grave situation.
The Registan is a square with three main buildings.
The
exterior is marvelously tiled with Arabic poems and animals.
Before visiting the Registan, we had visited the more modern end of Samarkand for lunch.
Scott had been feeling better and chose to have a beer with his meal.
Unfortunately, our guide was right.
We had finished touring the magnificent buildings and were sitting along a wall next to the street.
Bless her, she still considered continuing her plight, until she eventually thought better and left Scott be.
Bill Clinton did choose to have a custom rug made from this factory though when he once visited.
During his visit he awarded the factory with an international honor in workers standards.
The large workrooms were filled with the loud chatter of women gossiping and listening to the radio.
It has a powedery outside and looks much like a powdered doughnut hole.
Thinking thus, my dad popped on in his mouth.
Fortunately, his colleagues never noticed his distaste and carried on their dancing.
The guesthouse is run by a mother/daughter pair who live in the back house.
The closer apartments housed guests, a dinning room, and traditional tea table.
However, the most remarkable aspect of the guesthouse was the garden.
Speaking of names and language.
For example, we met a man who was named, I did you not, Chubacca!
We spent the evening taking a short stroll of Bishkek.
After a week in Samarkand, Bishkek seemed remarkable industrial and more modern.
Nevertheless, we ate at a local restaurant, where we again, had Manti.
Traditional tea is served from a small stove with a strange variety of cookies to accompany it.
From there our group crawled up the Telety River valley until setting up camp by the riverside.
Perhaps it keeps the blood refreshed and their legs strong.
My only reckoning is that young men, when intoxicated, will do such things.
Somehow though, all six of them managed to squeeze into a 3 person tent for the night.
We followed a tributary creek up a steep valley, climbing further into the mountains.
Thus, the fresh smelling trees and good earth was a surprisingly welcome restroom exchange for us.
The bright teal of the lake is indescribable.
Some of the rocks in the range date back to 540 million years ago.
The Soviet beast showed up the next morning to begin the crawl back down the mountain valley.
Part Nine:
The Bishkek guesthouse was a welcome oasis after our long drive that day.
Cold showers are still cold.
But clean and refreshed we were able to relax at the guesthouse tea table with snacks and tea.
Unfortunately, our solace would not last too long as we discovered some new visa problems.
At a mall restaurant we were determined to eat something other than manti, lagman, and shashlik .
Fortunately, there were picture menus; unfortunately we did not understand the choices in meat.
So what did we do?
When you’re hungry, humility and embarrassment go out the window.
They are soft, warm, and my savior against the recurrent feelings of food poisoning.
Part Ten:
Crossing the Kyrgyz/Kazakh border was interesting.
A process that takes about 2 hours per party.
So, this “truck stop” was our option.
He came back to the fan, shell shocked and begging for my hand sanitizer.
Further down the road, we were stopped at a checkpoint station.
Apparently, it is a standard thing for the Kazakh government to stop any car with foreign plates.
Part 11:
Somehow, the 150 mile trip had taken all day and we welcomed our hotel.
After good bye filled with much gratitude for Dima, we began the search for dinner.
Definitely over manti, lagman, and shashlik, we simply began walking the city.
If Bishkek looked more modern than Samarkand, than Almaty was nearly European.
We chose to explore a local super market, since I had a craving for cereal.
Unfortunately, we stood in the dairy isle for nearly a half hour.
We finally found what we thought was regular, pasteurized milk.
It even said 2% fat on it.
Only, it wasn’t milk.
Or at least it wasn’t the consistency of milk.
It smelled like milk, but it was the consistency of egg nog.
We had dry cereal for dinner.
We passed miles of statues, government buildings, parks, even the circus.
Part Twelve:
The flights back home were long.
We had seen the
most disturbing bathroom situations in the world.
Central Asia is a region with an amazing history.
Was I going to have to cover myself?
Were we going to be at risk of a terror attack at any minute?
I shake my head at these ignorant questions.
Humanity is still humanity.
Central Asia is a unique, diverse, and life changing region.
