Farewell, 'stans! I hardly knew ye...

Karina made it the 60km from her ancestral home in Issy-Kul, Kyrgyzstan to meet me in Almaty in just under 12 hours (the road is somewhat indirect). I whiled away a day waiting for her, strolling the leafy streets of the former Kazakh capital and laying in the park among young couples to read my book. We're now in the sleek Almaty airport waiting for our 1am flight to Delhi. Flights at inconvenient times seems to be a hallmark of Central Asia.

It was nice to end my trip in Kazakhstan. Despite ending up as the homeland of Borat, this is really the only country on my trip which has shown a glimmer of a future for itself. Kyrgyzstan has nothing, and while Uzbekistan has as much oil as Kazakhstan, it appears quite set on plundering it on monarchical glamour projects and counter-productive suppression of Islamists. I didn't even visit the two countries regarded as the regions most backward, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

This is a fascinating part of the world, and its vast steppes have been an amphitheater for some of the most important developments in the last millennium of the world's history. Today, the region suffers mostly from irrelevance, far from everything, too far even, for the proper exploitation of its mineral wealth. Proper governance is all that can save these small, unsustainable countries. And without some kind of economic union to being them to a something close to a global scale, even that won't be enough. As I travelled the region, I kept thinking of the fascinating role of the Russians, who fought for 200 years to conquer this region, and then gave it up in the space of a few months in 1991. Despite the horrors of the Stalinist USSR, it is not clear that for the common people, the state of independence is better.

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Kazakhstan, Oh Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan, after the recent democratic election, has become a one-party state. President Nazarbayev, the former Kazakh Communist Party secretary, swept the country's parliament. The election, like all the previous Kazakh elections, was decried as deeply flawed by international observers. At first blush, Nazarbayev appears to be just another third world dictator who likes to legitimize himself with elections.

Except that it's quite likely that at this point he would win a fair election quite roundly. If he is a despot, he may be one of those rare enlightened sorts, the exact type that a developing country needs. He was a long time Communist official in Kazakhstan, and was very reluctant to take the reigns of an independent state. His was the last of the 15 SSR's to withdraw from the union, and even then it never even went to the trouble of getting its own international dialing code (they still use Russia's "+7"). Upon independence, Nazarbayev led the country on a quite radical course of privatization, following the instructions of Western multilateral institutions. He did use his power to limit political dissent, but unlike in the case of most totalitarian regimes, that dissent was largely coming from anti-reform, anti-West elements.

After the first few years of his reform programs, which he likened to "surgery without anesthetics," the country has experienced 10 years of double-digit economic growth, which has created a happy an influential middle class, quite beholden to Nazarbayev for their prosperity. The opposition today still exists, but pre-election polls had it drawing only 20% of the vote (in the actual election, it drew less than 7%, below the minimum required for parliamentary representation).

This accomplishment is particularly impressive when set alongside the examples of his neighbors: he has managed to leverage the Caspian energy wealth without turning the country into a stifling, stagnant police petro-state such as Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan. He has maintained domestic bliss in a country even more diverse than Tajikistan (only slightly over half of Kazakhstan is Kazakh), which suffered a debilitating civil war for much of the last decade. It seems that the price of having a president-for-life,and the Billions of Dollars he and his family have squirreled away, is actually quite resonable in light of the benefits he has brought.

Now, at the age of 67, Nazarbayev is starting to look spread his legacy beyond the Kazakh borders. There has been talk of a Central Asian union, and Nazarbayev has taken to travelling to his neighbors and giving their leaders pearls of advice, such as to undergo economic reforms before political ones. Relations among the 5 stans have been, in the past, bad to miserable, which has lead to debilitating transaction costs for the land-locked region. Any kind of closer integration would be a very good thing for the region, although it's hard to see it happening any time soon. Uzbekistan, which in Soviet days was the regional oligarch, and still has half of the region's population, has a historical disdain for their Kazakh cousins. Indeed, the very word "Kazakh" means "Adventurer" or "Outlaw" in the Uzbek dialect.

Dubai on the Steppe

So after flying from Tashkent to Almaty, I am now about 40 miles from where I was two weeks ago when I was visiting my friend Karina and her family on the shores of Lake Issy-Kul, in Northern Kyrgyzstan. 40 miles, but a world apart. Kyrgyzstan is a dusty, struggling developing country, which I characterized as "Africa with Mountains" (not pejoratively; I love Africa). Kazakhstan, or at least what can be seen from Almaty, is a burgeoning young republic, alive with young people, graceful avenues, and expensive restaurants. The guidebooks describe Almaty as a "European town," but I'm not sure that's quite right -- it's got none of Europe's charm, only its standard of living. A better description might be "Dubai on the Steppe."

The differences between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are striking -- firstly, the people. The Kyrgyz and Kazakh people are essentially the same ethnic group, both descendants of the nomadic Mongols. The distinction between the two came in the Stalinist period of collectivization, and was used essentially as an administrative tool to separate the people of the steppe, living in what is today Kazakhstan, from those of the mountains and alpine valleys, living in Kyrgyzstan. But today, the Kyrgyz are still largely an impoverished people, their skin stained dark brown from the sun and their faces prematurely aged, giving even young children the wisdom of decades. The Kyrgyz look every bit the part of of indigent former nomads. The residents of Almaty, just across the border, however, look like cosmopolitan urbanites. Their skin is fair, and they look much more like their distant Manchurian cousins of Northern China than anything else. Indeed, I've passed more than a few girls who look a lot like my girlfriend Vivian (though clearly none anywhere near as intelligent, nor pretty, nor charming,).

If it weren't for the highly unfortunate influence of Russian fashion, these young people walking the streets of Almaty would not be out of place in a suburban California shopping mall. Right now it appears very popular for women to wear suspenders let down to hang from their waists. See-through mini-dresses are also in, as is anything with "Dolce and Gabbana" written on it. Maybe the comparison with Vivian was hasty.

New found prosperity will do that to a people. Kazakhstan is in the throws of a fairly well-managed energy boom. The oil wells of the northern Caspian sea (brought to the Kazakhs by the good fortunes of Soviet gerrymandering), have funneled cash 1,000 miles eastward to Almaty, where you can see it flowing through the streets in the form of a very impressive array of luxury western vehicles. Mercedes, BMW's, Toyotas, Lexi, it's enough to pass at a Menlo Park soiree -- compare this to Kyrgyzstan or Uzbekistan, where the only cars you see are old standard-issue Russian Lada's or cheap-as-dirt Korean cars, pumped out by domestic factories (Hyundai in Kyrgyzstan, Daewoo in Uzbekistan). It's striking.

The third difference I'll point is the prices. And such prices! A Kazakh coming to California wouldn't blush at a $20 lunch... that would be considered quite reasonable in Almaty. I'm paying $4/hour here for the Internet, while 40 miles from here, in Kyrgyzstan, I paid a tenth that. My hotel is a steal at $80/night. I was thinking of booking into the Intercontinental for the one night I am here (to get the dirt out from under my fingernails), but their best rate was over $500.

And that $4 hour of Internet is now a minute from being up... I'll write more about the very interesting factors driving these differences between Kazakhstan and it's neighbors when I get more cash from one of the ubiquitous ATM's...

Escape from Uzbekistan Part II

I made it! After sending me away in the morning with the instructions to return at 5pm, then asking me to wait indefinitely while the consul returned from some errands, I finally received a quaint hand-written visa at around 7:30 last night. I had more than enough time to enjoy one last evening in Tashkent, before catching a few winks and heading to the splendidly chaotic Tashkent airport for a 6am flight.

I had a business class ticket (coach was sold out), and so was eligible to bypass the mob crowding the entrance to the airport building, jostling to get their bag scanned and tickets checked before boarding their flights to Moscow, Istanbul, Riva, and beyond. Of course, I didn't know that the $50 extra I paid for business class came with these benefits, so I matched the old ladies elbow for elbow only to be turned away at the check-in desk, and redirected to a different entrance. At the business class check in lobby and private passport control and lounge, I found myself in the company of some serious looking gentlemen and their families, the sort of people who walked up to the refreshment table and seize a whole tray of pastries to bring back to their reclining travelling parties. After being locked in the departure lounge until 10 minutes past the departure time (a guard scowled and grunted his disapproval at me when I tried to leave early), a bedraggled agent walked through the lounge announcing "Alma-Ata! Alma-Ata" (the original Soviet name for Almaty, disused for 15 years now). She led about a dozen of us out through the locked door, past the hoi palloi, and down into a private bus that sped us to the foot of our waiting RJ85.

The most amusing part of this business class experience was that it wasn't business class at all: that is, there was no business class on the plane -- we just took an assortment of empty seats from among the "coach" passengers, who had already boarded and were apparently waiting for us. All the same, I enjoyed my oligarchical experience, well worth the $50 just for the story.

Though Tashkent is only about 70 minutes flying from Almaty, the airports are worlds apart. Tashkent's terminal, unchanged since Soviet days, is characterized by peeling paint and shouting passengers. It actually has a good deal of international flights, but passengers reach their waiting Sukhoy, Yak, and (sometimes) Boeing aircraft by way of buses. There were only 4 proper gates. This gives them a low rating on the Maritz Development Index (the ratio flights at a country's national airport which are boarded by jet ways).

Almaty, however, is graced by a brand new, albeit smallish airport. Instead of the rows upon rows of Sukhoys I left in Uzbekistan, I landed to find myself in the midst of a nice collection of private jets, G5's and some others. The terminal is sparkling, the passport control nicely computerized, and (the biggest surprise) the bathrooms were clean. Heady times in Kazakhstan!

Escape from Uzbekistan

This will be the last blog post I have to submit via email (and likely the last without pictures) since I am to leave Uzbekistan and its regulated Internet in about 12 hours. I had gotten to the end of the line in Khiva, and lacking a Turkmen visa, I had to turn back. I still have some time to kill before I'm due in India, and so I'd like to go to Khazakstan, which has the added benefit of having direct flights to Delhi.

There are two flights daily from Ugrench, near Khiva, to the capital of Tashkent. I went to the airport with a ticket for the flight for the next day, but the complexities of Central Asian flight schedules and visa requirements meant that I needed to get back to Tashkent by that evening, or else not be able to get a Kazakh visa in time to get the next flight to Almaty.

We arrived early and befriended the old English speaking airport manager. ("I am boss of 11 person!" he proudly told us.) He was able to get us on the flight, but only barely, as he was clearly not the boss of the Uzbek police security detail which decided to copy out by hand the entire first page of our passports. We ran across the tarmac to the waiting BAE RJ85, and had to get the ground staff to reopen the baggage compartment so that we could (ourselves) throw our luggage in.

I'm back in Tashkent now, and will head to the Kazakh embassy directly to see if the visa they promised me last week has materialized. Last week, the exasperated Uzbek clerk confided in me that "Our consul is crazy." If I get it, I will use my ticket for the 6am flight tomorrow morning to Almaty...

Khiva now

We left Bukhara following a hearty lunch prepared for us by the wife of Akbar, owner of the house we were staying in. Jonathan bought a fine old fragment of a Torah from the old man for a fine fistful of dollars. The old man responded to this windfall by trying to overcharge us for laundry, but his wife thought better and gave us a nice lunch to send us on our way. We ate in the courtyard while we waited for our driver to say his afternoon prayers ("Please 20 minutes? Allah Akbar?" he said, making praying motions).

The road west from Bukhara runs flat and straight through a moonscape of desert dotted with small scrubs. After a few hours of sand and potholes, we wound down a valley and started to run parallel to the Amu Darya, the river which was once the all-might Oxus river, which along with the Sir-Darya to the north (aka the Jaxartes), and the Tigris and Euphrates, was one of the 4 rivers of the mythical Arab paradise. The Oxus when crossed by Alexander 2,500 years ago was a vast river bringing the runoffs of Central Asia's might mountains over 2,000 miles to the Caspian Sea. It served as the border between the Persian influenced lands to the west (now Iran and Afghanistan) and the largely Turkic lands to the east. It was the boundary of Central Asia and the Middle East.

Over the next millennium, the course of the Amu Darya shifted to the north, leaving the Caspian and joining the Aral Sea, which grew into a vast desert lake, reaching its peak in the 1950's, at which point the Soviets started large scale irrigation programs, diverting essentially all of the river's waters to feed its cotton plantations. The river, much weakened, could not support the Aral Sea, which started to dry. Today, there is nothing left of the Aral Sea except for a few salt ponds. Stalin built a massive fishing fleet to bring fish from the Aral to the Red Army during the Second World War, and today it is possible to see those same boats beached, 200 miles from any water.

Across Amu Darya lay Turkmenistan, and we drove parallel to it for about an hour, talking of how we had wished that we had been able to get visas to enter that bizarre country. At one point, the road crossed the Amu by way of an extremely rickety pontoon bridge, and then before long we reached the outskirts of Ugrench, a drab Soviet town of medium size, along the Turkomen border. From there, it's only 30km over good roads to Khiva.

Khiva today is a "museum city." Rather than a horde of angry Turkmen staring us down at the gates, there was a plump elderly lady in a traditional Uzbek house dress, demanding 5,000 Som (about $4) for entry into the city. Plus another 1,500 if we wanted to use a camera. I had read much about Khiva, and was keen to visit it, but what I walked into felt like a full-scale model of the once great Khanate, and far from the real thing.

This city is about a mile square, and is crammed full of monuments and mud brick houses. There several dozen palaces, mosques, madrassas, government houses, and between them lie traditional houses for about 3,000 Uzbeks who are still permitted to live in the old city. The signature sites are the magnificent minarets, built in the 18th century, which tower above the town, standing some 60m tall and bedecked in dazzling Majorca blue tiles. The streets are spotless, and well worn by the Tevas of the busloads of middle aged European tourists at the start or end of their Silk Road tours. (Khiva, as the furthest west major site in Central Asia, is a convenient end point for them, as it was for us.)

We spent the night in a newly built hotel in the old city, owned by a man who claimed to be the 6th generation of Khivan wood workers. The hotel buildings intricately carved wooden doors led me to believe him. It was only at night, walking back to the hotel across the old city from the local Shashlik restaurant in the new park on the other side that I felt some semblance of what the city may have been like. To fight the heat, Central Asians tend to like to sleep outdoors, mostly in the courtyards of their houses, but a great deal spill out into the street. The full moon wasn't quite bright enough for me to see the unnaturally fine state of the houses, but more than enough to pick my way through the sleeping residents crowding the street. Some boys sneaked around a corner and giggled, but mostly the city was quiet.

Khiva Then

Khiva! The very name was enough to set trembling the hands of Europeans well versed with Central Asia. By the 18th Century, Khiva, which had originally been a small provincial town of the Golden Horde (the furthest west branch of Genghis' descendants), had grown into a mighty fortress, noted for the ferocity of its kings and subjects alike. Its strategic position near a navigable portion of the Amu Darya (Oxus) river, and it's location at the edge of the desert domains of the Turkmen slavers gave it a great, if ill-begotten, bounty from taxing all kinds of illicit trade. Its 30 meters-high mud walls served as a base for raiding parties of all sorts, leaving safe no traveller in the western reaches of Central Asia.

The southernmost residents of Russia felt the yoke particularly hard, and hundreds of these subjects of the Tsar found themselves as slaves to the Khan of Khiva. The Russian government, for its part, saw Khiva as both a persistent thorn, but also as a potential strategic acquisition.

As early 1717, well before the proper start of the Great Game, the Russians tried to command Khiva's friendship with a force of several thousand Cossack cavalry. They arrived with a hearty welcome from the Khan, who expressed a sincere desire to house and feed the weary Russian troops. They were divided into several small groups, sent to surrounding villages to rest, and then promptly slaughtered.

The Russians tried again in 1824, this time with a better equipped and far larger force -- so large that it was too slow to get through the mountain passes in time and suffered great losses before having to turn back several hundred miles from Khiva.

By this time the Great Game was in full swing, and the British were well aware the Russians wouldn't give up until they had Khiva securely in their grips. The premise for the Tsar was the large population of Russian slaves living within the Khan of Khiva's domains. The British realizing this, decided the thing to do was to convince the Khan to release his slaves, making it much harder for the Russians to make this advance.

The British government in India dispatched a series of officers on the highly dangerous mission to Khiva to convince the Khan to simply give up his Russian slaves. One officer, named Shakespear, made it through, and being a linguist and a master of Oriental courts, was able to charm the Khan roundly. Peter Hopkirk, in his book the Great Game, recounts the Khan asking young Shakespear about England. Is it true that the ruler is a woman? (It was Victoria.) Are all her ministers also women? How many guns does she have? When being told that she had too many to count, the Khan replied proudly "I have twenty!" assumably proud both of his arsenals and his counting skills.

The slaves were released (though it should be noted that since this was before the serf emancipation in Russia, they were probably released to go back into slavery of a different sort), and Khiva remained independent for some time, but only until the Russian General Kaufmann, commander of the Russian fortress at Orenberg on the Caspian Sea came on the scene. Kaufmann, who was probably partially mad, was a master of the fait-accompli -- one by one the Khanates of Central Asia fell to his armies:Bokhara, Khokand, and then Khiva. At each one the Brits protested, but did nothing -- the Tsar expressed outrage at these unauthorised actions of the renegade Kaufman, but quietly sent emissaries and traders to solidify the new additions to his empire.

Colonel Bailey, and his remarkable journey

In Hopkirk's other book "Setting the East Ablaze," he recounts the history of Central Asia from the time of the First World War on. In it are several amazing stories of intrigue, enough, as a quote on the book's jacket says, for about a dozen adventure movies. None, however, are quite as moving as that of a certain Colonel Bailey.

In 1917, the British consul in Kashgar (based in the same building where I stayed while there several weeks ago), was increasingly concerned with the absence of intelligence from Central Asia. The Russian Revolution had swept through the region, cutting off all communication from the outside, and potentially freeing the 40,000 German and Austrian prisoners of war which had been held there by the Tsar. The Brits were worried that these might be turned into an army and marched on India by the Central Powers. Bailey, who was an officer in the Indian Army, was called up to Kashgar and dispatched to report on affairs in Central Asia, and if needed, prepare the ground for a British invasion by their armies currently fighting in Persia.He set off for Tashkent, passing like we did through the Tian Shan mountains into what is today Kyrgyzstan. When he reached Tashkent, he found a city in chaos. Its new Bolshevik masters, formerly Russian railway men and industrial workers, were perpetrating untold terrors on the local population. The local population, which had previously been happy to cast of the Russian Imperial yoke, was starting to find that their new, also Russian, masters were probably worse. Bailey was discovered as a British spy, but rather than be executed summarily like so many other enemies of the Bolsheviks, he was spared, largely because the local Bolshevik leaders were not yet sure of their own success, and were all planning their own escapes to Kashgar if things started going badly.

Soon, as the civil war in Russia started winding down and the Bolsheviks emerged as victors, they were able to focus their attentions on Central Asia. A vast conquering army descended under the leadership of the terrible Frunze, and subdued the region once and for all.

Bailey, realizing that he was about to run out his hosts' hospitality, decided to go underground, adopting the disguise of an Austrian prisoner of war, many of whom were still stranded in the region. He remained in Tashkent, undercover, for the better part of the year, still hoping that the British would invade from Persia. He spent most of this time being sheltered by Russian families loyal to the murdered Tsar, and had a number of harrowing adventures, punctuated with a brief romance with an Irish woman working in Tashkent as a governess for a wealthy family.

After the end of the war, Bailey received news that the British army was being demobilized and withdrawn. Hope was now lost, and there was nothing left to do but escape. But the Bolsheviks had severely restricted movement, and there was no way his disguise would hold up for much longer. Winter had closed the passes back to China, and the only way out led to the east, through Persia. If he could only get to Bukhara, which was then still not yet in Bolshevik control, he might be able to escape over the deserts. No one quite knew what has happening in Bukhara, since the Emir there was murdering all of the spies the Bolsheviks were sending. Bailey, incredibly, hatched the plan of applying to be such a spy for the Bolsheviks, under the guise of being a POW trying to escape to Bukhara. The Bolsheviks agreed, under the condition that while he was in Bukhara, he would look out for information about a certain Indian Army Colonel Bailey, who they thought might be trying to escape through the same route (!!).

Bailey was issued the proper transit papers, and was able to escape to Bukhara, and then from here soon thereafter made it out across the very same deserts to the west that I am about to leave to cross. He made it to the safety of Persia, and from there back to London, to be treated with the hero's welcome he deserved.

Noila, keeper of the secrets of Bukhara

In my book on Tamurlane, the author spends a few pages recounting his conversation with a certain Noila, the director of the city's mosque and madrasah restoration department. Our Lonely Planet guidebook had among its listing section for Bukhara guides, the phone number for a woman named Noila. We called, and she was available to show us around. Noila, as it turns out, was not the director of restoration, but rather the curator of the museum of the Ark, in the old palace. No matter -- she was happy to give a personal tour of the city, ducking us in and out of the city's many monuments, threading us through the labyrinthine old city.

Noila was an able guide, whose mannerisms I can describe best as "Soviet" -- a love of statistics, and a hearty appreciation for all the great works of the Russians in "restoring" the mosques to something approximating their past grandeur. She herself was an ethnic Bukhari Tajik (Persian) whose family had been forced to emigrate to Dushanbe, the soviet-constructed capital of the Tajikistan region. Her family then sent her to marry a Bukhari, so as to be able to maintain some links with their ancestral home.

We saw about a dozen ancient Muslim holy sites, a fraction of the total, but enough to remind us of why Bukhara was considered to be the holiest city of central Asia, the "Heart of Islam," even before Temur. The city was home to the Imam al Bukhari, the ninth century author of the Sahih al Bukhari, generally considered to be the second holiest book of Islam (after the Koran). It is a collection of 7,275 "hadith," or sayings of the Prophet Mohammad, each given with a complete genealogy tracing its provenance back to the source. The Imam is buried, along with several of his contemporaries in the various handsome mausoleums that dot the city.

A touching site in many of the Bukhara's holy sites is a man or woman squatting quietly in the corner, waiting for wayward Muslims in need of a prayer. They are out of work imams, ready to offer their services to pilgrims who, due to the suppression of Islam during soviet times, do not know how to pray themselves. For a small fee, the imams will utter a prayer on behalf of the visitor, completing the pilgrimage. Islam, together with all religions, were dismissed as "superstition," and were actively taught against in Soviet schools. Bukhara had its hundreds of mosques turned into store rooms or, later, museums. Those Muslims living in the "Heart of Islam" who wanted to practice, had to do so in semi-underground mosques located out of sight in the back streets.

Since independence, Islam has made a very limited resurgence. President Karimov, who likes to think of himself as a modern incarnation of his Turkish cousin Ataturk, has allowed the practice of Islam, but only in a highly secular manner. Several of the mosques have been rehabilitated, and across the countries a handful of the madrasahs, or religious schools, have resumed instruction. We visited many mosques, but saw only a handful of worshipers, and nowhere in the country did we hear the voice of the muezzin, which in other Muslim cities would call the faithful to pray 5 times a day. Even the great Nadon Minaret, which stood so tall that even Genghis Khan was to spare it when razing the rest of the city, was silent.

Inside the Mir-i-arab madrasah, one of the city's prettier ancient structures, Noila told us: "You can see here that this building is laid out like a traditional madrasah. In the center is a courtyard. To the left is a mosque, and on the right is the large classroom. In the mosque, there is now a museum, and in the classroom there is now a shop." It is worth noting that that the museum was, in fact, also a shop -- indeed the shop of Akbar, the owner of our hotel. It was a nice shop, with beautiful wares.

It was possible, however, to imagine this madrasah, along with Bukhara's many others, teeming with students. Each had hundreds of alcoves spread across several stories, and each alcove would have been occupied by several students, used for sleeping, eating, praying, and studying. The mosques and markets would have been teeming, and the streets awash with the refuse of this busy crossroads town.

I read an account written by George Curzon who travelled through here right at the time of the Russian conquest, when the Emir of Bukhara was reduced to vassal status and the first Russian colonists started to appear. "For my own part," he wrote "on leaving the city I could not help rejoicing at having seen it in what might be described as the twilight epoch of its glory. Were I to go again in later years it might be to find electric light in the highways. It might be to see window panes in the houses and to meet with trousered figures in the streets. It might be to eat zakusha in a Russian restaurant and sleep in a Russian hotel; to be ushered by a Russian guide into the palace of the Ark and to climb for fifty Kopecks the Kalon Minaret. Civilization may ride in the Devil's Wagon, but the Devil has a habit of exacting his toll. What could be said for a Bukhara without a Kosh Begi, a Divan Begi, and an Inak?"

Since I know what none of those last things are, I can't say really relate to Curzon, but all the same it was nice to be able to come to Bukhara at the tail end of yet another of its many periods of history -- at the end of it's charming post-soviet renaissance, before it takes its rightful place on the established tourist circuit.

At the end of our tour, Noila took us up to the Palace of the Ark, the citadel of the former Emirs of Bukhara. We passed by the miserable dungeon pit where the British secret agents Connolly and Stoddart were kept until their deaths, and entered the museum which she had meticulously curated. I was pleased to find the section on "foreign diplomacy of Bukhara" was based almost entirely on Peter Hopkirk's book "The Great Game," which I carried with me and have read and re-read. Several of the exhibits were photocopies of photographs from the book.

That night, we had dinner prepared for us by Noila's 85 year old aunt, the maker of what is deservedly called the best Plov in central Asia. We ate in her stately courtyard home, just a hundred meters from the square where Connolly and Stoddart were executed. I left my copy of the book where Noila was quoted for her, despite her protests that she was misrepresented. It was the first time she had seen it, and I imagine she didn't like being described as having a "scholarly face".

Jews, back in Bukhara

After a trip that was lengthened somewhat by our driver needing to stop twice for mandatory prayer breaks, we pulled into Bukhara's old town, and twisted around a few bends to find Akbar House, our home-turned-hotel. Arrived at last! And in terms of accommodations, I couldn't have picked a finer culmination of our central Asian odyssey -- the residents have taken to opening their homes to tourists in the form of small, delightful B&B's with attentive hosts and luxurious environs (by luxurious, I mean air-conditioned).

Bukhara is a charming old town, which due to its late integration into the Russian empire as well as its relative lack of historical secular importance, was never really homogenized like Samarkand. It was the religious and cultural capital of the Timurid empire, comfortable in it's role as second-city to the temporal capital of Samarkand. It appears that the Soviet planners blessed Bukhara by overlooking it, allowing it to retain most of its ancient charm. It is very different in character from Samarkand and the rest of Uzbekistan that we've seen, largely because it is populated by "Tajiks," the same Persian-speaking people who make up the majority in Tajikistan. The Persians differ from the Turkic Uzbeks in their mode of dress and conduct; they seem to be calmer and better educated, but on the whole are just as friendly. The fierce heat of the city has been mitigated by the cool of the many courtyards and neighborhood open reservoirs -- a civilized place.

The city was once home to Central Asia's largest and most prosperous Jewish community. There were several synagogues, and hundreds of family homes clustered together through the same crowded streets for hundreds of years. The Jewish families were brought to the region by none other than Temur, who captured them while campaigning in Persia, and brought them back to his homeland to work as craftsmen. The Jews were forbidden to leave the
Timurid heartland, but were permitted to settle in Bukhara, a city more like their Persian homeland, which they appeared to have found more welcoming than the Turkic Samarkand

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the vast majority of the Jews emigrated en masse to Israel and to Queens, New York, leaving only a smattering of their older kin behind. Many sold their beautiful old courtyard homes to local Bukharin, who in turn re-opened them as B&B's. We are staying in one called "Akbar House," owned by a gregarious Uzbek of the same name, who is also runs a antique shop in a wing of an old madrasah. Akbar, who himself is a a quarter Jewish, has a beautiful home decorated with various local crafts and textiles, many of which might be for sale if the price is right.

Jonathan, my traveling companion, is mildly obsessed with purchasing some token of Judaica to take home to his parents, but we understand that whatever was left by the departing Jews has long since been snapped up by waves of Jewish and Israeli tourists. I was surprised to find that there have been no enterprising locals that have taken the opportunity to produce some authentic-looking candlestick holders or some such to flog to tourists such as ourselves (which indeed is exactly what has happened around every old synagogue in India or China, no matter how small, insignificant or ancient the Jewish community there was). Eventually old Akbar was convinced to part with a fragment of a handsome old Torah that he has kept around the house, apparently for just such an occasion.

Cotton

Uzbekistan, as viewed from Moscow, looked like a vast see of cotton. The hot climate, fertile soil, and the irrigation potential of the regions two great rivers, the Sir Darya and Amu Darya, fit nicely with the empire's vast appetite for cotton, which could be used for clothing and munitions alike. Through the lens of the managed economy, devoting essentially all of the arable land in central Asia to cotton seemed like simple genius. And so it was done. The great rivers were diverted, and the sea they once filled, the Aral, was drained to make way for the needs of the empire.

When independence came, the Uzbek economy, utterly dependant on the rest of the Soviet system, foundered. The struggle to decollectivize the farms and and diversify the industrial base has been fierce: anecdotal reports say that they've managed to convert half of the farms to something other than cotton, but it's cotton that still dominates the landscape, and it's cotton whose thirsty water needs have driven the region to the brink of war. Uzbekistan is still the 2nd largest exporter of cotton in the world.

What's more, the seasonal nature of the cotton industry's labor needs, with only one harvest each year, still dominate the pattern of the year here in Uzbekistan. It's now the end of August, and the homes we've been staying in have been filled with young people, all home from school on the short vacations that precede the September harvest season. In a few days, these university students will set off for the cotton fields for a month of hard work. Every single university student, teacher, and staff member in Uzbekistan is required to pick 40Kg of cotton in the month of September. It used to be that every citizen was required to pick this much, but a shrinking cotton crop and improved technology has reduced the labor needs. Similarly, the vagaries of central Asian society has allowed for the bribing one's way out of the requirement, but not for less than the substantial sum of $200, about three months salary for the average worker here.

The Cathedral Mosque

I have just finished reading a brilliant book about Temur the Lame (Tamurlane), and so was quite jazzed to visit his capital of Samarkand, and a little disappointed to learn that very little in the city actually belonged to him: the vast majority of the buildings, of course, were Russian, and what ancient monuments survived largely were built by his heirs. There were a few exceptions, and I hired a guide to help seek them out. The most prominent of these was the Bibi Khanum, or the Cathedral Mosque, intended by Temur to have a mightiness to match that of his conquering armies.

This mosque was built by Temur upon his return from India, where he conquered Delhi, and was probably inspired by some of its great monuments. He placed two of his most trusted amirs (lieutenants) in charge of its construction, and promptly set off on another five year campaign of pillage, this time to the West, to Damascus and Anatolia. During his periods away, perhaps his perception of his greatness became inflated, because what had been produced upon his return he found far from adequate. My book tells me that "[m]erely casting an eye upon the mosque, he pronounced against Mohammed Jalad (his builder) a sentence of death and forthwith they drew him on his face and bound his feet and ceased not dragging him and drawing him over the ground on his face, until in this manner they had torn him to pieces." Wanting the job done properly, Temur took charge himself, forcing builders to work night and day until the portal to the mosque reached over 100 feet and its minarets up to 150. The result is brutally magnificent, it's simple elegance not being lost even to the many "repairs" done by the Soviets. The historians of the day declared that "the dome would have been unique but for the sky being its copy, the arch would have been singular but for the Milky Way."

That is the story according to the books. A much more attractive tale of this striking place comes from local lore, as related by our guide and corroborated by many trinket sellers, whose word I take as high authority. In reality, the mosque was not built by Temur, but by his favorite wife, who was from China and had an unpronounceable Chinese name, and as such went by Bibi Khanum (meaning "Dear Wife"), the name now rightfully given to the Cathedral Mosque itself. She had itbuilt for Temur while he was off on the 5 year campaign to the Middle East. This 5 year campaign, however, only took 4 years, and when Bibi heard that Temur was coming back early, panic struck, because the mosque was not yet finished.

She called the architect to her, asking him to redouble his efforts. The architect happened to be in love with Bibi, and agreed, on the condition that she allow him to kiss her. She was aghast, and she suggested that he just take a slave girl from the harem and kiss her all he liked. She took a basket of eggs and said "Look! They are all the same on the inside! Such are women."

But the wily architect retorted by pouring a glass of water and a glass of (of course) vodka, saying "they look the same, but one has no effect while the other sets your veins on fire." Confounded by his logic, Bibi allowed the man to kiss her, but only through her veil. The architects love was so powerful, that his lips left an indelible impression on her cheek.

Temur returned and was pleased with the mosque, but when he saw the lip-shaped mark on his wife's cheek, no excuse would placate him. He ordered the architect and Bibi together to be thrown from the minaret of the newly built mosque. In keeping with the values of the region, it is said that Bibi fell to her death, but the architect grew wings and flew away.

I'm sure there's a lesson in here somewhere, but I'm not sure what it is.

Me and Islam

I had a run in with Islam . . . that is, Islam Karimov, Uzbeksitan's illustrious president. I didn't so much run in to him as feel his might presence while we were both in the same ancient city of Samarkand. A presence so mighty that it caused all the streets in the city to close to car traffic, thus causing this tourist, lame in one leg, to hobble back across its sweltering width to the safety of my hotel.

He also caused the Registan, the city's most prominent site, to close down completely, because the reason of his visit was an "international concert" to be held there in honor of Samarkand's 2750th birthday. This all upset me even more because I later learned, upon seeing some sewer drains stamped "Samarkand 2500" that the 2500th birthday was only held in 1976, the discrepancy being explained by some convenient architectural finds.

This being central Asia, however, we were able to convince a guard to let us in to the Registan to poke around for a small consideration, although the painfully uncomfortable look on his face as he followed us through the holy trio of Madrases allowed us to stay for only 15 minutes or so. It was brief, but enough for us to experience what George Curzon, on his way overland from Europe to take up a post in India, called the "noblest public square in the world." He wrote in his diary that he knew of "nothing in the East approaching it in massive simplicity and grandeur, and nothing in Europe which can even aspire to enter the competition. No European spectacle indeed can be adequately compared to it, in our inability yo point to an open space in any western city that is commanded on three of it's four sides byGothic cathedrals of the highest order."

The Registan was built in the centuries of wealth that followed Temur the Lame bringing Samarkand onto the world stage in the 14th century. The complex was started by Temur's grandson in the early 15th century, who built the first of the three great madrases, or academies of Islam. The second and third were added in the 17th century, but were made largely consistent with the Timurid style, being characterized by glimmering blue cupolas, and a fast-and-loose interpretation of Islamic law (the facades are decorated with generally prohibited
massive images of lions and other animals). The effect of the three enormous buildings is truly stunning - it is said that as an architectural set piece, it is unrivaled in the Islamic world.

Curzon saw the square in 1888, and would have visited a a much diminished Samarkand, which while brought to greatness by Temur in the 14th century, fell quite far in the intervening centuries, receiving its final blow at the hands of the terrible Nadir Shah in 1740. By the beginning of the 20th century, the Registan would have been mostly ruins. Today, the process of "restoration" started by the Soviets in the throws of national beautification leading up to the 1980's Moscow Olympics has run it's course: the monuments of the city, once only noble ruins, have been to returned to (what may be) their original glory.

I'm not really a stickler for originality, but the blues of the tiles shine a bit brightly even for my tastes. The dazzling, clean effect is in full keeping with the small army of policemen that surround the site, ready to remove any sign of trouble as quickly as the "preservation department" was ready to correct any faded tiles. Islam Karimov runs a tight ship.

The Golden Road to Samarkand

Sweet to ride forth at evening from the wells
When shadows pass gigantic on the sand,
And softly through the silence beat the bells
Along the Golden Road to Samarkand.

We travel not for trafficking alone:
By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned:
For lust of knowing what should not be known
We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.

This morning, two days behind schedule, we set out for Samarkand, along a road significantly less Golden than that of James Elroy Fecker. The road from Tashkent south to Samarkand is, these days, a good one, but the country it traces is drab: vast cotton fields as far as the eye can see, only partially obscured by service stations and small market buildings.

Samarkand was once one of the greatest cities of the world. It's place in the western mind was one by Tamerlane, or Temur the lame, that mighty 13th century warlord, who conquered much of Asia and made Samarkand is capital. At a time when the West was poor, diseased, and squabbling, the vast riches of the east were concentrated under the aegis of one man, and systematically brought back to one city: Samarkand.

The city had been prominent before Temur's time -- indeed it's ancient name "Semiz-Kent" means "Rich City" in the ancient local Turkish dialect. It was a major silk road trading city, notable for preserving itself during the terrors of Genghis Khan by promptly surrendering at the warlord's approach. Its neighbors who held out were razed to the ground (it was at Khojand that Genghis said "I am God's punishment for your sins"), but Samarkand was treated fairly. Indeed it is said that it was in Samarkand's main mosque that Genghis was said to have made his only entrance into a standing structure.

A scant century after Genghis's coming, in 1366, Temur made it the first city he conquered on his meteoric rise to power, and it remained his lifelong home (despite only once spending more than a year there). He was obsessed with his collection of plunder from far away lands, and Samarkand was the prime beneficiary of this. He brought back scholars and builders, poets and craftsmen from every part of Asia, and put them to work beautifying his city, making it into the greatest city in the world. The population swelled, and he built outer suburbs for his subjects to live in, naming these lesser villages after the once-great cities he had conquered: Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo, Delhi, etc.

It was through these suburbs that we drove into Temur's ancient capital. The monuments of Temur and his successors no longer dominate the skyline, for since the red flag was hoisted over the Blue Palace in 1924, Samarkand has been primarily a minor soviet city, and as such was subjected to the same 15-story hotels and drab office buildings that could have been found anywhere in the empire. The soviets, however, didn't raze any of the buildings they found, rather just built around them. Indeed, if anything, they, were a little to zealous in "preserving" the ancient structures. The present regime, which has rehabilitated Temur as a nationalist symbol, has continued this trend, and today, the Timurid domes are a dazzling blue, the brick walls a smooth earth-colored surface, and the fountains sprout water to miraculous heights.

But the city is still Samarkand, and the ghosts of past splendors are not all extinguished by modern excesses. Tomorrow we set out with a guide to explore the buildings themselves.

Just another day in Tashkent

Yesterday we were supposed to run some brief errands in Tashkent, then head out by mid-morning for Samarkand. Clearly I had forgotten my Africa parallels, and assumed that a few errands would only take a few hours... a woman in line with us at the Uzbek Air office said to us "yes, you can buy a ticket here to anywhere in the world. But it will take all day. Soon they will have online booking. Maybe in the next century."

So we spent the day in Tashkent, among the millions simply trying to get their errands done.

In Uzbekistan, it's easy to divide the population into to groups: The Uzbeks, and the Russians. The Uzbeks, who can be further broken down into Tajiks, Kazakhs, Karakalpaks and actual ethnic Uzbeks, are a splendid people. Despite having only 2-3 words in common, I've had a rousing conversation with every cab driver I've sat next to. The guess-which-country-I'm-from game has gotten great results (bearded, I often solicit "Spanish" or "Arab"). Also successful is the "which country is 'Harasho' (good) game" ("Uzbekistan Harasho!" "Amerika Harasho!" "Khazakhstan Harasho?" "Nyet").

Their friendliness and openness stands in quite start contrast to the policies of the police state they live in. Indeed, even the police, while in the process of enforcing some ridiculous restriction (like the closing of a national monument for spurious reasons) have been extremely friendly and curious. The policy of not allowing foreigners to buy mobile phone SIM cards was easily circumvented just by my asking: the clerk simply used his own ID card for the registration. We have had none of the problems we foresaw with police extorting bribes: the only halfway hostile treatment we received was when we were in the company of a Russian Uzbek citizen...

This Russian was Yvgeny, our companion on the road from Kyrgyzstan. He was in the process of completing a law degree, studying at Russian law at a Russian university in Tashkent. He was planning to join his sister and mother in Russia as soon as he finished. "I don't speak Uzbek, so I can't be a lawyer here!" he told us.

He spoke English pretty well, but no Uzbek. The Russians here, who were the colonial upper class in an apartheid system have chosen, en masse, not to try to adapt to their new role in the society, but instead to emigrate. Those that don't yet have the means to leave are making do; we had some drinks in a very Russian bar, with Russian bar staff, a few Uzbek patrons, but only Russian beer, imported from St. Petersberg. At dinner in a posh Tashkent restaurant last night, I was curious to see more than a few couples comprised of a pretty young Russian girl accompanying a flashy Uzbek young man. Apparently the girls know which side of the bread has the butter on it.

Uzbekistan is quite different from Kyrgyzstan in this since. Kyrgyzstan was a rainbow of different ethnicities, with the Russian language as the binding force that kept them all together. Uzbekistan, which had far deeper central Asian roots prior to colonization, needed only the soviet lacquer to be removed to fall back to its independent ways. The Russians here are just along for the ride.

We were able to collect our needed plane tickets just minutes before the office closed, and only through the help of Svetlana, a Russian desk agent who I befriended. She helped us find out which of the 30 lines we needed to stand in, and then walked me out of the office into the nearby bazaar to change $500 US Dollars into the Uzbek Som that I needed (which I had to carry back in a large plastic bag). She even pleaded on our behalf with some of the other desk agents who told us that they couldn't help us because "bank closed." We got everything settled, and I tried to find her to thank her, but she had gone.

Lost Tashkent

I see that my original post on Tashkent was lost to the winds of the Internet. It's hard to post from Uzbekistan because the government blocks access to Blogger, the service that I use. They probably saw the Chinese blocking all self-publishing tools on the Internet and thought it was a good idea. But I will try to recap the main themes in my Tashkent post here:

We drove to Tashkent from Osh, through the Ferghana Valley. The Ferghana Valley is a messed up place, the victim of Soviet-era forced migration to fuel the vast cotton plantations being built there, and also of subsequent Stalinist gerrymandering, dividing the area among Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan in such a way so as to ensure none of those soviet regions would ever be an independent state. Except, of course, that those regions did become independent when the USSR broke up, and the region, as predicted, became a powder keg which had a minor eruption in 2006 in what became known as the Andijon massacre in Uzbekistan. So, as we rode thru Ferghana, there were a LOT of police checkpoints, and no one looked happy.

It's important to note that Uzbekistan today is a Dictatorship, or a Monarchy. In the independence shuffle, one man, Islam Karimov, came to power as Uzbekistan's president and has wielded absolute power since. This can be seen in the ubiquitous police presence, the restriction on communication (no blogs, no mobile phones for foreigners), and in the gaudy monuments around the country.

After six hot hours in a "shared taxi", we came to Tashkent, once the 3rd largest city of the Soviet Union, and the major hub for the Central Asian empire. During it's previous life, it developed into one of the only "civilized" places for the Russian over-class to live in this vast hinterland, and they flocked to it in droves. At one point it was over 50% Russian. We shared the taxi with a young Russian man named Yvgeny, who was a law student who had been working in Kyrgyzstan as a mountaineering guide for the summer. He spoke English pretty well, and was able to negotiate on our behalf with the Uzbek police checkpoints... though to be honest I'm not sure if having a Russian in the car was a benefit or liability.

Tashkent itself is actually a rather pleasant city, very leafy, with wide avenues and a strong vibe of life. It's full of boisterous Uzbeks and demure-in-speech but outspoken-in-dress Russians. It's clear that today, however, it is a very poor city - visible in both the poor upkeep of the old soviet edifices and in the tinny quality of all the new buildings that have been built. Despite considerable petroleum reserves, the average monthly wage here is about $40... African levels.

I really like the Central Asian bargaining scheme. Like in China or India, there are no set prices, and haggling abounds. But the soviet order has tamed this in two significant ways: Firstly, the opening offer is intended to be roughly in line with the expected outcome -- a seller will offer 50 if he intends to settle on 40 (not 5, as in China). Secondly, this haggling usually happens after the service is rendered. For example, in taxis, the driver will take you to your destination, then wait for you to pay him what you think that ride was worth. We've been generous, offering $1-2 for most of our in-town rides, and we've yet to get anything but a thank you and a smile. Of course -- these aren't proper taxis that we've been riding in, but what appear to be just the cars of regular dudes, on their way to or from work, who pull over their ancient Russian-made Ladas to give a lift to stranger, in anticipation of some pocket cash.

I had my haircut in a Tashkent Beauty салон (Salon), which was quite an experience. There were 5 or 6 severely Russian women, dressed so severely that I for a moment though that "Salon" was a euphemism for something else. But if it was, I didn't matter, because I got a first-rate haircut with none of the usual "so what kind of work do you do" nonsense (she didn't speak English). At the end of the hour-long process, she made her opening offer: about $3. I didn't haggle.

Africa with Mountains, Part II

Driving through the Ferghana Valley, where I now am, you ride shiny new Hyundai taxis, which take you in air conditioned comfort past rusted out crumbling factories and farms.

The New York Times ran a rather breathless article yesterday lamenting the lot of Zambian factory workers who have been put out of work by their country succumbing to the temptation of importing cheap Chinese goods. A parallel was drawn to the US, and our own addiction on cheap imports, and the conclusion seemed to be that the loss of jobs was offset by the increased spending power brought to the masses. The classic educated perspective on globalization - and the one that I usually take.

I think this may hold in Africa, which traditionally has had a minuscule manufacturing base and as such has not much to lose, but in Kyrgyzstan, the negative impact of globalization appears to be much greater. Firstly, the quantity of Chinese imports is far higher here. Lying just a short mountain pass away, Kyrgyzstan is a natural market for the workshops of Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Every refrigerator, every toilet, every packet of napkins has Chinese characters on them. Only the food appears to be domestic, and that only barely so -- last night while stuck in an airport I enjoyed a "instant" version of the Russian classic chicken and noodles dish which, aside from the wrapper, was indistinguishable from the instant ramens I've bought in China.

This relatively open trade policy is the result of the enlightened policies of Kyrgyzstan's first president, Akayev, who in an attempt to ally with the west more or less followed the path prescribed by the multi-lateral institutions. The result, in addition to the flood of cheap plastic trash and trash cans has been an almost complete decimation of Kyrgyzstan's industrial base. And this despite the country having a Soviet-bequeathed educational base which would be the envy of many developing countries.

It will be interesting to watch Kyrgyzstan's development. It will certainly be a test of the orthodox development thinking -- if liberal trade policies can't succeed here, I doubt they can anywhere. And, with time, they may: it may be the case that the soviet-era factories were so inefficient that they needed to go, and now there are signs of a rehabilitation: Hyundai, for example, recently built a factory in the Ferghana Valley for export into the Russian market.

I am still enough of a student of economics (and a reader of the Economist) to believe in the power of free trade, but my heart goes out to the citizens of Kyrgyzstan, members of that once mighty industrial empire, who have been forced to endure coming in last in the globalization race for almost 20 years.

Water water everywhere

We were supposed to cross from here to Uzbekistan today, but we can't because of the water.

Kyrgyzstan's greatest natural resource is its water, which flows down from its Tian Shan and Pamir mountains into the Syr Darya and Amu Darya (also known as the Oxus) rivers that lead to its neighbors. During the soviet era, this water was used mainly for the thirsty production of cotton in the valleys of Uzbekistan. Since Independence in 1991, as the various central Asian countries struggled to make the transition to market-based economies, each has been trying to monetize whatever assets the Stalin-era gerrymandering left them with. For most countries, this is mostly natural gas. Kyrgyzstan, however, has no gas, and so has taken to trying to sell their water to their neighbors: threatening to dam up the rivers for power production if Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan do not provide cut-rate shipments of natural gas.

The predictable result of this has been a very tense relationship between the two countries, which has led to occasional border skirmishes and vastly restricted regional commerce, hobbling Kyrgyztan's economy, and making border crossings very difficult. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the regional political club, has made resolving water disputes a top priority, and some progress has been made, but still the main borders between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan are closed -- the two countries' capitals are can be passed only through Kazakhstan.

But we have no Kazakh visas, and so must make our way south, to the only active border crossing, which lies in the Ferghana Valley. Despite taking us a day or two out of our way, this is not an entirely bad thing: the Ferghana valley is one of the regions most interesting areas: it has Central Asia's most fertile land, and as such has been populated by a fascinating mix of Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Tajik peoples. Stalin-era planners tried to manage this potentially dangerous mix by dividing the valley in an apparently haphazard way between the Uzbek, Tajik, and Kyrgyz administrative regions. This seemed to work during the soviet times, but when these regions became independent states, it has had the opposite effect: the Ferghana valley today is one of the most polyglot and liberal areas of central Asia. It's also the site of 2005's "Andijon massacre", where the Uzbek government ham-fisted a protest and killed scores of local Muslims. But more on that when I get there...

Karina's Dacha!

Karina, my friend and roommate from Stanford is from Kyrgyzstan, and every August, her entire extended family gather at the house that her grandparents built on the shores of lake Issy-Kul, the world's second largest freshwater lake. Of course, knowing this, I couldn't not join her... indeed, the opportunity to visit her was a catalyst for the trip. So we traded one Lada taxi after another as we hurtled from town to town, making our way here.

We arrived yesterday to find a charming beach side resort town, not completely unlike a small village on the Riviera, except for the massive mountains framing the lake on all sides. Issy-Kul is only 60 KM from Almaty, the (former) capital of Kazakhstan, and its oil-rich residents use Issy-Kul as something like a Hampton retreat during the short summer season. The beaches and nightclubs are a fascinating mix of all the races that made up these former soviet republics -- people tracing their ancestry from as far west as European Russia, and as far east as the Siberian far east all today call Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan home. The result is a rainbow of colorings and faces, all happily sporting the latest in Russian fashions and crowding together around the tables and dance floors during their holidays.

Karina's family is largely from Tartar stock, filling a spot somewhere towards the western, Russian end of the spectrum. Her great-grandparents were forcibly moved here from the Tatarsta region of central Russia during the 1920s as a part the collectivization of the soviet empire. Her family were horse breeders, and their expertise was used to build up the largest horse farm in central Asia. Her grandfather managed the farm for a while, and then chose to retire to this pleasant spot in the mountains. Karina's mother and aunts were raised here, and remained here until they moved to the capital city of Bishkek for education. Today, most of the family is in Russia (Karina herself studied and worked there for 13 years before coming to Stanford), but they still make the annual pilgrimage back to Issy-Kul in August.

We arrived to find a veritable feast being prepared, possibly in our honor. The house is simple and charming, reminding me of my family's home on Camano Island. One major difference is the large yurt which is erected in the house's backyard, used for overflow housing and for large meals such as the one we were about to eat. We were pleased to find that Karina's mother had prepared a large meal of a fine lamb stew, which put to rest any fears we had had about the mistreatment of lamb in Kyrgyzstan.

Africa, but with Mountains

I felt much closer to my Great Game roots these past few days, riding high, as I was in my saddle as we crossed the mountain passes of the Tian Shan, the very same ones traversed by the refugees, traders, and agents of intrigue passing between the relatively stable Chinese Kashgar and the tumultuous unknowns of Central Asia. I've been devouring Peter Hopkirk's "Setting the East Ablaze" which describes some of the goings on during the period immediately following the Russian Revolution in central Asia, and it is positively fascinating. Enough stuff for at least a dozen adventure movies.

Our ride, however, just 3 short days up to the mountain lake of Song Kul and back down, would probably make a movie better characterized as farce than adventure. Before even getting on the horse, upon exploring an abandoned soviet-era collective farm (the kind I just said in my previous post did not exist), I jumped off of a wall and badly sprained my foot, leaving me tottering around for the next few days. We arrived at the home of the family whose horses we were to rent, and after being fed a shepherd's meal of jam, bread, and various kinds of dairy by-products (butter, cream, congealed cream, etc.), we set out on our trek. About 20 minutes had gone by when I decided to try to put my horse in a trot, which caused by companion Robert's horse to break into a gallop, which in turn put my horse in an even fiercer gallop, and we shot out in opposite directions, leaving the rest of the group about a mile or two behind.

We eventually collected ourselves, renegotiated with the horses, and set out to climb the 1,000 meters or so up to the high mountain plateau of the exquisite Song Kol lake. Along the way, we stayed with two shepherd families sharing meals with them and sleeping with them in their felt yurts. In earlier days, entire communities would have migrated to these alpine valleys in the summer months, but today most villages choose to remain in their permanent bases in the lowlands, sending only one family up to the mountains with everyone's sheep to tend.

As we rode between yurt camps, enjoying the spectacular views of vast green hills intermittently dotted with white yurts, we passed shepherds, mostly teenage boys, on horseback idly putting their flocks out to pasture or bringing them into their makeshift pens to be bedded down for the night. The odd cow or camel made an appearance. It was gorgeous, and reminded me a lot of the empty beauty of Africa, except with massive mountains.

Our guide, Illych, the son of the family from whom we hired the horses, spoke a little English, and we were able to engage in the usual banter: which car is the best, where are the prettiest women, how much do things cost in America, and so on. We turned to how much things cost in Kyrgyzstan. How much is a horse. How much is a cow. How much is a sheep. A lamb, as it turned out, went for about 2,000 som, or about $50.

Readers who know me can probably guess where this leads. I asked if he could negotiate on our behalf with one of the local shepherds. This he did, and an afternoon of riding was exchanged for a one of butchery: we rode out, chose a lamb (or rather, we were given a black sheep), and brought it back to our camp. Our guide and his assistant skinned and carved the lamb with what can only be described as great aplomb, and the grandmother of the yurt prepared it for us in the traditional Kyrgyz manner. This, sadly, comprised of boiling the lamb with no seasoning for hours until it was recognizable only as meat. No matter, we returned from a sunset ride to a vodka-lubricated lamb feast, a bit bland, but nonetheless a welcome respite from the bread-jam-and dairy by-product meals we had for the last few days.

The Kyrygz people we met in the mountains were invariably sweet. They welcomed our "Community based tourism" with genuine hospitality. Having come from China, I was shocked that they didn't try to sell us anything along the way. I saw in them the same patience and kindness that I think can be found in the people of the sierra around the world. Maybe the temperate climate leads to temperate personalities -- I hear the Uzbeks living in the hot valleys and deserts further west are significantly different.

From Song Kol, we continued in an ancient Russian Lada north for a few hours to reach the lake of Issy-Kul, home to my roommate Karina and a sort of Hamptons vacation get-away for wealthy Kazakhs from just across the border. The roads were awful (another parallel with Africa) but as Illych told us before we parted "Bad Road, Russian Car, No Problem".