Kyrgyzstan To Kathmandu

Part 2: Post Kathmandu

2006-12-24T07:38:00.000-05:00

From Tibet to the Tropics

So we're here. Sweating and schvitzing, moist and perspiring. Yup, it's tropical. "Toto, I don't think we’re in Tibet anymore." And it's definitely not China. And how do we know?

We came out of the organic moldiness of Nepal and the chaotic consumerism of Kathmandu to the warm hospitality of the Thai people. Bangkok is more like LA than Thailand, but even there, people were out-of-their-way helpful, and certainly not trying to rip us off at every turn. Well, maybe the tuk-tuk drivers- the three-wheeled motorcycle taxis that lurk at tourist haunts to overcharge their passengers for a thrilling ride through traffic. But most of the merchants asked a fair price and were willing to bargain. We spent six days there, in Bangkok, far longer than we wanted, because we had to wait for an available seat on the train north. We had a relaxing time at the Atlanta Hotel where we met several engaging women: two Swedes returning from Burma where one, a journalist, carried a hidden microphone for the Swedish Public Radio piece she was working on. A mother-daughter Canadian pair in the social work, behavioral medicine fields also became instant friends. Interestingly, 3 of the 4 of them were Jewish. I'd never met a Jewish Swede before. She said there were only 17,000 of them, but they made a lot of noise. She also interviewed me for another piece she was doing on health care. It was fascinating to her to hear about my visit to Bumrungrad Hospital where I underwent a comprehensive physical exam. Why would I make a special trip to Bangkok just to get a check-up? Simple. I'm an American. And since I'm on a leave from my job, I have no health insurance. But not to worry: we may have inadequate health coverage, but we have plenty of weapons of mass destruction.

As relatively nice as Bangkok was with its clean, air conditioned rapid transit, and delicious 50 cent street food, it was nice to finally get out of the city. We threaded the bikes on foot through the congested, humid streets downtown to the main railway station for our overnighter north. The train differed from the Russian and Chinese trains I've traveled on- larger sleeping berth, no free food. We got out before Chiang Mai at Lampang, and headed north on a route that should have taken us to the elephant training camp. At least according to two maps. We started in the wide shoulder lane of Highway 1 before crossing over to the quiet, hilly and winding backroads. A pleasant ride, and 45 kilometers later, we were back in Lampang where we learned that the elephant camp had been moved, to near Chiang Mai, where our tickets were meant to take us in the first place. Highly reminiscent of leaving Kashgar, going in circles. But this time we had consulted the map. At least we had a beautiful tour and then some local men helped us to flag down a bus and reach the night's intended destination, Phayao. We stayed at the locals’ hotel for 4 dollars, en suite. An overhead fan was enough to keep moisture and mosquitoes at bay. Next morning, we caught the bus to Chiang Rai where we started cycling in earnest. We rode the small roads for 82 kilometers, and were able to sleep in a small village bungalow. A shop girl pumping gas from her family's local barrels- atop 50 gallon drums sit three-liter, plastic graduated cylinders into which the fuel is hand pumped and out of which it is gravity fed into vehicular tanks- told us about the guest house. When she had difficulty drawing a map that we'd be able to follow, she said to wait a minute, disappeared, and then returned with a motor bike. She led the way back to our pleasant sleep for the night. The next day, 60 easy kilometers brought us to the border town of Chiang Khong where we could catch the slow boat to Pakbeng, Laos. We over-nighted in this tourist town complete with Mexican food and high-speed internet, in a multi-leveled, old fashioned house made of rich, dark, hardwood planks. It was lavishly furnished with traditional pieces, complete with hammocks and a fountain in the main lobby/guest lounge living room. Spacious, creaky, traditional, and with a large diameter tree growing right through the place- all for about six dollars. The next day, we shuttled to the other side of the river in a long-tailed, outboard motor boat to officially enter the Peoples’ Democratic Republic of Laos, and head downstream on a pleasant, five hour voyage. Loaded with about 120 backpacker tourists and a few locals, we motored downstream, even through some rapids, on a 70-foot long, six foot wide, wooden river boat. The 6-cylinder, diesel motor was attached to a hand-cooled transmission. A teenage boy was no doubt going deaf from his job which was to wet down the old, greasy bath towel which was wrapped around the gear box with water scooped from the bulge with a 1-liter plastic bottle lashed to a three foot long, bamboo pole.

Indian food for dinner, banana pancakes for breakfast, and we were off. Along small roads, banana trees sported bright red flowers, harvested field stubble surrounded the thatched-roof, raised shade platforms scattered throughout the cultivated land. Dog-faced, doe-eared cows ate their fill from the lushness of Chiang Rai province. Back in the saddle again, I was brought back to the last days of Tibet, recalling when I was full of the sense that we were in the theatre but the play was over. The lights were on, but everyone was gone. The stage was empty. The place was cold and abandoned. Even the stones were frozen. In contrast, this was everything easy. People said our route would be hilly. But it seemed to be more down than up. And the wind, when it wasn't at our back, brought a gentle cooling to our untaxed cycling bodies. Coming down from the Tibetan Plateau last month, our first day was more up than down, and always struggling hard against the wind. "This isn't the movie we came to see," I told Chris. You know how you go into a multiplex and a few minutes into the film you realize that you are sitting in the wrong theater? "We're supposed to be seeing The Longest Downhill in the World. This is the wrong movie!" But no mistake in Thailand. It was merrily, merrily, the ride is but a dream. The road was smooth, with a wide enough shoulder. The drivers all seemed to know where they belonged, and stayed there. Chris noticed that we didn’t hear any horns. An occasional gentle toot was just for the wave, the thumbs up, the "good going". Clearly, we had entered another world.

So, how do we know we are not in Tibet? Well the food here is delicious. The air is relatively clean. We are not coated with dust. Our noses aren't runny. There is litter, but no garbage. People have toilets and know how to use them so we don't have to watch where to step. The hotel beds don't have springs protruding and unmentionable dirt in the corners. Children don't try to grab the bikes as we pass.

"People smile here," I said to Chris. It’s really amazing after going so long without. When they say hello and then laugh, it's because their mouths feel giddy from the foreign words, not because they are mocking us.

But the main way we know this isn't Tibet though, is how we are dressed: we are wearing sandals!

Hard Earned, Well Done

2006-11-23T03:07:00.002-05:00

In a matter of hours, we traveled from dead winter to a cool humid summer; from the sterility of the Tibetan Plateau to the moldy chaos that was Nepal.
Six weeks have passed since we first ascended to the Aksai Chin; barely a word have I written. Can I recall now, the stress, the struggles and ultimately, the sense of accomplishment of that dream, that severe dream, that never-ending emptiness that was the road to Kathmandu?

"You know," I said to Chris, who lay shivering in his sleeping bag next to me on our last night at 4800 meters, before I buried my face in my bag, choking back tears.
"What's the matter?" Chris sounded concerned for me in our fragile environment, our tent hastily erected in the dark, single digit night. We had crossed the last two of the plus-5000 meter passes in a Chinese apple truck, headed to the Nepal border. Although we had paid for a ride about 135 kilometers, the falling darkness alarmed me and I was suddenly possessed with the sense that we should not descend off the Plateau under cover night, in a rattly but warm, orange colored truck. In my desperation to escape the wind, I had lost sight of what was important to me, what I had come for. Besides the opportunity for endless eating- when food was available- I wanted to ride "the longest downhill in the world." I was sure I'd regret this forever, after all the struggle and time it took to get where we were, if we just anti-climatically coasted on in the dark without seeing, without experiencing, without savoring the transition. Chris, on the other hand, had been done with Tibet for weeks, and was ready to take the lift the full 280 kilometers to the Nepali border. But ever agreeable and accommodating, he agreed in the moment to stop the truck and get out, before we'd lost any more precious meters of elevation.
Under the dim beams of our headlamps, with frozen fingers and brilliant stars, we scuffed the ground at the side of the road looking for a place somewhat level and free of large rocks. There'd be no hiding from the wind. The wind which sent us hitching in the first place, scrapping our grand dreams of tackling those last two passes and making the final 7 day stretch from Lhatse to Kathmandu under our own power. The wind which nearly defeated us on our first pass out of Lhatse- a lung-busting, 1200 meter, 31 kilometer climb (after a week below 4000). The climb which started out dreamlike: a paved, moderately graded, smooth new road with a tailwind, but turned into a nightmare as our tailwind turned on us 10 kms from the top and caused us to walk, to stagger dizzy, and to stop and hold our footing when it gusted up to 50 mph. We perservered that day although we never made it to the comfort of an indoor night. We toughed it out in a hasty camp, erected after pedaling hard downhill into the headwind, and managing only 10 kph. No way would we reach Shekgar that day.
We did arrive there the next night, after more battles with wind and the added demon of sand gusts. Sharp grains blasted full force in the face until we'd surrender motionless, pursing lips tight against the grit which tried to find its way into any available crevice. At least the scenery was dramatic. Every turn of the road revealed a changing view of variously hued sandstone peaks with caramel ridges and a brilliant blue sky.

On the third day after Lhatse, things were no better. Our steady climb was on a deteriorating road- the perfect pavement having ended the day before, and the vistas flattened out into monochromatic hills. The occassional ruins that punctuated the view were not enough to sustain us in face of the relentless and powerful headwind. The Wicked Wind of the West. We hid for an hour in a dry bend of a monsoon drainage, jumping up to hitch at the few passing vehicles while we ate biscuits and our last crisp Chinese apple. Finally we faced the music and got back on the bikes.
So when the orange apple truck came by, neither of us hesitated to pay the $25 dollars the driver wanted to get us away, far away, from this trial of effort. And as we saw the condition of the road- ever sandier from the deposited blow by, ever corrugated as it went up- we were pleased to be riding in our last Chinese truck.

I couldn't answer Chris, choked up as I was. I could only shake my head.
"Nothing's wrong?"
I shook it again.
"Those are happy tears?" He was confused. I nodded, butI was silent. "Tell me what's going on so I can try to understand."
After a time, I was finally able to explain. "You know, I am so glad that you agreed to get out of the truck," I started. And I went on to tell him how emotional the whole experiece was. Of realizing that we had come to the brink, to the edge, and after this night, we would be coasting down, off the Tibetan Plateau, our home for more than a month and a half. How glad I was to be able to extend the end for one more night, under the billions of stars, in the freezing ruins of our last camp.

Truthfully Tibet

What I have to say here are my truthful thoughts about Tibet. I feel a bit remorseful expressing them, because some people will shout at me and tell me that I shouldn't say what I don't know. Well, I admit I know little about the political situation- we heard that jobs go to Chinese, not Tibetans; we met a Tibetan girl schooled in Nepal who was denied the opportunity for university study in Lhasa; we met a Tibetan driver who was not allowed to sleep in the Chinese hotel with his foreign tourists and interpreter - but I do know my impressions and my feelings, and that is what I report here. Of course we met other travelers who felt much differently about all this. But that's them.

So the truth is, we really didn't have a good impression of the Tibetan people. As I wrote previously, smiles were free but hellos cost. A common greeting was, "Hello. Money" Sometimes just, "Give me money." Often people didn't wave with their arm raised and their palm forward. The hand would be out, palm upward. The give-me-money position. Probably the hordes of 4WD tourists who've been passing this way in recent years have felt a compassion or duty to these oppressed people, and have freely haded out small notes of Chinese yuan. But we found it offensive and irritating. And the lack of any hospitality was clearly disappointing. Only once were we offered a cup of tea without strings attached, from two shepherds huddled by their dung fire who invited us to join them for a cup of their salty, yak butter brew. In stinging contrast was the family who housed us for a night when we crested a 5200 meter pass in the toe of a snowstorm to find no descent on the other side.
"How much?" the man asked when he showed me the mattresses in the barn-like room, two skinless animal carcasses hanging above the makeshift beds. We agreed on a price and then he showed us into the family's main room, with a warm fire in the center stove. They were drinking tea which we only were served after Chris fished our own cup out of the bike panniers. Did they really have no extras? Or did they just not want to wash one. It seemed that when their dinner was ready,was when they ushered us out into our quarters. And for the rest of the evening and again the next morning, different family members and neighbors took turns staring at us at a close distance, and after I yelled at the kids and scolded the parents, observed us by flashlight through the window. A most unpleasant night that sent us riding away early, long before any breakfast found its way into our hungry bellies.
It was no better in towns. Being overcharged for everything got old. As did egg fried rice, pork fried rice and noodle soup for breakfast. And on the road- especially on the section between Lhasa and Kathmandu known as the Friendship Highway, we tired of dodging the children playing in the road. Their favorite game was a version of Red Rover. They'd stand holding hands across the road, a form of group Chicken that invited us to aim right at their joined hands. They'd of course, scatter when we didn't swerve away, and then immediately chase us down and try to grab hold of our bikes. Chris would just ride faster and get away. I resorted to using my scary voice, getting off the bike and making threatening sounds. It never quite got to rock throwing, but it did get as bad as rock picking up. One time, I found myself swatting at them. Me! A teacher who actually really likes kids.

To be fair, there were some exceptions. We stayed in a hotel in Sigatse, the last main town before Lhasa, some 260 kilometers to the east, having arrived there hours after dark. We had set out from Lhatse (140 kilometers to the west)early that morning, intending to make the two-day ride in one day by hitching late in the afternoon instead of camping. It was perfect- a goorgeous lake at the top of the small pass, and an empty flatbed truck stopping for our outstretched hand at the 67 km point, where Chris had just fixed a flat. Or so it seemed. The driver's eyes made me suspect. His chain-smoking and freezing wide window opening added to my concern. His eye-rubbing prompted me to suggest he put a cassette in the tape player and turn up the volume. But when the oncoming truck flashed lights at us as we drifted stright towards him, and I saw the driver slumped over the wheel, my cries of, "Wake up! Wake up!" caused Chris and I to look at each other and make a new plan. At the top of the next pass, at the yellow and back road sign indicating a steep descent, we spontaneously told the driver to stop and we got our things out of the flatbed as politely and quickly as possible. Better to ride what we thought would be 37 downhill kilometers in the dusk than to risk rolling off the road into the great beyond. The driver was very confused. But we were certain, and we quickly dressed for the evening descent. Which turned out to be mostly uphill after we came off the pass. As we were headed east, we had the long glowing sunset behind us. And when it became truly night, we had the luck of a road recently paved and newly striped. Chris was able to follow the white line, and I was able to follow his rear pannier reflectors. We rode in synch, he blocking the (of course) headwind and leading the blind through the night. Approaching the town of Sigatse, illuminated in the plain below us as we crested the last of the climb, I occassionally had to stop to regain my balance. Without visual reference to passing grass and trash on the roadside, I found riding downhill in the dark to be a perceptual challenge. We arrived to a lighted strip and began the task of trying to find a hotel in Chinese in the dark without a guidebook or a map. Following successive pedestrians' kind directions, we were on a promising street when we asked a soldier standing by his fuel tank truck. As we couldn't quite understand each other, he chose another way to explain. "Follow me," he indicated, and he jumped into the tanker and fired it up. Only 400 meters down the road he pulled over and waited on the street with Chris until I had the chance to check out the rooms and he knew we were satisfied with the hotel. The young woman administrator, a Tibetan girl who knew some English, proved to be one of the exceptional people we met. Not only did she give us a refund after we paid the agreed upon discounted price when we checked out the first time, and let us leave our cycles in a staff bedroom for the three days we went to Lhasa and back, by bus. Now only that, but she opened herself to us so that we really felt the friendship. We stayed there again for one more night after returning from the Tibetan capital. And when she saw me scraping the last of the lipscreen out of the tube, she ran next door and bought me a delicious smelling, Chinese lip gloss as a gift. This kind of encounter was truly appreciated. But it was not enough.
I guess in the end, it was like Chris said- he was tired of having to fight for everything. Fighting the wind, the cold, the dust, the wind. Fighting for a fair price, for correct change. Fighting harassment by everyone wanting a handout. Fighting altitude. Fighting sand and washboard roads. Fighting for every meter of forward progress. Even fighting hunger and discouragement. We fought the good fight. But as we went down and down, off the plateau; as the sight of green returned, and the scent of vegetation came towards our ancient smellbrains; we reawoke to the land of the living.

Images From The Road

2006-11-10T01:36:00.000-05:00

Here are a few photos from the road. You can see more pictures on flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/42197075@N00/

Saga of Saga

2006-10-31T05:56:00.000-05:00

October 31; Saga, Tibet.
Happy Halloween. The five French Canadians in the hotel are ready with costumes, but I might miss my favorite holiday since there are two competing interests this evening: having my first shower and shampoo in two weeks when the hot water comes on between 7 and 10 pm; or sleeping before cycling tomorrow morning to help me make it the 60 or more kilometers it might take to reach an indoor sleeping site. Because I didn't sleep much last night, crammed in the back row of a stinky short bus with four other travelers riding with 15 other Chinese citizens, most of whom smoked through the night, "resting" against the ice-encrusted window, trying to keep from freezing beneath a PRC army coat. But at least we arrived in one piece this morning, scraped the centimeter of dust off the bikes and settled into a fairly snazzy $15 hotel room with hot water for three hours each night.
The past two weeks have been full of ups and downs. I wrote little more than a list of topics to cover, because for some reason, Tibet muzzles its pilgrims. So here are a few of the thoughts that reverberated through my troubled mind during the past fortnight.

Frying and Freezing
The thing you notice when you travel east in October on the Tibetan Plateau is My Left Foot. That's the one that perpetually rides in the shadow of the front panniers and never wants to warm up during the day. The right foot is quite comfortable, full sunshine penetrating the worn canvas of the the old summer hiking boots. In fact, the sun innudates all parts on the right side, as that is the direction of south. You can't really say that it all evens out- the right ear, the right cheek, withering and burning if you don't continually reapply sunscreen. Part of the challenge of the road.

If It's Not
If it's not the cold, it's the headwinds. If it's not the headwinds, it's the dust. If it's not the dust, it's the sand. If it's not the sand, it's the gravel. If it's not the gravel, it's the washboard. If it's not the washboard, it's the gradient. If it's not the gradient, it's the altitude. If it's not the altitude, it's the cold... That's on the road.
In the tent. If it's not the smelly feet, it's the stinky gas. If it's not the gas, it's the B.O. If it's not the B.O. it's the garlic breath. If it's not the breath, it's the feet. Part of the acceptance of the trip.

Dogs, Doo-Doo, Human Excrement and Garbage: This is Tibet?
It has been hard to come to terms with what we see every day here. Disillusionment with some mythical anticipation of what Tibet would be. Prayers wheels, stupas, gompas, bells and colors on women's thick woolen garments, sweeping skyscapes. Yes, those things are to be seen. But more impressive, albeit in a very negative way, is the refuse everyhwere and the lack of concern of those who deposit it.
I'd heard of the vicious dogs present in Tibet. Well, canines are abundant, especially around the ubiquitous garbage heaps that punctuate every village road and path, but even the feeblest three year old is adept at tossing stones which these pups abruptly heed. Even waving your arm or growling at them causes thes four-legged creatures to take their tails away with them. Of course their doo doo remains. But this is of little consequence. When walking in the open- and here it is mostly open- you quickly learn to train your eyes and plot your path carefully. Yak and sheep and the occasional goat turd is not the least bit of a nuisance, especially as it often warms your sleeping room in a sweet-smelling heat stove fire. So avoiding the dogs' waste is second nature. And when nature calls, they tend to move off to an untrod place. Not so, the humans. Inexplicably, the local poplulation finds it appropriate to stop and squat in any and every place. And if they do decide to use the constructed facilities, they leave their deposits anywhere near or about the intended hole, making it nearly impossible to find safe footing to correctly aim yourself. If you dare enter these public facilities. And so you likely also head out to anyplace you dare to do your business. Feeling more animal and criminal than human and wondering how people can be so casual and unashamed.

Ali Full of Cyclists
That is the heading that Rich, the green card carrying Slovakian encaptioned a recent photo on his fantastic website (drogpatravel.blogspot.com) of several late season riders on the 219, as the Xinjiang-Tibet Highway is labeled, whom we first met him in Gilgit, Pakistan, at the end of our time there. In addition to Rich, nearing the end of his 6-month circa Himalya solo sojourn, is Nikolai the Dane who befell an unfortunate fate when he fell, alone before the crest of a 5160 meter pass and seriously injured his right hand. A sleepless, freezing and scary night sent him hitching to Ali where we met him for the first time, a few days later. He'd already heard of us from John, the kitchen-sink carrying Bostonian who combines hitching and cycling in a generous way. He makes Americano coffee and shares his oreos with good humor and kindness. He rolled into Ali on the bus which he'd flagged down en route, black-faced with diesel soot and cigarette smoke. And then there were the unstoppable French, Delphie and Ivan, who start riding at first light each day, and only stop for breakfast when the sun has climbed to a warming height in the sky- just about when Chris and I would be eating in the tent. It was great camraderie to meet with others at the winter-end of the Tibet season. And for the past two weeks we have been leap-frogging and reconnecting as we ride at our different paces or sometimes hitch to the same places.

Mt. Kailash

Clearly the high point, both literally (5660 meters) and figuratively, the walk around this holy and significant peak. It is near the headwaters of four of Asia's most important rivers. And Tibetans believe that circling this massif brings blessings proportional to the number of circuits. For me, it was a beautiful a nd quiet time in the clear air, surrounded by colored flags which create prayers as they flutter in the wind.

From Darchen to Saga
About 500 kilometers. 10 days riding or maybe 2 hitching. After our trek around Kailash, we decided we would just ride east for one day, because there was a village (read warm (?), indoor beds with no need for tents or campstoves in the wind) just 42 kms. away. After that, we would hitch to Saga where villages would then be spaced just a day's ride apart. It's not that we don't like sleeping on our inflatable Thermarest mattresses and eating instant noodles three times a day. Well, maybe we don't love that stuff. But our tent zippers are failing and the stove is very tempermental and the winds are wicked cold and the scenery, while beautiful, varies only slowly. And more importantly, the very few villages we passed through were mostly run-down, small, and not the best place to meet new people or make local friends. Better get going and get to a more southern locale. So we set out for our one day of riding. Less than a kilometer on the bumpy morning road, and a dump truck came by. Chris made an instant decision and within an hour we bounced into Hor Chu, having collected the Dane on the way, who got about 8 kilometers out of Darchen. We spent the rest of the day hitching, which is how we realized it was very unlikely anyone would pick us up. That evening, at the Chinese restuarant which would be our home for the next 5 days (we slept in comfy beds in the "motel" in the back), our hosts told us a bus would come. It came the next day, going the wrong way, but we paid a deposit and waited til the day after tomorrow for it to get us. Well, it broke down somewhere on the way back, and it was only on the 5th day the we finally got to spend a jarring, freezing, sleepless night on the way to Saga.

The Road to Ali

2006-10-17T00:45:00.000-05:00

The Road to Ali

The road to Ali has been long, high, difficult, cold and full of compromise. The day of reckoning came on October 11th when we crossed the 5190 meter Khitai Pass. The ibuprofen I had taken in the morning to reduce the shoulder-neck pain that I'd been having had worn off, and I was greeted at the top by a wicked headache. The lowest point we could reach that day- and for the next 10 days- was 4830. We past an icy, sleepless night in a sort of foxhole campsite. The temperature was in the single digits (Farenheit) and my years old REI down bag was rated just to +20. I resolved to end it there. Not my life, but my riding. Ahead of us were four more passes each over 5000 meters. Probably we would have been safe, but I was unwilling to face the lack of oxygen and the lack of thermal units. We rode and camped one more day, as the elevation increased very little there, and we had a long and difficult discussion as to what to do. It was unfair to rob Chris of the chance to cycle over the highest passes in western Tibet. I was prepared to hitch 260 kilometers to the town of Domar at 4380, and wait for him to join me. We slept one more night, our tent erected inside a deserted Mao era building, serenaded by Tibetan Mastif Ducks. By morning, Chris had resolved to keep the team together, and we began a 3-day hitch that carried us 450 kilometers over the four high passes, and to this well-supplied, Tibetan town of Ali.

Our rides were with Muslim Uighurs, Hui Muslim Chinese, and Han Chinese. We rode in a fuel truck, a coal truck, and a road construction electrician's truck. We slept at night in simple dormitories, and ate our fill after dark, as our Muslim benefactors were observing Ramadan, and we were reluctant to eat in front of them.
It was painful to enter Tibet in a vehicle, although it would have hurt worse to ride through the snow and sleep so cold and high. It was especially crushing on the second day, when our truck drove us around the shores of the beautiful Pangong Tso Lake, bordering India. The day was pleasant, the water was turquoise, the road was inviting and we were in a vehicle.

But it was a pleasure to be protected in the work truck with the electrician when we passed through 60 kilometers of hellacious wind and sandstorms in the long stretch of eroded road construction. Our driver, the electrician, stopped to do some work, and during our 3 hours of waiting, we helped erect an insulated canvas tent, and looked around at the rock crushing equipment. But mostly we snacked and read, well protected in the thin metal hull of the truck.
Now we are filling our last hours of civilization with internet, errands and shopping. Tomorrow we head out with a Danish guy as we join forces on the way to Mount Kailash, nearly 300 kms distant. Beyond that it's another 500 to Saga at the intersection of the Friendship Highway- the road to Nepal. Our plan is to ride to Kathmandu, but before that, to visit Sigatze and Lhasa before back-tracking to Saga. I have found some warm additions to my sleeping bag, and so with these reinforcements, we hope that the cold won't deter us again.

Leaving Ali

Two Weeks Ago
More than halfway to Ali and I really haven't written anything. I haven't had a voice. This part of the trip since leaving Kashgar- I'll have to tell you about that comedy of errors later (Four left turns brings you right back to start!)- has been very inward. Clearly, Xinjiang has not been about culture or people or scenery. It's about challenge. And acceptance.
The places we have been riding for the past 800 kilometers have been high, cold, desolate. The roads, when we finally left the crazy-making, horn blowing, dust spewing, speeding trucks flying over the asphalt, have deteriorated into corrugated washboard littered with gravel and sand, sometimes deep. The passes, and there are a dozen on the way to Ali alone, have gradually increased in elevation. Tomorrow is our first one over 5000 meters, as we cross onto the Aksai Chin Plateau and meet some of our greatest altitude in western Tibet: 5440 meters.
Today is our 22nd day of riding without a break. That's also how many days since my last shampoo. I've gotten good at bathing out of a one liter hot water bottle. Last night we actually slept inside in a warm dormitory in the last town before this next 188 kilometer stretch without a village. There were about 25 very friendly soldiers watching China Cable Television and feasting on delicious hot plates prepared for them by the efficient husband and wife proprietors. Maybe it was some sort of R+R- after dinner and CCTV, they left around 9 pm. Chris and I ordered five plates of food for the two of us- plus rice- a typical cyclist's dinner portion. And if our cookstove ever starts working again, we'll reheat the few leftovers for tonight's dinner.
We are holed up at 4680 meters, in an abandoned road matintenance station, 24 kilometers below 5190 meter Khitai Pass. As there is no water for 31 kms past here, we plan to cross tomorrow and sleep at a spring at 4930. As you see, life these days has become very mathemeatical. We take care not to go too high in one day so we have time to adjust to the lower levels of oxygen in the air.
There have been days when I think repeatedly: there is nothing else I'd rather be doing; there is no place I'd rather be; there is no one else I'd rather be with.

Two Weeks Before That
It's an island here, Kashgar, for me. Coming back for the second time, we know our way around around, sort of. How and where to cross the streets. Where to get a godd lunch. How to get to the bank, the bike shop, the supermarket. How much a slice of melon costs. And the names of the key hotel staff. It has also been cooler than when we first arrived din August, so we've been able to enjoy our days and haven't had to suffer from hot, sleepless nights. But more than the familiarity, Kashgar is a respite from the vigilant state required when traveling in the Muslim world of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, pakistan. Of course, the Uighur Autonomous Republic is also predominately peopled by Muslims, but here it is tempered by the Republic of China. Here I can comfortably walk around in a tank top, and could even wear shorts if I wanted to. We did meet one young shopkeeper who that the Taliban is good and Bush is bad. We agreed with him on the latter, but couldn't on the former. We looked elsewhere for yogurt next time. But the point is, it is a relaxing moment for us, poised between the world of the "stans and the forbidden lands ahead.
With cyclists daily depating "east" as we are calling it, we can only believe that we will be successful as we aim for the 5000 meter high plateau. With enough to eat, proper clothin, sufficient knowledge, a comprehensive medical kit, cleaned and tuned cycles, rested and trained bodies, we are in a positive position for success.
Of course, it is not guaranteed. Riders have died on this route- from stubborness or ignorance. Others have been hurt. We hope to be prudent and deliberate in our actions and decisions. We are willing to go only 20 kms in a day if the altitude warrants. We are also resolved to make our progress. We are experienced in cold environments. And we have the prayers of many of the faithful supporting us. Enshalla, we will arrive at our destination healthy and glad, if a little bit lean.
With cyclists daily depating "east" as we are calling it, we can only believe that we will be successful as we aim for the 5000 meter high plateau. With enough to eat, proper clothin, sufficient knowledge, a comprehensive medical kit, cleaned and tuned cycles, rested and trained bodies, we are in a positive position for success.

21 Days in Pakistan

2006-09-16T02:52:00.000-05:00

We are still searching for our purpose here in this country. Maybe the value of our time here isn't to collect astounding photos or make lifelong friends. Chris may have nailed it last night when he said that maybe the reason we are here isn't for us at all. Maybe it's for you. So that as your eyes and ears we can tell you what you see here- that this is not a country to fear. That the people are warm and friendly. They are kind towards us. They practice their religions diligently and take seriously hospitality to strangers. People were eager to meet us, and when they learned that we were Americans, they were accepting of us, patient to listen, and understanding of the fact that the citizens are not the government.

Day 15

The scenery is compelling. So it's hard to admit I am getting tired of terraced fields on the steep mountainsides with corn, wheat, potatoes and beans, forming tidy geometric patterns on the irrigated alluvial fans streaming wide at the mouths of deep canyons: twenty captivating shades of green leveled against the sandy, tan, grey and brown stones slopes that are the Hindu Kush, the Karakoram, the Himalaya. Farther north, the views are punctuated with the drama of crisp, peaks, all far higher than Mt. McKinley, soaring more than 4 miles up to pierce the sky. Down here,all is dusty, coated with the dryness four rainless months have brought. Only the glaciers still flow, feeding the fields through an ingenious system of high canals, bringing water from the frozen sky to the roots of every plant. It is beautiful. But I am jaded.
There is only so much scenery to see. You adapt quickly, so what is jawdropping and rubber necking, soon becomes a familiar backdrop and you want more. But I think we bit off more than we could chew.
We somehow sidestepped the careful planning that has gone into our trip, and set off with our bikes to cover about three weeks worth of touring in only eight days. We expected to hitch segments of the route- to save time, to pass more quickly through areas we were cautioned against, to avoid riding up the most rocky and steepest sections. But we didn't expect to be hit with such debilitating diarhrea that has taken its toll in forward progress, with time on the bench. So last night, in our flea and bedbug inhabited hotel in the very charming town of Chitral, we had a late planning session. It became clear that our options were three: rush on by vehicle to complete our intended loop through Dir, Swat,and Kohistan; delay our push-off to Tibet by a week, starting around September 20; or enjoy some time at the Kalash Valleys and then return by jeep the way we came. It seems as if the third will be our chosen alternative.
Some of the sections I wouldn't want to repeat, such as where the road is winding and narrow and rocky, scratched right into the rock wall and hanging precariously over the edge of a deep gorge below. I especially don't like when other overloaded jeeps come at us and someone has to back up to allow room for two vehichles to pass. But the latter parts, getting closer to Gilgit, were so beautiful, they returned to my sleeping dreams. Picturesque villages along a bouncy, blue-green river. The essence of summer, with relaxing sandy river beaches and the king of roads with downhill, smooth pavement. If we have to go back, it won't be so bad.

What Are We Doing in Pakistan?
Here it is, 10 days into our time here, and I am feeling apprehension and dissatisfaction. We are riding and hitching a great distance in a short time, making a loop through several of the Northern Areas: Ghizer, Chitral, Dir, Kohistan, Swat, but not having any real contact with locals; riding through emptier places than we expected; and being in much more of a hurry than any other time in these two months. Our purpose here is elusive.
In Kygyzstan, clearly it was about experiencing the environment and everything in it- nomads, sheep, horses, yurts, flowers and the color green; enjoying activities: hiking, mountain biking, horsetrekking; and visiting friends and favorite places. Tajikistan, for us, in contrast to the stony, barren and silent landscape, was about hospitality: tea, lunch, overnighting, weddings, hotsprings - people bringing us into their homes and lives. China was all about riding; transit through empty spaces, from Kyrgyzstan to Pakistan, from Pakistan beyond. And China was about good food. We like eating in the Peoples Republic. But what are we doing in Pakistan?
I am sitting in the morning tent in Shandur Pass, site of the world's highest polo grounds, all but deserted in this early fall season, save the few soldiers in the barracks behind the small mounds to our east, and the yaks grazing nearby to the west. Chris is trying to cook our corn mush and date breakfast on the last of the bad Tajik fuel which we bought from a five gallon bucket in Murgab. I am typing away, trying to make sense of my time here in Pakistan.
We entered the country with some difficulty. The Chinese bus we boarded in Kashgar, we expected to get off of at top of Kunjerab Pass to ride the 86 downhill kilometers to the border town of Sust. But the Chinese driver refused to let us out. He claimed that about a month ago he had let two other foreign cyclists off at the pass so they could ride down. When he arrived in Sust without them, he was made to go back and retrieve them. I doubted his story. When we arrived at Immigration, I lodged a complaint against him. He was brought in to the chief and told that he should have let us out. It helped that it was a misty, drizzly day with poor visibility and a slick, broken road. But it was already done.
We had already arrived in a town of men. Only traders, hoteliers, cooks, shopkeepers, barbers and chicken-killers - there are fresh birds everywhere to be bought, feathered or plucked - were to be seen on the streets where we spent our first night in Pakistan. All dressed in the baggy pajama-style shalwar kamiz, which is local dress for men; Chitrali hats, wool caps with a rolled brim; and facial hair consisting at a minimum, of a moustache.
I'm wondering. Originally the plan was to take two weeks riding on the Karakoram Highway (KKH), stopping off at the great places along the way in the Northern Areas, ending down in the the town of Gilgit, as I had done nine years before. We moved quickly, and had five great, scenery-filled days of high activity and elevated moods by the time we reached there.

On the third day in country, Chris got the chance to cross one of the famous and freaky suspension bridges near Passu. I couldn't bring myself to do it again, and was content to play photographer. Early that evening we arrived in Karimabad, the tourist capital of Hunza, where we met Mercedes and Enrique, Spanish-speaking cyclists into their fifth month on the road. We relaxed there, did some tourist shopping, paid too much for dried apricots and would have paid too much for walnut cake and Hunza museli too, if the power hadn't been out for the past two days.
The next day, we had a late afternoon ride through winding village roads, through the frenetic strip of business that was AliAbad, to the pleasant village of Minapin. The hotel at the top of the hill hadn't changed much: the apple trees were thicker and there was a new high-end wing on the hotel. There was a new proprietor, although the previous one was around, and we remembered each other and the tea and chips (thick cut fries) were as good as ever. Only the welcome had changed. Four kilometers back, begining at the turnoff to the village, was a barrage of signs on walls, stones, buildings, bridges. Down With The USA. Kill Bush. Crush Israel. It seems recent events in Lebanon had provoked this outcry. This did not reflect our experience anywhere else, as we were often greeted by children giving us pears, teenagers grapes, men apricots, grandmothers apples, to welcome us to the country. Likewise, some group is responsible for painting other signs on stones: Love Nature, Educate Your Children. Peace is Wealth. Help the Tourist.

We had our best day so far, trekking 4000 feet to the Rakaposhi Base Camp. I had hiked to this 12,000 foot lookout before, but it had been snowing, so when I got to the viewpoint I saw only the sharp jagged teeth of the glacier below. This time, we emerged on the ridgetop in full afternoon sun to a rising wall of snow and ice full in our view. We giggled and laughed at the crisp blue sky and clean white faces rising another 12,000 feet above us to their 7740 meter heights.On the fifth day, we struggled in the heat and arrived in the hectic, crowded, trafficky city of Gilgit, just at the close of dusk, after 92 mostly smooth, uphill and downhill kilometers. The Madina Hotel was a welcome garden haven in the midst of the madness. The owner Yakoov, is a gentle, practicing Ismaili Muslim man. His ethics and demeanor were inspirational. An added joy was the reunion with Karim, a local man still affiliated with the hotel that I had kept in touch with sporadically since we first met in 1997. He was able to bring deep insight into the local culture and politics.So, five great days in Pakistan. And then what? Armed with Mercedes’ suggestions and trip notes, we decided to spend the next 10 days on this counter-clockwise loop, exploring some new and reportedly friendly regions in the North West Frontier Province. Two days into it, why am I so unhappy?
"I don't want to do this anymore," I cried, curled up on the the ground, sucking warmth from the dirt, hiding from the wind behind a big rock, hiding from the reality that I was somewhere in northern Pakistan and just wanted to be done with all this. Sobbing, I was really wondering why I thought I could do this bike trip in the first place, and how I was going to get out of cycling across Tibet. "It's too hard. I have no energy. I'm too lazy. I can't do this."
"It's OK to have a bad day," Chris soothed. "You can cry if it makes you feel better." Chris brought me a drink and the crumbly yellow pad to rest on. He was treating me so kindly, despite my ineptness, I felt even worse: weak, lazy and undeserving . I had really wanted to make the 48 kilometers to the top of Shandur Pass. We'd only gone half the distance but I knew that I was finished. All I wanted to do was lay down with the last pages of the novel I'd finally cracked and read until sleeping at the early failure of light, now around 7pm. Just then a vehicle came by.It would have been one thing if I were really sick. Raging fever. Vomiting. Then I could easily justify getting off the bike and into a Landrover. Sure, my stomach was queasy and noisy and caused me little appetite resulting in poor nutrition and lack of fuel. Too, I had a bit of a tickle in my throat and too much mucus in my lungs. The dramatic drop in barometric pressure, replacing blazing sun with clouds and coolness, and maybe a bit of hormonal deficiency- I guess these things were all contibutors as well as maybe road fatigue. A bit of apprehension travelling to slightly questionable areas. Maybe a sense of disingenuousness at travelling so far and cycling so little. to my lassitude. But I couln't excuse myself for my poor performance.
The driver took us to the top of the pass, site of the world's highest polo grounds. Mercedes raved about the place, saying you could spend days there just relaxing. We found it a bit bleak and uninviting even though there were tall mountains and it was very quiet. We later learned that early July is the green season when the place was crawling with national tourists. We got the tent up in the cold wind, and Chris prepared a macaroni soup with the last of our Kyrgyz dried tomatoes. We had mistakenly left most of our food in China when we set off for this brief Pakistani holiday, so we had very little of interest to eat. But we had arrived at our resting place for the night, Shandur Pass, where I retired early with The Life of Pi. Catastrophe averted, and we are on track again.

Reversal
It was a delightful and rewarding descent from the top of the pass into the village of Laspur. Not for the first time I was glad that I have a mountain biking background, as it was actually a somewhat technical descent. In fact, we met a medical French couple in the Kalash valley, several months into their two and a half year world bike tour, and Chloe remarked that it was a very difficult ride down for her. We thought it was great fun. Well, maybe Chris wasn't so thrilled after he realized that the thunk he'd heard was his water bottle flying out of its cage, and he had to run back uphill retrieve it.As we contined along the rock strewn, dusty road, there was a sudden reversal of fate as Chris sought rapid relief, at first behind the cover of large boulders, and eventually just anywhere off the bike. Our progress slowed as we neared the village of Mastuj, happy to rest early in the Merecdes recommended hotel. What she failed to indicate was the four kilometer climb to the village proper, up a steep, loose gravel bed, and up some steep, sandy sections. During the next 24 hours, Chris managed to find relief a total of 30 times. I guess that qualified as severe diarrhea, warranting a course of Ciproflaxcin.
It also warranted an unscheduled layover, the bright side being that our hotel proprietor invited us to join him at a neighbor's son's wedding the next afternoon.
It's hard to understand, but as in Tajikistan we were treated as special guests. Festivities were already underway when we arrived to the big tent in the neighbors' yard. We were ushered across the central clearing, stepping through the ring of men and boys, five deep on the perimeter, and given three of the very scarce chairs to sit on, which were vacated by less worthy souls. In the center, in turn, small boys and then grown men danced- solo, or just a few at a time, while the males forming the ring clapped to the rhythms of the paid musicians. Where, you may ask, were the women ? Well, some of the girls were peering over the back of the courtyard wall, close to the home where they were relegated. But for the most part, all the females were crowded into the house and courtyard, away from the men, away from the music, away from the central celebration.

We witnessed this because when they saw our cameras, the hosts asked us to come to the house and photgraph the bride and groom. I was glad to be able to interact with the grandmas and the girls. But I was baffled at the men's idea of a good time. At least in Tajikistan, the men got to dance with the women, and the women got to show off their finest for the men. This day was the beginning of dismay for me at the intensely patriarchal society that prevails in much of the area we visited.
Our stay at the wedding was relatively brief, as the dancing ended and heaping plates of pilu (rice pilaf with mutton and carrot) were served. They specially placed us at a table with chairs, and even brought us spoons, as food is traditionally eaten with washed hands. Just as fast as they were fed, everyone filed out or the yard, to return in the evening for the real party. We opted for a decent night's sleep so we could be on our way in the morning.
By jeep. The next day we were in Chitral. By the time we had been to the Kalash and back, we were ready to head back to Gilgit. It was joyous to cycle again along the Ghizer River. Gemstone aquamarine blue green water under the cacaphonously clashing azure heavens. Armies of school girls bouncing home in their sky blue or turquoise green shawls, separate from the troops of boys in their gay blue, button down collar shirts.
"How are you? We are fine. What is your name?" Shy giggles and smiles and a bold girl daring to speak English out loud to the foreigners. The same in every village. The same passing each of the many schools.

The Kalash

If you've heard of them, you know thatthey are some Other People living in a remote valley in northwestern Paskistan. The women wear black cotton dresses, heavily embroidered at the shoulders and hem, and tied with a broad, bright, handwoven belts of hot pink or bright orange color. Their necks are draped with 50 or more strands of yellow and orange bead strings. A top their heads are a too-small beaded crown with varieties of metals bells, plastic buttons and white seashells added to make intricate patterns with strong, bright beads. An 8-inch wide tail trails down from the center of this crown, three more pounds of trinkets beaded into a continuation of the headband. These head pieces are balanced on theskull, resulting in excellent posture among these girls and women. They are trained to wear them beginning around the age of three. Their bangs are long and combed forward, and then braided into three different width plaits right at the front crown. These long tails are then turned and pulled back behind the head to trail below their headdresses. The rest of their hair is cut very short.
Begining at seven years old, girls get their first tattoos- simple stars, circles, crosses and dots - on the forehead, the left cheek, the chin, the right. They marry young and live with their families in slate and log houses- rectangular, dark, and seemingly suspended among the cliffs.
They are farmers, growing grain and beans and vegetables. The are arborists with walnut, pear,apple and other stone fruit fruits. And they are enologists, making wine.
An enclave in a Muslim land, they have their own culture and society. They are friendly and welcoming to strangers. And in the warm months they receive many. Not only foreign tourists make the journey out to this distant valley, but local Pakistani tourists come out, especially young Muslim men. For where else can they drink their fill freely of wine when they live in the dry province of the Northwest Frontier?
We got a ride back to Chitral town with one such carload of 2nd year engineering students from a village four hours away. One seemed comatose in the front, another riddled with head pains in the back. They insisted the driver was sober, but an hour into the ride I was eager to change vehicles, so when the students stopped for a short break, I flagged down another car and we quickly piled in to a gasoline fume saturated jalopy. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
We had had an overnight stay in the valley of the Kalash. Not enough time to get to know the people or their animist religion, but enough time to take pictures, teach a girl to juggle, and teach an 8th grade class about my home state and its animals. After the vocabulary-geography-art lesson was over and we opened it up for questions, there was just one. A confident boy in the back asked, Why is America so harsh towards Muslims?"

Tidbits and Snippets

2006-09-16T02:27:00.000-05:00

Four in Ten
Four countries in the past ten days.Maybe that's why I've become so grumpy. Adjusting to four different kinds of food, money, roads, languages, time zones and activity levels.

Pakistani Chicken 1
I wondered what those empty cages were for. they looked like bird cages.
and so they were. empty between deliveries. filled by trucks from rawlipindi. emptied one by one as customers chose a dinner bird.
plucked or feathered?
at least you know the meat is fresh.

Pakistani Chicken 2
some people take their half out of the middle,
and so it goes with Pakistani drivers.
narrow roads,
sometimes winding
and hanging above bottomless gorges.
nevertheless, the driver holds his ground in the center of the road,
often horn blowing a warning to potential oncomers behind blind corners,
but rarely moving aside for the eventuality of meeting.
when the opponent appears it's a game of nerves:
who moves left wheels off to the gravel side
and who keeps all four tires centered on the pavement?

Pakistani Chicken 3
it's a chitrali specialty, chicken karai.
chopped, marinated in masala, bone-in chunks of chicken
are added to a small, hot wok, rich
with sizzling garlic, fresh tomato and unnameable curry blends.
served with fresh, hot chapati.
when it's good,
there's nothing tastier.

Pakistani Chicken 4
call to prayer to the followers
followed by the call to layers by the cock.
the imam, the rooster
sing the pre-dawn serenade.
no oversleeping for this flock.

Pictures unwritten
If Kyrgyzstan is nomads, horses, sheep and green; Tajikstan rocky, barren, hospitality; then Pakistan is vertical canals, terraced landscape, 8000 meter peaks.

These are pictures I didn't take:
Having a Smoke with Friends
four men in bright clean shalwar kamiz,
sitting in the full, late afternoon sun,
as I flew past, downhill, to the highway center of AliAbad.

Petro Hydrology
water running running uphill
in canals
impossibly high
on the mountainside, collecting
glacial runoff, transporting it to life.
irrigation ways. stone works:
skinny steps up alongside the cascade down.

Terraces
full ripe pumpkins suspended
by sturdy vines over
the edge of the terrace wall.

Overload
piled high, top-heavy,
trucks wobble under the arms and legs of a dozen men and boys,
clinging to the frame, perched on the sacks,
riding kamikaze on the front bumper.
daring transport on one-lanetracks,
coated with dust
glowing in the afternoon sun

Bellow
a lone cow
tried to a shady tree
in the middle of an empty terrace.

Riding the Mysterious KKH

2006-08-29T04:33:00.000-05:00

Chris Writes

Beware the Boys on the Road
Entering Pakistan, I had been warned of the children; particularly the
boys who at times enjoy throwing rocks at cyclists as they roll by.
Cycling into the village of Passu, we encountered two boys sitting
atop a wall several meters above the road. The boys waved and yelled
”Hello!” though, as we passed them, we heard the unquestionable sound of
small stones hitting the pavement behind our wheels. The both of us
immediately turned around, rode back and yelled at the boys. Once
Sage picked up a softball sized rock and asked how they would like to
be the target, the two young lads realized we ment business and
quickly left their lofty post and ran for the cover of trees.

The following day, as we cycled through a small village, four young
boys who were dilligently working beside the road sprinted ahead of us
and to our horror picked up large sticks. We quickly assumed our
positions but to our surprise, two boys started beating the trees while
the other two collected the apples mid-air as they fell. Enthusiastic
and hardly able to contain their eagerness, the boys ran to the road’s
edge, and with outstretched hands offered us more apples than we had
space for.

Several days later, while riding through the tight, stone wall lined
streets of Minapin we encountered 10 or 12 boys playing a game of
cricket. Once we were spotted, the boys came running, shouting any
English word that came to mind. We were soon besieged. With their
bright eyes transfixed on our dust covered bicycles and their questions
being asked with so much enthusiasm, we were afraid that a few of them
might explode from excitement. After a lightning round of questioning
the boys then dug deep into their pockets and pulled out handfuls of
uncracked walnuts, insisting we take every last one.

Then there was the afternoon when, as we slowly climbed a small hill
before another village, some young men in a white car sped by yelling
something inaudible out the window. Once I got to the top of the hill
and started coasting down, the same car, now parked on the side of the
road, waited for me to pass and slowly drove next to me. Not sure what
to expect, I tried to keep my distance but with a rock wall on one
side and the car on my other there was not much room to negctiate.
After a long minute, the passenger stuck his head and
offered a polite greeting followed by an enormous handful of ripe
grapes. As quickly as the car had sped by several minutes ago, it
took off and was gone again. Again several kms down the road we
encountered the car and its occupants, on the side of the road and
again more grapes were thrust in our faces. This time the passenger
needed another to help with the load of grapes. With smiles and
profuse "thank you's" we moved on.
The warnings we had received before entering Pakistan about the boys
on the roadside rang true, except we never expected to run out of
storage space for the gifts that were given so freely and with so much
eagerness.

Modes of Transportation
Shortly after entering Pakistan you begin to see several types of
transportation typically used. For one, the motorbikes that scream
by, blearing their horns and carrying three grown men make any tourist
look twice and wince. The mass appeal of the small motorcycle can
only be understood once one travels through the country, with its
hellacious dirt roads, narrow alleys or roads so rutted that even four
wheel drive vehicles find it hard to pass, the motorcycle fills a
special nitch. Following the motorcycle, large 10 passenger jeeps or
mini-busses dot the landscape. These vehicles almost always are jam
packed with passengers on the inside and whom ever could not fit
inside is now sitting, hanging or somehow magically attached to the
outside. At times, 4 or 5 grown men sit on top of an over loaded
jeep's roof rack while another 6 hang off its rear bumper and for the
completely desperate, the front bumper is usually free and quite
available. Moving up the scale of motor vehicles one sees the large
and always highly decorated Pakistani trucks. With intricate, hand
painted decorations costing upwards of $15,000, these truck drivers are
serious about their 6 wheeled, rolling beasts. These trucks usually
sport not only beautiful landscape and flower designs but also have
hanging reflectors high above the cab and what seems like thousands of
small bells hanging from chains below the bumpers. The drivers are
usually curteous and always proud to show off their rides. These
trucks are usually grossly overloaded with burlap sacks full of
potatoes, wheat or what ever agricultural crop is in season, heading
south for richer markets.

Stationary Store on Wheels
While cycling through Pakistan one always encounters children, either
on their way to school, home or working in the fields. Passing by,
children usually stop what they are doing, wave, yell hello or come
running. By our third day in Pakistan we started encountering a few
children, in the small villages, that as they ran to the edge of the
road would scream "Hello, one pen, Hello, one pen". We would always
greet them and tell them we had no pens to give. By the fourth or
fifth day the greeting of many of the children changed from "Hello,
one pen" to "One Pen", "Pen please" or even "Give me pen". One
ingenious little boy started out with "One pen" and as we rolled by
the quantity of pens he was asking for increased with every meter
traveled. The last I could hear of him he was asking for "Five pen".
In the beginging, as the one pen chant was so new to us we disregarded
it as just an unusual greeting a few kids were using. But as we rode
further south the mantra of one pen became such a common sound and
nusiance, chanted over and over, with the kids running beside us
yelling at the top of their lungs that we started to devise plans on
how to divert or end the pleading early. Finally, as one over
enthusiastic boy started screaming the daily matra louder and louder,
with ever increasing intensity we decided to try and charge a few
rupies for each pen that was asked for. The starting price hovered
around 5 rupies (about $.09) and increased marginally until the
child realized that as they screamed and pleaded the price rose. Sage
continued to say under her breath "What do I look like, a traveling
stationary store?", which always offered me a bit of comic
relief in the midst of the one pen onslaught.
At times, we wished we had pens to give out, especially to the
youngsters who, so openly gave us apples, walnuts, appricots or
grapes. In the end we neither gave out any of our limited supply of
pens nor did we receive any money for a pen

Bridges to Prosperity
While in Pakistan one never knows what to expect when it comes to the
bridges. There are as many types of bridges as there are people. The
first bridge we encountered, crossing the Hunza River was probably the
most dramatic and the only one of its type. The bridge, the shorter
of two leading to a small village across the muddy, glacier fed
river, was at least 300m long, narrow enough to grab tightly onto the
two straining cables and employing so few wooden planks that at times
the distance between each step seemed to span over a meter. Before
stepping foot on the bridge, I had to inspect the anchoring systems,
the steel braided cables and slightly unsettling sight of partially
broken hardware used to hold two sets of cables together.
Attempting to cross such a bridge was truly a mental test. Hands
holding on tight to each cable, feet testing then stepping on the
remaining, and often to skinny planks and the eyes focusing not on the
planks but the fast flowing river below. My attempt to cross the
bridge was short lived and if I had lived across the river I may have
very well starved to death. But upon my the failed attempt at
crossing, an older woman from the nearby village climbed onto the
bridge and without any effort, fear and only one hand, started
traveling across the now swaying bridge, she seemed to glide, despite
the ever increasing span between wooden planks.
The second type of bridge common to many small and often remote
villages along the Karakoram Highway is the wooden basket hanging from
a small pulley that rides on one thin, well-used wire. The
approaching trail is often carved into the cliff side, so narrow at
times that two people coming from opposite directions could not pass.
The basket itself has an often torn and tattered rope attached to each
end and to the opposing banks. The basket riders, upon climbing into
the small and bouncing basket begin to pull themselves aross the
river. The first half of the ride is rather short as the wire slopes
to the center but the second half is usually slow and requires
substantial effort. Hand over hand, the individuals pull themselves
and sometimes their occupant and/or goods from the market to the
opposite side. Typically, a youngster from the village, seeing
someone crossing, will come running and join in the effort to pull the
basket and its occupants, making the progress twice as fast but
still too long to be suspended, mid-air above a raging, rock strewned
river.
When it comes to bridges for pedestrians and motor vehicles alike
Pakistan has some of the most entertaining ones around. The country
is big on suspension bridges, often narrow, only allowing one car from
either direction to cross and only one car at a time. Our first
encounter with this type of bridge was upon entering Gilgit, late in
the afternoon and just behind a small car packed full of occupants.
As the car ahead completed its crossing, the car just in front of us
started its journey and so did we. Once the car drove onto the bridge
we could see and hear the super structure of the bridge groan and flex
along its entire length. As the steel cables lengthened, the wood planked plantform stretched and the entire bridge seemed to drop
several inches. Cycling behind a vehicle on a bridge that sways more
than than a lobster boat in winter waters proved to be an art that
neither of us had ever mastered. We wove from side to side,
stumbled when we tried to pedal as the bridge appeared to drop out
from under our tires but were having the time of our lives. With a
long bridge platform to cross and cars waiting on the other side we
had to keep close to the car ahead. Once that car drove off the
bridge, the entire mass seemed to spring skyward, ignoring the
miniscule weight we and our bikes offered.
Finally, as the traffic flow and population increases along the KKH
the construction of new bridges is inevitable. We passed four new
bridges, all in various forms of installation. Some of the bridges’
wooden platforms lay on the banks, being pre-cut while others simply
had the stone pillar uprights errected and slack cables, drapped over
the pillars, hanging in mid air. One such bridge, still in the early
stages of construction was already being used by the villagers despite
the wooden platform missing most of its decking and any guard rails. It
was so narrow it would have even given goats pause. But as the small
and now impractical bridges become replaced, the villages on the
opposite banks have the chance to grow and prosper.

Tajikistan

2006-08-20T08:29:00.000-05:00

When you hear the word Pamir, what comes to mind? Stark, skyscraping mountains? A remote and exotic land? I have to admit that I had no imagination about this place that we are in the midst of passing through before we got here. But still I was surprised by what I encountered.

Cresting the 4280 meter Kyzyl Art Pass, we barely rolled downhill onto the desert plateau which is the eastern Pamir. The colors were captivating- golden sands and russet rocks. The stillness and emptiness were even more so. A turquoise lake, our home for the night, turned muddy by morning with the inflow from the unseen glaciers surrounding our bed. Only horseflies stirred, and they made me mad, dashing headlong from their hungry conspiracy. Chris had to laugh as he watched my torment.

Slowly riding in the thin, high altitude air I had to wonder at this lifeless place. What was the grand appeal that drove the adventurous to hitch or cycle or hire a jeep to tour though this unpeopled land? Our constant companion was the Chinese border- delineated by a complex but tidy array of barbed and electric wire, and thick fenceposts in an unforested, unvegetated desert.

First Impressions
We entered over the high pass of Kyzzyl Art. On the other side, stark in barrenness. Dry. High. Windy. Colored sands and rocks: brick, ochre, gray- pyramids rising up and tumbling down. Dust devils reaching 300 feet high, disappearing as fast as they form. All against a brilliant blue sky, ringed with the high reaching snowy peaks of the Pamirs bordering China.
Camped by a magically turquoise lake. Woke to find the mirage faded to a silty brown pond. Three ragtag soldiers appear from the distance, two of them each carrying a small window pane. No water, no supplies. just too-small shoes and thick socks. Wrong-sized sneakers and holey jackets, they trudged four hours in thick, tattered clothes through the sand and heat to deliver these materials to the border post at the pass. Another hour to reach the post. No water or food on hand, they would turn and march back, a soldier's duty done for the day.
Rode for hours along the empty landscape. A solitary soldier emerges from the Chinese side of the 3-meter high electric border fence. He calls to another man who is following 2 yaks across a sticky mud flat while Chris filters water from the clear flowing streamlet. The yaks disturb it, turning it into yet another of the unfilterable waters.
We meet 2 and then 2 more cyclists. What we are doing is not so special, There are so many out on the circuit. But we are the only Americans- at least this year, so far. The others: German, Polish, British, Swiss, Dutch, Czech. In this sense, I'm proud to be an American.
Up the pass. Not a hard one, but still 4200 meters high. At the top I know: some things are worth it. Kara Kul Lake, 15 miles away, huge in the distance. Why is it called black lake when it is purple and turqouise, brilliant azul, a gem in the desert?
With a helmet, a modest descent of 52 kph. Chris's speedometer recorded 78.2. Some things, I don't want to know.
Past the village of Kara Kul, on the way to camp, we turn back to fill up on fresh water at the village pump. Small children take turns jumping and hanging, moving the pump arm up and down. 2 stylish teenage girls come wheeling their 2 urns on a rickety metal wagon. Chris fills one of the urns and one girl pumps the other. Friendly young men with theirs and then 2 young soldiers stop to chat. In the end we stayed at a local homestay with a Tajik guide on his way to pick up his next group. We learn a lot about Tajikistan from him and our beautiful hosts.
So far, so good. I only hope I'm up to all this physically. It is much harder than I imagined. How will I fare in Tibet?

Tajik Border Control

Along the way, it frequently occurs that you have to stop and show your passport yet again. Sometimes you get to sit down, sometimes you have to stand. There are easy-going guys who gently check your passport, and there are the wolves, trying to catch you without a registration stamp,which costs about 21dollars but carries a fine of $330 if you don't have it. All of the comings and goings through these checkpoints are carefully recorded in small notebooks, the kind kids use for school, decorated with Barbie or race cars or disco teens. As if all this weren't enough, we've had some outstanding checkpoint experiences.
12 kilometers out of Murgab, we descend into a narrow canyon. There's a checkpoint at the neck, just past the bridge. Full of flies. A shiny plastic mural poster of a liquid waterfall in a lush setting. Great contrast to our desert surroundings. Formalities without a hitch, and Chris goes down by the river to pump clean water. I futz with my bike and head down to join him. A soldier walks to the edge and beckons and calls out in Russian.
"Come on, Chris," I say. "We've just been invited to lunch." Bowls of potato soup, a plate of sliced onions and delicious fresh made bread are spread out before us, the commander, and the half dozen recruits assigned to spend two years without holiday leave at this remote site.
We are soon joined by Ian, a British guy who has spent the past 12 years touring by bike. In a dirty tee shirt and thin bike shorts he says that his only home is his cycle, apart from the few months he spends at a Bangkok guest house every winter. I hope I never get that extreme.

Today was so weird. First, we're battling headwinds that came on strong at 8 am and only intensified so that by 2 o'clock, we were pedaling hard to go 6 miles an hour downhill. We did a great job of keeping our complaints to ourselves and putting our mettle to the pedals. We discussed the folly of spending precious days making so little progress in a landscape that was increasingly boring. The rocks and sand that called themselves the Pamirs made us wonder why others raved so highly about this route. The place is a desert. A high (over 13,000feet, dry, barren wasteland. It's amazing that every few hours we'd see goat droppings, and then soon, detect the thinnest sliver of green where these hardy animals could drink and graze. And then we'd see the sandstone hovel that no doubt was made livable and warm, which housed the children chasing the goats and the rest of the shepherds' family. This is truly living on the edge. But seeing one or two habitats a day, hearing only the wind in our heads, and thinking about all the more ridable places in the world got us to discussing the pros and cons of trying to hitch a ride. Granted, the five vehicles we'd seen so far were jammed packed already, but we wanted to consider the possibility. After all, what is the point of spending a large percentage of the available time making little progress with full effort, meeting no one and seeing little change in the landscape? After a well-needed Snickers break, we decided to hitch- should a car come by. We hadn't seen one in hours. After five minutes though, one came by. Packed of course, but they stopped and gave us encouragement- there were two jeeps just behind. We got back in the saddles and continued our slow forward progress- I think we'd finally covered 30 kilometers, when I saw something heading towards us in the distance. It was a big Toyota Land Cruiser with just one passenger and a tire on the roof rack. Not only that, but the young man who jumped out to greet us with a big smile was the same person we met yesterday- Zaire, a guide for a Central Asian tour company carrying a Japanese couple on tour. We'd spoken for about fifteen minutes on the road the day before, because the Japanese were also cyclists back home, and were considering doing an international tour in the future. They were curious about our route and gear etc.
Zaire and the driver agreed to give us a lift to the Chinese stolovaya - cafe - where we were headed. But as the conversation got going and we were rolling, it turned out that they were driving down to the Wakhan Valley, our true Tajik destination.
The great thing about travelling with Chris is he is very flexible and open minded. So four hours later we find ourselves outside of a guesthouse with Tajik speaking people watching us as we stand around a pile of panniers and helmets and tent and all, wondering what we should do. We just spent more money than we ever planned on the ride here. We offered to pay 25 dollars but the driver thought it should be 50. As we progressed along our planned route, we began to think it would be worth twice the price not to have to ride that way- especially into a wind tunnel. The scenery deteriorated, the mountains getting lower and more rounded, the roadside even less vegetated, if that were possible. Then, we got to the turnoff which leads down to the Wakhan Valley. Clearly,we were no longer in a inhabitable part of the planet. Gravel pit is a more likely description. There were, to be fair, some goreous, small salty lakes, but surrounded but sand and stone, and not even the textured colored sandstone that we'd been traveling with for the past few days. Just chunky broken rocks haphazardly strewn about the tilted walls of the giant sandbox.
We reach the passport control point at the edge of the border zone. Our papers are all in order but they are now inaccessible. We had loaded our bikes on the Land Cruiser thinking it would be a 20 kilometer lift. Now the pannniers containing our documents were under the cycles where they were hastily loaded into the back.
"Don't worry," Zaire said with a smile, holding a paper in his hand. "I have the permit for two tourists, one man and one woman." The driver handed this to the soldiers peering in the Toyota's windows at us. A friendly conversation ensued, Chris handed up three Marlboro Lights that he pulled from the last pack that we carried to give as gifts, and we drove on.
"Let me see that paper?" I asked, curious about the details of the tourists we supposedly were. Chris was a 62 year-old Japanese guy.

The Wakhan Valley
We were happy with our decision. With every twist and turn we felt even better about not spending any time riding through 3-inch deep sandpockets on a dry, windy desolate track. But then the mountains began to appear on the horizon. Or rather, far above the horizon. The completely white faces of the Hindu Kush peaks loomed above the high mountains, touching the sky. The river we'd been following somehow got our attention as it turned from a bobbing class II to a bouncing class III to a booming class IV before it diasppeared altogether in the depths of the narrowing canyon. Our road became a track that clung to the steep sides of the rising mountains. It contoured in and out around the deep cuts made by near-vertical water, finding its way down to the torrent far below in the canyon separating Tajikistan from Afghanistan. It was a pity that we did not get the chance to ride the gorge's edge and the rollercoaster hairpins down to the little village of Langar. But missing that was the price we paid to avoid 6 days of hard labor in the sand and salt mines on the road to Ishkashim. Now we are 117 kilometers away, resting with flying insects in the indescribable Ismaili Community House.
Carpeted raised platforms surround the central floor. Walls are painted with symmetrical murals, the whole structure is made of intricately carved beams and posts. This creativity, the work of village youth. Young artisans in the community. The first of the Pamir homes we got to see.

Unparalled Pamiri
One of the main delights of traveling through this remote stretch of Tajikistan, at places just a stone's throw from the Afghani Wakhan Corridor, was the hospitality of the Pamiri people. At times it was difficult to travel more than 200 meters without being stopped by an invitation- for lunch, for dinner, for tea, for the night. We accepted one every day. We feasted at the home of Gulchekhra and her husband, Bek, who Chris befriended while I was photographing the large group sitting at the curb seeing their guests off on the mini-bus back to the central town. "Tea" turned into a 4-course meal. Their son then gave us a hour-long tour of the local millhouses. In these community stone huts, families bring their harvested and threshed wheat, grind it between hand-carved millstones by the power of the rushing flumes, load it into empty sacks, being careful to leave a large scoop of flour for the poor in the designated cubby on a shelf near the door, and then lash the full sack to the waiting donkey "taxi: for the slow trot home. Villages with a lot of water have several mills, and host families from neighboring settlements during the busy grinding season.
Another day, Roma, a part-time law student in Bishkek, snatched us by the village pump, and brought us home for a two-hour tea. We left stuffed and bewildered by this family who filled our bags with fresh apricots and boiled eggs, satisfied by our sharing of pictures and stories of home.
Chris met Marat at the Bibi Fatimah hot spring. It was worth the steep, 7-kilometer switch-back route to this unusual resort. Chilrden and young men helped me push my bike to the top, while Chris managed to peddle most of the way himself. An ancient fortress, like China's Great Wall, juts out toward Afghanistan atop a high ridge commanding a full view of enemy advance. The springs themselves were equally captivating: three hot waterfalls gently poured out from the side of the cave where old women and young girls bathed in the healing waters. In the men's pool, Chris held court with the dozen Tajiks bathing around him, and we left there with promises to visit Marat in his village the next day.
We stayed in Boybar for two whole days. Marat, a sizable Judo champion, led us up to a naturally carbonated spring in a green fold in the dry, stony mountains where we lunched and drank and filled our bottles. He and his English-speaking wife gave us their cottage, came and cooked for us each morning and generally swamped us with generosity and hospitality. In turn, we bought a sheep for the family- them and four of Marat's five uncles living in Boybar. Eight of us packed into the jeep and we drove back with the docile dinner. It was horrific and moving to watch the uncles sharpen the knives, listen to the prayers of sacrifice, and see the bleeding sheep kick and writhe until his life bled out.
It is possible to eat too much meat. We ended up spending an extra day in the district center of Ishkashim while Chris recovered. That's where we met Dr. Shirinbek and his son Olim, both surgeons, but from different eras. The younger, a laprosocpic surgeon, trained in Moscow, spoke good English and expects a better future for his wife and children. His father is a reknown thoracic surgeon who has endured a difficult past and survives in a difficult present. He lives with his wife, 2 kilometers up a steep track, withstanding the snowy, cold winters by huddling in the kitchen. The grandchildren who come in the summer to escape Dushanbe's heat and help with the milking and the washing go back to school in the capitalin the winter. Dr. Shirinbek treats patients at the hotspring sanatorium at the base of his hill where he runs a herbal apothecary. He explains that during the civil war after the break up of the Soviet Union, there was no medicine and no access to any. What he did have was books. Books on herbal treatments and how to prepare them. They were all in Russian and from them he learned. Using the surrounding plants, he built up a medicine chest and a practice, and he continued his work as a surgeon.

The last outstanding hospitality was the most intense of all. Passing through a sleepy village east of Khorog, we saw smoke from an outdoor cooking fire and heard lively, loud music coming from a house just off the road. People waved and called and we hollered our hello's back. A few hundred meters along, we stopped at a roadside table to buy some halvah to add to our snack chest. Chatting with the seller, we understood that the music and smoke came from a wedding. We had expected to go to one while in Ishkashim, as the uncles from Boybar were planning to attend one and said we could be their guests. Alas, Chris was doubled over with meat overload and the uncles were very late as they spent several hours waiting to find enough gas for the journey, one plastic liter bottle full at a time. Tajik weddings last 2 or 3 days, so the next night, Chris and I attempted to go on our own, after the Boybar boys had already come and gone. We made it to the edge of the dark, music-laden driveway, but chickened out before crossing into the lighted festivity zone. Now that we had the chance, we decided to turn back and go. We were swamped by the two-hundred guests, the villagers who were invited to Day 2 of the wedding. The men were in one room and the women in another, sitting around an elaboraborate and symmetrical array of food. Nobody ate while they waited hours for the guests of honor to arrive. The bride and groom were more than 100 kilometers away, and in the meantime, Chris and I stole the spotlight. We were given the seats of honor and fed steaming plates of fresh meat, cool bowls of yogurt, tea and melon, and sweets and salad. The musicians came in from the courtyard where the grandmothers were intermittently cooking pilau and drumming, smiling and singing, and set up on the highest of the elevated floor levels in the open, central Pamiri house. Kolya, the one who invited us in, was hosting the party for the fatherless groom. He was a gregarious Master of Ceremonies, as he selected from the 100 seated females- marrieds on the left, singles on the right, who would dance. He himself was fluid and rhythmic on the floor, a contrast to Chris' amusing efforts when Kolya partnered him with a friend of his daughter's. We declined the vodka and the countless offers to stay the night and rode off into the twilight after three hours in the intimacy of this prototypical Pamiri family.

Living with the Mafia

2006-08-20T07:49:00.000-05:00

Chris Writes
Just before leaving Kyrgyzstan we stayed with a family, living just 2 kms from the Kyrgyzstan/Tajikistan border. After a quiet family meal that included sweet butter, fresh bread, appricot jam and boiled-in-milk goat lung, the father asked why on earth we would be interested in visiting Tajikistan. As he put it, Tajikistan is nothing but rocks, sand and vegetationless mountains. Nothing grows there, he told us sternly, as he had lived there for many years. We quickly dismissed his concerns and said it was the people we were interested in, not just the environment.

The next day, after getting our Tajik entry stamp we saw what the old man was talking about. Just over the mountain pass the grass became sparse, the sky a deep blue and the water, running straight from the nearby glaciers, so silty that even trying to use our filter would have been pointless. Looking at each other we questioned our sanity and personal reasons for pedaling forward. We reminded each other of the wonderful stories that friends had told of the Tajik people and their hospitality as well as the beauty of the Wakhan Valley, now over 500 kms to our south.

After leaving our first big Tajik city, Murghab, we understood why Tajik people are reknowned for their hospitality and good natured personalities. While filtering water at a nearby stream, next to the second military checkpoint of the day, Sage, my ever trustworthy cycling partner was invited in for lunch. Not just any old lunch but a full course meal consisting of fresh baked bread, delicious potato and onion soup and endless cupfuls of chai. The half dozen soldiers were so happy to have company as they are required to serve a full two years military service, without holidays or time off. Shortly after lunch the soldiers decided it was time to check out our bicycles and were more than eager to pose for pictures, cradling their AK-47's tightly in their arms and broad smiles on their faces. As our travels took us deeper into Tajikistan we found that soldiers were the ones most interested in having their pictures taken, armed or not, and offered us words of advice about the roads ahead.

Several days later and hours of arduous pedaling into ever increasing headwinds, we started talking about hitchhiking. The scenery was resembling that of many desert scenes I had viewed in foreign movies and the quantity of water that was required to be carried evey day was starting to wear on us. After several failed atempts at obtaining some motorized transportation we finally got what we were looking for, a completely empty Toyota Land Cruiser. The driver and translator were two men we had met the day before, escorting tourists around and now were heading in the direction we needed to go. We gladly accepted the ride and took pleasure in the guided tour as we rocketed down the potholed road. The car ride took us from the dreary, dusty and seemingly lifeless area of east central Tajikistan to the south, our intended goal, the Wakhan Valley, also known as the Pamirs.

Shortly after entering the Wakhan Valley, an area that shares a common border with Afghanistan, we understood why this trip, up to now was worth the hard effort. The tree-lined streets, miles of hand-dug irrigation canals and beaming smiles of the Pamiri people. Not only was there water, but fresh fruit hanging from the trees and more invitations for chai or pleas to stay the night at their homes. At times we had a hard time getting more than 5 kms down the road before countless invitations were offered.

Near the small village of Ptyup, 7 arduous kms and three hours of cycling up steep dirt roads, we arrive to our first natural hot springs. The Bibi. Fatima hotsprings were our intended evening stay for that day and the hard work needed to reach the springs were well worth the price for admission. Unfortunately the hotel at the top was full with tourists from surounding cities so we sullenly turned back and decided to knock on the gates of homes near by, hoping for an invitation to stay the night. Within minutes we had two offers and the offering parties started to debate who should have the honor of hosting us for the evening. Suddenly a neighbor boy arrive with word that the man of the house we were heading towards had just invited 6 strangers to stay the night. With that news the boy immediately took Sage's bike out of her hands and started leading us down the narrow winding path that lead to his house. After storing our bikes in their makeshift garage we were led, in the dark, down a slippry and narrow path to the family's house below. We were the center of attention for the evening and it was not long before supper of chai, fresh bread and butter arrived on the table in front of us. While talking to the father and showing him the photos and postcards from home he informed us that he worked in the hospital several kms below us. That he made the walk to work daily, six days a week and that his pay for the month was $25 (US). He had worked there for several years, acting as a administrator of sorts, helping to keep the plethora of files in some order. His two eldest sons worked at the hotsprings during their summer recess from school to help support their family.

The next day, the youngest son, about 7, lead us proudly to the hotsprings and with pantomimes, described what we should do and where we should go. With a separate bathing area for both men and women we had plenty of time to enjoy the healing waters the surrounding mountains spewed forth. Not sure what to do or expect, I followed the lead of our little guide, undressing and climbing into the hot water. Within minutes there were 12 other men, of all ages soaking around me and talking in a language I was slow to learn. Then a young man, named Marat joined the naked group and asked in perfect English where I was from and what my name was. That was all that was needed to get the party going. Within minutes I learned that Marat was living in Russia, a theater performer and opera singer, there with his three uncles to enjoy the healing waters the spring offered. Once they learned that I was with my "wife" as my cycling partner and I assume the role to help explain why we share a tent, they wanted to know why we did not have any children. Suddenly the bath house errupted in pantomimes and advice spoken in foreign tongues, about how we should go about to conceive our first child. The general consensus was that I must visit the hotsprings for three days, taking care to soak my private parts and on the third day, as everyone demonstrated with overly active hands, lay with my wife for the evening.

After the multitudes of advice we were invited to visit Marat and his wife, who lived just two days from the springs in the town of Boybar. Not wanting to pass up the opportunity we quickly cycled to the village and were amazed as countless relatives poured out onto the small village street to greet us and take our bikes from us as we were lead to Marat's summer house. There he and his wife made us a late lunch and then wisked us off the meet even more of his relatives. As it turned out, the village was originally named after his family and most of the village had family relations to his. His 4 uncles all insisted we visit each of their homes and meet their families. One of the uncles rushed off to open his store and retrieve several bottles of vodka, beer and wine for the evening festivities. His eldest uncle had a striking resemblence to the "Godfather" himself, Marlon Brando. It was like shmoozing with the Mafia, if we needed something it appeared within minutes, no questions asked. What was intended as an evening of festivities turned into two days of flurried activity as we were taken high into the surrounding mountains for fresh mineral water and watched as the family fished in the heavily silted river with long nets stretched from bank to bank. On the final day, we bought the family a sizeable sheep. Marat and his uncles tried to convince me I should do the honors and kill the animal but in the end I chickened our and was simply a by-stander, watching in awe as two of the uncles sharpened their knives, prayed and held the animal down. Most of the family was there to witness the event and within one hour the goat was fully dressed and on its way to the boiling pot of water waiting above the roaring fire.

Most of the family was there to witness the event and within one hour the goat was fully dressed and on its way to the boiling pot of water waiting above the roaring fire. That evening the family, in all seriousness, suggested we buy some land and build a house. For as little as $500 (US) and three goats the family and all the village neighbors would show up, and for three days build us a summer house. The suggestion was passed from uncle to uncle with additional suggestions made on what size of home we would need, especially in relation to how many children we would be having. In the end we politely declined but the dream of owning a home of my own in the Wakhan Valley still shines bright.

Further down the valley, bellies full of fresh meat, we passed from friendly village to friendlier village. Never sure what to expect or how the people would surprise us next. We visited two additional hotsprings and I received similar advice from the bathers in each, pantomimes and all. The days in the Wakhan valley were short, never more than 30kms and the lunch breaks lasting several hours as we usually spent them in the homes of local families, adopted for an afternoon. As we progressed to the big city of Khorog, past the bridge leading to Afghanistan, the road went from decent asphalt to patches of desert sand and potholes large enough to swallow a small child. We cycled slowly, often carrying a watermelon, strapped to our rear rack, waiting to enjoy its ripeness at the next stop. The evenings were usually spent in the homes of friendly families and often the neighbors and their neighbors showed up to view the pictures and postcards of home we brought along.

After three and a half weeks in Tajikistan we decided we needed to move on, our visa was almost expired and China, Pakistan and Nepal where waiting to be explored.

Leaving Tajikistan and reentering Kyrgyzstan proved to be entertaining, at the very least. While cycling up to the Kyrgyz border, already late in the evening, Sage was greeted by one of the two military border dogs, running straight at her, intending to have her for dinner. She managed to defend herself with the bike between here and the vicious K-9 while the border guards, wearing bullet proof vests and holding AK-47's stood by and watched. After our hearts slowed to that of marathon runners, we handed over our passports for viewing and proceeded on to the next building for our customs inspection. There we were greeted by an 8 yr old and his 6 yr old brother who informed us that the commander and the others were having dinner and we would have to wait for them to finish. With daylight dwindling and our butts aching, Sage informed them that they better get someone out here now or we would be going on our way, customs or no customs official. We waited two minutes then proceeded to the gate. Immediately the youngest boy ran ahead and with outstreched hands yelled "No Go" but it was too late. Sage already had her bike on its side, pulling it under the gate. Once the boys saw our determination they simply opened the gate and let me pass. It was nice to know the Kyrgyzstan border was guarded by two young children and no officials.

We are now in Kashgar, China, getting ready to leave for Pakistan. The ride here consisted of long days through scenery that never seemed to change, and headwinds likewise. At the Chinese border, we had to wait for 4 hours as the Chinese officials had their lunch, practiced drills and cleaned the border house. Once in China we did not know what to expect as our first encounter with the Chinese officials was less than pleasant. Only kms down the road though a large truck slowed in front of us and a man and woman jumped to the ground, smiling and waving us to the other side of the road. They proceeded to share their ownly melon with us the only shade available, next to their truck.. The young couple, having been married only 3 months were more than happy to have us as visitors and as a parting gift, gave us 20 yuan and would not accept anything in return, only saying, "Welcome to China".

Cycling adventures built for two begin in Kyrgyzstan

2006-07-17T09:51:00.000-05:00

Chris Writes:Half way across the globe and a world away, we continue to bike and make slow progress.

After a late start from Naryn, Kyrgyzstan, heading south we found what Kyrgyzstan has plenty of, WIND. Making slow progress we inched our way closer to the mountains and our first pass. At the pass, a mere 2800m we wondered how on earth we would find ourselves riding over 4000m through Tajikistan and Tibet, all the while staying alive and enjoying ourselves.
For the past two weeks our spinning wheels took us through desert scrub, high plains and ragged mountains. The towns we pass and the people we meet are all outgoing, offering us tea, home-made sour cheese balls and ample amounts of bread.

Climbing into the mountains, we start our training for Tajikistan, cursing the wind for our slow progress but loving it for the cooling breeze it provides under the hot and unending sun. Slowly our lungs adjust and our legs strengthen with the steep climbs.

Hospitality is a true speciality here in Kyrgyzstan and the people here know how to provide for beautiful memories. While slowly spinning over one of the smaller passes in order to get to the larger ones and dreaming of cold beverages we find a wonderful waterfall, just feet from the edge of the road. Minutes after we begin enjoying the crystal clear water an overly crammed car appears, the type found on many college campuses. A family spanning three generations pours out. Within seconds the usual questions of "Where are you from? What are you doing this for? Who is paying you?" starts. Once the women are satisfied with our answers they instruct their grandchildren to stop playing in the water and fetch us the partially eaten lamb ribs that have been riding in the trunk of their hot car. With a flowing movement of the hand one of the grandmothers removes a piece of fat, the size of a large mans thumb, opens my mouth, inserts the fat and clamps my jaws shut, all the while scolding me for being so skinny. We are so glad to receive ANY food as our supplies have been dwindling from the ravenous appetites we now harboring. Sage, my riding partner is hardly spared as the second car pulls up and the fathers and sons pour out, obviously still enjoying the vodka they had consumed several hours ago. The questions start again and then the bottle of vodka is called for. Being the only foreign male, I am offered the first drink, making it a hard drink to turn down. Oblivious to the remainder of the climb we have to undertake, our new friends insist we drink and enjoy our good fortune. One of the mothers tells Sage in broken English that today was a family member's wedding, the reason everyone is so merry.

While cycling the first real pass and cranking the pedals for over 20km and 5 hours we finally near the top. As the distance to the top of the pass shrinks, we watch as children and grown ups from alike run from their two yurts, up to the roadside, to greet us. The are enthusiastically patting us on the back, raising their hands in cheering fashion and offering us a big glass of kumuiz, better known as fermented mares' milk (the milk from birthing horses, believed to cure whatever ails you and slightly alcoholic in nature). After we make introductions and pass out the remaining toys to the children, one of the women invites us in for chai. The word chai is used as a general term for tea and bread here. As we turn and head toward the yurts, the younger boys eagerly push our overloaded bikes down the grassy slope, other children dance, laugh and play with the new toys all the way to the two structures sitting on the only flat ground found while we hurriedly change into warmer clothes. Once inside we are greeted by a warm stove, fresh, hot bread and a warm smile from the grandmother of the house wrapped in wool blankets. For this particular event the children are not allowed in, only the adults. This does not stop the kids from peeking their curious heads in on occasion or making up silly excuses for entering. The old man to the right of me, now leaning heavily on my leg asks me about the woman next to me, he assumes that she is my wife. After a few minutes he starts giggling like a school girl and in a quiet and shaky voice asks me in slurred Russian how the sex is or something on the subject. Once the man of the home hears the hushed words he immediately and loudly changes subjects, to something more G-rated. The old man now less dependent on my knee, is still laughing quietly, oblivious to his surroundings or the change in conversation.

After only 250km and ten days of riding, pushing and carrying our bikes from Naryn to Kazarman to Jalalabad enjoy two whole days of rest in Osh. The two days are spent cleaning the bikes, doing minor repairs and tightening anything that looks like it could loosen up, then there is shopping and internet to contend with. The hills are steep, full of loose rocks, rutted and shear drop offs. Riding down the other side of the passes, the gravel under our bike tires gives one the feeling of cycling on marbles rolling on clear glass, at times. All the while, being sure to stay clear of the bowling ball sized rocks that appear sporadically in the road. We stop for a rest, and get to watch the only car we have seen in hours hurtle down the mountain slope, oblivious to the dizzying heights, just inches from their car.

Old men stare in disbelief, women stand in awe and kids run next to or behind us, as we pass through the small villages. The people we meet on the roadside always ask us if we are sportsmen (athletes) and who is paying us to do this? We try and explain that we are on this trip to meet people like themselves and to experience foreign cultures and customs. And no, we are certainly not athletes, just two ordinary people who love to eat and cycle. And no unfortunately there is no one to date who has stepped up and offered to pay us for all of this hard work.

As hard as the days are or surely will be, we continue to enjoy cycling the plethora of dirt roads, climbing and descending passes and rolling through little villages not even given a chance on our maps. The food is always fantastic, the watermelons are as ripe and red in the center as strawberries and the meat is incredible fresh despite a clear lack of refrigeration. For two average people who enjoy bicycle travel a little off the map, Kyrgyzstan could not have been better.

We are looking forward to Tajikistan, now just over a week away. We are told Tajikistan is as wild as the American Wild West was during its hay day. The next six weeks will our training ground for Tibet as most of the country is well over 4000m and quite desolate. The roads are reported to be in very poor shape but the people's hospitality is said to be the most generous of any Central Asian country. Cycling through Tajikistan we will be rolling south along the Pamir Highway then turning left and entering the Wakhen Valley, then bicycling along the Afghan/Tajik border until the village of Kharugh.

As for now, we are off to enjoy our last hot shower for several weeks and find enough food to fill our hungry bellies.

Journey On
Chris

Training Wheels

2006-07-17T06:27:00.000-05:00

Firsts
It's been two weeks of firsts. We completed the shakedown leg of our bicycle trip: Naryn to Kazarman to Jalal-Abad, and now we are in Osh. It was only about 250 kilometers. How could it have taken us 10 days of riding? Well, I guess because we were just starting out.

We had our first rain- the exact second we actually pushed off and got into our toeclips. But we rode on into what turned out to be the only rain we cycled in for the whole 10 days. A half kilometer later, we had our first mechanical problem- a bungee cord left sitting on the rear rack found its way into Chris’ rear sprockets. Less than 10 more kilometers down the road, we got to our first little pass. That night, our first thunder and lightening- with the added entertainment for me, of Chris’s nighttime antics. I woke up in the middle of the night to find him trying to crawl out of the tent. He wanted to watch the boy herding cows against the stormy, electric night sky.
He’d warned me he talks in his sleep but I hadn’t heard about the walking. I insisted he was dreaming, he insisted he was wide awake. But logic won over his feeble mind when it was pointed out that boys don’t herd cows in the middle of the night in a thunderstorm. The next night he saved me from falling off a roof. But at least I was prepared for it when he woke me up yelling, “Stop! Stop! Stop!”

On our fourth day, we had our first pass. It took less than 5 hours to summit and we were pleased that we felt no effect from the altitude, having become well acclimatized during our previous days spent backpacking and trekking up to 12,000 feet.

One of our firsts will no doubt not be our last. Sad to say, it was our first headwind. In fact, it was a week of headwind. Relentless. People had a strange concept of the birth of this breeze. Everywhere we went, they told us that just over the hill, there was no wind. I think they just have never been over the hill. Another bit of useless advice was that the wind only started after lunch. Well, we’d start out earlier and earlier each day- but guess what? So would the breeze. It was driving one of us crazy but at least the other one, the one who was drafting behind the wind-breaking leader, would appreciate the cooling breeze that kept the 90 degree temperatures at bay.

Another first was quite hard to accept. Our first lift. Granted, it was the third offer in two days. My jiloo duk (stomach) had cancelled my appetite so I was hungry and weak, and the wind had slowed us down. Once we broke down and accepted the ride, we had no regrets. Especially looking at the gravelly, 13-kilometer climb.

We also had our first encounter with the traveling watermelon man. About 15 cold and thrilling kilometers down the other side of the pass, we actually turned and rode back up when I understood what the man was shouting from his parked Niva. We sat on the rocky ground, slurping and smiling and spitting seeds, incredulous at our good fortune.

Well, now you are looking at my last first- my first photos ever posted to a blog. Thanks to Edilbek Manabaev in Osh, the most knowledgeable and friendly and helpful Kyrgyz man I’ve so far met, you are able to see these pictures and read some of the snippets I wrote in my tent.

Snippets from the Tent
June 26. Karakol. We're finally ready. Almost. We've still got a phone call, internet, and lunch shopping to do on the way out of town. Oh, and a bit of sightseeing.
We've really had a fantastic week here in this mountain town just past the east end of Lake Issyk Kol. We had a delicious swim in a protected cove on the ride out here. Our taxi driver was new, and very patient. When we got to the Vogzal, I'd forgotten that I had planned to find a Universal - a station wagon- to transport the 2 of us and our bikes the 400 kms to the capital of Issyk Kol Oblast. But when we got to the place where the taxis hover, looking for clients to all destinations Kyrgyz (except Osh, which has its own bazaar meeting place),someone recognized me and put me in a taxi to Karakol. With his brother, or cousin, or whatever you might call the relationship between him and the driver. It took an hour for Chris to break down the bikes sufficiently to fit them in the Audi trunk. Then we drove all over town to do the final errands _(now there's a word with no meaning: final)_ except he was very unfamiliar with Bishkek so I had to navigate. Anyway, we made it out to Karakol where we settled into our 5 bed yurt at Turkestan Yurt Camp, in the center of town.
Sergey has done an incredible job with this place since I was here 6 years ago. Lots of strategic plantings and yearly expansion has turned this place into a shady hobbit haven of colorful yurts.
We took a day-ride to the local beach. Young people were fascinated by our bikes, but one young man, a Muslim in his early 20s, mainly enjoyed the chance to practice his English and learn more about Americans. He asked about our relationship and the age difference. He guessed us to be 6-8 years apart, and put Chris at 30. So I guess I’m 36 now, which suits me fine. The water was refreshing, but a little dirty, as the nearby river empties into this cove of the lake. On the way back we stopped at Gulya's, Amy's host mother. She prepared a fantastic spread of chilled eggplant rollups with cheese and tomato, the usual homemade jams and bread and fresh thick cream, endless milky tea and bantering in three languages with various translations going back and forth. I asked her son Samat about the bandage on his finger and the iodine painted up his arm. He showed us the cut on his finger that he got a few days prior when stripping some wire. Then he showed us the puffy red line under the iodine stain that had already reached his arm pit. It was hot to the touch and he felt himself to have fever. We decided to treat him with Cipro for 5 days. I later found out it worked. They sometimes take these things so casually, but both Chris and I felt it was very serious.
Next day was the 50 km roundtrip mountain bike ride up the Karakol Valley, my favorite local Kyrgyz haunt. It wiped me out. I must have been in fantastic shape last year, because it was a breeze then, but I was struggling up the hills this time. Of course, lack of acclimitization -it is 1600-2600 meters, this ride-and a bit of residual jet lag- we'd only been in country 5 days- could have contributed.
After that was a day of organizing in the morning before we set out for our backpack trip around 1 o’clock. We ordered a taxi just to expedite the running around that had to be done, and it turned out to be Valera, Alsu's husband. I had loaned them $100 last May to buy the car so that he could start driving cab. They have had a successful year, except for the unnecessary loss of their 3-day old son, so they were able to repay the money when we returned from the trip. I suppose our 20 dollar cabfare helped.
The hail on the way there was a sign of things to come. We took Assan, a 10 dollar a day porter, who carried our loads like a Nepali-in flip flops. We carried 20+ pounds each too. The way in, along the Jetti Oguz Valley is beautiful in itself. I'd ridden up the previous year but as we neared the place where we headed west towards Telety Pass which ends in the Karakol Valley, a sight emerged that I had never imagined. Then I understood the directions Tahir was giving us, “Across from the White Mountain.”
"Which mountain is it? I asked, as I was following along with the map during the directions giving phonecall. (He was supposed to guide us on this trip, and or his friend Loha ,but that fell through. Taha told us several days ahead of time that he wouldn't be able to go after all, but Loha only told us at 11pm the night before the trip was to start. That's why we had such a late start, because we were trying to find a cheap guide or a decent porter. The first porter that we got was a skinny as a rail and probably still in high school. Didn't suit us for crossing a 3850 meter pass with a snowy, 40 degree descent. Assan at least, was beefy looking and came to us through someone I knew. He worked out okay, except when we descended waist-deep snow going over the Telety and camped in a down-our- we ended up having to cook and serve him dinner because he was recovering in his tent. But back to the the white mountain- it was a wall of snow and glacier and a delightful surprise. We turned past it all too soon and made our way up through a forested trail that let us out into a high meadow where we camped amongst curious cows. Here Assan earned his keep, as he tossed stones and Kyrgyz epithets at the invasive bovine beasts.

July 8
That sliver was not a river, but just the reflecting gravel road stretching even farther into the uphill headwind.
"This is not my idea of fun," I recited silently, even while knowing that it wasn't helping me get any closer to water, which meant camp. Of course by now I've arrived, because you always get what you need when you need it. Tonight it was not only a clear stream to camp by, but there was a secluded 2-foot deep, fresh running, bathing pool; a spring "bubbling out of the heart of the earth," as the proprietor of the Shorpo, Tea and Bread truck stop across the way pointed out; and soft, green, level grass to place our tent. Which is currently being buffeted by very strong winds. But the road was hard today. I actually broke down with doubt. “Will I really be able to make this?” It's only our third day, but it seems that 40 kms a day should not be so hard. But we've had a wicked headwind. The lobsterman says 25 knots with gust over 30mph. All I know is that I rode downhill in third gear and had to walk going up. The gravel was loose, the surface was washboard and the temperature was in the upper 90s. As I said, not my idea of fun.

July 9
"Why don't you go faster?" asked the Russian-speaking kid riding double on the horse, as he looked at Chris, ahead, and then back at me, balancing carefully while creeping uphill in my lowest gear.
"Wind, load, grade," I replied, leaving out that I was tired, female, and almost 50.

This was after a filling visit at one of the yurts at the top of the pass. Delicious sheep shin and noodle soup, whole wheat flat breads and the Kyrgyz treat called kaimak- a sweet cream that spreads like butter and is made fresh every day. Four and a half hours, 20 kilometers and a 1075 meter climb with more than 33 switchbacks. That's almost 3500 feet climbing to an altitude of over 9400 feet. Not bad for the 4th day of our trip. Especially since yesterday, I was about to give up. In fact, this morning, I was very nervous about my performance. Not that I was being judged by anyone but myself. I did have to trade Chris some weighty food for the lighter stove and bowl, and I wore my boots instead of packing them on the bike, but it was still me turning those crank arms up and up the hill.

What do you call a cooling breeze from behind? A tailwind? A Godsend.

Galloping on the Edge of Paradise

2006-07-05T03:33:00.000-05:00

Approaching the 3971 meter pass after lunch, the rain begins. We don full length, four-pound pale green Russian military rain slickers, and tighten the hoods around our faces as our five horses pick their way up the grassy southwest slopes towards Ulan Pass. I wondered why the river was called that- ulan meaning red, in Kyrgyz- when the waters were so blue. But as we rounded the corner, traversing slowly up, I got a glimpse of red sandstone, eroded beneath the green and rock cover. Just as we reached what seemed like the pass, the hail began. This time we were not as lucky as during our backpack trek over the Telety Pass in Karakol, because the ice stone- mundoor in Kyrgyz- were hitting us straight through the openings of our hoods. I agreed with the horses who reeled themselves around to take the sting on the backside. Just then, Albas, our lawyer cum horse-guide, turned and said, “Take care” as he prepared to go over the edge. I moved to the rim myself to see what kind of challenge awaited us this time. But at first I couldn’t determine it. There was no trail over the edge. And the terrain down to the no trail was steep, rocky and slick with rain. I got off the horse to walk.
“We go by the way,” Albas said, and as he pointed, I could see that I would have to stay seated on my red and white steed, for the way, was up the red river. Through it, in it, next to it, over it. Wherever the horses could find footing. I could hear Chris laughing and cheering his horse on as he slid and skidded down a meter-high mud step. Being the cautious person that I am, I quickly determined that I would be walking over that obstacle, and got off on the right side, which was the wrong side, of the horse. It was a tense ten minutes for me as we picked our way upstream, crisscrossing between small boulders and slipping through wet, muddy scree above the not so deep, river. A slot canyon. In cold, wet, slippery conditions, on horseback.

It seems that each time we approach a tricky part, like the soundtrack of a dramatic scene, the weather plays its ominous notes- wind, hail, rain and snow. The trick is to recognize the joke, and enjoy the song. The truth is that Chris and I are competent in the mountains, and travel safely, with our eyes open. Usually.
There was a point, on the second day of this week-long horse trek, when we came out from the shadow of one range into an immense valley, maybe 50 or more kilometers long and about 10 across. Chris had just commented how hard it would be to find your way through there when Albas confessed that he a little bit, didn’t remember the way. We pulled out the map, the three of us, and noted that we hadn’t been following along up til now. Most of the terrain was on another quad, a sheet which we didn’t have. Luckily the sky was clear and there were easily definable features. And then for confirmation, a shepherd appeared in the distance and seconded our route.

It always seems to go that way when traveling: what you need comes when you need it. Like yesterday afternoon. We arrived on day 7, in Naryn City, the capital of Naryn Oblast. Our “taxi”, a scarred, rusted and repainted Russian Lada, drove through the quiet main street while Albas was off looking for a driver to get us the last 60 kilometers from Ak Muz, white ice, the town where we ended our trek. I put my arm out to carstop, and the young driver and his Parkonsonian father gladly invited us to join them for the ride, and some som. Although each seat should cost only 50, we somehow agreed to pay 200 for the two of us, even though we did get another 40 som paying passenger at the edge of town. But neither of us cared to haggle over the extra couple of dollars. It was a pleasant hour’s drive with a pit stop in the mountains at the outskirts of town. You never know where you’ll find a toilet in a more developed area, or how challenging it may be to squat down.
We got dropped off in the center of Naryn, and that’s when it started to become apparent that our overpaying was not without consequence. We got stranded without any som in our pockets. The banks were closed for another hour and a half for lunch. And we couldn’t pay for anything- not internet, not food, not even a phone call. And we were hungry, passing by the food stalls with fresh tomatoes, Ashlan Fu (a cold, spicy noodle concoction), and ice cream, as we decided to walk to the bank to wait for its after lunch opening, toting our packs and extra items and wanting just to rest in the shade. And that’s when I first told Chris that I loved him. For he remembered that in his dirty shorts, that hadn’t even been thought of since the start of the rainy cold horse trip, were hundreds and hundreds of som. More than 30 dollars. We were rich! We headed back to the spicy noodle lady. I was surpised at how good it was. Everyone always says that the best Ashlan Fu comes from Karakol, and here we were, in another Oblast entirely, and this was the best I’d ever tasted. When I told her that, she told me that she was from Karakol, Tyup, in fact, just 30 kilometers away.
“How did you come here?” I wondered “Were you kidnapped?” Yes, she was, she told me, her head dropping just a bit. Bride-kidnapping is an illegal and vile tradition were men and their friends, especially in more rural areas, stalk and capture a woman to join the family as a milk slave and baby-maker. At least that’s how it goes at it’s worst. The girls and woman usually make the adjustment, and admit in many case to learning to love their unchosen husband, and in some cases the practice is just a ritualized conclusion to the prenuptial, consensual dating that has occurred. But usually the woman is snatched away from her personal goals and education aims, and forced into the tradition role of mother, mender, cook and tea-server.
“Sad?” I asked, in my one-word Russian way.
“Of course.” She only goes home once a year, always in summer, as that’s the best time, she explained. I personally like the clear, dry, sunny winter days after each snow fall, but then again, I like to ski.
So, Chris and I were enjoying our lunch, with fresh round bread, almost like a deep dish pizza crust, when I happened to glance up and there was the one Peace Corps volunteer in the area that I knew, and was trying to reach, but couldn’t manage to get through to on the cell phone. Three hours later, our laundry dropped off at the service- next day for 2 bucks, our baggage safely stored at Izzi’s apartment where we could stay for free during our time in Naryn, and her key zipped safely into Chris’ pocket, we found ourselves at a bona fide Fourth of July barbeque eating hot dogs and hamburgers and drinking decaffeinated iced tea with actual ice. We ate watermelon and brownies with decaf coffee and enjoyed the fantastic hospitality of some Christian volunteers who are long-term local residents of Kyrgyzstan. In fact, Nancy has been in country for 12 years, and just so happens to be an alumnae of my alma mater, Gordon College. Small and wonderful world.

So this is a glimpse of our travels. We are now doing the final business. Post some news, pick up the laundry, repack the bikes- and replace my headset bearings. In two hours we need to head to the banya and tomorrow we expect to start a 10-day ride to the city of Osh, where we will have our next dose of civilization. We would both no doubt write lots more, but an unexpected fate has befallen us. We seem to enjoy each other’s company to such a degree that so far we have spent little time reading, writing or in self-contemplation. Worse things could happen.

For the most part, these past three weeks since leaving the US have been the like the flightless soaring on horseback, across the wilderness and pastures of this fantastic, fairy-tale land. Exciting, effortless, gliding into the present. Galloping on the edge of paradise.

Visa for Bikerboy

2006-05-16T19:22:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was klasichiski . Classic.

In March, I had written a request to get my cyclemate, Bikerboy, a visa support letter for Kyrgyzstan. Our route requires more than 30 days and a double entry, but we have no intention of squandering precious days in Bishkek once we set out on the road, waitng for a visa adjustment. A few phone calls and three taxis later, I found the Ministry of Foreign Affairs building and had just to wait in lines until I appeared in front of the correct window. The Correct Window Guy told me to come back in May, that it was too early, that it would take just 5 days to get the letter, and I should address it to the Director. So I did as told and went back last week, May 3rd.

But of course, the windows, which are usually open two hours each morning were closed because the day before had been a holiday. A helpful guy saw me wandering around and when I told him I was looking for the room with windows and he told me about the schedule change, he offered to take and deliver the letter. Then he gave me his card, surprisingly, and said to call him tomorrow. The Deputy Director. Of course, I couldn't reach him the next day, between him being away from his desk and me being in front of my first graders. And then I went away for a long weekend. I came back and it's 4 work days later and I pick up the phone again. Yesterday.

He's not here. Call this number. That number is a fax. Try this number. He's with someone. No answer. He's out again. He finally answered but said call back at two or any time after two, and he'd tell me the status of the request. Two. Not there. Two-thirty, three, three-thirty. No answer. So I decided to just go over there, even though it wasn't window time anymore. They only see people between 9 and 11 am.

I worked my way past the desk guard, who said Deputy wasn't in, I should wait. I know what waiting can mean. Sometimes it means the guy you need is in the hospital or in another country and won't be back for a week, but go ahead, take a seat, and wait. I've learned to ask what I'm waiting for and how long I will be waiting and if the person knows this for sure or is just saying this to give me an agreeable answer. But I didn't even parade those questions out. I just asked for underlings, overlings and any other linglings until the Guard finally said I could go see the Director Himself. His Highness was actually smoking a cigarette in his office when I stunned him by knocking and walking in uninvited. After he understood my request, he waved me off to go find Nuraieem. Secretary.

Reception pointed me to room 103. 103 said to go to 111. A tired looking man was malingering outside the door of 111, so I tentatively approached the orange-shirted woman behind the orderly desk and said, Nuraieem? Orange Girl yells at me: Nilzyah (never, not allowed, don't come in here). I retreated to the hall where I learned that Tired Man had been there since 10 am and it was now after 4. A few minutes later, when Orange Girl put down her phone, I popped in and asked again, Nuraieem? Nyet, she's in Rm 103. Back to 103. Detailed discussion with the girl behind the piled-high desk. Finally, 103 girl locates Nurieem by phone, and finds out she is out of the office altogether and is to return "in 10 minutes." You can guess what that means. Considering my next step, Deputy appears, in a very neat pink shirt. He remembers me and is actually still a helpful guy who showed me a decent amount of respect. I tell him the problem and he brings me back to Orange Shirt who it turns out, is the real worker who actually writes these letters we're trying to get and just puts them and a pen under the noses of the bosses who sign. This time I notice the Russian sign on the barred door that basically says Don't Come In Here! Guess I missed that the first time down that hall. Anyway, good thing the orange shirt had a cool cat design. I love cats. I made friends. Deputy Pink Shirt left and Cat Girl said to wait in the hall, just a momento. After 5 momentos, I went back in. Not afraid so much this time because 1) Pink Deputy had brought me to her himself, and 2) I kind of asked before I entered. Turns out she was looking through all sorts of folders for the signed and stamped letter I had brought last week. My bad, I didn't make a copy! When after ten minutes she still couldn't find it, she asked me to bring another. As if the first one didn't take a week to get. I was balking at the thought and told her how I'd been working on this two months already and only had 6 days left.. So she picked up the phone and called the original Window Guy I'd first spoken to in March, the one who is actually in charge of this altogether, her boss, the guy who signs the letters she writes, just under Deputy Pink. Window Guy is out with a broken leg and won't be back for a few more days. Cat Girl had called him in the hospital to try to find my letter. In the folder he said. Wrong.

I finally insisted that we go back to Deputy and find out exactly who he gave my letter to. He was in his office with someone, but came out and went to room 103 and checked that the letter had been logged in the Journal last week, with my name on it and everything. But it was nowhere to be found. He more or less scolds the secretary in charge and takes a folder out of the hands of another one who was very ineffiecient in trying to look through- balancing it in one hand and trying to shuffle through pages with the other. He puts it down on a table and uses two hands to look faster while he scolds her for being so unclever. I'm starting to like this guy.

Now it's after 5, and everyone is still at work.. even if work, for some people, consists of walking slowly from one
office to another to pretend to look busy. Finally the Deputy brings me back to Orange Cat's office. After enough more looking and his exasperation of how a document could just disappear, he decides that since it's just a simple request we have, and it will be granted in the end anyway, and that I've been there twice already and it was their screwup, Cat Girl, Kamila, could just draw up the visa support letter and I could submit another copy of the signed, stamped, request from my school director on letterhead after the fact. Only thing was, I didn't know Bikerboy's passport details off the top of my head. I suggested I open my email quickly and pull the information off. But guess what- no email. So I have to fax the information to her tomorrow and she'll fax the visa support back to me. We'll see. I'm prepared for another trip to the Windows of Foreign Affairs.

Countdown

2006-05-03T19:42:00.000-05:00

Three weeks out. Probably I'm too busy to commit myself to writing much or often, but it's best to start at the begining and so this is the prelude- or finale- to the last year in a decade of travels. In 23 days I will spend my final night in Bishkek, my home since September 05, in the country of Kyrgyzstan where I've lived since September 04. Thereafter I'll be propelled by jet and momentum, across the continent across the ocean, to Boston to wish my mother a happy day on her 80th happy birthday, (as my little first graders call the annual anniversary of earth entry) and back. Upon returning, I will no longer be tethered to job, organization or flat, but bound by bicycle and boy to the classic Asian holiday- cycling the high remote land of nomads and pilgrims. A trip I've dreamed about for years and have now the great fortune to step into.

Life has led me to this point and it took only recognizing the arrival of the right time and the willingness to find myself in the right place. I am here with the gear, the time, the funds, the strength (I hope), the desire, the plan, and the sin qua non, the companion. In just a few short weeks, when we meet in the London Airport Heathrow for the first time, we will be on our way to mutual support and individual fulfillment as we set out to meet the world on our way to the Kingdom of Nepal.

So, who is this companion, the unnamed cyber buddy? When we finally meet at LHR, we will have the first chance to find out how close our impressions of each other have been to the real characters only represented by the photos and emails exchanged over the previous 20 weeks. We've somehow managed to convince ourselves that we will be a compatible team, able to solve problems as they arise, easily make amicable decisions, and mutually support each other to the conclusion of our quest.