Crossroads: An Update

Crossroad: An Update
Bishkek, Dushanbe
October 9, 2007
By Dan Murdoch

"The pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; the optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
Winston Churchill

WE ARE scattered. The team is spread across two countries and three cities in and around Central Asia’s craggy, imposing` mountain ranges.

Lovey has spent the last ten days in Dushanbe trying to sort out visas for our American contingent. The Tajik capital is currently hosting an international conference and every hotel in the city is booked, forcing J Lov to prostitute himself to find a place to stay. The poor chap has spent most of his days queuing and arguing at embassies, walking the same streets between the internet café, consulate and his accommodation.

OJ and TP, the other surviving members of Team USA, are in Khorog, high in the Pamir Mountains. Both of them are under house arrest, closely guarded by the Tajik KGB. It is illegal for foreigners to be out without their passports, which Lovey has in Dushanbe, and the pair were repeatedly arrested during their first few days without documents.
You would think a six-foot-three goliath of a Yank and a moustachioed Mexican with a Mohawk would be able to escape attention in a small Tajik mountain village. Maybe the brightly coloured German cars blew their cover?
Whatever happened, I’ll find out soon, but I know they have been subjected to constant police harassment and are now bound to their homestay, where, thankfully, the owners have taken pity and begun to feed them for free each night.
I'm not sure what curious cabin fever their enforced proximity has created, but during a recent Gmail chat both complained to me, quite separately, that the other smelled.
Team Europe, Carlos, Zsofi and I, are in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek, staying in what may have been the inspiration for Prisoner Cell Block H, but without the lesbians. Actually we are probably Prisoner Cell Block Q or R, nothing as luxurious as H, where I hear they have their own shower.

Our continuing mission: to get to Cambodia, has taken some violent twists in the last few weeks. Crippled by a series of breakdowns on the Tajik-Afghan border, we were forced to stall the Trek to confront a number of burgeoning visa crises.
Between us we need new visas for the next four countries along our route: Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Russia. This being former-Soviet territory, any brush with authority puts you at the delightful whimsy of former-Soviet bureaucracy, and the visas have been a handful, setting us back a week, and they are still not finished.
But the delay has thrown up an even greater hurdle- looming large in the distance is China, an undoubted highlight of the trip, a booming country and culture we are all desperate to taste. But also a system of paperwork and officialdom that makes Turkmenistan look like a Parisian hippy community of liberal utopians.
To get a visa for our expedition in China takes has taken three months and is costing us $8,000 for the documents for three cars and six people. Our points of entry and exit are fixed, as are the dates, and the Chinese insist we pay to have a guide with us for the whole month. Hence the ridiculous costs involved.
The problem is we are almost undoubtedly going to miss our fixed entry date. But what we find infuriating is that we are actually on China’s western frontier right now- both Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have open borders with the country. But the Chinese are refusing to let us change our point of entry. This means we have to circumnavigate the whole of north west China, a trip of thousands of kilometres up the length of Kazakhstan, across miles of Siberian wilderness, and down through Mongolia, a country that has more horses than cars.
Of course this was our original route, but, judging on previous form, it will probably take three weeks to a month. We have two weeks before we have to enter China, according to the terms of our visa.
Not gonna happen.
So we apply for a new visa? It takes at least two months to do and will mean another $2,000 deposit. No one can afford to sit in freezing Mongolia, where it was -14c yesterday, for two months.
So we have to seriously contemplate an alternative to China. We still haven’t paid $6,000 for our Chinese visas, so we have $6,000 to play with to find a way of avoiding the country.
“Blue sky thinking people, lets think outside the box here.”
Or something like that.
So far our ‘best idea’, and I use that term loosely, is to ship the cars through or around the country.
We’ve had to get our atlases out, but one option is to drive to Vladivostok, Russia’s icy eastern port, and get a ferry from there to the northern part of South Korea. We then drive down the Korean peninsular to the southern port of Pusan where we would get a cargo ship to take us around China- possibly to Singapore. From there we could drive north through Malaysia and Thailand, and east into Cambodia.
Crazy.
The other option is to drive to Ulaanbaatar, the Mongolian capital, and try to get the cars onto a freight train to take them through China, possibly to Bangkok, Thailand or Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. We would either go along with the freight or sort out individual visas (a much easier process) and travel behind. Then collect the cars and continue to Cambodia.
Mental.
Both options mean taking on the challenging drive to the north east of Asia almost a month later than originally planned. The weather is closing in- it is freezing here already- and it will mean tackling snow and ice, which we hadn’t anticipated. This area is also the most isolated part of the trip, a terrible place to break down, and if we go through Mongolia there will be few roads.
The shipping option could also involve a couple of weeks at sea.
A third option is to try and get the cars onto a train to Ulaanbaatar from here in Bishkek. If it is possible there is a slim hope we can still make our Chinese visa and would miss the terrible drive around the borders of China.

So there we go. We are in contact with freight and shipping companies (if anyone knows of any in the region, please get in touch) and await their replies to see if any of these ‘plans’ are even feasible.
Hopefully Lovey will fly back to Khorog tomorrow and Team USA can begin the trip over the Pamir Mountains. It’s maybe a week’s drive till they get here to Bishkek, then we need another four or five days to sort out final visas and make our decision.

Our route and our trek could soon be changing dramatically. Personally, I'm excited. I love change, and I love the idea that we can tackle the Chinese challenge by doing something completely ridiculous like taking to the sea with the Trabbis.
I'm up for the shipping option.
I wonder what Korea is like in November?

Ends
mrdanmurdoch@gmail.com
For more of Dan’s blogs go to: danmurdoch.blogspot.com or trabanttrek.org

Notes on showering etiquette in Central Asia

Notes on showering etiquette in Central Asia
Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan
October 8th, 2007
By Dan Murdoch

THE SHOWERING situation here is quite an adventure. The facilities are very much communal, shared between three large apartment blocks. Inside what I shall politely call the gentleman’s washroom, but may be better termed a small, filthy cesspit, there are three showers, which in my experience are shared between six people.
The routine is this: you jump in the shower for a quick rinse, wait for the naked men surrounding you to start staring, then step out and begin to lather yourself. You will have to wait near a shower for at least five minutes, dripping and soapy like some fluffy yeti, for a gap to appear beneath the crowded nozzles. When you see a space it is imperative to jump in quickly and wash off the spuds, before the other nudies get annoyed.
You may then retreat to the relative safety of the dressing area, pleasantly decorated with live moss, where people perpetually leave the door open to the wider world, leaving you horribly at risk of a terrible exposure.
Of course I always seem to arrive in the washroom when there is a deep queue for each shower. So I have to hover, in full naked glory, waiting for my go and wondering where to look. I normally stare at my miniature aeroplane bottle of shampoo, which is about the size of a teabag and written entirely in Russian, a language so foreign it uses a different alphabet, and is utterly, utterly indecipherable to me.
I'm sure this ruse is wearing off, but I have yet to work out the correct posture to adopt when standing in a room full of naked Kyrgyz.
But I tell you this: I have seen more cock in the last ten days than the preceding ten years.
And the Asian penis has been hugely underestimated.

Ends
mrdanmurdoch@gmail.com
For more of Dan’s blogs visit: danmurdoch.blogspot.com or www.trabanttrek.org

Impressions of Osh and Bishkek

Impressions of Osh and Bishkek
Kyrgyzstan
September 29th – October 3rd, 2007
By Dan Murdoch

OSH is famous for its bazaar, though I wasn’t that impressed. My favourite stall
sold a single roller blade, four wind-dial telephones, a selection of second hand electricity sockets, various ratchets, one faucet, two plates, a cashiers tray, a wing mirror, one large cooking pot and assorted nuts, bolts and screws.
The man’s entire business.

Cobblers lined the rusting bridge repairing tatty shoes over a dirty river.
From the thick crowd an old man held my hand tight: “Manchester United?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Aha,” he celebrated this victory of communication long and hard before expanding: “Anglia Ruski tree nil”
“Yes, we beat the Russians.”
“Aha,” another victory cry, he still wouldn’t release my hand, “Chelsea?”
“No, Chelsea are boring, Chelsea eta scoochnaya.”
“Aha,” he loved that one and squeezed my hand tightly. The conversation was typical of my travels. Pretty much everywhere I have been in the world, except the United States, people speak the international language of football.
“Beckham, America?”
Even here, in this strange outpost of civilisation, Beckham’s move the states is big news.

Many of the city’s buildings still bear communist murals depicting strong boned, clean shaven men in factory overalls and bright eyed independent women in jeans in front of ploughed field and assembly lines. At least Sovietism was a victory for women’s rights.
A fantastic variety of hats top the streets. Little skull caps, clinging to the back of the head, sharp cut fedoras in pale blue with embroidered ribbons, the sweeping Pamir hat looking impossibly balanced and ready to topple.

We visited Salaman mountain- where all your dreams come true. According to legend Mohammed came through here and camped for the night. At the spot where he slept the ground rose up to form a mountain in the exact shape of his reclined body.
The mountain is etched with lover’s graffiti, messages entirely suitable of a geological miracle, such as “Samir loves Ruia”.
If you take a dried thistle from the mountain’s soil you can cleanse your home of evil spirits, and by tying a strip of ribbon to a tree your dreams will come true in a week. You slide down a few metres of smoothed rock seven times to cure back problems and place your hand in a hole three times to have a wish granted. Pilgrims crawl into a tiny crevice to pray to Allah, and joggers exercise on the undulating path. The foot of the hill is a sprawling cemetery of people wishing to forever lie where the Prophet once rested.
From the top Osh stretches out across the wide river valley, a beautiful respite from the mountains. It looked greener than from the ground, a neat grid of tree lined roads, few buildings breaking the two-storey skyline.


In Kyrgyzstan one of our main sponsors, the pharmaceutical giant Richter, has a base. So here they have been helping us out with visas, transport and accommodation.
The country is divided into north and south by a range of snowy mountains. The north is the more Russified, and has always held the reigns of power from the capital, Bishkek. The south is more conservative and more Muslim, and, in 2003 revolted, beginning in the cities of Osh and Jahalabad.
I asked one of our Richter contacts how things had changed since then.
“In 2003,” she told me, “People wanted a change- the president had put all the power in his family and people were not happy. After that many people left Kyrgyzstan. It was a difficult time. But now things are safe. People are calm and friendly, they have smiles.
”On October 21 we vote on a new constitution and that should help make the country more democratic.”
But when I arrived in Bishkek and asked the same question, I got a different answer: “Things are worse since 2003,” the Richter lady told me. She said she was Russian, but was born in Kyrgyzstan, to Kyrgyz parents, and had lived and worked here all her life. “There is less money. The country is going nowhere. There is no money here. Not like Kazakhstan or Russia. Kyrgyz people do not make anything. They just buy and sell things in the bazaar.
“The culture of our people is not great. They do not wash their hands before they eat, they eat from the same plate. I cannot understand it.”
We were driving through the city and she paused to point: “That is our White House,” she explained, gesturing at a crumbling concrete edifice surrounded by limp fountains.
What about the new constitution?
“Bah,” she scoffed, “three weeks until the vote and still we have not been allowed to see the document. Why do you think that is? No, there will be no more rights for us. The leaders don’t care about democracy.”
Is there corruption?
“Oh yes, of course. Everywhere. People have so little money. If they are in a position with power then they use it to make money for themselves. I think corruption is in the blood of our people.”
Strong words, but I didn’t take them to heart. A wannabe Russian living in the city.

We had been looking forward to the accommodation Richter had promised to provide in Bishkek, but when we started pulling into a down-trodden ill-paved courtyard my heart sank.
We got out of the car, and a thick breeze scooped up rafts of dust, sand and litter and swung them into shawled faces of poor old ladies. This is not what I was hoping for. Our apartment had the demoralising ambiance of a prison block, even the cockroaches looked embarrassed to be seen there. Then the cherry: no showers. The simplest of pleasures, but we were desperate for a hot shower, it had been days. But we would have to go to a public washroom across the street.

Ends
mrdanmurdoch@gmail.com
For more of Dan’s blogs visit: danmurdoch.blogspot.com or www.trabanttrek.org