Tajikistan part deux

7.15 - 8.1

Here's a map of my route in Tajikistan and a quick geography lesson....it's only been a proper country for 20 years so don't feel so bad.

Solid lines cycled, dots motorized transport

So I continued cycling through the Wakhan Valley, astonished at the hospitality of the Pamiri people, soaking in the beautiful surrounding landscape and dodging brides to-be. The terrain on the other side of the river started off as barren, isolated and inhabitable but as I cycled west, the Afghan towns became bigger and more frequent. Proper buildings with electricity replaced the mudhuts that previously scattered the small valleys and I caught close glances of the Afghans decked out in their Shalwar Kameez. I felt like I was at an Afghan aquarium, viewing the life of these amazingly isolated people, completely separated and cut off from the rest of civilization by a raging river. The Afghan side was dry and extremely rocky, they were so isolated and desperate for farmland that I saw cultivated slopes that were on the sides of insanely steep, barely walkable mountain sides. I would stop and marvel at a small patch of green grass and shrubs on a slope that was unfathomable for human feet. One small slip and 4,000 ft of tumbling straight down.

Aghan kids across the river

One day I was cycling through a town when a local woman jumped out in the road and motioned for me to stop. I wasn't really sure why but I figured she wasn't going to rob me, so I stopped. She pointed across the river and covered her head with her hands. Just as I opened my mouth to ask "what?!" a loud explosion sounded in the distance and about 10 seconds later, the entire area was pelted with small pebbles and stones projected from across the river. "Holy crap!", my mind was racing with millions of possibilities but after the shrapnel of stones stopped flying, she just put her basket of vegetables on top of her head and continued about her business like nothing happened. Turns out the Afghans were blasting a new road just across the river. The Tajiks had a local man watching their every move and whenever the Afghans would run and take cover, he would let out a big yell and everyone in the village would take cover. It was a hilarious sight to behold, at least once I realized it wasn't guerrilla warfare between the neighboring countries. I ate lunch just down from the blastings and whenever the man would yell, I had to take cover behind a large tree.

So I pushed onto Khorog, my first real town in weeks. The night before I arrived, I slept on a cot in a tiny restaurant just beside a beautiful tributary stream. The owner was unbelievably nice; he fed me diner, gave me a cot, then left the restaurant and said you can have anything you want. I was like, 'wait wait wait...let me pay you before you leave'. He just threw his hand at me and said 'don't worry about it'.

I rested a day in Khorog (after dodging yet another bride) and pushed on towards Dushanbe. The first day out of the gates, I charged some 100+ km and landed at yet another soccer game in a small village. This time it was a proper soccer field with men on the field and women and children watching the match. I was waved over to join a team and within 5 minutes I blasted a shot that ricocheted off the cross bar and into the imaginary net. I was immediately taken back 5 years to highschool soccer and my instinctive victory dance that followed was the shirt over the head, airplane celebration. People applauded the crazy foreigner wearing shorts (Muslim countries don't wear shorts in public for any reason, not even soccer) and after the game I was offered to sleep at one of the boys' houses. Turns out the boy, Parpisho, was a child prodigy and was studying his poor little butt off in Dushanbe trying to apply to a top US, UK or Turkish school. We spent the night eating eggs (his family was flat broke save smiles, kindness and livestock) and solving college level math problems. It was a connection like no other and I felt the desperate need to help this aspiring scholar out....he was a really good kid who was sharp as a tack, laboring in the fields for his poor family by day and studying all night to gain an extra edge on his classmates. He said he averaged around 4 hours of sleep each night.

Parpisho (the child prodigy) and I. I almost broke his foot during the soccer game

Parpisho's beautiful village of Vamd

Another interesting twist to add to the already crazy world of cycling through the Wakhan Valley; the banks of the river were landmined some years ago by Soviet troops to prevent Afghan incursion. There were 'mine sweepers' working through some of the areas but whenever I had to relieve myself during my cycle, it was always a chess movement of strategic feet placement. I usually only stepped on areas where it was obvious that animals had previously grazed (aka if there was short grass and animal poo, it was cleared).

Don't pee there!

So I officially left the wonderful, isolated and hospitable world of the Wakhan Valley (and the Pamiri people) and began cycling towards the flat, boiling hot interior of Tajikistan. The temperature had gotten remarkably hotter by the day and my new game place was to awake at 5:30 am, cycle from 6 until 11 then find a shaded place and spend the hottest part of the day in a relaxed slumber eating apricots, writing poetry and day dreaming about buying a vowel from Vanna White. This was great in theory but it never actually happened, I have a really hard time stopping without someone physically pulling me off the bike or begging me to go for a swim, I was going to continue as long as the conditions were bearable.

At this point, I'd been married to my bike some 400+ hours, so needless to say, we knew each other pretty well. If there was a slight leak in air pressure in the back tire, I knew as soon as I mounted the bike. If my rear left pannier was missing a sock, I could tell. So just before Kulyab when I heard a strange creak coming from the rear tire, I knew something was wrong. I isolated the noise and indeed it was a crunching like sound coming from my rear hub. My rear wheel's bearings were failing, producing an eerie sound like teeth grinding. This wasn't exactly a problem I could fix on the fly, I needed a bike shop......a proper bicycle shop and Tajikistan (one of the poorest countries in Asia) only had bike mechanics armed with hammers, wrenches and blow torches.

So I dismounted the bike and stuck out a thumb (well, you don't actually stick out your thumb in Asia, you do a motion kind of like fanning a fire with a piece of cardboard while remaining standing). Within an hour the bike was on top of a jeep and I was cruising through the blistering heat of Tajikistan in my first motorized transport since the crazy mud/sheep crushing event in Kyrgyzstan. If you stuck your head out the window, it literally felt like a blow drier. This place was blistering hot and I was already feeling a bit run down and my stomach didn't quite feel right (which was nothing new). So one jeep, one mack-truck and one Audi later, I arrived in Qurghonteepa, the hometown of the girl and father that I met in Urumqi (China) that had invited me to their house. At this point, my rear bicycle tire couldn't even turn and my stomach situation had degraded to a ill feeling fever and a rumble unlike any other. So I opted to get a hotel room and sleep off the bug, arriving at my hosts house refreshed and energetic the next day.

I ate at a restaurant just across from where the Audi had dropped me off (because of my non-functional bicycle). First things first, Qurghonteepa doesn't see many tourist at all, so for an white person to just walk into your restaurant is a big deal. The heads in the restaurant turned and everyone rushed over to the table to hear my story (at this point I knew enough Tajik to keep everyone's interest for about 2.5 minutes) but I was feeling completely out of sorts and needed to sleep off the funk. One of the younger employees spoke some rudimentary english and offered to help me find a hotel and shuffle my gear and broken bike to the room. His name was Sobir and this was the start of a wonderful friendship between a big hearted 19 yr old Tajik boy and a Georgia boy turned cyclist. He left me to rest in my hotel room, which was void of aircon, a fan or bug screens on the windows. (Qurghonteepa has a malaria warning and plenty of mosquitoes). It was 120 degrees F outside and the room was like a sauna. I was getting sicker by the moment and my paranoia of getting malaria increased by the bug bite, so I did the only logical thing in my mind......I pitched my tent in the middle of the room. I slept the entire day in a puddle of my own sweat and my energy was depleting fast, that night I got super sick and spent the night moaning in disgust and pain.

So I'm in one of the hottest places on the planet, my bike is broken and my body is following suit. It takes all the energy I have just to walk 10 feet to the bathroom and each time I stand up, I get overwhelmingly dizzy. I try to find the house keeper to ask for a wet towel and chicken noodle soup but she is nowhere to be found. Then out of nowhere appears Sobir.

Sobir, the freakin man

'Hey Kyle.....ok?' - Sobir
'Yeah, I'm alright' - I'm not ok at all, I haven't felt this bad since the Tazmanian devil from China

Sobir brings me a wet towel, goes to the market and buy me some juice, soup and a new shirt (my cycling shirt is disgusting with sweat stains and odor). He leaves me to goto work but promises to visit me after his shift. I am getting no better, my insides are absolutely crazy and my fever hasn't broken in almost 2 days (I'm thinking about the family that I came here to visit, I have no way to contact them besides email so they have no idea I'm here). Sobir comes back after his shift with a bowl of sheep broth, rice and potatoes (God bless his soul). I'm practically in a coma, unable to do anything except goto the bathroom, even talking requires too much energy. We both agree that if the fever doesn't break by the morning, I'll have to goto the hospital. So the morning comes and I've managed to sleep but my fever is still running strong and my bowels are absolutely mad, so Sobir takes the morning off work and accompanies me to the local hospital, I'm dizzy and noxious just standing up. We goto the hospital, which has no organized strategy for accepting patients, you just wander around until you knock on the right door (I have no idea what I would have done without Sobir) luckily Sobir's family friend was one of the doctors on shift and we knocked on the right door. The doctor looked at me, put his hand on my forehead, then asked me to stick out my tongue. My tongue revealed a white film and the doctor immediately declared, 'stomak infesione'. I was then placed in the back of a makeshift ambulance (basically a small 1970 van with a rug in the back) and taken to the dusty rundown warehouse of a building that represented Qurghonteepa's stomach infection clinic. Sobir fought the red tape and bureaucrats to get me a bed and insisted that I was traveling and had no money to pay a hefty doctors bill. They found a bed for me on the second floor of this boiling hot warehouse, no electricity, no running water, no bug screens for the windows. I was beginning to wonder if I'd made the right decision coming to the hospital. The nurse came around and stuck me with a needle then hooked me up to a saline drop which was fixed to the nearby window with a nail, the needle was masked by a small piece of sticker taken from the IV bag. The nurse brought me a used glass jar (I swear it was a pickle jar) full of salt water and motioned for me to drink it. This place was most definitely sub par but within a few hours, I was actually retaining liquids and I slept for nearly 14 hours.

I spent a total of 3 days in the hospital, swatting mosquitoes in between long sleeps and the daily visit from Sobir. I shared a room with two people, a father who was withgoing some sort of skin treatment and the son who was watching over and caring for the father. The hospital didn't offer food so the son fed me and his father 3 meals a day, chicken soup and bread for 3 days. It was absolutely amazing and I was astonished by the kindness that people showed me in my time of need. When I was feeling better and ready to leave, the father and son also decided that their time had expired (there is no such thing as doctors discharging patients, patients discharge patients). They packed up their belongings, we packed into their car and they drove me to my hotel, the hospital visit cost me all of about $1.50.

I went directly to Sobir's work and everyone in the restaurant gave me a warm 'welcome back' greeting and a hearty plate of beefsteak! Me, Sobir and some of the restaurant workers visited the local swimming hole (a river that ran through town) later that afternoon.

Sobir, his brother and I at the famed restaurant (this is the shirt he bought me, 'Dad and I fish fry')

Still, the sole reason I came to Qurghonteepa was to rendez-vous with the Tajik father and daughter that I had bonded with so well in China. I had recieved an email from Fazilat, the daughter, almost weekly in anxious anticipation for my arrival and I had been in their hometown for nearly 5 days without being able to contact them. So Sobir and I left my hotel, jumped in a taxi and headed for the house of Hoji Gulom ('Hoji' is the prefix given to Muslims who have visited Mecca). The taxi pulled into the house and instantly the father dropped his work and gave me a huge warm welcome. I introduced Sobir to 'Hoji' (I love introducing two wonderful people to each other) and Sobir got in the taxi to leave. I extended a long and grateful thanks to Sobir for everything that he had done and promised to pay him a visit before I left.

At this point the red carpet was unrolled, the sheep was slaughtered and the fruits were harvested, work was stopped and everyone and their mother, brother, cousin, dogs, everyone came to welcome me to their town. It was like my second welcome to Qurghonteepa and after my initial greeting celebration, sheep slaughtering, food harvesting, I was taken into the 'dining room' (basically a sleeping room with a special rug that food is eaten on) and I was presented (completely spoiled) with a feast fit for a king: sheep, potatoes, pilof, fruits, homeade bread and jams, chai, you name it, it was on the table....on the rug. This was a traditional muslim family, only the men participated in the feast while the women served the men and ate outside. This wouldn't have been a problem except none of the men spoke any english and after my 2.5 minutes of Tajik vocabulary was exhausted, our conversation (if you can even call it that) fell into this meaningless baby dialogue of popular brand names. "Lexus.....America?", "Brittany Spears.....America?", "Obama.....America?". Then it fell into this groundhogs day conversation that I'd painfully endured for the past 2 months while traveling in Central Asia and not speaking the language.

"Velisepeat.....dingy?" (How much does your bike cost?)
"Zina....doram?" (Do you have a wife?)
"Profession?" - (What's your profession?)
"Profession....Dingy, Dingy?" (How much money do you make in a year?, I always responded with a unrealistically, inadequately small number that still blew their minds)
"Visa, da?" (Can you get me a visa for America?)

Seriously, everyone I'd encountered for the past 2 months has asked me these same questions and I desperately needed to conduct a conversation with some form of intellectual stimulation. The answer to my problem was just in the other room, Fazilat, the bright english speaker eager to practice her engligh was seperated from me by more than a simple wall made of wood. And that's how I spent the next 3 days, being treated like a king...a mute king. I managed a few sentences with Fazilat at home but it always ended abruptly with an awkwardness that I couldn't seem to grasp. I couldn't understand how the social and religious rules had changed so much from China (travel) to Tajikistan (home), but that's how women are contained, concealed and protected within the Muslim community.

Me, 'Hoji' and his family (Fazilat on far right)

It was a hard lesson to learn and after three days I was ready to step down from my throne and get a move on. My body was nearly repaired but my bike still needed some surgery. So I headed towards Dushanbe, 'Hoji' and his brother drove me to Dushanbe and I hooked up with some Swiss friends that I'd passed on the road a few weeks earlier. They were living in Dushanbe, working for a Swiss NGO, and they spoke EEENNNGGGLIIISSSHHH! I had my first real conversation in weeks, they were smart, intellectual, not concerned with how much money my bike was worth! We slept in, ate three bowls of cereal in the morning, sat on a western toilet, drank beer, went rock climbing! It was fantastic and I felt the most comfortable I've felt in months.

White people! Swiss friends in Dushanbe

From Dushanbe, I recieved a new Kyrgyzstan visa and made the long and trecherous 4 day motorized journey back to Kashgar (China) dodging the crazy Uzbekistan enclaves.

Here's some stats up to this point:

Total distance: 7225 km (4,489 miles)
Total elevation gained: 90,764 m (297,782 ft)
Total cycling time (my butt on the saddle): 439 hrs

Pictures!