Kashgar, China: A Vital Oasis on the Silk Road Both Then & Now

    For the first full day in Sarajevo, we explored the Old Town and hit the major cultural sights. First stop was Baščaršija (“Bashcharshia”,  maybe), the Ottoman-built bazaar and old town.
     The quaint Old Town felt simple and pleasant, and it was fun to wander around without worrying about getting too lost (not possible). Tiny, cobbled alleyways were that perfect sort for wandering. It was astonishing to consider that the tragic siege of this city by the Serbs occurred relatively recently, and that every local we met lived through it. 

    Since religious clashing formed a major part of the (every) conflict, it makes sense that Sarajevo is one of the most religiously diverse cities in the world. In just a few minutes, just a few blocks, I passed a Serbian Orthodox Church…

…and a newer Orthodox Cathedral. 

    Because the siege and the war occurred in recent history, it is the main focus of a visit to Sarajevo. It’s difficult, heartbreaking, but necessary to learn about. I won’t attempt to explain the complicated details of the horrible war as if I were an expert, and instead I urge you to read about it and, if possible, go and speak to locals all over the Balkans.
     One such local we met was Samra, an absolutely wonderful guide for Insider City Tours & Excursions. She led a (highly recommended) group tour to the tunnels on the outer edge of the city.
     The tunnels were built by the Bosnian Army to connect Sarajevo with territory closer to the mountains, in order to smuggle food, supplies, weapons, and other aid in, and people out.

         Visiting the tunnels is an intense experience, because you get to walk through a portion and realize you cannot grasp what it must have been like for the people whose lives relied upon their use. What made this experience extra emotional for my group was that was our guide used the tunnels, when she was just a child, to escape from the region. How often do you to learn history from someone who actually lived it? 
     I recommend you take the very affordable and informative afternoon tunnel tour with Insider Tours, which is located right across the street from the Sarajevo 1878-1918 Museum.

     Speaking of: In addition to the 1990s war, the main historical draw in Sarajevo is that it provided the location of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s 1914 assassination, the catalyst for World War I. The assassination by Gavrilo Princip, the buildup to the event, and of course some details of the subsequent war are commemorated in the Sarajevo 1878-1918 Museum. It’s a clunky name, but it’s easily identified outside simply by Muzej and the plaque citing the event. 

    Somehow, being in this spot seemed cool in a history nerd look-I-remember-things-from-high-school kind of way.      
     However, the tragedy of the 1990s was truly the overriding lesson to learn in Sarajevo. Everywhere you turn, there’s a distressing and emotional reminder of what happened. Shop for produce in the Markale Market in the center of town…

…and you learn that this market was the site of two deadly mortar attacks on civilians. 

    This memorial stands in the back of the Markale market to commemorate the people killed in the attacks. The first attack occurred on 2/5/1994, when 68 civilians were killed and 144 were wounded. The second attack occurred on 8/28/1995, when 38 were killed and 75 were wounded. 

     Walk from the lovely old town towards the more modern areas, and when you pass a park you’ll see one of the most upsetting, hauntingly beautiful memorials ever constructed. This monument stands to commemorate more than 1000 children killed in the city during the siege. See the textured depressions around the edge? They are cast from footprints of surviving siblings of the children killed. Heartbreaking.

     Look down when you walk along the street, and see one of the (few remaining) “Sarajevo roses” – shell craters that an artist filled in with red resin. The Sarajevo roses spattered around town make the terror of shell craters somewhat beautiful as they stand in memorial.

     Downtown, we fortuitously passed Gallery 11/07/95, the first memorial photograph gallery dedicated to the Srebrenica massacre. (Apparently the Jolie-Pitts helped fund the gallery.) It was incredibly upsetting, of course, but powerful and worth a visit. The dark side of humanity will shock you, even if you know what happened. If you don’t know about Srebrenica, you should read a little about it. 

     Not everything about Sarajevo is so grave though. Some incredible food awaits here, including savory bureks! Although I loved the fruit-filled bureks they have in Zagreb, Sarajevo’s potato-filled ones were just heaven. 
     The BEST ones are at Buregdzinica Sac, a small corner shop in an alley called Bravadziluk Mali. They sell the huge slabs like slices of pizza, cut off from the circular pies.

We also had some fantastic meals: 
– Read about my luck getting vegan Italian food at the only restaurant open one Sunday night, TAVOLA! 
– Read about the amazing dinner (and dessert!) at KARUZO, a fancy vegetarian restaurant that focuses all of its attention on your experience.
– Read about the Middle Eastern food from ZAATAR & CO. in old town!

     Although I’m making it seem like the only happy things were food-related, that’s just me. The city was full of wonderful surprises, from the friendly and welcoming locals to the beautiful views:

     We also stayed in the best hotel, Hotel Bristol. It’s in the more modern part of town, near the famous Holiday Inn where journalists found shelter during the siege. It was one of the most beautiful and luxurious hotels I’ve stayed in – and for the price of a mid-range anywhere else! Notably, it has a small gym, a sauna – and one of the Top 5 beds I’ve ever slept in. Oh I miss that bed. Seriously, it was superb.
     Sarajevo is a really special city. If you are taking a trip to the Balkans, I urge you to carve out time here. I was very wary of swapping time on the Dalmatian coast to come here instead, but I’m so glad I did. 

Now that our time in yurts is over (forever?!), I could fully relax (well I still had to worry about bathroom breaks) and enjoy the rest of our journey around Kyrgyzstan. This country kept surprising me! The people were nice, the food was plentiful, the watermelon was given to me, the roads were in existence. Most of all, the landscape kept enthralling us with its extremely varied beauty. We still had a few more days driving with Sacha around Lake Issyk Kul and in small villages and towns before we landed in Bishkek, the big city capital. I liked the activities almost as much as I liked the fact that we had activities, but I started to get sick of the little villages. (Literally.) Hence my completely shocking personal revelation mentioned in the title.

Catch up on the previous Kyrgyzstan posts!
Crossing the Torugart Pass; Tash Rabat
Part 1: Back in the Yurt Camps
Part 2: Issyk Kul and Kyzart Village

Day 5
“Everything’s coming up (roses?)”
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Our lovely be-gardened guest house in Tamga village continued delighting us on this new day, with a lovely breakfast in the lovely little dining space surrounded by the beautiful flowers and tons and tons of…bees. Bees? Bees. I guess with flowers come bees. We had forgotten this since bees are super endangered everywhere else in the world save for this garden, apparently. I had oatmeal and watermelon and apples for breakfast so it was a great start, aside from the bees.

We set off on our drive, stopping shortly again at the lake shore for a few minutes just to take more pictures and enjoy the view for a little longer and so I could pee in the most picturesque outdoor pop-a-squat location yet. You’re welcome.

We drove through a valley called Jeti Oguz, which is famous for its enormous cliff-face stretch of the same name, which means Seven Bulls. The cliff face is of dark reddish brown bumpies that symbolize “furious bulls” standing together. I am a taurus; is that the bull one? If so I would like to be called Furious Bull from now on. If not I don’t care astrology is dumb as a trump.

The plan was to continue our eventual complete loop around Issyk Kul Lake by heading to our next stop of Karakol, but we had a surprise stop at the most amazing geo park (eco park? both). Seriously, it was a surprise to us at least, because the itinerary for today pretty much just said ‘drive to karakol’. So unforch that means I don’t know what this geopark was called (I’ve been trying to find it online! Maybe it existed just for us like a Brigadoon situation OMG IS KELLI O’HARA GOING TO SING WHEN I’M THERE??? oh no chill out this already happened and she didn’t, time doesn’t work like that no matter what McConaughey says (just kidding I totally believe him). The whole big area is Jeti Oguz and it might just be the resort or park or the same name but I can’t confirm.

​For a few hours we drove along (and across!) the most beautiful somehow jade-colored rapids, up and around the rockiest of paths (I almost didn’t care because it was so beautiful but man alive that was some shaking) and hills and the scariest little bridges across the river rapids. Those bridges, man alive, I saw the first and was like ‘who would be dumb enough to walk across that little plank of a bridge!’ and then we DROVE across it, across ALL of them, in an SUV.

This valleypark was enormous! There’s security at the entrance (I guess it works because the whole thing is surrounded by mountains that sneakers can’t drive down so) and then you can just drive and hike for miles and miles and hours and hours like we did, all along this insane colored water. I know it doesn’t look amazing in the pictures (no filters!) but it was like pure jade and so incredibly beeyoot.

After we drove through most of this amazing valley, Sacha parked the car in a clearing and was like ‘there’s a waterfall about 40 minutes hike that way’ he literally just nodded his head upwards. That way just meant ‘up’ the mountain. And he said we should go check it out. We were hey so how do we find it exactly, like how much upping and in what part of the ENDLESS MOUNTAINS AROUND US ARE WE TALKING. He pointed to a person on a horse about halfway up the mountain and was like ‘they’re going to the waterfall so you can follow the path they are taking.’ Guys this was not helpful. The horse was like already a kilometer up the mountain and we couldn’t tell how he got to that point or what came next. We started up the mountain and the ‘trail’ was pretty much ‘do you see a way you can go that will let you continue your journey? does it seem a little ridiculous but less ridiculous than the other options you observe? follow that one!’ It was scary! Thank god Z was a boy scout because he could tell MUCH better than I could which fork prongs (tines?) were probably the right ones. The scary trail (or lack thereof) put me in a mood something terrible. AND of course I kept skidding the whole time because it was gravelly!

Finally, after lots of treacherous rocky crossings and tree branches that gave way when I tried to grasp them, we found the waterfall. IT WAS FINE.

Because we had to enter (with tickets I think) at the entry point (you don’t say), we had to drive allll the way back through the valley and across the rapids and over the bridges and through the woods in order to leave. Haha ‘had to’ like it wasn’t such a treat to see it all again. We continued our drive towards Karakol in order to reach that town by lunchtime. I was sooo pumped for lunch because, are you ready for this? You know the website (and super useful app) HappyCow that I talk about all the time? If you don’t know, it tells you what restaurants near you (everywhere in the world) have vegan options. It’s magic (no it’s crowdsourced so if you find something incorrect it’s on you to fix it). Well, the ONLY HappyCow listing for ALL of Kyrgyzstan that wasn’t in Bishkek (the big fancy capital) was in Karakol! I was so so excited. We found the place, called The Fat Cat Cafe, sat down and looked at the menus and…there was not one thing veg on it. Well there was a grilled cheese for vegetarians CAN YOU SEE HOW HARD I’M ROLLING MY EYES? I asked the worker ‘hey so I was told that you had vegan food?’ and the woman said “Oh yes I can make you lentil soup if you give me like a half hour, 45 minutes? I haven’t been to the market yet today so I would need to buy vegetables and lentils.” THA FUCK? I reread the only other HappyCow review of the place (there’s a second on on there now with the TRUTH you’re welcome) and it said there was vegan food ‘on request’. So, first of all, no way in hell this place should be on HC if it doesn’t have any regular menu items that are veg. Second of all, WHAT KIND OF RESTAURANT ISN’T PREPARED FOR THE DAY AT 2PM ON A SATURDAY? Isn’t that your busiest time, all restaurants in the world? What kind of place is run like that? And I don’t just mean for the vegan request. Like, she hadn’t been to the store yet, at all, on a Saturday afternoon. And she had other employees just sitting around. What kind of fuckery I can’t even. I reported them to HC hoping to get them deleted but they are still on there. Le sigh.

Luckily Sacha has been to every restaurant in town and knew good ones with vegetarian options. If I’m reading my blursula picture of the menu correctly, it was Dastorkan restaurant, a good restaurant and an amazing name for a JK Rowling character. The menu even had 3 green-tipped pages that were all the vegetarian options.

This place was great! We also got the requisite basket of fluffy lavash bread. It was great…except, I don’t know if it was the food here, or the food the night before, or the spring water from a few days ago, or who knows how many endless factors, but I started to feel sick soon. We were staying in Karakol that night, at a nice little guest house about 10 minutes drive from the restaurant. We arrived and relaxed for a little and I had a little of the Travelers’ (TM(i)) but thought nothing of it. Z and I soon walked to a cafe to use their wifi (yay!) and after a little while I Traveled (TM(i)) again. I started to feel worse so I said let’s walk back to the house, I don’t feel so good. We had made it about 2/3 of the way when I vomited the hardest I ever have right on the sidewalk. Well in a grass patch but still. It was very violent and horrible and so painful that I thought I was choking. LUCKILY it happened, if you can even believe it, in front of what can only be called “Apteka Row” (the russian word for pharmacy) – a whole string of pharmacies. Z ran into one and I think just pointed out the window to me and was given anti vomit and anti nausea pills. It seemed to help a little, despite the fear of taking unmarked Kyrgyz pills (I still have some if anyone wants to try! or examine). When we returned, I told Sacha I wasn’t going to eat dinner and he was SO mad because the owner lady had already started making it and I was like okay if you really want me to try I will happily vom again on her little white tablecloth. I didn’t say that but I should have. But like come on dude.

So, I just slept the whole evening and night. Luckily I had some saltines from China in my pack and had those in the morning. Saltines are amazing. You watching The Good Place (also amazing)? You know when Ted Danson is like “I wish I could have tried a saltine”? I feel him.

DAY 6
“Suuuuunday morning TIME FOR CHURCH!”

The mean old lady and the mean old Sacha made me drink tea for breakfast even though I HATE tea especially strong black tea and, guess what, tea makes me nauseous, because they both thought that my drinking bottled water instead of tea was what made me sick. This is the kind of ‘bullshit science’ that republicans can only DREAM of taking hold in America. FFS. It’s funny, actually – our Trans Siberian guidebook mentioned offhand that old Russians in Siberia had a weird rampant distrust of  ‘dangerous’ cold water, warning against its consumption for no reason other than that it had become a rural myth. But now in Kyrgs we actually meet the old (ethnic) Russians who believe this! Ahhhhh! Shut UP!

We had a busy morning planned with lots of activities and somehow we still had to end the day at our guest house in Chon Kemin – more than 300 kilometers away! First we had a visit to Karakol’s mosque, called the Dungan Mosque, which is really cool because it was built like a Chinese Buddhist temple! We haven’t seen nearly enough of those! No it was really cool to see how the roof had dragons and other traditional Chinese symbols carved all over, and the structure as a whole was very China.

What was not cool, was that this mosque made women wear these RIDONK heavy coverups like f-ing WIZARD robes. So smelly and so extra hot in this weather and just ugh annoying. I try to be chill about all religions but I can’t get behind any of the parts that require women to cover up so the mens don’t get too excited. Control YOURSELF, Aaron.

After the mosque, we went to the Holy Trinity Orthodox Church. So much religion! The church was built in 1894 in the ‘six-pillared’ fashion but it has only 4 pillars! Fan thyself!

I really dig the whole decaying wood thing they have going on here. Very wool.

After all the gods and everything, we were to see a local museum in the town of Cholpon Ata, which is a really satisfying name to say. Unfortunately, the museum was closed, despite the sign on the door with the museum’s schedule clearly stating that they should be open right now. Guyssss. Sacha made a few calls and we amused ourselves in the small grocery store next door. GUESS WHAT I FOUND.

MANNER!!! Why didn’t I get more than one? (Ed. note: Don’t cry for me. Have you seen my instagram? Thanks Emmeline & Josh!)

When we returned to Sacha, he had bad news: The museum people said it was closed today because they had no electricity. Sacha didn’t buy their excuse and said “I think it’s really because they are sleeping.”

We still had more to do though, so no harm no foul. Next up was the Open Air Museum of Petroglyphs – a whole field of rocks and boulders with ancient drawings made from carving or scraping and such. Some had miraculously retained their clarity, but most had faded in the like thousands of years.

After we burned in the dry sun to a sufficient crispiness, we had lunch at a terrible cafe on the side of the road that was giant and full of tourists and had wifi but had a terrible waitress. She brought me my vinaigrette salad with fish on it even after Sacha made sure she knew no fish! Who puts fish on a vinaigrette anyway! Also people were smoking in the bathroom. It was an OUTDOOR restaurant. I don’t understand. I ate some vegetarian borscht instead (soup is always a good idea) and then we continued the drive to Chon Kemin and our last guest house, one run by the popular tour agency CBT (we were looking at CBT and NoviNomad when we were deciding who to go with, but CBT was terrible at answering emails and our questions so NoviNomad luckily won out. If you like loud hostels with giant dorms full of yoots, CBT seems the choice for you.) Because it was a CBT house, it was full of the most tourists we’d seen in weeks! It was a nice enough place and it had wifi! It was just a shock to have all the noise and PEOPLE when we’d been mostly in isolation for so long. I love isolation from other tourists.

The best part was the saddest part – our last gorgeous communal dinner in a yurt with the traditional set up. How wonderful is this kind of meal!

There were many plates of tomato salad (course) and vermicelli and carrot salads all over, and then the main event was plov, the main dish of Kyrgyzstan (and Uzbekistan and like the entire region I think). Plov is a rice pilaf usually with giant hunks of mutton or other gross meat (spoiler all meat is gross) on top. It’s a lot of rice. Mine was rice with bits of carrot. It was a lot of rice – the vegetarian platter was almost as big as the meat version but the meat plate was for like 11 people and the veg was just for me! How much rice do you think I can eat! I have to save room for watermelon!

We made some small talk with the other tourists and met some that didn’t make us too angry or annoyed (progress) but then, as is our wont, spent most of the night trying to get the weak wifi to connect. We heart wifi. Then we enjoyed our last night’s sleep in a shared space! We hate sharing! From here on out – hotels! (Well and hostels but private rooms!) Tomorrow we leave for Bishkek!