Traveling Through Kyrgyzstan, Part 2: Ooh This is Me I'm Having Fun!by Randi / October 10, 2017
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
Crossing the Torugart Pass; Tash Rabat
Part 1: Back in the Yurt Camps
Part 2: Issyk Kul and Kyzart Village
Snow capped mountains never get old
Day 5
“Everything’s coming up (roses?)”
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.
“Everything’s coming up (roses?)”
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.
furious bulls
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.
taken from a rickety little plank bridge erma erma erma
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.
“just go up” “okay, monster man”
who dat ninja
view from our waterfall trek
So apart from the skidding and the constant fear of tumbling down the mountain because of the tiny little narrow not-trails, this whole geo park majig was amazing! It’s so beautiful and so fun. I wish I knew its name.
I couldn’t know it betterrrrrr if I knew its name! (anyone?)
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.
do you think they put my salad on a heart-shaped plate because they knew how much I love salad
vegetable soup!
broccoli to share! I share my vegetables I”m such a good wife
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.
Someone tell McConaughey to get a message to this girl in the past and alert her ‘girl you gon vom’
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.
buddha mosque buddha mosque
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.
who dis ninja
it me
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!
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Madeira, Portugal (Part 2): Funchal Vegan Food, Lodging, and More
As discussed in the previous post, Madeira, the little Portuguese island off the coast of West Africa, is an amazing little paradise of mountains, gardens, and overall pleasantness. In this post, we are getting down to what matters: the vegan food, and the hotels. Although the remote location means the extreme vegan ballerness of mainland European cities hasn’t reached Funchal yet, there are still lots of good options and cute restaurants to check out. And as far as lodging goes, we stayed in THREE different hotels over this trip! Okay, one was in London and one was not planned, but you’ll see! We had an incredible time in Madeira and you can read about all the sights and stuff to do here.
yep this was taken during a break in barfing. (‘oh it’s pronounced bar-fay’)
My top restaurant recommendation is Coracao (pretend it’s a squiggly c!) Vegano, which has been around, and vegan, since 1973! Amazing job guys. The food took a minute but we had just flown in and we were super hungry so it probably seemed longer than it really was. Before we share the food, look how adorable the restaurant itself is!
Since like I said we were so hungry, we did our usual thing of ordering too much food. We ordered a wrap, a thing called Vegan Lust, and sushi. So yeah, the offerings are eclectic, like lots of vegan cafes, without one clear vision or cuisine. But who cares!
First up, the vegan plate of lust. It contained crispy chicken slabs (is slabs not a good word for food?), bacon slabs (again I ask but what is a better way to describe it?), and salad. It was fine! I love salad and the various vegan slabs were fun.
Next up, the wrap. There’s only one wrap option, the Crispy Wrap, and it has crispy vegan chicken with veggies and salad inside. I loved the filling and wish the wrap itself was sturdier; it fell victim to the disease that kills most wraps – sogginess. Ugh I love wraps so much but haaaate when the wrapping gets too soggy I might dry heave just thinking about it. There is nothing else in the world where suuuuuch a tiny change in status makes me go from loving it to literally barfaying from it. But anyway, it wasn’t as soggy as other wraps I’ve seen in my day, so it was pretty good.
Lastly, sushi! Or what they call Shingen Zushi! It’s a fried tempeh roll and it was DERN GOOD. Man I love tempeh sushi. I want this again! So the food overall at Coracao (squiggly!) is decent, but it’s a must go because it’s kind of a Funchal vegan institution. And it’s rare to find an all-vegan place! I think this is the only one in Funchal, actually. And I adore that they are not shying away from announcing themselves as such or wimping out with referring to some ‘plant-based’ bullshit. Look at the entrance!
Just in case ‘vegano’ in the name wasn’t enough! Love it.
The next restaurant we tried that is worth sharing was called Copaki, which is a little farther down the coast, closer to the Contemporary Art Museum. They aren’t vegetarian but they have a veggie/vegan menu that is really great. Unfortunately, I ordered the wrong thing, like I can’t even believe I ordered it. I had the choice between deep fried aubergine (eggplant), braised tofu (omg want), lasagna (what!!), or fajitas, and like a G-D MORON I chose fajitas, momentarily forgetting that the main component in veggie fajitas are bell peppers and I FORKING HATE bell peppers! What was I thinking? I think I was distracted by the prospect of guacamole. Ughhh I had to eat so many red peppers and they make me nauseous.
first of all that’s not fajitas
Best (not) of all was that the ‘side of vegetables’ was more bell peppers. I mean. So don’t be like me, because I think if you ordered something that there’s a chance of you actually enjoying (e.g. not your least favorite veggie??) then we are all good at Copaki. Still can’t believe it. Luckily, I had some other dishes and they were great. Hard to mess up, but great.
Including:
BRUSCHETTA! I love bruschetta hard. I love it even more when people pronounce it right. (Hot tip: You’re probably doing it wrong.)
Including:
BRUSCHETTA! I love bruschetta hard. I love it even more when people pronounce it right. (Hot tip: You’re probably doing it wrong.)
Ours had mushrooms on top! Approved!
Next, we shared a bowl of soup. I honestly forget what kind of soup this was, but it was a pureed light colored vegetable (there aren’t that many so just you decide) and it was good.
Next, we shared a bowl of soup. I honestly forget what kind of soup this was, but it was a pureed light colored vegetable (there aren’t that many so just you decide) and it was good.
what brand of soup are you
But guess what else! They had a nice vegan dessert, can you believe it? I was expecting nothing more than fruit plates or fruit sorbets, but here they had a vegan puddingy flan type thing with candied puffed wheat bits on top. NICE!
Overall, it was a nice meal, and Copaki is a little more upscale than Corasquiggle if you are looking for a date night or something.
We also stopped by Gigi Sumos one day, a juice bar chain that is on HappyCow and says it has vegan bagels and salads too. Well, they don’t really. They can make a salad vegan by removing all the stuff in it, and they don’t have vegan salad dressings! I asked the staff, but you say you offer vegan salads; how can you do that if you don’t have vegan salad dressings? And you know what they did? They offered me MUSTARD or SWEET CHILI SAUCE. Like, both condiments straight from their bottles, undoctored to be palatable as salad dressings. I mean I chose the sweet chili but DAYUM.
even with avocado it’s sad! and look more bell peppers
Luckily, after that unfortunate stop, we went to the MOST BEAUTIFUL land of produce – Mercado dos Lavradores! This famous market is a must-do for tourists. It’s a giant building full of food vendors. The main hall is vegetables and fruit and nuts and spices and dried fruit and all kinds of good stuff, and there are restaurants and hot food vendors all along the sides. Because it’s so touristed, the produce is expensive, but you can get INSANE stuff. This is where I found my most favorite avocado of all time. You ready? She ready.
Look at those gorgeous things! Do you see the giant avocado? We bought that one that is standing upright – it was bigger than my face. Luckily our travel was intra-EU so we got to bring it home! It made a lot of guacamole. Okay so because it was so big it was kind of bland, but I don’t care, it’s so cool. If it were a rocking chair it would be a stop on a long-drive through the American West.
I don’t have a picture of the next coolest find we made in the Mercado, but I remember it vividly. A few vendors stopped us and made us try pieces of a special Madeiran hybrid fruit called – I shit you not – ‘ADAM’S RIB’. Making things even more interesting, it’s a hybrid of pineapple and banana. And against all odds it sort of reminded me of custard apple! It was more fun than delicious but it still was good enough for us to buy a few. SO FUN.
Okay, that’s it for food in this post. Sadly, we didn’t get to what many say is the best restaurant in Madeira for vegans, Restaurant Olives, but maybe next time. And there’s some happy news: the next Madeira post will be a fancy restaurant review, a part of the Vegan Michelin series!
LODGING
Funchal is the kind of place where you really will want a baller resort to stay in. Without sandy beaches, you’ll want to swim in a nice pool. Also, this isn’t the kind of city like Paris or London where you want to spend as many seconds as possible seeing all the sights because there’s never enough time to see it all (‘there’s no time! there’s NEVER ANY TIME!’). That’s not the vibe here. You’ll see some stuff like I shared in the previous post but you’re gonna want to relax in the hotel. Also, the hotels get the most beautiful beachfront so the views are amazing. We did a lot of research trying to find the nicest place that was still a value for money, and we decided on the Porto Bay resort. Porto Bay actually is three different resorts, and if you stay in one you have access to the amenities (restaurants, gyms, pools, tennis courts, kids clubs (so many families), mini golf, &c) in all three, so it was a great decision. They have the Cliff Bay (which I think is the most expensive), the Porto Santa Maria, and the Porto Mare. We chose the latter. And we liked it, and we loved it.
one of many sun bed areas
This was the view from inside our room.
What’s out there, you ask? Let’s go see!
Oh it’s just one of the FIVE pools at the Porto Mare alone! While I of course swam in this one just to have done it, it wasn’t super hot to make it my regular pool. Luckily, some of those five are indoor. If you know me, you know I love an indoor pool, like to a weird degree. Look how beautiful these options were!
That one was so big it snaked its way to be part outdoor pool. SO FUN.
There were also jacuzzis and steam rooms all over the place. And while the gym was a little hard to get to (down to the basement and then up again sort of?) it was a pretty good gym! My only sadness about this stay is that there were tennis courts literally outside our wing but we didn’t play.
The food at Porto Mare was pretty good too. As with all hotel buffet breakfasts, there was tons of cereal and fruit but nothing great on the hot food side. But, they had Alpro yogurt! So it was overall a win.
Now I bet right now you are thinking, if you loved this place so much why did you say you stayed at a different place? Well, Madeira can get crazy winds, and so it wasn’t a huge surprise that our flight home to London was cancelled because of them. EasyJet transported our entire flight from the airport to a hotel that was much, much better than I expected of EasyJet (I expected a trash motel). It was called the Pestana Ocean Bay.
It’s that green bit. Not the nicest place, but still pretty good. Checking in the entire flight took hours, sadly, as the hotel was not ready for such a madhouse. We were originally given a basement room but it had ants (omg maybe it was a trash motel and I forgot) so I went back to reception and demanded we be moved, and we got a much nicer room on the top floor! Awesome.
We were all given tokens for the dinner buffet, which was fine. Nothing special but they had enough dishes out in the giant buffet that were veg. We talked to some fellow passengers (ack) and wondered when we’d be notified about our rescheduled flight. The email came late that night: they were putting us on a flight the next night/morning at 1 AM!!! ONE. AM. And since this is Madeira, most of the people were supes old! This sucked. We’d get in to London at what, 3-4 am? And back home no earlier than 5am and have to go to work? No no NO this will not stand! Luckily, they offered money back if you chose not to accept their shitastic rescheduling, so we refused and booked a NORMAL HUMAN TIMED flight with British Airways. We still had another whole morning to explore though, so we walked along the beach and the caves near this end of Funchal.
Okay so that’s two hotels; what’s this talk about a third? Well our flight out of London was at 7am, so we decided that rather than getting up at 3 or 4 am beforehand and hating the world on our first day in Madeira, we’d sleep at the airport and only dislike the world on our first day. We stayed at the YotelAir in Gatwick Airport and you know what? It was super fun and comfy. It’s a pod hotel, meaning the rooms are tiny little compartments and you feel like you’re on a submarine or something. (Or an overnight train!!) But it was clean and comfy and even though everything was a weird purple haze, it was great! Nice bed too.
ahhh so similar to our train journeys!
There are buttons to bring the bed down for sleeping!
The check-in process was so smooth, maybe the smoothest at any hotel ever. The staff was super nice. And it was weirdly fun to be able to change into pajamas and then go out and shop at the airport Boots and stuff!
So except for the aforementioned fancy dinner, that’s it for Madeira! I hope you consider it for a future vacay, especially if you are old or have kids. I hope to go back someday! Oh and here is a look at my favorite Funchal graffiti:
Send it to your friends named Sam and have a good day!
From Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan: The Hardest Border Crossing Yet
After our perfectly lovely time in Almaty, Kazakhstan, it was time to cross into our final ‘stan, the one most believed of Herman Cain: Uzbekistan. There was no easy direct way to go from Almaty to our first destination in Uzbekistan – Tashkent – so we had to take an overnight train (but of course!) to Shymkent, Kazakhstan first, then get a taxi to the border, cross the border, and then get another taxi from the other side of the border to Tashkent. It was exhausting just to think about, but considering how relatively well our travels had gone so far, I was optimistic that it wouldn’t be too troublesome. I think I’ve previously shared on this blog that IQ quote about being an optimist and fool? Yeah.
To relish our final moments of Almaty’s modernity, we got an Uber to the train station instead of arguing with taxi drivers. We would have enough of that the next day, oh boy, would we have enough of that. When the car was due to arrive I shut down the little baby laptop and prepared to put it away and get my giant pack on…and true to chitty, chitty form, Windows decided to install updates then. DO NOT SHUT OFF YOUR COMPUTER. You think that maybe it was one of those quick ones since they didn’t ask first? Here’s the picture I took.
150 UPDATES. What in tarnation is that about! This is the kind of bullshit that can put me off Windows forever. I had to hold my computer open in the car, in the train station, as we waited for and then boarded the train. Can you even picture how ridiculous this crap made me look? I had a giant backpack on my back, my stuffed daypack slung on one arm, my ticket in one hand, my passport open in the other, my purse hanging cross-body, and the laptop nested in the crook of my elbow. If I thought people had stared at me before in these parts just for being a Western female traveler, hoo boy, was I in for some learnin’.
Fortunately, this train helped to balance out the fury that the computer caused me. Because of some of the less-than-stellar experiences endured on the Chinese overnight trains, we decided that our first night back on the rails after so many weeks merited an upgrade! We got a private berth instead of sharing with 2+ randos (not to be confused with randis which are usually good) and it was GREAT. And clean! The little compartment had one set of bunk beds against one wall and a little vanity table with a (clean!) mirror and small table on the other side. I thought there was a closet but the inside door was a connecting one to the next compartment, for families I guess. Our neighbors were none-too-pleased when they realized someone was trying to open the door but they had a crying baby so it’s a draw. This little room was so nice, as was the train in general. The bathrooms weren’t horrifying, AND – there was a water cooler! Guysssss! I could refill my bottles with potable water! My baby nephew says to me “drink agua!” every time he sees my water bottle and you know what Huddybear? I did!
We placed the still-updating computer on that little table and left it to finish. When we went to sleep, it was at number 9. Of 150. In the morning, when it was at 33, we just shut it down and used up ALL of our restraint to not smash it into a thousand pieces.
As we waved goodbye to the European-style cosmopolitan vibe of Almaty, we knew we were saying goodbye to civilization in general for a good while. Our time in Uzbekistan would comprise experiences on the more raw, less modern side of things, as our itinerary tracked ancient Silk Road stops and historically important towns and landmarks that are more or less untouched since the old days. Meaning, it would be like stepping back in time, especially considering how modern the city we were coming from was. Bye civilization!
But we didn’t realize at first just how drastic the contrast would be and how quickly it would materialize. When we got off the train in Shymkent, we needed to get a taxi to the border with Uzbekistan, and it was quite the ordeal. We asked several drivers for prices but all were oodles more than they should have been according to literally every piece of information – internet, books, hostel employees, previous travelers. We talked to a woman at an information desk by the side of the road (I don’t know if it was official; it looked like the Bluth banana stand without bananas, which I wanted even more than information) who told us in Russian to take this bus that was there and that would do the job. We were about to board but with a little more questioning, we figured out that that bus just would take us into the city center, where we would have to find the bus that would actually take us to the border, or get a taxi. The extra step seemed incredibly unnecessary and unwanted, especially if we would end up needing to negotiate with a taxi there anyway. We might as well just do that now, we thought. So back we went to argue with taxi drivers. Finally we found one who offered a not too bad price, so we agreed and unloaded our stuff and got in and…didn’t leave. The driver instead started filling the other seats with other people. We sighed but this was to be expected, right. Finally the car was full and the driver starting driving and took us to…the other side of the train station. What’s going on, we asked, not actually wanting the answer because we knew there was some bullshit about to come our way. The driver indeed spewed some bullshit, telling us to get into this other van that was there, already full of people. So this driver we had found wasn’t actually going to ever take us to the border. He was taking us to his friend with a van. He actually had the gall to agree to something he was never intending to do and then DRIVE US 15 SECONDS TO ANOTHER PART OF THE STATION.
Oh man this shit was just the beginning.
We said are you kidding me, no f-ing way, we are not getting into another stuffed mashrutka and paying the price we agreed on as if we were getting a private taxi. So we went back to the front of the station and started all over again negotiating with drivers in Russian the best we could. One driver promised he would just take us and not fill the car with others and we said great let’s do it. We left the station, drove for five minutes down the main road…AND THEN TURNED BACK TO GO TO THE STATION. What the HELL is going on, we asked? OH – he had to pick up another person. At the station. That we had left. You said it would just be us and ALSO WTF, we said. That’s it just this one more, the driver promised. JFC, fine, we said, come on let’s go. We again left the station, and then the driver stopped the car along the side of the main road where a crowd of people were standing. He wanted to pick up another person from this crowd! And not someone he knew about, he was just going to ask if anyone needed a ride. FFS. We yelled HELL NO! Just take us to the f-ing border right now! He reluctantly left and started driving the three of us to the border — at the fastest speed I’ve EVER witnessed any car go, race cars in Talladega Nights included. I was petrified. This guy was such an asshole AND he was a dangerous driver?? Oh my god. We sped down the roads passing every car and weaving through lanes and cutting off EVERYONE else on the road and just holding on as tight as we could, terrified.
When we were sufficiently in the middle of nowhere, nowhere near anything we could see or walk to besides highway and desert, the driver pulled into a gas station along the side of the highway. He said he needed gas, and didn’t have money to pay for it, so we had to pay for it. Are you KIDDING ME? I started screaming at him in English, I knew he could understand my hatred and disgust at him even if he didn’t know every amazing curse word I used. We are not paying for your gas, you crook! But then he popped the trunk and started pulling our bags out, threatening to strand us along this highway in the middle of nowhere if we didn’t pay up. As much as I despise giving in to people like this, we really had no choice, so I gave him a little money. But no, that wasn’t enough. Apparently gas is very expensive in Uzbekistan or something because he kept asking for more. I really didn’t want to give any more and set a dangerous precedent in case he kept stopping along the way and demanding more money, but luckily that didn’t happen. Just this one instance of extortion so I guess we were lucky. He got back in the car — I don’t even remember if he actually pumped any gas — and flewww down the highway for another hour while I sent him death ray stares from the back seat. He drove mostly in between the two lanes, stopping anyone who dared even think about passing him. I continue to wish him very ill thoughts, naming him like Arya except I don’t know his name but the universe knows who I mean. Get ‘em.
Finally, finally, he dropped us near the border. We walked up to the gate, took a deep breath to get over the horrible experience we just miraculously survived, and then another deep breath to prepare for one we expected to be equally terrifying. See, the Uzbek border brings with it a lot of rules, and a lot of horror stories. We never heard anything as strict and scary as the stories about Uzbek border guards. They can delay travelers for hours, going through every single nook and cranny of their luggage, opening every container, going through pockets, everything. Worst of all, Uzbekistan has a VERY STRICT and VERY SERIOUS no-drug policy, and their list of banned substances includes things that we can get over the counter in many Western countries. So we had to be careful about every substance we were bringing in, and make sure we had prescriptions ready to show. But the banned substance list is serious, and it’s not something you can get around with a prescription. If you try to bring any of them in, you could go to jail. One of the substances on the banned list? Ativan. I know. Because we did our homework (do your homework!), we knew about this trouble before we left for the summer, so I only packed about as much Ativan as I thought I’d need up until this day, so I wouldn’t have to throw much out. I still had a few extra I had to toss back in Kazakhstan, but nothing worth crying over. It’s just so funny and perfect that the one thing that would have helped me deal with the shitshow that was this country was the one thing I had that they outlaw. COOL GUYS.
When we got through Kazakh exit, we were given the forms. We knew we had to declare every kind of currency we had on us and in what amounts, so we had counted up all our shiz on the train. This is more annoying than it sounds when you have traveled to 10 countries! We had dollars, we had euros, we had pounds, we had soooo much Chinese yuan that converted to like just a few dollars but takes up so much space, we had Mongolian money, we had roubles (a significant amount since we would return to Russia after Uzbekistan), we had Kyrgyz money, Kazakh money. Man alive this really makes one appreciate the euro zone. We wrote everything down and then had to declare our valuables, including our phones, readers, and the baby laptop. We had read about other white travelers who had to unpack everything and who were detained for hours so we were super nervous. But, luckily, the border guards on duty for us were SO excited to meet Western tourists that they were pretty much just friendly and trying to ask us all sorts of questions, not about what we were carrying but about us and the west and whatever. We SO lucked out. I mean there were no toilets anywhere to be found but still, quite lucky. I guess I could have brought my Ativan in after all but better to be safe than to end up in an Uzbek prison in the driest desert with no toilets, right.
Oh but then we had to find another taxi to take us to Tashkent. Guyssss. I never want to take a taxi again. But there are no buses! There’s no other way! You just find a guy with a car and you hope that they are trustworthy. Ish. We found an old man with an old car and mistakenly thought ‘hey maybe this old guy will be more legit and somewhat decent than the younger asshat men are.’ We showed him the name of our guest house in Tashkent and he said ‘oh yes I know that place!’ We were relieved. The guy drove us through the nothingness and into the city, where he immediately stopped, got out, and started chatting with two young women. What is going on NOW, we wondered. Then the two women got in the car with us. I know. What’s going on, we asked?? One of the women spoke a little bit of English and she explained that the driver didn’t know where the hostel was, so they were going to help them. Let’s go over this again. The man who told us he was familiar with the hostel not only lied about that and didn’t know it, but DIDN’T EVEN KNOW THE ROAD IT WAS ON. And here’s the kicker – neither did the two women. They were just helping by using their phone maps –WHICH WE HAD TOO. And they showed us that they didn’t know how to read their phone maps, because WE were the ones who ended up instructing the driver on where to turn and how to f-ing drive. It was ludicrous and so frustrating and like, are there ANY taxi drivers in central Asia who aren’t complete assholes?
Finally, after we screamed NO, LEFT – NO YOUR OTHER LEFT about 40 times, we found our guest house, yelled at the driver to get out of our sight for ever and never come back here again, and entered the house eager to shower and relax. Naturally, the room wasn’t ready yet.
We’ll talk about that guest house and about the rest of Tashkent in the next post. Until then, I need to go take an ativan.
