Cultural Learnings of Odyssey, For Make Benefit Glorious

Day one in Kazakhstan and we are stuck at a border again! Three hours in and we realise we’ve changed time zones and have lost another hour. After four hours we move from the side of the road to a near by cafe. Seven hours in and we are on to our 10th pot of tea and 50th game of cards. Nine hours in and we are all gradually losing the will to live. Ten hours and we are finally on the move. We head to a camp a couple of kilometers down the road, rush to put up our tents and enjoy a dinner of toasted cheese and tomato sandwiches.

Pot of tea number 23 at the border

Bush camping, night number one

Day two in Kazakhstan and we have to make up the 100km that we didn’t manage to do the night before, plus the original days mileage. We make a stop at a small town along to way to pick up supplies, our guide Svetlana takes us around the market and to visit Kazakhstan’s mosques and minarets, left over from the time when the area belonged to Uzbekistan. We stop for lunch at a water reserve surrounded by semi-wild horses. After some debate we decide they are probably being bred for meat. Despite the trauma of knowing my favourite animals may end up on a plate in England very soon it is a beautiful spot for lunch and we are even lucky enough to see the elusive mating ritual between mare and stallion, which certainly brightened up the view from the toilet.

Wandering around the market

Herds of horses at lunch

After a long and very hot drive day we make it to the Aksu-Zhabagly Nature Reserve in the early evening. The park ranger canters up to the truck as we approach our camping spot. The reserve is the oldest in Central Asia and covers the north-western mountain chains of the Tian Shan. In the largely flat Kazakhstan the mountains provide some striking contours to the landscape.

We are to spend two days in the park hiking and camping surrounded by spectacular mountain ranges and untold numbers of animals. We spend most of the evening being sucked on by baby cows and occasionally wandering into fully grown ones in the dark.

The following morning Svetlana has managed to arrange a mammoth day ride from one camp to the next, however there are only eight horses and being keen to hike into the Aksu Canyon I decide against it, only to regret my decision a moment later once all the places had been filled.

Despite a severe case of fomo (fear of missing out) I make it to the canyon in good spirits, the spectacular walk down and a promise from Svetlana that I’ll be able to commandeer a horse when they make it back to camp helps raise my spirits. We make it into the canyon in good time and spend an hour at lunch cooling ourselves in the ice cold water before trekking back out.

The girls before the canyon trek

Svetlana teaching us about the local wild life

At the bottom of the canyon

After setting up camp we head out along the top of the canyon to look out for the riders. Before long we see them walking along the ridge looking slightly worse for wear by thoroughly happy with the days activities. As we come across one of the rangers Svetlana explains that I would like a ride and he happily hops down so I can clamber on board. Back at camp the ranger has difficulty removing me from his steed but Teresa wisely ignores my pleas for a truck pet.

Mary has cooked up a storm whilst we have all been off riding and walking and we settle in for the night after a feast of chilli and apple cake cooked over the camp fire.

Wonderful evening at camp

Mary and her sublime apple cake

We raise early for our final day in Kazakhstan. Our stay has been short but wonderfully sweet. The spectacular scenery and incredibly friendly people make this one of the most welcoming and enjoyable countries we’ve been. I think all of us plan to return at a later date to experience some more of this amazing country. So yes, for the Kazakh Seven with all our visa woes, it has been well worth it. We spend the morning wandering around a self sustaining village at the bottom of the mountains. Svetlana imports a wealth of knowledge about the Kazakh people and the way they live, I’d love to tell you some of this but unfortunately I was too busy playing with the puppies, calves and goats.

Calypso in the mountains

Traditional Kazakh breakfast

Making the traditional fermented mares milk, Svetlana assures us it is every bit as nasty as it sounds.

Obligatory shot of the baby animals

We end our time in Kazakhstan at yet another stunning bush camp complete with its own stream, perfect for cooling down and washing away at least some of the four days worth of grime we’ve accumulated.

Calypso getting a wash

The perfect bush camp for our final night

We are sad to say goodbye to this beautiful country but excited about what Kyrgyzstan will hold. More of the same, we hope.

Minarets, Madrassas and Vodka in Uzbekistan

Five days in the oppressive Turkmenistan is quite long enough and we all find ourselves eager to leave but first we have the small matter of getting across the border. The border crossings are becoming gradually more difficult and the Turkmen to Uzbek is no exception. The Turkmenistan authorities need to search every inch of the truck and so we wait. After a number of hours we are finally allowed into no mans land and to the border with Uzbekistan. However before we are allowed across we need our passports checked for a final time. Unfortunately Jules’ stamp isn’t quite clear enough and we are turned back to get it stamped again. Exasperated we drive back to the Turkmen side where we are told the authorities have gone to lunch. We are stuck and so we wait. Thankfully the truck comes stocked with food and water, we begin to set up for lunch only to be told we are not allowed to do this either. So we make sandwiches on the truck and hand them out the windows to our fellow hungry truckers. Finally, once we have all been fed and watered and we all have the correct and clear stamps we are on our way to Uzbekistan. Only the truck needs to be searched again and so we wait!

Six hours later we finally make it into our sixth country. Uzbekistan feels like a breath of fresh air but not literally, I’m not sure I’ve ever been anywhere with so little breeze. The heat is oppressive but the country is beautiful. Our first couple of nights are spent in the wonderful city of Khiva. Dominated by the blue minarets and mausoleum’s the city has a magical feel, the name Aladin is bounded around with everyone feeling like we have just stepped into a Disney set.

Blue minarets

Wozza blending in

The Harem

Andy rocking the local head wear

At dinner on the first night we change some money on the black market. With the current rate at 2500 sum to the dollar we all end up with bags of cash and little idea of where we are going to stash it.

$100!

Our time in Khiva happily coincided with the summer festival. During our first evening everything the city shuts down, the streets are flooded with people who have traveled from the surrounding cities and the capital Tashkent to attend the festival. We become somewhat of a tourist attraction ourselves with locals begging to have their photo taken with us. A space is cleared for us around the main square and we settle down rather apprehensively to watch the ram fighting. Luckily it is not as traumatic as we feared, the rams are brought into the area for a matter of minutes, they knock heads a couple of times and the owners are presented with carpets.

Ramming

Cock fighting

Locals enjoying the action

After the entertainment we head back out onto the streets where we experience some local dancing and barter over some local trinkets.

Dancing

From Khiva we head to the tourist town of Bukhara where we go wild over to the goods on sale. I treat myself to a beautiful silk scarf and we spend our time wandering around the markets desperately trying not to spend all of our money for the next six months.

Bukhara’s markets

From Bukhara we head to the city of Samarkand, this city has a far less touristy feel but still boasts the beautiful minarets, mausoleums and madrassas that we have come to love.

After another day of sight seeing many of us are starting to feeling minareted out, when our guide, Bob, mentions the possibility of wine tasting we jump at the opportunity. We wander over to the wine museum in the early evening, narrowly missing a freak thunder storm. We enter the room to find the wines already laid out for us, after learning from Bob about all the awards the Uzbek wine has won our hopes are high.

The tasting is mostly a success even if some of us do find a few dead flies in the wine, and we all clamor to buy a sample of our favourite wine at the end.

After dinner fueled by wine and a bottle of vodka between us, Louise, Simon, Pernille and myself head out in search of a club. We make our way home having failed in our quest, however on the way home we stumble across an underground bar, we enter with trepidation but are immediately ushered to a seat by the bar tender. We order another bottle of vodka to be drunk the Russian way (straight).

Whilst we are sat at the table ‘enjoying’ the drink we are treated to some local dancing and are soon dragged up to join in.

The vodka drinkers

We wake the next morning a little worse for wear and minus a bottle of wine purchased only the night before. Soon we bundle Pernille onto a train to Tashkent a day early, so she can apply for her Kazakhstan visa once more.

The rest of the truck follow on to the capital the next day, where Bob once again takes us to the best restaurants in search of the tastiest local meals.

Jules helping to prepare dinner

With Pernille now in possession of a Kazakh visa we spend our last day in Uzbekistan celebrating at the water park. After 10 fabulous nights spent clean and dry, if a little too hot, in Uzbekistan’s most luxurious hotels we are about to begin a marathon stretch of bush camping in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

Through the gates of hell

Welcome to Turkmenistan, the country where flat roads came to die. The roads, if you can call them that, are by far the worst we have encountered. Bumping around in the back on the truck is much like being on a roller coaster, great fun for about five minutes, utterly exhausting for the next 8 hours. When our guide, Artem, suggests that the roads are only five years old I laugh but this is not a joke, no weight restrictions, overloaded trucks and a lack of maintenance have destroyed a perfectly flat tarmac road in a matter of years. Artem assures us that the President is now aware of the problem and is directing money to sort it out.

Our second night in Turkmenistan is spent camping next to some underground thermal springs. We rush to set up camp and grab our swimming gear before the cave is shut for the night. At $15 for half hour this isn’t a cheap experience but one I am unlikely to repeat. As we enter the cave we can hear twittering above us, pigeons, I’m sure you can get any number of diseases from pigeon droppings but we carry on regardless. The deeper into the cave we get the stronger the smell of ammonia and sulphur. Not entirely sure that this was a good idea we strip off and make our way down the last few slimy steps into the delightfully warm water. The cave is famed for the number of minerals in the water which can be used to help any number of skin problems. Swimming around in a deep, dimly lit cave with bats hanging above you and no idea what could be below you is quite disconcerting but the warm water is relaxing and well worth a visit.

The next morning we make our way to the capital, Ashgabat, a striking city in the middle of the desert. After a couple of days of exploring it has certainly left an impression on all of us, not all of them good. The plush marble fronted buildings and shiny cars (it is illegal to drive with a dirty car in Ashgabat) certainly give the impression of wealth but the city is frustrating. We quite often feel like the only ones there, no one walks the streets which could be because fuel is free so no one feels the need to walk but it could also have a lot to do with the tight restrictions placed on everything. Guards line every corner telling you where you can and can’t walk. We are shouted at constantly for taking photographs. Tourists have a curfew of 11pm and hotel rooms are bugged which mean that sensitive conversations need to be held outside. The internet is restricted and emails are monitored. This is the first police state I have visited and although the country feels very comfortable, we don’t see any poverty, it is very difficult to gage how the people feel because none of them will talk to us.

The independence monument in Ashgabat

Paparazzi at the independent monument

During our time in Ashgabat we visit the Arch of Neutrality a monument adorned with a huge solid gold statue of the Turkmenbashi, the late leader of Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan was recognised as the world’s first neutral country by the UN in 2011. In this case neutrality seems like another word for insularism, it feels like another way to shut out the rest of the world and maintain control over the people of Turkmenistan.

 

Turkmenbashi on top of the Arch of Neutrality

The declaration of neutrality

The Presidents Palace by night

 

 

It is a relief to leave the city after two days and head back out to the desert. Just outside of town we stop off at the largest market in central Asia. Packed with carpets, fabrics, sheep, camels, furniture, and food we wander around trying to find a trinket from Turkmenistan. We soon find ourselves lost in the endless rows of goods and end up late back to the truck.

 

Livestock at the market

 

Back on the road we head to the Darvaza Gas Crater with a brief stop along the way at a smaller bubbling and burning mud crater to get us in the mood.

We arrive at camp late afternoon and prepare for our trip into the desert but not before a major truck clean. Jobs are divided up and everyone gets involved scrubbing and sweeping so the truck is spotless once more. It’s a shame the same cannot be said of us. As the sun begins to descend it’s time to make our way to the crater, a huge burning hole in the middle of the Karakum desert, it is known locally as the ‘Gates of Hell’. Apparently the result of gas exploration in the Soviet era in the 1950s, the crater is man-made and was set alight to burn off the natural gases found there to avoid poisoning the surrounding environment. The crater has now been burning for more than sixty years. It is quite something to behold and seals Turkmenistan’s fate as the strangest country I have visited to date.

Our final day in Turkmenistan is spent at Konye-Urgench, once the center of the Islamic world and the capital of Uzbekistan. Today, due to Stalin’s determination to divide the people of Central Asia it now belongs to Turkmenistan and boasts ancient ruins of mausoleums and minarets, dating back to the 12^thcentury. We spend an hour wandering around the ruins in the searing heat of the desert before we head for our longest border crossing yet and the wonderfully relaxed Uzbekistan.

Azerbaijan, home to the world’s largest KFC and Eurovision!

After very little sleep post our Armenian adventure we were up early in order to cross the border into Azerbaijan. We were warned beforehand that this was our first ‘serious’ border crossing, although this did not quite prepare us for the questioning we were about to get. By now we were all aware of the problems between Armenian and Azerbaijan but what we weren’t aware of was that by entering Armenia we would encounter problems at the Azerbaijan border. When the border guards saw the stamps in our passports we were immediately subjected to a tirade of questions about where we had been, where we had stayed and what we had seen. With most of us now terrified we were going to say the wrong thing and risk being ejected from the country our bags were scanned and any products from Armenia were removed. Our cameras and passports were then removed from us and we were ushered into a waiting room where we all started to relax with the border guards. After a couple of marriage proposals, the loss of any photos of the genocide museum and a re-education about the Armenia genocide itself (it didn’t happen apparently), we were on our way.

We spent one night in Sheki, sleeping in the Karavansaray – traditionally where the animals would have been kept on the Silk Road – perhaps it has something to do with the smell? We sample the local dish; Piti – lamb smothered in fat and cooked in a clay pot – sounds disgusting, tastes delicious. We make a brief stop at Khan’s Palace. Brightly coloured, adorned with stained glass and mirrored jewels this small palace was originally used as the khan’s administrative building, completed in 1762 it is the only royal structure that survives in Sheki today.

Khan’s Palace:

We plan to stop at some weird and wonderful mud volcanoes before making our way to the capital, Baku. It isn’t long before the rain starts and soon trusty old Calypso is stuck in the mud. Stuck at an alarming angle the truck lurches and slides as Driver tries to free us. Before long those of us at the back are begging to be released and we make the walk up to the volcanoes on foot. The volcanoes make a bizarre site. The smaller volcanoes ooze and spit grey mud whilst the larger ones gurgle away in the background giving this alien landscape and eerie soundtrack. A few of the more inquisitive members of the group venture too close and end up waist deep in mud giving the rest of us a good giggle. As we wander back down the hill caked in grey sticky mud we find Calypso freed from her mud encasing and we are able to head off to a bush camp for the evening.

Calypso in the mud:

Mud volcanoes:

Phil in a mud volcano:

Mud covered boots;

Bubbling volcanoes;

We arrive in Baku early in the morning where as a group we head to the Turkmenistan embassy in order to get our visas and start the process of crossing the Caspian Sea. There are no scheduled ferry times and we have been warned that we could end up in Baku for a number of days before we are able get on one. For a hefty price our Turkmenistan visas are processed in a matter of hours and we are set free for an hour to grab some food with strict instructions to be back at 3pm for news on the ferry. Three o’clock comes around quickly but there is no news so we are ushered back out again to explore. Baku is a glossy cosmopolitan city filled with beautiful parks, lined with trees and wacky fountains. Winners of Eurovision in 2011 and the host city in 2012 they are certainly proud of this fact. We arrive one day after the 2013 event where Azerbaijan came second. The locals talk about it constantly and the main square is full of large screens where the contest was shown. Even as a Brit who thinks Eurovision is a bit of a joke I can’t help feeling we missed out by not arriving a day earlier.

Eurovision fever:

 

Alex jumping for joy in Azerbaijan

6pm rolls round and we are told there is a possibility of getting on a ferry the next day so we have the evening to ourselves, expecting a bit of a lie in and a casual morning of waiting around the hotel. We plan at trip on the funicular railway for a view over the city, however, when we arrive back at the hotel later that night we given the unexpected news that we will be getting on a ferry in the early hours of the morning. We rush around packing our bags, handing over passports, showering and jumping into bed for a few hours sleep. We are woken by a cheery phone call from Teresa at 6am, two hours later than expected, and told to be ready in 10minutes. More rushing and panicking ensues but we are soon all in the lobby waiting and worrying about the state of the ferry. The Caspian Sea crossing is notorious on this trip and it is one aspect that has been a cause of anxiety for us all. Having already done one of these crossings between Egypt and Sudan I am preparing myself for the worst. We have been told that the actual crossing takes 16 hours but external factors such as finding somewhere to dock and loading and unloading the ferry can mean a painfully long wait, not to mention the state of the ferry’s themselves. We have been warned about maggots in the beds and come prepared with roll mats and sleeping bags.

Baku by night:

We make it to the port at 6.30 and finally jump on board the ferry at 9.30 to be greeted by brand new mattresses, an on board bar and restaurant. We are delighted and settle down on deck to wait for the ferry to be loaded. We set sail at 12.30 expecting to dock at around 4am. After a lazy day reading and snacking we watch the sunset and head to bed.

Sunset on the Caspian Sea:

Before we hit the hay the captain comes round to tell us that there are two ships in the docks ahead of us so we will drop anchor in the morning and wait for a dock to become available. At the prospect of another lie in we are thoroughly ecstatic. At 2.30pm the next day, however, when we still haven’t made it into port our patience is beginning to wane. We finally make it into port at 3.30 and are made to wait in the cargo hold for a further two hours whilst the Turkmen border authorities finish their tea break. At 5.30 we are moved out of the cargo hold and are made to wait outside passport control until 7.30 when they start to process our passports. At 8.30 we are finally released, desperate for the toilet and delirious with hunger we make a quick stop for plov, a local rice dish. With an 11pm curfew for tourists we make a quick dash down the road to a bush camp.

A full 38 hours after our wake-up call in Azerbaijan we have made it to Turkmenistan, country number five.