Lost in procrastination

Krzysztof Derwinski 写真展：東京の音楽喫茶室

2010-10-15T12:25:00.012+09:00

The exhibition features images from the world of Tokyo's classical music cafes. All photographs were taken with a Tachihara 4"X5" camera and contact printed using the "salt" process on Fabriano cotton paper.

Time Period: October 26th (Tue) - November 7th (Sun).

Place:

Cafe Ensemble

Roseheim Matsunaga BF1

2-17-8 Komaba

Meguro-ku, Tokyo.

Tel: 03-3467-6296

http://cafe-ensemble.com

Hours:

08:00-22:00 on weekdays

12:00-19:00 on weekends and national holidays.

Mondays closed
11/02 : 08:00-19:00
11/03: 12:00-14:00
11/07: 12:00-14:00

Cost: Free. But since the venue is a cafe, visitors are requested to make at least one order.

To Blog or Not to Blog?

2010-09-04T16:52:00.003+09:00

The generator hums outside, powered by subsidised Indian diesel, trucked in across 5000m passes, so that I can sit here and write. Can I justify words in this instance? Would that justification be a lie to myself and others - even if supported by those who are sitting around me.

Then there is the other concern. Who needs this? Does writing publicly of an experience that has largely been an inner, private one hold any meaning? Wouldn't it be better to let someone else judge the diaries that will remain once my lease on this life is over?

Or am I just a lazy bastard?

You be the judge.

2009-09-27T20:37:00.002+09:00

My first panorama. My first venture into HDR.

Shinjuku at 3pm on a Sunday whilst being talked to by a crazed Daido Moriyama fan who had some strong opinions about the Rape of Nanking.

Work in Progress...

2009-07-13T21:13:00.004+09:00

For someone who takes a reasonable amount of photos, I haven't been putting that many up on this blog. Part of this may be due to the fact that I don't take as many as I should. Part of it is due to the fact that I'm too lazy to sort through thousands of files. But I'm guessing that a large part of the reason is perfectionism. Anyhow, in opposition to my instincts, I've decided to post up a body of work that is not even half-finished, but which I've put some effort into planning and producing. Feel free to comment and make suggestions.

All images are salt prints from 4"X5" film negatives taken with a Tachihara field-type view camera.

人間　shi(k)kaku

2009-05-23T12:46:00.004+09:00

Shinjuku, Japan, 2008.

Camera: Nikon D300. Lens: Tamron 24-80mm.

Spaces, Distances.

2009-04-17T10:40:00.001+09:00

Seoul, South Korea, Summer 2008.

Camera: Nikon D300
Print: Untoned salt print from digital negative on washi.

Kolumna Zygmunta

2009-04-04T13:27:00.002+09:00

Warsaw, Poland, Summer 2008.

Camera: Nikon D300
Print: Untoned salt print from digital negative on Arches Watercolour Medium 185 GSM paper.

Toshio Shibata "Landscape"

2009-01-06T15:05:00.002+09:00

This is a great little exhibition. For those scared of people, retrospectives, art museums, or those with not much time and/or money, it offers an interesting alternative to the Toshio Shibata retrospective that is currently on show at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography.

Inward looking, meditative landscapes of large, man-made structures - it's fantastic to be able to see them in a more intimate setting with no distractions. You can get up close and see the beauty of the 8X10 film format in the details it is able to offer, or just stand back an enjoy the overall impression conveyed by the images. Shibata's printing skills are also to be applauded, as he is a master at bringing out the varying texturesof his landscapes with just the right amount of contrast and exposure. Oh, and if you have the money ($18,000USD+) you can buy whatever is on display.

Highly recommended.

Venue: Gallery Art Unlimited
Schedule: From 2008-12-19 To 2009-01-31
Closed December 28th - January 7th
Address: 1-26-4-3F Minamiaoyama, Minato-ku, Tokyo 107-0062
Phone: 03-6805-5280 Fax: 03-6805-5281

"Dream Museum - Architectural Masterpiece of Japan" Exhibition

2009-01-06T14:00:00.003+09:00

Size does matter. Walking into the exhibition and seeing the Youmeimon at Nikko stretched over a whole wall, you can't help being impressed. While I'm not much of a pixel peeper myself, I appreciate the fact that this kind of sharpness at such a size requires appropriate equipment and the knowledge to operate it effectively.

But while the exhibition is to be commended on a technical level, there's something lacking artistically. What distinguishes competent architectural photography from brilliant architectural photography, is an intelligent awareness of the range of natural/artificial light available and how it will impact on conveying the atmosphere of the space to the viewer; an warm afternoon glow peeping into a room to bring out the gold-plated reliefs, the diffusion of grey sky to expose the austerity of a dark temple interior. While this kind of awareness is present in some of the photographs, it's clearly lacking in others - for instance, the unattractive haze of a glaring sky in the Itsukushima photos.

I'm guessing that time constraints in the shooting process would have something to do with the unevenness of the works selected, but this is where filters and darkroom fiddling should step in. Definitely an exhibition worth seeing for those interested in Architecture, not necessarily one for those interested in Architectural photography.

Venue: Fujifilm Square
Schedule: From 2008-12-23 To 2009-01-28
Exhibition Hours: 10:00-19:00, Closed 12/27 (Sat)-1/4(Sun)
Address: West 1F & 2F, Tokyo Midtown, 9-7-3 Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo 107-0052
Phone: 03-6271-3350

Тіні тіні / Shadows of Shadows

2008-11-02T19:11:00.006+09:00

Verkhovina Region, Ukraine, Summer 2008.

Camera: Beautyflex TLR (1950s Japanese Rolleiflex Copy)
Film: Fujifilm 120 Neopan 400

無力無善寺

2008-02-20T13:06:00.000+09:00

外でいる悪魔に反対して、騒音の美しさ。心の中は安全です。

One More Cup of Coffee for the Road

2008-01-05T09:31:00.001+09:00

Something strange happens when I'm in a confined space for too long. It's not that I have anything against 14 square meters facing to the north. I've made it as pleasant as I can and it's a place I can generally enjoy being in. However, I can't think straight when I'm in the same place for too long.

The problem with 4 medium-sized islands and 130 million inhabitants is that there isn't all that much space to go to. Sure, there is a concreted-up river not too far from my house that I enjoy going to. A small park going the other way. But generally, neither is a space where one can sit with a book and get down to some serious Rodin-esque thinking action.

This is where Caffe la Fresco fits in. Number 11 in the annual Japan barista championships, it sits innocuously past a hairdresser's and an Indian Restaurant. It's also one of two places within walking distance where I can sit outside and have a coffee.

Another favourite is Nelken. Crimson velvet high-backed chairs, years of cigarette smoke left on the ceiling, still-life paintings, decorations formed by dried up roses. Classical music only. No laptops permitted.

A less creepy alternative is Violon, where pretty much everything has been hand-made or hand-picked by the owner, including the 100% analogue stereo system with valve amplifier and turntable. Superb acoustics, superb stereo, vinyl in immaculate shape. It's perfect for the morbid introspection, as silence seems to be an unspoken rule.

明けましておめでとうございます

2008-01-03T11:45:00.000+09:00

It's difficult to walk, if you've had 3 plates of pasta, 3 pizzas, a bowl of chips and two salads. Such are the dangers of 1500 yen all-you-can eat extravaganzas. The result is watching the New Year roll in at Ueno Station; only a handful of other people in "I-wish-I-was-somewhere-else" predicaments for company. At least the music changes to a pleasant Japanese classical music pastiche featuring a koto.

We decide to walk off some calories by footing it to Asakusa. The streets are completely deserted until we stumble upon a shrine I hadn't visited for 4 years.

Desipte a bursting stomach, the ame-zake served at the shrine slides in without a hitch. However, the queue for New Year's prayers is a little long and I am anxious to see the source of a tolling bell.

The queue to ring the bell is also long. 20 minutes. There's another one in the neighbourhood and another queue.

Finally, we make it to the main temple in Asakusa and the biggest queue I've ever seen. We go home.

The following day we hop on the train to Tokyo station and go to see the Emperor. Countless riot busses. A bag check. A body check. Ordinary police. Police with sunglasses. Police in black suits and sunglasses with ear-pieces. I can't help being excited by finally crossing the moat and going into the palace.

The buildings within are a little disappointing. 1970s modern Japanesque architecture. The crowd is also of a surprisingly modest size; mostly old people and a disproportionate number of foreign tourists. At exactly 14:20 the Imperial family emerges and the flag-waving starts at shouted commands of several officials stationed within the crowd. It's actually pretty creepy. One guy waves a WWII imperial army flag. Nobody bothers him.

The Emperor is a kindly looking old man. He wishes happiness for the citizenry, prays for world peace, waves to everyone and the whole ritual is over within minutes.

The crowd slowly descends down the Imperial driveway in a very orderly manner. Several officials walk with large placards in English which read: "Please walk slowly and carefully." I guess that it's only the troublesome foreigners who need reminders on how to walk... In any case the entire crowd makes an amicable exit to enjoy the blue skies outside.

「猫の手ほど借りたいだ。」

2007-12-08T10:22:00.000+09:00

When you're so busy that you'd "even want to borrow something as small as a cat's paw," I guess you can honestly say you are busy and not be deluding yourself into thinking that you are something other than a disorganised procrastinator. Whilst relying on the help of a cat in your daily office struggles would probably do you little good, this particular saying seems to convey the desperation involved in chasing time that you see so often around you.

But it's Sunday morning. You want to want to relax.

"What time should we leave the house?" She asks.

"Does it matter?"

It does. Apparently, spontaneity makes people here rather uncomfortable.

An unemployed friend writes : "If I worked hard, I'd have to think about nothing."

The temple grounds at 深大寺 (Jindaiji - http://www.jindaiji.co.jp/jindaiji.html) paradoxically offer a release from the regimentation. There are many people, but they are enjoying their Sunday; eating sweets under scarlet maples, buying souveneirs, taking photos.

Of Concrete and Wires

2007-12-04T16:48:00.001+09:00

Waiting. It is an art.

One looks at the shadows cast by buildings and scrambles to stand in the remaining spot of sunshine. Even this does little to curb the chill of the wind blowing through concrete tunnels.

Maybe this is why people walk fast. To keep warm.

There is a trace of something else here. A faint memory of another cold, another wait. That time to watch. This time to act.

As always, a Japanese studio can't be faulted. Pearl drums. Zildjan cymbals. Marshall JCM800. Wood to cover slabs of concrete. Bleeding hands and dripping sweat restore warmth to the fading day.

But all days eventually bring further waiting in the dark. A clockwork of trains offset by a spate of suicides. Plastic seats on wind-swept platforms. Vending machines with heated cans of coffee. Boss. Fire. Blendy. For people who "try their best." The dictionary doesn't quite mange to provide a translation for the most over-used and abused verb in the Japanese language.

You used to think you didn't hold any values, but you've proven yourself wrong. Even if the values are not absolute ones, what is interesting though is your perverse admiration of those with contrary values.

Concrete can be beautiful. So can wires. But you say this from a position of privilege; you have an escape route on the train carriage, not below it, as a "human-body-accident."

You aren't really here and one of the main reason s that you are here is precisely that - culturally-codified and protected outsider status. "Outside-human." It's in the official documentation. It's in the recurring compliments - "you use chopsticks so well." It's in the recurring questions - "can you eat sushi?" It's disturbingly almost scripted. But it is not malicious. It is not incessant.

It is what it is and hopefully you aren't telling yourself otherwise.

Dies Irae

2007-10-19T08:46:00.000+09:00

The mornings have ceased to be stuffy. Icy northern breezes start to ruffle the faded leaves. While the first few minutes of wakefulness are unwelcome, being hit by the freshness of the new day outside makes up for that.

Your only student is a pleasant young systems engineer. His English lesson starts at 7 am. He finishes work at 10pm. He's always pleasant to teach and picks up new language quickly. What makes you different from these kinds of people? Uncertainty? Fear? Negativity?

You are awake during similar kinds of hours, only with the exception of the afternoon which offers the opportunity for a nap. The result is a lack of concentration and a general feeling of fatigue. However, when the end does finally come, you are glad to have overcome your inclinations to sit with your head in a hole.

An unexpected call from your boss, from her private number; it's over. The company president has been sacked, the company submitted for court administration. For fun, you tag along to the unemployment office with your co-workers and end up on TV.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=DzlBPtqTlv4

Village : Population 36,000,000

2007-07-07T19:35:00.000+09:00

The image is : chaos, alienation, robotic utilitarianism. You stand on a overpass in Shinjuku, gazing over the neon facades ahead. You've just stumbled out of a honeycomb of an underground city of neon. The contradiction is : there is no one below. There are few who are above.

But it's different where you are from. The arcades of Koenji, Asagaya are filled with a vivifying buzz. Middle-aged mothers wearing black sun-blocking visors greet each other. Children play in the park. The underbelly of the Chuo-line glows in the evening, smoke rising from sticks of grilled chicken and frying balls of takoyaki. Beer flows freely and conversations flow with it. Up a staircase, and you're inside the power-less temple of no-good.

"Shibuya! I'm going to Shibuya," screams the performer, underneath a flurry of colourful decorations and photocopied pictures of cats. Inside the "Silent Park", rows of cars sit passively, waiting for their owners.

Apartment

2007-01-21T10:11:00.000+09:00

As you approach a loud construction site, you realise that you should have drawn yourself a map. Obviously, you're not going to find a real estate agent where there's no building. Luckily, you've scrawled down an address, so you start walking around, trying to find a map of Nishi Shinjuku 1-Chome. In the end, it turns out that you were 500 meters off.

The place is in an area you'd walked past previously; back to back real estate agents. Oddly enough, you never make it to the actual place though. As you stop to glance at one of the boards advertising apartments, you're approached by a woman asking if you're looking for an apartment. You're a little surprised. Japanese real estate agents are notorious for not wanting to deal with foreigners. Going by your instincts, you follow her into her office, write down what you're looking for, and make an appointment to see her the following day.

Only one of the places she has found interests you. It's tiny, but has everything you might need. Best of all, it takes 20 minutes from the front door to your workplace. You decide to see it. A few phone calls, a battle with the photocopier and sticky tape to make a map, and you are on your way to Minami-Asagaya.

There's something endearing about Minami. She's 29, but you'd never guess it from the way she looks, or from the frequency of her giggles. She's clumsy with maps, has never ridden the Marunouchi and doesn't even know where the entrance is. Assuming the role of guide, you find out that she comes from Ibaraki and has been in Tokyo less than a year.

Minami-Asagaya is perfect. It has absolutely everything you'd hope for - quaint narrow streets, small cafes, temples and all sorts of cheap shops. The apartment is small and a little dark, but it feels strangely right. There's even parking space for a motorbike, should you save up enough money for one. You think. You think again. You ask to take a detour to the station. You decide.

"The sound of loneliness, makes me happier"

2007-01-20T10:06:00.000+09:00

You find it strange, seeing her among the crowds bursting from a row of ticket gates. It doesn't feel like any time had passed between the last meeting, and yet, it's been 5 months. You're both famished and you've both got no money. You've eaten a total of one meal in Shinjuku during your life, but she expects you to choose a place.

You step into an unpretentious soba (buckwheat noodles) joint full of salarymen bracing themselves for the commute back to the suburbs. The soba is nothing special, but at 350 yen, you can't complain. She's leaving in a few months, as originally planned. The only addition to her plan is her new boyfriend. You are glad she's able to finally open herself to another person in that way. You are even more glad that you can think that without any trace of jealousy.

Stepping out into the cold, you start looking for a watering-hole. Heading to the narrow streets of West Shinjuku, you hope for a cheap bar among the discount electronics stores. There's nothing. She tells you about her fetish for hip bones, and how when she looks at sculptures, that's the first part that she observes. Her boyfriend has gorgeous hip-bones. She wants to show them to you.

You skirt the south of Shinjuku Station and head north into the seedy neon of Kabuki-cho. Being there with a girl is a different experience. Even the pimps in this country seem to have some code of behaviour, not approaching potential couples. You enjoy this immunity, free to observe them preying on loneliness in the cold. Opposite a cosplay bar with a giant gorilla hanging from the wall, you find a tiny yakitori (grilled chicken) place tucked away next to an entrance to a hostess bar.

There is one counter inside and one table. You sit in the corner, watching the other patrons. Two Korean women are talking to an aged salarymen. Predictably, he pays and leaves, after which the women start putting on make-up - presumably for the evening's work. She comments that she finds it crass when women leave lipstick on their cigarette butts. You vaguely agree.

The oddness of your conversation strikes you at that point. What language are you speaking? It's not English. It's not Japanese. What is it? It morphs depending on who might be listening, and what you talk about. Does anyone else talk about what you talk about? You doubt it.

You order a bowl of spiced octopus tentacles and a bowl of raw sliced squid, pickled in salted squid brains. Goes well with the chu-hi (fortified bubbly rice wine), which is a little rough in its pure form. You move onto ame-shu (plum liquor) - your favourite. Melancholy enka drifts out of the bar's speakers, perfect for the occasion. She's not too keen on it, finds regret meaningless. You vaguely agree, changing the subject to the shape of people's ears.

The night seems warmer than before. You talk about how people smell. She wants you to smell her boyfriend. You promise you will. The crowds at Shinjuku Station are phenomenal. Wrapped in the fragrance of drunken salarymen, you board the train. It's strangely comfortable, pleasantly detached. She has an odd way with words: "They are like potatoes. Just that some potatoes are nicer than others." You'd never thought that way, but after all, you decide that your fondness for potatoes is somewhat reminiscent of your fondess for people.

The parting is as casual as the meeting. One part of the crowd takes her. One part keeps you. In the end, you're just glad to have a friend.

羊蹄山 (Yotei-Zan)

2006-09-10T08:36:00.000+09:00

Coming off the train at Niseko, I feel like I've landed in the right place. The train station is all but deserted. Lush, green hills surround it. In the distance, the towering symmetrical cone of a volcano. To tell the truth, there's not much I know about this place. It's simply the recommendation of a shy girl at the Hakodate tourist information desk. I have no map. I ditched my guidebook 1000km away. This leaves me with one option - the old woman behind the station kiosk counter.

She tells me that whilst she's never climbed Yotei-Zan (the name of the volcano), she's heard that there are some huts where one can stay. Taking leave of her post, she escorts me to the station attendant, who doubles up as the tourist information office. He recommends a mountain on the other side of the train line, as it's closer and has more amenities. Unfortunately, it looks like some kind of tourist resort, with prices upwards $60 per night. There's little he knows about Yotei-Zan, other than the way to get there, which he sketches for me on a local area map.

It's 2 pm when I start walking. As I've missed the bus, I have 7 km of highway before me. The town of Niseko is clean, with brand new paving, but too quiet for a place of that size. I walk into a supermarket and purchase a bottle of green tea, a block of dark chocolate and a bag of prawn-flavoured chips. My hope is that the base of the mountain will be full of the usual souveneir shops stocking everything from walking sticks to Winnie the Pooh keyrings.

Having climbed up through a winding forest road, I find that there's a camp site, an amenities block, some lodges and one vending machine. There's a map of Yotei-Zan, and indeed there's a shelter near the very crater. The mountain is 1898 meters high. I have inadequate suppiles. No wet weather gear. One thermal top in addition to a spare t-shirt. I don't have a watch, but judging by the position of the sun, it's mid-afternoon. So, I start walking.

After several hundred metres, the dark cedars thin out, and I enter a more thinly-vegetated myrtle birch forest. The undergrowth is thick, covered with something from the bamboo family that I'd never seen before. I meet nobody. As the path turns to the east side of the mountain ridge, it starts to get colder in the shade. I'm just hoping that I'll be able to come clear of the vegetation by sunset.

That is precisely what happens, 5 minutes before the sun sinks into the Pacific Ocean below. The view is gorgeous - the Sea of Japan on one side, the Pacific on the other. A half moon sits high to the east of the sunset. As the sunlight fades, the path grows steeper. I accidentally take one step to the side of the path and fall 1 metre into the undergrowth. Still, I'm hoping that my eyes will adjust to the darkness.

When the path starts to cross some steep lava flows, I start to get worried, as it's hard to discern where to go. Luckily, there are white dots painted on some of the rocks. At one stage I manage to fall into a hole and hurt my knee. At that point I decide that taking out my torch would be appropriate.

It is more than appropriate, as I come across a faded wooden sign indicating a turnoff for the shelter. It's not far, but when I step through the door, I only hear snoring in the dim interior. Luckily, a woman comes out of the toilet and helps me find the ranger in charge. The ranger is clearly not happy, giving me a lecture about the dangers of climbing mountains in the dark, and how it is his responsibility if anything were to happen to me. I pay him 800 yen, and spread my sleeping bag on the hard wooden floor.

Waking up is no problem - at around 4 am the whole hut is suddenly filled with the noise of people packing their bags. To my surprise, another foreigner approaches me. He's been working as a teacher for 5 years, and is climbing the mountain with his Japanese wife.

The climb up to the summit takes us up some steep lava flows, then around the rocky crater rim. I can't really see where I'm going and so I fall into another hole. It turns out that we are the first people up the mountain and I wrap myself up in my sleeping bag waiting in the cold for the sunrise. It is well worth it, as we are the only people there to see it, in addition to another Japanese couple.

Sunrise is at 04:55. I need to be in Sapporo at 12:00. Unfortunately, this leaves me with little time, and so I start running down the mountain. In no time, I've managed to lightly twist both ankles.

Views on the way down are gorgeous, with the volcano casting a symmetrical shadow on the valley below. As I near the base of the mountain, I meet more hikers. To my surprise, 90% of them must be over the age of 60. They are well prepared, with walking sticks, hats, hiking boots and bells to ward off bears who still inhabit these parts.

It's 08:00 by the time I make it out onto paved road. It's a gorgeous morning and I enjoy the smell of potato fields. I make it to Hirafu Station by 09:00, having asked directions of local farmers. The station is little more than a wooden shack, with a 民宿 (inn) attached. I haven't seen a vending machine during all this time. Breakfast consists of yellow tomatoes purchased at an honesty stand set up by a local farmer. 100 yen. I play with the station cat. The train comes at 09:18. I get to Sapporo precisely on time.

Back in Disneyland

2006-08-16T19:00:00.000+09:00

Descending down to Narita, I started crying for no reason at all. I just wanted to cry, and so I did. The sprawling mass of the airport gave me time to regain composure, well, whatever composure one could have after a week of salt-water showers and 5 days in the same shirt.

The customs officer showed me a picture with all the prohibited items on it and asked if I had anything to declare.

`No,` I answered.
`Really?`
`That`s right.`

After a thorough groping of my luggage he let me go and thanked me for my cooperation.

It`s funny, but everything has an unreal quality to it, like being high on an assortment of illicit substances. I have this weird feeling of not really being here, of not really being part of the tapestry of people and places I pass through. I love all the little details:

Toilet bowl design. There is a large pool of water in the bowl. Your poo slides gently into it, and floats. The result is that you don`t get splashed by the water, and that the bowl doesn`t get dirty.

Onigiri. $2 Seaweed rice wraps at every convenience store.

Lotteria. Like McDonald`s, but you can get a shrimp burger.

When I get on the train in Melbourne, I tend to glare at people with nothing other than contempt. Here, I can`t do that. If a person has shit for brains, then they are bound to be dressed in a manner that negates that. I`m just overcome with warm fuzzies for almost everybody.

I`ve spent the day, cruising through various train stations, walking through various malls. Using Japanese again feels great. I think all the study is starting to pay off.

A Tropical Vacation

2006-08-14T16:27:00.000+09:00

Going to Bali was never on my agenda. It's the sort of place that brings to mind images of fat Australians being drunk and obnoxious, or otherwise lying on the beach, obtaining massages from undernourished, impoverished locals. Still, when I found out that the cheapest way to fly to Japan was through Indonesia, I was a little excited. With a big island, even if it does have fat obnoxious tourists lazing around, there must surely be places to escape that and to have an authentic existentially nourshing experience, or some other bullshit that my over-intellectualising brain tends to churn out and hope for.

Unfortunately, there are not, or if there are, they're too much of a bother to get to.

Being bothered with anything is not something I'm currently capable of. Luckily, in every tourist den filled with the unceasing hollering of "motorcycle, transport, taxi, massage, sarong", there are a few decent, relaxed people... and I've done well in finding them. Hence, I've settled for a few days in Padangbai - the main ferry port out to the island of Lombok.

First, there are the people I live with at the Made Guesthouse. They are there to help with any needs, but don't ask every day if you want to rent a motorbike. Then, there is Martini, a lovely woman who has a small restaurant outside of the main tourist drag. She started off as an illiterate villager, selling sarongs on the beach. Now she's renting her own shop, and has enough money to send her kids to school. Her 8 y.o. daughter is a splending dancer, and is more than willing to show off. Martini has done splendidly when it comes to acquiring language abilities. She managed to learn to read and write from tourists at a late age, and it's a real shame that she didn't have the opportunities to fully develop her abilities.

For the past few days I've been travelling with a lovely couple from Berlin. We met on Nusa Lombogan which was the archetype of an impoverished village suddenly hit by an influx of money and tourism. Both of them knew who Klaus Kinski and Einsturzende Neubauten were, and it took us 5 minutes to realise that we liked each other. When the locals decided to charge me 3x the local price to the neighbouring island, Nusa Penida, and only let me talk them down to 2x the local price, I decided to tag along across the South Bali sea to Padangbai.

That made me happy. We ended up with 5 villagers in a sailing vessel the size of a large canoe. 8 people in total. Great move for the open seas. Luckily, the swell wasn't large that day, so only my back was drenched in the water.

Today, I'm in Ubud, the old capital, epicentre of all things hideously touristic. Walked around a forest park and looked at some temples infested with angry monkeys and mostly fat tourists. The only exception to the fat tourist rule are the Japanese, of whom there are quite a few here for some reason. Thankfully, I've hired a 110cc scooter to get here and so in a few hours I'll head back to Padangbai. It's a nice ride - overtaking in the face of oncoming traffic, dodging cats, dogs, children, potholes, or being held up by local village festivals which spill out into the street, with the crowd following some kind of colourful, carried idol. The only protective gear is a helmet that wouldn't help in a bicycle crash, and I'm wearing sandals to top it all off. The scooter has 70,000 km on the clock and hardly any front brake pads, but I feel it will get me home.
I feel that it'll get

2006-01-02T17:00:00.000+09:00

Lying in the grass, feeling the warm welcoming moistness below and watching shadows stretch in the late afternoon brightness. That earth is calling and I'm almost ready for its embrace. The past three months have been a blur, a pull of consciousness back into a state from which I thought I had been liberated. Evidently not so. As the context of my existence returns, so do all the former habits, along with the circular lethargy and ennui. Amongst all this, a few flashes of brightness followed by the narcotic haze of a pink dawn and a hangover.Why the angst? I have all I need and not recognising it is a misdemeanor for which I am obliged to pay the price.

The Peace of Heaven

2005-08-13T17:56:00.000+09:00

It was a day for doing nothing. Washed clothes. Watched TV. Read Tao Te Ching. Spoke to my Egyptian friend who was bored and wanted to go to Egypt to do his PhD and evaluate his son's bride-to-potentially-be. Ate at my favourite restaurant. 6RMB for a huge plate of potatoes and eggplant that I barely managed to eat. The kung-fu movie on T.V. had a stunning fight scene on a pane of glass suspended from a crane on a sky-scraper.

Made it to Tiananmen (Gate of Heavenly Peace) Square at 7 pm. The sky to the east was brighter than the sky to the west. The west was bringing the most ominous black cloud I'd ever seen - an a red sunset underneath it. The cloud passed. I thought we were safe. And then the running started - the crowds gathered to watch the flag lowering, dashing for the nearest shelter.

Within seconds, the square was a sea. I was soaked. Sheltered under a police van, when a Chinese guy offered me the safety of his umbrella. We went to an underground walkway. To pack to hide, waves of water gushing down the ramp.

Then came the guard - shining bayonettes, pressed uniforms - all for the purpose of retrieving a flag that hung soaked, wrapped around a flagpole, powerless to offer shelter. They took the flag with the same ritualised sharp movements and marched out, the rain intensifying to make sky and earth one water-soaked entity. Not a single soldier out of step, the same measured pace as they'd take on any other day.

I wrung out my socks, rolled up my pants and caught a train and a bus to get to the far north of Beijing. Stepping into a noodle bar, I knew I was in the right place - it was full of funky kids with funny hair and studded belts. The gig venue was only a little further along.

Not what I expected. Clean, new... fitted out with wooden tables and chairs. Many foreigners - mostly Americans. Some girls decked out in evening-wear. The polite English-speaking guy working there asked me if I wanted to sit down. What?! I came for mohawks, filth and blood...

The first band had one mohawk. They rocked out. The crowd just stood there. The second band got some skin-head guys pushing each other around - but if was damnlame compared to what I'd seen in Japan. The third band started with a doors cover - they looked good, but it was a pity that the singer spent most of his energy on trying out his Jim Morrison poses rather than learning to sing. The fourth band blew me away - Rebuilding the Right of Statues were so Joy Division, I couldn't help but dance away. The fifth band didn't realise that to be loud you need such a thing as contrast. The best thing about them was the singer's "I love Elvis t-shirt." The last band, New Pants was awesome.

Spent some time talking to an American guy, then a drunken Chinese guy who came over and told us that he loved us. The sky outside was lit up white with lightning. Sat and watched the rain fall. It abated. Decided to walk the 20km back to the hotel at 3 am. Beijing was dark, misty and quiet at that hour. A few hobos sleeping, a few people on the way to early morning jobs. I got to Tiananmen at 6 am and took a bus from there... cutting down on 5 km.

Woke at 2pm. Time to pick up the visa. The woman at the paying counter told me to go to the next counter. The woman there gave me my passport and went away. Nobody seemed interested in my money. I 'asked' the woman (no-one spoke English) if everything was setted. She seemed to say 'yes.' I walked out.

Police and anger

2005-08-12T12:08:00.000+09:00

There is one easy way to work off anger : walk. 11km from the PSB to my hotel. Got lost in the Hutong (old narrow alleys of grey houses being bulldozed to make way for "modern" highrise), found a street that had a park running through the middle of it. Got to the main shopping district and found another lovely park, running by a river parallel to a main road.

Then I found myself walking out into the middle of Tiananmen square. 2 girls approached me - students on holiday from Xi'an. They asked me what I thought of China. I gave them an honest answer, which was a bad move. I think they were genuinely offended at what I had to say about the government... quite ironic given where we were standing at the moment. We stood around and watched the flag-lowering ceremony (bunch of dudes with sharp bayonettes doing the flag-lowering thing), and met a Korean guy who was cool.

Another Brick in the Wall

2005-08-08T18:43:00.000+09:00

I was thinking of spending some time studying Chinese. I was thinking of buying some books in Beijing and starting now. I was thinking of one day coming to China for 6 months, and doing nothing but travelling aimlessly on a bicycle.

This morning, I rocked up at the Public Security Bureau (PSB) with the intent of obtaining a 5 day visa extension. Having stood in a que for 15 minutes, I was sent to another counter to pick up the visa application form. Mid-way through filling it out, the woman told me that I couldn't use a ball-point pen, but had to use a marker. For some strange reason, my black and white photo was accepted - despite the specification that it should have been shot against a blue background. But there was a problem - I needed a temporary residence registration form from the hotel. Oh, well - back to the other side of Beijing.

Upon getting back to the PSB I was told that the form needed to have the hotel's stamp upon it. I asked the woman if she could call the hotel and ask them to fax it. She told me I had to do it myself. So I did. Problem was, that nobody in the hotel had a sufficient level of English to understand what a "temporary residence registration" was and consequently had no idea what the hell I wanted. Back to the woman upstairs. She told me I could come back tomorrow. I asked how much the penalty for overstaying the visa was... 500RMB. With my sweetest smile I asked what the airport security would do if I rocked up with an overstayed visa and no money.

"They wouldn't let you leave."

But she got the hint and called the hotel. Fax came after 15 minutes.

Back to the que and the visa desk.

"Ok, you can pick up your new visa on Monday."

"Well, actually, I can't - I'm meant to be on a plane at 9:40 that morning."

"Oh... can I see your ticket?... Ok, photocopy the ticket and fill out this form."

She hands me the Reason for urgency request form.

I go to the photocopy centre. The matter is theoretically settled. Despite my outward composure, I'm sizzling beneath the surface. I suppose that little makes me angry, but the one thing that could drive me towards impulsive violence, is the helplessness felt in the face of power.

There and back again

2005-08-07T09:54:00.000+09:00

Looking out over the mist settling on the corn fields, I felt weird... What does it mean to return to a place? It means to take yourself then and now and to perform arithmatic:

"the body is a device to calculate the anatomy of the spirit" - Rumi

I'll keep the conclusions to myself.

The train ride was more exciting than the others (which isn't saying much). Sat next to a girl who was studying English. Her mother told me I was handsome. The girl said, "it's true." Then they had to move because they didn't have seat numbers. The dudes next to me played cards. I read "Tess of the D'Ubervilles" (Thomas Hardy), ate noodles, drank beer.

West Beijing train station made me think "how did these people get the olympics" once again. A badly sign-posted, circular mess of multi-storey walkways which eventually led to a bus station. Caught the right bus. Talked to a pretty girl on the bus who was studying German, got off with her help at the right place and eventually found the right hotel.

The two people I was sharing dorm with weren't there. I left my door open... and there was Damien (Karakol, Kyrgyzstan). Nice to catch up - he got robbed in Mongolia and the cops didn't bat an eyelid, or fill out a report... In other news, he'd bought a laptop and was getting heaps of DVDs. To my great surprise, he has a liking for Visual-K. So, we sat around watching Malice Mizer concerts (Ahh, Gackt is so beautiful...) and talking to the dodgy Egyptians sharing his room about John Winston Howard.

Oh, a joke...

Q: Why can't John Howard be circumsized?

A: Because there's no end to the prick!

Taiyuan

2005-08-06T09:53:00.000+09:00

Thought I'd come here, since there's apparently nothing to do and that's what I like doing.

The highlight of the train ride was an old guy in a bona fide Mao suit and the diorrhea all over the toilet floor. Honestly, you'd think that Chinese people would have enough practice aiming into squat toilets. I mean, just after 4 months or so of squatters and I've got my precision down to getting it into the hole...

The Lousy Planet (photocopy, haha) proved as lousy as ever. Walked down the street of budget hotels and got quoted 50 yuan for each one (more than I've ever paid for accommodation in China). Walked down another street. Found a place for 30... still too much. Was about to go to Beijing, when I stumbled upon a dirty orange building with no reception on the first floor. Just a sign and a staircase. Found reception on the 3rd floor, staffed by 3 beautiful women who had a giggle at my presence. 15 for a dorm. Killer.

Next stop : Public Security Bureau. Thought I'd ask the guard outside for directions. Bad move. You're not supposed to do that. Went inside, found the office and recieved the following treatment: "What is the purpose of your stay of Taiyuan? Do you have money? How much money do you have? Where is your hotel?" Well, I have no purpose in coming to Taiyuan, I have enough money to get me through, and I don't know my hotel's name or address, because it is a dingy hole that isn't allowed to take foreigners, and I'm not about to dob them in. In the end, the daft woman's friend turned up and told me to go to another office at 3:30.

Walked into a market and bought some camouflage sneakers and a camouflage t-shirt (arsehole tried to rip me off, but I talked him down from 40 to 25... and he probably still ripped me off).

PSB office was shining new, full of officials, none of whom could help me. Eventually, a woman rocked up and told me that visa extensions took 5 working days to process.

Walked around the main shopping district. The usual: hordes of beautiful young women with their ugly boyfriends, noise and the smell of grilled stuff.

Thought I'd walk into a CD store. The woman there knew her stuff, and could speak English. She even had an Einsturzende Neubauten CD, which I bought. Also got some DVDs, as it's cheaper to buy them here than to rent them in Australia!

So, nothing much happened in Taiyuan. Catching a train out to Beijing at midday.

Pingyao

2005-08-04T13:24:00.000+09:00

The 11 hour train ride to Pingyao cost 39 yuan ($6.50). Soon I realised why - no attendants to mop the floor (they were too busy wrestling each other), no trays for rubbish, no air-con, half the lights and fans not working. But whatever. As usual, I got landed next to some smelly middle-aged men who weren't keen on a conversation. So I tried to sleep. After 6 hours of that exciting pastime, I moved to the adjacent carriage which had empty seats.

Dawn brought fields fogged over with pollution, a crimson sun and the occasional coal mine/power plant. The

train arrived on time. Some guy from a hotel found me, and after a little bargaining I got a bargain - 45 yuan for a single with shower, t.v. in a Ming-era guesthouse. Bunch of moron Americans staying there being moron Americans, an anorexic chain-smoking vegan British guy who's into really studying Chinese and is hating the "Teaching English" (tm) experience. Very friendly Chinese family running the place.

Pingyao is incredibly well-preserved. Ancient city walls, ancient houses and despite the masses of loaded Western and Chinese tourists, generally friendly, decent people. The little kids are the best, screaming 'hello,' or running away to the safety of their mothers' skirts and then screaming 'hello.' The centre of the city has some tourist streets, but the rest is a vibrant, if comparatively relaxed town. Streets are generally too narrow for cars, so this means that the traffic is limited. Outside the walls, there are still many old houses and this is where to get decent food at a local price, and internet.

I've spent the past two days doing little. Catching up on sleep, washing clothes, enjoying the courtyard of the guesthouse, reading, writing, walking around town, bargaining and buying souveneirs. It's very pleasant, before the rush of noise and pollution that Beijing will bring.

Hua Shan

2005-08-02T18:03:00.000+09:00

There's somthing about Taoism that intuitively appeals to me. Mean beards, holy mountains and bad 80s kung-fu movie special effects. Being thoroughly tired of Xi'an, I decided to climb a Taoist holy mountain. Finding a bus wasn't hard, and the friendly conductor wasn't trying to rip me off. In fact, he was too busy defending himself from his wet-towel slinging friend to care. In the end the bus took 2 hours to fill up and leave.

Got there at 4 pm. Heat around 40 celcius. Humidity around 80. Found a restaurant with friendly people who decided to recommend what I should eat. It was good. Wrote a post card. Sent it. Ended up procrastinating at the Taoist temple at the foot of the mountain. Great place. Peaceful carp pond. Waft of fresh timber (the gate is being built). Bearded monks playing music inside the small shrines. The park entrance gate brought a change to the atmosphere: one-hundred-fucking-yuan! Wedged into a narrow canyon there was no escaping it.

The reason for this obscene fee soon became apparent : there's a stone road that leads most of the way up the mountain, then becomes transformed into a series of steps. Everywhere, small stores selling everything from People's Liberation Army overcoats, to Red Bull. Occasionally, a Taoist shrine, or a house.

I took my time, trying not to sweat too much. Didn't help. Soon, I was like the Chinese guys : topless and sweating more than before. Once the sun set, it didn't get much cooler : the path just got steeper. Never climbed up a mountain a) half-naked b) in the middle of the night. Sounds like a good start for an ero-goth movie... but alas, the Hairy Woman Cave Hostel was a disappointment. A surly owner with a surly daughter. I decided to move on.

Ended up at the North Peak hostel. A clean new dorm. 35 Yuan.

Woke up at 6 am, and headed up for a circular visit of the mountain's 4 other peaks. Clouds everywhere, and a heavy drizzle... my luck with mountains and sunrises hadn't changed. Still, the clouds occasionally blew apart, revealing cliffs and pines.

The Japanese school of landscape painting is largely a rip off of the Chinese and so it involves heavy stylisation of what's there. The Chinese on the other hand were only slightly distorting reality. These mountains truly are surreal.

The morning also brought hordes from the cable-car : chain-smoking middle aged men with their families. The other staple : university-age couples. I felt slightly out of place, in my crazy Taoist running up mountain drag. Still, had a chat with a few nice people.

Once it came to coming down the mountain, the clouds cleared... well, until I descended to the sweltering valley below. Made it back to my favourite restaurant for lunch, hopped on the first best bus (which had a DVD of a kick-arse Jet Li film), got to Xi'an's suburban bus station, not knowing where I was. Taking a bus wasn't hard (they have maps pasted on the windows). Got to the station, wrote what I wanted on a piece of paper. Got what I wanted : 21:30 train to Pingyao. Bye bye Xi'an.

End of the Silk Road : Prostitution Street

2005-07-31T12:09:00.000+09:00

Getting to Xi'an was a shock - humidity, heat, noise and traffic rivalling that of Beijing. An unslept night, the hard seat on the newer trains having less room than that on the old. I got off and proceeded to walk out when a man came up to me:

"You looking for a hotel?"

"Ahh... yeah."

"Dormitory, 40 yuan, ok?

"Sorry, the most I've ever paid for one's been 25."

"40 ok?"

"No, I'll find a cheap place."

"30 ok?"

"No, 25's the most I pay."

"25 ok?"

"Ok."

Well, it's in a dingy basement, but at least it's cool, and I've had the whole place to myself for 2 days. The shower is hot. The location... uh, central.

The first thing that happened as I walked down towards town was being invivited by about 10 "hairdressers" into their "salons". Since then, I've been approached by male pimps, female pimps, even the old women at the convenience store I bought a beer at were asking if I wanted a girl. Still, I'm getting better at saying "no" politely - I can even manage eye contact and a smile as I refuse.

With 7 million inhabitants, the city is one big mess with no PT aside from busses. What was once the centre is enclosed by an ancient wall. Slum, condominium, shopping mall, pagoda, bell tower - it's all there... as well as the first McDeath I've seen in 4 months. Nothing interesting has happened. Met a nice guy from the UK and some Irish women, but most of my social interaction involves telling prostitutes to go away.

The best thing about this city seems to be the street food in the mornings - 1 yuan pancakes full of vegetables and tofu. Internet has been difficult to find - took 3 days of walking in fact. The first place I asked involved the girl telling me it was 3 yuan (too much), then after some frantic behind the back hand gestures from her pimping arsehole of an empoyer, 10 yuan.

Oh, and I saw the Tarrcotta Warriors. Not worth the effort unless you're an archeology fetishist.

Time to leave.

Lanzhou

2005-07-31T11:16:00.000+09:00

Improved weather, a 3 million city, no plan and two days to make the most of it. Did what I do best - caught a random bus and went for a walk. The place has no real center - only occasional concentrations of multi-storey ultra-modern malls and hence people. Underneath all that there's muslims cooking corn cobs and other delicacies - some stalls showcasing cooked sheep head. Miraculously, found some fried potato and kept walking to the Yellow River. It's a actually a deep red. Incredibly strong current. People strolling around in the park near it. Ate deep fried crap once it got dark then went back to the hotel for a bout of the fiery cyclops as a consequence.

The following day started at a net cafe where I met two Chinese girls. Pearl had been studying for her PhD in Wisconsin and had come back for the first time in three years. Her cousin was studying English at a local university. We were going to see a movie together, when it turned out that it had been dubbed into Chinese. Decided we'd meet up at 2 anyway and do something. I went to the station, got my ticket and settled for a beer under an umbrella, having nothing to do. Some guys waved me over to sit with them.

Peroxide hair, cool clothes, I thought they were in a band. Turned out that they were hairdressers. Insisted that I they should give me a haircut for free. I went along with it. At first I thought that the girls at the salon were less than impressed. But after a 20 minute "hairwash", that was in fact a head massage, I was no longer so sure. The haircut took five minutes. Unfortunately, my hair doesn't yield well to Chinese pretty boy hair-do's, but anyway - the stuff keeps growing.

Pearl and Quin needed to go to Pearl's parents' house to retrieve her I.D. to collect some free movie tickets from a newspaper. Thought I'd come along. Pearl's father wasn't impressed with his daughter when he woke up - "Why aren't you cooking him a feast?! He is your guest!!" I had to be diplomatic, commenting on the quality of the watermelon.

The newspaper office involved a number of women sitting around old computers in a musty high rise building. The photographer rocked up and wanted to take pictures of me. Went along with it. Should have asked him if he could get me a modelling job...

We ended up at a local park with a large Buddhist temple, admiring the mineral springs which had since turned to stagnant ponds. Then they took me out to dinner - "but we pay, it is Chinese tradition and you must accept it." The highlight of Lanzhou food ended up being a very simple dish of thick local noodles, coated in mustard and chilli. Awesome.

Xiahe

2005-07-28T11:12:00.000+09:00

Third most important monastery town after Lhasa, I thought it was worth a visit, only being 6 hours away from Lanzhou.

Took a bus to what I thought was the right bus station (there's about 4). Wrong station. Took another bus - the wrong way, it turns out. Eventually got there, to be told that I couldn't get a ticket. Ah, of course - Gansu prefecture has a policy of compulsory insurance for foreigners, which insures the prefecture from being sued by the foreigners in the even of an accident. Who pays? The foreigners. Bought insurance for 20RMB.

Finally got some breakfast - sour-tasting vegetables, but at 3RMB (50AUD cents) for 3 kinds of vegetable plus rice, no complaints.

Made it to the bus 20 minutes early to find the whole bus waiting for me. Got the back seat, knees pressing against the hard plastic seat in front. The driver was a maniac. Once the decent highway degenerated into village road, it was a number of near misses whilst overtaking donkey carts, trucks and other busses. Landscape - dry sparsely-vegetated hills, ramshackle Hui villages with mosques.

Once the hills got a little greener, I saw my first pagoda... or what I thought was a pagoda. In fact it was a minaret, and what looked like a Chinese Buddhist temple was a Hui mosque. More followed. Everywhere, villagers threshing wheat. Then a village that came across a unique concept : let's leave the wheat in the middle of the road - that way the cars will do the job for us.

But things soon got more Tibetan, with hillside monasteries surrounded by villages. And the road got worse - everyone being periodically thrown half a metre into the air, as the driver refused to ease off the accelerator. One interesting thing you see around these parts are goat carcasses strung up from bridges.

After the quaint roadside villages, Xiahe was a let down. Firsty, rickshaw attack - "taxi mister! taxi! Tara hotel?! Good hotel." Kept walking up the road. Something was wrong - the first Tibetan town where I wasn't getting smiles or "Tashi Dele"'s from the locals. Eventually, made it to the Labrang monastery guesthouse (10RMB). The guy there couldn't understand my Tibetan... but it turns out they speak a different dialect here. Ended up sharing a room with a Chinese engineer from Lanzhou uni. Strange guy, but friendly.

Soon I realised why the town was messed up - the whole place was crawling with old western tourists. Was craving some bland food, so I was forced to visit a restaurant that served western fair. 6 Dutch people in there, the owner bending over backwards to kiss their arse. When it came to dealing with me, I was treated like dust.

Started the following day with a kora of the monastery. The few beggars there, almost started salvating when they saw a foreigner walking past. I gave them nothing. Met some Tibetan students. They were nice. We strolled around the streets and talked about random stuff. Eventually made it to the monastery and got invited by a monk to his room. Nice guy. His brother was a nomad living in the grasslands, had some great pictures from there.

In the end, I decided to pay the obscene 40RMB admittance fee and see the monastery's halls. It almost felt like an obligation... I've seen so many things, and in the end I wonder whether it was truly worth the admittance fees, which probably don't go so much to preservation, as the support of nasty regimes. What makes travel worthwhile, and what separates it from tourism, is taking pleasure from ordinary life - observing it, or ideally participating in it. Should I travel again, it will be with a road atlas, a phrasebook and no plan.

That evening, monsoonal rain came. By morning, it was still there. I packed and left.

Golmud - Lanzhou

2005-07-25T13:18:00.000+09:00

Arriving in Golmud was something I didn't want to do. Decaying concrete and toilet tiles in a desert light, a taxi ride with the driver trying to charge triple, train ticket chaos... wandering around the streets trying to find tomato and egg and internet. In the end it turned out well - Itamar and I ended up at a set of deep-fried skewer stalls, under an umbrella with beer and a pile of greasy fish, octopus, potato and cauliflower, reading out poetry. Then a drunk policeman turned up to practice his three phrases of English with us: "Welcome to Golmud," "My name is...," "I like you." And he bought us beer.

We went on another walk. Played guitars in a music store. Ended up back under the umbrellas. The guys next to us decided to buy us pints and force us to skull them in a toast to God-knows-what. No more beer after that.

The hard seat train carriage wasn't nearly as chaotic as I'd expected. Everyone had seats, there were trays for rubbish and people actually used them. Smoking was forbidden. Attendants would walk by with a broom every few hours and clean up. The music stopped at 11pm. Despite the desert cold, I slept well. The guy in front of me slept with his head on my lap. 17 hours later we were in Lanzhou. Upon getting out of the station we were approached by a girl who told me I had beautiful eyes. Unfortunately she didn't.

Lanzhou is a forest of chimneys followed by a 30km high-rise sprawl alongstside a river. For some reason I'm becoming fond of it. Went to the first "cheap" hotel in the LP, they told me 90RMB. I told them "thank you", bought a Pepsi and asked the seller about cheap hotels. She pointed across the road. I went there and the woman just said, "no." Asked her about cheap hotels. She pointed down the road. Eventually, I stumbled across a young guy who led me up some stairs. 25 for a clean single with TV, phone and shared bathroom. Not bad.

Spent the day wandering around looking for greasy food stalls, but it seems that they only open up at night. Ended up eating delicious tofu and eggplant that cost next to nothing. Parted with Itamar over a beer. It would be nice to travel together longer. Inshallah. A Chinese guy from the hostel in Lhasa rocked up, and so I drank more and as he bitched about the local people - apparently uneducated and dishonest, and his uni course - the professor ordered him back from his holiday.

Walked around Lanzhou's neon-lit streets for several hours in a drunken daze. Met an old dude who wanted to emigrate to Australia for the sake of his son. Ate skewered octopus and vegetables. Went back and slept.

The Road to Golmud

2005-07-25T12:26:00.000+09:00

Itamar is insomniac, so he offers to buy the tickets to Golmud. 210Yuan ($30AUD). We meet at Tashi 2 Restaurant which opens late, monsoon rain keeping everyone in bed. I also want to have my last bag of Lhasa-fried-potatoes, but the vendors aren't open yet. An uneventful trip to the bus station, we get on and wait as a huge row erupts between the driver and a group of random.

In the bunk next to us is Wayne, a Chinese-speaking American. He explains that the driver sold an old man a "ticket" (at a discount price), the woman with the legitimate ticket got on, asking the old man to move out of her seat. He said that he wouldn't move unless the driver refunded his money. The driver refused.

The whole bus joins in the argument. In the end, the old guy ends up on the floor. Wayne asks the woman in front if she could move one of her kids to the eisle opposite, so that he can stretch his legs out. I paid 50yuan for this floor space, I have a right to it!" She starts screaming at him. The driver tells her to move the kid. She keeps screaming. The driver tells her he will throw her out unless she shuts up. She shuts up.

The road is good. The bus is fast. Wayne has been travelling for 30 years. Aside from teaching, he writes and paints. Has a very negative view of the Chinese: they first care about themselves, then their family, then friends, after that they have no empathy whatsoever. I try to prod him in regards to the Confucian and Buddhist traditions. Says that Mao destroyed all that. I'm not convinced...

We stop at a set of roadside restaurants. I ask a few people if we can eat, they say "yes". In the end, the driver slurps down his noodles and asks us to leave half way through our meal. A few more people get on the bus. I now have a Hui Muslim girl next to me in the eisle. Wayne can forget about stretching his legs.

The landscape is wonderful, crystal-clear lakes, glaciers sliding of mountains. We stop at a 5200m pass. I have some amazing conversations with Itamar: travel, philosophy, religion, Zionism... we get on well.

Leaving Lhasa

2005-07-25T11:51:00.000+09:00

My last day in Lhasa is marked with one thing: the obligation to shop. The morning brings rain and grey skies. I sit around wasting time, talking to whoever is around and find an empty room having slept the night on the floor of a dorm. Not many people are around though - my entire dorm had left at 3 a.m. to go to the Ganden Thangka festival. In the end, the Chinese kids staying next to me invite me out to a Tibetan tea house for tea. 3 jao for 1 cup (5AUD cents). The dude with a perm turns out to be a mountain guide from Sichuan. Tells me that it's a lot more beautiful than Tibet.

In the end it clears up, and I begin my first consuptionist kora of the Jokhang. The stall owners aren't particularly pushy, except for one Tibetan girl who physically grabs me and won't let go. Bargaining is hard. I probably get ripped off on 50% of the things I buy... which isn't such a bad ratio, considering the area. The prayer flag dealers are the worst. On my third kora I make the mistake of looking at "antique" thangkas and become mesmerised by one particular Cherensig (Avalokiteshvara) with White Drolma (Tara) underneath... but the guy's asking price is $100USD. There is also a lot of crap, in particular amongst the new thangkhas.

In the end, I sit in front of the Jokhang and watch the people passing by. There is an immense ethnic mix - women from Amdo with tiny braids, strong Kampa guys with red yak wool through their hair, monks, nuns, western tourists. It's mesmerising, especially looking at this through a camera lens, trying to get good pictures.

Upon getting back I find a note from Itamar, with whom I'd made a plan to go to Golmud. He'd made plans to meet a Tibetan artist for dinner at 6. It's 8. Damn. Luckily, some of the volunteers from the orphanage had returned from their Everest excursion, so 3 of us go to a Tibetan place by the Jokhang for a stare-fest, as we are the only Westerners to have eaten there for a long time. No menu. The chef takes us to the kitchen - a dark labirintine affair. The whole place feels medieval. In the end, the home-made noodles and tea cost 3 Yuan each (50AUD cents). I'm seriously considering staying in Lhasa for another day, just to buy a Thangha. Janine discourages me: the Thanghkas in Kathmandu are of a higher quality at a fraction of the price.

Getting back, I find Itamar and apologise. He's going to go drinking with some Koreans. The Folk Music Cafe turns out to be one of the coolest bars I'd ever visited... instruments adorn the walls. Anyone is welcome to pick one up and play. There's an upstairs balcony, where we have our party: 4 Koreans, 3 Japanese, a French girl, and 2 Israelis. The highlight of the evening has to be our sing along of X-Japan's "Endless Rain." The drunk Japanese guys simply love it.

I make it back to my room at 2 am. My room mates still aren't there. They come about 3 am. We have a bizarre drunken conversation about foreigners in Japan, go to sleep, then wake at 5 am, as they are taking a jeep to Nam-tso.

"Arrested." Again.

2005-07-21T11:52:00.000+09:00

It was going all too well. I ate a decent breakfast, went to the bus station, bought a ticket for the local price, caught a bus that was leaving in 15 minutes. They guy next to me got spat on by another Chinese guy who'd missed the window. Nothing else of interest happened.

Tsethang turned out to be another Chinese monstrosity of grandiose proportions. However, the people were lovely. So many Tibetan smiles and 'Tashi Dele"'s. Still, I didn't want to hang around for fear of the cops. Walked to the edge of town and eventually a lovely Tibetan lorry driver gave me a lift for a few km. Asked me about the Dalai Lama, but unfortunately I. Refused payment for the lift.

I kept walking. Passed some road workers, then jumped onto the back of a tiny Daewoo yute with 3 Tibetans. Great ride, as the river valley spread out below us with some monasteries on the hillsides. Eventually made it to the village of Rong, 30km out of Tsetang, just as the rain came in. Walked to the edge of town and took shelter by a road junction petrol station with some other Tibetans.

Was waiting when a jeep with 3 cops happened to drive by. Unfortunately, the guy in the front was a high-ranking officer, and knew the score. A few phone calls, and I was loaded into the jeep and made to wait. I decided to play the stupid-student-from-Poland-with-bad-English-and-no-money card. It worked. Soon, I'd made 'friends' with the young cop in the back, who showed me through his CD collection and even apologised for stopping me.

Half an hour later, 2 cops from the foreign affairs branch in Tsetang rocked up. They seemed pissed off, but relaxed once I'd convinced them that I was completely clueless. The officer in charge at the station wasn't so nice, but in the end they took down a report, photocopied my documents and told me to go back to Lhasa without fining me.

Got back to Lhasa at 10pm, hungry and pissed off. Turned out that every hotel was full (Checked 7). Since I'd stayed in Kirey for a few days, I managed to convince the staff to let me sleep on the floor for 15 RMB. The materass had blood stains on it. Oh well.

Circles

2005-07-18T15:34:00.000+09:00

The Chinese government is keen to boast that it has developed tourism in Tibet. Well, it certainly has... bringing in tourbus-loads of mainly rich Chinese and charging them obscene entrance fees to all of the attractions. Potala Palace - 100RMB (15USD), Jokhang - 70RMB, Drepung Gompa - 55RMB. To put things into perspective - the average monthly salary here seems to be 250RMB. I spend under 5-7US per day - living in a clean dorm, eating good food, emailing, taking local busses.

But I found a solution : the kora. Walked 3 times around the Potala with a horde of prayer-wheel spinning grannies yesterday. Almost cried when they started to prostrate. 3 koras of the Jokhang are behind me also. A different atmosphere, given the tourist-infestation. At 10pm, a kid literally grabbed onto me screaming, 'money! money!' I gave him a hug, ruffled his hair, and said 'no'.

Sera Gompa - another kora. Drepung - the highlight of my stay in Lhasa. A young monk waved to us from under a tree, then led us through a side-entrance, gave us a tour of the place, then insisted on feeding us - all just because it was his day off (also the cops day off), and he was keen to practice his English.

Today I went to the seat of the main Oracle. Very tantric temple - mostly wrathful protector deities (the 100 tooth, 100 eyeball type), pictures of mutilated human corpses. The workers patting down the new roof were the highlight - sang and danced as they did their job.

Even after Kailash, I feel that I should burn more karma. After all, I hadn't done that many evil things in this lifetime. So, I have a new insane plan - the holiest pilgrimage in Tibet. If it goes ahead, I'm disappearing for 3 weeks.

Lhasa

2005-07-16T12:23:00.000+09:00

Two days and it's already a love-hate relationship.

I love it for the Tibetan pilgrims walking koras. I love it for the fact you can get Nepalese thali for $4. I love it for the 1 yuan fried spicy potatoes. I love it for the hot shower and clean sheets at the youth hostel. I love it for the asian tourists at the youth hostel. I love it for the fact that at 3700m I'm getting so much oxygen that I feel like I'm on amphetamine.

I hate it for the fact that it is a thoroughly Chinese city, with a few islands of "Tibetan-ness" left for the sake of a tourist industry that almost exlusively benefits the Chiense goverment. I hate it for the fact that everything has a ridiculous entrance fee (Potala - $15USD). I hate it for the fact that within 30 minutes of sitting at even the dirtiest hole-in-the-wall restaurant you will be approached by 5 beggars who won't take "no" for an answer.

Went to Sera monastery, which was closed for some reason. So we did a kora of the place with the Tibetan pilgrims. Highlight: dirty 3 y.o. Tibetan girls trying to 'fly' by hanging onto our backpacks.

This morning we had breakfast at the dirtiest tea-house and met a lovely Tibetan man working for a U.S. NGO. Told us about the TB, Hep A & B problems in rural Tibet. Must be a nightmare trying to get permits for doctors to visit villages and for the transport of essential medicines. Still, it is good that something is being done.

First Day in Lhasa

2005-07-15T00:19:00.000+09:00

I had apprehensions about coming here, but they've partially drifted aside...

The first thing that I've fallen in love with are the hot chips street vendors - 1 yuan (20 cents) per bag.

There is still a Tibetan 'old town' - granted it's 'touristed', but it's buzzing with pilgrims and monks.

Nepalese thali for dinner - $4, but what the hell...

In order to find the thali we talked to some North Americans. The girl was working on some field recording project and was thinking about hitching into east Tibet to find some nomads to record. Might join up.

Kirey hotel is a good choice. Hot showers. Sharing the dorm with a bunch of Koreans and a Japanese girl.

Ran into the same Americans we ran into at Lake Karakol.

The road to God-Knows-Where

2005-07-14T23:56:00.000+09:00

The bus cost 826 Yuan. The Korean girl who spoke Chinese paid 760, the Chinese geologist from Beijing who spoke English paid 726, the lovely Tibetan girl who force-fed us paid 500.

The bus took exactly 72 hours, arriving at Lhasa's obscene north bus station at 6pm today.

Highlights:

- The electricity on the bus going at around 5000m.
- Overnighting at 5000m since the headlights weren't working.
- The leaking radiator on the bus. Had to stop at every stream and lake to refill it.
- Niyma, the lovely Tibetan girl, walking 300m to a lake to fill up the radiator since the drivers were too lazy.
- People spitting on the floor, bleeding on the floor, throwing rubbish on the floor, throwing cigarettes on the floor.
- Eating at a dingy restaurant full of prostitutes and a seedy old guy trying to grope them in turn in some shithole in the middle of nowhere.
- Gong-Zhu, the most beautiful girl I've ever met (according to my definition of beauty... which happens to include self-inflicted cigarette burn marks all up both arms).
- Learning to play 'beat the landlord' (a card game), with Gong-Zhu's 14 y.o.-ish sister sitting with a mean look on her face, a cigarette hanging out of her mouth, slapping cards down with some ferocity.
- Running into Dirk (the German guy who we kept meeting in Kyrgyzstan) in Lhatse.
- Breakfast in Lhatse. Decided to eat Tibetan - Tsampa (fried barley flour), Yak butter tea, Sugar. Quite a portion... obviously we're starting to look like anorexic junkies, and the old Tibetan woman took pity on us.
- PSB checkpoints - no one bothered to check our papers.

Ngari (Western Tibet)

2005-07-11T07:30:00.000+09:00

Arrived at 4 am in Ali today having hitched on a China Post Truck (bargain at 100RMB). As lovely as always, the place was full of pink neon. Walking towards the centre we saw a couple having sex in the middle of the pavement, only interrupted by the woman's tubercular coughing. Now waiting for the PSB to open so that we can get visa extensions and go to Lhasa. Since I really couldn't be bothered going into what I've been doing in detail, here's a rough synopsis:

First, we visited the ruins of the Guge Kingdom, near Zanda (another depressing Chinese town). 8 hours by bus on the scariest road I'd ever been on. Stayed in a hotel owned by Tibetans who were afraid to take us as foreigners, but since it was 12pm...

Took the same bus to a miliary base in the middle of nowhere. Were about to go to sleep in the barracks when another bus came. Ended up in Barga - shithole full of mangy dogs, another Chinese army outpost and impoverished Tibetans living in tents. Met 2 Japanese there who'd been waiting for a truck to Lhasa for 3 days.

Decided to walk the 15km to Lake Manasovar. Regarded by the Hindus as the abode of the mind of Brahman, it is possibly the most sacred lake in the world. Found Chiu Monastery to be closed, under renovation. Stayed with the lovely Abbot and his lovely wife. Gorgeous views of the lake. Very beautiful people. Washed for the first time in 5 days in the mineral baths in the village below.

Hitched on the back of a truck to Darchen, base for the kora of Mt. Kailash. Regarded by the Hindus as the abode of Shiva, it is possibly the most sacred mountain in the world. Darchen is a hole full of concrete, the nastiest toilets I've ever seen, mangy dogs, piles of rubbish everywhere. The only redeeming feature was the Tibetan girl running our hotel, who kept bringing us yak butter tea.

Did a kora (circambulation) of Mt. Kailash. 3 days. 52 kilometres. Highest point 5600m. Stayed at 2 monasteries. Amazing.

Sat on the side of the road for a day and failed to secure transport. Getting back to Darchen had a cup of tea in a tent, had Josh show up from his kora, telling us that a truck was leaving in 5 minutes. Got on the truck.

General observations:

Tibetans are amazing people. Very friendly, they have the warmest smiles I've ever seen, and love to have a joke.

The Chinese soldiers all look like they are under 20. Friendlier than I'd expected.

Food is generally limited to noodles. Yak butter tea is great stuff.

Transport is incredibly expensive. Foreigners get charged double for busses. Hitching is illegal for foreigners. Hitching on the back of a truck is illegal for everybody (as of this year).

If you want to see "Tibet" don't go to Tibet - go to Ladakh, Sikkim, Nepal, West Sichuan Province, etc. None of the monasteries can be classed as functional, even though a lot of effort is currently being spent on rebuilding. In some Chinified towns like Zanda, the atmosphere amongst the Tibetans reminds me of Australian Aborigines in outback outposts... very sad.

Going Legal

2005-07-11T07:20:00.000+09:00

Arnaud, Jonathan and I get up early and proceed to look for the Public Security Bureau. Turns out they've moved... into (surprise) a huge concrete building covered in white toilet tiles. Nobody is there aside from one woman, who makes some phonecalls when she sees us. On the wall, the following 'poetry' :

"Visa alternation and plusing the bamboo slips: Foreigners enters a country queen, in case the manouver which will be go in for outside original capacity have to propose the visa sort and alter the application to person in charge's gear. In case man travelling together have to plus the bamboo slips."

2 Japanese, 2 Austrians, a Korean and a Latvian turn up. The first 5 came in a Jeep. The Latvian girl speaks Chinese, and managed to hitch, hiding under a load of watermelons at the checkpoint.

Then come the PSB : 2 friendly Tibetan women in woolen jumpers with a kid. They fill out the necessary paperwork, take our money, and tell us to visit next year... as if we hadn't violated Chinese law in coming here.

Getting back to the centre of town, we run into Josh, from Beijing, who speaks English and wants to go to the same place as us. There's a bus leaving in 30 minutes. But we have no money. A mad rush around various banks leads us to a back room up a staircase, where everything is sorted out. We grab our bags and leave Ali.

Getting into Tibet

2005-07-11T06:08:00.000+09:00

Day 1

Rocked up at the Kashgar bus station trying to find out when the bus leaves for Yecheng. Turned out that there were apparently no busses on Sundays. Quick decision : let's go today.

A redbean soup with tofu dumplings for breakfast, and our shopping spree begun. First, a whole department store full of random crap - torches, cooking utensils, guitars, t.v.'s, soap. Was under the impression that you couldn't bargain in a department store : wrong. Best find : an L.E.D. torch powered by a single AA battery for $8.

Then some gorgeous young girls dragged us into their clothing store. Quite healthy actually, given that my only pair of pants hadn't been washed since Uzbekistan, was covered with my own vomit and had two sewed up rips in it.

Finally, food. 20 packs of noodles, a few kilos of dried fruit, lollies... all packed into a Chechen bag. We were set to go... or so we thought.

As soon as we got back to the hotel we were confronted with the sight of yesterday's cops escorting three women into their car - the three women who had robbed us. One of them was holding a fat wad of our souveneir money. Into a taxi and to the police station. Lovely place - spitoons everywhere, fool of green mucus and cigarette butts. Then to a fotographer to fotograph our money. Bastards made us pay for the pleasure and for the taxi. Then made us sit for 2 hours doing nothing, in the hope Jonathan would get his phone back.

In the end we just told them we had to leave, or we'd miss the bus.

At the station, we met the Pakistani (Pashtun) dude who'd been waiting for his visa renewal several days prior. He got the visa eventually, at great pain to his wallet. Still, he insisted on buying us a drink. Lovely man.

The bus was quite an experience. Started with 3 passengers, by Yecheng it had about 30... mostly dirty old men coughing up incredible amounts of phlegm thanks to the dust of the Talakaman desert.

Day 2

Got to Yecheng at 1am. Checked into the cheap-ish hotel next to the bus station, slept 6 hours, then took a taxi with tinted windows to A-ba (6km away), where the road to Tibet starts. Was afraid that the Public Security Bureau (PSB) would bust us.

A word about A-ba. It's a completely Chinese town, built mostly of concrete with white toilet tiles plastered on. Order of buildings looks roughly like this: brothel, mechanic's garage, brothel, restaurant, brothel, restaurant, guesthouse, shop. Dust blows through the place all day, turning the sun orange, or blue. Behind A-ba, stretch fields of corn and other vegetables, tended by impoverished, but in our experience, very friendly Uygurs.

Getting to A-ba, we ate breakfast at a restaurant in front of a huge sign saying : "Foreigners shall not be allowed to travel on the road to Ali without permission." We proceeded to try to get a truck. No luck. Everyone made handcuff symbols, and told us to take the bus.

Buying the bus ticket was easy-ish. The seedy bus driver told us to sit down, put on a video and went off for an hour before bothering to sell us the 500 Yuan ticket. Stayed at the same guesthouse as the rest of the people taking the bus. Slept all day, only to emerge for another feed of awesome Sichuanese food.

Also went for a walk through the fields, to find a wasteland behind them full of rubbish, mangy dogs, and a brand new set of multi-storey apartment blocks with nobody living in them.

Getting back, we found a new arrival in the room. Barry, from England, was making his way to Australia by land, where he works in some shithole in the middle of the outback. Barry does this every year - via a different route. Last year, it included Baghdad and Kandahar. This year, both Congos and Sudan.

Day 3

We were still in A-ba, and the food was still the only attraction, aside from a brief episode at the grocery store. Ended up playing a concert on the owner's son's guitar and then signing the guitar afterwards. Quality.

The bus was meant to leave at 12 but didn't. 8 hours later we were finally on it, crammed into bunks designed for midgets. Then... DISASTER, as the cops showed up.

"It's for your own good. This is a dangerous road. 3 Koreans died last month. If you rent a Jeep with a guide you can go..."

We were put into a van and driven to a designated "tourist hotel," but not before the cop had a severe word with 2 more westerners hanging around A-ba.

Naturally, the place was above our budgets. Soon a taxi showed up with 3 more westerners: Helena from Sweden, Elizabeth from Australia, and Jeff from Ireland. All of us sat on the steps of the depressing hotel, in a depressive stupor for an hour, getting stared at by rich Chinese tourists, before a herd of goats turned up from nowhere.

I decided to walk to the bus station hotel, to work off the rage. Ended up doing a circle through Yecheng after asking directions from various Uygurs in Turkish.

Day 4

Got up and decided I was getting to Tibet, no matter what the PSB was going to do to me. Helena was in the same mind. Jonathan seemed happy to come along. Everyone else decided on a different route. But just as we were sitting in the foyer of the hotel, our friend the policeman turned up.

First, he ignored us, and checked our registration papers.

Then: "Do you really want to go to Ali?"

In unison: "Yes."

"If you get in trouble, you will not tell your governments and make trouble for us?"

In unison: "No."

"There is a good bus leaving tomorrow. You can take that bus. But this is the last time you can do this."

Austrian girl starts dancing.

Day 5.

We rock up in A-ba and the bus driver wants to charge us 600 Yuan. We go back to Yecheng to find our friend-the-policeman so he can get on the bus driver's arse. We fail to find him. Coming back, the driver refuses to sell us the ticket. We give him the cop's phone number. The cop turns up and sorts everything out. Everything is legal...

Then the conductor tells us to hide behind some trees in a field peppered with human shit and toilet paper. Arnaud, a French Tibetan Buddhist joins us, and Nikki, a Scottish girl without a clue as to what she is doing. The bus is going to leave 6 hours late. We eat dinner, using the back entrance of a restaurant, then get pushed into a taxi organised by the bus conductor, and get driven outside the town and told to hide behind a dirt embakment. We wait until it gets dark, then get on the bus which comes out of nowhere.

But there's a problem. The bus is full, and the taxi carrying the other half of the party still hasn't arrived. We stop to load a load of luggage onto the roof, just as a dust storm comes through, mixed with pelting rain. Finally the others arrive. We're on the bus about to leave, but there's a problem and a half hour wait. Some guy comes in a taxi and sits down on the floor since there's no room.

10 minutes of driving, and it becomes apparent that the bus isn't going to get to Ali (Engine sounds like William S. Burroughs reading out of Naked Lunch). We turn back and drive to A-ba to change busses.

Day 6.

The bus is lovely. No room to put one's legs, driver decides to keep himself awake at night with bad Chinese pop, everyone is smoking and spitting. Above 4000m you probably couldn't tell the difference between inhaling fibreglass fumes, and cigarette smoke.

In the morning a check point. The driver does some smooth talking, the surly officer lookes at our passports and waves us through.

Beautiful landscape. Barren valleys, brisk streams, a landslide.

By the end of the day we're on a plateau. I'm very glad we're in a bus. Our driver is a genius, navigating through rivers, landslides, as convoys of trucks stay stuck.

Day 7.

We clear a pass in the morning (above 5000m). Running is painful at this altitude. Elizabeth and Jeff are not feeling well.

Arrival in Ali at 10pm. Total journey time 44 hours. Very short.

Up the Karakoram Highway: Lake Karakol and the Mountain of Ice

2005-06-25T00:39:00.000+09:00

It starts with a lesson in ticket-buying. We rock up 30 minutes before the scheduled bus departure and get told that the tickets have been sold out. A French couple rock up. We share a taxi to the international bus station and buy tickets for the bus to Pakistan. 2 1/2 hour wait.

We go into town. Next to the mosque, there's a Chinese woman taking a shit on the nature strip. Breakfast costs little - tofu/spring onion dumplings, and ricewine/milk soup with rice/sesame/nut dumplings. I mail some postcards. Takes the dude 20 minutes to find the stamps. At least I don't need to use Chinese for prices - Turkish is understood.

When we get back to the station, it seems that nothing is going to happen soon. There's the French couple, 3 Americans and a bunch of Pakistani men ogling the western women among them. The bus disappears, a jeep and minibus come. We have to pay 18 yuan extra each if we want to go anywhere. In the end we cave in and end up in a jeep with 3 Americans and an Pashtun dude from Jalalabad.

Good ride - the driver has a stash of Bollywood soundtracks, the van with the French couple breaks down and the Afghan dude almost jumps out of his seat with joy at the sight. The Karakoram highway is stunning - torrents of water, canyons of red cliffs, 7000m mountains looming above it all. We stop at a Kyrgyz roadside market and talk to a kid wearing an "I love Jesus" hat.

Getting to Lake Karakol, what I fear would happen happens : we get mobbed by impoverished people drooling at the prospect of getting our money. First, there's the dude collecting the 50 yuan entrance fee, then there's the dude running the commercial yurt, then there's the dudes with camels, souveneirs, etc. The whole tourist circus. When we make our move to get away from it all we are told that staying anywhere else is illegal and that the police will come and get us. So it's 25 yuan for a floor spot in a yurt.

It's damn beautiful though. Three 7500m mountains encircling a pristine lake, a setting sun.

At least the hot water for my instant shrimp noodles is free. Going for a walk we plot how to get away. We meet Anayidin. He tells us he can take us to his family's house in the Kyrgyz village on the other side of the lake. Ollie also meets Kaparelli, whom Jason had stayed with. We later find out that Kapareli had been taken away by the cops and beaten up.

We get up early the next day and eat breakfast in Kapareli's yurt - Yak ayran and yak milk tea. Anayidin rides out in front of us on his bicycle to make it look like we are travelling seperately. We sneak past the hotels, then rounding a bend come to walk right in front of the shining white Chinese police station complex. I wave to the cops and smile (wearing my turban). One waves back. We're through.

Anayidin's cousin's place is a homely mud-brick place with all the usual Kyrgyz shyrdaks and rugs. We drink tea at his friend's place, then decide to see how high we can go up the Mt. Mustagh-Ata ('father of ice' mountain - 7546m). It's not easy. The lake is at 3600m. Soon we feel like we are breathing through a straw and our bodies have turned to lead. However, dehydration is more of a problem that the altitude - we only have 500ml of water each. Yak shit makes eating snow dangerous.

In the next 6 hours we make it up to what must be 4500m or so. The views are stunning. Two dry valleys on both sides of a ridge, snow caps everywhere, the icy mass of Mustagh-Ata above us. Absolute silence. An eagle flies by around 50 meteres from me. I hear the scrape of air against the feathers. Not a cloud in the sky. We walk down the same ridge and meet some yaks before scrambling down a steep valley wall.

In the village, the kids have come home, they want to have their photos taken. We eat laghman cooked with yak poo and sleep well.

Getting out of Karakol proves as hard as getting in. We spend around 4 hours trying to hitch and even have a bus drive past. In the end I suggest we walk to the tourist hell of Lake Karakol. It's a good move. Heaps of Chinese day tourists doing the Chinese day tourist thing - buying souveneirs, riding camels, taking photos. One of the busses agrees to take us, for free.

Tales of Kashgar: Weeping cyclops on the Silk Road

2005-06-21T16:49:00.000+09:00

Going by my usual Central Asian experience, bazaars start early. So I set the alarm to 7 am Beijing time, which is what the whole country runs on, although no one is sure what the real time is. It's too early. Whilst there are many old guys with beards on donkey carts, nothing seems open. The animal market by the river is non-existent. Jason speaks some Chinese. We find out that the animal market is outside town. $2 taxi ride. The animal market isn't 'happening' either. A few sheep. A few stalls selling sheep-based dishes, with severed heads piled up outside.

We find a tuk-tuk (motorbike with trailer) and catch a ride back to the main market. It's more 'happening' than an hour prior. There's now some dogs and cats in cages by the river (too healthy-looking to be eaten). Still, it's an incredible anticlimax for what the LP calls 'the greatest market in Asia'. The Chinese authorities have built a huge 'modern' concrete structure in 'Uygur style' to house most of the stalls. Very un-atmospheric. We eat some disgusting plov, and decide to take a tuk-tuk back to the animal market. More 'happening' than before, but still lame compared to similar affairs in Kyrgyzstan. We find a bleeding sheep with it's head half-severed, I talk to an American Philosophy professor on a grant-funded trip, and I eat some icecream to get rid of the taste of the plov.

On the tuk-tuk back into town a bunch of middle aged Uygur women get on. One of them proceeds to grope my backpack, sending the rest of the hejab-ed crew into hysterics. Odd. Luckily none of the husbands are present to sever my head.

The outskirts of the big market are more interesting than the center, but more interesting still is the every-day bazaar inside the Uygur old town. This place is a shock - mudbrick houses, dirty kids, not a single Chinese. You walk 200m, and you are in China - big modern concrete structures, everything in Chinese (and Uygur underneath, as it's government policy of Kashi to be bilingually signed).

I start to feel sick. End up at the hotel. The cyclops breathes fire. Then it gently weeps. Jason (yes he is a nursing student): "Oh, so it's like an enema from within." Yes... 10 minutes later, I have a fever, and am shaking with chills. No energy to even go downstairs and buy some water. About an hour later I try the re-hydration salts, coal tablets and Mersyndol. 2 minutes later, I get projectile vomiting. Now, let me tell you, projectile vomiting into squat toilets is quite an art - one I haven't quite mastered yet. 1/3 ends up in the toilet, 1/3 ends up around the toilet, 1/3 ends up going back up my nose. But... I feel much better.

The following day I even make the effort of buying 5 bottles of yakult-like drink, 2 tubs of fruit jelly, and chips with pepsi at the local fast-food joint, "Best Food." Then back to bed for several hours. In the afternoon, I pop out for another bowl of chips, then go for a stroll around the moonlit streets and read Rumi.

Today we wake up and realise that we'd been robbed: both our phones and all of our souveneir money. How? Well, we'd left that in our room during the 2nd time that I'd ventured outside in the past 24 hours (last night's 'dinner'). I also think that my credit card had been flogged, so I cancel it, then find it within an obscure corner of my bag. It could be worse - I also left my camera lying around.

Going to the Public Security Bureau, we find out that they are shut for most of the day. "Come back at 4pm Beijing Time." We go to the post office. Same story. I still have no appetite, but force down a meal of greens and rice. The cyclops has yet to reply.

Getting to Kashgar

2005-06-18T15:52:00.000+09:00

Day 1.

It starts with me realising that my alarm clock is out. We are late for the bus. Turns out the bus is leaving at 10 not 9. Oh, and it's not a bus - but a Russian van with improptu seating. 200 Som ($5USD). We grab some breakfast in a chayhana by the river and come back to find the 'bus' isn't working. Another one has come. We chat to an English student seeing her mother off. Turns out we've been ripped off by 50 som.

The road all but disappears outside Osh. 17 people are crammed into the van. I'm sitting on the spare tyre. Every change of gears is accompanied by a hideous grumbling. The engine stops. We have to push-start the van. Half an hour later, opposite some yurts in a valley, the drive shaft falls off the bus. We picnic on the grass and talk to a dude who's wearing striped black pants, striped black shirt and pointy shoes. He makes wedding videos.

Lunch is in a chayhana overlooking a pretty valley. Plov. Afterwards, the bus starts to climb up the steep valley, and causes the back door to burst half open, covering us in thick dust. After a few hours, we miraculously clear a 3620m pass. Sary Tash is below, on a wide plain with the Pamirs in the background - a 7000 metre line of white mountains.

As we get off the bus, we see another caucasian getting off a scrap-metal truck. Jason is from Sydney, and it has taken him 26 hours to get to Sary Tash from Osh. Our striped friend has a guest house. We stay there, in a pleasant Shyrdak covered room.

Day 2

There's not a cloud in the skies. The whole of the Pamirs are visible. We sit on the side of the road and wait for a truck to hitch on. Around 9:30 one stops. It's long and full of scrap metal. We share the cabin with two Kyrgyz guys going fishing and the 2 drivers. Our packs end up with the scrap metal. It's an amazingy scenic drive. It's also an amazing slow drive, but luckily it hasn't rained for 3 days. One of the two windows works and it's incrediby hot. At around 3500m we stop for lunch and get some Kumyz from a couple of nomads. Kumyz and vodka. Hmm... luckily I don't get the urge to explode as before.

4 pm we come to a checkpoint. It's closed and we have to wait for 2 hours. Jason's truck is there as are his driver friends. 2 more bottles of vodka are consumed. I'm seriously pissed.

We come to the border at night and our driver finds us a dorm with a bunch of old truckers - drinking, smoking, farting and playing cards until midnight. Irkeshtam seems pulled straight out of Mad Max - no running water, no toilet (old Russian trenches make an excellent substitute), skanky kids and dozens of trucks full of scrap metal.

Day 3

We get up in time to cross the border by foot. The officer in charge spends a long time deciding whether to try to extract bribes from us, then comes out with : "please tell people Kyrgyzstan is a good place." In the end my passport is inspected 6 times. We get on another scrap metal truck. The driver tells me about his time in Afghanistan, and how he constantly had an AK next to his gear stick, and how it would get so hot from firing that he couldn't hold it.

The Chinese side is closed in the middle of the day for 4 hours for "lunch". Getting to China is getting to civilisation - there's a temperature measuring gadget, X-ray, computers, and a road. Unforunately there is not bus and we're forced to get a taxi for the 300km to Kashgar ($12). Amazing change of scenery : no trees, no grass - just multicoloured canyons, and streams flowing over the road. When it all flattens out, there are tall white poplars, and people walking all over the road (Uyghur).

Kashgar is very Chinese, despite being full of Uyghurs - something I didn't expect, but which I'm not complaining about. Finally, decent food and not being able to figure out what the hell is happening.

The Reason for the Barricades

2005-06-15T15:27:00.000+09:00

Turns out that we arrived in Osh a day after a riot which left between 0 and 4 dead and 2-20 injured, as security forces opened fire on an angry mob.

The atmosphere in Osh does not point to such violence. We stroll through the park, some guy is singing in a Karaoke tent, there's an old soviet passanger plane sitting in the middle of the park. We walk up to Solomon's Throne and meet some young people who want to take photos with us. Bobur's (the dude who started the Mughul dynasty) mosque is pretty unimpressive, but the setting above osh is great. We walk around the mountain and find a few holy caves visited by muslim pilgrims. This is the most muslim city I've been to in Central Asia by a long shot. I get the sense that many conservative Uzbeks flee Karimov's tyrrany by coming here. The funny thing is that this is such a friendly place - we keep meeting people and chatting to them, end up having dinner with two policewomen.

Getting to Osh

2005-06-14T20:32:00.000+09:00

The Bishkek hit n' run went well. Got there at midday, left our stuff at the helpful CBT office and went to pick up the visa. Come back in 2 hours. No problem. Ate at the university Stolovaya ($1 for soup, salad, bread, potatoes, cabbage, drink) and went to buy more pirate MP3s. The cheerful Russian stall-keeper said that I made her day by coming and told me I should stay in Bishkek. Hmm...

Well, picked up the visa and went down to the Osh Bazaar to take a shared taxi to Osh. Couldn't find the taxi stand. A babushka working at the marshrutka parking found us one. The driver didn't seem like the taxi driver type, so we decided to go with him, but not before eating dinner with the babushka at a place with a bare lightbulb suspended from the ceiling and a box of chocolates tucked behind a wire sticking out of the wall. Highlight of the meal: babushka gets a plate with a bone on it, takes a lump of lard from her soup, dumps it on the plate, dumps the bone in the soup.

Sharing the taxi with us were Ulan, his 2 y.o. son (vomiting from the outset), and Batar - a businessman from Andijan, who could speak some English - e.g. when the Audi's door wouldn't open : "fucking German car, Hitler fucking fascist." Great road - deep narrow canyons, a climb up to a 3600m pass, all in moonlight. Midnight, a dinner stop. An old wooden house, a few rooms with wood-fire ovens. Dim lightbulbs. Awesome tea. 3 am. Kaim pulls over, and falls asleep, snoring... loudly. 5 am. Flat tyre. The road looks like this - 500m of nice even asphalt, followed by 30 metres of no road, and so on for the 700km to Osh. The spare tyre is damaged. Finally a dude on a soviet motorbike with a felt wool cap helps us. Breakfast at a place with a woodfired oven, the tyre is fixed. Midday. Flat tyre again. The road worsens - gravel and dust. Coming to the Fergana valley is like going to a different country - half the people are Uzbek - conservative Uzbek (we even see women with faces covered). There people walking on the roads with their livestock, Daewoo marshrutkas. In one word : chaos.

The trip takes 20 hours.

In Osh we find an apartment in a soviet apartment block that costs $4 per night. This city is awesome - an explosive ethnic mix, a lively bazaar to display it and a huge rocky hill in the middle of it all with an ancient mosque. A muddy river runs through the middle of the city - chayhanas wrap themselves around the banks, old dudes with long silver beards sit inside munching on Shashlyk and sipping tea. There are also 2 straight modern (read: soviet) tree-lined streets. One of them has an improptu barricade through it... a potent reminder of what happened here 2 months ago and what could happen again.

Kochkor

2005-06-13T17:43:00.000+09:00

I knew this was the right place to visit as soon as the Lada we were in sped past some sand dunes, a mountain lake and a bunch of dudes fishing in a river whilst looking at their herd of cows all within the same 10 minutes. The main street is lined with huge poplars, and the electricity poles are decorated with metal cut-outs of ships, rockets and other militarily-geared economic Soviet-era produce. We went to CBT (a Swiss-run NGO that has a network of home-stays, etc, throughout Kyrgyzstan) and worked out a place to stay and what we would do for the next few days.

Mira's place was nice. Outdoor toilet. Big dog (tied up). 2 sons (18 and 12). 1 daughter (9yo). In the back yard, a Lada 1500, with it's engine pulled out. My room was traditional Kyrgyz - bedding on the floor, Shyrdaks everywhere (traditional Kyrgyz 'carpets' made from compacted dyed wool).

I spent the next day doing little. Started off with a tour of the local graveyard - there are huge mud-brick sarcophagi topped with Muslim crescents and Soviet red stars side by side. Also some metal frame constructions in the shape of a yurt. Went to the town square and sat down. Talked to some dude called Mars, who was prancing around in a black suit and shaking everyone's hands. He wanted to show me some whale bones. Tried to find vegetarian food, and settled for some pieroszki from a babushka who told me I should eat meat. Had some Kumyz (fermented mare's milk) and talked to a dude who'd served in Berlin.

In the evening we went to a local park. The whole place is overgrown and people take their cattle and sheep in to graze as their kids play on the rusted swings, or the dysfunctional merry-go-round. Met some drunk dude with a toddler in his arms who proceeded to teach me about the deep meaning-ful-ness of "Salam Aleykum" and tried to kiss me afterwards. We went to the town square and met another dude who wanted to go and get drunk with us. When I refused, he came out with, "do you respect me?!" and became pissed off... but given he could hardly stand up, it was hardly an issue.

The next morning we set off early, walking out through some fields to the village of Oisakeev. From here it became obvious that Kochkor was surrounded by mountains on all sides. Very tall mountains. Met some dude who wanted to rent us his horse. Kept walking, eventually coming to the foot of a valley. From here it was a steep climb up a muddy road, as the clouds hovering above us burst. Ollie was helped by Mukai, who was coming up the valley on his horse to visit his brother. We also ran across Diirk, the German dude we'd run across 3 times previously. Best quote: "In Africa 2 things were most important: earplugs and pepper spray."

Eventually, we met some kid throwing rocks at his sheep and asked if he knew Nurjan. He didn't, but the next 2 yurts we came across were hers. Cool woman. Very tough and scary. "Are you married? When will you got married? Young?! I got married when I was 15."
3 young daughters, 1 toddler son, all living in the yurts for the summer (they do have a normal house in Kochkor).

Russian joke:
Q: Why are Kyrgyz yurts round?
A: So that Russians can't piss in the corner.

The following day we hiked up to Kol Ukok, a glacial lake at around 3000 metres. It rained and we got soaked. Spent the rest of the day in the yurt, churning cream by hand and participating in a weird version of "spin the bottle", where you spin the bottle then sing a song. Livin' On a Prayer went down well.

It was nice to stay in a yurt again. These constructions create a very special space - acting like a filter on the fabric of reality, taking out the harshness of the elements but letting in light, smell and sound of what's around - in this case a few goats, galloping horses, and a fast flowing stream. When you emerge from one, the world is strangely transformed - more intense, almost too intense to take in.

The walk down proved more exciting than we'd hoped. Met Mukai again, this time with two bags of wool. Then, walking across some fields we met a dude on his horse. Kengegul invited us to stay at his house, and when we refused, came out with ol' the "do you respect me?" line. 5 minutes later we were sitting down with his wife, daughter, neighbour, neighbour's wife, neighbour's son. Lunch: butter, cream, kefir, bread.

Kengegul loved Poles. "Ahh... you fought the Germans, Germans were fascist, very bad people, fascists." He also loved Brezhniev and Chlebovaya (bread) vodka, which we had to drink, with me having to make the toasts. We went outside for some photos and some random dude in an army jacket rocked up on a horse with two bottles of Kumyz which were instantaneously emptied. Somehow my vegetarianism came up. I gave bad meat in Australia as an excuse. Kengegul came up with the perfect solution: "Here, have my goat."

In Oisakeev, we were ambushed by about 20 Kyrgyz kids by the mosque. The good thing about Kyrgyz kids is that they don't beg you for money, or a pen. They are simply curious and friendly. Speaking Russian helps. But then, a greater danger arose: the babushka with +10 strength glasses and huge walking stick:

"How many of you are there? Where are you from? Why are you here? What are you looking for?" She quickly became convinced that we were spies looking for ore in the surrounding mountains. When one of the kids tried to intercede, she just told him to shut up and kept nagging us. Eventually we were free of the babushka, but not the kids. Well, all they wanted was for me to take a photo of them. I obliged.

Bishkek - East Kyrgyzstan

2005-06-08T13:01:00.000+09:00

Day started badly. Woke up at 4am because of a random nightmare, and lay awake for 3 hours thinking up ways to do grevious bodily harm to the Chinese consul in Bishkek. Ate breakfast and hit the road, the wrong road and ended up walking a few blocks to find a marshrutka heading for the bus station. Upon getting in, by pants were caught upon a nail and ripped at the knee. Found bus tickets without a hassle and a bus, before a policeman took me into a private room and searched everything thoroughly, including my money "for counterfeit." Subesequently, I think he managed to pocket some, despite my paying attention to what he was doing.

On the bus, we met Jazgul, a Kyrgyz girl studying English who invited us to her house in a village. Ollie wanted to do a 3 night hike, but this depended on the weather - hence procrastination with our answer. We said we'd call her that night. Subesquently, it turned out that the mobile phone network in rural Kyrgyzstan doesn't work.

Bus ride was pleasant, if a bit long for the short distance that we'd covered. The aircon worked. We stopped for lunch at a bus station flanked by some high mountains - smoked fish from Issy-kul lake and bread. The lake was stunning - the deepest blue I'd seen since Van Golu in Turkish Kurdistan.

Arriving in Karakol, we got off in the centre and walked a block to our hostel - a pleasant wooden Russian house, with an English-speaking owner who proceeded to tell me stories about the Polish king Jan Sobieski. Very Russian-looking country town, with a predominantly Kyrgyz population.

The second day we got up at 5 am and walked to the Sunday animal market. Quite a weird affair - old guys drinking vodka (yes, 5am), munching on pieroszki and pulling sheep, goats and calves out of the boot of their Zhiguli, or stuffing them into the Zhiguli. The horse section was the most exciting, as some of the horses would start to buckle not liking their neighbours.

We decided to go up to Altyn-Arashan - a 5 hour walk up a valley to an altitude of 3000m. Damien, an Australian who'd come up through Afghanistan, Tajikistan decided to come part of the way with us. Nice walk - tall spruce trees, a roaring flooded mountain stream, horse herds, snow-capped peaks in the distance. It took 4 hours. We met a total of maybe 3 people.

Altyn-Arashan is amazing - at 3000m it's just a couple of wooden houses, a few sheep, horses and goats. We decided to stay at the former Kolhoz (collective farm). Good choice. The caretaker, Alexander, was incredibly interesting - a very educated, friendly yet reserved demeanour - I bet he had a few stories hidden away. We could eat dinner at his house, and use the scorching mineral baths. Two copulating goats and the fact that a bear had ripped up two horses up the valley completed the experience.

Aside from that there wasn't much to do - the next day was rainy, and a walk managed to get us soaked and wet. We walked down the day after and found that Rolando and Laura (Brazil - met in Samarkand) were staying at our hostel. Great folk. More Iranian prison stories to light up an evening.

Heading to Kochkor today where we hope to organise a horse trek.

The Smile of Bishkek

2005-06-03T14:19:00.000+09:00

It all begins with a guy called Danko. One day he happened to be walking down a random Bishkek street with a backpack when a drunk Indian man stumbled out of a posh restaurant and invited him in to a banquet. The banquet was frequented by the cream of Bishkek's diplomatic crop and this made Danko rather uncomfortable given his dishevelled appearance and clothes which had probably not seen a washing machine for several weeks. He began to drink and as he began to drink he began to talk. He met a Canadian girl who happened to mention that she had quit her job the previous day - maths/computer teaching at an international school.

Danko somehow woke up the following morning (possibly in a park) and proceeded to walk towards the train station, when through his alcohol induced stupor he remembered the Canadian girl and the international school. Not long after he was standing in the principal's office pretending that he was a teacher looking for a job. Reply : when can you start. The possibility of living in Bishkek (aka Reality) hit Danko a little too hard, and he decided to worm his way out of the situation by demanding an outrageous salary - "I've never worked for less than $1000USD a month." Reply : "My salary is $800. BUT... we really need you. OK."

I met Danko in the wonderful Hostel Mashhad in Tehran - on my last night there. All the elements of a good place to stay : a rape rumour among Japanese backpackers, dirty sheets, smelly toilets, an owner with a heavily jelled side-part (i.e. pedophile hair) and a resident people-smuggler ($1000 a pop to get Pakistanis and Afghans into Western Europe), whom I had just gotten drunk with - risking deportation and a lashing in the process.

With 4 months salary, Danko had bought himself a nice little flat in Bishkek and that is where I'm staying now, together with Veronika, who is looking after the flat, the 3 resident fish and 2 turtles, her husband Alexi, and their cat Max. Not a bad arrangement. Last night I cooked for the first time in a month - Indian curry. I even managed to find dried tumeric and ginger roots at the chaotic Osh bazaar. However, the Kyrgyz vodka was not a good move.

Bishkek is nice. Like Almaty, a soviet grid with wide tree-lined streets, but smaller, cooler and less noisy. Not a bad place to be stuck, and it looks like I'm stuck. My Chinese visa has a mistake in it which the consulate has refused to fix, saying, "we can cancel the visa. Then you can apply for a new one if you get an invitation from a tour agency and buy a new visa. It will cost you $30 and it will take a week." Went to the embassy and had a bitch. They told me to call back after 3. We shall see - I might just go and apply for a job at a random English school.

Almaty

2005-06-01T14:47:00.000+09:00

It's a gorgeous Almaty morning - sun shining on the snow capped peaks to the south (visible through our hotel window), thumping Russian techno on the music channel I'm watching. Yet, I have a problem. "Cavity mate," and no uncle Les to fix it... well, I go and find the next best thing - a dentist named Timur. He's actually got sterilized equipment, knows what he's doing and complains about eastern european dental technology upon spotting my nasty Polish fillings. 20 minutes, 20 dollars and it's done.

Almaty is happenning. There's a Krishna restaurant - the poshest Krishna restaurant I've ever been to. There are also ATMs (with money) and Burger King. Yet it's hot, the streets are congested, and there aren't enough trees. We fail to meet any people aside from a guy who claims that the police robbed him of all his money. In the end we go to a park and do the Russian thing - beer from the Kiosk.

The following day, a trip to the mountains. From the outset it's a disaster, as we find that the street which the Lousy Planet lists as the place to take the bus is one way. The wrong way. We find the bus eventually and get off at the roundabout to take the second bus, up to the mountain. 2 of the 3 busses listed in the book don't exist. The third has stopped running. A friendly Russian babushka tells us which marshrutka to take.

We get to the gate of the national park, and don't get charged as the dude in the booth thinks we're resident Russians. We pass a column of soldiers and follow the road up a valley when it starts to rain. By some miracle, a 4WD with three lovely Russian dziewuszkas pulls over and they give us a lift to the start of the trail.

Well, it's not really a trail - it's a huge pipe, bringing water from the lake down to the hydroelectric plant below. A few kilometres walking on the pipe and we're at the Bolshoye Almatinskoye Ozero. Lovely green colour, stunning 3000m-ish mountains around it. But not much water for a Bolshoye Ozero. We think about going up to the Astronomical Observatory to look at huge rusted Soviet telescopes, but the not so delicate sound of thunder persuades us to do otherwise. Good move - within 2 minutes we are soaked, sheltering under a huge boulder.

Going down is harder than going up. At the bottom of the trail we meet the dziewuszki. They washed the car and did nothing besides. We keep going down, and Ollie starts to feel ill. No fermented camel milk. We're about to start trying to hitch in desperation, when the dziewuszki rock up to save us once again. The owner of the car lives close to the Autovokzal, so we end up getting a lift straight to our door. Not a bad arrangement.

Welcome to Kazakhstan

2005-05-30T12:18:00.000+09:00

First thing in the morning, we caught a bus - not exactly the right bus - but the conductor told us where to get off and where to walk. Half a kilometre later we were at a bazaar with a marshrutka stand. 20 cents later we were crammed in a tiny Daewoo van heading for the border.

The border was busy, but unproblematic. Ollie accidentally stated that he was taking more money out of Uzbekistan than he brought in. The officials didn't care - we got our stamped forms and were off to the Kazakh side. A beefy bald soldier stopped us and asked where we were from, then whisked us through as he proceeded to hassle a crowd of Uzbek babushkas for bribes.

On the other side, a crowd of begging kids surrounded us. I thought I'd give them some peanuts. Bad move. Very bad move.

Another marshrutka, $2.50, for the 100km to Shymkent. This country is beautiful - kilometres of rolling green hills and in the distance the snow-capped Alteau Range.

Shymkent is rather chaotic. First of all we're attacked by a horde of taxi-drivers in full feeding frenzy: "Brat! Mercedes! Gdzie vam nada?!" We find the bus ticket office. 3 pricings - front, middle and back of the bus. We get the cheapo then find the luggage storage and walk to the bazaar. Decent size bazaar - mostly clothes. We have a bowl of plov with bread and tea for $1 each in a place made of plastic stapled to a wooden frame and a bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. Killer. The people here are very different from the Uzbeks. In fact, it almost feels like Mongolia, with the heavy bone structure and the asiatic features and fashionable Korean clothes.

The centre of town is rather Soviet - straight streets, green trees and a huge MIG suspended above a hill over a mosque. We walk through another bazaar and buy some cherries. The meat section is the best, with flies crawling over everything. One woman is selling fish from Sweden, she chastises my vegetarianism, trying to sell me a chicken.

We walk back to the bus station. I find a babushka sitting at a stall with big containers and bowls on top of them. I decide to 'have a bowl', not knowing what the hell is inside the container. Highlight of the day - fermented milk and rice soup. Her dried fermented cheese balls are also great.

At the bus station we find that there is a time difference between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan - the hard way : we've missed our bus. The arsehole at the gate refuses to give us a refund, to the bafflement of the woman who sold us the tickets in the first place. But we have no time for arguments, there's a bus in another part of town in 15 minutes.

We buy tickets and find out why the back seats cost less - the hard way : you can't open the windows, the ceiling latches are broken and the aircon doesn't work. It's like a sauna. The Russian guys in front of us take off their t-shirts. 4 hours later there's a break at a restaurant. We hang out with a bunch of orthodox priests and Nurhan - a pro-boxer who beat Kosta Zhou in 1981 in amateur league, and who shall be fighting in the World Championships.

After 13 hours on the bus we get to Almaty. It's surprising, but I'm still able to sweat.

Uzbekistan

2005-05-26T21:34:00.000+09:00

One of my most vivid memories is that of Tashkent airport in 1987 - stepping outside the plane, and being hit by a wave of fragrant dry air and sun. It's taken a while to finally come here, and the place has so far overstepped expectations - green, modern and cosmopolitan with an efficient public transport and wide uncongested roads, it's somehow reminds me of Moscow, but is much, much more pleasant and interesting. Maybe two nights (just to get a Kazakh visa, buy Mp3 CDs and courier stuff home), and we're (Ollie and I) off to Kazakhstan.

Travelling in this country has been incredibly easy and comfortable, if more pricey than I had hoped. My travelling companion Adam is mostly to blame for this, due to his time constraints and travel ethic that is diametrically opposed to mine. Transport-wise, busses are overpriced and leave at inconvenient times, arriving at inconvenient times, trains are virtually non-existent between the provincial towns. Hence, shared taxi were our main mode of transport. Accommodation wise, there is a network of homestays ($5-10, breakfast included), where you can usually get huge dinners ($1-2.5).

Some places we went:

Bukhara - the largest preserved old town in Uzbekistan. Known for it's repressive khanate, which even had some unfortunate British envoys imprisoned in a 'bug-pit', then beheaded in the main square. I hated it. With no economy to speak of, the citizens have focussed almost exclusively on sucking out as many tourist dollars from the bus-loads of fat Germans and French that get out of huge tour busses. A surreal theme-park atmosphere - souveneir stalls everywhere; the tourists often seem to outnumber the locals. The highlights were an old guy who showed us around a ruined medressa, and the babushka who cooked us amazing 5-course meals every night.

Khiva - famous for slave-trading and a khan who used to have people impaled and thrown from minarets. It's a similar story to Bukhara, but smaller and hence less menancing. More interesting after dark - we saw a guy walking his sheep on a lead. Still, the area outside the old town was better than the clean and polished interior of the town walls. We stayed at a 200yo place next to a medressa and got incredibly drunk with the highly-amusing owner, having our arses beaten at chess in the process.

Nukus - isolated, soviet-esque capital of Karakalpakstan, much warmer than the rest of the country, with the people much more 'asiatic' in appearance. Excellent art museum, featuring works smuggled out of gulags. Also a great display on traditional Karakalpak life.

Monyaq - once Uzbekistan's main port on the Aral sea. Now, a bio-weapon-contaminated dust-swept decrepid hole in the middle of a desert, with some rusting boats stuck in the sand dunes around it.

Samarkand - one of my favourite places in the world. Bustling, colourful bazaar, not directed at tourists. Huge graveyards and mausoleums. The architectual jewel of the Registan complex. Winding streets of the old town filled with Tajiks in traditional dress. Straight tree-lined avenues of the new town, bustling with young people of many ethnicities - Koreans, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Russians. Oh, and Bahodir B&B - friendly owner, leafy courtyard, tasty $1 dinners.

Travelling like a tourist has really put me in a bubble though (that's why I hate to travel as a tourist). Life is damn hard here. The cotton-farmers riding on donkey carts must make next to nothing. Petrol is cheap 30 cents/pl, but in Turkmenistan it's 7 cents (we actually did a backyard smuggled Turkmen petrol deal at one stage) and a monthly pension is $20. No one seems to be concerned with the politics here - the events of Andijan seemed to raise hardly a reaction. Yet everyone says that life in the USSR was much, much better - even the old man whose brother died in a gulag.

Crossing a closed border

2005-05-14T16:44:00.000+09:00

I get off a train that cost me 80 cents for a 6 hour Kupet ride with an elderly Turkmen couple and a woman with her two childern and make my groggy way out of the station. Naturally, a policeman stops me an interrogates me. He finds me a taxi, which I have to take to the border. I talk the driver down to $8 for the 40km ride, but that's as low as he'll go. Damn.

The ride takes us through a desert with grazing camels and across the massive, muddy Oxus river. Naturally, there's a police check point and I get the usual paranoid treatment from the officer in charge : "Why are you here? Who are you? What did you do in Turkmenistan? Isn't your visa expired?" Obviously the moron can't read. He can't really speak Russian either, and so one of the recruits - a relaxed young guy - ends up translating into English. Well, they let us go, only to have the traffic police stop us 2 km later and attempt to fine us for a malfunctioning handbrake. Who needs a handbrake in Turkmenistan anyway - the whole country is as flat as surfboard.

Customs, surprisingly, is no problem. The soldiers are friendly and eager to practice their English. I get waved through, and walk the 1 km of no-man's land to the Uzbek post.

Half of this distance is covered by a line of trucks, the Turkish and Iranian drivers picnicing in the shade. They tell me the border is closed and invite me to drink some tea.

Right enough, the border is closed. But the soldier in charge, passes me along to his friend a few metres down, who radios his officer. 20 minutes later, I get the medical examination : "всё нормално?" "да" "но, даваи" "Everything ok?" "Yes" "Ok, off you go." The passport control is just as straight forward.

Then comes customs. They look at my two forms and proceed to tear apart my bag. "What's this? What's that?" They take out every single box of medicine and question me about it. They even look at my dirty socks and undies. Finally they count my money and let me go.

The guys outside are having a good time relaxing. There's no taxi but they say that a tourist bus will come soon and that I should wait for it. In the meanwhile I get pushed into an improptu performance. They really enjoy "All Along the Watchtower."

The bus comes and I get a free ride to Bukhara, with the French-speaking guide. He shouts me lunch and then we take a shared taxi together to Samarkand. The driver is an ex-boxer who had had his hair fall out from working in a nuclear test site in Kazakhstan. Every second sentence he says contains the words "на хуй" (fucking). I ask him about the speed limit in Uzbekistan (we are doing 160km/ph). Answer : "Depends how much you have to bribe the cops."

In Samarkand the B & B is great. Leafy courtyard garden, litres of free tea, dinner and breakfast, clean room with bathroom. All for $10. The people are great. There's an Italian photographer, a Belgian couple going to Tajikistan, two French people working in Kabul, and many many more. But the topic of conversation is sobering. Andijan is rioting, 2000 prisoners have escaped, the police are firing on crowds, a suicide bomber has been shot outside the Israeli embassy. With the Kyrgyz border closed many of us don't know how to leave this country.

Mashhad

2005-05-08T18:35:00.000+09:00

Sina invites me to stay with him and I agree. He is not into Ta'arof - the Iranian practice of offering you something without really meaning it - and I'm very happy when he lets me chip in on the taxi ride. Due to the constant scamming of pilgrims, the taxis in Mashhad have meters, so for once I'm not worried about being ripped off. Plus, I'm with an Iranian.

Sina's 'cave' is pretty cool. An architecture student, his whole house is covered by posters of various designs and cluttered with models. Pretty versatile guy - plays basketball, umpires baseball, writes poems, listens to cool music, makes great photos. We sit down to eat some lunch, then take a taxi to Hooman and Pooya's place.

A family of architects, their house is rather interesting, the drafting room in particular. Sina tells me that he goes to see the two identical twin brothers whenever he feels bad. They are never unhappy. I believe him. There are few people I've met with so much warmth, and such a lasting sense of humour.

The plan is to sneak me into the Mausoleum of Emam Reza - holiest site in Iran, closed to non-muslims. We first enter the enormous new courtyard, half finished concrete structures surrounding it. A guards pads me down, but it's no problem. The Jameh mosque is superb. The brothers explain that you are dwarfed by the greatness, but are able to relate to and find yourself in the details of the flowers or the intricate calligraphy. On the side is a huge staircase, carved out of a single piece of wood, with the doors shut. According to legend, the 12th Emam shall ascend it at the end of the world, when he returns.

We take off our shoes, and proceed to enter the mausoleum. It's amazing.... halls and halls, the walls and ceilings covered entirely by a mosaic of mirrors. Within each hall people praying - Arabs, Iranians, women, men (although some sections are gender-segregated). Finally, the tomb of the Emam - a shifting mass of bodies, each one straining to touch the sacred sarcophagus. The women are in a specially segregated, glass corridor - a mass of black. The prayers are mixed with weeping. The atmosphere is like nothing I've ever seen.

Leaving Tehran

2005-05-07T17:24:00.000+09:00

On my last day, I get up at 7 am, grab some felafel (the guy doesn't want my money) and make my way to the train station. Naturally, the dudes selling tickets can't comprehend why I want to go second class to Mashhad, but I get a ticket anyway. I take two busses up through 20km of Teheran's sprawl, then a savari (shared taxi) with a guy I meet on the bus (pays for the taxi). I proceed to look for Christophe's house in this beautifully leafy suburb of north Tehran.

He lives at the end of Islam Ddend street. The "Dead End of Islam" is quite nice - huge garden, flowers, swimming pool, two dogs and a recording studio... and a psychiatric hospital. Christophe's grandfather studied psychiatry in France, married a French woman and set up a psychiatric hospital in his back yard. Christophe is quite relaxed. He takes me up on a walk in a mountain valley north of his house, and we chat about artistic life in Iran and politics.

From there, a range of bizarre things happen. First, we meet Andreas (the German I met in Shiraz, then again in Eshfahan). Then as we return to Christophe's house, his partner, Marnoosh, turns up with a friend who is taking the same train to Mashhad. I travel with him to another friend's house, then to the train station.

Six people in the comparment - Mohammed, an IT student, two girls studying architecture, and two women wrapped up in black chador (pilgrims). They have a problem with being in the same compartment with two men. Enter a mullah and his friend. First thing the mullah does, is gives the architecture students a sermon : "Shame on you, you are from Masshad and half your hair is showing from under your hejab!" They change comparments. David's friend Hooman, rocks up, only to face this request from the mullah: "Please tell this young man about Islam." I evacuate to the dining car. It's a great train - chilled out university students in tight clothes, girls with half their hair showing, and women wrapped up in chador and mullahs.

Return to Kurdistan - Day 1

2005-05-05T01:09:00.000+09:00

It almost feels like a miracle as Charlie and I spot each other on Enquab Square in Sanandaj, capital of Iran's Kordestan province. It's 10 am and the streets are bursting with life - homicidal taxi drivers, crippled beggars, Kurdish women in colourful sequinned dresses, Iranian women in black chador, Kurdish men in boiler suits with head-scarves, Iranian men in shirt and pants. It's a world away from any other Iranian city. We go to have breakfast in the bazaar and an old Kurdish man insists on paying for our meal. Still, we have one problem - we know where we want to go, but don't know how to get there and lack a decent map.

First, we try a bookshop. The friendly owner digs and digs behind a pile of books, and emerges with a map only slightly better from what I already have. We try a travel agent - they try to get us a taxi driver. We try the museum - only the poor map I recieved the day before. Finally, I decide to try the army base, not being quite sure whether it's an army base or home of the dreaded "Komiteh" religious police. The soldiers are friendly, but we get directed to the museum. So much for the map.

Giving up, we do our food shopping. First, some dry fruit - apricots and figs, then some cheese. This is a problem, as every shop we go to only has one box, and we want two. At last we go to a bread factory - fresh pieces of levan rolled out on a conveyor belt. Two guys who speak some English walk by. We talk to them and they take us to their friend who might have more information. This is a bad idea. Within minutes, a crowd of people has gathered around us. Some people say the security situation on the road is dangerous. Some say the river has flooded. An English teacher comes past and tells me not to listen to anyone. We take his advice.

Half an hour later we are on a minibus headed for Sarvabad. We only know this : it's the closest town to Owramantakht (where we want to go). Getting off, we rush to the first shop with a old Kurdish man, hoping for some advice. Unfortunately, he panics at having to talk to a foreigner and a crowd of high-school students take his place. Some tell us it's dangerous. Others say it's impossible. We head for the army base. The bemused officer tells us to take a taxi. I suggest to Charlie that we cross the river and visit the village on the other side.

Within a few minutes we are tramping through fragrant flowering meadows, surrounded by some local villagers. They point out the bridge and a path in the steep mountainside above the village. The village is very friendly - 3 invitations for tea which we unfortunately have to refuse, with only 3 hours of sunlight. We scramble up the mountain and are hit by a thunderstorm. 10 minutes under a boulder and the sun is shining again. We meet an old man, his son and their donkey. He tells us it will take 3 days to Owramantakht. The son seems to think otherwise.

Another thunderstorm, another boulder. We meet a group of local men. They give us the names of 3 villages and videotape the conversation. We keep walking, amazed by how lush the vegetation is. Travelling with Charlie gives me a new perspective on the world thanks to his botanical expertise. Finally, we see some goats on what becomes a shelf above a steep canyon. I look closer and spot stone houses.

It's like stepping 500 years back in time : no running water, no road, no electricity, everyone in traditional dress. We meet Rafool who knows a few words of English, and ask him if we can pitch a tent. He won't hear of it. He rushes us to the nearest hut and begins to toss aside the borders which block the door. 10 minutes later his mother appears, with a woolen floor mat. 10 minutes after that, she re-appears, this time with a jug of sour goat milk, a basket of bread and a bowl of panir. Some other people come - firewood, blankets, pillows. We protest, "no, we have food, we have tent", gesticulating feverently and pointing at our packs.

They simply won't hear of it. It turns into a big party, with half the men of the village gathered around the fire inside the hut. When they see we are tired, they all leave. We fall asleep quickly, watching the twinkling lights of Sarvabad below.

Return to Kurdistan - Day 2

2005-05-04T16:01:00.000+09:00

We are woken by the sound of a donkey. A few minutes later Rafool comes in and re-starts our fire. We munch on our breakfast, drink tea and go to examine the village "soccer field". Women are shaking milk in sheep-skin containers, making yoghurt, the men are heading out with their flocks. We also head out, having said our partings.

A steep path eventually leads us onto a flower-covered plateau. We only meet some old men with their donkeys. The path keeps climbing among the grasslands with awesome views of the valley below. It soon becomes apparent that we will need to cross the 2000-3000 metre mountain range that was looming above us the day before. I'm thoroughly exhausted. Charlie and I discuss the villagers diet over our own lunch. Wouldn't these people get malnourished, living only on animal products, with no cultivation of crops? A man turns up to answer our question. Hamad is a forager. Every day he climbs up the mountain and picks edible grasses for the folks in the village below. He shows us what we can eat. Quite tasty actually.

After an hour climb we reach the high pass, and are hit by two things - a staggering view of a 2000 metre drop into the valley below with the mountains forming the Iran/Iraq border on the other side, and a massive hail-storm. Running/sliding down the steep rocky path we make it to a Chaykhana. After a short wait, the storm passes and the sun is out again. The rocks are hurting my feet. Hamad points out where his friend fell off a cliff and died. After another hour we meet two women - also foragers, they are Hamad's sister and mother in law.

Just above the village of Zhivar, we part ways. There are fields enclosed within stone fences and small orchards of pomegranate. There is also a waterfall where a woman is doing her washing. We try to find out if the water is drinkable, but fail to communicate. Her children fall over laughing at our miming efforts. Out comes the iodine.

The river is actually the main road into the village, and we are forced to balance on partly submerged rocks as we make our way down. The village itself is a bit of a disappointment after Morodol - there is power and running water, and even a shop and a school. People are friendly, and we soon have a crowd of schoolboys following us. They try to practice their English, and tell us that their English teacher lives in the next village and that we should meet him.

The road down winds and winds, with the roaring Sivar river below. One of the boys points out where his father drove off a cliff, another shows us where his uncle died. Eventually we make it to Bolbur village, but the English teacher isn't home. We decide to head out of the village and camp. There's only an hour of daylight left, and we've been walking for 9 hours.

The teacher comes as we buy a sack of potatoes and some matches. Mehdi refuses to let us camp. He insists we come to his house and stay with his family. We eventually cave in. Mehdi and his family are lovely and we eat dinner on the floor, watching kurdish music videos. The also show us a DVD of the dervish festival held in Owramatakht - long haired men dancing themselves into a trance to the sound of frame drums. I play them Tom Waits' "Downtown Train" and we go to sleep.

Eshfahan

2005-04-28T20:58:00.000+09:00

Coming to Eshfahan, I noticed one thing - I was really tired. As I got off the bus and dealt with the whole "Mister! Mister! Money change! Taxi!" business, I realised that Iran was starting to seriously piss me off. The young guy who put his face 10 cm from mine at the bus station felafel shop and proceeded to ask me inappropriately random personal questions certainly didn't help to make me feel "Welcome in Eshfahan Mister!"

Chinbotsu. This Japanese word means 'sinking ship' and usually is used to described a hobo backpacker who stays in a hotel for too long... I got to Amir Kabir Hostel by jumping on the first random bus heading in what seemed like the right direction. Dorm was full, but Junko had told me about the room with no bed. At 25,000 R ($3.50AUD) per night, "the mosque" has got to be the cheapest place in Eshfahan. Being "closer to God" (in the owners own words) has become addictive. The people here are great. Met a Czech couple heading to Afghanistan. Was about to go to Teheran and get myself an Afghan visa when Charlie turned up. A Malaysian student living in New Zealand, he happenned to have a tent and a desire to hang out with some Kurdish nomads. Hence, change of plan - we're meeting in Sanandaj on the 30th, then hiking through the villages near the Iraqi border.

However the strangest thing happened on my first night in Amir Kabir. Heading out the front door, I met none other than Eijiro-san - one of my favourite students from Japan. I'd actually been thinking about him a few weeks prior, given his interest in Eastern Europe. Well, the focus of interest has certainly changed. 10 minutes later we were out to see the Zarkuneh - a traditional Persian sport. Very weird: a group of guys in the middle of a ring engage in super-masculine feats of strength while another guy beats a drum and recites Hafiz.

The next day we hung out near the river, having some tea in a teahouse underneath one of the bridges' arches. Interesting atmosphere, with many people picnicing by the river. Aside from the riverside, the other main fat-camera-toting-German attraction in Eshfahan is the Emam Khomeni Square: home of 2 magnificent mosques and one palace. Ok, it's very beautiful, but it's also packed with tourist souveneir shops and most of it is under renovation : hence the difficulties in making decent photos. Still, I will be happy to sit here for two more days and do very little aside from strolling around the cit, playing Saz and eating icecream.

Yazd

2005-04-26T14:46:00.000+09:00

You really wonder about why there's a city here - rocky desert, sandy desert, desert mountain, and... Yazd - a sprawling modern city and with a sprawling ancient mud-brick town. Unscathed by Genghis and Timur, it is now feeling the influence of a modern way of life, as fashionable youths hoon through the twisting mud-brick lanes on motorbikes with no regard for pedestrians. Still, it's easy to imagine what life was like 400 hundred years ago, as you pass men in turbans and women with black chador clenched in their teeth.

I feel awful. No particular reason. I walk through the old mud-brick lanes and get lost in the maze a few times. Finally I make it out onto a main road and stumble across an owner of an English school who all but offers me a job, and tells me how to find the Zoroastrian temple. Built last century, the temple is not so exciting, yet the flame has reputedly been burning since 400 A.D.

I take two busses and walk through what feels like a 2 km construction site. At the end of the road is my goal: The Towers of Silence. Given the Zoroastrian obsession with the purity of the elements, burial or cremation were not possible. Hence, bodies were left in these towers for the vultures to tear them apart. A priest would sit next to the body and watch which eye was torn out first to determine where the person would go in the afterlife - heaven or hell.

I climb up one tower then the other. I sit looking out over the desert for 3 hours, until I regain the desire to interact with fellow humans.

Then I visit the modern Zoroastrian cemetary. All the graves are made of marble and concrete - so that the body doesn't touch the earth. On my way out, I see a few people having a picnic. They call me over, they make me sit, they make me eat, they make me drink. The Zoroastrian women find my embarassment very amusing as they feed me soup, vegetables, bread, rose-water bisquits, lemonade, tea... Turns out that I've come across a funeral and this is the after-party.

A car comes and stops by the cemetary: an American-Iranian visiting the country for the first time, and his uncles friend. They tell me many things... for example, Parsi has about 10 words for "pimp". They take me to a tea-house in the garden of Regent Zand's holiday palace and we smoke a mint-hubbly and drink tea. Suddenly, I look up to see Junko standing across the other side of the garden fountain. The world is an amazing place.

Bandar - Bam - Kerman - Shiraz

2005-04-21T21:55:00.000+09:00

Half way through my stay in Iran now, and it's quite pleasant, if not what I'd expected or hoped for. Communication is incredibly difficult since not many people speak English and all the signs are in Farsi. Communicating via hand gestures has proven more difficult than in other countries - e.g. today it took 10 mins for the bus driver to realise that I wanted to know when the bus was leaving, when I was pointing at my watch then the bus...

People are generally friendly, although I do pick up bad vibes from a lot of the unemployed, uneducated youth who seem to sit around various streets doing nothing. I haven't really experienced the culture of hospitality that I'd read about, and the tea culture is something that seems on the margins of everyday life. Oddly enough, the friendliest people I've met in Iran have been Afghan.

The journey from Bandar-e Abbas to Bam cost me $2, on the lowest class of bus which broke down in the middle of a desert. The driver had worked for Iran Oil during the Shah's reign and could speak English. However, he was now forced to drive a bus for political reasons. Most of the other passengers were Baluchis heading to the Afghan border town of Zahedan (famous for two things: guns, drugs and fundamentalist Islam). Despite the lack of English, some of them let me know what they thought of Europe and European values. The highlight of the trip was when the bus stopped by a heard of goats in the desert. Half the passengers got off and started catching goats and stuffing them into the bus luggage compartment.

Bam was fascinating. The city looks like the earthquake had happenned yesterday, not 15 months ago. Everything is in ruins. I spent the whole day there walking around talking to people and taking photos. Most were incredibly friendly and wanted to tell me about their lives despite limited English. I stayed at Akbar's Guest House. The owner is a very distinguished retired English teacher and it was interesting to talk to him. The only other foreigner there was Koji (from Japan), who'd come in from Pakistan. We've ended up travelling together since.

Kerman was a disaster. We got dropped off on the outskirts of town, then stumbled around trying to get our bearings. All of our questions about street/park names were met with: "Mr! Mr! Taxi!?" Ended up finding the hotel after 2 hours. They wouldn't take us : "We're full." Bullshit - you just don't want to take foreigners. 3 hotels later, we walked through the bazaar, caught a bus to the bus station and went to Shiraz.

Now relaxing in Shiraz. Great city - fragrant gardens, sunny weather, educated, friendly people. The mausoleums here are amazing: the interiors are shimerring mosaic of mirrors that really does your head in. We even got shown areas usually only open for muslims. Today we went to Persopolis. Absolutely worth the effort : the ruins are some of the most spectacular I've ever seen - up there with Efez. Tomorrow, I'll head to the countryside in the hope of hanging out with some nomads, then heading to Yazd.

Bandar-e Abbas

2005-04-15T22:14:00.000+09:00

Buying a bus ticket can be as difficult or as easy as you make it. Like in Turkey, Iran's bus stations are full of touts who desperately want to know where you're going and how. Unlike in Turkey, these guys expect a tip for their 'services'... I fell for the 'scam', but it only cost 15 cents - hence no need to complain. Ticket cost $11USD for 1360 km in a brand new luxury coach... not bad.

Bus left one hour late. Reason unknown. Unlike Turkey, it soon became apparent that there was no tea service, even though ice-cold water was available from a tank. Driving looks like this: you step on the accellerator, then flash your lights if the vehicle in front is too slow and hope they move. In the middle of the night I woke up to see one of the bus drivers beating the crap out of a passanger in a nearby seat. Don't know what the problem was, but soon after, everything became quiet.

Southern Iran is worlds away from the north. The mountains look like a slice of the continental shelf had been simply lifted out 2000 metres and left sitting there. Scorched by the blistering sun, they are only covered by the thinnest of shrubs. Yet in the valleys below, there are patches of lush palm trees and some signs of cultivation (I think nuts).

Bandar-e Abbas is scorching. After 20 hours on the bus, I'm exhausted. I get to the bus station, and check onward bus times, then sit with some people peddling kids toys and play my Saz. Next, the taxi problem. A dude wants to drive me for $3 to the centre of town. I insist that he find some passengers to share the ride with. End up paying 50 cents.

The place is dead in the middle of the day, the bazaar mostly closed. The shop owners lazily sit around. I seem to be the day's main attraction. Talking to these people, it is apparent that this is a very different Iran. Half of these people are either Afghan or Baluchi or Pakistani. I see several women in red Burka (face mask) - not the Taliban version, but a 18thC Portugese fashion accessory that has somehow been assimilated by the local culture. I meet an Afghan owner of a women's clothes store. We sit down in his shop and have a chat. He's lived in Iran for 20 years but doesn't like the place. Afghan refugees get no education here, hence the kids do all sorts of random jobs on the streets and are stuck in a cycle of poverty. He hopes to go to Holland in two months for study, but has no passport. He also tells me he loves Bin Laden and has all of his speeches on VCD.

I'm staying at a mosaferkhuneh (cheapest grade of hotel, illegal for foreigners to stay at). It costs about $2USD per night. The other guys in the dorm are very friendly, but but speak little English. When the bazaar opens I think will need to go and buy myself a Pakistani outfit. I'm glad I bought the Kurdish head scarf in Sanliurfa. With any luck, turning up wearing these two fashion items at Melbourne airport will get me arrested. The Persian Gulf looks very inviting. Hopefully I can go for a swim.

Crossing the Road

2005-04-13T21:48:00.000+09:00

All the legends are true : you see 4 lanes of one way traffic which doesn't obey speed limits, stop at a red traffic light, let alone a pedestrian crossing, and you wonder how the hell you will cross the road in Tehran. Solution: you look very closely at the shifting mass of steel and glass, then walk into the smallest gap in the traffic. Inshallah, the car you've walked right in front of has functioning brakes. You continue to do this across 4 lanes... and then you suddenly hear a loud screech of brakes. Reason: motorbike going the wrong way up a one way street has missed you by 10 cm. You should have looked left then right.

Life on Sayat-Nova Street

2005-04-08T23:49:00.000+09:00

It seems, good, doesn't it... living on a street named after one of the greatest trobadours that's ever lived, in the centre of Yerevan - capital of the land of pomegranates, avant-garde cinema, tall mountains and heart-wrenching music. However, my time in Armenia has been severely spoilt thanks to the horrible woman at whose house we are staying.

The following is a list (probably incomplete) of Anahit's rules:

- don't move the washing machine.
- when you cook, do not use more than one pot.
- do not leave leftovers for the next day in the pot you use.
- do not take a shower between 9 am and 6pm as the house might run out of stored water.
- turn on the heater for the water 2 hours before taking a shower, then turn it off not to get electrocuted.
- close all doors so that heat doesn't escape from rooms.
- when you close doors, do it with great care as to not damage the door.
- when you sit on your bed, do not sit on your doona as to not damage it.
- when you pour water into the kettle, do not bring the kettle to the tap, but use one of the plastic bottles next to the tap.
- replenish the plastic bottles after use, but do not screw the lid on, so that the chlorine will escape in gas form.
- when you are in the kitchen, do not stand near the fridge as to not warm it with your body heat.

Breaking any of these rules by any tenant ensures a circular rant at high volume, directed at me (since only I understand Russian). Naturally, my efforts to help out all parties involved go unnoticed. Today, I get this: "You are Polish - a brave, noble nation. Why do you act like you are Japanese? We Armenians don't change our nationality. Why didn't you admit to moving the washing machine, but were sneaking about in your dealings..."

The machine was moved a week ago. I did not move it. I don't know who moved it.

I am not normally vindictive, but for the sake of other travellers, I shall do my best ensure that this woman's "homestay option" is no longer listed as an "option" in any forthcoming edition of the Lonely Planet guide to the Caucasus.

Nagorno-Karabakh

2005-04-05T23:06:00.000+09:00

To most who've heard this word before, it usually brings to mind only one thing: a 5 year war that killed 30,000 people and left both Azeri and Armenian relations and economies in tatters.

Aghdam. The sound itself is as unpleasant and heavy as what it represents - city of formerly 100, 000 inhabitants, bombed, sacked, looted and left to stand empty for 13 years in no-man's land.

It turns out that we need a visa, as Karabakh regards itself as a country, despite the fact that the rest of the world (minus Armenia) disagrees. Naturally, the embassy has moved and we have to travel to the grotty outskirts of Yerevan, to find it standing regally in between two crumbling housing estates. $25, 3 hours, a few basic questions and an offer of a taxi driver for $250 to drive us there (rejected), and we all have visas.

Junko and I have found one other person to travel with. Pablo poses as an Argentinian school teacher, whilst being an Italian / Argentinian duel-national journalist and a huge fan of Ryszard Kapuscinski. He's been practically everywhere. Thanks to a dark complexion and the ability to grow a 4 finger long beard (official Taliban requirement), he's even managed to hang out in Kandahar. I tell him about Aghdam. He also thinks that going there a great idea.

Most people would think otherwise. The city is in a restricted military area and the embassy will not give us permission to visit. Landmines pepper the disused side-streets, and if one ventures past the mosque, there is a small chance of being targeted by an Azeri sniper from the other side of the line of control.

3 days later, after yet another infuriating negotiation involving 3 people talking at me simultaneously in 3 different languages, we have a taxi driver and a decent price. The drive is stunning. All of Karabakh is covered by snow-capped mountains and green meadows (albeit full of landmines). We pass a tank manouvering by the side of the road, a platoon of soldiers, and derelict houses. Coming to a small town, we spot a high-rise peppered with bullet holes. Pablo decides to take some happy snaps.

Bad move.

As soon a we make it back to the car, 2 men appear from nowhere and the usual starts: "Who are you? Where are you from? Why are you photographing this? Why does this interest you?" Not long after, a police car arrives and we are driven to the local station.

It's like a scene from a Bond movie. The police commissar has two gold canines, a tatooed hand, and I can almost spot the shadow left by the Lenin portrait that would have hung on the wall behind his head 15 years ago. He takes my passport and flicks through it at a well-practiced snail's pace. Meaning: I could do this a lot faster, but I am in control of everything here, including time.

Next, the inane questions: "It says here you are registered as living in Belarus, but you said you are from Poland." I have to explain to him that my Belorussian visa was valid for 13 days, and hence it's unlikely that I reside in Belarus, despite the registration required by Lukashenka's soviet-style government. I win. Next: "Why does it say 'Ankara' on your Uzbekistan visa?" "How did you come to Armenia?" "How did you come to Turkey?" and so on for half an hour. Junko's passport is next. He is only interested in the Pakistan visa, despite the fact that she hasn't been there yet. Luckily, the moron doesn't look into Pablo's Argentinian passport, as the passport would suggest that Pablo had arrived in Nagorno-Karabakh by UFO, as his Armenian and Georgian visas are in his Italian passport.

Finally we get to the main issue: Aghdam and the Nagorno-Karabakh accreditation card which doesn't permit for us to visit the place. I play the 'dumb tourist' card and 5 minutes later we are out of the station and on our way to Gandzasar monastery in the north of the "country."

Susa

2005-04-03T20:57:00.000+09:00

On top of a snowy plateau stands a city. In the middle, white on white, a brand new cathedral. The inside is almost completely bare. The only worshippers, a group of monks saying mass for themselves. Their singing is discordant, just like the sight of the cathedral - unblemished, yet somehow wrong, grating against the surrounding space.

Soviet-era high rises tower around the cathedral and upon the surrounding hills. Most of them are derelict, bombed-out, burnt-out hulks. In some of them people are still trying to somehow make a living - plastic sheets for windows, metal pipes poking through as improptu chimneys for improptu wood-fired stoves. The empty hulks still provide a source of sustenance - a former window frame, a broken door - anything will do as firewood.

A mosque stands down the hill from the cathedral. From the outside it is quite pretty - an old
Persian design. Inside, everything has been stripped bare. It's strangely quiet in the surrounding streets. A few dogs scavange food from piles of rubbish. They shuffle into the shadows when I approach. We come to a shop. Inside, everything seems normal - the usual variety of food and other daily supplies. The people inside are cautious, reserved, but not unfriendly.

In the central square, a soviet era statue sits on a bench, a contented look on the worker's face. It seems that it's all that remains of the tolerance and coexistance that was once Susa's claim to fame.

A kind of welcome

2005-03-31T00:54:00.000+09:00

Coming to Armenia, the plan was to go to Alaverdi. However, two things happened:

- the bus that was promised wasn't running, and the marshrutka driver that was going to Alaverdi wanted to charge us the same fare as for Yerevan.

- the bus that was running at 9:30 wasn't going through Alaverdi, but the snowy wastes of Western Armenia.

So we took the 9:30 bus, together with an elderly Japanese-American couple who were doing some kind of research regarding development. Soon it became apparent why it was going to take 7 hours to cover 300 km. The slightest hill, and the engine began to roar and the bus began to slow down to 30kmph. The further we went from Tbilisi, the worse the roads got.

Finally, the border crossing appeared and I had the pleasure of using the worst toilet since the Mongolian/Russian border: no door, a hole in the floor, excrement deposited in and around the hole.

At customs, I had the pleasure of being personally interrogated by the Georgian police. Luckily, it was standard procedure. After, had to run ahead of the bus to the Armenian police post to score a visa.

As soon as we entered, it became apparent that time didn't exist within this small, empty booth.

The officer opened up our passports and began to slowly flick through them. Then came the questions: 'why are you coming to Armenia? where will you go? what will you do?' His conclusion was this: 'I'll give you a visa, but she... she is a problem... Syria, Sudan, Pakistan - theses are all terrorist countries. Why is she here? How do I know she doesn't want to make trouble? Why didn't she go to an embassy? If I give her a visa, and she's a problem I loose my job. Show me one European visa in her passport. You say she's a tourist... why didn't she go to France, Italy - those are beautiful places.' And so began the half hour argument, during which I managed to convice the moron that 145cm Junko was not a terrorist, but a tourist and wrangle a 2 week visa out of him.

I was expecting the other people on the bus to be furious at the delay. To the contrary; the first question was: 'Did they get any money out of you? How much did it cost?' When I tried to apologise, they told me: 'It's normal. Bloody mafia... that's what they are.' Then they all tried to feed us food - the Armenian couple coming back from a holiday Abkhazia, the old guitarist with a Polish friend, the boxer who'd been KO'd twice.

In Yerevan, a marshrutka ride and we managed to find accommodation at the house of the Anahit - a nutty old woman who likes things in their place: 'When you close the door do it like this, when you wash the dishes rinse the sponge and put it here, when you cook, put the lid here like this, when you wash the teflon pan use this sponge and put it on a newspaper so that it doesn't get scratched by other utensils...' I'm more convinced than ever that it's better to not really know what's going on.

Georgia: A very brief summary

2005-03-28T22:03:00.000+09:00

Given the lack of time, I've been forced to adopt this format. Sorry.

The general situation:

Since the revolution, the government sacked most of the corrupt police officers and put others in their place. Hence there are now few problems with bribes. Supposedly the power-station on the Abkhazian border is being rendovated. Consequence: some parts of the country have had no power for a month, 25% of Tbilisi has no power, water or gas as I write this. Sometimes you can see people burning tyres on the street to keep warm. Unemployment in the provinces is the norm, and not the exception. Aged pensions are about $15US per month.

Things I did:

Spent the first two nights across a river from Vardzia, a medieval cave city in the middle of nowhere. The lower Caucasus range was stunning, and I could hike in the mountains around the city and hang out with the caretakers of the place.

Then I went to Tbilisi, the capital, and stayed with my father's friend, Maria - a university professor. The city definitely hasn't yet recovered from 15 years of Shervanadze, civil war, revolution and the 2002 earthquake. Most of the lovely old houses are crumbling, but it's quite pleasand to just stroll through the narrow decrepid streets, occassionally munching on the very addictive Katchapuri (Georgian cheese pie). The museum has some awesome gold finds from Colchis (home of the Golden Fleece), and the incredibly under-funded Art Gallery also houses a couple of gems. Another thing I grew fond of, was visiting historic churches around 4 pm, when mass begins. Most of the more significant churches also house a choir, and this allows you to appreciate the bizarre Georgian polyphonic choral tradition in a very pleasing setting.

Sighnaghi - sown on top of a small mountain range overlooking the Great Caucasus and Azerbaijan. Saw my first Stalin portrait on someone's balcony. Otherwise the day was a mess thanks to bad transportation.

Gori - Stalin's home town. The house where Stalin grew up is well-preserved, as is his personal, bullet-proof train carriage. The museum was freaky. No light (another black out), we were lead by candle light to view Stalin's death mask in otherwise complete darkness. Aside from quotes and photos making Stalin seem like a nice guy, the museum featured personal accessories and birthday presents.

Mtskheta - The sprititual "heart" of Georgia, this is where St. Nino converted the country to Christianity in the 4th century. The Jvari church, perched up on a mountain was stunning (although it required a 6 km climb). The cathedral in Mtskheta was definitely the most awe inspiring building in Georgia for me, with a very stern Jesus gazing down from above the altar.

People I met:

The first thing I noticed in Georia was that people were a lot more reserved towards stangers than in Turkey. The "where are you from" question (spoken in Russian), was often not forthcoming, and when it was, it wasn't the first question in a conversation.

Generally speaking, the biggest arseholes in society seemed to be the marshrutka (private minibus) drivers. One day I even saw one kicking the crap out of a customer in the middle of central Tbilisi. The politicians on TV seemed to have similar personalities.

Maria was very kind, if wonderfully detached from reality, as was her son Levan, who is studying film direction. A lot of people made their way through their house and it was cool to chat with them. Tamula, a 20yo student, spoke excellent English, and could tell me about Svaneti, having travelled there. David, a writer, took me round the Tbilisi museum. I also got drunk with some of Levan's musician friends. I met one foreigner - Junko from Japan, on the marshrutka to Gori. On the same marshrutka we met, Jakub, a law student who kindly took us around the town.

Finally, I have to say that I'd love to come back here one day, preferably in summer when going to the Greater Caucasus is possible. Despite the poverty and resultant the difficulties in travel, the atmosphere here is great, and there is a lot to do and see.

Getting to Vardzia

2005-03-19T00:42:00.000+09:00

Got to Georgia via a scam: Turkish bus driver telling me that there was a bus to Akhaltsikhe, telling me to get in his bus (I thought he'd give me a lift to the stop), then charging me $15 for the ride to only the border. The customs officers were rather surprised to see me (it wouldn't surprise me if I was one of the first crossing that day). They were very nice on both sides. One of the Georgians even spoke English.

Two things struck me immediately: beauty and decrepitude. The mountains of the lower Caucasus are stunning. Unemployment is probably around 80% with people living off what they grow. Caught another taxi on to Akhaltsikhe. Why? The driver wasn't an arsehole. He also gave me a good price.

In Akhaltsikhe, the driver entrusted me to the care of his friend, who shouted me some pieroszki, and shoved me on to the marshrutka to Vardzia.

A Georgian Dictionary

2005-03-19T00:32:00.000+09:00

Road (n) Relatively flat continous dirt surface, frequently interrupted by pot holes, and infrequently interrupted by patches of asphalt.

Road Sign (n) Piece of relatively flat, rusted metal, encripted with Russian and Georgian symbols (many unintellegible), indicating age of at least 15 years.

Road Rule (n) Pattern of vehicular movement, across and along roads, primarily goverened by the need to get somewhere fast, and to avoid potholes.

Public Transport (n) Minivan with modified roof (to allow standing), with apparently unlimited capacity.

Building (n) Concrete, metal or wooden construction, with occasional supply of electricity or water, glass inside windows.

Hotel (n) As above, with one room with a door, occasional electricity, seasonal water supply (in winter the pipes freeze), bed, panes of glass in windows.

Bath (n) Building with large body of water fuelled by a single pipe spouting hot mineral water and sulphuric gas.

Kars / Ani

2005-03-17T23:50:00.000+09:00

I expected a standard eastern Turkish city - crumbling low rise houses, tea houses full of old men, stacks of vegetable stalls. Yet this city has a very distinctly cosmopolitan atmosphere and energy : streets lined with Russian-era houses, Kurds, Georgians, Russians, Turks all walking through them. For a city of this size there's an unusual variety and amount of shops. You can find almost anything - even a disco. Yet there are also clear signs of a former age. Walking past the butcher's in the morning, I almost trip over the carcasses of two sheep, simply lying in a puddle of blood on the sidewalk. I am also shocked by the prices... soup is $3, internet $2. Maybe people are trying to rip me off. But then I go to a bakery, eat some baklava, drink tea and the guy refuses to let me pay for it.

Getting back to the hotel in the afternoon, I stumble across the man from tourist info. He's found another passanger to go to Ani - the ancient Armenian capital. He says the guy knows me. Well, he does - it's Ryouta-san, from the Iranian embassy in Ankara. Ani is beyond words. Sitting on mountain ledge between two streams, flanked by snow-capped mountains on both sides, the place is like no other. Tall grasses blow in the winds, the ruins of ancient churches stand as they've stood for a long time.

Cappadocia - Kars

2005-03-17T02:19:00.000+09:00

Decided to take the night bus to Ankara. Ended up a minibus then a bus which wouldn't depart for no apparent reason. When it came to departure, a hobo came to storm the bus and ended up wrestling with the weedy conductor, until the beefy bus driver got up, pushed the conductor aside and disposed of the hobo with a solid chest level kick. Lovely vibe.

I decided that I still hated Ankara within 10 minutes of arrival. The bus station was unheated and the benches were metal. Two guys kept pacing around, one screaming, 'Çay! Çay!', the other 'Taxi! Taxi!' This continued for maybe 30 minutes, until a policeman came and told me and all the other hobos camped at the station to get up.

At 7 am I took the metro to the main train station. Bought a ticket for the 13:30 Erzurum Express and proceeded to look for a luggage room. No longer in operation. Tried to get tourist info to help, but no help there. The police also refused to take my bag. Went to the metro station, where the policeman told me to go back to the bus station. This would have cost me $5. So I ended up at the embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran with a bag that could have technically contained enough C4 to send shrads of glass far enough to brake the windows in the embassy of great Satan 500 metres away.

I wasn't the only one. A Korean guy was there, and a Japanese from Okinawa, who also had his luggage. Another one of the 'someone find him a wife' species, he wore a sports bag as a back pack, a back pack as a sports bag, had a huge sleeping bag strapped on and obviously hadn't washed, shaved or possibly eaten in several days. It was a dero backpacker conference as together with the Korean guy we advised the Japanese guy where to go next (he had no idea). 1 hour, 75 Euro and I had the visa - a disappointingly unflashy stamp in the passport.

Ride to Kars was pretty boring. Woke up this morning to find the adjacent passangers gone, and a seat covered in faeces in their place. This part of Turkey is gorgeous though, with tall snow-capped mountains and many rushing streams.

Cappadocia

2005-03-15T01:32:00.000+09:00

Took the night bus to Kayseri. Pretty uneventful, aside for having to plough through 30 cm of snow at 20km/ph in the mountains. The bus for Göreme was waiting upon arrival. Inside were two backpackers. Thought I'd met the girl in Budapest but with a different boyfriend, yet that was only deja vu.

We all ended up at the same hostel together, then ended up shopping and cooking together for the next two days. Vanesa and Reiner had both come up through Egypt and were heading to Germany. Great people. I really enjoyed their stories of South America and the Middle East. Oh, and I didn't think I'd be listening to a casette radio with Tom Waits whilst cooking Belarussian food in Turkey.

As the weather was good (cold but sunny), I took my cura and went to find a cliff overlooking Göreme to sit and play songs. The landscape is pretty surreal. Volcanic eruptions and erosion have left valleys of bizarre stone cones in their wake. Thought I'd stroll down a valley, but I came to a 3 metre cliff. Jumped down that cliff, then another, then came to a 5 metre cliff. No jumping. But shit, I was stuck in the valley. Had to climb back up the two cliffs, which I managed after falling off one and tearing my hand in the process.

The following day I took a tour, since the region is a pain for those using public transport. The underground city was pretty impressive, with seven levels of rooms. There are around 200 such cities in Cappadocia. Most were built by the Christians there to hide from various marauders. Ihlara Canyon was also beautiful, with some churches there containing well-preserved frescoes.

The third day was spent hiking around Göreme. Whilst the town itself is a strange mix of tourist dive and Turkish village, the surrounding landscape is unspoilt. Joined up with Jun, a Japanese maths student, and Lynne, a Canadian and went off to explore the various valleys and caves. Ironically, the 'find' of the day was something that a small group of senior Canadians (the only tourists we'd met) told us about:

You go through a small door into what seems like an ordinary cave house and find another door and a stairwell. Above is a (pre-)Byzantine cathedral with a 20 metre ceiling. All in the middle of nowhere.

Thanks to Jun and Lynne, I had some people to share cooking dinner with. Jun was hilarious - 'Why do you cook so well?' - one of those people who will die unless he finds a wife to attend to his bodily needs. There were some other cool Japanese people there, including a guy who'd come from India, and a weird medicine student who spent 30 minutes brushing his teeth.

Harran

2005-03-11T19:39:00.000+09:00

Where I expected sand and rock, I see fertile fields and dozens of concrete irrigation channels. Aziz is driving like a maniac, Bob Marley blaring from the stereo. Since myself, Laura and a Swiss couple going by bicycle to Iran all wanted to go to Harran, Aziz offered to drive us.

10 km from the Syrian border, the town is famous for strange hive-houses made of mud, the ruins of a Arab Islamic University and an incredible 3 storey castle, from the top of which you can see Syria. The Arabs living in harran are funny. A 19 y.o. boy comes up to Laura, asks her age, her country, then proposes marriage, offering a $15,000 dowery. Too low. His sister's asking price is $17,000.

Urfa

2005-03-10T18:58:00.000+09:00

Took the first bus out of Diyarbakir. Nothing but rocky plains and the occasional herd of goats for 200 km. And rain. Very heavy rain, where there shouldn't be any. After some deliberation and attempts to communicate with the Arab bus staff, I bought a night bus ticket to Kayseri for the following night.

On the way into town, a Kurdish man in traditional head dress approached me. Asked me what I was doing in Urfa and was extremely happy when I told him that I was a terrorist. Shook my hand and said 'Me too! Very good Kurdish terrorist!'. He was actually the owner of a small Pansion. It cost a little more than I budgeted, but since I liked Aziz and his wife (she had facial tatts), I decided to stay with them.

By lunch time, the weather had cleared up and so I decided to have a stroll around town. Awesome place. There's an incredibly ancient castle looming over the old city from which Abraham was said to have been thrown. At the foot of the hill is the cave where Abraham is said to have been born and a huge complex of mosques, parks and a carp pond. The atmosphere is wonderful, as pilgrims wander leisurely through the compound, stopping occasionally to feed the doves or the carp.

At the bazar, I was approached by a young guy with the usual 'how are you?' chat. Hearing that I was from Poland, he came out with this:

'Moja zona to Polka. Ale kurwa ona byla!'

'Wife was Polish. Complete whore!'

Spent the next few hours wandering up the castle and around town, listening to Serdal's tales of marital woe and life in Poland. Things were going well until the economic situation of his inability to find employment caused the relationship to fray. While he liked Poland, he couldn't cope with one thing culturally - married couples where partners cheated on each other. This apparently rarely happens in Turkey.

At one of the mosques (converted Byzantine church), we stumbled into Laura - an American English professor travelling alone. She had wanted to find Aziz, but was unable to do so, and thus was happy to find out that I was living at his place.

Diyarbakir

2005-03-10T03:25:00.000+09:00

I wake up late. The hotel room's windowless, tucked away at the end of a corridor, next to the main heating system. It feels like every drop of moisture has evaporated from my body during the past 10 hours that I've slept. Needless to say, I'm in a rather random frame of mind.

Outside, the sky is blue. The main street in town almost has a European flavour, with all the glossy bank fronts and hotels. I walk towards the old castle (now an army base), and the atmosphere starts to change: old men sitting in front to tea houses, dressed in the same clothes that their ancestors had worn for generations, a soldier standing in the guard tower of the 'palace gate', as others had stood for generations. The battlements are massive - circumbulating for 6 km around the city, they form the 2nd longest wall in the world.

Past that gate, it feels like a timewarp. Several old people sit on the sunny steps of the 12thC mosque, doing nothing. I walk past an old woman with a tatooed face. If it wasn't for the discarded plastic bags blowing through the streets and ramshackle powerlines, I could be mistaken for thinking that I'd stepped back 500 years. There are no cars in the narrow streets, no signs advertising anything - only rows of improptu shacks painted in bright blues, yellows, pinks, aquamarines, and hordes of dirty children playing everywhere with their mothers looking on. It feels wrong to photograph this world - an offensive voyeurism, taking something from those who have little without giving anything back. A few of the kids shout, 'Yes! Yes! Photo!' as I walk past. I decide not to take any photos.

I sit on the battlements outside, looking out over the Tygrys. A man walks up to me and asks if I'm a tourist. I tell him that I'm a terrorist. Turns out that he's an undercover cop. Oops. He tells me that I should move on, since the area is dangerous. So I go and get become further lost in the maze of narrow streets. The absence of the supermarket is welcome, as scores of small shops sell all that you'd need in this closed world - from food to cheap plastic balls for kids to play with. Occassionally, men push carts full of vegetables through the streets, shouting out the price. I come to a 15thC mosque with a huge courtyard. 3 young boys surround me. Incredibly cute, they are too young to realise that I don't speak their language, too young to shout 'Hallo! Money! Money!' However, the smallest of them is already waving a pellet gun around.

Back in the town centre, I end up meeting Mohammed, an economics student. We go and have tea at his uncle's carpet shop, in a shady courtyard. I end up asking to see some kilims and sumak. Hasan has many beautiful things - earthy camel wool kilims from Hakkari (Iraq border), pink Armenian kilims, flashy Diyarbakir kilims. He isn't pushy, but has the same problem as all other carpet dealers I've met - can talk but doesn't know how to listen. I end up sorting through piles of kilims myself. Yet my problem with kilims is the same as my problem with women: I keep looking for something that would sweep me off my feet, and if I find it, it is inevitably beyond reach. In the case of Hasan's carpet shop, I pull out a gorgeous green and orange kilim. Turns out that it's approximately 100 years old and costs 1000 Euro.

Afterwards, I worry about my ticket to Urfa. The police station has a tourism info office, but the policeman on duty doesn't speak English. A guy from the municipality police comes, but also can't speak English. He indicates that I ought to follow him. We walk down the main road at a brisk pace and end up at... a cake shop. He shouts me a plate of local baklava (in Diyarbakir, it is made of thin rice noodles and filled with sunflower seeds as well as nuts). Soon, the English-speaking manager of the local electronics store comes and I explain what I want. The policeman ends up taking me to the right ticket office and everything is sorted for tomorrow.

Midyat - Mardin

2005-03-09T03:36:00.000+09:00

Murat knows everyone. We wander through the bazar, he says 'merhaba' to a guy at the stall, takes an apple, keeps walking... The atmosphere in Midyat is... well, medieval. Ancient mud-brick houses line the narrow winding streets and hordes of dirty children play in the dirt. Kurdish women watch over them, gossiping by their house fronts. Men play soccer at intersections, unafraid of the hard stone surface of their 'ovals'. It's late afternoon and all the town's goats are coming home - sometimes literally, as I see one open a door handle and pop inside a house. From the top of the town's most expensive hotel, the view is incredible. There's an army base in the distance with a nationalistic slogan painted on the hill. On another hill, a Syrian orthodox monastery which we visit with the help of a kid living there.

At the hotel, new guests arrive. Mustafa is an Arab businessman selling cloth all around the country. He is very proud of his 2 mobile phones and their video functions. He shows me a video. It features 10 seconds of an American soldier having his head cut off with a knife. He seems keen on asking me what I think of it and George Bush. The hotel is full and I end up having to share my room with the guy.

I still have a head in the morning and take the first dolmush to Mardin. The city sits in a cloud at 1300m, it's rainy, the hotels are overpriced. Time to head to Diyarbakir.

Morgabriel

2005-03-07T22:28:00.000+09:00

There are rocks everywhere - rough rocks full of holes and rounded crevices, covered with dried moss and mildew or broken by dry thorn bushes. They are sitting in creamy brown soil, the kind that wraps itself around your boots and won't let go. In between the rocks are small trees, leafy enough for a goat to chew on, but not to give anything you could really call shade. That's all there is for miles - hills of it, until they turn to the snowcapped mountains in the north.

Morgabriel Monastyr stands in the midst of all this, just as it has stood for the past 1600 years. A 6 metre wall surrounds the compound. Inside, a tree-lined alley leads to the heart of the monastery. Small birds flutter through the pines, chirping brightly. A crisp north wind carries the faint fragrance of the trees.

At the entrance I am met by Zakariah and his little brother Gabriel. He takes me into the compound, hardly saying a word. In the 5thC church, the alter is a cluttered enclave: books, eucharist, a cross. Before the altar stands a dias with the biggest bible I'd ever seen. The cover is sculpted entirely from silver. I am next taken to the old basilica, a chorus of jackhammers and drills accompanying my entrance. A single crate at the top of the round dome is the only source of natural light. The catacombs are all unmarked. Before the entrance, one of the bishop's graves. St. Simon's tomb sicks out of the thin plaster floor that sounds strangely hollow. The new curch is covered with murals, probably painted some time in the 1960s.

On the way out, we pass one of the priests - great silver beard, black robes. He nods lightly.

In the desert I meet three things. First, a herd of hairy goats, eating their way through everything. Second, a Turkish man with a backpack trekking to the monastery. Lastly, a Kurdish woman leading a donkey - red head scarf, a purple and green double layered dress.

I sit by the side of the road, counting the oil cisterns speeding in from Iraq. Finally, a bus comes.

Hasankeyf - Midyat

2005-03-07T14:20:00.000+09:00

I lean my bags against a pillar and pace, waiting for the bus that is meant to come before 6pm. Not a single vehicle passes in the 15 minutes I spend waiting there. A policeman walks out of the nearby tea house: 'My name is Yusuf, fine thanks and you. Where you go?' Hearing my reply he says, 'problem', and invites me in for a cup of tea (no. 6 that day).

After an improptu lesson on 'would you like to', Yusuf takes me to speak to Sohran from the tourism police. Sohran drives me to the police station. 'You think I look like a policeman?' I tell him that he looks like an artist. He laughs.

At the station, cup of tea no. 7 comes. Yusuf whips out his English textbook and the conversation assumes this form:

Sohran: 'Are you married? Why not?'

Yusuf (from textbook): 'Who is your an-jul?' (uncle : 'c' is pronounced as 'j' in Turkish)

General laughter.

When we get to the 'religion' question, Yusuf starts babbling in Arabic, indicating that I should repeat. His attempt to convert me to Islam fails, as I realise that to become a muslim all one has to do is make a profession of faith... Surely they'd get more converts if they subtituted tea with straight vodka.

Once cup of tea no.8 is drunk, we go and sit in the police van, waiting for a vehicle to flag downç An hour later there's still nothing.

'Maybe I'll have to sleep on the floor'

Sohran: 'I do have a jail you know.'

'Aha. So I just have to beat you up.'

Finally a bus comes, full of Kurdish guys going somewhere near the Iraqi border. In Midyat, the driver refuses to take my money. I insist. So does he. He wins.

At Metro Hotel, the manager is a stark contrast to his surroundings. Dressed in a nice black suit and striped black shirt, he leads me to my room and turns on the electric blanket. The ceiling is covered in mould, the carpet is stained. There's still ash in the ash tray. In the midst of tea no. 10 the power goes. Time to sleep.

Tatvan - Hasankeyf

2005-03-07T00:03:00.000+09:00

Got up in Tatvan to a glorious day, Van Golü the most intense blue I'd ever seen water take. This was about to change. I took the bus to Ahlat and stumbled around the 12thC Seljuk cemetary, constantly harrassed by Kurdish kids screaming 'Halo! Money!' Museum was closed. So I went back to Tatvan and walked pointlessly around town, having random conversations.

Getting back to the hotel I found a very pleasant surprise - a package from Sevda's mother containing freshly-baked bread. So I went to the backlava shop, got some backlava and went for a visit. Lovely, lovely people.

This morning's bus ride to Hasankeyf was rather intense. The road winds through the steep canyons, a swift stream flowing by. Army checkpoints everywhere with M60 machine guns at every control booth. The look I got from the soldier looking at my passport was, 'what the hell are you doing here.' The driver usually had the steering wheel in one hand and a cigarette in the other, overtaking whenever and whatever (donkeys, trucks with a 10m load, busses). The result: projectile vomiting from the 3 of the passangers.

Right now I'm in Hasankeyf. LP barely has a paragraph on the place. It deserves a chapter. On the hill overlooking the Tygrys is a huge, abandoned 13thC city - mosques, houses and a castle. Unfortunately, there is nowhere to stay in town and so I have to leave. A Kurdish guy offered for me to stay with him in Batman. I'm kicking myself for refusing - it's 5 pm (dark), raining, and maybe there are no more busses.

Tatvan - Day 2

2005-03-04T22:55:00.000+09:00

Got up to see that the rain had stalked me from Ankara. The plan was to go to Ahlat (40km north) and see the Seljuk graveyard there. But as I'd have to wait half an hour for a dolmuş and the rain showed no signs of abating, I decided to do some grocery shopping and internetting instead. This took longer that expected, as I ended up having tea with some old dudes at the baklava shop.

Next stop: tourist info... But on the way there I stumbled into Sevda, and she invited me over to her house. Very welcoming, homely place, with a horde of siblings and cousins constantly popping through. Interesting family, as 4 of Sevda's siblings are at university or have degrees. Her sister would have gone to university, but decided against it based on her strong muslim beliefs and their clash with the Turkish government's ban on hejab at universities.

Being served lunch was a very pleasant surprise. Given the amount of the food, I dread to think what would have happened if my visit had been expected. Got to drink real milk again (pasturisation is a terrible crime against the sanctity of dairy).

Went to tourist information afterwards and suprised the distinguished man in charge, who told me that I was the first foreigner to come to Tatvan in 2005. Bad news though - chances of getting to the Armenian island churches were minimal, and Nemrut was out of the question, with a 2 metre snowcap. Some Kurdish girls turned up and I ended up asking them to teach me some Kurdish, possibly offending the man at tourist info in the process.

In the evening I went to a dodgy music shop, and spent about an hour listening to music with the guys there, telling them what I wanted burnt onto CD. Back at the hotel, ended up drinking more tea and talking more politics with the Kurdish owner. Sevda's cousin Irfan came to visit me at the hotel and we ended up back at Sevda's place (drinking more tea). Her brother was in, and I found out many interesting things from him.

I hadn't realised that before 1999, the Kurdish language was banned in Turkey and one could go to prison for buying/selling Kurdish music or literature. The paranoia was so intense that they changed green traffic lights in Batman to blue, because the colours of the Kurdish flag are Green, Yellow and Red. To this day, kids are punished at school for using Kurdish, and watching Kurdish satellite t.v. channels (precisely what we were doing at the time) is illegal.

Tatvan

2005-03-03T18:04:00.000+09:00

The busride to Tatvan took 15 hours. Even after 3 days of no shower, I still smelled better than most of the guys on that bus. Turkish Kurdistan is wild. It's just a mountainous mass of rocky wastes, currently covered by snow. The government is trying to develop the area by building roads and 'modern' housing, but the poverty is staggering. If I had to use one word for it, it would be feudal, with Turkish army outposts standing like castles on top of the occasional mountain. Yes, the atmosphere is very tense, with armoured cars and heavily armed patrols everywhere. While the Kurds here are settled, you can still see traditional dress, even among the men, who wear colourful shawls around their heads.

Upon arriving in Tatvan I missed the minibus to town and decided to walk. Walking past the school a bunch of students came out to say 'hello,' inviting me to the school. I first declined, but soon it became apparent that I couldn't. So, 15 minutes later I was 'teaching' the English class. 15 minutes later, the girls in the class were telling me that I was better looking than Brad Pitt and asking me to come and stay at their houses and whether I'd considered converting to Islam (hint, hint). I diplomatically had to refuse. Afterwards, some of the students walked me to a cheap hotel.

That night, Düş Sokağı Sakinleri, were playing in town - excellent Turkish folk-rock... a mix of Nick Drake, 'One More Cup of Coffee' Bob Dylan and Sigur Ros. Ended up hanging out with one of the students, Sevda (love), and her cousin Irfan (knowledge) a local journalist. Top people.

Ankara

2005-03-02T01:00:00.000+09:00

It's a hole. Rows of similar medium high rise houses - half of them crumbling. The metro is lovely, but too small and overpriced ($1.25 per ride). The roads are wide but congested, mostly by empty taxis cruising around looking for customers (and yes, every second car is a taxi).

I got in at 9 pm to find be completely desorientated at the massive 3 storey bus station. Quickest way to get to where I wanted in town: flagging down a dolmuş in pouring rain on the other side of the highway in the middle of nowhere. Slowest dolmuş ride ever, as the guy kept slowing down and beeping at passersby (potential customers).

First dodgy hotel was full. The second was half-full with dirty (literally) old men. Reason was simple, as a room with a shower costs $5 extra. Hot water only at night (provided by a gas cylinder chained to a pole in the toilet. Not surprising that the LP doesn't recommend the place for single women.

By morning, the rain had turned to snow. 2 degree snow - the kind where the moisture and cold seep in gradually and don't want to leave. The one tourist thing I did was a visit to the Atatürk mausoleum. What can I say? They really love the guy; the personality cult beats that of any I've seen to date. Every place I've stayed at has had a portrait of the man hanging inside. The mausolem itself is monumental (in the Soviet sense of the word).

Spent most of the day sorting bureaucracy. Naturally, it turned out that every single embassy had moved since the last edition of the LP. The woman at tourist info was lovely though and gave me a map, directions and phone numbers.

The Iranian Embassy was not evil enough. No leaflets about the 'Truth of Christianity'... just travel literature and free tea/coffee and a clean toilet. Had to show my passport 3 times, but in the end submitted the application. 2 week wait as it gets sent to Tehran.

The others:

Turkmenistan - the woman didn't know anything about issuing visas to a Polish national and had to call Ashabad. I need a letter from my embassy detailing what I am doing, and then the whole thing will need to be sent to Ashabad.

China - I need a letter from my embassy verifying my identity. Then we can talk (for $30).

Uzbekistan - I need to rock up with my invitation, $80 and it will be done in 15 minutes. So, inshallah, that's what I'm doing tomorrow, then hopping on the overnight bus to Tatvan and backtracking during the next two weeks through Kurdistan.

Konya

2005-02-27T17:37:00.000+09:00

Coming here was something I'd wanted to do for a while. Konya was the capital of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum, and hence many 13th Century Seljuk buildings remain - most importantly, the mausoleum of my favourite poet, Jelalludin al Rumi (Mevlana).

The bus ride took 7 hours. The landscape: steppe and snow capped mountains, occasionally a city of identical bright-coloured cheap lowrise. The guy I happened to sit next to happened to speak pretty good English. Hasan was studying International Relations at the university of Konya. He wanted to move to the West, then come back and work for the Turkish government. A very patriotic Turk, he wanted to help his country modernise.

Hasan asked if I wanted to stay at his house, which was 25km from the centre of Konya. Luckily, I agreed. As a consequence, I got to hang out with a bunch of young Turkish guys, drink fine Turkish tea, and eat Hasan's mother's kick-arse börek (spinach, cheese pastry). The house was pretty much the last of a series of high rises on the very outskirts of Konya. The whole place is a student city. The univeristy has 70,000 students. The campus itself includes a huge food court, shopping mall and a restaurant where 200 people were gathered in front of a huge TV screen to watch soccer.

The guys were especially proud of the nearby Hilton hotel's modern shopping mall. All the youth there seemed very westernised - lots of peroxide and jeans. But the metal detectors and armed guards gave a very different spin on the phenomonon.

The next day, I got up and caught a clapped out minibus to the centre. I love this institution - the driver changes gears with the same hand that he hands out change for the ride. Konya was pretty disappointing though. The Seljuk architecture is too heavy for my taste. Rumi's mausoleum was way too touristy, with people heckling tourists for all sorts of services. Probably the coolest thing there was the illuminated manuscript collection and a box with Muhammed's beard. One has to wonder why the Konya exists. It's in the middle of a barren waste. The social conservatism is apparent with many old men wearing beards, and some women in hejab with only eyes showing. Still, these people were as friendly as anywhere else in Turkey.

Pamukkale / Hierapolis

2005-02-26T17:13:00.000+09:00

This 'village' almost topped Selçuk's status of tourist dive, but with a twist: empty hotel, followed by empty hotel, followed by a crumbling hovel, some goats, chickens, ducks and old dudes with beards and woolen caps. I was the only guest in my hotel, until Lee, a cool Korean arrived as as I was leaving. Quote of the day: 'I hear President of Lebanon is assasinated, so I go to Lebanon.' He'd also gone overland from Mongolia to India. This was his Egypt - Turkey trip. Being the only guest did have some advantages, as the owners gave me some free food.

Hierapolis could have been done in a few hours. To climb up to the ruins, you have to take off your shoes as you climb up the travetaries (strange calcium rock formations caused by calcium-rich water gushing from the local mountain springs). Unfortunately, these have been severely damaged by extensive overdevelopment and use of water for swimming pools in the area... and more are being built.

Hierapolis is mostly scattered rubble. Where the sacred spring was in the centre of the city, now there's a swimming pool for tourists. Leaving, I counted 25 tour coaches in the parking lot! The local villages come here to make a profit, selling everything from Roman coins to postcards. Despite these matters, the necropolis 2ndC B.C. - 2ndC A.D. is amazing - it does literally feel like a city with house-sized sarcophagi. The Roman theatre is also very well preserved.

Ephesus / Selçuk

2005-02-24T22:05:00.000+09:00

Always wondered about who the St. Paul wrote those weird letters to. Well, coming to Ephesus was a good way to find out. The ruins of the ancient city sprawl for over a kilometre. Mozaics still adorn some of the Roman houses and the public latrines where St. John and St. Paul would have peed could still be usable, given the excellent state of the sewers and pipes.

The base for this outing was the town of Selçuk, above which St. John is buried in a Byzantine basilica. Pity that the town is a tourist dive, very reminiscent of the average Greek island village. The place I stayed was under renovation, but that was no problem for them. The dude in charge was pretty intense though:

'I say I love Russia, I love communism - my father say fuck off. So I go sleep at the mosque. I not speak to my father any more.' He was very protective of his kitchen, but let me use it. However, he didn't let me do the dishes!

Having spent several hours walking through the ruins, I decided to hike 6 km up a mountain to see St. Mary's house. In the Gospel according to John, Jesus entrusted Mary to John as he was dying on the cross. It is believed that John took Mary with him to Ephesus. In the 19thC a stigmatist nun had visions of Mary's house. In 1982, two theologians found what they believed to be the foundations of that house. I don't know... I must admit that there's an incredibly calm atmosphere to the whole place... and the holy water from the spring is delicious.

On the way back I did something stupid. As I had 2 hours of daylight left, I decided to climb up to the Byzantine fortifications above Ephesus, following animal paths through forest and scrub. It was definitely worth the view: a panorama consisting of Ephesus, Selçuk, the Aegean sea, a setting sun, farms and mountains. Getting down was a problem - the whole plain between the highway to Selçuk and the mountain ridge had been flooded, and in any case the cliffs were too steep to climb down safely. So I had to walk along the entire length of the wall, scrambling through toppled boulders and thorn bushes, until I came to St. Paul's prison, by a field where a tractor road led. Total hike length: 20km +.

Bergama - Pergamon

2005-02-23T02:22:00.000+09:00

More Turkish friendliness:

I'm sitting on a crumbling Ottoman bridge, admiring the crumbling ruins of the pre-Byzantine church in Bergama (one of the 7 churches of the Book of the Apocalypse!), when 2 puppies and their mother turn up to enjoy the sun after the storm. A young man appears and starts talking to me. No English. But he wants me to follow him. The vibe is good, so I follow. All he wants is to show me the crumbling farmhouse that him and his father are trying to turn into a hotel.

The 6 km hike up to the Akropol takes ages, but the views are stunning. Calls to prayer echo through the surrounding valleys. The people here are really poor, but all seem very cheerful, giving a wave, saying hello. Mashallah that the tour busses go straight to the top of the hill and don't stop in town.

The ruins are impressive - especially the steep ampitheatre. The Japanese tour busses are funny. They virtually run through the entire complex in 15 minutes. I stay several hours.

Getting back, I go to buy some groceries. At the bakery, the baker refuses to let me pay for my baklava. I try to insist, but he wins. I get free baklava with pistacchios.

Ships of Fools

2005-02-22T02:00:00.000+09:00

Sat on the 1 pm ferry to Bandırma, reading Foucault's musings on the Renneissance connection of travel, madness and water, and thinking morbid thoughts in the 'am I going the right way' vein. Madmen were often expelled from medieval cities by being handed over to a crew of a ship and forced to wander a strange landscape on the other side of the sea. An ultimate enslavement to ultimate 'freedom.'

In Bandırma, I asked some guy about the Bus Station. He went out of his way to push me into the right dolmuş. At the bus station I got a ticket in 2 seconds. It's easy - each bus company has guys trying to veer customers to their booth.

The conductor on the bus to Edremit was very much interested in me. Unfortunately, he spoke no English. When he found out that I didn't follow soccer, he quickly lost interest.

Got to Edremit at 7 pm. The next bus to Bergama was at 8. Within 5 minutes, the dudes from the bus company had sat me down for some tea and were asking me to play them some songs. I tried to explain that I was learning and pulled out my learner's book. They looked at the songs and started singing them to me. Half an hour later, I was listening to their tape collection in their car. Amazing what you can convey with no language - marital status, circumcision, army service, favourite soccer team, etc.

Got to Bergama at 11 pm. More precisely, got to a field in the middle of nowhere at 11pm, where I had no choice but to share a taxi to get to Bergama through the pelting rain. At 11:30 the doors of Pension Athene were shut, all was dark. It was an immense relief when a similing motherly type opened the door and showed me to a lovely room in a 160 y.o. Ottoman building, turning on an electric blanket.

Istanbul - Day 4

2005-02-21T01:42:00.000+09:00

Thought I'd do what I'd procrastinated over for 3 days: going to Aya Sofiya. At $15 I almost turned back at the entrance. But I'm glad didn't. The size has to be seen to be believed. I thought it'd take 30 minutes, but it took 2 hours. Then you think about the fact that the building is 1500 years old and it blows your thinking to strange places.

Next, I walked to Taksim to do the other thing I thought about doing in Istanbul... buying something with strings in order to make music. Walked around a zillion music shops and got people to show me stuff. Now I am the proud owner of a Cura. The smallest of the Saz family, it has 6 strings and

Also saw a Whirling Dervish ritual, at what according to the LP is the only place to see the real thing (as opposed to a bunch of trained dancers). Yes, it was beautiful - but the hordes of tourists taking pictures and people coming in and out during the ceremony ruined the effect totally.

The end of the day involved a great deal of water-pipe silliness at the hostel, as Sharif (the guy in charge) lost the plot: 'You are going to a mountain in Georgia... and I'm stuck in this fucking hole. There's too much beer in the fridge!'

10 beers later, he was in a much better mood... but in no way to help the 3 Dutch guys who had just arrived (on route to India by car).

Istanbul - Day 3

2005-02-20T01:24:00.000+09:00

It was going to be a shopping trip from the outset. The torch I'd bought the day before had the lightbulb blow within 5 seconds of use and I realised that I no longer owned a pair of plastic shower slippers.

Thought I'd try the grand bazar. Well, it's just a tourist trap. The atmosphere is strangely similar to Kabuki-cho at 12pm - dudes in black coats pimping their wares. But despite that, it is pretty to look at. Was feeling like a cup of tea, so I let a carpet dealer molest me for half an hour. He showed me some lovely sumak from the Van area. Turns out that the animal designs upon some sumak are linked with the story of Noah's arc. It is believed that the Ark's final resting place is Mt. Ararat.

The streets around the bazar were a lot more interesting than the bazar itself. This is where most of Istanbul goes to shop - dozens of narrow streets packed with shops, still ordered in medieval fashion (underwear in one quarter, jewellry in another). Finding the lightbulb was no problem. A nice old man in a decrepid little shop fished one out ın 5 seconds. The slippers took the whole day. Finally, found bought a nice light pair off a Kurdish dude. Every second dealer of this or the other that I've met in Istanbul is Kurdish. Must be an economically desperate area.

In the meanwhile I visited the three lovliest mosques in the city. I love the Ottoman style courtyards... great places for people watching.

Istanbul - Day 2

2005-02-20T00:10:00.000+09:00

Woke up at 4 am shivering with cold. By the time I got up at 7 am I had a headache. Today's mission: Georgian Consulate, Air İran office - both on the other side of town (north of Taksim).

Two head turning things on the way:

- A billboard saying 'Istanbul: a city of love and dreams' right next to a gun shop with a huge relief of a revolver, shells falling from it.

- A car plastered into the wall of a building for no apparent reason

Turned out that the Georgian consulate had moved, but there was a sign on the door about the new address. The new place in a state of total disarray - workmen going in and out. The consul greeted me with cigarette in hand. Visa procedure: fill out this form, give me 19AUD and come back in 3 hours.

My luck ran out by the time I found Air İran: Sorry, we can't sell you a ticket unless you fly from Istanbul to Teheran then Taschkent.

I decided to explore the neighbourhood: millions of narrow residential streets, with 5 storey dilapidated houses. Found an Old Evangelical Cemetery in the midst of all this. A woman let me in, but I couldn't walk around, as she was wearing thongs, it was raining and 3 huge shepherd dogs were guarding the premises.

Having picked up my (pink!) Georgian Visa, I thought I'd hang out at a few airline offices. Turned out that Uzbekistan Airways ran the show where Taschkent connections were concerned. The office was staffed by two grumpy men and a security guard. However, they were very helpful in the end.

The last part of the day was the most pleasant, as I went to Taksim and took a stroll down the crowded modern main shopping street. Getting bored of the vibe, I got lost in some side streets - night clubs and quaint cafes everywhere, a dilapidated house here and there. Eventually I ended up in a derelict residential district on the shores of the Bosfor.

Winding my way back to the centre I stumbled across two Japanese girls on an incredibly steep side street. Japanese people are easy to start chatting to... all you need is 'Isshou ni torimashouka?' Maki-san and Makiko-san were cool and incredibly cute, but unfortunately our paths had to part as I was going the other way. Next I stumbled 'musical instrument street'... dozens of shops selling weird things with strings. Japanese girls, weird string instruments - it would have been heaven if not for my headache and killer cold.

Istanbul - Day 1

2005-02-17T23:51:00.000+09:00

Having settled into the filthy dorm, I decided to get some lunch - but not before becoming manager of the hostel for 20 minutes, as Ali needed to show dodgy Rob where his equally dodgy friend lived. Once they returned, we got some food. A nice vegetable casserole for me.

Then they got me to come along to some tatoo studio where one of their dodgy friends worked. It was closed, but the whole building was full of carpet-maker's studios. Interesting to see how it's done. We parted ways as I decided to trek down to Sultanahmet Cami. Unfortunately, it was prayer time. The call for prayers was one of the most awesome things I'd ever heard.

It was getting cold, so I decided to go back to the hostel. But not before I got hassled by some Kurdish carpet dealers. Must be real low season, if they thought that a dero like me might buy a carpet. Still, it was interesting to hang out and watch them play backgammon and listen to Kurdish dance music.

Istanbul - The Ride

2005-02-17T19:05:00.000+09:00

Sat next to a guy who I didn't quite look Turkish, but seemed roughly my age. Good choice. Hakan turned out to be from from Igdır - a village just across the border from Armenia. His family had originally come from Naxçıvan (the piece of Azerbaijan stuck uncomfortably between Iran, Turkey and Armenia). He was living in Köln and studying architecture. It was his holiday and he was flying to see his sister in Istanbul - unfortunately wıth laptop in hand.

It was very interesting to hear his views about Turkey and Turks in Germany. Turns out that while many Turks are quite religious, they are also very nationalistic and are consequently passionate about secularism. Apparently, more Turkish women will wear hejab in Köln than in Istanbul. The immigrants are prone to ghettoising to such a point that Hakan found it difficult to learn German (despite wanting to do so).

Flew in to Sabiha International around 3 am. Immigration was a joke. First went to a counter to buy a visa. The guy spoke no English, but had a list of nationalities and prices. Australian citizens - 20 Euro or USD for a 3 month visa, Polish citizens - 10 Euro or USD. Got out my Polish passport and 20USD. The guy didn't give me change - just a 3 month multiple entry visa. Then stood for 20 mınutes in a que. Reason: the dudes at the counters were a little slow with their computer skills. Got the guy to teach me how to say 'thanks' in Turkish.

So, it's 3 am, the airport is 18km from Kadıköy, Kadıköy is across the Bosfor strait from the centre and everything is probably closed anyway. I go to the ATM and get nothing - I'd used my imit for the day. I go to the exchange counter and give the dude 20Euro and ask him to re-teach me 'thank you'. He laughs at my attempt to speak Turkish. There's a 18AUD bus to the centre, but so what - what then?

I find a bench to sleep on. There's arm rails so I can only sit down. Two girls in hejab proceed to 'check me out'. Weird. Actually, the number of attractive women in Turkey is almost offensive.

Anyhow, I wake up at 5 am to the sound of cleaning equipment. Most of the lights are off. There's no planes until midday. The old guy opposite who was there 2 hours ago is still there, so I doze until 7 am and a brilliant sunrise breaking through the wall of glass overlooking the runway.

The dude who changed my money waves from the cafe. So I come and say 'hi', even though he speaks no English. Emrah, the cafe manager speaks English. There are no customers apart from a handful of peacekeepers flyıng to Afghanistan. About 7 young guys work the shift. In a few minutes they are giving me free coffee, asking about my non-existent girlfriend and playing me the latest Turkish MP3s off their flashy mobile phones.

At 9 am their shift ends and they offer to give me a lift to a bus stop. Soon, 5 of us are cruising through the outer burbs of Istanbul, techno pumping at full blast. Hills full of horrible 30 storey condominiums. Then 3 trees, 3 old men and 30 goats. Finally we fınd the bus at the stop and it ıs time to part.

The bus conductor is super friendly - helping everyone with their luggage, aiding the old to their seats. When I ask him where the Kadıköy ferry port is, he gently takes both of my hands in his and says something in Turkish.

The ferry across the Bosfor looks like it's about to sink. I have to jump across a 5o cm gap to get on. Great views of both sides of the city though.

Take a tram to Sultanahmet and get off to see the aforesaid mosque on one side, and the Aya Sofiya. Awesome. I find the youth hostel. The nutty owner, Ali, at first refuses to admit that he is the owner and proceeds to try to convince the equally nutty Australian, Rob that he is the owner. At 5 Euro per night - it's a true dive... everything fılthy with the exception of a new shower that has no hot water. Still, the Turkish ornamental tiles, a lıbrary (!) and a blaring TV with the latest Turkish video clıps make the place remarkably cozy.

A Bureaucratic Success

2005-02-14T17:38:00.000+09:00

Getting traveller´s cheques in a town of 22, 000. I thought it might be a problem. But then I remembered I was in Germany, land of methodical efficiency and superfluous infrastructure. Walking into Sparkasse my hopes surged - glass ceiling, grand piano, abstract paintings, camp assistants with pink ties. An air of 21st century high tech chic: I´d bet they sent robots in to do the cleaning, or sprayed a cleaning enzyme through the air vents during the night.

Promptly, I was asked the dreaded question, "do you have an account with us?" and sent to Deutschebank across the road. Same problem. Went to Volksbank.

Great place. Upon hearing the words, "do you speak English?", the woman behind the desk freaked. Her worst nightmare had come true. In the end, she did a great job trying to help me, but unfortunately was powerless to get the travellers´ cheques.

Then I had an idea - a powerful weapon, given that bureaucrats don´t tend to have imagination - why don´t I offer to lodge my passport as a deposit, or ask if my aunt could order the cheques, given she had an account with the bank. Finally, my aunt had to go in person, twice, and have the money transferred from her account. Got the cheques at 9.00 this morning.

Two observations:

Banks in Germany try hard to exist for people. They are brightly lit, well designed, with comfy couches. If they were to go the way of the Collectingwealth Bank of Australia (down downsize lane), they´d turn into nightclubs. You don´t have to go to a counter to do business and there is none of the standard bulletproof glass/crate/speaker-microphone rubbish that seems to plague the majority of the Eastern Bloc´s banks, train stations, post offices, etc.

Banks in Germany are sensetive not to discriminate - each one will have an employee in either : a pink shirt, a purple shirt, a striped shirt, or a light blue tie. Seriously, what is it with camp guys working in banks?

Some Kind of Monster

2005-02-13T20:52:00.000+09:00

Thinking about oneself. A very unhealthy habit. An attempt to end these undesirable thought patterns calls for a kind of exorcism of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in...

Comments about me:

Poland

Some guy in a bar who´d had 5 beers:
"When you have children and see yourself reflected in their eyes... then you´ll care about the future of humanity."

Uncle Miroslaw:
"What are you travelling for? People travel for business, or for academic purposes. You, you´re just wasting your money."

Uncle Andrzej:
"He spent the past year working his butt off in Japan, and now has a sufficiently individual personality to go and blow it in the following 12 months."

Gramps:
"Have you ever considered working for the police? No one would suspect you of being an undercover agent."
"I´m concerned about your appearance. You dress like a 16 year old. Someone at your age ought to have a little dignity."
"You look like you´re dying of unrequited love."

Gramps´ neighbour (within 5 minutes of having met me on the street):
"Your mother must be really beautiful."

Greece

Gregory:
"Let the crazy man be crazy."

Abi:
"You´re just living on another planet"
"It´s about time you realised you´re a little off track."

Nick:
"You´re like that kid in high school - we used to kick his arse on the playground."
"I wanna be on the planet you´re on."
"Why the fuck did you come and study teaching English when you should be writing the story you have inside you."

Comments about my (vegetarian) cooking:

Gramps: "It needs something." (reaching for a bottle of 30% cream).
Gregory: "It looks very good. Looks like meat."
Joel: "C´mon! It´s a potato - how bad can it smell!?"

The Vision Thing

2005-02-10T18:51:00.000+09:00

I have come to the half-way mark - temporally and geographically. Five months behind me, five months ahead of me, and it´s the furthest to the West I will go this trip. Most significantly though, I hope that I have come half-way symbolically in the Jungian sense of the word.

Tourist is an ugly word. It conjures images of cameras, bumbags/fannypacks and crowds. At it´s worst, it´s the most socially acceptable form of voyeurism - a panoptical view into the existance of the Other - where each transaction is highly calculated and controlled. In exchange for capital, the package tourist is relieved of all concerns pertaining to their bodily needs and granted a license to reinforce his or her cultural stereotypes.

As much as I´d love to write myself out of that narrative, it is powerful through its very being. The convenience of not having to think, of having things come to you, is dreadfully seductive for someone as socially impaired and lazy as myself. The only solution is to reflect upon one´s failures, and to look up to the successes of others. Hence this entry on those who travel and/or blog better than I do.

First, there´s Brian: "Having quit my job and left my apartment, I left the U.S. (after one last binge of burgers and ice cream and movies)." That was in May 2002. I met Brian on the bus from Sofia (Bulgaria) to Skopje (Macedonia) - one of those rare incidents where I overcame my insecurities and started a conversation with a random stranger. It was certainly worth it.

I´d met Carl at Hostel Mostel the day before: "When are you getting up tomorrow? Please kick me in the head at 8 o´clock - I need to get the bus to Plovdiv." Thanks to Carl I went to Albania. His blog has been a treat since.

Then there´s Pat - a different kind of traveller: "The US - you love it or leave it." At around the age of 50, that is precisely what he did, moving for the second time to Japan. At the time I met him, he was one of the few people that made life at the pink bunny school of English bearable.

Finally, Col - one person who takes remarkable notice of what´s going on, and has a metaphor for everything. He tends to savour the places he goes, making the effort of living there when possible.

There are many others I could list. But the sum of their collective lesson seems to be twofold:

- Throw yourself into life, leaving your fear behind - don´t stand apart from it all.

- Make the effort to notice (and even note down) the details - from supermarket prices, to the rhythm of rain as it changes with the seasons - that is what makes existance beautiful and interesting.

Watching Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire) three years ago, I couldn´t empathise with Damiel, the angel who chooses to fall to earth. If there was an ideal state of being, then it would have been to float, observe, occasionally dipping in a hand to help. Now I can only regret how long it has taken me to pack my bags and begin to leave the Panopticon.

Red, black and gold

2005-02-07T19:40:00.000+09:00

Germany seems different from my last extended visit in 2000. Maybe it´s the winter weather (with no snow), or the fact my cousins have grown up, or the electric organ being designated to a pile of junk in the basement... but everything seems bleaker than it was. I´m told the economy is the slowest-growing in all of Europe. Last night there was a fatal stabbing in town. People don´t feel safe.

We went for a Sunday drive in the nearby mountains. There was still snow on the ski slopes, and the whole region was swarming with sunday drivers. Some pretty towns along the way - old Tudor-esque houses, churches with variously-shaped steeples. But looking at numberplates you would have thought you were in the Neatherlands.

Krakow - Werl

2005-02-03T23:50:00.000+09:00

Everything went according to schedule. Got up at 07:00, packed, popped some painkillers, ate breakfast, caught the bus.

In contrast to Greece, I had to go through passport control at the airport. I nervously eyed the sniffer dogs in the departure hall, as I was smuggling my Arool (5 month old Mongolian fermented camel cheese) across it´s 21st border, and also had some oscypki (Polish mountain sheep cheese) which were of dubious legality.

The plane ride sucked. The woman next to me couldn´t understand why she needed to put her hand luggage under her seat or in the overhead comparment. She couldn´t speak English or German, so I had to translate. The fact that the air hostess was a rude bitch and couldn´t understand that this woman couldn´t understand English or German didn´t help.

My aunt´s friend Genia picked me up from Dortmund airport. Soon enough I was in Werl. As my aunt is studying for a tooth implant exam, I spent the evening watching dental surgery videos. Really cool - they drill about 2 cm into the jawbone, then put a screw into the hole. All under local anaesthetic.