What I Will Miss Most About Tajikistan

What I Will Miss About Life in Dushanbe

I know my last post was only a couple days ago, but I was sitting at the dinner table feeling a little sad about leaving in a little more than two weeks (since it’s December now, it’s really starting to hit!), which is odd, since I woke up this morning freezing cold, after being without power for several days, thinking “I am so done with this country… take me to Africa.” So I thought I’d write some more specifics about my life here, that you can laugh about, and that I can look back on later and reminisce about that time I moved to Tajikistan for three and a half months.

1.  Three somoni taxis, that drive up and down Rudaki Avenue, picking up Tajiks who are too proud to take the bus, and charging them about 60 cents to go anywhere along the main road. My impression is that they’re not quite legal, because whenever they approach a police officer, they remove the card that announces their route out of the windshield, and replace it once they’ve past him.
2. The store on around the corner from my house/the school where I go almost every day to get something for lunch, so the cashier knows me and the owner greets me with “good morning” (in English) no matter what time of day it is, and points out new things he has in stock that I might want to buy.
3.  My grammar professor announcing that everything we do is wonderful, and proclaiming “Your grandmuzzer and grandfazzer Iranian!” no matter the level of skill required to answer whatever question he might have asked.
4.  My host mother looking me over – and I can tell what’s coming – and saying “Emilia, Gir” regardless of the amount of food I have eaten, or the fact that I have only paused to take a sip of tea. As much as I complain about this, know that it is all in jest. It has become a running joke in my family, and these days whenever she says it, the rest of the table turns to her and says “Sir shod!” (“she’s full!”) in a “really, Mom, just leave it alone” kind of way.
5. And on that note, my host mother being unable to stop at the “y” when she says my name. Try as she might, an “a” will always follow. Just so we’re clear, Tajiki has words that end in a long e sound. In fact, they have a special letter for that, which only appears at the end of words. So I don’t understand it. But I will miss it.
6. Taking only language classes, where sometimes we play Scattegories (and I’m no better at that game in Farsi than I am in English), and other times we read stories about farm animals. Today in conversation, we discussed Farsi names for such childhood games as “Hide and Seek” (literally “Wolf to Air”), “Chutes and Ladders” (literally, “Snake and Step”), and that game where you try and slap the other person’s hand, before they can pull it away (literally “I bring bread, I take kebab”), and then we moved on to explaining folk tales. Luckily, I’m trying to take two language classes (Swahili and French) in Kenya, so the fun should continue, as long as all works out.

Also, today we went to a beer factory. It's Dushanbe's oldest and least developed, and all the machinery is operated by hand and manpower, not like those fancy Russian beer factories that use computers to do that. The room where the yeast is prepared looked, we all agreed, like the set of some bad horror movie - all filled with rusty tubs and with two feet of ice covering the blue-grey walls. It was good to have something to do, but not really a great example of the beauty of Tajikistan. 

As November Winds Down...

Let me look back on the month of November. It’s rained at least half of the month, sometimes for a week at a time. The streets are full of puddles, and though the deeper ones often have makeshift paths of a couple bricks scattered across them, the rest are just left for us to struggle through. My shoes have been wet since the first of the month, so every time I put my feet in them, it takes a lot of effort not just to get back into bed. And on that note, some days the cold is so intense that all I want to do after class is crawl under my thick fleece blanket that could fit nine of me comfortably and warmly underneath it and cuddle up next to my space heater, but I feel bad if I’m not interacting with my family. Our power flickers on and off, and sometimes we lose it for the best part of a day or two. When that happens, there’s often no water either, and if you’ve ever tried to use a squat toilet in the pitch dark… In the streets, the colors of coats and umbrellas and hats range from black to dark gray (with, perhaps a few navy ones for the more adventurous Tajiks), and my bright red coat stands out like a sore thumb. I am cold literally all the time. While the temperature is nothing to write home about (though believe me, I have), there is just no relief from it. I am cold in my room (I can see my breath right now, sitting at my desk) and while I sleep and in the kitchen as I scoot as close to the stove as possible and in school since our heaters only work about 40% of the time and as I walk down the streets of Dushanbe (though my motivation to do that is decreasing significantly with the temperature) and in every store I go into. A couple months ago, I said that I was glad it was cooling off because it made covering my shoulders was becoming unbearable. I take all that back. Bring on the scorching sunshine, Dushanbe. So November in Dushanbe could be the gloomiest place I have ever been. And yet…

And yet, I am writing this at my desk next to the only source of light and heat around right now: a small red candle sitting in a mug and dripping wax onto its matching saucer, while the smoke alarm above my head beeps indignantly, and I am listening to Christmas music, wearing my huge and colorful Pamiri socks. Every time the power goes out I sit with my host mother and sisters making shadow puppets by candlelight in the living room while we pile on more and more blankets. The last remains of Saturday’s snowstorm are melting and turning into ice and everything looks beautiful outside. And yes, it is cold everywhere, and I’m feeling nostalgic for Dushanbe in September, but I still have a great host family, who I’m happy to spend several hours a day with, just sitting and watching crazy Russian TV (lately they’re really into a “Fear Factor” show, except with children and with Barbie dolls and race cars as prizes for reaching into boxes of spiders) when I can’t bring myself to go outside and find something to do. I’m still loving taking only language classes (though I admit, some more than others). And I know that I will be sad to leave when the time comes, in just a few weeks.

We had a great Thanksgiving celebration on Thursday. Our classes were cancelled for the day, and the Tajik guys who work in the office cooked us a fabulous lunch feast of osh (the Tajik national dish: rice, cooked in a lot of oil with beef, carrots, and other vegetables) with turkey substituted for the beef, and cranberries and walnuts thrown in. The osh was great, and a few of us also made hot apple cider (a nice change from the pots and pots of tea I drink here). Our director had gotten some pies (apple and pumpkin) from the American style café nearby. While they weren’t great (somehow all foods in this country always taste just a little bit like Tajikistan), it was very Thanksgiving-y, and I really enjoyed it. Thanksgiving Day also happened to be Tajik National Flag Day, and for a country with the longest flag and the tallest flagpole in the world, this is a big deal. There was a parade of Tajiks along Rudaki Avenue, waving flags. It was almost like the Macy’s Day parade, except with fewer beloved cartoon characters, and more Tajiks.

So, despite the cold and rain and unreliable power, I am still loving Tajikistan. I’m excited to come home, but I’ll definitely miss things here. There are things that are hard to deal with, but it’s an amazing, beautiful country. Don’t believe me? Look at my Pamirs pictures.

One Month Left?!

That’s right. Today, November 19, 2011, is one month from my departure date. I can’t believe it. The semester has gone so quickly! While I’m bummed about leaving (most people on this program are coming back for the second semester), I’m starting to get things in order for Kenya (leaving January 2^nd!) and I’m getting really excited about that.

Last week, Tajikistan played Japan in a World Cup qualifying match, in Dushanbe. Who even knew Dushanbe had a soccer/football stadium?? The last time they played each other, we lost 8-0, so we didn’t have such high hopes, but we still thought it would be fun to see the game, so we convinced one of our professors to let us go instead of one hour of class. We got to the stadium around half-time, and there was a crowd of Tajiks waiting outside the gates, being held off by armed police officers, wearing vests and carry shields. Not joking. We were trying to figure out where we might be able to buy tickets, when suddenly the crowd started to run back towards the streets. Not sure what was happening, but also not wanting to get trampled by Tajiks, we ran with them, and when we got the chance to look up, saw that the police were chasing people back away from the gates with horses. One of the students I was with went up to someone and asked about tickets, but was told that they were all gone. Not deterred, she asked someone else, and was finally directed to the other side of the gate, so we followed her. Again, we were told that the tickets were finished, but suddenly one of the guards said “oh, foreigners, foreigners” and ushered us through the gate. We reached literally a line of armed guards who asked for our tickets, but we said that we didn’t have any. Several of the guards just shook their heads and said “not possible” but one of them again said “foreigners” and stood aside to let us through. Weird. The stadium was really not that impressive. I’m pretty sure we were the only women in the stands, but I think people were more shocked by our foreign-ness than anything else. The Tajiks did the wave. A lot. With great enthusiasm. Also, we only lost 4-0, so improvement! And it was a lot of fun to see the game, even if it wasn’t played so well. On Sunday, we went to the Zurkhane to see an exhibition of Iranian weight training. It was exciting, and also hilarious to watch my American classmates try it out.

Last week was pretty standard… The rain and cold of November in Tajikistan has sort of curbed my interest in wandering around Dushanbe, so I have spent a great amount of time in cafes and at school. Classes are still going well – It’s cool to have only language classes, and it’s going to be hard to get back into the swing of deep thinking and paper-writing. I read Winnie the Pooh in Farsi, but was dismayed to learn that in the Persian version Winnie is the rabbit, so it’s actually Winnie and Pooh. I was extremely confused for some time, because I kept reading “Winnie said to Pooh” and becoming quite concerned, thinking that Pooh had developed a serious personality disorder.

EXCITEMENT! (In the Form of a New Arrival, Goat Meat, Mud, and Precipitation)

This has possibly been the most exciting, action packed couple of days of my semester (with the possible exception of the Pamirs trip, but even that is debatable). On Thursday I woke up and went out to the kitchen as usual for breakfast. Matluba, my host mother, was there, bustling around, which is unusual, as she usually makes breakfast and sets it out, then goes into the living room to curl up near the space heater. When I came in, she told me “tonight is Guldasta (my second oldest host sister)’s son’s birthday, so I am going to stay with her” I said “oh, cool!” with, I thought, proper enthusiasm for a birthday party, but only after I responded did I realize that several things were wrong with what she had told me. For one thing, Guldasta doesn’t have a son (but she is pregnant), and for another, she and her husband live in Uzbekistan. They’ve been staying with us for the last month or so, but on Wednesday, she disappeared. After riddling through what Matluba had told me, and considering all possible translations of the Tajiki, I concluded that either Guldasta had had the baby (although the “tonight” confused me) or was having the baby, and that Matluba was planning to go to the hospital for the evening to stay with her. Unfortunately, by the time I had pieced all this together, Matluba had left the kitchen, and I felt a little silly chasing after her and asking “wait, what?”, so I never got the chance to clarify, and I went through the day extremely confused.

When I got home Thursday night, nobody seemed particularly excited in a our-daughter-just-had-a-baby way, so I assumed I must have been mistaken. At dinner, though, Gulnora, my oldest host sister, turned to me and asked “did someone tell you that Guldasta had a son?” and Matluba said “oh yes, I told her this morning.” So, it turns out I do have a new host nephew, but the whole thing was very confusing and took a while for me to figure out. I asked what his name is, and Rahmatullo (my host father) said he doesn’t have one. Guldasta and her husband are thinking about it, and maybe he will get a name next week, but no promises.

In the midst of all this excitement, Sunday was one of the biggest holidays in Tajikistan – Idi Qurbon (the sacrifice feast), which celebrates Abraham not sacrificing his son. To recognize this, a big thing in Tajikistan is to sacrifice a goat or a sheep. Then, people go around from house to house eating with their family, friends, and neighbors. I asked my family what we were doing, and Matluba said we would have a party, visit friends etc. And in the middle of all the Idi Qurbon preparation, she was busy welcoming Guldasta and her son home (they came home on Friday), so there has just been an absurd amount of food and cooking and busy-ness in my house lately.

On Saturday, a bunch of Americans and I took a trip to a big bazaar on the edge of the city, where they have absolutely everything. It was pretty crowded, and there was a lot of traffic getting in, because everyone was shopping for the holiday, but it was still fun to look around, and nice, at least, to get out of the house for a while. When I got home, I went into the kitchen where Matluba and Munisa (the youngest host sister) were making two deliciously fried snacks for Sunday: fried-dough-cookie sort of things (something like Mandazzi, if you’ve ever been to Africa) and these fried almost-dumplings with potato inside. I went into the kitchen to sit with them while they did this, and was instantly told to “Gir” (take). Well, I should have expected that. They were really good, and trying them turned out to be dinner, so that worked out.

The next day, I was awakened to the lovely sound of children outside the front door shouting “IDI MOBARAK!!!” and banging on the door, looking for candy. Sort of the Tajik answer to Trick-or-Treating, except costumes are unnecessary and it happens early in the morning, rather than in the evening and late at night, on a day when no offices are open, so there’s no excuse for not answering the door. I went out to the kitchen, where I had breakfast of eggs and more of the food from the night before. At 10:30, I was invited to eat more food. This was when the feasting of the day began – I was given a bowl of potato-carrot-beef soup, bread, more eggs, fruit, more fried things, and cake. Literally as soon as I finished one thing, I was offered more of something else. Family members came all throughout the day – all of the sisters and their husbands and children (it was hinted at several times that at my age, it’s getting unacceptable that I don’t have any of those) I sat with Matluba and the three older sisters and their collective four children (two age 4ish, one 3 months and one 3 days) for several hours, being repetitively told to GIR by everyone except the two infants (and probably only because they can’t talk) until 2:30, when Matluba got up to fetch a plate of goat meat. We hadn’t sacrificed anything, but we did have the meat (possibly a gift from a neighbor who had). Goat: the strangest thing I have eaten in Tajikistan. Not a huge fan of meat in the first place, I couldn’t eat much of it. First of all, it smelled like goat, so that was a bit of a turn off for me. Second, like all meat in Tajikistan, it was mostly fat, and I actually was physically unable to chew it. Luckily, since I had been eating since 10:30, when I said “I’m so full,” I think it was plausible. And true. After an hour of the goat, Galya (the third oldest host sister with the 3 month old) got up and suggested she, Munisa (the final host sister who’s 15) go to her husband’s house to celebrate. So the three of us left (my first break from eating in 5 hours) and took a short cab ride to her house, where we were welcomed, sat down, and given more soup and snacks by her family-in-law. Again, every time I put my spoon down, all I heard was “GIR, GIR”. We left after an hour (the appropriate visiting duration) which was good, because someone had poured me a glass of this awful electric green (I’m trying to think of something to compare it to, but I really can’t imagine anything that green that I’ve ever seen before. Maybe highlighter fluid, but about eleven shades brighter) soda that tasted at once like liquefied jolly rancher and non-alcoholic rubbing alcohol. So when Munisa said we were going to leave, I was more than ready, to say the least. When we got home, some cousins (I think) were on their way to my host aunt (I think)’s house for more feasting. I was more than happy to hang out at the house (I thought if I put any more food in my stomach, I’d explode) but Matluba suggested I go with them and Munisa. So, we all piled into a minivan (about 10 of us in a car that could hold 5, not to mention that I, at least, had gained about 50 pounds since the morning) and drove across town to the aunt’s house. It was really fun, actually – all of the cousins were dancing and chatting and teasing one of them about how she’ll never impress her future in-laws (it kind of reminded me of being with my extended family, because there were just cousins and people everywhere, but to my mind, we’ve never talked about the proper way to serve soup to one’s in-laws). We were, of course, served more food, but luckily only nuts and chocolate – no meat or soup, so no pressure to eat a lot – and then we just watched Tajik TV and listened to Tajik and Russian music until Munisa and I left around 10:00. Since my bedtime here hovers around 8:30, I was exhausted, and so came home and, almost without a word, fell into bed.

On Monday, I went with a friend of my host sister to an aqueduct in Dushanbe. We walked around a bit (I fell in the mud a lot). Unfortunately, the water was quite low, because it’s fall (it will get much higher in the spring and summer as the snow melts), so it wasn’t as pretty as it might have been, but we did have some great views of snow covered mountains in the background (have I mentioned that I love Tajikistan?) Afterwards we went back to his house, where he showed me into the party room (set up with bottles of juice and soda, fruit, chocolate, cookies, nuts, etc.) and instructed me to “gir”. I told him that I was still full from Idi Qurbon, and he said “it’s still Idi Qurbon. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow” but didn’t make me eat. After a tour of his house (which was huge and looked like American – especially the kitchen, which had an oven (!) and a stove with gas fans above it), he showed me some photos of his last trip to the aqueduct (in the summer, with lots of water) and of his parents’ trip to New York City (apparently there is a Tajik Oshkhona there… a prize goes to someone who can find this for me and bring me there), and then we returned to my house.

On Tuesday, I awoke to a great surprise: It had been snowing all night. The floor of our courtyard was too wet and muddy for any of it to stick there, but the roofs and trees all over the city were covered with several inches of it. Because it’s so early, must of the trees still have their leaves, so lots of fallen branches all over Rudaki Avenue created lots of public transportation problems. 24 hours later, it’s still snowing which is nice, but cold. And yesterday, we lost power all afternoon and evening, so I ate dinner by candlelight with my host mother, sisters, and week-old nephew under thick winter blankets. Also, eleven Tajikistan points to whoever can explain to me how electricity is needed to turn boiling water into tea.

The Tajik National Zoo is the Saddest Place on Earth, and Other Stories from the Wasteland.

Last Monday, Joey (one of the other students – also from AU) and I decided to spend our morning at the Tajik National Zoo, since we didn’t have class until 1. We knew that it was on Somoni Avenue, the other main street besides Rudaki, so we jumped on a bus line that Joey was sure would turn down Somoni. It did, and we thought we were all right, until it abruptly turned off of Somoni, onto a mysterious side street. We assumed it was no big deal – that we would just get off wherever it stopped and walk back up to Somoni. Unfortunately, when the bus finally stopped, we were pretty far from the corner, and in a place that didn’t look like somewhere we wanted to walk around… that far from the intersection of Rudaki and Somoni looks much less developed and much more wasteland-ish. So we decided to stick around and stay on the bus, hoping that it would take us back to Rudaki, or someplace we recognized. Unfortunately, it just brought us deeper and deeper into the unknown, so we finally decided to get out and see if we could wait for a bus on the same route going in the opposite direction, which could take us back to Somoni. After waiting a while without seeing a bus go by in either direction, we hopped in a Mashrutka (a van acting as a taxi for as many people as can possibly fit inside) which brought us back to Rudaki, about as far from the zoo as we had originally started. So, abandoning all confidence in public transportation, we set off on foot, and arrived at the zoo about 30 minutes later.

It turns out that we shouldn’t have worried about reaching the zoo with adequate time to look around. Despite the promising entrance – a brightly colored sign, and a man selling actual cotton candy – inside, there were a couple dirt paths, lined with cages, holding exotic animals like rabbits, dogs and goats. One path was completely surrounded by empty cages. We did find some camels, which were actually reasonably exciting: they had a relatively large space to live and run around in, but when we found the jungle cats and large animals exhibit (which our resident director had insisted we see), it was pretty terrible. The cages were about half the size of AU dorm rooms, just large enough for the bears to sit in. There was one wolf that just kept pacing his cage, taking about 8 steps before he had to turn around and go the other direction. We turned a corner and saw kittens (as in, house cats) in cages just mewing and actually climbing the wire of their cage. It was about then that we decided we had had enough, and we left pretty horrified, reminiscing about the DC zoo.

The rest of the week was filled with midterms, which went pretty well – I only had three of them, and they weren’t too difficult… I’m glad they’re done though, so I can go back to my ignorance of the farsi words for “gall bladder” and “past progressive tense”.

On Friday, Jake, our RD, brought us all pumpkins to carve on the takt (which speaking farsi, of course!), which was fun and festive… and now they are decorating the school and the office, so that’s great! Not to mention that he salted and roasted them, and brought them to us for our excursion yesterday, which were delicious, as pumpkin seeds are my favorite seed snack, and one of the many things I have been craving lately, amongst olives (of course), Product 19, and bagels. And the smell of flour…

Our trip yesterday was to a city called Sharitus. It’s about 3 and a half hours away. It has been cold and rainy for the last few days (so much for Dushanbe’s cloudless weather, which I was raving about for the first few weeks here) so several people cancelled at the last minute, leaving us with a lot of extra space in our two cars. The car I was in had only three people in addition to the driver, with the capacity to hold eight. Thrilled, we all stretched out until we stopped unexpectedly and the driver got out to inspect the engine, then suddenly grabbed an empty water bottle and walked down to a nearby river. Apparently, our van had broken down, and it was discovered that it would take several hours to fix. Since we didn’t have that kind of time, we were forced to all squish into the other van, also able to hold 8 people plus driver, but actually holding 10. Much less comfortable, we proceeded to Sharitus, where we stopped to walk around a bazaar while Jake and the driver looked around for a car to hire to drive us back – more comfortably – to Dushanbe. The bazaar was cool, but my interest in bazaars has declined since the third or so one I saw, and also since the temperature dropped considerably. Our next stop was the Khoja Mashhad Madrassa and Mausoleum, which was really cool and beautiful, except that the tour guide who was supposed to meet us wasn’t there, so the historical and cultural significance of it remains a mystery. After that, we headed to Chilichor Chashma (44 Springs), which was also beautiful… we had a nice takt-picnic lunch, and fed lots of huge and ridiculous fish. Apparently, people swim in these springs, but not much at the end of October, when it’s drizzling and cold, so we didn’t hang out there long. When we had had our fill, we headed back to Dushanbe, where we wasted an hour and a half before our monthly American Councils-sponsored dinner. We went to a Chinese restaurant and ate an incredible amount of delicious food. We were all pretty satisfied with the quality of the food, and all went home a little uncomfortably full, sleepy, and happy. Despite the miserable weather, it was a pretty successful day.

Some New News from Dushanbe!

Sorry it’s been such a hiatus since my last post – I burned myself out a little with that Pamirs one… These last two weeks have been relatively quiet (as in, no weeklong trips to the Afghan border, though I did spontaneously attend another circumcision party – this is becoming a thing), which has been pretty nice after two action packed weeks, it’s been nice to relax (and go to class, of course!!).

Which is not to say that there’s nothing for me to talk about.

We’ve taken to spending most of our days out on the takt, a kind of platform with a carpet on it, meant for sitting, eating, relaxing, etc., which is in the courtyard one of the buildings of the school. It’s nice that it’s the building where all my classes are… there’s a garden there with vegetables and fruits (pomegranates and persimmons, mostly) for us to enjoy, and a ping-pong table. It’s the building with the language policy (No English. Ever.) which we’ve just been informed will be extremely strictly enforced now, because we’ve been pretty lazy about it lately. It’ll be hard, but I keep telling myself it’s good practice to speak with people whose vocabularies are at the same level as mine (it’s why I spend so much time playing games with my 4ish year old niece and nephew), but I feel a bit silly speaking farsi with Americans.

Last Friday, in my literature class, we took a field trip to the Dushanbe Mosque. We got there just as Friday prayer was ending, and it took a good twenty minutes of a constant stream of people coming out for us to be able to push our way in. It was beautiful in the courtyard, but women aren’t allowed into the actual prayer room, so that was all I got to see.

That night, one of the professors (not one of mine, but as there are only about eleven students in the school, everyone pretty much knows everyone) took us out to dinner, where we each ate half a chicken (it was delicious, and possibly more protein than I’ve had since I arrived in Dushanbe), and toasted (Tajik style, so with a lot of vodka) to pretty much everything: our friends, our host families, Tajikistan, ourselves, the Tajik language, our real families, and on and on, toasting to anything any of us could think of. It was a good time, but a little excessive…

The next day, we went to a couple museums (an archeological museum and an ethnographical museum), which were interesting. I could understand a lot more from our Tajik tour guides there than I had a few weeks before at the Ismaili cultural center that we visited, so I guess my Tajiki comprehension is improving, even if my speaking abilities are still pretty limited to things like “thank you,” “school,” and “how are you,” phrases that are infiltrating my Farsi vocabulary to the point that it takes a lot of thinking now to say those things in Farsi and not Tajiki when I’m in my classes. After the museums, we went to a Tajiki and a Farsi bookstore, which were cool, since most books elsewhere here are in Russian. I didn’t buy anything, but it was fun to see things like Sesame Street and Home Alone in Farsi…

Last week was reasonably uneventful; we’ve got midterms coming up this week, so most free time has been spent memorizing essential Farsi words like “spleen” and some tool that’s used for twisting wires but not pliers, that I don’t know in English. You know, really important things that I’ll probably need to know in Farsi for everyday life.

Yesterday (Saturday), we took a short day trip to Hisor, a town about thirty minutes outside of Dushanbe with a pretty impressive fort, and a museum inside an old madrassa. The fort definitely had the potential to be really cool, but we had possibly the worst weather Tajikistan has ever seen. There was a dust storm, and on top of that it was cold and rainy, so although we climbed to the top of a hill in the fort to see great views overlooking Hisor (and it’s possibly to see back to Dushanbe from there as well), all we could see was dust and clouds. It was still good to get out of the city for an afternoon though… it’s always nice to see more of Tajikistan.

Travels: To the Pamirs and Iskanderkul

Ok. I haven’t posted in a while because I’ve been trekking around the country, and catching up on schoolwork, which means that this will be the longest and most action packed of all my musings and ramblings. Two weeks ago, we took a weeklong trip to the Pamirs – the mountains in the southeast of Tajikistan that line the Afghan border, and it was the most incredible week. I’ll go day by day to try and organize all that happened.

THE PAMIRS

Day 1: September 24. In which we drive to Qalaikumb, but are delayed by dynamite-wielding Iranians.

We left Dushanbe at the crack of 6:00 am, with the expectation that we’d make it to Qalaikumb (our first stopping point) around 4 or 5. The roads were far from excellent but the mountains we were driving through were incredible. We stopped often for photos, and once to pick cotton in a field on the side of the road. Tajik university and high school students often have to leave school for weeks or sometimes months at a time to return to their families’ cotton fields when it’s time to pick it, and education suffers (thanks Intro to IR Research paper for that gem!) When we stopped for lunch, we were told that due to some blasting of mountainside by Iranians for road construction, our route was going to be closed for some time (basically we would be kept waiting for 4 hours). We were given the option of pressing onward and waiting, or turning back to Dushanbe and giving it another go in the morning. We pretty unanimously voted just to forge our way onward despite the delay, so off we went. Not much further into our journey, we met with the Panj river – the Afghan border. Several tourist-y “here is Afghanistan” photos later, we proceeded to follow the river eastward – it was our guide for nearly all of the trip, so most of the photos I have of mountains are actually of Afghanistan, because that’s what you can see from the Tajikistan side. It was really cool to compare the two countries… only a tiny river separates them but the houses are constructed differently, and Tajikistan boasts the electrical wires running all along the roads that Afghanistan does not. When we got to the road closing, we were told not to stray too far – I guess the landmine signs that surrounded the area where we parked our vans made our director nervous. Most of us read books, napped and chatted a bit while we waited for the road to open, and they finally let us through. After traveling across days and weeks and in and out of years, we arrived in Qalaikumb around 8:30, had a late dinner, bought some questionable water and returned to our guesthouse, which was run by some wonderful people. Due to our program director’s habit of lowering all of our Tajikistan expectations, we were thrilled and surprised to find comfortable beds, a western toilet, and a shower with decently warm water. A few of us walked a ways down the road in the dark to see the stars, which were fabulous and incredible, and then we turned in for the night in preparation for another early departure in the morning.

Day 2: September 25. In which we stroll through a park and then wait several hours to eat dinner.

The next day we woke up and were fed a delicious breakfast of nan, chai, and eggs, and then left Qalaikumb for Khurogh. Again, we stopped constantly for picture taking and leg stretching (suffice to say that the vans we were in were a bit cramped). We arrived in Khurogh relatively early – around 5 – and then were led around the city (for lack of a better word). There was a beautiful park that we walked through, and despite it’s small size, it is the capital of the Tajik province Badakhshan, so it was a pretty happening place (OK… not really, but there were shops selling chocolate and water and juice, and who needs anything more, really?). We walked through the park toward an Indian restaurant where we were planning to have dinner, but found that it was closed because it was a Sunday, so we ate instead at another restaurant, operated by a classy hotel chain. We ate outside, on a porch overlooking the river and with a beautiful view of the mountains… it was lovely to watch the sun go down from our table. The service, in classic Tajik style, was lacking, though, which would have been fine, but I was starving and it got chilly once the sun set. It took a good three hours (at least) from the time we sat down to the time we finished, and most of that was spent waiting (to order, to get drinks, to get food, to pay, etc.). As it was getting late, we turned back to the guesthouse, which was also much nicer than we had been directed to expect, though admittedly a bit rustic, and where a few backpackers were starting off their Pamiri adventures (yep… sometimes people backpack through the Pamirs – it’s a thing). Several people came into our room to play cards (one of our three Tajik drivers had learned the game Uno – or “yek,” in Farsi/Tajiki and was quickly becoming a fanatic) and then we all went to bed.

Day 3: September 26. In which we decide to avoid angering Afghan soldiers hiding in the mountains.

In the morning, we were given the day to wander around Khorugh, see the bazaar, visit a Pamiri handicrafts shop, and find lunch (we all ended up back at the same restaurant as the night before). The bazaar was pretty big and exciting, but not too different from the one in Dushanbe (see previous post). I didn’t need anything foodwise – I was pretty well stocked from my trip to the Dushanbe bazaar – but I did need water, so after a look around the bazaar a few people from the group and I went back to the main street, where there were a lot of little stores, searching for water. There was none to be found except in one store – apparently the city’s usual shipment of bottled water was running late, and all the stores had run out. Ok, Tajikistan… When we had located the one store with a stock of water (and exhausted it), we went back to the restaurant for lunch, which took about as long as dinner, but was fun and relaxing and delicious. After lunch, we headed off to Ishkoshim, a small village near the Wakhan Corridor. It wasn’t too long of a drive – only a few hours – and we arrived at our guesthouse with plenty of time to spare. We were early for dinner, so our director suggested we take a walk into town. By that, I mean we walk down a deserted dirt road dotted with one or two shops that was introduced to us as “the main drag” we were walking parallel to the river when we saw that a sort of wall ran down to the bank, and thought we’d walk along it, as close to the river as we could get. We ran into some Tajik kids who followed us, laughing and talking to us, and when we got about two thirds of the way down to the river, our director suggested we ask to make sure it was ok to continue on. They said it was fine, but the Afghan guards in the mountains would probably shoot us if we did. We turned around. When we got back to the road, one of the boys told us there was a cave up in a mountain that we could walk to in about 10 minutes, but there was a bit of a slope. Please consult the photo below for proper translation of “a bit of a slope.” After a harrowing climb up (but before an even more harrowing climb back down, in which I questioned whether I might be able to build a life for myself in the cave so I wouldn’t have to go down), we discovered that the cave was really a hole that the boys had dug to keep the body of a fox. While we were thrilled with the treasure, we told the boys that we needed to return to our guesthouse for dinner, so we said goodbye to them, and returned along the main drag. After dinner, the group made it through half of a Star Wars movie, before falling asleep.

Day 4: September 27. In which we walk into the Wakhan Corridor, and stargaze a lot.

Most of us woke up early (departure at 5) with our director to walk down the road, starting off our journey on foot two hours before the vans, which were going to meet us and pick us up as they caught up to us. The sunrise over the mountains was actually spectacular; you could actually see individual sunrays as they hit each of the mountains… I have never seen anything like it, and there’s no way photos could ever do it justice. As we headed into the Wakhan Corridor, we walked through villages whose language exists only in one village, some spoken by only two or three hundred people, and not at all mutually intelligible with one another. I would love to learn one of them… When the vans reached us, they said it was only another few kilometers to our first scheduled stop of the day – a fort – so we decided to keep on walking, with the result that we walked about 10 miles before 8:30 in the morning. So, success! As we walked, Pakistani mountains came into view, so in most pictures if you can see snowy mountains behind the first set of mountains, they’re in Pakistan. The fort was pretty great (who doesn’t love to climb on rocks?) and outside of it was an Ismaili shrine, which was cool to see. Then, we piled into the vans and drove to fort number 2 of the day, which was much bigger and much cooler. We took a lot of pictures over there, of the group, of Pakistan, of the fort itself… From there, we drove to Langar, where we were spending the night. Even smaller than Ishkoshim, Langar is a barely-there town, and the guesthouse was by far the simplest of our trip, but also my favorite. There were no beds – just a “takt” (a board on the floor) lined with mats and thick, thick blankets, where we all slept side by side. The single light bulb in our room was dimmer than the lights on our phones. Still, the dinner they served us was incredible, the people were friendly and talkative, and the stars outside were unbelievable… They had been getting progressively better as we moved higher into the mountain and away from the lights of the city, but in Langar, I was laying on a hill looking up at the stars and saw more than can possibly exist in the universe. I saw four shooting stars in the space of maybe twenty minutes. Still, the cold eventually forced us inside, so we put on the rest of Star Wars, but I at least fell asleep as soon as it started, and woke up to the credits rolling. It’s ok… I couldn’t follow the first half anyway, so I don’t feel anxious to know what happened.

Day 5: September 28. In which I am the only person on the planet, and also get offered a donkey to carry me up a mountain.

The next day, we woke up early again to do the same kind of walk as the day before, but the vans were going to leave after 4 hours, instead of 2, and the walk would be a strenuous uphill hike. Let there be no beating around the bush when I say I am not an intense hiker. Still, we’d be following the only road up the mountain, and the vans would be traveling the same way, so no matter where I ended up, I would be found. I was quite clear with the director the night before that I would not be hiking strenuously for four hours, and he was cool with that. My plan was to walk a ways, see the sun rise and then find a rock on which to sit and read. As soon as we started walking though, the mountains took my breath away (maybe it was the altitude too…) and I realized that I had very little interest in fighting a losing battle to keep up with the HIKERS of the group, and that I would rather stroll. We were just winding up the mountain, so I very rarely lost sight of them, but I did just kind of walk along on my own. People who know me well might say that I get lonely easily and like to have other people around, but this was actually probably my favorite part of the trip. The mountain was completely deserted, except for the occasional (by which I mean maybe 10 in 4 and a half hours) Tajik passerby wondering what on earth this white girl with unruly red hair was doing wandering around the mountain by herself, and the huge mountains all around me made me feel so tiny and insignificant, but in a wonderfully grounding and amazing way. I actually felt like I was the only person on the planet – I could hear every sound around me. The few people I passed were quick to offer me hot tea, except for one, who offered me a donkey instead, to help with my trek up the mountain. When the vans caught up to me around 9:30, I was not ready to return to civilization, but I was pretty tired. This began our return journey; we were heading back to Khorugh. We got to see camels on the Afghan side, and also some yaks at a Kyrgyz village on the Tajik side. The road was so desolate – everywhere you looked all you could see was dust and dirt and mountain – but it was a beautiful place. There were a couple lakes with the bluest water I’ve ever seen. When we had arrived back in Khrorugh, it was dinner time, so we went to the Indian restaurant we had tried to our first time in Khorugh, which was pretty good… For all of you planning trips to Tajikistan, Khorugh has great food.

Day 6: September 29. In which we return to Qalaikumb, and not too much exciting happens.

We returned from Khorugh to Qalaikumb, doing pretty much in reverse what we had done on Day 2. We got to Qalaikumb relatively early, though, so we had a little time to walk into town (I keep using that phrase… it means almost as little here as it has in the past) before dinner, which was wonderful, and complete with delicious apple tea. After dinner, I watched a movie with a couple other students, stargazed for a bit, and then went to bed.

Day 7: September 30. In which we return to Dushanbe, and it feels like development.

Our director was leading one more early morning walk, but only two of us went with him. The other students and our director both have pretty long legs and walk pretty fast, so at times I was jogging to keep up with them, but what else is new? We walked for a little over an hour and a half before the cars caught up to us, and while the scenery was certainly nothing like in Langar or Ishkoshim, it was still a nice early morning walk. The cars found us and picked us up, and we headed back to Dushanbe, with only a few stops (including one for lunch). We arrived around 4, and I was thrilled to shower and fall into bed at 8:30, for about 13 hours.

ISKANDERKUL

Ha! You thought you were nearing the end, but only of Part 1! Stand up. Stretch. Eat a sandwich. Have a drink of water. If you don’t come back to keep reading, I won’t be upset. Actually, I won’t even know. Be aware, though, that Part 2 is much, much shorter, and full of pretty exclusively relaxation. I even feel relaxed writing about it. Reading it will be a bit like a massage for your brain. I’m going a little crazy… writing about the Pamirs took a lot of my sanity…

Anyway.

This past weekend (October 8 and 9) a group of 6 students went to Iskanderkul, a lake which is (so I’ve heard) north of Dushanbe. We were planning to camp on the shore, hike a lot, have a bonfire, and be really intense. On our way out, we called the company we were going to rent the tents and sleeping bags from, but the number wasn’t working. We were a little concerned, but pressed on, hoping that as we got nearer, we would be able to get in touch with someone. We never did get a hold of them. Luckily, our driver, Zafar, knew someone who worked at a company that rented cabins on the lake, and found him. Unluckily, the company had closed and moved out for the winter, because I guess it gets pretty cold in Iskanderkul, so the tourism season ended last weekend. Luckily (this trip is a bit full of ups and downs), Zafar’s friend was able to get him the key to one of the cabins and willing to let us stay there. The cabin was so, so nice. The rooms had beds with warm blankets, there was a kitchen, and a sort of sunroom all lined with windows, and a porch (though the boards making up it’s floor and the stairs leading from it were more than a little questionable), and it sat just feet from the shore. The view from the porch was gorgeous. Once we had settled in, we headed off to a waterfall – only about 20 minutes’ walk from the house. The mountains we were hiking amongst were beautiful (the Pamirs were awe inspiring and breathtaking and incredible, Iskanderkul is pretty, in a way that they are not) and there was a kind of platform over the waterfall which was cool (but a little frightening) to walk onto.

After spending some time near the waterfall, we turned around and walked back to the cabin for a picnic by the lake. We’d all brought some lunch/snacking food, and we shared: cheese, bread, nutella, a pomegranate, etc. Then we went into the sunroom and sat, chilling and playing cards (mostly Uno and a weird Russian game) for a few hours. When we were sufficiently relaxed, we decided to head out in the opposite direction from the waterfall to “Snake Lake,” where two of our number (not me) jumped off a rock into the very cold lake. The rest of us sat comfortably warm, sunning ourselves on the rock for a while, and then we all returned to the cabin for naps, snacks, and to gather firewood. I spent a lot of time and energy on that firewood, but as soon as the sun went down it got very, very cold, and the prospect of sitting outside (even by a bonfire) became considerably less appealing. Instead, we stayed in the sunroom, playing more cards and chatting, while Zafar ran around the town gathering surprise dinner supplies. He made us a great stew of potatoes, noodles, carrots, an onion and some garlic, and we all dug in. We found a couple forks and spoons, but mostly ate Tajik style: with hands and bread as makeshift utensils. By 9:30, I was exhausted (my bedtime here tends to be around sundown…), but I willed myself to stay awake until 11, when others suggested we turn in. As soon as I got into bed, though, it was so cold that I thought I’d never get to sleep. My last thought as I lost consciousness was “It is very cold in here. It’s conceivable that I won’t wake up.” I did, but I’m very glad we were not in tents.

While we had originally planned another hike for the morning, we were all pretty worn out from our day of relaxing so instead a couple of us walked around the lake after breakfast (more nutella, bread, and cheese) and then left by 10:00, with the hope of getting back to Dushanbe by lunchtime (it’s only about a 2 hour drive). On our way out, about an hour outside of Iskanderkul, we passed a group of people watching from afar what we assumed was a wedding. We got out to see what we could see, but were almost immediately invited (and then dragged) down to the reception of what turned out to be not a wedding, but a circumcision party, and as soon as we arrived we became the center of attention, being offered food, tea, vodka (at 11 am), and asked to dance. One of the guys in the group was then brought up to the front of the reception to give a toast, in farsi, which, if I remember correctly, went something like “Thank you… This is a very big party, very good… A lot of food… thank you” and so on, which was very funny for us, but which the other guests apparently really appreciated. Our driver soon suggested we leave, due to the plethora of drunk men, so we headed out after about an hour, and drove on. We arrived back in Dushanbe with no more shenanigans in the early afternoon, and I spent the rest of the day catching up on some schoolwork.

Phew. Sorry about the length of this. Kudos to anyone who got this far. It was an action-packed couple of weeks, though, and I think it deserved all this attention. On the agenda for the next few days: classes, studying, and recovering from all this travel.