Category backpacking

Mike at the Summit

In the morning we awoke to the sounds of people around us, and, paranoid that we should perhaps not be camping on church grounds, packed up our tent and decided to start hiking further up the mountain. There is a glacier about 900m up (but over 3k distance wise) the mountain, so we aimed for that. With the packs, the going was slow, but we made progress slowly as we watched the summit of this 2000m mountain loom closer.

Once at the top, there was an astonishing view of the glacier beyond, and of base camp one for mount Kazbeki assents. It was noon and we decided that without warmer clothing and clamp-ons for our boots we should not risk crossing a glacier to reach a frozen plateau where we could freeze to death in our tiny tent. We turned around and began the descent. However, midway down the mountain a grump of a cloud hovered over us and began to pour, we threw down our bags, and in less than a minute our tent was assembled with us dry inside. We waited out the storm on the edge of the mountain in this fashion, playing cribbage, making a small esbit fire for food and warming up in the sleeping bags. Two hikers (now soaked) climbed up and we emerged from our tent for a top-of-the-world get to know ya. They were photographers on a mission to photo raptor birds in the wild. We chatted a bit before breaking down the tent and continuing our descent.

We passed the church, and our campsite from the night before, and in the middle of the woods encountered a Frenchman on his way up named Julien. We chatted a bit before climbing down the rest of the mountain.

Back in town, we ate at the same café as the day before, and they advised us on camping in the park on the edge of town. We ordered food and a few beers and Julien showed up and joined us for dinner and told us about his amazing trip from France to basically all over. We had a few rounds of beers while Julien had a few rounds of French fries and then it got dark while we told travel stories. It was already late so we quickly headed into the park once the beers were empty and the mosquitoes emerged. In the park there was a stream bisecting the north and south parts. We crossed a log over the river by moonlight, and set up our tent on the northern bank.

In the morning, we packed up the tent and faced a river that, in daylight, looked impossible to cross with our bags. Somehow, in the moonlight, it had seemed safer. We managed to cross the rickety log without incident and then got lucky when we nabbed two seats on a bus back to Tbilisi. Although I was car-sick the entire time, it was a pleasant enough ride with a great group of people who were about as friendly as any group could be.

Hiking

Kazbegi is a mountain town nestled smack dab between South Ossetia and Chechynia, in northern Georgia. All around this peaceful and beautiful valley wars rage off and on while the serenity and peacefulness of this particular town and the surrounding mountains has been maintained for generations on end. Indeed, in times of turmoil in Tbilisi, artifacts would be rushed to this region for safe keeping from any invading force or political what-have-you.

I was hesitant to go north due to State Department warnings and because I read the news regularly and know that the border areas are about as stable as a three legged dog. But, after meeting several Georgians, travelers and even government workers who vacationed in the area, we felt assured, and packed a small bag to take with on our journey north.

The bus careened up a road in such disrepair that it does not deserve to be called a pathway at all. Our bus’ tires screeched along pebbles mere inches from drop-offs that would have decimated any vehicle unlucky enough to fall over the edge. They would have a hell of a time searching (and identifying) body parts should the bus tumble out of control. Rather than harp on the uncontrollable, I shut my eyes and woke up occasionally to the sounds of honking, squealing tires, and eventually, of the parking break.

Mike and Friend

Kazbegi was the classic cowboy town, with one main street through town (littered with cows on their way to greener pastures) and lined with tiny shops, cafes, and a few hostels. We bypassed all of these and found a café on the outskirts of town where we ordered a few beers and the only item in English on the menu: Plate of Meat.

After eating, we climbed the mountain behind the town to the church, which is where religious artifacts are kept in times of trouble. With heavy packs, the walk was grueling, but we made it fun with chatter and joking until we suddenly emerged from the woods to see the clouds breaking and light pouring over the tiny church as if God was peeling back the clouds for a look.

Strangely enough, when I entered the church a man approached me with a wrap-around skirt that he insisted I put over my jeans. Apparently the Orthodox church likes women to have their head covered and a skirt around their legs. After traveling through several Muslim countries, I was shocked that this was the most conservative religious experience yet: I was in long pants, hiking boots, a sweater, a head-scarf and now a wrap-around skirt. I looked ridiculous. I’ll never understand traditions like this, unless you grow up with it, it just comes across as odd.

We set up camp near the base of the church, and Mike made a small fire so we could cook some ramen noodles and tea (our camping staples) before watching the sunset and climbing into our sleeping bags and falling quickly asleep.

Our introduction to Georgia was astonishing. While the country itself is beautiful but developing, the people could not be any finer. When we arrived in Tbilisi on the night train from Baku, it was 10:00am and people were bustling about outside the train station selling socks, ping pong paddles and other strange items. We quickly converted some USD to lari, and headed off in the direction of a hostel recommended in a guide book.We arrived at said hostel, which was supposed to be a home-stay of sorts, to be met with a friendly but incredibly drunk woman in her 60s who was scantily clad and perhaps raving mad. We went down the street and found another hostel called the Green Stairs. While the rooms were shabby at best (it could reach a staggering 130 degrees at midday due to the greenhouse-like roof) the owner was so friendly that we ended up staying in Tbilisi longer than planned just to be around him.

Tbilisi itself is an incredible city, but one in disarray. Every beautiful building has seen better days, and cracked paint and splitting wood is the norm. The back alleys are safe, and we gave ourselves a tour of the city while searching for a café with wi-fi (such is the life of a modern traveler).

Having found an area with wi-fi we discovered we were in the tourist hub of the city, with fanny-packs and tinted visors galore. We toured around from church to church, admiring the craftsmanship and the devout followers. The interior of each is unique but similar, with pictures of decapitated saints and skull and bones under the cross (none of which made sense to us). We sat around the city like two people who had just run a marathon, and lazed about for several days in Tbilisi, taking it all in. We planned out route through the Republic of Georgia, and generally moved at a pace not unlike a snails.

Pretty Kitty

We only had a five day transit visa for Azerbaijan. It is a relatively small country and while we would have liked to stay longer than five days, the visa was 130$ for 30 days or $20 for five days, so we took the later and decided to see as much as we could in the time we could afford to buy.

We spent the morning walking around the city as we weaved our way to the train station to reserve tickets for the evening’s 10pm train to Tbilisi. When we arrived at the station we wondered from window to window asking about a train to Georgia’s capital. Every window-attendant just shrugged, mumbled in Russian, and pointed to another window. We literally made our way, one on each side, down the entire 24 window ticket buying area asking each person, all of whom was rude, and down-right mean. Finally, I started asking other travelers. Most were friendly enough, but said that they did not know how to buy a ticket either. Everyone looked frustrated, annoyed and disgusted with the ticket salespeople. Finally, as I was about to cry, two Azeri boys said they would help us. They stood there patiently with Mike and made sure he got a good ticket for a fair price and then even helped translate from Russian to English for us. Without those friendly boys we might still be wandering around the ticketing office from window to window like lost children.

We headed to the train station at 9:30 a bit depressed that we already had to leave. Our time with the American family in Baku was great, and as we waited for the train to leave we found we already missed the fun loving antics of their young child, who had kept us company over the past few days.

The train was supposed to take 15 hours, but as with everything in the Caucus we’d experience thus far, the time was much more. But, this turned out (as it usually does) to be a good thing. We met Famil on the train, the young man who had helped us purchase our tickets earlier that day. His bunk was only a few doors down from our sleeper train compartment, so he spent the evening drinking beers on the train with us and chatting. His English was phenomenal, and he told us how he spent time in Barcelona and Turkey, as well as in Georgia and his home country of Azerbaijan. He speaks several languages fluently and is learning Spanish. An older gentlemen calling himself Frank (for our benefit) was also in our compartment. He tried to communicate with us in Russian and charades, the latter of which was more effective. A friendly and talkative cabin-mate, this gentlemen was fun to travel with and kept us all entertained with his storied (some of which Famil translated for us).

Azerbaijan, being currently in the middle of an oil boom, is as expensive as Europe. We were confined to Baku because we only had a few days on our transit visa. We talked with other travelers about the best sights and heard about the James Bond Oil Fields, which were featured in the opening scenes of The World is Not Enough. We set off on a bus for 20cents to the city’s largest mosque, which was destroyed (not surprisingly) by the Russians and rebuilt recently atop the hill overlooking the oil fields. Several dozen nodding donkeys pumped oil out of the ground in the field along the Caspian while dozens others were nestled in people’s backyards or along the side of the road. The entire area was alive with up and down movements everywhere you looked. The site, however, sounds cooler than it actually is because you are not permitted to go anywhere near any of them, and can only look down on the chaos from atop a rather tall hill. We spent most of our time watching the dock workers at the Caspian Shipping Company as they loaded a research vassal and an oil rig builder.

We heard about the mud volcanoes outside of Baku several hours, but everyone said they were lame and to skip it because the cab drivers who wait at the bus stop to pick up tourists will take you out to the mud volcanoes and then charge an arm and a leg to get you back to the bus. Meanwhile, the volcanoes themselves are apparently very small and unimpressive. Having seen the boiling mud craters in Darvaza in Turkmenistan, we were fine to skip it.

The Maiden’s Tower in Old Town was amazing. The architecture and construction of the tower was unlike any other for its time, and historians still argue about the purpose of the odd structure. It is called the maiden’s tower not for any damsel in distress saga, but because the tower is impenetrable, with 5m thick walls. From the top there is a great view of the Caspian, but an even better view of Baku.

Old Town is well worth some time getting lost. We spent hours walking around the back alleys, admiring the stacks of moldy bread and playing with the endless supply of feral cats. The nearby fountain park area displays old European architecture that is steadily being rebuilt and recovered in sandstone facades of the new style. The entire area was under construction when we were there, with sandstone flying everywhere as experts carved new bricks.
The Boulevard along the Caspian is a beautiful, several kilometer long parkway that is soon to be the gem of the city. This was also under construction while we were there, but this did not prevent us from enjoying the views, or the shade of the trees in the hot summer sun.

By far the two most interesting things we saw in Baku were the Monument to the Martyrs and the Cemetery. The first was a large park with a headstone for each person slaughtered by the Armenians in the massacre of 1992. There was a monument to those who fell to the Russians in 1990 and even a small monument marking the graves of the British who died in Baku trying to keep the Turkish from invading during World War I. The cemetery contains the resting place of the president, as well as celebrities, scientists and other important people from Azerbaijan’s history. You can take a little tram ride up the side of the hill to reach these two spots for 20cents, and it’s well worth the trip.

We arrived in Baku at 1:00am and disembarked from the ferry with a sigh, it had been an amazing trip, and although it was over 30 hours from boarding to alighting, we were sad that the ‘cruise’ was over. By the time we got through the ridiculously lengthily customs and border check at the sea port it was around 3:00am. Being thrifty, “a penny saved is a penny earned,” we decided that spending $20 each on a hostel that night was a waste of money since we’d only get to sleep a few hours. After a short debate we decided it would be humorous to stay awake all night and watch the sunrise. We heard a rumor that there was a McDonald’s in town, and we were determined to be there for the Mc-Awesome-Breakfast. We strolled along Baku’s main boulevard along the Caspian shore-front, a magnificently redesigned and renovated walkway that parallels main European fairways.

At one point along the walkway Mike rested himself upon a bench and I walked down to see if there was anywhere in the cover of trees to pitch our tent for a few hours of rest. As I was walking alone looking for a spot, a man approached me and was so persistently asking for something and winking so devilishly that when he came close and attempted to reach out at me I was forced to yell for him to desist and put my hand on the knife I always carry. He continued to pester me and I had to pull the knife out and glare grumpily. All the while I was walking (trying to appear calm) towards Mike, and when I was within earshot I called out to Mike and the creepy stranger sauntered off into the trees and disappeared. Having pulled my knife on someone within an hour of landing in a country we decided that all night walk-abouts were perhaps best carried out on lighted streets.

We cut into downtown Baku and were amazed at the beauty and architecture of the city. The entire place is being renovated and upgraded as Azerbaijan is in the midst of a very profitable oil boom. New facades of shaped sandstone with wooden balconies are going up all over the main parkways in the city, giving the entire city a facelift. We walked around in bafflement at how European the city appeared. Having found that the McDonald’s was not a 24 hour establishment in Azerbaijan, we walked to a nearby Turkish donar booth and purchased a few beers. This was the earliest breakfast beer of my life at 4:30 in the morning, but we toasted our much-anticipated arrival in Baku as the sun rose above the sandstone buildings around fountain park.

Here is the process you must follow when trying to get a ferry, since many people want this information and no one else provides it in one place:

1) Put your name on the list as soon as you arrive. The list is a little notebook sitting on the counter in the ticket office. If it isn’t there, ask around until someone gets it for you.

2) After the ticket window is opened (only when a ferry if fully loaded with cargo and the Captain’s lists arrive) you will be issued a coupon. This is NOT a ticket. This simply means you were on one of the lists and deserve a spot on a ship.

3) Take your coupon to a nearby window (unmarked, but you’ll see a line of other passengers forming) where two border guards will take your passport information for their exit records.

4) Go to the waiting room and get in line to go through customs. Despite being in line, the guards come out and point at who they want to process next, don’t be offended, they take the ones who look hard to process first.

5) Once behind the white wall that separates the custom’s process from the waiting room, give your passport again to the officer waiting at a table inside the door.

6) From there, guards will usher you to a conveyor belt where your bags will be scanned and searched, they will weigh heavy-looking bags.

7) Confusingly, you need to hand your passport to a man in a window-booth across from the conveyor belt, so put your bags down and prepare to wait; here you will be de-registering from Turkmenistan. They will take your registration card out of your passport, and give you an exit stamp. Do not leave the country without it or you will be denied entry to your next country.

8) Follow the green line on the floor out into the port. Guards will be stationed to usher you ever 100m or so to an awaiting vessel. Follow their direction.

9) Once you step onto a ship, you’ll be surprised at how rough the accommodations will be. Someone will demand your

passport and the passage fee. It is safe to give them your passport, they need them to log who is on the ship, and having done ferry services without any reported incidents of passport theft, it will be safe. The fee is supposed to be $90 USD per person, but we ended up paying $100, which they said we could pay or else get off the boat. The fee includes a room.

10) Follow someone on the ship to the passenger quarters. These usually contain a bunk (or up to four in a room) and a bathroom with no running water and petrified turds in a broken toilet. Don’t use your facilities, use the public ones down the hall. Don’t complain about your room because they are all equally bad. Even though you are boarded, the ferry might not leave for several hours. Don’t ask why, you’ll get no answer anyway as no one knows anything on board the ship. In the same vein, don’t bother asking when you’ll arrive or how long the journey is. Some take 12 hours, ours took closer to 24, others report 16-18 hour trips.

11) Once you arrive in Baku, the process to disembark and go through customs is very efficient, but a lengthily process. It took our group over four hours to go through customs, start to finish. As a tip, do not mention Armenia, as the two countries are at war. Once you are processed and in the country with your entry stamp, you can hire a cab or you can simply walk away from the docks into town.

Good luck!  By the way, the process is the same whether you are going from Turkmenbashi to Baku or vice versa.

Uzbek CYM

One of the strangest, and most frustrating things about traveling in Central Asia has been the double standards related to costs. As Americans we take for granted the amazing equality we have inside the country. True, we have problems, but one would never walk into a museum and be charged a different fee because of the color of his skin. That is not so in Central Asia.

In Uzbekistan, for a local to get into the Registan it cost 200 CYM, for a foreigner it costs 7000 CYM. Similarly, to get into any sight in Khiva, a foreigner must buy a city-wide pass that costs roughly $7 USD while locals can pay to enter whatever exhibit they want for free or for pennies on the dollar. Can you imagine the same practice in the US?

For a local in Turkmenistan to get into the underground lake it costs 3 Minat, but 30 Minat for a foreigner. (Thats the difference of $14 USD). We drove over an hour to reach the underground lake only to be rudely shoved aside by a guard who demanded fistfulls of cash. In this stubborn instance we turned on our heels and left the park, a $14 USD difference is not only unethical, its downright discriminatory.

And cash is not only demanded at ridiculous sums, its sometimes simply taken. In Kazakhstan we  were hassled by police, guards and railway attendants who demanded money, and when it wasn’t give they patted us down and took it anyway. A strange way to treat a visitor.

On your customs forms in Central Asia you have to list how much you are bringing into the country. We’ve heard of other travelers who didn’t report all the cash they were carrying, and as a result corrupt guards simply took the extra cash and laughed away all complaints. On the other hand, if you do list how much money you have you will get shaken down by one of the custom’s officials pals. Catch 22. We stick to withdrawing small sums out of ATMs, though even that is tricky.

Don’t get me wrong, I love traveling here, but the money issues are a bit annoying, and it really makes me appreciate the countries we’ve visited that don’t discriminate based on country of origin.

The small and relatively untouched village of Nohur rests in an unmarked valley of the Kopet Dag Mountains, which make up the border of Iran and southern Turkmenistan. The people of Nohur dress and act conservatively, and their traditions have been able to survive Turkmenistan’s modernization because of the remoteness of their village.
Descendent from Alexander the Great, the Nohurli are surprisingly hospitable. We arrived at 6pm via 4X4; the only way to reach the town is down a long pebble road flanked by shale mountains covered in lizards. As we rounded a desolate corner, we were amazed to find a small village awaiting our arrival. Damat jumped in the back seat and smiled as he pointed up a narrow alley. The engine was gunned and we bumped along on our nearly vertical assent up the northern face of a hill in the middle of Nohur.

The roads were little more than compact dirt and rocks where water had once drained from the hills, yet a village had found this method of road making suitable to their needs. Large adobe houses sat firmly on their wooden beams (though where the wood came from was a mystery is this desert landscape). Children and elders dashed in front of the 4X4 to look at our pale faces as we pushed them to the glass to return their eager stares. Finally, with Damat pointing out the window and whispering the village’s secrets in Russian, we stopped at his hill-side home.

Damat introduced us to his wife and granddaughter. His wife, an elderly woman with all gold teeth and sun-damaged skin, grasped my shoulders firmly and planted three or four wet kisses on my neck before running her calloused hands across my chest and smiling at me. I stood shocked for a moment before I could smile back—chest rubbing was not a normal Turkmen greeting, this must be native to Nohur. Damat, thankfully, just shook my hand, and his granddaughter simply hid behind his leg and peeked out from time to time to look at my reddish hair or my white fingernails. She was a beautifully, frail child of about eight, dressed in bright colored western clothes that contrasted sharply with her grandmother’s traditional dress and headscarf.

They settled us into a small, empty room and set up a tarp on the floor. They piled bread, butter, home-made cheese and other treats on the tarp and poured us each a hefty cup of tea. Damat sat cross-legged on the floor and began to talk adamantly, using gestures as much as any homesick Italian. We ascertained that he wanted to show us around town in the morning. Since we already had onward travel plans he agreed to take us on tour of the area tonight. He jumped up and yelled for his granddaughter, and we were off.

We bumped along a dirt road that looked little used and likely to peter-out into a rock drop off, but Damat continued to point out the window and insist we crawl forward, no matter how much the Jeep leaned to one side. Though we were threatening to topple over, Damat insisted we continue to the city’s graveyard. The graves cannot be explained as we did not understand Damat’s gesturing, but suffice to say that each headstone had a ram or gazelle’s hors firmly tied to the peak, giving the cemetery a warrior-like feel.

We bumped along the road at a 40 degree tilt to the right until we reached a lone house on the hill, we got out and walked up the steep steps to find one of the oldest surviving trees in Central Asia, which is covered in bits of cloth representing villager’s wishes (mostly for a male child). The steep steps led further up the hillside so we traversed them to find a small cave claiming to be the resting place of Kyz Bibi. Legend has it that when an invading force was nearing this unfortunate woman prayed that the mountain would swallow her up rather than allow her honor to be challenged. The mountain obliged and the tiny cave that remains is testament to Kyz Bibi’s bravery.

We continued on our Nohur journey deep into the ravine and then urged the Jeep forward and onto a flat plateau. After 12k we disembarked in a small ravine filled with cows, toads and lizards and marched down the hill following Damat and his granddaughter. They led us through the brush to a clearing made entirely of rock. Damat grinned as he led us right to the edge of the rock plateau and pointed over the edge. “This is easily a 100 foot drop-off” I thought as Damat held his granddaughter’s hand so she could lean way over the edge to catch a glimpse of the waterfall. I snuck a peek as well, the water was pouring out of mountain seemingly conjured from out of nowhere. A small trickle of water ran across the top of the plateau, but this was hardly enough to feed the waterfall. Damat, though easily in his seventies, quickly scaled down the side of the rock face for a better view, with all of us skeptically in his wake. The view was dangerously beautiful, for as you looked around you started to waver from awe and could easily “ooh” and “awe” your way off the edge. We sat for a while, the lizards scurrying in the background, and listened to the falls.

Back at the house Damat’s wife had prepared plov and tomato salad for dinner. Damat waved her away good naturedly and steered us to a house nearby that was his son’s. Inside a frail but beautiful girl, his daughter-in-law, was weaving silk. The loom stretched from one wall to the other, and required amazing dexterity as she pumped the loom with her feet and passed the shuttle with her able hands. The silk takes several days to make, but they wanted only $20 per piece, which is about 6 feet long. We watched her work for several minutes and then easily coughed up the money for a fine piece of blue silk.

Back at Damat’s house, his wife had set the tarp out on the roof of the house so we could watch the sun finish setting. We all took our places on the floor around the tarp and began to eat. “What is that thing?” I yelped before I could control the urgency in my voice. Mike looked over and caught a quick glimpse, “it’s a scorpion!” We sat silently looking around, our heads rotating like an owls. I grabbed my notepad and quickly sketched a scorpion and showed it to Damat, who leaped up with an agility that shocked me, and ran to the spot. The critter was long gone, but Damat informed us that they were very bad, and we should be careful. We sat on the roof into the late evening as the sun gave way to the moon and a blanket of stars filled the sky. Nohur’s lights came on one by one as we watched, and soon the whole valley was specked with soft yellow bulbs. Late into the evening a chanting rose from the valley, the last call to prayer. We watched the stars circle the mosque as the moon dipped behind a hill, and listened to the chanting prayers of a devout village, a hidden village, as it prayed its way to sleep.

Arrival in Ashgabat

Originally, the trip was planned as a Shanghai to Ashgabat adventure. Well, we have an announcement to make—we have decided to keep on going. Since this was our original destination, here are some updates on the stats so far.

Total miles by land: 13,136 miles by land
Number of countries visited: 4
Total amount spent: $882 per person
Number of days on the road: 43
Amount spend per day based on total amount and days on the road: $20.50
Total number of currencies used/traded: 6 (RMB, KZT, USD, UZS, TMM, AZM)
Number of lost items: 3 (Mike’s sandals, Mike USB, Lauren cell phone (later recovered!)
Number of mosquito bites: Lauren 14 and two bee stings, Mike 6
Number of bouts of food poisoning: Lauren two, Mike one
Bribes paid: Two (Kazakhstan)
Number of trains taken: 7
Number of border checks: 6
Number of crappy batteries gone through: 6
Number of cities seen: 10
Number of buses taken: 5
Number of pictures taken: 3,800 (14.3 GB), 95 in Shanghai, 56 + 77 + 43 on the rail, 259 in Urumqi, 422 in Kashgar, 96 in Yarkand, 307 at Lake Karakul and Tashkurgan, 100 in Almaty, 394 in Tashkent, 142 Chorsu Lake, 661 in Samarkand, 647 in Bukhara, 523 in Khiva, 378 at Urgench Fortresses
Number of cars taken: 29 (cabs, mostly)
Number of guesthouses/hostels: 10
Number of hotels: 1
Number of other American travelers we’ve met: 3 (two traveling male friends starting law school soon and one very interesting woman traveling solo for over a year

Soviet Chair Lift

We left mid morning for the lake, in Tashkent province, about an hour and a half north-east of the capital. The drive was peaceful and from the SUV we watched women sell their morning’s fruit harvest as old men and boys continued harvesting behind them in the fields. We passed through several small towns with large cathedrals, mosques and an abundance of butcher shops (comically called a ‘go-shit’ in Russian).

The protected area includes a lake at the center surrounded by rolling green hills with mountains in the distance. The lake was created when the river, which originates in Kyrgyzstan, was dammed. Thousands of people live in the area selling their harvests or living off the small tourism industry.

On the winding roads through the park we were occasionally surprised as children (average age of about eight) would jump out of the tall grass surrounding the road to wave purple and yellow bouquets of wild flowers at the car. At several large bends in the road women had congregated to sell their goods, and it was at once such bend that we found a young businesswomen selling burnt-sugar peanuts. These were easily the best snack I’ve ever had and she was the best bargainer I’ve ever encountered.

We stopped the car often to jump out and admire the view, which changed so drastically with ever turn in the road that it was almost like a new drive began every few minutes. Finally, after my eyes were so overloaded with beauty and newness that they felt strained, we pulled off the road to an old Soviet-era chairlift that went up the side of a large hill and into the snowy mountains. It was ill maintained but functional, and as we watched for several minutes not one car detached itself and fell to the jagged rocks below.

We went through the cattle wire to the ticket booth and bought a ticket each for about 2USD round trip. The chair lift was set up as a two-seater deal where it was obvious that each seat on the contraption had been replaced or reattached at some point or another. My chair set, for example, had one blue chair with no arm rest and one yellow one with rust discoloration. Under the chair, before one did a quick prayer and sat in the lift, there was painted two sets of footprints, the one on the inside larger than that of the outside. I sat on the outside, as I’m smaller, and when I sat down the chair swung in towards oncoming traffic- aka, those who had made it up and were now death-gripping their chairs on the way down. As the chair lifted off (not so gracefully, I might add) the chair attendant gave a surprised but jolly wave and cheer. The lift took around ten minutes from bottom to top, and as I am writing this I obviously lived through the adventure. At the top a large burley man who smelled of beer and lamb pulled me from the chair so forcefully my feet didn’t touch the ground until he let go well out of striking range of the pendulum-like chair. The attendant and his friend/co-worker/man drinking in the corner laughed at each other when they saw our petrified smiles.

The summit was beautiful and well worth the harrowing ride. Within seconds of summiting it began to snow and I donned my fleece and scarf. Previous pilgrims who had survived the Soviet chair lift had ripped pieces of fabric from their shirts and, with a prayer of thanks, tied the fabric to the fence at the summit. I felt compelled to do likewise but decided not to tempt fate- I’d tie on a thank-you at the base once I’d made it safely back down. Mama didn’t raise no fool!

After a tour of the summit we descended (much less terrifying) and drove down the hill a ways. From the summit we had seen a plane which, from our vantage point, looked to have crashed nearby. We drove down a bumpy dirt road to find the plane, which turned out to be an Aeroflot (I’ve always felt they were an unsafe fleet) plane surrounded by weeds and trees but guarded by a house and warehouse nearby. I still have no idea what the plane was there for, or, more puzzlingly, how it arrived in that position. It sure did not land there, and it could not have driven down the bumpy road.

We then drove to the lake where we walked down and stuck a toe or finger each into the icy water. We discovered a floating rock, which I stabbed with my knife to discover was actually a floating piece of filthy bread. We drove around the lake and stopped again at a high point before the dam, overlooking the entire lake and beyond. We climbed up into the rocks and gazed out at the truly beautiful green hills, jagged mountains and herds of goats, cheep, donkey and cows.

Driving now above the dam we stopped at a small café called the Golden Deer in Russian. We parked and sat in a local-style booth. No sooner had we sat down than every man, woman and child in the restaurant and outdoor café ran into the street to watch two young men drag race their cars up and down the strip of curved road where everyone had parked their cars. The boys peeled out, gained speed then slammed on the brake and e-braked as they threw the wheel into a firm 180. The crowd cheered them on while we sat in our outdoor booth wondering if they would smash into our car. This went on for half an hour. Meanwhile, we had ordered two Big Macs, which were on the menu in Cyrillic. How they heard of a Big Mac out there is beyond me. It was a double-decker hamburger with mayo. Copyright laws need not apply. This was also the site of several scenes which caused me to utter sentences that should not be said aloud, including, “That man is combing his stomach hair” and “Now he is playing with his mullet.”

Back in the car we drove around the dam (surrounded by guards) before heading back to the capital. It had been an adventurous, harrowing, peaceful and puzzling trip into the Tashkent countryside.

Naturally, some of you are wondering how we can afford to be unemployed and yet pay for train tickets all over the continent. Here is how I afford my share of the travel expenses. Mike has saved for over a year to pay for his half while I saved less and am working from the road.

I have one writing contract, which I acquired in the summer of 2008, which pays around $500USD a month. I have a good working relationship for the company, and because of my tenure with them, and because I turn in assignments on time and with additional features, I am confident the relationship will continue indefinitely. However, I have a contract which stipulates a one month notice should they terminate, giving me one month to find another contract should this one expire.

I also do a bit of travel writing for an online travel and trip planning company. I work on an assignment basis which produces an average of $150USD an assignment (roughly every other month). More importantly, this is a link for me to build new contacts and a gateway to future contracts.

I have also been writing, on a by-article basis for an online magazine, which pays a confidential amount per article and is based in Thailand. My relationship with this company is great, and they love that some of their writers are also on-the-road travelers.

In addition to this, I am a frequent visitor to various online writer’s boards where companies pay by the article or by the word for content on various topics. Because of competition and constant undercutting, many writers do not get paid as well as I do. I work to cultivate working relationships with people at each company to ensure my stability with them, but also because a writer is more than the content they produce.

In addition to the above, between March – April of this year I earned a 100 hour TOFEL certificate which will enable me to teach in any country in the world for profit. Should we run into financial troubles or decide to settle in a place for a while, this will be an additional source of income.

Thus, while I am not making a fortune right now, I am breaking even and traveling the world, which is more than I could have asked for. I do have some University loans that cost me about $200 USD per month to maintain, but I put away savings expressly for this purpose beginning in early 2008 so that I would not have to worry about my loans until the summer of 2010.

Cathederal

We arrived in Almaty, the former capital of Kazakhstan, at 6:00am after 36 hours on the train. We immediately realized how screwed we were when we tried to buy train tickets to Tashkent for the next day using charades, smiles and Pictionary-like drawings. We both studied Russian for the month before we left, and discovered that knowing how to ask someone’s name and where they are from is useless and unpractical, albeit friendly. Finally, I figured out that there was a train, from another nearby station, leaving at 5:12am the next day. I promptly bought two tickets for 12,000Tenge after speedily changing my RMB into Tenge at a nearby counter using a similar method of charades and Pictionary.
From the train station, we hopped in the back of someone’s car for 400T to So Young’s Youth Hostel. It was hardly 8:30am, but So Young was awake and set about making a nice breakfast of fresh peppers, bread, popcorn and tea. A New Zealander woke up and joined us, and a bit later a boy from Holland joined in. We discussed everyone’s travel plans and how So Young, a S. Korean native, had ended up in Almaty (logistics expert for rail transport).
While we have many legitimate gripes with The Lonely Planet guidebooks, the section on Almaty was decent and set up an 8k ‘walking tour’ through the key spots in the city. We decided to add ‘buy Russian phrase book’ to our to-do list for the day. We walked all around the city in honest awe of the cleanliness, greenery, modernity and friendliness of the city and debated settling here for 6 months or so to learn Russian in a comfortable and interesting metropolis. This is still a possibility, although we would also like to see what Uzbekistan has to offer.
We had a fine 6USD lunch at a bier garten and then walked to the city bazaar and mosque, as well as an old cathedral in the middle of Pavlov park. We walked to the cable car, but decided not to take it to the top because of impending rain clouds. An hour later it poured so ferociously that the streets soon filled with water. We ducked, quickly, into the town’s biggest expat bar in an attempt to meet a few locals to hear what they think of living in the city- but the bar was deserted. Dashing through the rain, we reached So Young’s and settled in for some quality time with the other travelers and So Young, and a nice evening prepping for our border crossing tomorrow and uploading pictures.
More from Uzbekistan soon to follow.

Tashkurgan Stone City - Princess Fortress

At the end of a tree-lined street, we stopped at an old clay fortress. We discovered that it was over 1300 years old. Middle Eastern / Central Asia in design, the fortress stood watch over a beautiful green valley. It was easy to envision the structure being the only building in the area protecting the furthest boundaries of various dynasties or empires. After getting some pictures on the fort, I turned to look at the Pamirs. It was almost crazy to imagine that just over that range was Afghanistan. The valley below the fortress was full of small huts and streams going through the lumps of green sod. We ventured out into the valley and found that all of the streams were fed by bubbling springs all over the valley. A quaint wooden bridges arched over several sections of the stream so herders could cross their fields. We then collected some food and water and headed back for Kashgar.

After several hours on the road again, seeing the same scenery – which was equally beautiful in reverse – our driver suddenly jerked the wheel off the road. We started a bumpy ride toward a massive mountain range across a small desert. Initially, I thought we were just going off-road a little ways to get a picture. After about 15 -20 minutes though, it was pretty clear that we were going all the way to the mountains. Somewhat of an unscheduled stop, the driver turned around smiling and said, “We are going to that peak right there. You can see some ice.” At least that is what I got in Chinese. The road got even worse and we started jumping rocks and small boulders with the jeep. And by “road” I mean middle of nowhere randomly driving across a desert.

After an hour or so, we started inching our way up and down hills and valleys to find a safe pass to the mountain range.

Suddenly, the driver dropped the jeep into a rocky Spring melt river bank. The jeep immediately became stuck in the snow. Everyone exited the vehicle, and started to help the driver dig it out. I was wondering, “Are we going to spend the night up here because, even if we do get it out of the snow, how do we get out of the river bank?” However, to my amazement we got back in the jeep and continued across the boulders and rocks. The driver was insistent that he drive us to where we needed to be. We requested that he stop so we can hike up the rest of the way. With a sigh of disgust, he stopped in the bank and we hiked for about 1 ½ hours to the edge of a glacier.

The landscape was beautiful. A beautiful white glacier was dipping into a valley between the mountains. We climbed around the glacier and took pictures for a while. Looking around in the other directions was equally amazing. Looking at the towering peaks above us, the clouds swirl by so quickly. However, maybe I was just dizzy as we were now well over 4800 meters or about 3 miles above sea level. As I turned West, there were dust devils whirling in the desert and a snow storm approaching through the middle. We quickly made our decent and headed back to the jeep. It took us about 30 minutes to build up a rock ladder for the jeep to get out of the melt bank. I am glad we did not blow a tire or hook the frame on a rock. It would have been a very cold way to end it all, but at least the scenery was nice. We eventually made it through a small sand storm and were back on the road to Kashgar.

We have a video but it will not upload, we will do our best to add it soon.

If you are interested in doing a trip like this from Kashgar, it will talk about 1 full day from Kashgar to Lake Karakul, and then another day to Tashkurgan, the glacier, and back to Kashgar around 9 or 10 at night. Don’t forget to bring your passport as there was at least one document check before we got to Lake Karakul. There were several Chinese police stations policing this “Autonomous” Tajik Region of Xinjiang, China, so there may be more checks in the future.

Old Town Doorway

We spent the day today walking around the Old Town districts of Kashgar. Around the mosque, one of the largest in China, were rows of marketers selling a variety of local hand-made wares. Across the street we entered the bazaar and were in awe as all Chinese aspects of the city disappeared and stalls of herbs, fruits, nuts, and spices covered the streets ahead. It was almost as though we were on the silk road again, which Marco Polo and Aurel Stein spoke of in such great detail. We walked for hours in what is most easily described as a photographers dream. Children ran up to us in the streets and alleys asking us to take their picture and then show it to them.

Around 7:00 this evening we experienced a large sand storm that engulfed all of Kashgar. People were running around the streets, shop owners closed their stores, and I got a fist full of sand in my eyes. There is some video of this, but we are having some issues with the Internet capabilities. There are still some really strong winds and I just heard the sound of several pieces of pottery breaking outside as a gust of wind blew them off their perch. If it is this bad in the city right now, I can not imagine what it is like in the Taklamakan.

Tomorrow we are taking a bus down / up the Karakorum Highway, which goes along the the border of several of the “Stans” and we will spend the night at Lake Karakul in a ger or yurt. The Karakorum has come highly recommended to us by our friends as well as a few fellow travelers we have met along the way. It will be a great photo opportunity as the highway will take us well over 3000 meters into the mountains. The last leg of this two day journey will take us to the base of the border with Pakistan. Apparently, we can stand next to a disgruntled member of the Chinese border security with one foot in Pakistan.

Kazakh visa example

We applied for Kazakh transit visas and found the process amazingly easy (perhaps because we are comparing it to the process of getting an Uzbek visa from Shanghai). Last Friday we dropped off our applications feeling a bit worried. We marked “transit” throughout the forms instead of “place of residence in Kazakhstan” or “transit area.” However, despite being very vague we arrived at the Kazakh consulate in Shanghai today and picked up our transit visas without issue. For a three day transit visa we paid 125RMB each (about 20 bucks).

While they have no expedite service (and it takes one full week to get a visa) they did us a favor and got ours back to us on Wednesday, having dropped it off the previous Friday. They were very friendly and helpful.

The hours of operation for the Kazakh consulate in Shanghai are a bit strange. They only accept applications between 9:30am – 12:30pm on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. They will only issue your visas (for pick up) between 3:30 – 5:00pm on those same days. Come early as there is always about an hour wait. A guard will escort you to a small waiting area and then usher you, one at a time, into the main consulate room. Expect to spend about two hours each visit so bring a book.

As per most visa applications, you’ll need passport photos. Have these cut and ready to go as they were a bit anal about the sloppy cut job we did on our pictures and spent quite a bit of time ‘properlly’ trimming the pictures and gluing them lovingly to the application. In addition, bring copies of your passport – simple black and white is fine- and the names of the port of entry and exit for a transit visa (for normal vaisa, have the name of a hotel in a major city for the application).

The address for the Kazakh consulate in Shanghai is: Room 1005, 1006 Orient International Plaza 85 Loushanguan Road Shanghai 200336, P.R.C. You can call +86 (21) 6275 -3878 or  email: office@kzconsulshanghai.org, or visit their website: http://www.kazembchina.org

We ventured to every travel gear store in Shanghai. For those seeking camping, climbing, trekking or other outdoor wear and gear we fully recommend Decathlon. This store has literally everything an outdoor enthusiast could want and expect to find in Shanghai. Since we’ve been to every outdoor store in the city we can safely say this is the cheapest, with the best quality goods, the widest selection (by far) and the friendliest staff. Other outdoor stores in Shanghai have been found lacking. They are usually one-room shops with overpriced fake North Face packs and a few flashlights. Check out Decathlon if you’re in town. We ended up spending around $100USD there and walked away with several quick-dry clothing sets, compression bags, quick-dry towels and other necessities for a backpacker on the road. We’re heading back this weekend to buy a two-man tent (400RMB) and two sleeping bags. With modern technology, these combined could fit into a small backpack and be assembled in less than 5 minutes.

Our packing list (for each person):

• 2 pairs quick-dry khakis
  

  Compresion bag

• 1 pair sweatpants/work-out clothes
• 4 shirts (all quick-dry, anti-wrinkle, one dressier)
• 1 pair shower shoes/ sandals
• 1 paid hiking shoes/boots
• 1 fleece
• 1 windbreaker
• 1 swimsuit
• Undergarments and hiking socks
• Small medical kit, including first aid and medicine for various on-road ailments
• Books and writing materials
• I-pods
• Laptop
• Plastic bags (for dirty clothes, separating wet things, etc)
• 1 two-man tent
• 2 sleeping bags

We packed everything in one large backpack using one compression bag each (black back shown above in left of image). The compression bags collapse everything to manageable size. In one small backpack we will carry the medicine and laptop in a heat controlled bag (as we’re going into the desert and don’t want a giant paper weight made out of the laptop if it gets too hot).  This way we’ll be able to travel with one small bag and one large backpacking ruscksack in case one of us gets injured or is sore from hiking, etc. We will add the sleeping bags and tent as well as the additional small bag and my camera and we’ll be off on our trip in less than a week!

Vietnam

We conducted an online poll to see where our readers thought we should travel next. 37% of our voters thought we should go to Vietnam. We’re taking their advise and we’ll be heading to Vietnam within the next six months after our Central Asia trip. At 32%, our readers put Cambodia as their second choice for a ‘living vicariously’ travel destination. We’re heading there after Vietnam and will be writing and posting images from both countries within the year. In third place, our readers voted for Japan with 26%. Tsk, tsk inattentive readers, I’ve already been! You can read about the trip and see the pictures from Okinawa. 5% of our readers voted for Laos, which we will travel to while touring South East Asia. Surprisingly, 0% of our readers voted for Korea. While we’d like to visit at some point we are taking our readers silence as a sign, and will visit Korea some other time.

Poll results

Vietnam 37%

Cambodia – 32%

Japan – 26%

Laos – 5%

Korea – 0%

We’ve added new polls to our site and several surveys. Please take a moment to participate and help us A) refine our site, and; B) learn more about our readers, and; C) be more interactive in the travel/dreaming community. We have polls and surveys throughout the site so please click around and vote on a few!

As every good adventurer knows, a good companion makes all the difference. At AbandonTheCube we revere those who have gone before us and applaud fellow cube abandoners. Below are a few other free-spirited blogs you might enjoy where the traveler has chosen to cycle away from modernity and into serenity.

Adventure biking

Bike travel:

For the avid travel biker, this site offers around-the-world adventure complete with tips for biking the road less traveled. The TravellingTwo site is dedicated to providing an online guide from people who have actually cycled through the area. Of special interest to us is their Central Asia page which details visa information. While some of that data has changed (for instance, all former soviet republics now charge the flat $130 rate for a multi-entry visa) it has other highly relevant information and well worth a read!

Similarly, two of our friends cycled from Lhasa to Nepal (by no means a minor feat) having encountered a plethora of adventures of their own, including one of the most hilarious and horrible international visa stories we’ve ever heard. We’ve learned from their experiences and are now rightly paranoid about Lhasa visas and permits.

Our trip:

Central Asia

We leave in less than two weeks on our pan-Asian train tour. While we are jealous of those who are self propelled, we’re more of the “read a book along the way” traveling type. We’ll be taking trains and buses from Shanghai to Ashgabat, where we will stay for several days. After a quick stop off at the gates of hell we will continue our voyage from Ashgabat north to Russia and hop the trans-Siberian through Mongolia and down through China and into South Asia to tour Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and more. This is just the beginning.

Samarkand

Having completed all the necessary paperwork, acquired mini photos of myself and located my passport I set off to the Uzbek consulate in Shanghai.

No one seemed to know where Huangpu Road was. After several attempts I finally located number 99 and went to the 15th floor, which is where the Embassy site said the consulate offices were. I found a glass door with neon green construction paper glued to the door and a tiny white sign in Chinese with a phone number. I called the number and asked where the consulate was. He replied with a question, “rent or buy?”

I went to a nearby office and asked how long the room with the green door had been empty. “Almost two years,” came the cringe-worthy reply. I called Mike, who looked online and located another phone number. No answer and then a dial tone. Bummer.

After returning from the boondocks to my Shanghai apartment I confirmed online that I had gone to the right address. I called the Uzbek Embassy in Beijing. No one spoke English and the Chinese intern who answered the phone hung up when I asked if it was the Uzbek Embassy. Frustrated, I asked a friend who is fluent if she could follow up and find any information. Meanwhile a friend of Mike’s who speaks Russian is looking online for more information.

Meanwhile, if I can’t find information on the consulate I’ll have to take the overnight train to Beijing to find the Uzbek Embassy and try to deal with acquiring the visa in person in Beijing.

Through the whole semi-frustrating ordeal I was reminded that this is simply how things are in Asia- impermanent. It is a great start to the trip!

-Posted by Lauren.

As the trip planning progresses I find myself at the stage of applying for international visas, a process wrought with vagueness and inconsistencies. For example, you can get a transit visa for several Central Asian countries but the duration of stay is not long enough to get across the country by land. Or, visa laws will stipulate that you need A, B and C and then when you get to the consulate they will have a list that goes from A to Z of random documents and health testing you need. That aside, the trip planning is going well. We are set to go from Urumqi to Almaty by train or bus through the Tien Shan mountains, and then spend a day in Almaty seeing the world’s second largest canyon and the accompanying hot springs. From there you grab a train to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where we’ll spend a day in the capital before heading to Samarkand and Bokarah, where I’d like to spend a few weeks, if time permitted.

Maps of the region are hard to come by, so planning a more accurate by land traverse is difficult. Where trains become obsolete we’ll take buses. In Central Asia and China a bus is anything from an SUV with all the seats removed to a long hallow tube with stacked cots and a pin for animals in the back. Hopefully the buses in and around Bukarah are an improvement upon earlier experiences, but either way its an adventure.

Trains are apparently the best way to travel…. until you reach Bokarah, whereupon the train becomes a projectile of T.B. From Bokarah we’ll need to take buses or rent an SUV or comission a pack of horses or camels to take us to Ashgabat. With visa laws somewhat obscure for Turkmenistan, I’m having difficulty believing I can just nab permisssion to cross at the border.

I’m growing more excited about the trip. Reading up on the bazars,

minnerets, whirling-dervishes, single-eyebrowed ladies and massive lakes of fire have inspired me to salavate when looking at the map of my overland route. It is a shame humans invented airplanes because I feel little good has come of it. We use them for war and for making travel easier. Unfortunetly its made travel less interesting. This trip is really going to feel like a trek from shore to shore. From Shanghai to Ashgabat, and then west to Turkmenbashy on the Caspian Sea. Visas are being acquired and train tickets sought out. The countdown begins!

-Posted by Lauren.

In planning the trip from Shanghai to Ashgabat, I’m encountering some chatter online about difficulties previous travelers have faced trying to cross the Irkeshtam pass from China into Kyrgyzstan. I contacted a Central Asian expert to inquire about the safety of traveling in this region, as well as the probability of attempting a border crossing at Irkeshtam. I was told it would be a waste of time to attempt to get from Kashgar to Osh. However, there is some hope in arranging for a Chinese travel company to escort me to the border and then deliver me to a Bishkek travel company, which would then drop me off safely in the capital of Kyrgyzstan.  As for safety, there was no one who would recommend a woman travel alone, naturally.

I’m determined to travel from the Coast of China to the Caspian Sea. If there were some way to make it from Turkmenistan to the Mediterranean I could have gone from coast to coast without touching an airfield, truly a feat in this day and age, where travel is about arriving, not departing.Alas, there are a few countries between the Caspian and the Med that are not intelligent to visit at present. It is all in the planning stages, and perhaps there is a way, but I will be more than happy to have gone from Shanghai to Ashgabat.

I invited a travel partner recently, and am excite to hear if she can make the trip. This woman has traveled all over the world, and has a travel resume that would make even the most adventurous traveler blush in envy. I’ll let you know what she says. She speaks some Russian and a bit of Kyrgyz, which would be helpful on the trip, not to mention she has an intimate knowledge of the Stans. I’ll not ruin the surprise until I get confirmation.

All else is going well, investigating visa options, researching train schedules and studying maps. I’m also following the news from the countries we’ll travel through and alternate routes should anything go south mid-trip.

-Posted by Lauren.

As many of you know, I was laid off from my financial job on New Year’s Eve (classy timing). But this upsetting twist has been an amazing thing. I’ve been busy writing full time now, and making a fairly decent income to boot. I’ve been painting and touring around Shanghai as well, and will upload pictures of the paintings soon.

Alas, this time should not go wasted. It is rare that I have money saved up, free time, and the perfect location from which to launch a trip like this one. I’m planing a journey across land from Shanghai to Ashgabat, beginning late April. So far, I have the first half of the trip, some 8,200 miles, planned.  I’ll take the train from Shanghai to Urumqi, which is a 48 hour trip through a varied and diverse terrain. I’ll be writting on the train, as well as photographing the changes as we chug through flatlands, mountains and then desert.  From Urumqi I’ll take an overnight bus to Kashgar, the bus takes 24 hours and skirts along the Taklamakan desert, one of the harshest in the world.The bus leaves mid day so that we will be traveling by night through the deepest parts of the desert.

Kashgar is one of the few places on the planet that inspires instant envy. I’m enveious of the folks I know who have been there who claim it is truly an oasis of culture and color- the fading with the influx of new residents. I want to get there before it compleately dissapears.

From Kashgar to Ashgabat, the roads are a bit hazy and the trip a bit more dangerous. Careful planning is needed, at least to secure visas, permits and find a map with existing roads on it. This second phase of the journey will be planned at a later stage. For now, I’m busy finding out what there is to see along the route I have mapped so far. I’ve been to Turpan and toured around Urumqi, so this trip I’d like to check out some outlying villages to the North of the city before heading through the desert to Kashgar. At some point, I’m determined to use a camel as a mode of transportation.

I just hope my laptop doesnt melt. April/May is a rough time to be out in the desert, but alas there is no time like the present. It will take about a month to finish planning, packing and acquiring visas, hence, the adventure begins now!

-Posted by Lauren.

Travel

How much would it cost to travel in Asia for a year?  This thought crossed my mind today as I was sitting in my office.  Like being back in grade school, my teachers refused to let me sit by the window because I would just stare outside all day and they would have to say my name multiple times before my head would turn.  Not much has changed since then as I am sitting in my office looking out the window.  Just ask Lauren, she will tell you how many times she has to say my name before I hear or acknowledged her – partially because I didn’t hear, more because I was thinking about something else, and probably because my hearing has gotten selectively more selective over the years.

Pondering bamboo scaffolding, how suspension bridges work, and what plant I would masticate as an antidote for…oh I don’t know, being shot by a poisonous frog dart like in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom; I fixated on travel for a long time this morning.  Now, all the previous thoughts being completely rational and normal for most people to have on a Tuesday morning in the office, how much would it cost to travel in Asia for a year?

This is really quite simple to answer, especially if you are already living in Asia and would not need to purchase a plane ticket.  Any Lonely Planet, not that I would recommend using them, will tell you that it is quite possible to get by on $20.00 USD a day in most Asian countries.  Even this is an inflated figure, as in many Southeast Asian countries you can easily get by for under $10 USD each day.  Including train travel expenses and the occasional treat, I think $20 USD is very fair.

I estimate that if I were to save up about 7,500 USD, I could travel for exactly 375 days, non-stop, for a year.  This was a really exciting thing to become fixated upon.  Lauren and I have no departure plans set yet, but these numbers are really fun to throw around in our heads for when we plan the Exodus and will probably affect how we go about doing it.  So much more to see and do!

“Do not tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you traveled.”

–  Muhammad

The next morning we awoke to the sounds of horses. Billig had brought in a rather large brown horse for the evening, and he had strolled around the yard all night eating every blade of grass and then leaving large piles of evidence strewn about, which the two dogs were rolling in when I stepped out of the yurt. I walked near the horse to say hello, sleep still in my eyes. The horse pivoted with such grace and speed that I hardly had time to react before it shifted all its weight to its front legs and kicked ferociously back with both hind legs. Mike was just stepping out of the yurt and yelled a too-late warning. The back leg kicked millimeters past my fragile skull and landed harmlessly back on the grassless ground. Startled, I realized that this was the second near-miss by a horse in as many days.

Trans-Siberian railway

Nevertheless, we asked Billig for horses for the day and walked into town while we waited for our mystery meal and for Billig to collect the horses from a friend. In town (which was a good mile hike) we bough the necessary provisions for a long ride, namely, a giant bottle of vodka and some orange juice to mix it with. On the mile walk back, we split the two bottles half and half and set about emptying them into our bellies. We were starving, our stomachs were raw from devouring mysterious substances for the past several days, and in town we could not find anything other than a large round loaf of bread to purchase for sustenance.

Back at camp we had carrots and noodles spiced with a tar-like substance I can only imagine was reheated dog. We chewed on wild onion shoots and looked across the kiddy table at each other. Mike looked ragged, tired and diseased; dark circles nearly eclipsed his blood-shot eyes. Still, he was an attractive man and I could not help but smile at what he had gone through the previous night for me. Wife had served a bowel of raw yogurt to the both of us, being lactose intolerant Mike slyly ate both his and mine, and as a result had spent the evening frequenting the outhouse via flashlight. Romance at its finest– or at least, romance on the steppe.

Billig returned with two horses, a small brown one which I presumed was mine and a large glorious grey one which could only, in this male chauvinist culture, be meant for Mike. Billig was not alone; he had a rather cheery Asian accomplice with him who he introduced as his Japanese friend. The two had met while Billig was looking for gold with the American. I wanted to learn more about the gold hunting, but would wait until later to ask.

Billig and the Japanese man (who was in a purple track suit) pulled out several bottles of beer and poured glasses for the men. Mike interjected and calmly and politely explained that white women also drank. Everyone in the yurt thought this was amazingly funny, and the Japanese man laughed as he poured me a full bowel of beer. We clinked and clanked bowels and all downed our drinks. Wife sat in the corner laughing and batting her eyes at Billig. He asked her to drink, but she said it was bad for her skin, and declined.

We drank several beers before another strange man arrived. This man was clad in traditional Mongolian gear, with a large cloth jacket tied on with a sash belt that also held a giant dagger. He wore a cowboy hat and had a long blade of grass between his teeth. He was fairly handsome, and Wife blushed as he walked in. Billig introduced him as the horse man, the until now supplier of our previous day’s brutes. Billig also explained that his wife had a massive crush on the cowboy, and he poured the man a bowel of beer and joked that his wife would someday ‘change to the other one,’ meaning the handsome cowboy. I thought that if Marlboro could have signed this lad, they would have won as many hearts as smokers. The man had brought the horses for us while we were off gathering booze, and had returned with saddles. It had started to rain and he and Wife went out and collected the saddles and set them in the yurt.

We drank a bit more, chewed our dog meat, and then the Japanese man in the track suit asked if white women also gambled. Mike assured him that they did and I found myself playing a very confusing local Mongolian variety of poker. Somehow I managed to beat Billig, though with the Japanese man’s help and constant cheering to assist me.

Tipsy and a bit lethargic, Mike and I mounted our horses and decided to go as far into the valley as we could before sunset. Already it was 11am and we were on the verge of being useless thanks to the endless bowel clanking. Wife set off across the fields with a bucket and the cowboy, Japanese man and Billig all got in a small white car (when had that arrived?) and took off spinning in circles, across the fields for town.

-Posted by Lauren.