Dear Chris,
I got tired of repeating to stunned people how we went all the way overland from Europe to the northern tip of Japan, just take a map, look what countries are in the way, spot the cities and the places of interest, and take a bus, just like here, I told this Sunday a very simpatico older Greek physician, practicing in the off-the-beaten-path, lovely island of Samothrace – You go to the KTEL station (bus cooperatives operating, in exclusivity, long-distance buses), ask which bus goes to the next city, and when, and you hop it, when you get off you look around for a small hotel, and that’s it, you move from one town to the next
(Lonely Planet) guides are useful for the maps of town, where are the bus station, the area with the most (budget) hotels, and to be sure we don’t miss any sight, certainly not as to what hotel or restaurant to pick, nor to read their condescending rambling, positioning the traveler against the “locals”
maps… the key word for me, I love to look at maps, to use maps, to organize an itinerary, step by step, and I know where it comes from, my grandfather and great-grandfather were both high military officers, the latter the first to reach the grade of general in the new Greek infantry, both participated in WWI, how many maps must have they studied before the battle! (I probably inherited too from them the capacity to micro-manage well a situation, while I do badly in macro, especially in finances where I am a disaster, like my father was)
our goal was not to follow the so touted Silk Road, nor retrace Alexander the Great steps like Greeks dream to do, it’s only later, reading the map, that I discovered that our route espoused pretty well the 40 North parallel, even our Northern Greece village is right on it (N40°18), as is our winter New York residence (N40°42) and our friends at destination (Sapporo, N42°59)
well, it’s a bit more complicated, this trip was to experience Central Asia, so we zigzagged a lot around it as these borders are incredibly capricious, roads have to negotiate high mountains, and open passes into China are few and apart, I mean the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China, another mythical spot, with the large oasis of Kashgar (N39°23) and the Thousand Buddha caves (N41°42, E082°55 for Kucha and N40°10, E094°40 for Dunhuang), anyway we wanted badly to see China again, and the road to the Far East passed through history-rich Manchuria, which by the way had a major role in Xinjiang, a Manchu name for “New Frontier”, then next-door Vladivostok, at the end of the long Trans-Siberian line on the Pacific, and though we didn’t fancy much Japan, our formerly New York resident Japanese friends, the journalist and the painter, now lived in the capital of Hokkaido, it didn’t take us long to envision hopping across the Sea of Japan…
that was one of three hard passages, the first was also a boat, the Caspian Sea ferry, and did I curse that foolish Saskawhatever who ignited the war this past summer, thinking he could take advantage of the moribund days of his friend the Monkey, that was barely three weeks before our departure, first, we were almost barred from crossing Georgia, the bus line started again operating a couple of days before we arrived in Istanbul (N41°5, E029°0), we zipped through to Baku in 36 hours not counting six to cross the Turkey-Georgia (traffic-clogged) and Georgia-Azerbaijan (totally desert at 1 a.m.) borders, not a breeze in the whole of Russian-occupied Georgia, didn’t even see the missile destroyer USS McFaul in the Black Sea port of Batumi
the problem started in Baku (N40°22, E049°48), the ferry to Turkmenbashi (N40°1, E052°57) was daily, yet I had given ourselves a few days to be sure we got on time for the escort waiting for us on the other side, for you cannot visit Turkmenistan without a guide, a bit like southern Algeria, well, that was a nightmare, first, nobody speaks even a word of English, it’s all Russian, then nobody gives a shit, there were two women at the ferry office, I mean a hole with a tiny window opening at totally erratic hours, the babushka types who could only tell me, Ferry, nyet! day after day
it’s simple, the ferry operates mainly freight, passengers are totally accessory, more like a nuisance, actually since there was a fire a while ago, the government restricted the number of passengers, so even with a large number of cabins, they can only take about thirty people, not much given the demand, and the only alternative being a 500-dollar one-way flight, or… I figured, by-passing the Caspian Sea along its southern shore, which means three days through Iran ! but in both cases you arrive in the capital Ashgabat and have to backtrack a long way to Turkmenbashi, the arrival port on the Central Asian side
it’s still OK when you have a ferry every day, but now, because of that reckless Saskawhatever a train bridge was destroyed in Georgia, and an Azeri fuel train exploded after hitting a mine on the old side track it had taken to avoid the damaged bridge, that was 10 days before, and still no freight was coming into Azerbaijan and, as a customs official told me at the port, No freight, no ferry! that lasted for several days, I kept coming twice a day to the port, something already frustrating in normal times was becoming almost impossible
when I was not in the port I checked at various airlines and travel agencies, staffed with sexily-dressed young women who spoke almost no English, the first puzzled me by asking, Turkmenbashi? Where is that? imagine a Brussels travel employee asking, Where is Paris? I later learned the town was still known under her Russian name of Krasnovodsk (Red Water), my next obvious question was not any easier to answer, I inquired about a flight to Turkmenbashi-Krasnovodsk, I had seen on the Baku Airport timetable a Yakovlev overtaking the Caspian in barely 40 minutes, I got only blank looks, these employees are very young, this one had high heels, a very close-fit short dress, and was extremely made-up, how would they have known flight #J2 231 had been grounded for at least six years, as David told me later, he was musing maybe they would reintroduce it with all the ferry troubles
trying to get a better deal, I went to Lufthansa – the only airline flying to Turkmenistan’s capital – at the Hyatt International Center II, walked too far, backtracked, saw a long line of black S.U.V.s nothing very unusual here, oil tycoons have plenty of the latest Mercedes and BMW S.U.V.s, never saw so many heavies, police itself has over 400 brand new patrol cars (each numbered), all BMWs of the highest model, 700s, and they use them as well as their blaring loudspeakers to stop any car they think they can get money from, as I was nearing I saw the very caricaturable secret service mastiffs, shaved heads, a microphone in the ear, dressed in black, sniffing around, at the airline they told me Cheney the Dick was at the Hyatt, evidently making sure Azerbaijan was on their side against the Russians in next door conflict
cheapest one-way over the Caspian to Ashgabat was close to 500 dollars, four times a week, and not to worry, the plane was almost always empty (you bet, with prices like that for a 2-hour flight!), we could simply show up at the airport, I opted for an Iranian transit visas, as usual they were helpful, except the payment (25 dollars) had to be made at Bank Melli (National) of Iran… on the other side of town, but metro is great and dirt cheap, with the required documents I entered the consulate at 11:55, just before closing
“Well…”
ten minutes later I had it, valid for five days upon entry, I told the pleasant, overweight consulate guy he could call on us when he visited Brussels, which he planned to
while I was waiting there was a Brit shouting from the sidewalk, “Pleaaaaase let me in! I was here early but the taxi driver kept circling around the consulate for an hour”, “Take the metro!” I told the guy on my way out, he looked at me puzzled and furious at once, what an idiot, in such traffic and with notorious thieves that are taxi drivers all over the world
ours took 15 Manat (18 dollars) to the port, enough to go to the airport outside town, and he was a neighbor of Elvin! there is no way we would have made it without Elvin, our guardian angel I had met in an internet café, he had came to me, smiling, young, very thin, nice black pants and white shirt, he knew passable English, above all he was extremely likeable and diplomatic, he truly charmed the old bitch at the ferry booth, to make it short, after lots of palaver over a couple of visits, he told her to please accept a small gift from us (about 20 bucks each above a 100 dollar ticket) which she was shy to take, What is a foreigner going to think about us? but Elvin was great, and beamed to us, Don’t worry at all ! I promise I would put you on the boat. She says whenever there is a boat, you will be the first aboard, and that gave us a cabin for ourselves, with plastic flowers and a window on the Caspian, on good old Professor Gul (Flower) ferry
our ordeal did not stop there, the boat left more or less on time, late at night, five days after we had arrived in Baku, I saw the oil platforms at dawn, and we stopped short of Turkmenbashi port at 3 p.m., fifteen hours to cross the Caspian, then we waited twenty hours on board before docking, four and a half to disembark, and another five hours to clear Turkmen customs… the bureaucratic heritage of the Soviet Union
we were lucky, others have waited six days, there is only a double dock and when ferries are stuck, like in our case, others can’t come in ! we had run out of food, had not had time to stock up in our haste to board – Elvin called me barely an hour after we had talked, Hurry up, hurry ! The ferry is here, you have to get on now! – that was OK, we could get surprisingly tasty chicken & pasta (the only choice) for just 2 dollars in the basic dining area, but we were at the end of our drinking water, no water on sale, not any drink of any kind, aboard the Professor Gul, the attendant told me tap water was OK, looking at the old plumbing I hoped for the best
we were lucky, later in Ashgabat we met two Germans, of course they had not made it on the ferry and had to fly for a thousand bucks both, and in addition miss the Western part of Turkmenistan, I repeat we would not have made it without Elvin, the bitches had all sorts of excuses – beyond the absence of a boat – here is what we read on the Thorn Tree, the year before, when there was regular service across the Caspian, this one to Aktau in Kazakhstan
We tried to get on the ferry from Baku to Aktau. We waited a week end then the ferry left without us although we went everyday at least 3 times to check departures. No places left they told us. Even an “extra fee” could not get us a ticket. Strange because the ferry takes trains and trucks, why not 2 cyclists?…
then I laughed at the Norge who complained they had to pay a full 5-m freight charge for their 4.4-m Land Rover, 20 dollars shipping release fee, 3 bucks for a 1.5 lt bottle of water and 10 for a meal of salad, fried potatoes, and tea, that there was no food service before the boat left the harbour, and that this took six hours – these tourists expect European travel conditions, yet bottom prices, I couldn’t have cared less for all these miserly details, just to get on a boat!
that was our first difficult passage, the next was the famous Torugart pass (N40°50) that political writer Robert Kaplan had missed in 1994 due to insufficient preparation, and had to make a huge loop north through Kazakhstan then back south through Urumqi, you cannot just take a bus and cross Torugart, you have to pre-arrange private transportation, it’s a military zone for the Chinese, you bet, it’s in Xinjiang, an autonomous region with a majority of Muslim Uygurs, and during the Olympics these exploded several bombs throughout the region, so, on top of being a notoriously difficult crossing – for the unpredictable bureaucracy, the week-ends closed, the cost, and the snow – it was simply closed down for two months ! this time I should thank the separatists! at least they have a more noble motivation than Saskawhatever
the pass opened two weeks before we showed up, our Chinese escort was one hour late, pissing off our Kyrgyz driver who had to wait after having zipped us through Kyrgyz customs ahead of a long line of truck drivers, one week later the pass closed again … due to heavy snow, yet, we almost missed it because of a … kidney stone, but that will be a story in itself, I’ll just say that at 3752-m, it was after all not impressive, almost flat on the northern, Kyrgyz side, very long on the Chinese descending side, with no special features, while we had crossed majestic passes in the Tajik Pamirs at 4272-m (Koi-Tezek), 4655-m (Ak-Baital, White Horse) and Kyzyl-Art at 4282-m where you leave Tajikistan to enter Kyrgyzstan, actually not far at all, on the western limit of this Uygur region
the last unpredictable passage was the Far-East boat, the Vladivostok-Hokkaido line respected most our 40th North route and would have taken us directly to our friends, but it stopped by October due to ice, we missed it by a couple of weeks, couldn’t have left earlier, were busy in Greece and anyway August would have been too hot in the Turkmen desert, the alternative was not bad, the weekly Vladivostok-Fushiki/Toyama which arrived roughly at the level of Tokyo on the continental side of the big island, we had to see Tokyo and the Fuji-Yama anyway – we could have missed that one too, the ferry’s main raison d’etre is the brisk auto business, Russian traders crossing to import cars, easy to spot, eight out of ten cars in Vladivostok were right-wheeled, in Japan they drive on the wrong side, like the Brits, now though, crisis oblige, the government increased tariffs on imported cars, we saw the first protests while there, and the boat had about one hundred traders, down from a peak of 300
but we are usually lucky and Vladivostok was our easiest, albeit less pleasant, stay, we almost did not make it to the hotel I had picked after some research – Vladivostok like all of Russia is insanely expensive – we arrived in town at night under a snowstorm and, like most places, the Moryak was on a hill, although he took many side-streets to avoid steep avenues, the taxi skidded severely, and hit once the sidewalk, cheapest room was 60 dollars, and that was on the fifth floor, without elevators, and our packs were full of books and rocks… still, I found out the next morning it was less than five minutes walk from the sea terminal where I easily spotted the Vladimar shipping line, it was a Friday, the next boat left on schedule, the following Monday, perfect!
what a relief to be able to read the signs, Cyrillic is easy with my Greek, that had been, as always, a torture in China where a short (480 km) Harbin-Vladivostok transfer had been so hard, the counter woman at the big Harbin train station had no idea what I meant when I said, Vladivostok! and that was the next door important town, albeit across from the border, until an older Russian told me they use their own name, Hachinwei, once more it’s like asking in Brussels for a train ticket to Paris and the clerk not understanding, even though they would use another name, let alone that no such direct train existed, we ended up taking a bus to the border town of Suifenhe, by miracle a fellow-passenger understood and took us to the, separate, bus terminal for Vladivostok, asking later for a reward, then a Russian bus drove across the border to the famed port
the rest in the Russia, or rather the Siberia, chapter, another time!
apart from the three difficult passages, we had a conflict at both ends of our trip, the Georgia war (August) upon leaving, and the Bangkok airports occupation and close-down by anti-government protesters (December) when we returned, while the former made us lose four days, waiting for the Caspian ferry, the latter forced us to land in Chiangmai (Korean flight), then lose a day and a half in the northern mountains to reach our dear Mekong hideout
hey! the trip started in the diplomatic hallways a few months before we hit the road, it’s not like, you get on a plane, arrive in Buenos Aires, and head north on the Pan-American, no hassle, no registration, no visas, if I thought the Algerian visa was complicated, with an official invitation, proven residency in the country where one applies (not easy with a Greek passport saying you live in Belgium, and a Belgian passport with a Greek address but no documented evidence), a mandatory medical insurance, a special permit for the Sahara, south of Ghardaia, along with a compulsory guide (and vehicle), wait to see Central Asia ! Are the ‘Stans’ worth the trouble? asked a traveler in a prominent posting/forum on the Thorn Tree Thread (Sep 02, 2008 by geekgal)
not that it was impossible, but it needed time, planning, efforts, and money! over one thousand dollars each for the eight visas, letters of invitation for Uzbekistan (at the embassy in Athens, not in Brussels), Azerbaijan (no needed if you land at the airport), Turkmenistan, China, and Russia, the special permits for border zones in Turkmenistan and for Gorno-Badakhshan in Tajikistan, and the neighbor of the latter, Kyrgyzstan, asked 175 Euros each of us for multiple entry, same day delivery, visa
in the visa expenses, I don’t count the traveling and time expenses as we are not lucky to live in a capital with all these embassies, I spent a week in Athens and went three times to Brussels from Li ge, I was lucky I had to go to Belgium, before leaving Greece eastward as I had to take back my mother and the cat, and that’s another story! I managed very well with all our exotic visas, and also all the cat’s vaccines (five), you know, in the European Union pets need a passport to travel (and an electronic chip under her skin) and it is much stricter than for humans, when we went to the Sahara and got our yellow fever shot, the health ministry official simply signed (illegibly) and stamped our vaccination cards, for Pussycat you get not only the vet’s authorization number and full address, but also the lot number, the dates, and the sticker from the vaccine
anyway we arrive mid-August at the Greek-Macedonian border, long lines, people are going back to the West after vacations, I show Pussycat’s passport, fine, I show mine, stamped, then he takes my mother’s, looks carefully and hands it back, Sorry, this is expired, with all the travel hassles, I had completely forgotten the simplest one, my mother had only a one-year valid passport, I argued, the immigration official would have taken two 50-Euro notes and let us slip by, but, I didn’t know what they would have said at exit, and we also had to cross Serbia, at the very least shell much more bribes
we turned back, where to go? I didn’t have the courage to endure again a ferry plus cross Italy with its heavy-handed police and impossible traffic, Bulgaria and Romania had just joined the E.U. and Mother needed only her national I.D., to make things short, we drove an additional 600 kilometers and 12 hours to detour via those two countries, and I was surprised that in the ten or so years we had not driven through, the roads not only had not improved but were worse, the Carpathians in particular were a torture, in the middle of the night, tens of trucks and buses on small, winding, and bad mountain roads, we arrived after 36 hours of nonstop driving, except for Mother and Pussy peeing
more expenses, I also had to get a new Belgian passport – after an initial scare because of the 15th of August long holidays, that was issued within ten days from Brussels via the Thessaloniki consulate and the Athens embassy – the old one was running out of pages and they don’t add anymore pages as in the good old times, let alone Russians wanted a neat document, not a battered thing which cover info, like Kingdom of Belgium, was totally erased from carrying it in my pockets, had even considered using the gringo passport, but that would have complicated matters, Russians already wondered why we entered their country with a different passport than we used in China
these two were supposed to be a hard nut, the Russian was the easiest for us, got an invitation on the internet in one day for 30 bucks with a reputed organization well introduced at the Russian consulates, then collected our visa in a few days in Brussels for 65 Euros each (on our brand new passport), a French couple who did it all on the internet shelled out 300 Euros each ! – but the former… I had to go once at the Chinese embassy in Athens and four times at the one in Brussels, even enlisting the help of a visa person – a Tajik ! – who could do nothing more, of course they seldom see someone entering China by land, especially in Brussels, comfy Belgians take the most-beaten-path, plus it was right during the Olympics, never seen so many people applying for visas, each day I went there were two travel agency employees with a big tray each full of passports and applications neatly folded, some travelers!
David from Stantours, my sponsor (more on him later), had done his job incompletely and had not sent the official letter of invitation (LOI in tourism jargon) from the local authorities in Urumqi, Xinjiang, only the hotel and transportation reservations, of course I could not read the all-Chinese documents he had sent me to check before driving 600 km south
in Athens, the Chinese said, Oh! We also need the LOIDavid sent it to me by email, by then I was in Belgium
in Brussels, the Chinese said, Oh! We also need the original LOI
the second time, they turned down the visa service person I sent in, the third time the Chinese consulate supervisor said she was going to call Urumqi herself to check on the authenticity of the document, by the fourth time her call had either gone through or she had gotten tired of seeing me, and they gave us our visas – one of those days I had gone shopping in the nearby Carrefour supermarket chain and bumped into one of the Chinese consular official, he smiled, and asked, Why do you want to go to Xinjiang? There is nothing to see there, it’s a desert and it’s cold! and he made the gesture of somebody being cold, typical opinion of a diplomat and typical view of a Han Chinese towards the Uygur territory, closer to Central Asia than to the rest of China, a bit like Tibet
I did not drive for naught to Athens that time, by a good combination I managed to get the Uzbek (in the suburbs), the Azeri (in the center of town), then the Kazakh (in another suburbs) visas in one week, even though theoretically each needed a few days
and Turkmenistan! a case of its own, they either give you a five-day transit, provided you have a visa for either sides of the country, Uzbekistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, or Azerbaijan, but there is no way you can visit anything in such a big country with everything scattered around and very poor transportation, so you are stuck with an agency, on the internet all pointed towards David Berghof… an (Eastern) German living in Kazakhstan but operating chiefly in Turkmenistan, with a company registered in New Zealand, and a bank account in Latvia, to make things brief, he was certainly not cheap, in line though with other destinations such as Niger and Algeria, also countries requiring guides, but he was very available, we must have exchanged over 200 emails back and forth before we eventually met in Almaty, and he always promptly answered the smallest question
better, his services were definitely professional, we were really fully taken care of – not that we wanted it, but no choice – even had a back-up vehicle during our 3-day Karakum desert outing, the vehicles were very good 4X4 jeeps – not like the Niger one who had 4 flat tires in a week – and the driving… couldn’t be safest, I often wanted to stir the guy, but Turkmenistan being pure bureaucracy, you had in several places to drive at 50 km/h even on huge, empty roads, worse, no soon had we entered the capital, Ashgabat, on a Sunday noon that a cop pulled us over – there is a cop at each corner – he wanted to ticket us because the car was dirty, of course we were coming from the desert, there is a city ordinance requiring cars to be clean… but that’s another story
hotels also were way above our traveling standards (family hotels/guesthouses), we had huge rooms in most places, decorated in nouveau riche style, the capital’s was particularly delirious, a whole suite, with high ceilings, on the famous Las Vegas or Berzengi strip, the government had built those small hotels – no more than 20-30 (biiiig) rooms each, mostly empty – to accommodate foreign dignitaries, China had its consulate on the first floor of ours, so the hotel restaurant was Chinese, and each morning we had the exact same breakfast, dry meat, tomatoes and cucumber in slices, a couple of buns, some marmalade (delicious, like all throughout the region)
but in Central Asia, you don’t have the choice, it’s either 4 stars or shit/nothing, backpackers have yet to make a foray there, or group tours for that matter, except in Uzbekistan, we had spent two weeks in Turkmenistan all alone, no other foreigner in sight, then we cross the border into Khiva, and are overwhelmed with French tours, big buses, noisy “folkloric” dinners, hundreds of tourist shops, every remote corner of a madrassa or even a mosque was taken by a little store, I mean, they figured the smallest stone where a tourist would set sight, and they planted a business there, carpets, embroideries, caps, dresses, “precious” stones, CDs, anything you can imagine
one such tour was great though, for one, it was small, second, very cultural, third, mostly easy-going retirees led by a young professor of art history in Lyons, Genevi ve had enlisted the help of a family friend, Madame Dila, a physicist at the famous Uzbekistan Academy of Science but, as such, earning peanuts, so she was taking jobs on the side, she had studied in Moscow naturally, an Uzbek, she spoke in Russian with her fellow Uzbeks, like most educated people she didn’t know the language, a Soviet heritage
the situation is more complex, the borders are artificial and several people live in the country, from very different tribes with each its own language – if you look at an old map, such as the one in the 1913 Grande Géographie Bong, you see other limits, the Bokhara khanate extends up to the Hindu Kush and Afghanistan, taking in most of Tajikistan, it does not even comprise neighboring Samarkand, much less the modern capital of Tashkent which was squarely in the Russian Turkestan, along with Kyrgyzstan and so extended to the… Chinese Turkestan, presently the Xinjiang Autonomous province, the Chinese have been in there since 1700, way, way before the Communists arrived, just like already at the turn of the 20th century the Tibetan government had two Chinese residents and three Chinese commanders overseeing it and handling such key areas as foreign affairs and the military, Russians too were in Central Asia and the Caucasus much before the Soviets
but I am talking here about Uzbekistan, its northern architectural gem, Khiva, was also totally independent, formerly Khorezm, a khanate which extended into modern Turkmenistan and ended up in the Russian empire as early as 1873, and you know it because building decoration, dresses, and language are different from the rest of the country further south, throughout the former Bokhara territory I was able to communicate in Farsi, not elsewhere, Tajiks are cousins with Iranians, the rest are Turkic, a fascinating mosaic or… puzzle
anyway, Madame Dila spoke French too and was very sweet, although stern looking, we met them in the small family hotel in Bukhara where they had left only one room free, I had stomach problem and she inquired about it, then she offered to take us with the group to Samarkand, I said, No, I know groups are not supposed to take strangers, but Genevieve, the guide, was exquisitely nice too, and the group didn’t mind, so we ended up driving in their minibus for a whole day, 300 km, stopping on the way at a pottery workshop – set up as a tourist trap – making a one-day excursion to Shakhrisabz, Timur’s birthplace, drinking the driver’s homemade, quite alcoholic wine, having a farewell dinner with them, they were going back home to Lyon and we continued for another three months, they were marveling at the continuation of our trip, “Oh! vous allez traverser tellement de hautes passes !”a very pleasant experience, and we learned a lot, on art and history, but how boring it is to be taken for a ride ! you abide by an itinerary established by the tour operator, you follow the road the driver wants to, you stop where the guides tells you, you eat where they have chosen, in, out, in, out, in, out of the bus, you are part of the flock, you have to listen to hours of historical and cultural facts – often interesting naturally, but eventually you mix it up all in your head, there is no place for some adventure, free choice, hesitation, independent move, even some catastrophe
the first ride had a funny episode though, you know how French people, and most Western Europeans, are, they need to eat at fixed hours, so, here we go, left early Bukhara, I mean 8:30 a.m., spent an hour at the potters, drove close to 400 km in the heat, it is past 1 pm and they are hungry, Genevieve in the back starts nicely,
we pass a big village with various eating places, the bus speeds by – the driver is from Samarkand and would love to arrive early
Oui ! Nous devons manger !!
Vous voulez manger?
she looks dumbfounded, Mais nous allons bientôt arriver, une trentaine de kilom tres!
everybody is now shouting, and we hear a typical French woman saying, Ce n’est pas sérieux, ca!
Dila confers with the driver, now we are driving in a totally desert area, the driver has left the highway and taken an isolated shortcut to reach Samarkand faster, he looks lost and suddenly stops and starts backtracking
, decrees Dila, il y a des melonsthere is indeed a fruit vendor, but no place to park and, especially, not the least shade
explodes Genevieve, half standing, while almost deafening her neighbors in the seats before her, Nous voulons un restaurant !!!we ended up in a small shop along the road, and they had their (late) lunch
BTW the stomach trouble I had in Bokhara was not at all the usual turista from some bug or new food, but pure indigestion due to plain overeating, started with fish on a terrace over the Caspian sea, in Turkmenbashi, the first night of our arrival in Central Asia, delicious beluga, pretty waitress but slow, an Azeri, Oleg recognized her from her face and accent, they spoke Russian
(same reputation as they had in Lithuania as Elvin had told us), then they like only money. Let me tell you a joke. The first word newborn babies learn is Mummy, Azeri babies say Money!the second night was in the desert, more beluga, but very tastefully prepared by Oleg on a fire, along with a puree of aubergines, spiced differently than the Greeks, for a memorable dinner (and night) on the edge of a lunar landscape, I had read about Yangy-Kala, “the Grand Canyon is not more impressive” wrote another traveler, a feast of white-pink-red colors and shapes, in the desolate lands expanding from the Caspian seashore, like there must be on some uninhabited planets, the silence and the nothingness as far as the eye could see made it special, plus lots of fossilized shells and big lizards, David, the head of the travel agency, had found the spot while driving around during his many years in Turkmenistan
the third grande bouffe was in a taverna in the provincial capital of Balkanabat, formerly Nebitdag, great Russian salads and sausages and lamb giblets, washed down by several freezing Baltika beers, that did it, the full catastrophe, I stayed for the next five days without ingesting anything, waiting for my stomach to solidify again, missed a great chile con carne during another desert overnight and an abundance of (not so good) food on the mountain marking the border with Iran
one week later, as we were crossing into Uzbekistan, it started again, big breakfast in Khiva, lunch we couldn’t refuse with a visiting family, dinner at the hotel – this was more of a pain for we were on our own, had to travel to Bukhara, 420 km, by shared taxi, another five days on a dry diet and I missed the only really two tasty dinners of the whole Uzbekistan, lamb in Bukhara and a dumpling soup in Samarkand
Oleg was a guide for David’s Stantours – a name made up from all these …stan countries – although he got us his best guide, Oleg (also lauded on the internet), that did not correspond to our wishes, I had specifically said we were foremost interested in meeting people, more than in seeing sights, well, we zipped through villages, slept in tents, spoke only to non-Turkmen-speaking Russian, Tatar, Jew professionals, but met Turkmen inhabitants only on our own free time in Ashgabat, it was nice and interesting to meet the former, but not so one-sided
Oleg plainly said he didn’t like to stay at homes
although born and educated in Turkmenistan from an ethnic Russian family, Oleg didn’t speak the language either, not really a problem as everybody communicates better in Russian, an ex-military, wearing camouflage pants and t-shirt, he was more the beer-type, perfectly suitable for tourists who go on vacation to some exotic place to have fun, i.e. drink and tell jokes
and he did have lots of anecdotes from “my tourists” – needless to say, like all these hard neo-capitalists, he would not have understood the difference between tourists and travelers, he charged us 100 dollars for being late one day at the Turkmenbashi port, adding harm to injury even though he said he had spent a couple of days there for he enjoyed this seaside resort
the very minute we left Oleg, right on the Turkmen-Uzbek border, we befriended an Uzbek family living in Turkmenistan, and visited Khiva with them – full story in the Uzbekistam section
midway south we bumped into the group of Lyonnais, and on the Russia-to-Japan boat was a couple from Mornant, a village 25 km outside … Lyon, Philippe and Denise were exactly same age as us, they too were an exception from the French arrogance, progressive, freewheeling, we spent a nice day and evening at the empty bar, talking about movies (they had a cine-club in their village) and books by Japanese authors
Jean-Francois was another friendly French, extremely sensitive and helpful, met during our second Uzbek foray, in the Fergana Valley, but again, he too was from the south, heading the branch of the huge Credit Agricole in Le Puy Sainte Réparade village, he had a slight accent provençal, he accompanied us to history-rich Kokand which he had already seen, he was in Uzbekistan for a whole month, he gave me a Chinese pill for my traditional traveling cough, we treated him to a very decent bottle of Uzbek red wine for dinner at Sonja’s guesthouse
good (Georgian) wine we also had had with Elvin in Baku, but I already introduced the young man who succeeded in putting us on the Trans-Caspian ferry, another pleasant young fellow was Fabian from Gen ve, his mother mistook one letter and he got this English version of the name, but yes! one more French speaking traveler, and some talker, he went on endlessly on philosophy, religion, his family, and so on, you could see he was one of those lone travelers, but it was interesting stuff, meanwhile the jeep ride too dragged on and became so joyful it took us two days and six meals (all offered) to cover the 500 kilometers from the Tajik capital Dushanbe to Khorog, the capital of the autonomous Gorno-Badakhshan region and the launching town for the Wakhan corridor along Afghanistan
seven in a modern 4×4, Fabian and I arch-squeezed in the third row back, against huge luggage, with the driver putting music loud and dancing at the wheel, Malika singing and clapping next to him, Uznik smiling and hugging Blanca, and Tabriz inviting us to his house, a) he offered us the first lunch, b) the driver offered us dinner, c) we slept at Tabriz’s after the family offered us a sumptuous supper (around 1 a.m.)… d) followed by breakfast, e) we continued and were stopped in the middle of nowhere by people who invited us to a long table full of food, to celebrate Id, the end of Ramadan, f) we dropped 50-year old Uznik, and she of course invited us all home, started cooking with her daughters, and we ended up dancing including with the Grandma – while all the way the driver had been and dancing at the wheel! positively unforgettable, the Pamir hospitality, so similar to their Persian cousins’, so very different from cold, selfish, and stingy Westerners, a bit like Greeks before they joined the European Union
on the other side of the Roof of the World, in Kyrgyz Karakol, snugged in the central Tian Shan range, was Miguel from Catalonia, Fabian had been traveling for two years, Miguel was in his fifth, wearing a Jewish hat (which we mistook for Korean) from his year of teaching Spanish in Israel and another one in Japan, actually the pair had met a couple of times as they were closely looping all these years around Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan
they didn’t go as north as Kazakhstan, we did, albeit briefly, and met Zoula and Nafisa, two sisters with a very combative and very blond 2-year old, Gulmina and Rasoul, two Turks, and Ruslan very needed for his excellent English, getting ready to go study with a fellowship to … Manchester, UK, very pleasant but too short encounter
Abdulwahab we saw longer, from the time he picked us up at the Torugart Pass on the Kyrgyz-Chinese border to the Thousand Buddha caves around Kucha via the Kashgar public hospital, two days later Royer Destroyer (gringo father, Mexican mother) joined us in Turfan for a day visit of the area, we bumped again into him totally by chance five days later and 2500 km away, in the midst of the hundred people visiting Xi’an…
Xi’an… on the 24-hour Dunhuang-Xi’an train ride we had mixed with six very convivial art students and their teacher from Guangzhou, and re-visited the terra-cotta soldiers with them, talking loads of photos while three of them kept drawing all day, at the last dinner we calculated how much it would cost for them to come over to Europe for a similar art trip, a dream
not so for our friends Eiza and Hiromi in Sapporo, at the end of our trip, they are scheduled to come in two years, hopefully making a joint paint-pottery exhibit with Blanca here in Greece, we met them decades ago when we all lived in New York, a few thousand kilometers is nothing for them
but the others? and the several people I did not mention? Ak Murat and Gul Jahan, the retired teachers in that forsaken hamlet in the middle of the Karakum desert, among the few people our compulsory guided tour allowed us to meet in Tukmenistan; Kuncha, Aysota, and Navat, the three smiling cooks in the Ashgabat joint; Bahar, the nice, ice vendor by the depressing zoo near them who asked to be taken in photo with me; same with 14-year old Muhhabat in Kokand who asked for my mail but never replied; Elnura in Fergana who did send some photos of hers; so sweet Tilohon handing us a watermelon from her stand in the big Fergana market; Maanilchan, the pretty Kyrgyz teaching English in a village in the Tajik Pamir; very resourceful Nemat who arranged our stay and transportation in Osh, now temping in… Cincinnati; Leila and her English class sweeping the autumn leaves in Karakol’s melancholic Pushkin park by Issyk Kul; Kanikey on her way back from school in Tamga on the same lake, smart as only a little girl can be; Coco, the smiling nurse at the Shanghai private hospital where our insurer took me, now married with an Aussi and living over there; even Sa’di, a.k.a. “I am”, for the verb he answered any question, whose brother had loaded in our car and who returned to teach in Dar Shai, that lost hamlet – his home place – in the Wakhan corridor
where are they all now? language problems, long distance, busy schedules, electronic mail makes it in theory easier to stay in touch, but it permits so many contacts that most get lost, quantity prevails over quality, I sent about twenty letters with photos, two were returned by the Azeri and the Uzbek post office for wrong address, none replied
I should not forget Tommoa, our neighbor from Brooklyn who signs his emails Tom Man of Adventure, now teaching communication and TV production in Nanjing, way south of our route ! I mentioned the kidney stone who made our Torugart pass more taxing, Kyrgyzstan is the country of horses, or rather horsemen, in Greece shepherds – Albanians! – move on foot behind their flocks, Kyrgyz mount horses, here people drive Mercedeses and BMWs (in Albania too), there they ride, I don’t know many Greeks who know how to ride horses, in the Tian Shan range we met a… seven-month old on a horse, I mean, in his father’s arms
I too wanted to ride, I looked a bit around, it was way past the tourist season, most places were closed, first we tried south of Issyk-Kul lake, there is a Russian village called Tamga where Sasha and Lubya have a nice, albeit a bit expensive, guesthouse, and they have a friend who rents horses, they also have a garden with a myriad of flowers of all colors, took almost a hundred photos under the late afternoon sun, took many of the horses too, a bad idea, we were on our own and I soon dismounted to shoot, using as a background the mighty Terskey (Dark) Ala-too mountain which suddenly rises above 5,000 m, separating Kyrgyzstan from China, well, the nag didn’t let me back on, first he moved away, as I approached closer it hit me with its muzzle, I insisted and he nothing less than bit my buttock! I had no choice than pull him back to the farm, at least try to, because he suddenly wouldn’t move for anything, Blanca’s horse started mimicking, we returned them without pay and instead took a nice 4-km stroll back along the quiet shore of this second-largest alpine lake (1600m altitude) in the world after Bolivia’s Titicaca
the northern shore is busier with a few resorts, squeezed between the lake and the Küngey (Sunny) Ala-too mountain which marks the border with Kazakhstan, that was the location of our other horseback riding experience, even more memorable, here I had found a true professional, Tatiana, a tiny woman of Tartar mother and Kyrgyz father, who rented horses and went along, hers was grazing too far so she simply walked alongside… for five hours straight into the mountain, we started in Cholpon-Ata – a quiet resort with six Russian groceries side by side, a big, sandy beach, and the presidential summer house – and quickly took very rocky paths north, slowly-slowly we rose, passing streams and boulders, till we entered the pine forest, with narrow gorges, pristine and majestic, you could see the lake, the sky was alternatively sunny or covered by dark clouds
dark was also the grave by the side of the path, that is where we met the rider with his infant, a sad story, they live alone in a shack on the slope of the mountain, a few years ago, wolves came down to attack the domestic animals, the owner took a gun and shot by mistake his son
Tatiana told us more stories as she walked along, at Soviet times with her father they used to manage a horse-school, now there are no more funds so she simply offers rides to visitors, mostly in the summer, winters are difficult, horses need to eat and be taken care of, several years ago she participated in a one-month Central Asian race which started in Turkmenistan in the month of… August, horses were falling down under 50 C, they were commemorating the 1,000 years of Manas, Kyrgyzstan’s national hero celebrated in verses “20 times as long as the Odyssey”, if you don’t know it I am sure you have not heard that the year 1995 was declared by Unesco as “International Year of Manas”…
Blanca, who had started testily, was now riding confidently and greatly enjoying her Carolina, on the way back into town we passed dachas, poor but very colorful under the afternoon sun shining on the autumn leaves, then there was an open expanse, strewn with a couple of millennium old petroglyphs arranged in a magical form, maybe that’s why my horse, by the grand name of Athina, started galloping hard, and it took me a lot to master her, she stopped very suddenly and I heavily hit the saddle, that did it, the next evening I started having pain in my back, because of the blow I thought I had blown up one of my many kidney cysts, indeed, my piss was very reddish
to make it brief, for the next couple of days I had unbearable pain especially at night, which allowed us to move on during the day according to our schedule, we reached Naryn where, Talaibeg, the Torugart guide was to pick us up, we didn’t go straight though, I had wanted to visit a caravanserai built in mid-millennium for the Silk Road traders, the setting was very austere, tuck in a narrow valley off the main road into China, called Tash Rabat, at around 3,300 m it was cold but sunny, the large stone building had snow in some of its rooms, we moved up the mountain, crossing a flock of yaks guided by three horsemen, maybe that was the effort, but I spent a bloody night, metaphorically and literally, the bottle with my pee was dark red, too bad I could not enjoy the place, the hosts had reserved us their own cozy bedroom, with plenty of blankets, in this small cottage where they live all-year round – I can’t picture this in January – and the woman had prepared a lovely breakfast of fried omelet which I could not touch, I promised I would seek medical help
the morning was better, and by 10 a.m. we were at the border, Talaibeg, who knew the officials, zipped us through Kyrgyz customs in front of a long line of truckers, he was pissed as he had to wait another hour at the border proper – a fence dividing Kyrgyzstan from China– for the Chinese escort to pick us up, I mean the Uygurs, Abdelwahab was Uygur and the driver was pure Turkic, had even a Turkish name, Enver, the road indications were in Chinese and Arabic script, no Latin characters, and no more Cyrillic ! in another stark difference with the Kyrgyz the car was a 4×4 jeep, with a driver, and Abdelwahab was a proper guide and spoke very good English, he offered us apples with a large grin, but much, much less tasty than Central Asia’s
I won’t tell you now how we reached Kashgar, the legendary oasis, but we did it in late afternoon, the first night in China was the same nightmare, I vaguely remember Blanca getting up at 7:00 as she was so eager to try the Chinese buffet breakfast in this 4-star hotel where the agency put us up (40 dollars for a huge room), the whole of China is on Beijing time for official business, and big hotels are mainly for business people, so breakfast was served 8:30 to 10:30 a.m., which meant 6:30-8:30 local time, what a disappointment! most trays were already finished, just some pieces of vegetables lay around, indeed there was only Chinese food, like you eat for lunch or dinner, no bread, no croissant, no jam, no cheese, no ham, no juice, no water, no coffee, stupidly she says, she asked for coffee (always drinks tea), the waitress brought her some dark liquid in a glass, with nothing else, she asked for sugar, they brought it, she asked for a spoon, they brought a big one for soup, I wondered what they served in their “elegently designed Caffee Hall drinking different styles of fragrent coffees”, as touted in their glossy brochure – anyway, we have known for decades that Asians eat the same food three times a day, but an international hotel ?!
mid-morning I went straight to General Public Hospital #2, I had wanted a private clinic, Abdelwahab told me public hospitals were much better equipped – hence more expensive for those with no medical insurance, yet it cost only 128 Yuan for a renal echography, and 5 for the registration, half a Euro, a symbolic fee like in Greece, so, 15 Euros to have an ultrasound, a lab test, and a medical examination with a generalist who oriented me towards a urologist, Abdelwahab learned a lot about kidney stones that time, for indeed it was a stone! and it was pretty low in the right ureter (all the pain going down, actually the bumps on the road had accelerated her), I was so surprised, although I’ve had over twenty stones (the last one though over 12 years ago), I had been focused on a bleeding cyst because of the shock, how the mind can be overtaken by some secondary impressions
so it didn’t matter that I had taken all the wrong medicine, first in Cholpon Ata where the crisis began, after lots of drawings (the kidney) and gestures (swollen) the pharmacist gave me a… diuretic instead of the anti-inflammatory I was asking for, she must have gathered the bladder was full of pee instead of the kidney overblown, I had naively thought an educated person might speak some English, not a word, I remembered physicians are not good with languages anywhere in the vast world, everybody in his/her narrow field, in Naryn, further south, I went in armed with an interpreter, a German-raised Kyrgyz leading a young German Swiss woman, who crisscrossed the Silk Road through a European tour operator who handed her over at each border to a new guide and vehicle, naturally she spoke French too, so we went French-German-Russian-Kyrgyz, I discovered in Kashgar that this pharmacist had given me an antibiotic and no anti-inflammatory, after all it was better as there was no inflammation, self-medication…
the whole diagnosis in Kashgar’s public hospital had taken less than two hours, going up and down this huge building, full of very picturesque Uygur patients, lots of staff, not unlike Greece, except there were very few and short waiting lines for each service or MD, plus they did not fight or shout, but doors were open, and people would pop in, in the middle of an examination, and ask questions
it was a bit dirtier, though, especially the toilets ! but they say Chinese toilets are the worst in the world, yet they are not as public as in Tajikistan where there is no separation whatsoever so you sit and shit next to each other in full view, this one was filthy, next to the lab room, the urologist, Mr. Sayedhaji, looked Turk and spoke only Uygur and Mandarin, as all specialists do he urged me to check in, with a 7 mm diameter the stone was too big to pass by itself, the kidneys had hydronephrosis, with 3 cm water in the right kidney, that could cause hypertension and kidney failure
I spent all afternoon communicating with Touring, my Belgian travel insurer (thank you Algerians! who required mandatory travel insurance in 2006 which I kept ever since, covering us worldwide at 100 Euros a year for the whole family, as well as the car in Europe) whom I wanted to inform in case of further need, I sent a detailed report, and they answered straight back, their physician was categorical, I indeed had to check-in, I argued that I had had dozens of stones, I know they end up passing, they don’t do anything in a hospital, I didn’t mind more pain, I prefer to see for a few days more, it was funny, the beneficiary (me) wanted to limit the expenses, the provider didn’t show the least restrain in spending, they ended up paying close to 5,000 US dollars for naught, from the day I was examined at the Kashgar hospital the pain totally subsided, and I finally passed the stone three weeks later, on my own, on the boat to Japan, 8000 km further east, when I had left the Asian mainland
the main problem was the only decent hospitals were in Beijing and Shanghai, respectively on the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea, all the way across this huge country, about seven hours and two flights away, of course! we have to go through Urumqi, the most remote city from any sea in the world, about 2,500 km from the nearest coastline (it is also the closest to the Eurasian geographic center), and we were two, and we had to come back, to all that they agreed and immediately got busy through their Hong Kong agent, I also tried to slow them because I had offered to fly back to Urumqi after the hospital stay, to save them an additional flight, and I didn’t want to miss the Sunday market, which was the main reason for coming to the big oasis city of Kashgar
communication was painful, this was a 4-star hotel, yet the tiny “business” center had erratic hours, an equally erratic connection, only one, part-time English-speaking attendant – a very nice, diminutive Uygur woman – and a computer full of gimmicks, either constantly playing or popping up, and all sorts of assistants (language, translation, thesaurus, etymology etc) I did not need, had to turn them off every and each time, or changing format or style, drove me crazy when in a hurry
the next day Touring asked me to fax the medical report to the travel agent to secure last minute flight seats on the crowded Chinese airlines, the fax machine at the “business center” was broken, an office with a fax on the second floor was closed by noon, Nasser, the head receptionist, was a nice guy, calling the medical report a “recipe” (actually in Spanish receta means both a prescription and a recipe), he came out with me to the square to show me a tiny fax/tel office, naturally that machine too was broken (and this is a modern center of that huge town), Nasser hurriedly looked around, they had said we should send it within a few minutes, they showed him another office, a long block away, the poor guy started running in his uniform, pointing to me where to go
we managed to see the animal market further on the periphery, with dozens of sheep and cows pushed in from the countryside, and the Sunday market closer to the center, the biggest ever, much more than Istanbul, Aleppo, or Cairo’s bazaar, teeming with thousands of people, colors, smells, goods, food, donkeys, carts, motorbikes, taxis, buses, pomegranate juices, and we had thought the small bazaar we had seen in the center of the old town was it!
small it was that one, and not many stores for every specialty, and few items each, some had only the size or type exposed, pants, dresses, shoes, sweaters, shawls, hats, many hats, but not one single women’s jean without some tasteless design or shiny ornament, and the shoes… most vulgar and plastic, I think the Han Chinese send to these places the worst of their already low-quality stuff
indeed, local products were good, the fur hats and the … pulao! a bit sweet with calabaza, and tasty and tender lamb, for… 4.5 Yuan (less than half a Euro)
a… Chinese opera had greeted us on TV on our first evening, we ended our stay in Kashgar with Tootsie dubbed in Chinese ! lots of ha ha ha – well, later on, in Vladivostok, we saw American Gigolo & a film about John Lennon’s murder in Russian, no subtitles of course
then we flew, well, it was not a departure from our overland-only trip, this was going to be a parenthesis, fly in, fly out, we would pick up where we left, I had opted for Shanghai, not only the first commercial city but the place where our Tommoa has lived for the past several years, it took us two flights and fifteen hours to arrive in Shanghai on the dot of midnight, the insurer had done things well, a minivan waited for us with a couple, they got lost but eventually took us to the… Shanghai United Family Hospital
there were half a dozen big places, but they chose this one who catered to Western expatriates and an elite of mixed descent, a British pathologist, Ms Carin, examined me and did a couple of tests from 12:30 to 3:30 a.m. when I almost fainted not of pain but sleep, I felt stupid and cursed the insurer ! I didn’t have any pain at all, the physician even suggested we stay in a hotel, but the agent had arranged for the hospital, where could we have gone in the middle of the night? so they gave us a private room, with a sofa-bed for Blanca, and all the amenities, digital TV, digital radio, digital watch, free internet access, free local telephone calls, a long-distance telephone card, three meals a day gourmet food chosen on a menu (not much taste though!), and I had to wear pajamas and a white robe and play the patient, nurses entered every so often for various tests, I underwent one more ultrasound, 418 USD, and a follow-up at 312 USD, the very same procedure cost 19 USD at the General Public Hospital #2 of Kashgar…
this was the disgusting part, here we were in China, paying New York prices for medical care, for the three minutes surgeon Ms Wang Xiao Chun saw me on the first morning they charged 101 USD, and 250 USD for the five minutes her colleague, surgeon Mr. Maskay, spent with me on my way out, on top they added a mysterious incision abscess for 250 USD, compared to this, the luxurious private room was cheap at barely over 1,000 USD
all in all it came to 23,000 Yuans, i.e. 3,300 USD for “A Day at the Hospital” for a 7 mm kidney stone, indeed we stayed only one day as there was nothing to do, I remember in New York I spent five days at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx, simply laying on a bed with an I.V. to irrigate the kidneys, and was charged 4,000 dollars, back in 1987, not including the physicians’ visits, after all, this Shanghai hospital is a U.S.-Chinese joint venture…
while on the way out, they rushed me to sign the discharge documents, i.e. the bill, and I got the distinct feeling they charged as much as they could, figuring I didn’t care for the insurer was paying, in another example of medical greediness and cheating of the public funds, Marie Arena, Belgium’s federal (there are three government layers in this tiny country with literally countless ministers) minister of Pension, Social Integration and Big Cities Policies (!), was shocked to find out that the Human Papillomavirus vaccine (against cervical cancer) “is more expensive in countries where it is reimbursed by the social security” [Le Vif-L’Express, 14-20 November 2008], this is typical capitalist (predator) behavior, get the most you can in any market
I drew Touring’s attention to this vast overcharge, they had been so nice and efficient too, but, after talking to me for hours on the telephone when we were in Kashgar, they made no comments whatsoever, they themselves told me to take advantage of all the benefits I could get ! I guess insurers cover each other, it annoys me to see such pure capitalist greediness, the same that is bringing down the banks and more – plus at the end, we are the ones who pay the premiums
you gather we were eager to get out, we had communicated with Tommoa, after several years in English-schools in Shanghai he had moved to Nanjing, teaching TV production and the like at the Nanjing University of Post and Telecommunications, this was no simple transfer, we were now on foot, Touring had agreed to fly us out of Nanjing, at my request, but we had to go there on our own naturally, a taxi took us to the subway station, where the material progress of China hit us full face, tens of underground boutiques selling anything you could fancy under the capitalist sky, a subway system much more modern than New York’s, with attendants showing us ho to get cards at the automatic machines, we changed line at the People’s Square, and went straight to the main train station
the big plaza was teeming with idle travelers or youths, some really had a nasty face, I changed my mind about taking a photo as they looked like they could easily snap a camera and run in the crowd, now started the part, hard anywhere in China, more so with train travel, you first have to enter the ticket area, make long lines – out of 30 there is one for foreigners, but no attendant the whole time we were there, I managed to make myself understood – not too difficult, Nanjing! and the time, except I didn’t get the express Tom had told me about, so we spent four hours on an almost empty car to get there, instead of two on the bullet trains, by the time we arrived Tom had started his evening classes, we got quoted four times the normal price by the ever-greedy taxi drivers, sent them to hell, and went queuing, with all our stuff, in the long line for bus # 97, with Tom’s instructions, “Look around if you can find someone with half a brain, and show him my address” – one of the students in line spoke a few words of English, the best I could hope for, we waited for almost an hour outside the classroom where he was showing a group of students how to position people in front of a movie camera
the campus was extended, he lived on one end, a complete apartment, rent paid, utilities paid, 400 dollars a month for food at the cafeterias and campus market… and five months vacation a year! he said it was great and he hopes to finish his career there and save money to buy a house in … Thailand, the restaurant was f-a-b-u-l-o-u-s and had f-a-b-u-l-o-u-s waitresses, one I called The Doll, but didn’t have my camera to shoot her, the other was Little Fish, Yu Dong Mei was so sweet and eager at 20, I pushed Tom to give her English classes, but she soon got interested in another guy who was visiting Tom
we had supremely tasty gong bao ji ding (roast beef on a hot skillet with bamboo shoots), shanggu qing cai (green vegetables), xiang buo gu lao rou (pineapple pork), jiu cai chao ji dan (green veggies with chicken eggs), spelling and translation courtesy of Tom to whom we are eternally grateful, first and only time we ate so well in China, where food is not exactly what you get at Chinese restaurants in New York – and I am NOT mentioning Belgium or Greece where we are invariably disappointed by the French or Greek versions of Chinese food… and the prices, here, including sodas it came to 82 Yuan for the three of us, 8 Euros…
the second time we went – in three days of our stay there – on the large, round table next to us was a party of students making such a fuss, with dozens of beer bottles thrown around, and a swarm of young waitresses running around them, these kids are from relatively well–to-do families, while the girls come from the countryside, usually the Hubei province
the weather was terrible, worse than England and Belgium combined, rain, mist, damp, and cold, often the case in the whole region, Tom courageously took us into town, I should say we arrived at a critical moment, and it was very interesting to see at work the usual North American sloppiness, the Nanjing university had an agreement with the New York Institute of Technology – where Tom had taught in the past – but both institutions were trying to cut corners, and the gringos did not check anything, so we were there on the day the whole U.S. faculty contingent was going to the police station to get their visa extended, or rather turned into proper work visas, for the schools had brought the teachers in with simple tourist visas
a university bus took us to the downtown campus, then we filled in four taxis to the police, they all lined up, about a dozen, made photos, filled forms, along with the school’s two administrative assistants, it lasted about an hour, they were turned down, the documents were not in order, they spent lunch – at an Indian resto as bad as the Indian resto in Tajikistan and as bad as the Chinese restos in Europe – recriminating about the universities – both Chinese and New York’s – who treated so badly their employees, most of them were near the end of their visas, like Tom whom they had to fly to Hong Kong to renew his tourist visa ! had we come one week later we wouldn’t have found him, and missed, as Blanca told him, “The best part of our trip”as a good host, Tom took us around town in spite of the failed visa attempt and, by now, the hard rain, the streets were full of colorful umbrellas, full of cars too, traffic was choking, we looked for bus stops, we took buses, we looked for subway stations, we took subways, we walked a lot, through back alleys and glitzy avenues lined with Bulgari, Edox, Max Mara, DKNY stores – even a By Pomme De Terre restaurant with Japanese-type three-dimensional menus – got thoroughly soaked, the erring was made worse by Tom’s not yet good knowledge of this huge city where he had recently come after several years in Shanghai, actually this used to be the (South) capital until the 15th century, then in 1853, then again from 1928 to 1949, when the Communists came to power and definitely made Beijing the (North) capital, this is also where the treaty ending the Opium War was signed in 1842 between Chinese and Brit, the one which gave Hong Kong to the latter
and I should not forget the Rape of Nanjing, between 150,000 and 350,000 inhabitants, slaughtered by the Japs, “les femmes sont sauvagemnent violées, torturées, mutilées par de petits groupes de soldats. […] Beaucoup d’entre elles sont ensuite éventrées. Leurs cadavres sont retrouvés percés de plusieurs coups de ba onnette, signe d’un acharnement indicible. Les membres de leur famille vivant sous le m me toit sont abattus sans sommation pour ne pas laisser de témoins. Les hommes, âgés de 15 45 ans, sont pourchassés, capturés, puis alignés par centaines genoux, les mains attachées dans le dos, devant des soldats japonais munis de sabres de combat qui soit les décapitent les uns apr s les autres, soit les exécutent au fusil ou la mitraillette. Les maisons sont scrupuleusement pillées puis incendiées”, etc etc etc, a revolting account by Michael Prazan [Le massacre de Nankin, 1937. Entre mémoire, oubli et négation, pp.75-76]
the funny thing, Chinese don’t seem overly resentful, and Japan never, either apologized or compensated, the U.S. themselves estimated in 1944 the Chinese overall war damage at 300 billion dollars, but as Japan was in shambles and China in the hands of the Communists, the U.S. pressed … Chiang Kai-shek to sign the 1952 treaty with Japan whereby Chinese renounced any compensation in the name of “good neighborhood”, as reported by Antoine Halff, professor of history at Touro College, New York, in his article Apprendre se souvenir de Nankin [Une histoire controversée, Le Japon méconnu, Mani re de voir, juin-juillet 2009, p.34]
a long and tumultuous history, the main museum had the nice parts of it, colorful fabrics and pottery collections all the way from the Dawenku culture in the Neolithic period (3,500 BCE) to the 18th century CE Qing dynasty, it was pitch dark – and still raining – when we finally reached the shore of the Xuanwu lake which is right next to downtown and supposed to be very beautiful, partly surrounded by the Ming city wall, nevertheless I got a blurred shot of Blanca and Tom each under an umbrella on the dark shore, made a call to my mother from a rickety telephone in a small shop that went through fine! we were happy to sit once more at the f-a-b-u-l-o-u-s campus restaurant
it took us over an hour and lots of arrangement by Ruby, the foreign faculty’s great secretary, to get to the airport at dawn, from the remote campus to the very other side of town, with no traffic! after changing plane in Xi’an, the mountains succeeded by the deserts of the Hami and Turpan basins seemed interminable, we were never far from the snowy peaks, we managed to get an evening bus in Urumqi (a.k.a. Urumtsi, Wulum qí, Wulumutsi), first time we took a sleeping bus, who dropped us in Kuqa at pre-dawn, we had come a long way, the kidney parenthesis had lasted only six days
[reported by Elisée Reclus in the Grande Géographie Bong, Paris, 1913, p.182], Nikolai Alekseevich Severtzov, a 19th century Russian explorer and naturalist, wrote this description while studying the Tien Shan and its lakes, following a route similar to ours – one and a half century later things are pretty much the same, the only moving life dotting the landscape were flocks of cranes flying high, herds of cows and horses with mounted shepherds coming curiously towards us, and 11-year old Gozalya who was looking after a dozen cows while her brother laid in the open fields
shouts Genevieve, Dila turns back Dila wakes up now Genevieve is heating up – Dila is older, her French is not so great, she sits by the driver, and she probably didn’t understand or pay attention she is jovial
said David, then he DHLed the original document to my friend Takis’ brother in Athens, as Takis was away on the days I would be there, I was by then in Brussels and thought it would take a few days from that forsaken place – Urumqi, where the hell is that on a map?! – and I would be back in Greece, it arrived in … 2 days, I asked Takis’ brother to mail it to me in our northern village, by that time I had gotten my visa in Brussels, so, I finally got that original LOI when we returned from our Far East trip!