On the way to China. The last "Silk Road" entry was the 16th May and now I am updating in October so some of what I say will be "with hindsight" as I am looking back over the 4 months since I returned and a period of adjustment, which has not always been easy, to being back in the UK. So different style maybe - on one hand not so immediate but on the other with reflections about the journey and the process of the journey. I am using my diaries as "aides memoire", the photos I took and also my memory - which from a programme I was hearing on the radio and also from personal experience and communication with others is probably our least reliable cognitive function! So now to the updates - and as an aside I cannot tell you what bliss it is to be using my own laptop and not relying on those Internet cafe or other public computers with somebody breathing down my neck to get on and always the worry that the connection might go and I was not "saved"!!! I will include dates and "diary" entries, so anything in a "quote and italics" will denote a diary entry and anything else is "freestyle" retrospective, reflective or relying on that imperfect memory! Also any notes, etc. in [ ] is information that I have added to my diary subsequently and was not in my original diary entries. I will also include some of the photos in the text that they relate to rather than being added as I am in the process of doing in the previous entries.
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| Balbals at Burana Tower |
At this point, although it does not come across too much in my previous blog entry, although I mention "bed rest", I was actually quite ill. I was suffering from possibly the worst upper respiratory tract infection (URTI) that I have had either in a long time or ever. Something I could not shake off. It had been going round the truck since Turkmenistan/ Uzbekistan. Everyone in the truck was so very kind to me and I was allowed to sit in the back offside seat and be ill. Under normal circumstances we used to move around the truck every day so that we all got a go at sitting in the prime seats as well as the not so prime ones and nobody had "my seat" moments. So I was very grateful and much appreciated their kindness in just letting me disappear to the back of the truck and be ill. What it meant was that when the others went off to do something exciting like hiking and wild camping in the mountains I stayed in what ever hotel we were at and collapsed. Which was a great pity as Kyrgyzstan was the place I wanted to be. But "never bother" as my father used to say - I will just have to go back and do all the things I missed out on, and more, another time. So yet another chance for another blog or even adding to this one! Who knows?
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| The field of balbals at Burana Tower |
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| The state sponsored marmot! |
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| The Burana Tower - used to be twice this height |
We said goodbye to 2 our our party, one of whom had experienced first hand travelling through the "ash cloud" and all that it entailed, arriving at Bukhara rather than Ashgabat. Her journey to get to the truck sounded as exciting and action packed as ours getting from Ashgabat to Bukhara! However 2 more joined us so we were back up to numbers again. We left Bishkek and as I note my diary entry of 17th May reads "Left for Kochkor. Back by a minaret set in a graveyard [the Burana Tower] with gravestones from the pre-Islamic [period] - Shamanic, Buddhist stones remarkably like Celtic heads. ........... The stone heads were so diverse - shape, size and some other symbols." These stone heads are called balbals and came from all over Kyrgyzstan but have been brought here to an ancient site which also has a small but very good and informative museum. I was fortunate to speak for quite a long time to the museum curator who had been instrumental in starting up the project about 30 years ago. Several of them were extremely phallic, as can be seen by the photos and to say nothing of the state sponsored marmot which far from being coy and hiding from us came out from under one of the heads and posed most delightfully for our photos! Ella Maillart mentions the balbals in her trek to Kirghizia (former Soviet Republic of) in 1932. See Ella Maillart: Turkmenestan Solo and also Forbidden Journey which is her account of the journey that she made with Peter Fleming (bro. of Ian); his account is called News from Tartary between Peking and Srinagar in 1934 (but more of that later). Actually see Ella Maillart anything. She is the most compelling writer. She had the good fortune to be born at a time when adventurous and intrepid women travellers were striking out and travelling solo in some very far flung places.
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| My birthday present |
Back to Kochkor to pick up the felt picture of Archie we had made on the previous visit. Lucky for hindsight - the previous visit to Kochkor had been on my birthday. Kochkor is fairly near Lake Issy Kul and on our previous visit we had met a very feisty, upfront lady who was involved in a women's felt making co-operative in the town. I bought some lovely slippers and a couple of hats and as it was my birthday she very kindly gave a lovely felt specs holder with the Kyrgyz "happiness" symbol on it. She also took a shine to one of my fellow travellers and even with his wife sat right next to him - it made no difference! When we made our return visit, maybe for reasons of domestic harmony or maybe not because his wife certainly thought the situation was funny, he stayed on the bus. But not to be deterred the lady of the co-operative came on the bus to search him out and gave him a smacking kiss much to his embarrassment and our amusement!!! On the previous visit there was also a little frisson around the truck as we all knew that our lovely guide had a girlfriend somewhere and from the way that this assertive young woman patted his bottom we instantly assumed that this was she. And he was teased accordingly but denied that this was the "girlfriend", it turned out that she wasn't! We stayed in the Kochkor homestays again. A different one this time and I note in my diary that the bed was damp though I do remember the food being very good. As to my birthday back at the beginning of May I see from the 16th May Kyrgyzstan entry that I wanted to post the co-ordinates of where we wild camped. They are as follows: "N 41º 54.790 E 74 º16.061"
VIEWS FROM THE CO-ORDINATES
The valley is at altitude, 35oom, but despite the URTI I still managed to sleep in relative comfort apart from the coughing, but I did feel for the others I was sharing the yurt with and as I was sharing the yurt with at least 4 or 5 other people I did not want to keep coughing. But again they were all very kind about it. The next morning 19th May it was time to say good-bye to Kyrgyzstan. My diary reads "Left early by 0600 - road appalling - snowing and miserable but brightened up later on (I obviously did too because I don't remember being particularly ill) Got to Pass (Torugart) will in time by 10.30 Customs (Kyrgyz) and good-bye Kyrgyzstan - so sorry I was ill for most of it. Ironic." The road was indeed appalling. It was not metalled as we would know it. To all intents it was what would be considered a track here. Full of ruts, holes and all the time slippy snow. Dion driving us came up trumps again because we got to the Pass without any major incident although there were hazards enough. One thing was that this is a major commercial route between Kyrgyzstan and China so it was full of well loaded lorries. The majority coming from China rather than to China. I did not realise until I saw that amount of traffic how much the neighbouring countries to China must rely on China for trade.
But the Chinese customs were something else but more of that next time!
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| Inside the Tash Rabat Caravanserai |
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| The yurt camp at Tash Rabat |
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| The cold mountains! I am not sure if this photo conveys the cold that I was feeling at the time. When I look at it I shiver! |
