Padrud to to Dushanbe

Walking down the valley to Shing

I woke up early in the morning to be on the road by 6:00, which is supposedly when vehicles went down to Penjikent. After waiting by the main road in the darkness with Jumaboy for a while, it became fairly clear that whatever vehicles there were had already left, so I started to walk down the valley in the crisp morning air.

By 6:45 the sun was up and I was on my way down the valley.

Everything looks so different in the shade as opposed to the sun.

Lake 3, with lake 2 behind it.

Dushanbe: a monument to President Rahmon

Hotel Poytaht is a Dushanbe landmark. It's a huge Soviet-style hotel near the train station, and it's actually a reasonably attractive low-slung building that is four or five stories tall with two long wings angling off the central reception area. It's supposed to have reasonable rooms on the top floor that are charged on a per-person basis (and may or may not involve sharing), but they didn't want to sell me this sort of room, and said the lowest room was something like $30 or $40. The difference was academic to me, as either total was more than I wanted to spend.

I headed to a small supermarket nearby to get something to drink, and to plot out my next plan of attack. I figured out I would try the Farhang hotel, which is supposed to be cheap even if it's not exactly central. I hopped a bus headed in that direction, and found the hotel without too much difficulty (being behind the UFO-shaped circus, which itself was just off the major road the bus traversed, made this pretty easy). Whereas the Poytaht was well-maintained and a clean version of Soviet "hospitality," the Farhang had the dilapidated and scruffy feeling more familiar from Kyrgyzstan. For such a large hotel, I had to wait in the lobby until an attendant showed up, but the rooms were a bargain (for Dushanbe) at 60 somoni.

I love Cherry Coke. This is no Cherry Coke.

While Kyrgyzstani supermarkets were surprisingly Russian/Western, most of the things they sold were fairly local, or possibly from Turkey. In Dushanbe, a lot more things were imported from Europe, and a lot of things that would have been locally-produced in Kyrgyzstan were imported. Maybe the best example is Coke and Pepsi. Thomas Friedman's McDonalds theory of war says that no two nations with McDonalds outlets have ever gone to war (which was true until the Russia-Georgia conflict), and to a certain extent I think this really says something about the stability of nations with McDonalds. I think that the existence of foreign brands in a country says a lot about the investment climate and political stability and predictability in that country, and in this context it's interesting to note that Tajikistan is the only country in Central Asia that does not have a domestic Coke or Pepsi bottling facility: these products are officially imported from Kyrgyzstan, and unofficially imported from Afghanistan. The locally-bottled brand is RC Cola, which is more or less extinct in most corners of the world.

This lack of locally-produced goods inevitably means that things tend to be more expensive in Tajikistan than in Kyrgyzstan, which is unfortunate given that Tajikistan is even poorer than Kyrgyzstan. If your only exposure to the country was Dushanbe, however, it certainly wouldn't feel very poor—even if your only basis of comparison was with Kyrgyzstan's most prosperous city, Bishkek. Now, it's no surprise that large, capital cities feel more prosperous than other parts of the country, especially when the capital cities are orders of magnitude larger than any other city in the country. But even given this, it's pretty clear that a disproportionate amount of public funds have been spent beautifying the capital, and that a disproportionate amount of money resides in the capital. The old, Soviet-era public buildings in Dushanbe are better maintained and more attractive than they are in Bishkek. As mentioned earlier, the stores stock more imported goods, at higher prices. You see a lot more late-model luxury cars and European imports in Dushanbe than Kyrgyzstan (although I believe that many of them are stolen), with models like BMW X6 models being not hugely unusual.

What really sets Dushanbe apart from Bishkek, however, is that in Dushanbe you can see new construction and new monuments being built by the government and President Rahmon (who has ruled since 1992). Sure, Nazarbayev is doing the same thing in Astana, but the key difference is that Kazakhstan is riding a wave of resource-based prosperity, while Tajikistan remains dirt poor. Despite this, in Tajikistan the villages remain poor while Dushanbe is beautified.

Old Soviet tank in old-style park takes aim at the skyline.

Imposing monuments (this one to Ismail Samani), empty plazas surrounded by barricades, and armed guards make these public spaces less than inviting. Pedestrians walking by skirted the plaza in front instead of taking the shortcut across, so I had to ask the guard to ask if it was possible to approach the monument and take a picture.

The Presidential Palace.

Next to Turkmenistan, Tajikistan is the Central Asian country that most aggressively promotes a personality cult around its leader, Rahmon. Pictures of him heralding his accomplishments and profound statements ("Education is good!") are everywhere. Putin looks like a wimp next to him.

Bishkek the third: picking up the Tajik visa en route to Osh

Coming back from Jeti Oguz, I was given a ride to the main road by the store owner's nephew, who was a stockbroker from Bishkek and spoke English. Before the did that, though, they downloaded some of my pictures to their USB drive, which was a bit surprising since the guy had no idea about computers (but his children did). In China, you could go into a modest looking shop and find that the shopkeeper had a new flat-screen computer behind their shelves, and that they were amusing themselves playing Mahjong or watching videos on Baidu, but in Central Asia such a scene would be truly shocking.

It was raining at the junction, so the owner's nephew let me stay in his car until a marshrutka passed, and we talked a bit about politics and the nearby gold mines. The Kumtor mine creates something like 10% of Kyrgyzstan's GDP, but it's owned by a Canadian company which keeps more of the profits than protestors like, as they accuse the government of striking a sweetheart deal. In his opinion there wouldn't be a profitable mine at all if you tried to let locals run it, but it's easy to see why people are upset when they see foreigners profiting off of local resources.

Back in Karakol I headed straight to the bus station to catch the marshrutka back to Bishkek. I lucked out in the sense that the marshrutka was almost full, which means little waiting. It still ended up taking me about 10 hours to take the 422 km trip from Jeti Oguz to Bishkek, despite knowing exactly how to get there and what transportation to take. This is a sobering reality about transportation in Kyrgyzstan: it takes a long time, even in the best of circumstances.

I wasn't surprised to find the Sakura full when I arrived there, so it was another night at the cheap hotel. No worries.

The next day I moved over to the Sakura in the morning to secure a bed, and otherwise I had little to do other than pickup my Tajik visa. Compared to the Iranian visa, the Tajik visa was easy-peasy. I just went to the embassy, told them I had applied for a visa a couple of weeks ago, and they picked through the applications sitting in the in-box to find mine, then processed it and gave me my visa. Even though there were rumblings that the GBAO permits were being issued in Dushanbe and that the Pamirs were once again open for tourists, I was told that they still weren't issuing them in Bishkek and that I would have to apply in Dushanbe. That was a major disappointment (as well as an additional expense in Dushanbe), but there's not much you can do about it.

The Tajik Embassy in Dushanbe is now listed on Google Maps and thus pretty easy to find. One of the more interesting things you may encounter on your visit to the embassy is the strip club on the nearest major road: certainly not something I expected to see advertised so openly in what is, after all, still a somewhat conservative Muslim country.

The strip club near the Tajik Embassy.

Looking down the entrance park to the Kyrgyz State University, next to the Philharmonic.

A statue of Manas in front of the Philharmonic keeps the pigeons happy.

Budget

September 30, 2012, from Jeti Oguz to Bishkek: 958 som

• Room at cheap hotel: 300 som
• 2 x super snicker, pic-nic chocolate bar, M&Ms: 121
• Van to Karakol: 30 som
• Marshrutka to Bishkek: 300 som
• Coke: 40 som
• Dinner at roadstop (bifsteak): 130 som
• Coke: 37 som

October 1, Bishkek: $65 + 670 som

• Bed at Sakura: 350 som
• Sandwich: 33 som
• Bus x 2: 16 som
• Ice cream, lemon soda: 21 som
• Lozenges, eggs, sandwich, pepsi, tomatoes, coffee packets: 150 som

Bishkek, part two: in search of the elusive Iranian visa

It's always something of a relief to return to familiar places, especially when you arrive fairly late, as you know where things are and how to get to where you need to be. This is becoming less and less of an issue with the GPS-equipped smartphones and offline maps that everyone has nowadays (as well as Google maps having a lot more listings with every passing year), but any way you slice it there's a lot less stress when you're on familiar territory.

I arrived at the Western Bus Station and made it to the Sakura without any problems, only to find that they were full. Not that surprising, really. They told me that there was a cheap hotel nearby, a couple of blocks south next to the casino. I made my way there and eventually roused the slumbering receptionist, if that's the right term. She was really more of a keeper of the keys, ensconced in a room behind a window. 300 som for a night was fine by me, so she gave me an old fashioned key and told me my room. Endless jiggling of the key eventually yielded entry, and I was in a simple 3-bedded room blessed with a functional electrical outlet.

I'm not entirely sure what this place was, but my best guess is that it was some sort of place where students stayed. Not all of the building was used as a hotel. I visited the bathroom and there were some dire squat toilets and barely functional faucets, but no showers. The bathroom had a common entrance for both males and females, with a divider down the middle that didn't reach the roof. For 300 som and one night, it wasn't a big deal.

Applying for the Iranian visa was a bit of a mess. You have to do all of the applying in the morning, and then pick up your visa in the afternoon of the next day. I already had my passport pictures and confirmation code ready (and thankfully they were able to find it this time), but they also surprised me by requiring proof of travel insurance. I didn't have insurance, so I had to go out to an internet shop and buy some online (it turned out being worth it, as I was able to make a claim on my damaged lens, which paid out more than the cost of the insurance). After submitting my now complete application, I had to go to the National Bank of Pakistan and deposit the visa fee of 50 Euros to their account there (perhaps the only embassy which doesn't price things in US dollars).

Had I arrived back in Bishkek a day earlier, I could have shaved a couple of days off of my stay in Bishkek: embassies aren't open on weekends, and by applying on Friday it meant I had to stay until Monday afternoon. Blah.

MiG-21 on display. Kyrgyzstan's flight training school used to be the major source of income for the republic, and Syria's Hafez al-Assad was trained there.

Monument to Fighters of the Revolution.

The wooded park that runs north-south along Erkindik Avenue. Unruly poppies and trees make it look both domesticated and wild at the same time—a common theme in Russian-style parks, it seems. I was sitting there reading my kindle one day when a Kyrgyz University student came up to me and started talking to me. She was embarrassed when I identified myself as a tourist that didn't speak Russian, and returned to her friends. So apparently I can pass as a Kyrgyzstani in Bishkek, where lots of people dress like me, even if few people in the country would make that mistake.

People's Friendship Monument, celebrating the anniversary of Kyrgyzstan's entry into Russia.

The statue of Lenin now sits behind the Historical Museum.

Seoul & its Palaces

Rolling over the Hangang river and into Seoul via KTX.

Seoulwise—a great non-partying hostel in Hongdae

Hostels in large, popular cities are essentially fungible, and don't really need reviews or descriptions unless they're pretty exceptional. And usually, exceptional means they're exceptionally bad. Seoulwise is an exception, as it is one of the best-run hostels I've ever stayed at.

The big reason for this is the owner, Mr. Young, who is basically there all the time and knows everyone who is staying there. As someone who has traveled a lot himself, he has a good understanding of what travelers want. Young manages to treat everyone like they are actually his guests, and not just customers, going the extra mile to help everyone out and make sure everyone is able to do what they want to do in Seoul. This leads to a very friendly atmosphere in the common areas, since he acts as glue and bonds everyone together through his friendliness and engagement with everyone. Personally, I was worried about the location of the hostel, since Hongik University is a notorious party place. Despite this, Seoulwise doesn't have a party-all-night atmosphere (which I appreciated... getting woken up at 3am by drunken revelers is no fun). Possibly a factor in this is that the proprietor doesn't let non-guests into the hostel rooms, and since he knows everyone it's easy for him to enforce.

In terms of facilities, it's got a full kitchen, two computers with fast internet service, and en-suite bathrooms in every room (but no bathrooms outside of the rooms, so no luck after you've checked out). There's free breakfast (toast, cereal, and coffee) and you can borrow an electronic subway card you can load up for cheaper fares.

When I was in Seoul, it was still a few weeks before Psy's Gangnam Style had dropped. One of the most popular song's I heard around town was Brave Guys' I 돈 Care (I Don Care)—there's a pun there, as "don" means "money" in Korean. Young told me that the Brave Guys were most famous as comedy singers, and if you see the lyrics in translation they betray surprising satirical depth.

Chinese and Mongolian Visas

I had hoped to get a Chinese visa in Korea, which would allow me to take a ferry from Seoul/Incheon to Qingdao, and thus avoid flying anywhere. I soon discovered that the Chinese Embassy in Seoul does not issue visas to anyone other than those who are residents of Korea (Korean nationals and foreign residents). This seems to be an increasing trend, as the Chinese are making it difficult to obtain visas to visit, especially if you are planning on visiting Tibet or Xinjiang. Other embassies seem to have similar policies—at least officially—but the Embassy in Korea actually follows it.

With the Chinese visa not an option in Seoul, I had to figure out where I could get one. The obvious option would be Hong Kong, but even the official High Commision website says that "'[a]pplicants who do not enjoy HK resident status should apply for visas with the Chinese Embassies or Consulates General in their countries of citizenship or residence." Despite this ominous sounding warning, it turns out that tourists have no problem Chinese visas in Hong Kong, especially if the apply through a visa agency.

My next stop after Seoul would therefore have to be Hong Kong, so I was forced to break my no-flying rule quite early in my trip.

Since I still needed a Mongolian visa, I decided to apply for it in Seoul. The process was simple and straightforward, as you just go to the embassy with your passport photos and apply. The only complication is that you have to apply in the morning, and part of your application is the payment receipt you get from paying into their account at a local bank. This means you need to give yourself enough time to complete the application, go to the local bank (just next door), make a payment at the bank, and then return to the embassy with the payment receipt. Do this, and you get your visa two days later. Applications are dropped off in the morning and pickup is in the afternoon. Once you get the visa, you have 90 days to enter Mongolia, and it is good for 30 days after entry.

On the subway to the Mongolian Embassy.

Korean War Memorial

It's called the War Memorial, but it's really more like a museum, and a great museum at that. They have tons of aircraft, ground machines, and even boats on display, many of which you can enter or at least peer into. It's like the Air & Space Museum in Washington, DC, but dedicated to military vehicles and not air- and space-craft.

A group of super-friendly primary-school kids came to talk to me in the cafeteria as I was cooling off and figuring out how to get to N Seoul Tower. Their teacher came over to talk for a minute or so, and then the kids invited me to visit their school in the suburbs.