Bananas Don't Travel Well

watch the road!After almost a month in Kyrgyzstan, we figured we ought to start moving on to China. Although we'd been dreaming for weeks of warmer weather, easier communication and vastly better food, we knew we had a long journey ahead, and it was with some reluctance that we started out. From our starting point in Bishkek, the relatively northerly Torugart pass would have been the more convenient border crossing, but the Chinese require special permissions and pre-booked transportation for tourists to use it, amounting to several hundred dollars and a lot of hassle. Irkeshtam, the southern pass, is wide open and relatively easy, but geography dictates that it can only be accessed through Osh. In the end, our Long March to China took over a week.

The first leg

I had just spent a week seeing a Chinese doctor in Bishkek for a back problem, so I wasn't relishing a 12-hour ride in a shared taxi, but short of flying (which we'd already done on the way north) there weren't a lot of alternatives. (A horrible mountain crash killing a few dozen migrant Tajik workers suspended all bus service from Bishkek to Osh a few years ago.) We did compromise, however, by breaking the journey at Jalalabad, a couple of hours north of Osh, and by purchasing the entire back seat of a shared taxi (i.e., we paid three fares instead of two) to give us more room. Our ride was a black 1990s Mercedes, and our driver was, fortunately, not a speed freak and not fasting either. The road had also been recently widened and tarmacked, so it wasn't actually as bad as expected.

ranges upon rangesI can now attest with certainty that Kyrgyzstan has no shortage of mountains. An hour out of Bishkek you start climbing, and then it's at least six hours' drive over three mountain ranges, each different. At the first pass, the road tunnels through the top and you are in pitch darkness for several minutes in a tunnel with no ventilation system whatsoever. On the other side, we came out into an alpine valley which had recently seen snow, with another range on the other side. We drove along the length of this valley for some time, remarking at the ski-resort potential of this landscape, with natural runs and good snowpack already in place in early October. But, happily, it remains an undeveloped wilderness, for now at least.

traffic jamCrossing the next pass, the mountains got rockier and as we descended trees appeared. In some places, the landscape resembled the rocky red outcrops in the more humid parts of New Mexico. We stopped for lunch at a filthy roadside teahouse that served us pieces of tough goat meat drenched in grease with stale bread. After lunch, we passed the Toktogul reservoir, and then gradually descended out of the crystal-clear mountain air into the smoky plains of the Ferghana valley. We reached Jalalabad at dusk and managed to talk our driver into taking us directly to the homestay we had booked. This turned out to be on the edge of town, and the family didn't provide dinner, instead giving us convoluted directions to a teashop that we never found. After stumbling around the unlit streets for forty-five minutes, we finally settled on a hotel restaurant that served expensive, terrible food—I ordered solyanka (the Russian soup) and got cubes of spam floating in greasy broth.

Beer in Arslanbob

discussing purchasesWe didn't stick around long enough to find out if our first impression of Jalalabad was accurate. The next morning we went to the bus station and got a cheap ride to Arslanbob in a tiny Daewoo with a guy who was delivering goods and was as eager to leave town as we were. We stopped at Bazaar Korgon, a transport hub and bustling, untouristy market, where he picked up his packages. It was fun to drive around the market in a car, because most people didn't notice we were foreigners and we got to see people interacting with each other, for a change, rather than reacting to us.

cheeky beer-selling girlsArslanbob is an Uzbek village in the foothills of the Ferghana mountains. We stayed there for a couple of days as a kind of retreat on our way south. The first afternoon, we ran into two Americans: Kelly, a Peace Corps worker based in Osh, and her friend Aaron who was visiting her. We asked the local Community Based Tourism (CBT) coordinator if there was a bar, or something like it, in town, and were led to a shop window staffed by two thirteenish-aged girls who flirted with Aaron and Chris while they bargained like sharks over the beer they sold us. It was local Kyrgyz stuff, in stubby bottles, but fairly drinkable. The CBT coordinator indicated that we should sit on a log outside the shop, so we did just that, talking and drinking and watching the locals go by.

In Arslanbob, we got our first really bad CBT homestay. The people were nice enough but they hadn't made any investment in the place. The food was mediocre, the toilet wasn't clean, and several of the guest room windows had gaping holes in the glass. It might have been passable during summer, but a cold autumn wind blew over us all night. The next morning we promptly checked out and had CBT assign us to a new, nicer place which actually cost less. This time we scored big: the father in the family was hosting a feast for his old school buddies, in honour of the 26th day of Ramadan, and was slaughtering a sheep!

Some mutton with your mutton?

The unlucky creature was purchased in a neighbouring town for a whopping $100. It was led into the yard while we were having tea, and after a bit of frantic struggling at being separated from its herd settled down for the afternoon. Around 4pm, the halaal butcher, a family friend, came by to do the deed. It was very quick and entirely silent, and the blood was carefully disposed of (halaal butchery requires that the meat stay clean). A bicycle pump was fetched to literally blow the sheep up like a balloon, allowing the skin to be removed in one neat piece to be sold later. The animal was gutted, the organs placed in a basin, to our relief reserved for cooking another day, although they looked and smelled very clean and fresh, not gross at all.

skinning the headThen the meat was carved up for various dishes. The head was stuck on a stake and charred so that the hair and outer layer of skin could be scraped off. It then went into a pot of water that was placed over an outdoor clay oven to make soup. Another, larger soup was made from various cuts of meat, fat and connective tissue, flavoured with herbs, onions and potatos cooked over an open fire. The men made a big show of mixing this soup with a giant ladel, and insisted that we take photos. We watched the soup cooking and were amazed at how difficult it is to render mutton fat; although the water got greasier and greasier, large lumps of fat, including the much sought-after ass fat, didn't reduce perceptibly after a few hours of cooking. (Central Asian sheep are bred to have incredibly large pads of fat that wiggle around on their backsides comically, like some Dr. Mephisto creation. This fat is considered the best part of the animal to eat).

Other dishes were made in the kitchen by the women of the family. We were shown the colourful place settings for the main party, but we and most of the family were fed separately from the father and his man-friends. One of the sons, Almaz Mamarizaev, spoke excellent English (he was a student who worked as a guide during the summers) and he served us the various courses and lingered to chat as we ate.

Here is how the meal unfolded:

First, we were served bits of boiled mutton meat. If you've ever had mutton, you'll know that it is fairly strong tasting and not that tender (mutton is a far cry from lamb, which is more commonly served in the West), and this was no exception. This was followed by the soup, accompanied with slices of liver, ass-fat and some ribs. Chris ate the ribs, I like liver so I volunteered to eat that, but I have to admit neither of us could stomach the ass-fat. The next course was mutton dumplings, which were quite tasty, but we were getting really full by then. Breakfast the next morning was a continuation of the feast, and we were fed mutton plov (a rice pilaf that is very common in Central Asia) and slices of tongue. By the time we left the next day, we were feeling rather muttoned out, and it took a few days to shake off the feeling that we were farting and sweating mutton scent.

Osh again

We headed down to Osh, where we stayed a couple of days waiting for our laundry to dry. While there, we had lunch with Kelly and Aaron, the Americans we'd met in Arslanbob. We also paid our respects to the largest remaining statue of Lenin in the world. Unlike other former SSRs, Kyrgyzstan hasn't tried to deny its Soviet past, and most towns have left at least one monument standing. This one was in better condition than most.

The road to Sary Tash

32 people in one vanWe were told that the minibus to Sary Tash, the final crossroad before the Irkeshtam pass, left in the early morning, so we got ourselves to the bus station before dawn. As the first ones there, we felt entitled to muscle our way onto the bus along with the locals when it showed up. Chris stayed outside to secure places for our bags, while I elbowed my way on with the mob to claim seats as soon as the door opened. Having secured the second row, I settled down to wait for the bus to load. It was absolute chaos. Everybody crammed on at once, scrambling for seats and positions for their sacks of potatoes, onions, and other miscellaneous goods (I ended up resting my elbow on a bag of yarn). The driver kept coming on board to scold people and several yelling matches ensued, but he was boss and did his best to dictate how the bus was loaded. A full hour of top-volume negotiation later and the minibus was ready to go. Its nominal capacity (judging by the number of seats) was about 17 people; Chris counted 32 aboard, and every inch of space was filled with goods so that people were perched on piles up to three feet high.

The journey over the mountains took seven hours and was incredibly dusty. Along the way, we saw several crews working on the road; the equipment and the workers were all Chinese. The Chinese, recognizing that the Central Asian governments have neither the cash nor the motivation to do the work themselves, are rebuilding the roads outside their own borders, to facilitate the movement of exports and extend their influence.

The food at the halfway rest stop looked abysmal, and we opted out this time, snacking on Snickers bars instead and chatting with Pierre, a French journalist who was on our bus. After we pulled away, the woman behind us seemed to be having digestive troubles: horrible rot-gut belches wafted our way every few seconds for the next couple of hours, making us glad we hadn't eaten. The road turned to dusty switchbacks and as our overloaded minibus lumbered up to the pass everyone began coughing.

Sary TashFinally, after a 45-minute climb, we summited, the air cleared, and we descended toward Sary Tash. As the town came into view, so did the Pamir mountains, the world's second highest range, stretching before us for five hundred miles. Pulling into Sary Tash, we foreigners were the only ones to get off the bus (we had to dig among the sacks of potatoes for our bags). A drunk Kyrgyz man met the bus to recruit us for his home stay. It seemed the only option, so we went with him. His house was nice enough, but his sullen teenage daughter was burdened with all the work of cooking and cleaning (there was no other woman in the house) and it was a fairly depressing place.

We explored the town that afternoon, which was really just a crossroad miles from anywhere. The location in a high-altitude valley between the Pamir and Ferghana mountain ranges was stunning, but it was a cold and desolate place. We spent the afternoon drinking local beer in a shop with Pierre. Dinner that night was meager, and there was no heat in the house, so we went to bed early. The next morning we got up before dawn again and were served greasy offal soup for breakfast.

Trucking

We headed out in the darkness, hoping to hitch a ride on a truck headed for the pass. There is no public transport from Sary Tash to the border (only a twice-weekly bus that goes from Osh to Kashgar overnight, so you don't get to see the scenery). Our host had told us that we should be out there by 7am. A couple of empty trucks rolled by without stopping, but other than that there was no traffic at all. It was freezing cold and all three of us were shivering. The sunrise did little to warm things up, but at least things looked a bit cheerier, and we got to see the local shepherds taking their animals out to pasture for the day.

Finally, at about 8:30, we started seeing Chinese trucks coming down from the pass. They all stopped at the roadside cafes just before town, but at least they provided some potential. Leah and Alex, a french couple we'd met in Arslanbob appeared. At first we were worried at our prospects for a lift now that we were a party of five, but the trucks started rolling again and this time they stopped. The first was a Chinese truck that had space for one: Pierre took that ride. Next, a Kyrgyz truck rolled up for us.

our Kyrgyz truck crewAfter an hour and forty-five minutes by the side of the road, it was a great relief to sit in the relatively warm sleeper cab, although we soon learned it wasn't actually heated. The truck was an old, red Russian Kamuz, and not long after leaving Sary Tash it broke down. Our driver got it going again soon enough, but something wasn't quite right and we didn't make very good time. The road was a pot-holed gravel disaster, but the scenery was spectacular. We drove the length of the Alay valley that separates the Ferghana and Pamir Mountains; the Ferghanas on the left were jagged, foreboding peaks that were dwarfed by the distant snow-covered Pamirs looking like a long line of giant fairy cakes. Riding in the truck, we got an unfettered view and it was a really memorable trip.

Almost stuck

We rolled into the border town of Irkeshtam long after Alex and Leah had overtaken us in their spiffy, new Chinese truck. We were getting a bit anxious because the Chinese side of the border, which is several kilometers from the Kyrgyz border post, closes for a two-hour lunch, and only reopens for an hour in the afternoon (it operates on Beijing time, which is a full two hours ahead of local time). To our dismay, our drivers pulled off the road just short, at what was apparently a relative's house. There, they unloaded sacks of onions from the truck, and went inside for tea. Nyet problem!, they insisted, they would be only ten minutes and we'd make the border on time. Chris and I stood around outside and gritted our teeth; the last thing we wanted was to be stuck for the night in Irkeshtam.

Half an hour later, as we were debating walking out to the road to hitch another ride, they came out to fix the truck. This involved flipping up the cab, and only too late did we realize our daypacks were inside, so all hope of escape was dashed. In the end, it was only another ten minutes before they were rolling again, and we made it through the Kyrgyz border posting, were put on a brand-new Chinese truck driven by a short and very round Uighur driver for the 11-kilometer trip through no-man's-land. On the other side, the Chinese had just closed for lunch, so we had a long wait in the cold. But we found some solace in that Leah and Alex had also been stuck there, so we had company.

The edge of the world

As we waited, we reflected on where we were. This was the very Western edge of China, with 1.4 billion people a whole world unto itself. We had come all the way from the Mediterranean, yet unbelievably we were still not quite half way to the Pacific Ocean. Though we were thousands of miles and two time zones from Beijing, the Chinese influence was already apparent in the walled compound built to house migrant Chinese road workers: building walls is truly in the blood! Just before the border, the road too had changed completely, becoming perfectly smooth, striped and guttered, built on a real base, instead of asphalt laid directly on dirt as is common in the former Soviet republics.

As the border finally opened, we struck a deal with our Uighur truck driver to take us on to Kashgar. We stopped at the customs shed, a trailer heated with a coal stove and staffed by young Chinese recruits who took turns wearing a Chinese military greatcoat while outside on traffic duty. An officer came along and ratted out the recruits for their sloppy uniforms. Each of the trucks was searched by the teenagers, but as they were all returning empty from Central Asia they had to settle on tearing apart the cabs.

Almost stuck, again!

Before long, we were on to the immigration post, which was very efficient. Our driver instructed us to meet him on the other side. While we were waiting, a taxi driver offered us a very expensive ride to Kashgar. We refused, he offered ten more times, we still refused. He glowered when our truck driver showed up. We suspect that this specimen was behind our being stopped by a policeman ten minutes out of town, who yelled at our driver and made us turn back. I asked our driver if we had caused him trouble; he said maybe, but that he had a friend at customs who would sort it out. He didn't want us to find another ride so we had lunch with him while he waited for clearance.

Meanwhile, Leah and Alex had run into problems with their truck, which had broken down at the border. The same taxi driver was busy bragging to the truck drivers about how much he charged foreigners to get to Kashgar, which didn't help their position either. Two hours later, when we finally left town again, Alex and Leah were still trying to negotiate a ride. The four-hour drive to Kashgar was through still more stunning mountain scenery: incredibly varied rock formations that changed around every corner, and shaggy bactrian camels roaming the valleys.

We arrive

It was well after dark by the time we got to Kashgar (11pm Beijing time), and our driver left us far out on the edge of town. He also insisted on more money than we'd initially agreed on, probably influenced by the taxi man at the border, so negotiations began again. In the end, he settled for our remaining Kyrgyz cash.

our Uighur truck driverWe had only a vague idea where we were, but we hadn't been able to change money at the border so we had little option but to put on our packs and walk. That we did, for three kilometers, through the Uighur part of town, where nobody seemed to understand Chinese. We finally made it to a cash machine, hailed a cab, and checked into the Chinibagh hotel, where the price of the room changed three times in as many minutes and we were introduced to the Chinese hotel policy of requiring full payment for the room, plus a deposit, up front. (The Chinese apparently party like rock stars; there was an itemized list of prices for each item you could destroy or steal in our hotel room, including a 50-cent charge for each cigarette burn in the carpet.) But in the end we had a much better value room than we'd had almost anywhere in Central Asia, and it was with great relief that we showered off the dust and climbed into a warm, comfy bed. We were home!