Hypertravel with Hardie #10, Central Asia: Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan...

Central Asia was—and is—something of a logical extension of the original Hypertravel inspiration, to “see it all,’’ with the only real difference being the much larger scale of the endeavor over a plot of land that is as difficult to define as it is to navigate. I only knew that however it was ultimately defined, Uzbekistan would be at the heart of it, and so that would be my starting point when the possibility finally presented itself in 2013. It wouldn’t be the BIG trip, of course, since that’s almost unfathomable, beginning in India and winding up through Pakistan and Afghanistan, then Central Asia proper, i.e. Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan, before detouring into China for the rebound tour through Xinjiang and Kashgar before finally diving back down the Karakoram highway to Pakistan and India, with an option to return instead through Tibet and Nepal, then India. Whew! I schemed and scammed on that idea for years before finally settling on a quick trip to solitary Uzbekistan in 2013. All those countries required visas back then, and often obtainable only in the home country, or maybe a visa on arrival at the airport only, in a random country or two. But overland travel has its own reward, so I figured to revisit the trip in 2014 with an extension from India into Pakistan, first, then Afghanistan, then who knows? But the inspiration for Uzbekistan in 2013 was the Sharq Taronalari music festival in Samarkand. That was in my world music days, and I was always a culture vulture, so it all fit together nicely, especially when wedged in and around Thailand, as usual, my sometimes and often home and refuge. But first I flew from LA to Frankfurt, with a layover there, before continuing to Tashkent. And Tashkent is nothing special, but proof of the Russian connection, big and boring. Samarkand IS special, with the same typical architecture that you can still find in much of Central Asia, the Indo-European part, before the massive Turkic immigration. And that’s what the classic cities of Samarkand, Bukhara, and Khiva are, Tajikistan maybe even more so. The music festival is good, too, even if slightly high-cultured and not some wild-ass hippie event. My guesthouse owner is a character named Firkat, that I call Fur Cat, who puts out a breakfast spread that must be seen to be believed, shades of Istanbul, with serving plates stacked skyward for three-dimensional effect, it seems. The food is good, too, whether it’s ultimately Turkish or Iranian, I don’t care. The architecture shows more affinity with Kashgar and Tehran than Istanbul, and both Bukhara and Khiva would be similar. Bukhara is next stop down the road and into the encroaching desert, and it’s nice, too, with variations on that same Iranian central Asian theme. But it’s a little bit smaller, so more compact and less famous, and apparently a favorite of itinerant Russians looking for excitement in the Central Asian outback. But what it lacks in fame, it makes up in authenticity. That means suzani ikat weavings, old-fashioned markets, and a babushka half my age who’s giving dirty looks at my dirty boots. From there it’s a long haul due west across the desert to Khiva, and once again it’s the shared taxis who carry much of the load for people like me, too rich for scuzzy buses and too poor for private cars. But it works, even if it keeps the bus system slow and funky. We’re in a different part of the region now, though, almost Turkmenistan and probably proud of it. They’re stricter here, and you can feel the difference, Mullah Abdullah and his minions with breath that smells like onions. In short, Bukhara is more like India, while Khiva is more like Iran. But the first thing I did in Khiva was to buy a train ticket back to Samarkand, and I had no regrets about that. Because Khiva is less attractive to me, and that is simply a fact. The catchy pop music is here replaced by long dreary dirges, and the people are less friendly to match. For some reason the French people like it, though, and that may be because they (we) are literally inhabiting a UNESCO World Heritage site. Is that even legal? Overcharging is a problem, also, especially the kind that comes with racial and facial distinctions. Given the dependence on taxis for transportation, this is no small issue. So, Samarkand is a welcome redux, even if it starts to feel slightly boring. The once exciting weddings that produce so many babies now seem excessive, as if people are getting married just for the parties! Since bars as such are certainly not publicly tolerated. But they are privately tolerated, and a troop of girls touring from nearby Tajikistan show how the local dances are done, smiling like visiting American dignitaries without the slightest hint of a hijab. But all good things must come to an end, of course, and Russian-era Tashkent is no match for the more traditional sites of Samarkand, Bukhara, and Khiva. Either way, it’s Muslim Lite and Turkic Lite. Speaking Russian is still your best defense against overcharging, even though the local languages are Indo-Aryan and Turkic. And that’s a subject that fascinates me immensely. So, this 2013 excursion is just a teaser for the really big Indo-Euro show that will get picked up in 2014 with a full-fledged introduction to India proper, with side-trips to Pakistan and Afghanistan, respectively. Neither of those will connect to Uzbekistan, but it could have. I made the choice to return to southern India, first, for a month or two, after Pakistan, and then Sri Lanka and the Maldives Islands after Afghanistan. Fortunately, I had a double-entry visa from the Indian consulate in Bangkok, so that worked fine. Now it’s even easier, just do it all online and stamp it all up at the border. So, after a couple months of travel in the north of India, I exited the country in the farthest NW corner of the country, into Pakistan, one of the weirdest border crossings in the world, and, given the fact that the people are genetically very similar speaking languages that are very similar, one of the strangely least traveled. The big drama the first day was finding my hostel in Lahore. Considering the relatively good English language skills of neighboring India, the skills for Pakistani taxi drivers was low, which made arrival to my destination difficult. But we finally found it, of course, and the next challenge was to enjoy an evening of Sufi dancing here, at its place of origin. As with all of Pakistan that I saw, women were nowhere to be found, but that’s just Islam at its core. But the policemen were the big surprise, as they beat the unruly crowd, including me, with sticks, that and the unruliness itself, which I presumed to be prohibited in Islam. But it’s not, quite the contrary. This is all in the midst of hashish incense that perfectly matches the level of the policeman’s incense. I never got hit upside the head, but I did feel the breeze, and I felt my own level of incense toward our trusted leader Hassan, I think his name was. But Lahore was good enough, and I knew nothing of the Indus Valley Civilization at the time, so the only other destination was the capital of Islamabad, after I canceled Peshawar due to illness. So, I got my Afghan visa in the capital, with three months to enter, which it turns out that I would sorely need, pun intended, after I lost my voice as the reward for a never-ending bout of cold and diarrhea. Islamabad was weird, too, deliberately erect in contrast to Lahore’s grimy grottoes and lurid exteriors, but both with no women showing their faces or even their burqas, victims of the thorough he-job that is fundamentally Islam. And this is the Lite version. So, I beat a not-so-hasty retreat to Mumbai to weather the winter and wait for the spring, trolling the west coast of India before returning to New Delhi. #Kabul #Afghanistan: Jihad for Dummies vs. Spring Hopes Eternal This trip got reignited a month or two later after a full tour of southwest India from Mumbai to Kerala state and all points in between, one of India’s nicest areas. Then I’m back in New Delhi with a flight to Afghanistan. The queue for Safi Air flight #248 from Delhi to Kabul looks like something of a loya jirga in itself, businessmen and diplomats, village traders of lapis lazuli, scammers and schemers, all going back to the homeland for one reason or another, all with excess baggage—fridges toasters and microwaves, dreams hopes and expectation, with strange tongues and whispering strange sighs, body odors wafting from overcoats whose histories likely date back to eras unspecified and improperly documented. Any one of these guys could be a Taliban terrorist, al-Qaeda conniver or Saudi Salafist, down on his luck and up on his religion, out of his rightful mind and into the only one that's left, high-tailing it or in-boxing it or tweeting it or snap-chatting architectural blueprints for any one of 1000's of memorials and buildings and airports freely available on Internet and suitable for bombing. That's probably what they're saying about me, too, CIA or worse, agent provocateur. The flight itself is no big deal, endless klicks over uncharted desert, over the border somewhere that divides India from Pakistan, Hinduism from Islam, vegetarians from carnivores, and divine hierarchies from an abstract figurehead, the latter looking to the Arabian desert for inspiration, the former to themselves and their past, mutated in direct proportion to the distance from the source, in time and space, the twin gods of physical existence. Afghanistan is the kind of place—Papua New Guinea is another—where it's easier to feel comfortable in crowds, the clusterf*ck itself some measure of security, a bulwark against bullsh*t, where white skin is the target, the whiter the better, since our distant-cousin Afghans themselves have no lack of light skin blue eyes and blue genes, vestige of some point in time and space back when back where on steppes balustrades and genetic ladders blazing a trail out of Africa and heading for greener pastures and broader vistas, all suitable for us featherless bipeds walking around semi-erect. This is fortress Kabul, never so beautiful in the first place, now reduced to concrete bunkers and abstract considerations, cold steel construction under mostly sunny skies, kids and old ladies begging for food, a burqa to hide the shame, a war of words and mutually exclusive concepts, consumerism and religious fundamentalism fight it out in the streets and villages, the only decorations for today's New Year celebrations the loops and swirls of concertina wire gracing fences and railings of any importance, Checkpoint Charlies at the most important military installations and warehouses of consumer goods. Nothing helped the Serena Hotel last night, Kabul's finest, cobbled together from those same hopes dreams and big ideas, and ultimate killing field, if for only a moment, in the battle to harvest souls for slaughter, always easier than conversion, multiple casualties and unspecified damages, the strategy of most journalists diplomats and businessmen being that the more layers of protection the better, thicker stronger and longer the path an enemy projectile must penetrate. I prefer to hide in plain sight, wearing nothing for protection, playing with children and scrounging for food, hanging with locals, something most foreigners would never do, go figure, so maybe that's part of the problem, the foreign intervention, the imposition of order from the outside, rather than from its own internal logic and familial bonds, that fortress mentality that only feels good on the inside, if you're one of the lucky few... and not claustrophobic. I like (ex)war zones—Belfast, Bosnia, Beirut, Belgrade. The challenge is to get the timing right. Show me a former war zone and I'll show you a travel bargain. But nobody wants to dodge bullets, not really. Sure, it makes good copy, but... naah. Kabul may have to wait another season. Some people chase tornadoes for kicks. Man, those folks are crazy. Me, I prefer half-crazed maniacs with machine guns. But this is no accident, no random occurrence. This is the afterlife. This is World War III. This is the war to end all wars. This is the beginning of the long dark nod. The Great Migrations have already begun. This is love during wartime, baby. Could you hold me just a little bit tighter, please, even though you're ten thousand miles away and we've barely even met? Thank you. I appreciate that. Election Day in #Kabul #Afghanistan Tomorrow is election day in Afghanistan, and all fingers are crossed, all eyes watching. Regardless of who wins, the future is not so bright. The Taliban vows to punish anyone who votes. And they aren't known for making idle promises. Of course the real challenge begins when the US pulls out later this year, and questions remain what sort of contingency will live on here. The smart money would probably bet on smart money, with few soldiers. That would probably be the best move. Of course the widely predicted civil war won't necessarily occur when the US pulls out, and if it does, that doesn't mean that the Taliban will win again. Another possibility is that the country might be partitioned de facto into a Taliban-controlled south and a more liberal—less conservative, that is—'Muslim lite' north, where women can walk the streets without a burqa and men can eventually learn to appreciate that, and their equality. Isn't that the real problem anyway: ignorant a**hole macho men who'd rather beat women down than lift themselves up? Old ways die hard, I guess... Partitioning is problematic, though, and symptomatic of possibly THE biggest problem in Afghanistan, its fragmented landscape. The fastest land route between Kabul in the central east, and Herat, in the central west, is through Taliban-infested Kandahar in the south, 'only' two days. The 'straight' route over hill and dale takes three days, with no guarantees. A flight only takes an hour or so, of course. You get the pic. I personally have no special interest in Afghanistan, no more than any other region of the world, anyway. My main reason for being there now—last week, that is—is two-fold: it's on the land route from India up through Central Asia and back through China, which I originally planned to do, AND... Afghanistan may be entering a dark time in which travel will be impossible. In other words, it may be now or never. Once there only then did I begin to see the country in a different light, full of real people in a very real situation—a very good metaphor for the modern world itself—mostly gone wrong, I might add. Volumes have been written about Afghanistan's lack of hospitality, but I didn't find that, just the opposite, in fact. And once people realized that I was NOT 'up to no good', harmless as a church mouse, in fact, they opened right up, pictorially, at least. I took no picture of a person that I was not invited to take, and I took every one that I was invited to take. The multiplicity of hired gunmen did not fit that list, unfortunately. EXIT Still, the writing is on the wall, and all bets are off, so I have no choice but to hedge them. That means catching the first flight out of the region, so that I won’t be any further inconvenienced. Because it’s already inconvenience enough just trying to get to the airport through the massive security on display. And since I have no remaining visa for India, then i must go elsewhere, in this case Sri Lanka, from which I’ll do a side trip to makdives. Hey, going to 150 countries is not easy, so I catch them when I can. C U there