by Danny Bent
* * *
The powers that be again decided I’d been having too much yin and threw me a curved yang. My stomach lurched and I had a split second to get into the bushes, diving through the soft sand. I was wearing cycling bib shorts with straps that went over my shoulders. I had to remove my top and then pull these down before my guts exploded. It was horrible. Imagine having diarrhoea in bib shorts, surrounded by the deepest depths of sand that gets everywhere. Now times that by ten and you can imagine how miserable I was.
Even in my discomfort I couldn't help joking with the police I met as they waved me over and asked me for photos. I swapped my cycle helmet for their top hats before allowing them to snap away.
I had to find a place to stop, and preferably one with a half decent toilet. I pulled into a café and the toilet had a soft warming material seat cover. It would have been awesome if it hadn’t been covered in shit.
The owner of the bar, a forty year old man, made me a proposition as I tried to fill my now empty belly. He offered me his wife for the night, showing me her assets in no uncertain terms. Obviously I said no and my distaste for the man began to simmer. I had no energy to do anything as the sickness had taken hold, and regular visits to the latrine were needed. I soon went off to sleep, on my own.
Whilst eating breakfast surrounded by local men and women, the same asshole who had offered me his wife sexually assaulted a girl working at the café. He pinned her to the floor with his weight, which was ample, and let his hands explore. People shook their heads and smiled. She was laughing but it was the laugh of a school child being bullied. I wanted to vomit in his face. Terrible.
The worst of it was that the performance was for my benefit, I am sure. Looking over at me, he smiled and I simply looked away. I hate myself for that. It still hurts almost a year on. But what right had I, a Westerner, to intervene in something that I had no idea about? Man is man here; women share the same privileges as the farm animals. It still haunts me and I know it's happening everywhere.
On your own travels, if you happen to come across Alex in a chai house just before the police station halfway between Nukus and Bukhara, and accidentally spill your boiling chai in a place no man wants to be burnt, then I owe you a drink.
Chapter 19
Bukhara, directly translated as Beauty, is an ancient and fairy-tale town, the land of magical lamps and astern beauties. Ancient Great Silk Road caravans never passed this town by, the only oasis for miles. Nowadays Bukhara is famous not only for its superb historic monuments but for its lively trade. Every traveller finds something unique in this town.
Taking out my map that morning, I had tried to find a way to get out of Uzbekistan. Alex’s actions had turned me off a country that I had loved before then. I knew it was silly, bad people exist everywhere. Without additional visas my route was fixed. Bukhara was my next destination.
Just outside of Bukhara, I stopped in a café where a woman bossed the men around, making them do the dirty work. A fat-tailed sheep lived in the garden. Sheep were specifically bred for the unique quality of the fat (called allyah) stored in the tail area. They have an ass like Beyonce Knowles. The fat on the tail area is valuable and the sheep know it. As they walk, their booties shake. I just couldn’t look at them with a straight face.
In Bukhara, markets line the streets and fill any open space, selling anything from dried fruit and nuts, to pixie shoes, to meat hung up in the midday heat covered in flies, to traditional musical instruments. The intricately sculptured Minaret Kalian towers over the city, the foundations of which are made with mortar plaster and camel's milk. It is nicknamed the ‘tower of death’ as condemned men were hurled to their deaths from the top of it.
* * *
I wandered round the city, my sandalled feet slapping against the red earth that makes up the road system. I was exploring the markets for a tea pot I could carry on my bike to make chai in whenever I met nice people. A man cycled past me with a traditional Uzbek cap on, selling naans as big as a table top. Unable to help myself, I bought one for less than forty pence.
Bread is sacred. It should never be thrown away. If people see it on the floor, they pick it up and find a use for it. I had a loaf of bread as big as a table and had to finish it. I had no-one to share it with. Trying to share it with the locals, I was given looks that perhaps I shouldn’t be doing it. Many locals have haired lips and are cross-eyed. I assumed this was down to the fact that the population of Bukhara is less than two hundred thousand and Muslim culture encourages inter-family marriage.
Holding a kilo of bread in one hand, I tried to change $50 on the black market. I was offered a good rate and beckoned into a darkened room where I met an elderly woman wrapped in many layers of material. Her skin was leathered and wrinkled from the sun; there was no way I could have even guessed how old she was. The lady disappeared for a moment and came back with two stacks of money, five inches thick. She wanted to exchange my single note for multiples of 200Som notes. Can you imagine walking round with inches of notes in your pockets? It just didn’t feel right so I apologised and left. However, many locals do pull out masses of notes when shopping in the markets.
The Chor Minor, which directly translates as four minarets, has four turrets with sky blue cupolas. In a labyrinth of winding streets, I bumped into Greg. He looked me up and down and said “Cyclist?” in his a strong Aussie accent. I looked confused as to how he knew. “You look friggin' skinny, you have stupid sock marks and are wearing sandals. It’s obvious.”
Greg was just the guy I needed to meet right now to make crass jokes about the way women were treated, the working conditions and the child labour. Although it is a serious matter, I’d been taking it too seriously. His jokes and laughter lightened my load. Everyone was experiencing the same and we could do nothing but set better examples.
We were sharing the same hostel, so we walked back together and, amongst the crowds of Germans and French people herded into and out of tour buses, I saw a flash of white, a smile, and a pair of eyes that calmed me at once. Katya and Cedric. They were in the hostel too.
At dinner the four of us sat at the low-lying tables, cross-legged and cramped. I looked around and saw other tourists in the same position, adjusting their butts and legs to make themselves comfortable. Sitting cross-legged isn’t something we do in the UK after leaving junior school. On the surrounding tables with normal chairs and tables were all the Uzbek people who must have been wondering why we foreigners were still using this more historic posture.
An Uzbek girl with bright green eyes caught my eye and I wandered over to see if I could practice my language skills. She was with a family so I politely bowed as salaam alaikum. They returned my greeting with smiles. Wa Alaykum-as-Salaam. I was offered food and enjoyed their company for a while. After eating, they asked if I was married. Checking out their new son-in-law, I thought. I pointed and smiled at the girl with the green eyes. “My wife?” I said in Russian. Some laughed but the table was empty within minutes and I was left sitting on my own. Cedric and Katya were laughing behind me in their own marital bliss. It’s tough out here being a red-blooded male.
The next morning Cedric and Katya left with a Belgian couple who’d joined our table whilst I was off playing Casanova.
I went into town to visit the local Haman. Haman are famous all over Central Asia. Men and women go into separate houses, get naked, get steamed, and then get rubbed to remove dead skin. After washing, they are massaged in a manner that is out of this world. Cracked, squished and beaten to a pulp in a way I have never known. The Haman walked along my body - it was fantastic!
Afterwards a ginger and honey mix is rubbed onto your skin. It burns like acid. Giving me some in my hand, I look quizzically up at him. “Penis” he said. OK. Boiling ginger stem on my nob. Great. It took fifteen buckets of cold water to try and wash it off and it still burnt. But as soon as you are out of the hot rooms, you feel amazing, like you could cycle up mountains and through deserts.
; This was quite fortunate. When I arrived back at the hostel, the owner ran up to me waving a credit card in my face. The Belgian couple had left their credit card. Could I take it to them? Travelling to Samarkand, two hundred kilometres away, they were leaving the following evening for China and they needed their card. I had thirty-six hours to get it there…..
* * *
So it was with their card tucked in my back pocket I set off for Samarkand. On the outskirts of the city I saw a bank on my right - ‘Agro Bank’ - reminding me of the banks I’d had dealings with in the past I lifted my camera to take a picture. Armed guards came out shouting “No”.
I told them there was no need to be so ‘Agro’, but my shutka went down like a lead balloon.
Cycling as a far as I could in the little time remaining, I pulled into a shop in Karmana to ask where the nearest gostinitsa was. The old boy behind the counter had dark wrinkled skin and only two teeth remaining - one in his upper pallet, one in his lower. Gurning as he thought about his answer, an idea suddenly sprung into his mind. “You stay my house.”
Before we could go home we sat outside his shop. A group of youths congregated around the two of us. My ukulele, camera, and iPod combined to produce a beautiful cacophony of noise and lighting.
Arriving at his house, I was poured a small tea. The old man, Halim, put three sugar cubes as large as eight normal ones into my cup and I watched as they dissolved into the hot liquid. His granddaughter, Alexi, joined us. She spoke English excellently and so I was able to ask more questions about their family. They all lived in the same building. This was her granddad's section. She thought her granddad was a very nice man for allowing me to stay and that I looked silly, but enjoyed my iPod and walked around her house taking pictures of family members for me, together with one or two of her one and only toy – a dirty doll that had seen better days. Her name was Charlotte and she didn’t like tea but liked to eat the sugar cubes raw. Together the three of us dined on more sugared chai and small boiled sweets.
As time wore on, Alexi was called to her bedroom and Halim and I set up our beds. The usual straw matting was rolled out. There was a bed in his room but it was used as a table for storing important bits and pieces. Halim also slept on a straw mat. Under the mattress was his bank. We did some black market exchanging and consummated the deal with another chai.
The boys I’d met the previous day were all waiting in the morning with their bikes at the shop. We set off together and the usual races ensued. The boys were on their way to the fields with scythes in their hands. The blades pointed dangerously towards their faces. A fall would have meant certain injury, so I slowed and let them continue without distraction.
Approaching Samarkand, I could see the smog like a force field over the city built in a perfect semi-circle. Eyeing an empty café, I ordered chai and water. With my chai arrived a group of men from twenty-five to sixty years old who wanted to know everything about me.
I was becoming quite adept at answering the regular questions in Russian. Where from? Where to? Where is your wife? How old are you? Do you have a wife? Where is your wife? What is your wife’s name? How many children? The questioning became more frantic with the men all wanting to know how a thirty year old man could not have a wife. It was completely unheard of. On top of that, a white man. He obviously has money and this nice soft skin. It began again. Where is your wife? How old? Wife? In the end I just couldn’t take it any more. I shouted “Ya neit jena”. I no wife.
With this sign of aggression the men moved away and talked amongst themselves.
As I readied myself to go, one of the group had a final question. “Do you have penis?”
Chapter 20
Passing through the bubble of smog, I entered the city. Prospering from its position on the trade route between China and the Mediterranean, Samarkand is one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world. What remained of the ancient dynasties was breath-taking.
I cycled past the huge Registan, the ancient city centre, a place of public executions where people gathered to hear royal proclamations heralded by blasts on enormous copper pipes called dzharchis. It comprises three Madrassah. The Muslim education institution, its archways and its intricate Arabic writing are quite awe-inspiring, not least because of the Registan's positioning between the old town and the newer upmarket cafés and hotels. Next, on my way to the hostel and my friends, I was longing to see the Guri Amir Mausoleum with its intricate mosaic artwork, tall minarets and blue tiled dome.
The first person I bumped into at the hostel was Greg. He was even more single than I was, and older too, and his sharp wit and gutter humour got me laughing immediately. Katya and Cedric heard the laughter and came running so that we were again able to share a hug. I passed the credit card over to the Belgian couple with due pomp and ceremony minutes before the taxi arrived to take them to the airport.
Katya was raring to tell me a story of their journey where they had been forced to make a prayer flag out of knicker elastic to avoid undue attention. It was so great to be around these people again with whom I had shared more time than with any others over the last three months.
Night time soon fell and I was reminded again that winter was coming fast and that I would be encountering snow in the high passes which lay ahead of me. Greg and I took our cameras for some night shots of the two buildings I’d seen on the way in. We managed to get some fabulous pictures before the police arrived. I quickly threw my camera into my bag as if we had just been walking. I feared they were going to delete our photos or, worse, confiscate our cameras. I let Greg’s sharp tongue do the speaking and hung back sheepishly, listening to what they had to say. They asked where we were from, where our wives were, and how old we were before inviting us to climb one of the minarets in exchange for a big old hunk of baksheesh – bribery.
Leaving the police to their scams, we found the only hotel in town known to sell beer and spent their bribe on a few glasses. On the dance floor guys writhed with other guys and the girls sat in a separate room.
Sitting with the women, we were soon told to get up and move to the other room where the men gesticulated that we should dance with them, or have sex. It was difficult to tell the two apart. Having yet to recover from my incident in the restaurant, I couldn’t handle the men touching me and forcefully dragging me to the dance floor, so Greg and I left, ‘sexy dancing’ all the way back to the hostel.
* * *
My camera was flashing.
I was at the Rajasthan again. The sun was rising and the morning glow made the monument even more impressive than during my previous encounters. My camera however was trained on the people cleaning, polishing, wiping it. The people had equal if not more beauty than the monument. One or two pointed and laughed at my interest, encouraging their minder to come over with a broom and shoo me away.
The streets were coming to life. Scratch card sellers were offering people the chance to win small amounts of money. Then there were the usual chai sellers, mobile bakers and commuters.
Bibi Mosque was next on my itinerary. Since 1974 the whole mosque has been reconstructed after its collapse in an earthquake, but the bazaar at its foot has changed very little in 600 years. As I have already mentioned, I’d been searching for an appropriate tea pot as a focus point for meetings with strangers in the streets and villages I was passing through on my bike. I wasn’t looking for anything particularly aesthetic but I was very specific in my ideas of how the pot should make me feel. I’d been looking for weeks now in all the small bazaars. I’d searched Bukhara to no avail. But this market had it all. Passing a lady begging with a fist full of Som, I saw the stall I was looking for and knew I’d found my pot. Between the rotting fly-covered flesh that was sold and made into our dinners in the evening and a hat shop selling a thousand varieties of the Taqiyah, the Muslim skull cap, there was a stall with a variety of kitchen implements - some brand new modern kettles; other older lamps that were used in primitive houses for lighting. Behind all these wa
s my teapot. It looked a little battered already but most things did in these stalls. Skolko? I asked how much it was. Amused, the owner held up a newer more modern teapot. Niet, shto. No, this one. I said pointing at the original one.
2000 Som – just over a dollar. I couldn’t argue with that. As I handed over the cash, the shop owner emptied his used tea leaves onto the floor and handed me his pot. Little did he know how much I would treasure it.
Katya, Cedric and I shared a brew back at the hostel and were the first to sign the teapot with my permanent marker before heading off to Northern Central Asia. It was a tough goodbye – without the stimulus of the outside world and without my friends and family, Cedric and Katya had become both.
* * *
In the evening I met a German lady who talked about her spiritual journey. Although I kept telling myself it was all a load of poppycock, my breathing and heart rate upped when she talked about the centre of the spiritual world being in Tibet and India. Was I destined to find what my soul had been looking for?
* * *
The borders between the ex-Soviet republics are crazy. One road in the south of Uzbekistan winds in and out of three countries continuously over a stretch of a hundred miles. Surely there aren’t border police at each point? An adjoining train line does exactly the same. My next leg led me to Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. From there, a direct route passed into Kazakhstan and then out again within a couple of miles. Another road wound around a little more but stayed in Uzbekistan.