6. 

VODKA AND KYMYZ

The driver raced the taxi along the unevenly paved road, coming right up to the bumper of a car before passing it into oncoming traffic. He raced past the totaled automobiles mounted on concrete pedestals by the side of the road, heedless of the warning they offered.

His speed and recklessness would have been scary on a fine day and that day it was raining hard. Heavy, gray clouds hung over the brown, bare, rocky walls as we plunged into the winding Chuy River Canyon. Kristin, saucer-eyed and white knuckled, begged him to slow down.

We arrived at the Wishing Tree just as there was a break in the storm. The story goes that long ago a group of travelers had been walking for many hours high up in the canyon and were very thirsty. At this spot they stumbled upon a spring and to mark the spot for others, tied a piece of cloth to a nearby tree. As the years passed the tree assumed the power to grant wishes, especially those of women who want to get pregnant. That was not the wish I made, however, when I tied my piece of fabric to the tree.

In Kochkor, we found another taxi to take us the rest of the way to the village of Döng Alysh where we would stay with a local family, the Jainakovs.

That afternoon the house was the most popular place in town. Nurbek and Aisulu Jainakov were celebrating the birth of their son seven months earlier and all afternoon well-wishers were coming and going into the yurt that was set up in the yard. According to Alina, the arrival of a child is not celebrated until months after the birth but not for superstitious or religious reasons. It is to give the mother time to recover, not out of for concern for her health but because she is the one who will be doing all the cooking.

The house was new, but had no indoor plumbing. We headed directly for the outhouse located beyond the walled yard and across two ariks (not the drinking water supply, we hoped). Alina shivered and looked around at the mud and the outhouse and declared, “I hate village life.”

We deposited our shoes at the front door of the house and were ushered into the living room, where on a long low table was a feast of borsok (Kyrgyz fried bread), cookies, raisins, candied peanuts, homemade jams, fresh butter, smetana (sour cream) tomatoes, cucumbers and tea; staples of the Kyrgyz diet.

A man, staggering slightly and holding a baby boy, entered the room.

“I’m sorry. A bit drunk. Sorry, sorry, sorry.” Pointing to the baby and then to himself he said, “Same nose, same mouth, same eyes, same, same.” I assumed the man was Nurbek, who we hadn’t yet met and that the baby was his son. I could only hope that the boy’s mother was Aisulu, or in his inebriated state he was being extremely indiscreet.

✢

 “All you’ll see is dirt,” groused Alina.  The rain had finally let up and the sky had begun to clear and I had just announced to her and Kristin that I was going out to explore. I left the two of them dozing on the couches and headed out accompanied by the Jainakovs’ oldest daughter, fifteen-year-old Gulima.

As we passed the house two doors away a drunken granny grabbed me and kissed me so fervently on each cheek that I thought her next kiss would be on my lips. She had obviously spent the day celebrating. She dragged me inside and asked me to take a photo of the group gathered around the plate- and food-strewn table. One of her daughters put on my hat and sashayed around the room while the granny stuffed my pockets with candy.

A stream meandered along the village’s main road, which was pot-holed in the parts that still were paved. Horses were preferred over cars as the mode of transport.

The pitched-roofed houses of either plastered adobe or raw brick were set far apart, each with a large walled or fenced in yard, and backed onto open meadows. The spaces under the roofs were open so that foodstuffs and hay could be stored there. In preparation for autumn and winter feeding, hay was already being piled up in the yards of many of the houses. At least outwardly little had changed in the nearly eighty years since Ella’s trip; her description of houses was the same. 

A group of children swarmed around me, mugging for my camera and pushing each other out of the way to be in the center of the picture.

When Gulima and I returned to her parents’ house I was invited into the yurt. Only Aisulu and two or three other guests were present, but the table bore the remains of a feast. My arrival signaled the partying to begin anew. Fresh tea was brewed, the sugar dishes were refilled, borsok was scooped from a large plastic bag and dumped on the table, grapes were laid out, cookies and candy were brought in on a three-tiered dish. And then came the vodka. All eyes were on me as I threw back my first shot. Big smiles and a few claps followed my slamming the empty shot glass down on the table. I was encouraged to eat a few grapes to cut the fire in my throat, but there was no fire, it had gone down smoothly. ”Huh, it must not be very strong,” I foolishly told myself. A few minutes later two other people arrived and another shot was called for.

This was fun. “What’s that?” I asked pointing to a bowl filled with a white liquid. “Is it kymyz?”. Kymyz is fermented mare’s milk and a staple of the Turkic-Mongol diet.

Aisulu nodded, and before I knew it a cup of it was set in front of me. I was only going to take a sip, but it was good. It tickled my tongue and had a smoky flavor.* I took sip after sip drinking more of it than I should have considering I was not finished with the vodka.

Nurbek’s parents, Gulbaira and Assambek Jainakov, arrived and another round of shots was poured. “Adin, dva, tre!” and down the hatch. It began to dawn on me that every time a guest arrived shots were poured. How many shots had I had? Three? Four? The yurt was starting to spin. I had to get out of there, and before any more guests showed up.

✢

I awoke very early to clear, lavender skies and a full moon hanging over the snow-dusted mountains. I had not slept well. I had been fighting a cold since I got off the train and during the night a grapefruit-sized lump in my throat had kept me awake for a few hours. I prayed that I wouldn’t get really sick. The last thing I wanted was to be lying in my sleeping bag on some strangers’ floor, moaning for my mother. (Coincidentally, Ella had developed a bad cold when she got to Bishkek. She also had lice.)

I didn’t want to leave my sleeping bag, but I could put off a trip to the outhouse no longer. It was the middle of August and the sun was rising in the sky, but it was chilly. I was wearing a parka and long underwear and I was still cold.

Aisulu was hustling a cow out of the yard like she was pushing a lazy child out to play, prodding it to get a move on with whacks on its hindquarters as the cow dawdled along.

I quickly washed my face in a sink set up on the front stoop. It was a porcelain basin set in a metal stand with a mirror and a small tank on top for the water, icy water at that hour. I dashed back into the house and into my sleeping bag. I lay there hoping either to fall asleep or for Alina and Kristin to stir.

Voices out in the hall.

“We are being discussed,” Alina said sleepily. “When we will go out to the jailoo.” We had been invited to spend a few days at Assambek and Gulbira’s summer pasture. It was decided that we would leave at ten.

We were drinking tea when Aisulu bounced excitedly into the room.

“Come, come,” she said to me, indicating that I should follow her outside.

In the yard was a freshly slaughtered sheep and knowing that I liked to take pictures, Aisulu thought I would like to photograph the butchering process.

It was a group effort. The sheep had already been stripped of its skin and two men were cutting up the meat and bones while a couple of other men looked on. A neighbor woman washed the stomach and heart in a metal bowl of bloody water. When the butchering was complete, the head was cut off the hide and placed on a large stone. Nurbek held a lit match to a blowtorch. The torch emitted a pathetic flame and went out. A second attempt had the same result. He banged the fuel can around a bit then lit a third match. Flames engulfed the head. Within minutes the skin was charred black and the ears were burned off. 

I wandered out back to where a group of women was washing the intestines in the arik. While one woman poured water into a length of intestine another pushed the water through. Others stretched and stretched again long sections then knotted them by dexterously pulling one loop through another.

✢

Ten o’clock came and went without us leaving. When we were served some food it was clear to 

us that we would not be leaving at eleven either. The battered Russian military jeep would not leave for the jailoo until almost noon. In Central Asia it is useless to be in a hurry to get anywhere, or to get frustrated with changes and amendments to one’s itinerary. Plans are fluid, not fixed. 

---

* Like any alcohol, the flavor of kymyz depends on how it is made and some tastes better than others, or, rather the taste is particularized. For me, this would the best kymyz of the trip.

Photos: (1) Dinner, (2) Local boys, (3) Everybody jump!, (4) Little Bear, (5) Kristin and I

---

5.

BISHEK 

part 2

I changed benches. The previous occupant of the bench I had been on was an enthusiastic spitter and the evidence of his enthusiasm was making me nauseous. I don’t know why, but Asians spit, a lot. Look down and you’ll see white, viscous globs all over the sidewalk. Men, women, young, old, rich, poor all spit. I have felt the need to spit only a few times in my life, in Asia it seems to be as physiologically imperative as breathing.

I was in Dubovy Park, a popular spot in Bishkek with shady paths, fountains, outdoor cafes and busts of the great players in Kyrgyz history. Kyrgyz and Russian boys zipped back and forth on skateboards, yelling out challenges and trying to impress each other with their skills, just like boys the world over.

Seated next to me on the bench was Honey. She initiated a conversation, telling me that she was a shop manager and came to the park every day at lunchtime. She asked me if I had any children. No, but I had a niece and two nephews and showed her their pictures. Honey pulled out photos of her two daughters, aged three and four. The older girl had blue eyes, like her father Honey said. That turned out to be about the only thing he had given his daughter. He was a complete ass as a husband and a father.

When the younger daughter was two months old she got very sick. The doctor told Honey that the girl would never be normal, never walk or talk, and advised Honey to give her up for adoption. Honey’s husband agreed, and complained about wasting so much money on a girl.

Honey ignored both the doctor and her husband, and today the girl is fine and healthy and loves to dance.

Honey’s husband left her soon after saying he wanted boys, not girls, and he wanted nothing more to do with any of them. He remarried and his new wife was pregnant. Both Honey and I hoped that they have a girl.

I left Honey and wandered over to a wedding party that was being photographed in front of a fountain. They were a jolly group, well lubricated despite it being before noon. The bride was Russian and the groom, Korean.

There were Russian and Koreans among the revelers, but were there any Kyrgyz I asked. A young man with languid almond eyes was pointed out. He quickly refuted the claim, “ I am half Korean and half pure Tatar!”

“What is that?” I asked pointing to the bottle of coppery liquid that the groom, a large man with eyes already half-closed from alcohol, held in his meaty hand.

 “Cognac,” he replied and then asked, “Do you like it?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never tried Kyrgyz cognac.”

At that remark, Ivan, a Russian fireplug with a buzz cut, dumped out his glass and the groom filled it with cognac.

"According to Russian tradition,” the groom informed me, “the glass should be filled to the rim and downed in one go.

“I’m not Russian,” I reminded him, but threw down the (thankfully) smooth liquor in the requisite one gulp. I didn’t want to gag or choke and give away my lightweight status.

I drank the glass of pineapple juice I had been given as a chaser, thanked the group, wished the happy couple good luck, and moved on.

✢

In my twenties and early thirties, I wasn’t so much a traveler as a seeker. I wasn’t out to experience and learn about new cultures and return home. I was location scouting, looking for a home, a place where I fit in, driven by a restless longing for a life that I never figured out how to live. Every place I moved I was sure it was there that my brilliant career would begin. But I was diffident, relying too much on chance, waiting for life to discover me. Life, however, had other places to go, other people to see, people who knew how to put themselves forward and attract its attention. The problem was that I wasn’t comfortable in my own skin and no country or city was going to magically change that. 

Always moving, starting over, making new friends was exhausting. In the span of twelve years I had lived in London, Palo Alto, Washington, D.C., Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Tokyo, Santiago, and Cuzco, spent several months working in a ski resort, three months in the Caribbean, a couple of months in Southeast Asia, a couple of months in France and a few more months traveling around South America.

I reached a point where I wanted to relax and not worry about where I was going to go next, and the next place after that. I chose to settle in the last place I ever thought I would be happy: Taos, New Mexico. My family started taking ski vacations there when I was twelve and my parents had moved there in 1985. I hated it as a kid, dusty and nothing to do, but I had met Mark when I was there visiting in 1998. I thought he was the home I had been searching for. I went back to Cuzco, where I had been living, bid my boyfriend there goodbye, and moved to Taos.

Mark was an architect, he had ambitions, he spoke English and he had a nice life that I saw myself being part of. For a year and a half I ignored the obvious: I was the only one in the relationship. Everything would be great for a few weeks then he would break it off only to come back a week later, a cycle that repeated itself numerous times. I thought he was scared, having recently come out of a four-year relationship when we met.

When he left me for another woman I was devastated, but instead of running away I stood still and tried to figure out what had happened. I had wanted to feel settled, to feel that I belonged somewhere and to someone, and I had wanted it right away. Mark had been a means to those ends. I had convinced myself that Mark was the man I was looking for rather than being the type of man I wanted. I realized that I wasn’t in love with him, there were some things about him that really irritated me, and he turned out to be a coward, not telling me himself about the other woman but letting two of my friends do it. I was grateful to him for leaving me. I turned my attention to what kind of life I wanted to live and to make it happen. I had opened my shop six months after my arrival and that gave me some freedom – meaning that I must have been doing something wrong because it seems most shop owners are tied tightly to their businesses – especially when I joined forces with Michelle who began as a friend, became an employee and eventually my partner in a unique business partnership.

Then I really started traveling, usually alone. I wasn’t running away. I wasn’t looking for a home; I had friends and a home to come back to. I went to Tibet, Turkey, Cuba, Inner Mongolia, Spain, Morocco, Laos, Bhutan, Czech Republic.

I am a good traveler. I can figure out exchange rates and subway maps. I can handle long bus and train rides. I am open to other cultures and ways of life. I never make negative comparisons of other countries to the United States. I am not afraid to eat something, even when I’m not sure what it is (except for the fried chicken feet and the pond scum I was offered in Laos).

But for all my travels, I have never mastered packing. I never pack the right clothes or shoes. I always end up looking frumpy or dumpy; my look cannot even aspire to be described as “backpacker chic.” I see other women travelers in cute, wrinkle-free skirts and dresses and I wonder how they do it and how do I, who dress fashionably at home, fail so miserably at being stylish when abroad?

5.

BISHKEK

After the vastness of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan felt small, hemmed in as it is by mountains. It also felt more prosperous, though it is one of the poorest countries in the region. We rumbled past trees; fields of corn and sunflowers; herds of goats, sheep and horses grazing in verdant meadows, and trim gingerbread-like houses. Kazakhstan was drab, dusty and desolate, and the houses I saw dilapidated.

Approaching Bishkek I spotted something that looked suspiciously like a subdivision. Dozens of small, square houses at various stages of completion sat on plots laid out on a grid of streets. No trees, no vegetation, just dirt.

At the station I bid farewell and thank you to Valentina and went in search of a taxi. I ran into Jonathan and his wife Rebecca and their children Elizabeth, eight, and William, six; lucky, because I don’t think I would have found my guesthouse without their help. Jonathan had been living in Kazakhstan for fourteen years and spoke Kazakh very well and could understand Kyrgyz and the taxi driver could understand him.

I learned a great deal about the family during the ride. Both children, especially Elizabeth, were chatty. Elizabeth had long, thick hair like her mother but fairer in color, and her arms were long and thin ending in slender fingers like her father’s. I learned that her birthday was July 18^th and that she had wanted to go to a water park in Shymkent that she swore, and William concurred, their mother had told them was just like Six Flags. It was closed, however, for mysterious reasons and she had had to settle for a movie and homemade pizza made with pepperoni shipped from the States. Her dad made delicious pizza.

She told me that she loved the outfit she was wearing, a denim jumper under a hot pink velour hoodie with diamante hearts on the right sleeve and a heart-shaped zipper, because if she zipped up the hoodie she looked like she was wearing a skirt. She described the hoodie as “treaty,” which I assumed was a good thing.

William, blond and skinny with lots of energy and enthusiasm, showed me the hole in his mouth where one of his front teeth had been until a month ago.

Elizabeth also told me that one of her grandmothers had died in June, the day before her father’s birthday. And William told me that The Four Seasons restaurant in Bishkek, where they have pizza and a kids’ menu, was the “bestest restaurant in the whole world!”

  ✢

Once in my room at the guesthouse I washed off four days worth of train grime and went out to explore the city. Ella would not have recognized Bishkek. She described Frunze, as it was called then after native son and first Soviet Commissar of War Mikhail Frunze, as a city of 40,000 inhabitants, with clean mountain water running in the ariks (narrow canals that run beside the roads), a few scattered public buildings, and a bazaar in the main square that “swarmed with people, tumble-down houses, booths, open-air eating places, and carts bringing in fruit, vegetables, and forage drawn by pairs of camels.” 

Modern Bishkek has one million inhabitants, the ariks are filled with opaque gray water and BMWs, Mercedes, Audis, and Lexuses zip up and down the streets.

Shop windows display western style clothes, kitchen appliances, cell phones. In the window of a toy store were rows of Barbies and stuffed Disney characters. Women and girls ran around in camisoles, tight jeans, mini skirts and stylish dresses. I saw one woman in a tight black tee shirt with “No Romance Without Finance” emblazoned in English across her chest. Boutiques are filled with clothes that would be popular in America or Western Europe and the sales girls have the same bored expressions on their faces until a potential sale walks through the door. If your size isn’t on the floor, they’re off to the backroom to find it.

I stopped in a drugstore/money exchange to buy some som and a toothbrush. Ahead of me in line was an elegant, slender Kyrgyz woman. Her hair was swept up, her face perfectly made up and she was wearing a sheer black lace top stylishly cinched at the waist with a wide black patent leather belt, a white flounced skirt with a black and yellow floral design, and yellow patent leather kitten-heeled slides. She handed the man on the other side of the counter a wad of bills and he handed her a gold ring in a small plastic bag. The place also functioned as a pawnshop. I’d have to remember that if I couldn’t resolve my money trouble.

Beta Gourmet, a Turkish supermarket, is like any in the US or Europe: shelves crammed with cakes, cookies, breads, fruit tarts, pizzas, fruit, nuts, yogurts, cheeses, meats, sausages, olives, juices, soft drinks, Snickers, M&Ms, and Twix. Like in Moscow, the days of empty shelves and breadlines were part of the distant past. I purchased a bottle of water and some bananas. When I asked the clerk if she could forego a plastic bag for the bananas, she responded with an emphatic, “Nyet, nyet, nyet.”

And in the lobby – the market was on the ground floor of a mall – were three ATMs dispensing both som, the local currency, and dollars. Yippee! I was saved for the time being.

I aimlessly wandered the streets, always seeming to arrive back at a spot I had just left. Hunger drove me into Café Jalalabad. I raised a lonely finger to indicate a table for one; the hostess seated me at a table already occupied by three women. A serendipitous moment.

Alina was Kyrgyz, a tiny thing with almost Japanese features. She was wearing a t-shirt she had bought in Turkey. “Erotic Gym” was written on the sleeve and across the front was “de Puta Madre.” She said that if she had known what the words meant she never would have bought the shirt. She had spent a summer working at a hotel in Antalya on the Mediterranean Sea that was popular with Russian tourists. Russians loved Turkey, but the feeling wasn’t mutual, she told me. She had recently graduated from university and was trying to get a career going as an interpreter and translator. She spoke Kyrgyz, Russian, English and Turkish. 

Kristin, an American PhD. candidate at the University of Michigan, was in Bishkek to research public health issues for a possible thesis topic.

Nina, a Russian psychologist, had recently returned from California where she had been a Fulbright scholar and she seemed to have fingers in a lot of NGO pies.

I walked away from the table with an invitation to accompany Kristin and Alina to a village located four hours south of Bishkek, near Kochkor, a popular starting point for treks to Song Köl, a mountain lake that was a backpacker Mecca.

Having discovered on the Internet the address of the Community Based Tourism* (CBT) office, I decided to head over there after lunch to organize a horse trek in Kochkor or Karakol. Alina pointed out Gorky Street on a map. I decided to walk, against Alina’s advice; she assured me that it was far away and taking a taxi would be a good idea. That was silly; Gorky Street was five blocks away. Well, one end of it was five blocks away and, much to my dismay, it wasn’t the end I wanted. More to my dismay, I discovered that the numbers on one side of the street did not correspond to the numbers on the other side. Walking down the odd-numbered side I began at 135 and passed 89 before the first number was visible opposite: 196. I was looking for 58.

I arrived at the office hot, sweaty, and parched. I took the news that no guides or horses were available in either Kochkor or Karakol for at least a week, maybe longer in Karakol, surprisingly well. No cursing my stupidity for not planning better from the States, no tears because my dreams had been dashed. I willed myself to be optimistic and confident that something would be available.

---

* CBT began as Shepherd’s Life in 1996 with help from the Swiss NGO, Helevetas. It arranges homestays in yurts, guide services, and excursions such as treks and horse treks. It offers the best way to experience traditional Kyrgyz life at affordable prices.

---

4.

ON THE TURK-SIB

part 2

In my imagination, nomads, long hair and silken robes flowing out behind them, thundered across the steppe astride their beautifully caparisoned horses. In reality, the steppe was about as exciting as west Texas. I looked at my clock. Only ten-thirty in the morning. I had hoped it was going to read one-thirty at least. Forty-eight hours to go.

The train journey was a bit like being ill. It was something to be survived. I knew it would end sooner or later and I hoped I wouldn’t have to endure it again for a long time.

I certainly wasn’t on the Paris-Simplon Orient Express. The people on board were not sophisticated. They talked in loud voices at all hours of the day and night. They drank. They smoked up a storm. Smoking was prohibited in the compartments, but was allowed in the space between cars, and the smell invaded the cars every time the connecting doors opened, which they did with maddening consistency. But they were kind to me. The car conductor made sure I knew how much time we had at each station and herded me back on board so I wouldn’t be left behind. Valentina found me a cup so I could brew tea with hot water from the samovar located at one end of the car. A Kyrgyz guy sat with me for a while practicing his English. I was the first American he had ever met he told me. And Maxim gave me a chocolate bar, dark chocolate, my favorite. 

Maxim, when he was awake, was a nice, generous person. He shared his food and cigarettes with Nikolai, even buying him a beer. And Nikolai kept his hand out, never reciprocating Maxim’s generosity.

Nikolai had boarded the train with just a couple of beers and a loaf of bread in a plastic bag. But he wasn’t unusual. No one had any luggage. Valentina, who had traveled to Moscow from somewhere in Siberia that was closer to Alaska and then to Bishkek, had one small suitcase that as far as I could tell was filled with food and souvenirs, no clothes other than the outfit she had boarded the train in. The contents of Maxim’s duffle were the same. Where were their clothes?

Earlier in the morning we had been held up for hours at Shalshalichnaya for Russian passport control. The tedium of the wait was excruciating. We were locked on the train, unable to disembark even to stretch our legs. The nearly sleepless night had left my body aching. I looked like shit and hadn’t peed in hours. I had very little water left and was afraid I would add dehydration to my list of woes.

We had crossed the border to another long wait at Kazakh passport control. It took fifteen minutes to wake up Nikolai to get his passport. He didn’t remember a thing about his antics of the previous night and couldn’t understand why I was even more determined not to have any interaction with him.

In the afternoon we left the steppe and entered the Qyzyl Qum Desert (Red Sand), an even flatter, browner, hotter, more barren expanse, brutal and unforgiving. Dirt tracks leading to who knew where crisscrossed the landscape. Miles and miles of electrical lines followed alongside the train. There was not a cloud in the sky, which was the palest of blues becoming hazy brown where it met the horizon.

How odd it was to see women selling crayfish, and roasted fish that were more skin than meat. We must have been near the Aral Sea. I had no idea where we were; the stations were not very well identified. I tried to follow the route posted in our car, but we seemed to be making more stops than it listed.

Melons of every description were also for sale: watermelons, elongated cantaloupes, small orange and green melons that looked like squash. And there were hundreds of them, huge piles spread out along the platform; their sweet smell perfumed the air. I wanted to buy one, but what was I going to do with a huge melon? I had no way to cut it. 

Sometime during the third night Nikolai disembarked (Hurrah!) and his berth was taken over by the Kyrgyz National Snoring Champion. He was built more like a Samoan than like the other Kyrgyz I had seen on the train, who were short and slight. It was hard to imagine him zipping around expertly on a pony. I was so tired that even his recital of his greatest snoring hits couldn’t keep me awake.

Turkistan. Hot as hell. Shashlyk. For the uninitiated, shashlyk is hunks of meat and fat skewered and roasted over smoldering wood embers. One of the simplest yet most delicious things you will ever eat.

I had looked up the words for beef, lamb, and mutton in my Russian phrasebook, but I couldn’t remember them for more than two minutes so by the time I reached the shashlyk vendor my mind was a blank. I pointed to the grilling meat. I mooed. The man shook his head. I baaed. He nodded. Was it mutton or lamb? I put my hand at knee height. Again he nodded. Yummy, lamb. I ordered two skewers. I should have ordered a few more; the meat was greasy, fatty and delectably grilled.

The sellers were an odd mix. Some were gold-teethed Kazakh or Uzbek fraus in housecoats. Others were hoochi-mama Russian girls in mini skirts and camisoles, strutting around with trays of roasted chicken and stuffed intestines on their shoulders like they were trays of drinks in a nightclub.

I noticed that at every stop a man walked the length of the train carrying a stick topped with a metal head. He hit the brake boxes under each car ensuring they made the proper “clonk!” and “ding!” So far there hadn’t been a worrisome “thunk!” or “dong!” 

✢

Two in the morning and two hours at the Kazakh border. One of the border control agents was cute and spoke good English. He told me he worked as a translator and interpreter; I guess he moonlighted checking passports. He asked me why I wasn’t visiting Kazakhstan. I told him about Ella’s book and apologized that she hadn’t visited the country.

“You are very brave to travel alone,” he said. “Most Americans lump all the Stans together as dangerous places. Any country that ends in “stan” is a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalists.”

In actuality, the former soviet Central Asian republics are just the opposite. In Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and especially Uzbekistan, the governments have come down hard on any potential fundamentalist Islamic threat they perceive or concoct.

I woke up with a start. The train was quiet. Valentina had changed out of her train clothes. Had I over-slept? Had everyone disembarked?

“What happened?” I cried out to no one in particular.

The only thing that had happened was that the train had crossed into Kyrgyzstan. I didn’t know how long we’d been there. I guessed not too long because no one had asked for my passport. Soon enough there was young Kyrgyz woman in camo fatigues in the doorway asking for my passport. She signaled me to follow her. We went into the next car, which was the same class as mine but looked classier. It had a carpet running the length of the passageway and I didn’t catch a whiff of its toilet.

We stopped between that car and the next where another border agent and two passengers were congregating. One passenger was six-six and screamed American. He was dressed in Dockers and a white, short-sleeved Oxford shirt. I instantly thought of the Mormon missionaries I occasionally saw walking the roads back home. No nametag, however, was pinned to his breast pocket. He explained to me that all foreigners without CIS passports had to register with the police and we followed the border agent to building by the tracks.

The Lonely Planet wasn’t kidding when they said that the Moscow-Bishkek train wasn’t popular with European and American tourists. There were only six of us; the American, Jonathan, was traveling with his wife and two children and they had boarded at Shymkent in Kazakhstan.

I had had no idea when I followed the female agent that I would be getting off the train and I had left all my money hidden in my sleeping bag back in the compartment. I trusted Valentina, but what about the others? What if a group of thugs conked her on the head and made off with all my money. I didn’t know where they would go; the train was locked up, but that didn’t matter. What the hell was taking the police so long? Why couldn’t Jonathan have let me go first? He was registering four people; I was only one. Pacing back and forth in the hallway, I worked myself into a real panic. I was so agitated I could hardly sit still once it was my turn, and the officer was no comfort as he typed in my information with two fingers. I raced back to the compartment and as inconspicuously as I could shoved my hand into my sleeping bag. I didn’t want Valentina to think I suspected her of thievery. My purse was right where I had left it. 

4. 

ON THE TURK-SIB

Right on time, eleven-forty pm, the train began to move. I felt the first stirrings of excitement build in me as it gathered speed. Sharing my compartment was Valentina, a “healthy” Russian – Irina’s euphemism for plump – from Siberia traveling to Bishkek to visit her sister. Any lingering fear I had about Russian trains (I had read stories of thefts) was dispelled when I saw her. She had an open and honest face, and looked tough enough to fend off anyone who tried to mess with my stuff. I snuggled under the covers and when sleep came I dreamt I was on a train headed to Central Asia.

In the morning, as the train rattled across the Russian landscape, men and women plied the corridors selling drinks, food and souvenirs: jewelry, singing mechanical birds, gaudily painted champagne flutes and frog prince snow globes that played Jingle Bells. 

Valentina was an easy mark. She bought a set of flutes, and pointing to an illustration of a handsome bridal couple on the box, shook her head and said with a laugh, “Not me.” She also bought a blood pressure monitor that she fiddled around with for hours but couldn’t get to work.

Nikolai, a smelly, crew cut, snubbed-nosed thuggish Russian with manners to match joined us in the late morning. Valentina knew right away that he was a drinker and warned me. The nasty cuts on the knuckles of his left hand, revealed when he removed a dirty piece of gauze, were probably from a drunken brawl or fall on the way home from a bar. And he only got worse over time. He strutted around the train sans shirt treating the other passengers to his overripe scent and his lightly chiseled physique. He never asked if he could sit on my berth, he’d just push my legs out of the way. I wished I had the nerve to hand him a bar of soap and tell him not to return to the compartment until he washed.

But who was I to talk. I wasn’t going to be much to look at by the time we arrived in Bishkek. No shower for four days. My skin was already breaking out. My muscles were atrophying from lack of use. I was swimming in perspiration.

The train had become a furnace hurtling down the track. There was little breeze or cross ventilation to offer a modicum of relief. I changed out of my jeans and shirt into cotton fleece shorts and a tank top, which were actually my pajamas, and I kept them on for the rest of the trip. All the passengers had put on their “train clothes,” sweat pants, shorts or cotton housedresses, and plastic sandals, changing out of them only when we were approaching their destination.

Quite soon the toilet would be too disgusting to go near. Every once in a while its foul stench wafted into our compartment located right next door.

During the day our passports were checked three times; first by a man with an official-looking name tag; second by a man flashing an official-looking i.d. card, and third by the compartment conductor, who had shed his uniform of the night before and was now sporting an old orange t-shirt. Before night fell our passports were checked a fourth time and we weren’t going to reach the Russian/Kazakh border until the next morning.

✢

The second night was not the worst night of my life (the night a man I was crazy about broke my heart or a bus ride in Bolivia spring to mind), maybe not even in the top ten, but it was pretty awful.

Nikolai spent the evening somewhere on the train getting wasted. He wasn’t the only one drinking, most of the men spent the day hitting the bottle, but he was the only one drinking from our compartment. He arrived back long after Valentina, Maxim, a young Russian who had boarded the train in the afternoon, and I had turned in. He threw open the door, light from the corridor flooding in, and stood in the doorway loudly conversing with his drinking buddy.

 “You’re either in or out, but not both,” I told him sharply in English, my tone of voice getting the message across, as I moved to shut the door. He chose in.

Time passed. I lay awake, my brain in overdrive flitting from one thought to the next; one thought being where was that rank odor hanging in the air coming from. Nikolai’s feet.

I eventually dozed off only to be awakened by Nikolai, straddling Valentina’s and my berths and shouting about his passport. While Valentina attempted to reason with him, I, a lot less patient, shouted,  “Get the hell off my kravat (Russian for bed)!” Not getting the desired response, I darted under his legs and took off down the corridor to find the conductor.

He wasn’t around so I enlisted the help of another man. We returned to find Nikolai stretched out on my berth. I remained in the passageway as Valentina and the man cajoled Nikolai back into his bed. Nikolai’s drinking buddy strolled by and thought it was a good time to get the lowdown on me; was I an American, where was I going, among other questions that I refused to answer. Throughout the contretemps, Maxim never stirred. He was either one of the world’s heaviest sleepers or he was completely passed out. 

Ella, exhausted by her mad dash to get all her gear and make it to the station, slept solidly her first thirty-six hours on the train. If only. Sleep for me was an impossibility the rest of that night, first because I was so keyed up and second because our compartment became a stopover for other passengers who popped in on their way to and from the toilet or a cigarette break.

---

3.

FEELING BLUE IN RED SQUARE 

part 2

“Hey Jennifer,” a guy called out to me. “Come here. Fifty rubles. I want you.”  Fifty rubles. That was all I was worth? Or was it the price for one of his gaudy, rhinestone faux designer watches? And why Jennifer? Was that his idea of a typical American name? I took one look at his slicked-back black hair, his unibrow, and his shiny red tracksuit and decided I wasn’t going to find out. 

It was Sunday morning and I had ventured out to a large market that was set up near my hotel, probably one of the few places in the city where the average worker could afford to shop. Many of the vendors of the mostly cheap, Chinese-made goods for sale were migrants from poorer former soviet republics like Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

With fifty percent of the population existing on two dollars a day it was no wonder that many Tajiks had sought a better life in Russia’s booming economy, working as street sweepers, and construction and factory workers.

In recent years nationalist gangs have singled out migrants as the cause of their economic woes. In 2008, Tajik authorities reported that eighty Tajiks were killed in ethnically motivated attacks. The declining price of oil and Russia’s financial crisis will probably make these attacks more common. The Russian government is even talking about putting quotas on immigration.

The mayor of Moscow, Irina told me, wanted to close the market down for the spurious reason that the states of the vendors’ health (were they contagious?) were unknown.

Rain drove me back to the hotel and I spent the rest of the day in the lobby. Cigarette smoke hung in the air, its smell permeating everything: my clothes, my hair, my skin. I could smell it even

 when no one was smoking.

✢

Ella wrote in Cruises and Caravans that as a young woman she envied those who had known since childhood what they wanted to be, those who had never known the anguish of hesitation,

 “I could not bring myself to do anything seriously. For a while I worked as a typist; acted at the Studio des Champs Elysees and later in a mountain film. But I knew these occupations were only temporary: they helped me live hand-to-mouth til I could find something to believe in.”

 

I have spent a good part of my life searching for something to believe in, believing in myself included. Fear of failure prevented me from trying so many things, from pursuing a career, from trying earlier in my life to be a photographer and a writer. Ella was twenty-seven when she published Parmi la jeunesse russe never having nursed the illusion that she could write. She showed a correspondent from Hearst Press an article she had written about the Caucusus; he told her it was no good, her story too plain. The article ended up being the basis for the book.

I struggle with being versus doing. To be considered a worthy or successful person is being nice, interesting, well-read, well-traveled enough, or are numerous accomplishments, talents and skills essential? I know, deep down, that who I am is more important than what I am, but I can’t rid myself of the notion that I am never going to be satisfied or find lasting love unless I have a long list of achievements, thinking a lover will look at me as a potential employer would and want to see a well-rounded resume.

I have a relative who dismisses me because I have never tried to take the world by storm, because I am not ambitious. Sometimes I am right there with him, rebuking myself for not having a career of consequence. I didn’t think a few teaching jobs and owning a little, moderately successful shop was anything to be proud of or would impress anyone. At forty-five, the pressure to accomplish something, to create something lasting, was weighing heavily on me. I no longer wanted “How’s the shop?” to be the second question my friends and acquaintances asked me. I wanted it to be “How’s the book?” or “Where are you off to next?’ I sold the shop and committed myself to making the trip.

So why was I feeling apathetic? It was troubling. Maybe it was the rain. Maybe it was being in Moscow; I always feel inconsequential and diminished in big cities. Or were there still a few seeds of fear shifting around in my head? Would I have the strength to last three months? I had never traveled alone for that long. My one previous attempt in the early nineties, my so-called Asian Odyssey, had been a spectacular failure. I made an ass of myself over a Danish Hugh Grant in Hong Kong, lost my passport on Koh Phangan in Thailand, and almost drowned in Nepal’s Sun Koshi River. I gave up and came home after two months.

Ella was nearly fluent in Russian, I am not. I had bought a book to try to teach myself, but I wasn’t making any progress. I could read the alphabet, but nouns and verbs floated around in my head for several seconds before bursting like tiny bubbles. Would I find anyone to talk to or would I be a silent observer never sure if I was understanding what I was seeing? 

Would I have the discipline to write every day or would I get so disgusted with my prose that I quit after a few weeks? I had never kept a journal for longer than two weeks. I didn’t want the trip to turn out to be an expensive waste of time and money. Travel is never a waste, but I wanted to return home with much more than a collection of photographs seen only by my family and friends.

Would this trip be the life-changing experience I wanted it to be?

I ate in one of the hotel restaurants that had a Middle Eastern, Turkish theme. By the time my meal arrived I’d forgotten what I’d ordered, but if I had had any inkling that it was going to taste that foul (or fowl, it was chicken) I would have ordered something else. Ten dollars for a salad that was the size of a side salad at home and that was mayonnaisey and watery at the same time. I choked down a few bites before I pushed it aside.

All the TVs in the public areas of the hotel were tuned to the Beijing Olympics. Russia had gone to war with Georgia over South Ossetia and Abkhazia a couple of days earlier – two thousand Ossetians were reported dead – but from the amount of attention the people at the hotel were giving it, you’d have thought St. Lucia had invaded St. Vincent. It was true that I couldn’t understand what people were talking about, though from their smiling and laughing faces, it didn’t seem to be about the war.

The hours passed slowly. I window shopped at the hotel’s various gift shops. When the skies cleared I moved outside, returning inside when the light became too dim to read by. Hours spent in the lobby revealed that quite a few people were whiling away the day there. Every hour seemed to bring another busload of Chinese tourists, three in so many hours. Eventually it was ten o’clock and there, with a taxi waiting outside to take us to Kazanskiy Station, was Irina.

✢

“Why is your bag like that?” Irina asked me.

After exiting the taxi at the station, I had put my little blue suitcase down on the pavement freeing my hands to pay the driver.

“Pick it up,” she ordered. “Keep it near you at all times. Last year, I had a tourist who put his rucksack down for a minute and it was gone.”

As for the little black purse I had in my hand, I was told to put it under my shirt right away.

“I need to be able to get at it. I might need money,” I pleaded.

“You’re at the station. What could you need money for now?”

No platform had yet been posted for the Bishkek train so we found some seats in the waiting hall. Across from us a scene from a Russian Jules and Jim was being played out as two very drunk men cooed and fussed over an even drunker woman who was trying to find a comfortable position to pass out in on the metal chairs. Please God, don’t let these three be my compartment mates. When the train was announced they stayed put and we left them to their sordid ménage a trois.

I left Russia the minute I walked onto the platform, swept up into the crowd as it surged towards the train, pushing, shoving, dragging huge bags along the pavement or hoisting them on their shoulders, tripping over the luggage of others, sloshing through puddles that smelled suspiciously of urine. Some fools were going against the flow, trying to return to the station and impeding forward progress further still. It was bedlam with hardly a Slavic or other white face among the hundreds of faces. I was knocked, pushed, jostled and all the while Irina was saying over and over, “Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, I’ve never seen anything like it,” and telling me over and over not to let go of my bags for a second and alerting me to all upcoming puddles.

When we arrived at Car No.10, Berths 33-36, Irina commanded me to stow my luggage, like it would be stolen if not hidden away immediately. As I struggled to heave my bag into the storage compartment underneath my berth, my purse swung freely about. Irina was appalled.

“Put that away right now! Where’s your sweater? Why aren’t you wearing your sweater?” she demanded like I was a troublesome child.

“I’m hot,” I whined.

“Well, put it back on.”

Preparing to leave, Irina said, “Call me if anything happens and I’ll come to Kyrgyzstan. I’ll fly though.”

Then she was gone and I was on my own.