Munich to Hong Kong - It's On!

Silk Road dreams and nightmares

2011-12-20T03:08:00.000-08:00

First of all, apologies for the huge gap in blogging. Internet access in Central Asia is pretty dismal, and in China the government block all websites with the word ‘blog’ in the title. (No, really.) Thus it has been impossible to update the blog without simply rushing it, which I didn’t want to do. The news you’ve missed is that I couldn’t go to Iran as the visa transfer was taking too long. I had naively assumed that sending a fax from the embassy in London to Istanbul would be pretty straight-forward – in fact it took them a month. By this stage I was forced to leave Turkey, or else the rest of my trip would have required a costly and stressful change of plan. I’m very sad to have skipped Iran, as it’s the one country that stood out above the rest when I was dreaming up my grand tour. It is somewhere I definitely want to visit before I die.

The next leg of the trip, then, was Uzbekistan. I took a flight from Istanbul to Tashkent, via Riga – for some reason this was cheaper than going direct. I had received dire warnings about Central Asian airlines, and their dangerous habit of chartering old Soviet bangers without the requisite safety record to land in the EU. Fortunately, though, this was a Boeing, and a tedious five-hour cruise ensued. For my meal I was offered a choice between something in Russian and another thing in Russian, and chose the latter, which turned out to be a pie. Most of the Uzbeks on board seemed to have visited Europe for an extended shopping spree, returning with enormous designer bags stuffed with clothes, jewellery, toys, electronics, or anything else considered shiny and Western.

My passport was checked and stamped by an official in his early twenties who looked as if he’d have no qualms about gunning down a classroom of kids. Before I got into a taxi, though, I had to extend my visa by one week, in order to give me enough time to see the country properly. I had unwisely applied for my Uzbek visa without going through a government-approved tour company, and thus had been awarded a desultory 11 days in which to visit, with fixed entry and exit dates. The man responsible for visa extensions was not best pleased at being dragged half way across the airport to acquiesce with someone as insignificant as I, and demanded (via. a translator) a “reason” for my request. My answer – that I needed more time to see precisely the ancient cities advertised on posters at the airport – seemed to rile him further. Eventually he became so fed up at my lack of Russian that he gave me the extension, seemingly just to make me go away.

Taxi drivers in Tashkent effectively have the airport on lockdown. The money exchange booth is frequently empty, so you have to find a driver who will change your dollars on the black market. Their rate is significantly better than the official one: 2000 Uzbek Som to the dollar vs. 1700. But the exchange rate is far from the only perplexing thing about the Som. The highest denomination note is 1000, equivalent to about 25p. Consequently everyone walks around with enormous wedges of cash, much of it worth sod all. One man at Bukhara train station looked like he’d just returned from selling five kilos of heroin, yet the bundles of notes he was stuffing carelessly into a plastic bag couldn’t have amounted to more than $200. This was the first phase of my induction into the school of Uzbek inefficiency, which, over the course of two weeks, would teach a masterclass in how not to run a country.

Small change

There are no youth hostels in Uzbekistan, only guesthouses and hotels. Tashkent offers very few of the former, so I asked the taxi driver to take me to a cheap hotel. For 20 minutes he drove one-handed through a hideous traffic jam, all the time on the phone to his boss. I had attempted to fasten my seatbelt, which he refused to allow – apparently this is considered an insult to his driving abilities. After much swerving and braking, he found me a hotel, although from the outside it could have been anything. The place was equipped with a front door, a desk, and a flight of stairs. There were five people working at reception, all of them hunched over piles of ‘registration slips,’ which all foreigners must keep in their passports wherever they travel. This is absolutely essential to avoid police hassle in Uzbekistan, as officers are under unofficial instruction from the government to fine you for any gaps in your collection. They also like to know where you've been, and when.

I handed over my passport to one of the receptionists, who filled out a series of forms which, from what I could tell, were simply different methods of recording exactly the same information. Two of these forms were the famous registration slips – one for me, one for the hotel. (It is no overestimation to say that a good 50% of staff time at this hotel was spent processing these slips. It is a laughable waste of resources, but they have to do it, or else they get in big trouble. Once, after informing another hotel that I could not present my Uzbek visa (my passport was at the Chinese embassy), the owner looked at me as if I had just admitted to being a child molester.) Exhausted, I meticulously counted out 54 of my 1,000 Som notes, and handed them over. I was then led to my room, which you can see in all its splendour below. I still had absolutely no idea where I was, or even what the hotel was called. The staff were too busy buried under a Caspian Sea-sized haul of paperwork to give me a second of their time, so I headed out for a walk. After an hour of traipsing down cavernous boulevards and grotty alleyways, all I had found were a handful of mini-markets and silent government buildings. I bought a bag-full of mobile phone-shaped biscuits and wandered back through the dark to the hotel. Is this why I went travelling, I asked: to eat biscuits for tea and watch lice scuttle across my room?

The first of many registration slips

I had nothing better to do than go to sleep, and settled down into my rock-hard bed. Around midnight I was awoken by a knock on the door. It was one of the receptionists, the only one who could speak English. I was still in my underpants, but this didn’t stop her from strolling right into my room with a crafty smile. “You want massage?” she said. “I give very good massage.” I politely turned down the offer. “You want sex?” she said. I gave her a quick scan, and saw that her belly was hanging out from beneath her tight black top. Clearly this is what she thought I meant when I had asked for “help.” There’s a time and a place for sex with a stranger, but a dingy hotel on the rough side of Tashkent with a 45-year-old amateur masseuse isn’t one. I eventually got her to leave, knowing I had declined pretty much the only optional extra this hotel would provide. I locked the door and went back to bed, wishing I was anywhere else but Tashkent.

The next morning I woke up with bed bug bites all over my skin and a foul smell in my nostrils. It was next door’s toilet, which had overflowed. I gathered my stuff and headed downstairs, with the sole intention of fleeing as quickly as possible. I breezed past the previous night’s interloper in reception, who had returned to the rather more mundane fold of her registration slips. In daylight, Tashkent revealed itself to be little more interesting than when smothered in darkness: a hulking nightmare of endless duel-carriageways and concrete megaliths, criss-crossed by a vast network of redundant irrigation canals and pedestrian barriers, prolonging even the shortest of walks by a good five minutes. Clumsy attempts to beautify the city have resulted in a bizarre landscape of dried-up fountains and fake lawns, serving only to accentuate the ugliness of their surroundings. One of the city’s grandest projects, the Dom Forum, looks as though it has been teleported from another dimension, where everything is enormous and made of plastic. Walking around its perimeter is like experiencing ancient Greece on acid. The parks offer an escape, although many are still blighted by Soviet ‘artwork,’ grey concrete sculptures that, if you're not careful, could take your eye out.

Hotel Uzbekistan

Some of this ugliness can be attributed to the volatile tastes of Islam Karimov, President of Uzbekistan, who has run the country since independence from the U.S.S.R. in 1991. Needless to say, he’s had a few run-ins with Amnesty International, and even the BBC, whose website was blocked after running a report on child labour in Uzbek cotton fields. His preferred method of torture is apparently to boil prisoners alive, which rather puts Dick Cheney to shame. The worst stain on his presidency, though, was to order the massacre of peaceful protesters in Andijan in 2005, among them women and children. He is also a prolific author, and you can buy his books on Amazon for a reasonable cost, such as Uzbekistan on the Threshold of the 21st Century and Evernew Tashkent. (Has the Nobel committee ever awarded the Peace prize and the Literature prize to the same person?) Every day at 9am, the main road between the presidential palace and Government HQ is closed off and surrounded by armed police so that Karimov's convoy can cruise along in peace, off for another day of self-congratulation. Anyone foolish enough to wander past the police barrier is acquainted with a sniper's bullet.

Karimov's morning commute is typical of the ruling mentality in the country: the obsessive belief that someone, somewhere, with even the slightest hint of power or significance, gives a shit about Uzbekistan. In Tashkent, tourists are advised not to take photos of countless public buildings: the upper and lower houses of parliament, the Forum, the Palace, foreign embassies, government offices, police stations, hospitals, airports, train stations, metro stations etc. Consequently, you never quite feel safe photographing anything, even the shower in your hotel room. Train stations are downright sinister due to the extent of security - in Samarkand, you can't get within 100m of the main entrance without having to present your passport and onward ticket to a pair of armed guards at a checkpoint. Quite what they're so scared of I'm not sure, aside from the mortifying prospect of people moving around the country freely, outside of the Great Database. Can you tell the Soviets used to run the place?

Perhaps this insularity is partly due to its geography: Uzbekistan is one of only two double-landlocked countries, i.e. surrounded by countries that are themselves landlocked (the other is Liechtenstein.) For all its size, Central Asia remains the world's great forgotten backyard. In China, fellow travellers scratch their heads when I tell them I have come from Kyrgyzstan - a country which borders China. Few people can spell, or even name, the five ’Stans (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan.) No wonder Sacha Baron Cohen selected the first as a cultural platform for Borat: no one seems knows anything about the place, despite being the largest and wealthiest country in Central Asia. It is precisely this sense of mystery that attracted me to the region in the first place.

I decided to take the "fast" train to Samarkand, perhaps the most iconic town on the Silk Road. Buying the ticket took a good ten minutes, as the woman had to fill out about eight forms before reserving my seat. The Uzbek government has spent millions on a new fleet of high speed Spanish-made carriages, only to discover that the existing railway lines aren’t advanced enough to allow anywhere near the maximum speed. As the train pummelled through the countryside, I chatted to a young student living in Tashkent, who was returning home for the weekend. He told me that he was Tajik, but born in Samarkand. I asked him where in Tajikistan his family originated from, and he had to correct me - Tajik was his ethnicity, not his nationality. It turns out that most people in Samarkand are Tajik, stuck there ever since the national borders were drawn up by Stalin in the 1930s, a characteristically reckless attempt to snuff out any pan-Islamic or pan-Turkic (i.e. Pan-Central Asian) uprisings by splitting up the ethnic groups. Just to be sure, the Soviets murdered thousands of high-ranking figures from various communities, and orchestrated the forced migration of nomadic peoples into collective farming communes, resulting in the deaths of a million people in Kazakhstan alone. And to think the British pat ourselves on the back for putting up with wartime rationing.

Gur-e-Amir

After the history lesson, the Tajik told me how not to get ripped off in Uzbekistan. He couldn’t believe it when I told him I had changed my dollars at a rate of 2000 – locals will never accept below 2500. I then asked him to quote a fair price for my taxi ride from the station to the guest house. 1000 Som, he said, 2000 at a push. I kept this in mind as we arrived in Samarkand, where I was immediately accosted by a taxi driver outside the gates. How much? I asked. “10000 Som,” he replied. I laughed at his opening offer, and proceeded straight to the crux of a typical negotiation: I walked away in mock-disgust. He followed behind, shouting: “7000 Som… 6000!...” By this stage I had found the bus station, which concluded the affair.

On the bus into town, it struck me the respect that all Uzbeks have for older people. Whenever a wispy-bearded old man clambered aboard, there began a competition to see who could surrender their seat first. Not that I had the opportunity to do so, as the marshrutkas are always so jam-packed that standing up is pretty much inevitable. It is even possible to seriously injure yourself, such is the amount of time spent craning your neck to steal a glimpse out of the window. Looking at the wrinkled faces on board, I understood why opposition to the regime is so apathetic in many parts of society. Who was in charge before Karimov? The Soviets. Before that? The Russian empire. They've never had a taste of democratic government, and they never will. And rocking the boat could land you in hot water - literally.

The Registan complex

Samarkand was the first real Silk Road town on my trip. The Silk Road was essentially a giant trading route between China and the West, straddling cities, deserts, mountains, valleys, steppes, rivers, and whatever else happened to be in the way. On and off since 500 BC, there was no clearly defined road – traders would take whichever route provided more favourable conditions, often depending on two things: the seasons (different routes for summer and winter), and whether a route was blighted by war (which was most of the time.) Samarkand, along with its nearby cousin Bukhara, flourished with the arrival of Islam from Persia in the 12^th Century. It was roughly the half way point between Constantinople and Xi’an, the two ends of the Silk Road, and has held the imagination of travellers ever since (that is, according to my Lonely Planet guidebook. Although it also paints Tashkent as some kind of groovy cosmopolitan culture-pot.) This fascination was most famously expressed through the Orientalist hokum of poets such as James E. Flecker, who wrote The Golden Journey to Samarkand:

We travel not for trafficking alone;
By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned:
For lust of knowing what should not be known
We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand

It’s not quite Coleridge’s Kubla Khan, but it shares the same fantastical vision of the East: a strange and mystical land where only the brave or foolhardy dare to venture. Today, Samarkand is an ordinary Soviet-planned town, dotted with enormous Islamic monuments. My guesthouse was beside the majestic Gur-e-Amir, where the body of Timur, the first great ‘national hero’ of Uzbekistan and commander of an Islamic empire that spread from Turkey to India, is buried. In 1370 he made Samarkand its capital, and a vaguely imposing statue of the great man sits in the town centre.

After a long day’s walking and picture-taking, I decided to head to the Blues Bar, which appeared to be the only decent drinking spot in town. As luck would have it, the guy next to me at the bar spoke perfect English, and very soon my freeloading instincts took hold again. He was a tour guide called Anvar, and was happy to discuss my Uzbek itinerary. “What were you doing in Tashkent for four days?” he said. “I think you have made a big mistake.” He had a point, although in fairness I had been waiting on my Chinese visa. I asked what he was drinking – it was Cognac, made just round the corner at the Samarkand winery. He offered to take me to a wine tasting the next day. “But I will pay,” he added. Uzbek wine, as I was to discover, is usually very sweet, due the high amount of sugar in local grapes, although a few dry wines were included. After the wine came the Cognac, and, after that, the strongest of all: a mysterious dark mulled wine that smelled rather like Christmas pudding. Anvar recommended that I take a spoonful before bedtime to help my dicky tummy, and to avoid water at all costs. This was not what I wanted to hear, given that daytime temperatures were pushing 30°.

There are two usable cash machines in Uzbekistan. Both are located in 5-star hotels in Tashkent. Others are dotted around the city, but all are empty. In order to withdraw money, the only realistic option is to go to a Bank of Uzbekistan. (If you have a Visa card, like me, it’s the only place that will work.) Being a bank, it’s only open on weekdays, between 9am and 4pm. This means that no one in the entire country can take out any money between Friday and Monday. Occasionally the banks will open on a Saturday morning, if the caretaker hasn't overslept. It was on one of these mornings that I found myself waiting outside the branch in Samarkand (yes, the second largest city in the country has only one centrally located bank.) After half an hour's wait, it was clear that the bank wasn't going to open. Amid the sea of equally-forlorn Uzbek faces was an English couple, who had cycled all the way from London. They had been stuck in Iran for six weeks waiting on visas, and the husband's patience was slipping. “Why?” he shouted at the policeman, gesturing toward the sign outside which, although written in Cyrillic, clearly displayed an opening time of 9am to 11am. “It’s the NATIONAL BANK OF UZBEKISTAN!! Why?!” The policeman simply smiled and shrugged. I tried to communicate, and told him that I needed a visa withdrawal. “Visa?” he repeated, puffing out his cheeks, as if I had just requested an interview with the Pope. He walked away, as had all the other locals by this stage. I had to somehow survive the weekend on a paltry 30000 Som.

An ex-wolf

An ex-dog

Uzbekistan soon became the only country in the world where the highlight of the day was my shit coming out solid. My bowels spent most of the time flitting indecisively between constipation and diarrhoea, the culprit apparently the pesticides in local fruit and veg. Uzbek cooking has a distinctive ‘homemade’ quality to it – the recipes are strong and simple, the flavours unsophisticated. The staple is Plov, which tastes a lot nicer than it sounds: meat and vegetables on a bed of rice, usually soggy with its own oil. Another is Laghman, a bowl of thick noodles with meat and vegetables. Not forgetting Shashlik, enormous kebabs with all the gubbins, as my Nan would say. So to summarise, Central Asian cuisine didn’t exactly take my taste buds to new and thrilling frontiers.

Laghman

The perfect country to get diarrhoea

On the train to Bukhara I was seated next to the only other white person on board, an Australian schoolteacher working in Tashkent. I asked her about Lonely Planet's claim that ex-pats “genuinely love” living there. “It’s okay,” she said, after a long pause. I told her about my bowel concerns, and she reassured me: “There’s always an adjustment period. But some people get it for the whole year.” I tried to escape this thought by immersing myself in the on-board entertainment – an shoddily-produced Uzbek-language drama, the highlight of which was a father fiddling with his baby son’s penis, only for it to piss all over his face. I managed to discern a vague plot: a bride stands up her fiancé on their wedding day, leaving him to care for their baby boy alone. He wanders around towns and deserts in absurdly long montages, babe-in-arms, searching for answers on the whistling wind. Even without subtitles, the film was clearly extremely sympathetic to the male characters, who suffer valiantly in the face of female heartlessness. It slots nicely into the social tapestry of real-life provincial Uzbekistan, where nightclubs are populated exclusively by men who, when not detesting the company of women, are busy forcing them into arranged marriages. (Later, when watching The Mummy on local TV, the female characters were overdubbed by a man’s voice.)

The Aussie negotiated a taxi ride from the station, using her dubious Russian skills. “I think I agreed to something extortionate,” she said, as we rode the five miles into town. Indeed, we ended up paying $30. The driver told us this was a generous rate, as the cost of petrol had recently risen, or some other guff. Fuming at yet another taxi rip-off, we were instantly confronted by a squadron of street orphans hawking various items of tat. One of them asked where we were from. “Brazil,” I said, and brushed past. My guesthouse was run by a wife-and-husband team, Medina & Ilyos, who had named the place after themselves. It was a small, neat affair with a spacious rooftop area to hang out and gaze over the dusty streets and houses. I was relieved to find some fellow travellers staying, among them an English couple from Derbyshere with a Land Rover. They had driven from Tajikistan on the Pamir Highway, one of the world's most spectacular roads, and were headed for Khiva the next day. I felt a touch of envy – having my own vehicle would have made navigating Central Asia about ten times easier. A few days later, I discovered that the only comfortable way of driving to Khiva would be in a tank.

Bukhara was immediately more attractive than Samarkand – unlike the former, the old town remains largely intact, and contains almost all of the worthwhile sites. I walked for an hour through the narrow streets of the old Jewish quarter, most of which appears to have stood still in time. The surrounding monuments lack Samarkand’s wow factor, but exceed it in authenticity and beauty. Among the more intriguing sites is the old prison where, in 1838, an Englishman, Col. Stoddard, found himself after unsuccessfully persuading the Emir to side with the British Empire over the Russians. A year later he was joined by Capt. Connolly, who had been sent to secure the release of his colleague, only for the Emir to lob him in prison as well. Incarcerated in ‘the Pit,’ along with rats and snakes, they were beheaded in front of the Ark in 1840. Nowadays Englishmen are permitted to enter and leave at their own will, for a small entrance fee.

The prison

The Ark

I walked to the northern section of the town to find the old city walls. The remains are impressive, albeit crumbling, and climbing on top of them was difficult. I was shown the way by a small boy, obviously a veteran of wall-climbing, and we played a bit of hide-and-seek around the ruined battlements. He was a good kid, so I took him to a nearby lake to rent a pedalo. As I handed over the 6000 Som, I realised that getting rid of him would be problematic. We paddled around in happy circles for twenty minutes, a mismatched couple amid an armada of teenage girls. By this point I was growing tired of his somewhat one-dimensional company, so I decided to head back to the guesthouse. I traipsed back through town, the boy at my heels, asking a series of questions which, if I understood a word of Uzbek, could safely be described as increasingly annoying. My saviour arrived in the shape of a camel, tarted up in silk and bells outside the Ark, which the boy demanded a ride on. I simply waved goodbye and continued walking – the boy had chosen the company of the camel regardless.

On my third morning at Medina & Ilyos, at about half six, I was woken up by the sound of an almighty row between the two hosts. Medina in particular was apoplectic. I tried to go back to sleep, until a deafening shriek rang out across the courtyard. By this point it was obvious what was happening: Ilyos had gone fist-happy on his wife. By the time I had flung some shorts on and ran outside, the pair were being separated by a young girl, either their daughter or nephew. Ilyos skulked out never to be seen again. Medina was inconsolable, wiping her tears away with a handkerchief. There was a bruise below her eye, and her hands had been cut. As I tried to console her, she revealed all: “Ilyos, he SMS prostitute!” she sobbed. “He is up all night!” This would explain why she had spent the previous day ranting down the phone at someone, who we had all assumed to be Ilyos. In truth they seemed an odd couple – he was much younger, and there was clearly an underlying mutual resentment to their relationship. Ilyos would join us for breakfast each morning, whilst Medina and the daughter/nephew ate theirs out of sight in the kitchen. In all truth, I had thought little of it before the fight, but now I saw clearly the real position of Uzbek women in domestic life.

Needless to say, the atmosphere at the guesthouse afterwards was rather unpleasant. All my new-found friends had moved on, either to Khiva or Samarkand, and I felt it was also time for me to leave. Before I could, though, I had to pay for the remainder of my stay. I had only dollars left, but Medina refused them on the basis that they were printed before 1996, which apparently makes them less valuable on the black market. I didn’t have the heart to argue with her, not least follow through with my plan to ask for a discount. After two hours chasing around various bazaars we found someone willing to change my dollars, and finally I could head for the long-distance bus station.

I knew I had to take a shared taxi to Khiva via. Urgench, as all the buses coming from Tashkent would be full. I had also been told that the road to Khiva was being rebuilt, and the drive would be prolonged by about a third. This made securing the front passenger seat all the more vital, both for my sanity and comfort. I was the first person to arrive for the next Urgench taxi, and it appeared that my plan of sitting up front would prove successful. After twenty minutes another two guys had joined, one with a huge guitar case that couldn’t quite fit in the boot. As we waited for a final passenger, the driver told me how the front seat is usually reserved for a “Madame.” For another hour I sat and prayed desperately for the final passenger to be male. As this blog has hopefully demonstrated, I’m all for the advancement of women’s causes, but not if they are to infringe on my birthright as an Englishman to claim the front seat of a shared taxi. Alas, a shrill female voice greeted the driver, and I realised the game was up. I (un)graciously surrendered my seat and jumped into the back, almost hitting my head on the guitar case, which was now wedged between the middle passenger’s legs.

A happy taxi

We made a lunge for the new road. Unsuccessfully

The journey to Urgench took 9 hours, 7 of which were spent listening to abominable Uzbek pop music at an ear-splitting volume. The road threatened to be drivable until we reached the desert, where it disintegrated into a pot-holed mess, made all the more agonising by the fact we were directly beside the newly-paved road for the entire journey, 99% finished, but still shut off. The monotonous desert scenery was the perfect accompaniment to the thumping soundtrack, with barely a dune or oasis in sight. We stopped for refreshment at a roadside café, my fellow passengers cheerily chomping on kebabs, not even fussed to swat away the flies which had found their way from the nearby squat toilets. (I say toilets – does a hole in the ground qualify?) The road continued to worsen, and by the time we pulled up in Urgench, utterly exhausted, it was well after dark. I managed to negotiate an onward journey to Khiva for 25000 Som, and arrived at my guesthouse a broken man. (In fairness this journey pales in comparison to the return leg of a family trip to Skye in 2009, which somehow took us 21 hours, including a puncture and a 25-mile traffic jam outside of Glasgow. Some tit had scheduled a U2 concert on the same night as a Celtic match, although I can't blame Bono for the puncture.)

Khiva, as it turned out, was worth the slog. It's a gem of a town, mostly a restoration job, but nonetheless magnificent. Along with Bukhara, it was once home to one of the world's largest slave markets, but now the only things tied up are goats. The old walls are still intact, and envelop the old town behind an imposing mud façade. By this stage I was growing a little tired of the same old madrasas and minarets, but the sight of locals still living and working inside the old walls was captivating.

After two days in Khiva, my Uzbek visa was approaching its end. There was no way on earth that I was heading back to Bukhara and beyond on the road from hell, so I booked a domestic flight back to Tashkent. I turned up with a couple of hours to spare, only to be told that they had no record of my booking. To add insult to injury, my phone had somehow been stolen amid all the confusion. I ran outside and hopped into the nearest taxi I could find, and belted it to the nearest bank. Being a foreigner in some evident distress, I was allowed to skip the queue and take out dollars almost immediately. We raced back, and I bought one of the last remaining seats, due to depart in 40 minutes. The small aircraft was evidently a Soviet shitbox, but the flight was smoother than any I have ever taken. I waited at Tashkent airport for another flight, this time to Bishkek, capital of Kyrgyzstan. I still had to fill out a customs form declaring all sorts of things, among them the exact amount of cash I had on me in all currencies. After submitting my form, I found a 2 Euro coin in my pocket. So scared was I of contradicting my statement, even by a tiny amount, that I chucked it in the bin.

For all its sporadic beauty, my lingering memory of Uzbekistan is the vast, clunking bureaucracy that consumes everyone and everything, and makes life needlessly difficult for solo travellers. Its primary purpose, apart from feeding the congenital paranoia of the state, is to keep people in a job. Why have just one person checking your train ticket when you could have three! The registration slips are a prime example: what an arcane and infuriating process, but it gives the staff something to be getting on with. Uzbekistan is full of people who think they're doing actual jobs – jobs that in other countries would be performed by a computer system. As all Uzbeks are required to participate in this from birth, there is little choice but to adapt to its ways and blindly persevere. I read in the Times of Central Asia that the government plans to create one million jobs in 2012. So that'll be more passport checks, more queues at ticket offices, and a lot more paperwork.

Khiva

Turkey... Part 2

2011-10-18T08:16:00.000-07:00

With my Iranian visa application stuck in geo-bureaucratic hell somewhere between London and Istanbul, I had time on my hands to exlpore Turkey. Not knowing anything about the country, I flicked through a tour brochure to get some general ideas as to where to go, and set about visiting them independently. My first stop was Kayseri, in a region called Cappadocia. It is at the heart of Turkey, almost plum centre, and was home to the first recorded human settlers in the country. I had heard about the landscape, and the famed balloon rides, but that was that. I was travelling blind.

Outside the airport I sat on the curb and waited for what I assumed would be a shuttle bus into town. There I got talking to an American couple, Carlos and Tammi, who had booked a private tour of Cappadocia. They kindly offered me a place in their shiny 4x4 for the day, which, needless to say, solved a few problems. After some confused negotiating with the driver ("Them - no problem. You - problem") I got a ride for 75 lira and the tour for free.

The climate was noticably cooler - we were at an altitude of almost 1000m. Nothing compared to the behemoths that await in Kyrgyzstan and China, but it was still a breath of fresh air after the sweaty streets of Istanbul. We were driven through canyons, orchards and gulleys, glimpsing the bizzarre and beautiful homes built into rock formations, where people lived for hundreds of years.

Our first stop was the enormous ancient underground city of Kaymakli, the largest of its kind in Turkey. The first Christian settlers lived here, and could stay for months at a time to protect from attacks by invaders from the West. Archaeologists estimate that over 10,000 people lived here at one point, which seems almost impossible to imagine once you're inside. The city is a labyrynth network of caves, many of them impossible to navigate without crouching or even squatting. The technology involved was immense - they constructed ventilation shafts, kitchen compartments, graveyards, and even wine-making facilities. All of this conducted under mere torchlight. (Look at how modern I am, belittling fire.) I didn't have my camera with me, but if you search for "Kaymakli underground city" in Google images you'll get a good idea.

We had a delicious home-cooked lunch in a shaded garden: Me, Carlos and Tammi, Kamil the guide, and the driver. Here, for the first time, I realised how glad I was not to be mixing with English people. Meeting young English travellers abroad is generally a deflating experience. As a rule, the closer they are to my age and background, the less interesting I find them. After all, that's the reason we're both here - to meet a different sort of person. Often it makes you realise why you got on the plane in the first place, namely to avoid conversations like the one I had on my very first night in Munich:

English traveller: Where are you from, then?

Me: Shropshire.

English traveller: Oh... Bye.

If you're ever abroad, and want to avoid talking to English people, tell them you're from Shropshire. I swear it works every time. Typically Londoners are the worst - one girl in Istanbul started the "where are you from" rigmarole with an original approach: "So you're a Londoner, yah?" I explained that I wasn't. She seemed confused - disappointed, even. I skipped the Shropshire bit and simply explained: "I'm from between Wales and Birmingham." This did not help her. Asking a Londoner to envisage the West Midlands as a geographical entity is rather like asking a dog to do your internet banking. The dog is not mentally equipped to carry out such a process. Better it stay on its favourite carpet and chew its own foot for a bit. Or complain about having to wait a whole ten minutes for another bone to arrive.

A church inside a wall of rocks

Kamil and Tammi

Before I left, my mate Loz warned that the quickest way to bankrupt oneself abroad is to go boozing. This may well be true, but at this rate I'm barely losing a penny due to the amount of people who have bought me a drink after hearing my travel plans. So far I've been bought a beer by people from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, Finland, Scotland, England (ok, there are some advantages to meeting the English aborad) Japan, and Germany. Usually they're over 30, and feel a mixture of pity and admiration for what I'm attempting. Every time I've offered to get a round in, they've refused. So much so that I've almost taken it for granted, and feel disappointed when someone doesn't get me one. You really can have too much of a good thing.

In Istanbul, watching the Stoke-United game in a bar, I got chatting to a Scot named Hamish, who was in town for a wedding. Except he wasn't, as his wife had fallen in, so he snuck out to the pub. When I told him I was going to Iran he puffed out his cheeks, and proceeded to buy me drinks. This was mightily generous of him, but he knocked off pint after pint so fast that I could barely keep up. He said that he worked on the floor of an investment bank, supervising the traders. After some interrogation he admitted it was RBS. I told him that I wasn't a taxpayer, so he had nothing to worry about. He duly bought me another beer.

Mustafapasa

Finding a decent hostel has been made ten times easier by - you guessed it - the internet. I use hostelworld.com, which has a database of thousands of hostels, campsites, guesthouses etc. all over the world, complete with customer reviews, pictures, maps and detailed price lists. I can book ahead with just a few mouse clicks, paying a small deposit up front. After each stay you are invited to rate individual aspects of the hostel, and leave a comment. Consequently it separates the wheat from the chaff, and has generally helped to drive up standards. If your hostel has a poor rating, or receives negative feedback, then you can wave goodbye to any business. It's not entirely trustworthy - there's always the odd eejit who complains about the wi-fi reception in his room that he's paid the grand total of €3 for. But, as a general resource, it's incredibly useful.

There's a theory that the internet has taken the true spirit of adventure out of travelling. Personally, I can't comment, as I'm from a different generation. I'm a touch skeptical, though. Michael the German had little time for hostelworld etc., and explained how back in the day, if he had no money left and couldn't find accommodation, he would go to a bar, find a girl and sleep with her. Thank goodness then, in my case, for hostelworld. (If you're reading this, Michael, that was called self-deprecation. It's what us English indulge in to pretend we're comfortable with our football team being awful, among other things. *Update - our rugby team as well*)

Pumpkins!

The primary criticism of relying on the internet is that, since you can plan and pre-book almost every facet of your journey, you rarely experience the thrill of spontaneity. Well, the other day I was twiddling my thumbs in Istanbul, and had a causal browse of a budget airline website. 24 hours later I was in the back of a 4x4 driving through Cappadocia and the most extraordinary countryside I have ever seen. All thanks to the near-infinite knowledge and practicality of the internet. Maybe if I had ditched the guidebook and hitchhiked into the middle of nowhere, I could have met some fascinating people - but I did anyway. In my opinion the world wide web is a phenomenal resource for the traveller, and anyone who dismisses it outright should be openly mocked. Also it gives me a platform to witter on without interruption (aka this blog.)

I stayed for two nights in a hostel in Goreme, probably Cappadocia's most visited town. Turkey overall has pound for pound the best hostels I've stayed in. Often when venturing into Europe, particularly with your mates, you begin by seeking hostels that are known for having the best 'atmosphere,' closest to the liveliest bars, clubs etc. After three weeks on the road, when you've just been on an overnight bus from Plovdiv and haven't shaved in two weeks, the only thing you ask yourself is "do the showers work" and "are the bedsheets clean?" Everything else is inconsequential. You create your own fun, and wherever you go you'll meet interesting people. It's a bit like going off to university - if you haven't made a bunch of friends in your first two weeks, then you're doing it wrong. Just talk to people, that's all.

I'm fortunate to be blessed with the golden currency of travel: command of the English language. In a typical European hostel, you will meet French, Swedish, American, Latvian, Aussie, Portuguese, Chilean, Korean, or indeed any nationality, all conversing in English. (It goes without saying that all the staff speak it too.) It makes me feel vaguely embarrassed to have such poor language skills myself. In Zagreb earlier this summer, a French guy asked me: "Comment t'appelle tu?" (What is your name?) He may as well have been speaking Vietnamese. He scolded me for not even having a basic command of a language that I had been taught for three years. To be honest, he was right. As for my estimation of the teaching of foreign languages in English state schools... well, I won't bore you.

In Goreme I met another Scot, Duncan, who modestly revealed that he had in fact already been to every country that I plan to visit, shattering my illusions of intrepidness. He mentioned some good walking routes nearby, so I decided to set aside a whole day for exploring on foot. Armed with a vague, flimsy map, I decided to follow the main road for a bit, which climbs up to the top of a long ridge. After 20 minutes I was looking down onto the whole surrounding area, which looks extraordinary regardless of where you're viewing it from. I spotted the greenish valley that Duncan described, and proceeded to climb down a steep slope, with the help of an old woman whose garden I had clambered through. From the bottom you realise that many of the rock formations look completely different from below than above. I had yet to notice the bizarre ledges that stick over from the top, which are so smooth and attractive that it's hard to believe they were created by chance.

A couple of hours into my hike I came across a tea house in the middle of nowhere, run by an old man named Hassan. I asked if he had a toilet, which he did not. Instead he pointed to a rock tunnel nearby, and gave me a handful of napkins. I drew upon my skills gained in Bucharest, and afterwards covered up my waste. I ordered some chai, out of gratitude for letting me use his tunnel, and he offered me bread and fresh peppers taken from the valley. I tried to pay for the food, but he was having none of it. As I said my goodbyes, he reached into a plastic bag and pulled out a small souvenir model of some Cappadocian rocks. Oh right, I thought, that's why he was being so generous - he's tricking me into buying his cheap tat. I was about to refuse, until he handed me the ornament and said, "present." Mea culpa. I was still in that Western mindset which confuses human generosity and spirit with some ulterior motive driven by greed. The old man just wanted to look after me. I walked on through the valley feeling a touch guilty, but also grateful that I was in a country with people like Hassan.

Hassan the Man

Uchisar

At the end of the valley was Uchisar, a small town on a hill overlooking everything. In the castle I bumped into a Dutch girl who was staying at my hostel, Denise, and two of her friends. We estimated that we had two or three hours of sunlight left, so we descended from the town in search of the sinister-sounding Love Valley, which would take us most of the way back. After much walking around in circles, we abandoned the idea, and decided to walk back along the top of the ridge, and get to Goreme before dark. We found a good spot to sit and gawp at the panorama, and I dug out Hassan's peppers and bread for a sunset picnic.

It was soon after that I met an American, Georgios, who happened to be taking the same picture of the same dead tree in the same spot as myself. He told me how to cheat your camera to take effective shots at sunset (like the one above), and later we went for dinner. Over Turkish pide he reminded me that life is short, and that we should spend our money on things we want to do, rather than wait glumly for a rainy day. He told me about his nephew, who died in a motorcycle accident on the one day of his life that he hadn't been wearing a helmet. To compound the tragedy, his head had struck the wall of the local church, where they prayed every Sunday. We agreed that we should savour every enjoyable moment that life allows us.

On this note - remember that flash flood from my previous post? It killed three people.

Georgios

That wasn't all I learned about fate and death in Goreme. Firstly involving myself - if the old woman hadn't been there to guide me, I would have traversed the tight hand side of the rock and dropped vertically for about 30 feet. Scary, but not as scary as a story Duncan told me about a bus journey he took from Turkey to Iraq. Only three other people boarded the bus (I can't think why), so he ignored his ticket and went straight to the back. The bus driver, though, insisted that he sit in his assigned seat, so he returned to the front. A few hours later, in the middle of the night, he woke up to the sound of screeching brakes, as a herd of sheep ran across the road. A few seconds later, another bus slammed into the back of them at 80mph, utterly destroying the rear half of the coach. If it wasn't for the pettiness of the driver then you wouldn't be hearing this story. (If that isn't chilling enough, another passenger received a phone call five minutes after the crash. It was his sister, who had just woken up from a bad dream, involving him: "What happened?" she said. He hung up with a face like death.)

Not a bad writing spot

Cappadocia is the most astonishing place I have ever been to. It's a strange and beautiful region, utterly unique, full of endless surprises. By the end I had a headache just from looking at things. At the top of the Goreme ridge, depending on which direction you look, you could be in four separate continents. The rocky brown ridges are remininscent of the Utah desert; the rolling dunes look as if they have been planted from the Sahara; the terraced hilltop town of Uchisar could be Italian; and everything else belongs on the moon.

And then there's the balloons. I didn't go on one - at $220 a pop I couldn't justify the expense. Watching them all float up at daybreak is an experience in itself, and one that doesn't cost a penny. About thirty of them drifted in complete silence, and I got a few decent pictures.

Istanbul

2011-10-02T10:46:00.000-07:00

Where to start?

Ok, the horns. I don't mean the Golden Horn, which splits the European side of the city in two. I'm referring to the horns on people's vehicles. In Istanbul there's 20 million of them. This is assuming that each vehicle has one horn - if the taxi drivers could have multiple horns, they'd be in heaven.

The traffic moves at around 2 mph, all furiously beeping away at each other with unnecessary regularity. In more sober parts of the world, beeping the horn is used as the last resort, to avoid an accident or to scold somebody for careless driving. Here, beeping the horn is usually the first resort. Often it's an attempt to get the traffic moving, but it rarely works. In a log jam of 20 taxis, 19 of them beep away like mad, imploring the leading car to stick his foot down and run over some tourists, or smash into the tram passing in front of him, or whatever happens to be blocking his path. Obviously, he can't do this - nor would they. Consequently the horn has lost all of its effect, as it's so utterly pointless, like two chihauhas yapping at each another from opposite sides of a fence.

There are 17 million people in Istanbul, and three million more cars. It's hard to fathom - you couldn't build a more car-unfriendly city if you tried. There's an extensive shuttle ferry network here, and a series of reliable tram and metro lines. But still the cars keep coming. Bikes. Vans. Full-sized coaches that happily drive down steep lanes that an Englishman would fret about taking his Fiat 500 through. It's just mental. They say driving a Formula 1 car in Monaco is like riding a bycicle around your living room. The same is true of Istanbul, but with a motorbike.

Then there's the rigmarole of agreeing a fare before getting in a taxi. The cabbie is obviously negotiating from a position of strength, which enables him to quote a preposterous price and hope that the passenger a) agrees up front, or b) barters for a reduced fare that's still far higher than a local would consider paying. It doesn't help being on your own - you can't split the cost, and it's harder to negotiate. There are no rules - only bullshitting. In fairness, it's similar to most of the world, but now I only get in a cab unless I have literally no other choice.

It's also unclear as to who's really in charge of the system. It seems that any bloke off the street can command an entire fleet of taxis provided he can speak five words of English or German. One guy outside Yenikapi ferry terminal was sat on the curb cooking a couldren of mussels, yet when I gave off the merest hint that I was looking for a cab, he leapt up, greasy prongs still in hand, and hurried me into the back of a taxi, only to find a petrified Chinese man sat in the passenger's seat. "15 Lira," he informed the driver, which was less extortionate than I was expecting.

Buying a product of any description in Istanbul is a bit of a nightmare. Price tags? Forget it. The item is worth whatever the shop keeper pulls out of his arse on that given day. You can't just go in and browse, as they're in your face quicker than the two gentleman's outfitters in the Fast Show. You're subjected to a barrage of pleasantries, each expertly tailored to part you with your cash. If you're not careful you can come out of a shop having bought something entirely different from what you originally wanted, such is the effectiveness of their camaraderie. Imagine those irritating Cockney fruit sellers, but at every shop, bar and restaurant. You just have to smile and fob them off.

Topkapi Palace

Last week, having lost my sunglasses, I went out to a nearby street to buy a new pair. Distrusting the knock-off street merchants, I went to a sunglasses shop. I wasn't allowed to try on anything myself, or even examine a pair. Instead I was lined up in front of a mirror, where the shop keeper took a pair off the shelf at random and placed it carefully on my head, lining them up as if he were the Sultan's personal optician. I told him that I was happy with the pair he had selected - after all, sunglasses are sunglasses - but he insisted on forcing more and more pairs on me, again placing each one on my head with the care of someone excavating a dinosaur fossil. Intriguingly, his selection of glasses became progressively more expensive. They all looked the same, so I stood firm on my choice and bought the first one, much to his visible disappointment.

There are more sinister ways to get ripped off, however. The other night I was walking back to my hostel when I was approached by a middle-aged man who asked me for the time. This evolved into a good-natured conversation about his 'friend' in London who he visits occasionally. He then asked me if I would like to come back to his 'cafe' for a 'smoke.' I was pretty tired, so I declined. After this, he didn't want to know me. The next day I found out from a travel website that this sort of thing happens regularly to single male travellers in this part of Istanbul. Usually you are taken to a bar, where after a few drinks you are presented with an extortionate bill (say $500.) If you don't pay up then you'll be taken to a 'back office' and threatened with physical abuse. Some people have even been threatened with death, which I've never really aspired to myself. The problem is that Turks in general are very friendly and hospitable, which makes it easier for the shady types to operate.

Haghia Sophia

I met a German guy, Michael, who was staying in my dorm. He made me think a little more about money, and how to save it whilst abroad. Michael kept a daily log of exactly how much cash he had spent, and where, so that he was always on top of his finances. A model of prudence, I thought, until he told me that last year he and his friends spent over €15,000 on cocaine, and that he would fly to Paris or Berlin for one night just because he was bored. Not a bad way to blow your cash, I thought, but it had clearly changed his attitudes toward money. From now on, maybe I should take a leaf out of Michael's book, and spend my money on cocaine - I mean, keep a daily log of my spending.

The best way to experience Istanbul is to take one of the many shuttle ferries that connect the three sides of the city. They cost about 70p for a ride, and can take you almost anywhere. I boarded one at six in the evening to get back to my hostel, but inadvertently took the wrong trip and ended up heading for the Asian side (I confused Karakoy with Kadikoy. Shocking.) This turned out to be the highlight of the week.

I've never before encountered a place where so many people are doing something as in Istanbul. No one ever relaxes here, except the tourists. Whole jobs have been invented just to keep people occupied - take the poor sod I saw pushing a wheelbarrow of bottled water from restaurant to restaurant, inquiring if their stock was low. Invariably the answer would be a "no," and he'd go trundling along to the next stall. It's also incredibly easy to get lost, as I found out as soon as I had gotten off the train. I said to myself, "whatever happens, I'm not going to get caught in a crowded market with all my luggage." Two minutes later I was stuck in the spice bazaar, frantically rotating my map, wondering why the hostel couldn't just come to me instead.

Istanbul is a place that you can be totally fed up with one day, and in thrall to the next. It plays by its own rulebook - I guess that's what makes it so special.

I wanted to spend a couple of days out of town, so I bought a ferry ticket to Bandirma, where I would take the bus to Gallipoli. I dragged my bags half way across the city to the ferry terminal, and was not best pleased to find that it had been cancelled. I tried to take a different bus, which would take me all the way there, but I missed the last one by five minutes. I wasn't going to get put off that easily, so I hastily booked an organised tour to Gallipoli for the next morning, with a visit to Troy thrown in for good measure. I thought this would guarantee my arrival, and that I wouldn't have to worry about a thing. The next morning I fell asleep on the bus, and woke up to this...

For about half an hour we looked on as this great brown river swallowed whatever town we were passing through. The driver had sensibly taken us to a junction high up on a road bridge, otherwise we would have been royally stuffed. After we had escaped the deluge, everyone's bags were taken out of the hold for inspection, all of them soaking wet - except mine, which I had stowed away back in Istanbul, anticipating such a biblical event. The Aussie passengers, who comprised most of our party, had no such luck.

We got there in the end, after 6 hours on the coach, and were treated to a decent lunch on the shores of the sea of Marmaris. The Gallipoli peninsula is stunning - much of it is a national park, and has been protected from development. The area is dotted with different cemeteries and memorials to the war dead - British, Australian, Kiwi, French, and, at the highest point of the peninsula, the Turkish, who lost more lives than any. Our tour guide explained in detail the calamity that was the Allied invasion in 1915 - firstly landing at the wrong beach, a mile along the coast from the intended spot; then the bloody charge up the steep hills and valleys; and the brutal trench warfare which dominated most of the campaign. At one point the ANZAC (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps) and Turkish trenches were only eight metres apart. Both sides swapped gifts - food, cigarrettes etc. - until the orders came to fire, at which point they would shoot at each other without mercy.

Brighton Beach - where ANZAC were supposed to land...

Where they actually landed

A sunken British boat

A buoyant Turkish one

As the months dragged on, the corpses were piled so high that it was possible to walk from one trench to the other without your feet touching the ground. Dysentry spread fast, and claimed more lives than the actual fighting. Some men were so weak from disease that they fell into the latrines, where they literally drowned in their own mess. The Turks always had the higher ground, and simply waited for the Allies to launch over the top of the trenches to be fired upon. At one point the massacre was so bad that the Turkish general ran across to the New Zealand trench shouting 'Dur! Dur! (Stop! Stop!)', because his men couldn't bear to slaughter yet another futile charge of ANZAC troops. By the end there were half a million dead or injured on all sides. It's hard to comprehend that a place as beautiful as the peninsula could have borne witness to such losses.

Gallopoli is considered a pilgrimage site by many Aussie and Kiwi travellers. It is their great national tragedy. Britain, meanwhile, lost more men at the Somme on one day than in the entire Gallipoli campaign (60,000 vs 20,000.) But that does not mean that Gallipoli should be overshadowed - it was the Royal Navy's mistaken landing instructions that sabotaged the campaign from the start, and resulted in a terrible loss of life, particularly for ANZAC. The British officer class who commanded the war stuck by trench warfare until the end, until it dawned on them that we were actually running out of young men aged 16-25. I count myself lucky that I am not from that generation.

The next day we were taken to Troy. My camera's battery had run out, which became more of an irrelevance as the day went on, as there was nothing really worth taking a photo of. 90% of the site is still underground, and much of what isn't was destroyed by a German archaeologist/treasure hunter named Heinrich Schliemann, who bulldozed through the site in the 19th century looking for gold necklaces. The day was memorable only for the Japanese tour group who asked whether the 50ft wooden mock-up of a Trojan horse was the original.

I got on well with the Aussies, who took me under their wing as the only solo traveller among us. All of them generously offered to put me up if I ever were to head Down Under. I can't promise anything, guys, but if I can't get into China...

Going Solo in Eastern Europe

2011-09-20T02:55:00.000-07:00

We waved goodbye to Rob, along with his girlfriend Kat and little daughter Charlie, and boarded the night train for Hungary. I had unfinished business in Budapest - I was there in July before a music festival, but didn't get to see half of the main sights. The city is split by the Danube - the regal Buda on the Western side, and the busier Pest on the Eastern. We took what must surely be one of the world's great bus rides - the No. 16 across the bridge to Buda.

After a couple of days Mike left for home, and I was by myself for the first time. My loneliness lasted for less than an hour, as I got talking to a group of Scousers at the train station who were also heading for Istanbul. They were stopping at Bucharest for the Romanian leg of the journey, whereas I would be getting off at Brasov in the heart of Transylvania. We settled into our carriages in good time, and at 23:30 the train left Budapest Keleti station bound for Romania.

A quick glance at Google Maps shows the countless number of small villages spread around Romania, with names such as Prod, Smig, and - my personal favourite - Vulcan. Around 90% of the population live in rural areas, and from the train you get a pretty good look at their farming technology. For the most part it's little more than a horse and plough, with kids carrying bundles of corn over their shoulders. If you're lucky you might see a tractor sat beside a field, but no one ever seems interested in using one.

Most of the roads I saw were dirt tracks, and you can spot them a mile off - look out for the enormous dust cloud trailing behind each vehicle. Often the roads are wide enough for only one lane, so any tractor you actually see in use will typically be holding up ten other vehicles, all crawling along behind one another in a dusty haze. Maybe that's why there are so few tractors - anyone driving one knows that he's blocking off half of the town, who are probably of a good mind to smash him up his rear end. Now if that's not a deterrent, then show me one.

Another distinct feature of Romanian villages is that almost every one of them has put their graveyard on the top of a hill, overlooking the town. I don't know if this is a superstitious tradition, or that Romanians take a perverse joy in showing off their dead people to the train-traveling bourgeoisie, but I'm glad it hasn't caught on in Shropshire.

They have irony in Romania now

You only have to venture a few miles from dirt-poor houses with no electricity and you're in Brasov, the tourist hub of Romania. Here you'll find designer boutiques selling top-brand jeans for at €30 a pop, and big hotels offering overpriced day tours to the nearby castles. The town itself is very pleasant, almost Mediterranean in its look and feel. I ate out with some people at my hostel, and ordered Gypsy stew with Peasant Potatoes. You can live like a King in Brasov for peanuts, but I restrained myself from ordering fillet stake and Rioja. No idea if that goes together anyway...

Not poverty

The next morning I took a train through the Transylvanian mountains, which were so gorgeous that I forgot to take pictures. I then had a 40-minute stop-off in Bucharest, where I rejoined the Scousers. I managed to squeeze in my first encounter with something that will surely become a familiar friend on my trip - a squat toilet. It was hidden away in the bowels of the main train station, guarded by a beast of a woman with hands like John Prescott. The fare was the equivalent of 5p, which, given the condition of the place, was reasonable. I approached the exercise in a careful and methodical manner, so as to increase the margin for error. For the most part it was textbook - that is until my triumphant yank of the dangling flush chain, which somehow resulted in flooding the whole cubicle. By some miracle I wasn't wearing sandals for a change. Summary: don't go to Bucharest for a dump.

It also has the world's second largest building: the vast palace that Nicolae Ceausescu built for himself as supreme leader of Romania. He saw fit to award himself over 6,000 rooms - a tad opulent for a man who was 5' 5". Hundreds of people had their homes demolished in order to build it, most of whom were forced to live in one of the many tower blocks that clutter the city. I counted at least 20 in a row as we were pulling into the station, and all of them looked pretty grim. Ceausescu was executed in the end - although they've yet to work out what to do wıth that palace.

Shove that up your Singapore Airlines

Our train was a Romanian sleeper service, which passed all the way through Bulgaria and onto Istanbul. We weren't the only British people on the train - we were soon joined by an older couple from next door, who had brought a healthy supply of malt whiskey and toilet roll (alas, I only got my hands on the latter.) Another solo passenger, Robin, swelled our ranks to eight. It was starting to feel like an episode of Benidorm written by Agatha Christie. We slipped the Romanian conductor a few notes for use of his fridge, and stashed away our beers and wine. (He also requested cigarettes, but all we could offer was cheese.) The Scousers had stocked up with a mini-banquet, including two whole chickens. This was a good idea.

The remains of the buffet

The Romanian side of the border...

... the Bulgarian side

The party atmosphere helped compensate for the progress of the train, which was slower than death. It took 18 hours to pass through Bulgaria, yet according to my rail map our route was no longer than Southampton to Glasgow. The architecture didn't change a great deal as we awoke to Turkey, with high-rise buildings still ubiquitous ("from shit'ole to shit'ole" as Anne the Scouser delicately put it.) But most of the journey was spent looking at the simple, beautiful Bulgarian countryside.

Bedtime...

There was a small hitch when crossing the Turkish border, which could have landed me in a lot of trouble. All UK nationals entering Turkey are required hand over a ten pound note at customs to have their visa stamped. Earlier I had stuck a tenner in my passport so as not to forget, as the border crossing was scheduled for 2:30 in the morning. I was awoken by the usual knock on the door by passport control, and I groggily crawled out of bed and got dressed. I had yet to realise that this was only the check for leaving Bulgaria, and not for the Turkish visa. I handed over my passport to the Bulgarian officer, who was surprised to find a crisp £10 note nestled inside. I'm not sure whether that's enough to bribe a Bulgarian, but he returned my passport unimpressed. I sheepishly removed the tenner and apologised for the mix-up, although he still gave me a thorough looking-over.

Turkey's fridge graveyard

Click and look for the far horizon...

Istanbul's answer to Sidcup

Istanbul!

All roads lead to Munich...

2011-09-11T04:57:00.001-07:00

An enthusiastic companion

Welcome to the easy part of the trip - Western Europe. Many Germans have a basic command of English, but I felt like making a stab at German, since there'll be plenty of other opportunities to bark pigeon English at foreigners in the next few months. After a few days in Munich I had gotten my head around some essential German phrases, chief among them zwei helles bitte (two lagers please.) Now don't write off me and my brother as a pair of lager louts - drinking beer in Bavaria is pretty much the standard tourist experience. And what beer!

There's no such thing as bad beer in Munich. Even if you go to a tiny newsagents in a metro station at midnight, the cheapest beer you can buy will have won about five world beer awards. They usually cost around €1.50, so the equivalent in England would be a can of Strongbow (not that you'd be allowed to drink it on the train anyway, unlike Munich.)

We went out a couple of times with our cousin Rob's mates from the Max Planck institute, where he's doing his PhD. One of them was a Portuguese guy who spoke English in a thick Scottish accent. He explained that his Grandma had been Scottish and he got it off her. Unfortunately no one except for Me, Mike and Rob could understand what he was saying. Poor guy.

In terms of public omnipresence, this man appears to have replaced the swastika

All German trains are run by the government-owned Deutsche Bahn company, and represents a considerably better customer experience than having to choose between Arriva Trains Wales or London Midland, depending on how late I want to be. We took the BOB (Bayern Oberland Bahn) train to Tegernsee in rural Bavaria, near the Austrian border. The town itself was lifeless, but the views around the lake were beautiful. We were so bored in the town that we decided to walk up and down the hill, which was inadvertently a good idea.

Back to Munich - here they design their public spaces for its minimum purpose and nothing more. Nothing is superfluous or wasted. On the U-Bahn (underground), none of the doors will slam open at every stop like London - each one has to be manually pressed by a passenger. The Germans can't get their heads around the purpose of a door which opens only for no one to walk through it. And to be honest, they have a point. Nor are there are any St. Pancras-style lovers' embrace sculptures here - what's the point of that in a train station?! Maybe if it was a solar powered sculpture which fed electricity to the train lines, then it might be condidered.

"YEAH, I'M IN MUNICH......... NAH, IT'S RUBBISH"

Unlike London, every U-Bahn will, arrive in exact 5/10/15 minute intervals, depending on the line. They are never early and most certainly never late. This means that your typical Bavarian can be sat at his breakfast table each morning before his daily commute and know the exact second in which leave the house, the exact pace at which to walk to the station, and the exact moment he will arrive on the platform as the train glides up. The downside to this is that if your timing is shoddy you will have a to wait much longer by London standards for the next one. But, says our imaginary German friend as he rides away, if you miss the train then that's your fault. Bye!

The Rathaus

Sometimes, though, certain aspects of Munich's drive for efficiency backfire on the average person. For instance, if you want to take an elevator to a different floor, you have only a 50:50 chance of going in the direction you want. There is only ever one lift and one lift shaft, so you are effectively competing with people on a different floor. You press the button and an arrow will illuminate, either Up or Down. You have no choice - it's entirely down to which direction the lift is currently headed. This results in a system that, in both the short and long-term, is unsatisfactory for pretty much everyone. I say it's a 50:50 chance - I swear it never goes the way you want it to. I must have tried about ten times in our hostel and only two or three times did I get where I wanted.

So the Germans have devised a system which, for an individual to achieve his short term aim, another person is screwed over. It's pretty similar when queuing - Rob says that he has queued up in a bank, only for the person behind him to form a "second queue" and leapfrog him. I suppose this is the same in most countries outside of Britain, where we bloody love a good queue. There are some traits which are just plain rude though - at an Art Brut gig in Munich on Friday night, I was pushed almost off my feet by a German woman. I'm not exactly a powerhouse myself, but I've yet to be physically debased by a female like that. Up yours Frau!

Munich is altogether the cleanest, safest large city that I've ever been to. The flip side to this is that it's not as 'cool' as Berlin, or London, or Prague etc. The kids here dress kind of the same, and there's not so much expression of individualism. Berliners, for instance, are much more adventurous with their fashion 'statements'. Bavarians are aware of this cultural rivalry, so much so that one nightclub event here is called 'So Not Berlin.' This is a pretty trendy name for an event, until you imagine a German person saying it.

At Haptbahnhof, and it's goodbye to clean, orderly Western Europe

Budapest & Transylvania up next. I forgot to pack a crucifix....

First things first...

2011-09-09T10:20:00.000-07:00

The big title up there should give you a clue: I'm travelling from Germany to China, for the most part on my own. It will be like one of those Charlie Boorman shows, except I don't have a support crew, or 4-star accommodation at the taxpayer's expense, or anything really. I'm not even famous for not being Ewan McGregor.

Most of it will be done by train, with a bit of bus, shared taxi and hitch-hiking thrown in. The countries I'm visiting are as follows: Germany, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, China, and finally Hong Kong, by which time it should (hopefully) be January. Seems very straight-forward on Google Maps, but once you start sorting out the visas, travel arrangements, medical provisions etc. you realise that some of it is a right pain in the arse. But, like a lot of things, being persistent has its rewards.

I did this in two minutes but you get the idea

Why Munich? Well, I had originally planned to do the entire journey overland from London to Hong Kong. This idea was killed off when I looked at the Eurostar prices, which aren't included in an Interrail pass. It's just cheaper to fly to Europe via EasyJet. My cousin Rob lives here as well (I'm writing this on his laptop), making it an obvious starting point for my assault on the Eastern hemisphere.

Why Hong Kong? That's an easy one - my Southampton mate/Awooga F.C. team-mate Alex and his wife Nancy have offered to put me up after a few months hard travelling. There I will probably act as a temporary adopted son, minus the usual drawbacks of having my nappies changed, or putting bath foam into the video player (I actually did this once.)

If I make it all the way - and I'm under no illusions as to how hard it will be - then I'll have a straight-forward decision to make. If I'm feeling homesick then I'll fly back to England, otherwise I will stay on in China and teach English somewhere. Ciaran, another of my Southampton mates, is already teaching in Guangzhou, the penultimate stop on my trip. I hope to join him in Facebook-ban exile in January.

I'm cheating a little bit in October by flying from Iran to Uzbekistan, skipping out Turkmenistan. This is thanks to the North Korea-esque xenophobia of the Turkmen authorities, who require all foreign visitors on a tourist visa to be accompanied at all times by an official state guide, to the tune of $50 per day. This guide bloke could turn out to be a great laugh, but I'm not paying for his bloody meals.

The main logistical challenge is getting into China. I plan to cross over the Tian Shan mountains from Kyrgyzstan, which is only possible via two lonely mountain passes - the Torugart and the Irkeshtam. Both are known to snow over during the winter months (and this is the Kyrgyz mountains, not the Cotswolds, so winter lasts from October to May), and it will be a close call as to whether I make it. Plan B is simply to fly.

Another challenge is Xinjiang province, which is the largest and most Westerly region of China. It's also the only one which is predominantly Muslim, and there have been serious political tensions in the past few years. In Kashgar, the first stop on my Chinese jolly, 15 people were killed in an uprising in July. The Chinese visa people in London routinely reject applicants intending to visit Xinjiang unless they provide a precise itinerary (plane tickets, hotel bookings etc.) Obviously I can't provide these yet, which is partly the reason I am applying for my visa on the road.

I hope this blog will be a good way of staying in touch, and it will certainly save me a lot on postcards. I'm currently with my brother Mike, who is accompanying me all the way to.... Budapest. I'll report back on our adventures soon. Tschüss!