Kyrgyzstan

The prices in Almaty, Kazakhstan drove us down to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. We were happy to find another nice, tree-lined capital city. Although rather quiet and small, Bishkek is a beautiful city. We found a great hostel type place with beds shoved in lofts throughout the huge house to stay in while we were in Bishkek. We had a great time wandering the streets and walking through the parks.

One day we went to the State History Museum where the entire ceiling (of a two story building) was covered in murals depicting soviet history. There were some exhibits as well, but the ceiling was definitely the reason to go to the museum. It exulted the greatness of living under the soviets, and even went up through the space race and cold war, with a picture of a skeleton cowboy wearing an American flag and riding a nuclear missile. I highly reccommend the museum.

From Bishkek we went out to Lake Issyk-Kul. Unfortunately, we were a little late in the season, so swimming was no longer possible. But we enjoyed walking on the beach with the donkeys and cows. The mountains were beautiful and the lake was very relaxing.

After the lake we headed back to Bishkek, to catch a car to Osh, about a 12 hour drive through the mountains. On one of the mountain passes we saw our first snow, waiting for the tunnel to re-open. While it was a long drive, the scenery was spectacular. We arrived in Osh and prepared to head out again, this time to Uzbekistan.

In Kazakhstan...

...It is absolutely nothing like Borat.

We arrived at 5am, after a red eye flight from Dubai. We were a little worried, because the official stance is that you can't get a transit visa on arrival, but everything we read said it was no problem. Thankfully, it all worked out and we were able to enter the country.

Almaty is a beautiful city. The streets are wide and tree lined. Coming from the heat of Dubai (and the rest of the Middle East) it felt quite chilly. And it was fall! I didn't realize how much I missed seeing the leaves change color until we saw it in Almaty. The trees were beautiful and we enjoyed walking along the streets.

Unfortunately, we found out that all of the hotel rooms were booked (some sort of Fall Fair) or EXTREMELY expensive (waaaay out of our price range). So, we ate an overpriced lunch at Gloria Jeans Coffee (and loaded up on caffeine, since we hadn't slept in quite a while at this point) and headed to the bus station, to catch a 5 hour bus to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

On the road, I saw ten or fifteen trucks, each loaded with two to three large missiles each, driving down the road. Unfortunately, I was the only one who saw it, and since I know nothing about these things, and can't read cyrillic we don't really know much about them.

So, we continued on to Bishkek...

Dubai

For the past two years, we have been reading almost monthly articles about Dubai in Newsweek (PCVs used to get them for free....apparently they don't have enough money for them anymore) The articles always talked about the ridiculous wealth and building sprees that were taking place in the Emirates.

They were all right.

We flew into the Sharjah airport, where there were an excessive number of men in dish dashes working customs. They didn't seem to care at all if they actually performed their jobs, they were just there to look nice. The guy doing our passports left for a while right when we got to the window, took a break to talk to his friends, and another to talk on his cell phone.

We were very lucky to be staying with friends of Gary's while in Dubai, as they don't really cater to the backpacker market. We stayed in "The Greens", an apartment complex right in the middle of the action. Our wonderful hosts, Dan and Autumn and their adorable daughter Kenna took us out to see "Mall of the Emirates". We figured since we had been seeing ancient covered markets in the other parts of the middle east, we should check out what the new covered markets look like. The mall was huge, crowded and expensive. It was interesting to people watch, seeing as only 5% of Dubai is actually Arab (the rest is all expats). Inside the mall were both a ski resort (complete with ski hotel, and ski cafe) AND a Krispy Kreme donuts (Cuttino was excited)

For dinner, we went to an Indian restaraunt, and had some delicious Indian food (nice change for me, since I think I ate rice and yogurt EVERY day in Iran...)

On the way home, we stopped to look at the Burj al Arab, the 7 star hotel in Dubai. We had to check it out online later, to find out what exactly you got for you $28,000 per night. It doesn't seem like you get much other than a horribly gaudily decorated room and limo service....I'll stick to backpacking...

The next day we spent the day eating a whole foods restaraunt, doing internet, and relaxing by the pool. Rough life.

From the Dubai we flew onto Kazakhstan to begin our Cental Asian leg of the journey.


Big thanks to Dan and Autumn and Kenna for letting us crash with them!!!

Iran, a quick run down

Iran was such a whirlwind tour, and we saw so many sites, that it's really not possible to describe all that we did. So I'll give a short description of each of the places we saw.

Crossed the border at Bargazan: The border guards fingerprinted us (they apologized the whole time) because the government requires them to. Seemed to be the first time they had done this, as it took them half an hour to find the forms, and they didn't have actual fingerprinting ink. We used regular passport stamping ink, which not only made for horribly smudged fingerprints, it also stained our fingers blue for the next two days.

Tabriz: Saw the covered souqs and the mosques with our uber-liberal guide. Also went to dinner at his family's house and met his lovely wife and daughter.

From Iran"

Kandovan: From Tabriz we took a day trip to see this Cappadocia-like village of people living in hollowed out rock buildings.

From Iran

Tehran: Flew to Tehran, in time for "Quds day", the last Friday in Ramadan, celebrating Jerusalem and Palestinian resistance. We managed to avoid it, but watched on the news HUGE numbers of people marching in the streets. Also went to the US Den of Espionage (former US Embassy) to check out the anti-American murals. The only actual anti-American stuff we saw or heard for the whole trip...

Kashan: Fin gardens and old beautiful houses with huge courtyards and fountains

Abyaneh: Another picturesque town. This one was mostly older people, because all of the young people have moved away, to the city, for jobs.

Yazd: Famous for "wind towers" which are used for cooling the buildings and Zoroastrian sites. Saw the eternal flame that has been going since 400 something AD, as well as the Tower of Silence, where they used to (up til 50 years ago) put their dead to be eaten by birds, to avoid fouling the earth with dirty dead bodies.

Esfahan: "Half the World" as a writer described it, by going to Esfahan you can see half of what is available in the world. The Imam Square has some of the most beautiful Islamic architecture I've ever seen. Esfahan also has palaces, bridges and more parks.

Shiraz: More mosques and shrines.

Persepolis: Outside of Shiraz, amazing ruins.

Then, from Shiraz, we flew on to Dubai, to check out the "new" side of the Islamic World.

Surprising Iran

Iran was a country full of surprises. It was the first time I felt any culture shock since our trip began.

The first surprise for me was the openness of the people to criticize the government. In Jordan, we never said anything bad about the King, and certainly not in public. But there we were in Iran, in public places and the border guards were apologizing for the ridiculousness of fingerprinting us, a man on the street was apologizing for his government and our tour guide himself was criticizing Ahmadinijad.

I was also surprised at how much wearing the veil bothered me. I spent two years watching women cover their hair, and didn't think that it would be that big of a deal to do it for eleven days. It was. It was hot and uncomfortable. The main problem was that the style of wearing it, is to wear it pushed back as far as possible on the head, with the maximum amount of hair shown in the front. This is great and all, but it makes it really really easy for it to fall off. I spent probably 20% of my concentration thinking about the stupid thing, and worrying that it would fall off. Every five minutes or so I would need to pull it forward again. And I wasn't really able to turn side to side, look up, bend down, or really move at all without it falling off. Turns out, wearing a scarf is waaaaay more work than I realized!

The last surprise was how friendly everyone was! We would sit in the park, and people would approach, eager to try their English and talk to the foreigners. I'm used to people staring at me, and talking about me, but it was interesting to have everyone coming up to talk to me. And not just talk, almost everyone who talked to us invited us to come with them to eat, or drink tea, or see something. Several apologized that it was Ramadan and they couldn't buy us food. And every single one of them LOVED Americans. A few mentioned not liking George Bush, but they were just as likely to say they didn't like their own government.

It was a trip filled with surprises. The next post will give a quick rundown of the places we visited (going with a tour guide and a private car means you see a LOT more than you do on your own! Every night I would have to get out the tour book and write down all the sites we saw just so I wouldn't forget them)

Funny things seen on the Iran State News Ticker

• Large bang in Spanish city
• Ahmadinijad says "The nuclear age is finished"
• Experts: Quds day* revives Palestinians
• Ayatollah: Palestinians should be the model for all resistance
• Russian Pundit: All muslims unite for Quds day
• Palestinians protest Israeli plan to dump toxic waste in West Bank
• President Bush admits defeat in UN General Assembly
• Turkey shocked by baby deaths
• President Ahmadinijad slams unjust world system
• Ayatollah: Britain is the main force behind zionism

* The Friday we were in Tehran was the last Friday of Ramadan, which was declared "Quds Day" the day for Jerusalem. There were protests all day, and on the street corners they gave out the cool "Down with USA" posters. Unfortunately we didn't get one (our guide made us return the one we posed with).

Iran, the guide....

In order for Americans to travel to Iran, they must be on a tour. We chose Gashttour because of their recommendations in New York Times and on other websites.

Before traveling to Iran, we joked that we would be watched by our "minder" very carefully, and we were ready to be very careful to watch what we said in public. Turns out, our minder was really just a bilingual guide.

Also, we were surprised to hear the topics our first "minder" brought up. In fact, we decided to compile a list of topics we covered, all in public places...

Topics covered and quotes from our minder:

"It's a pity women have to wear the veil"
What do you think of Ahmadinijad?
Life was better with the old government (pre Revolution)
Homosexuality exists, he knows lesbians and gay men. They do not receive the death penalty, only imprisonment
He would like to read "Satanic Verses"
Prostitutes (he told us how to find them....look for the girls wearing too much make up, looking side to side and chewing gum)
Death Penalty (for four reasons; pedophilia, drugs, adultery, and murder)
Birth Control (the pill is ok with a doctor's note, but not condoms)
911 Conspiracy Theories (all Jews got out of the towers before the planes hit)
How to bring alcohol past customs
Israel and visiting without getting stamps ("Have you been?")
Fanatic Islam
Self flagellation and black clothes are anti-Islam
He likes polygamy
Drawing pictures of Mohammed is ok
Young people need sex
Iran needs nuclear power, but of course they are making weapons on the side
and lastly, we met his Communist, artist nephew, who goes by the nickname "Fidel"

Topics not covered by our minder:
Abortion
AIDS