i didn’t like Bukhara or Samarkand. I found the recreations of the ancient cities like someone who has had plastic surgery. The blemishes that are so important to character had been shone, polished and fixed to an uncomfortable and false perfection. That aside, the Uzbek people were the friendliest we’ve met this side of Sumatra.
.
[Bukhara]
So I should start with Turkmenistan
Turkmenistan is a tiny country flooded with oil and run by chubby round-faced despots who have built glorious gold monuments of their chubby round-faces that gleam and glisten in the harsh desert sun. There is one statue in the capital Ashgabat that reigns supreme above the cityof the former president for life, Niyazov, who died in 2006 and it rotates (that’s right, it rotates) so that the sunlight is always cast across his gluggy cheeks and fat features.
In Ashgabat, a city of hollow decadence built in the last 15 years, dad got quite ill and tired. So I left him in the homestay moaning and groaning and burping and slurping in his bed and walked out the door. I met a kid, Rex, who adopted me and promised to show me the Turkmen life. I shadowed him on a wild night that took us from cigarettes on street corners past KGB officers snooping about to roaming the empty streets then chasing down a spliff on the other side of town and skulling vodka and rapping in russian before the 11pm curfew and then heading home. But I spose the real details of the night will have to wait for the book…
And then on we went to Iran, and drove into the capital Tehran late in the afternoon, or early in the evening, as the cars turned their headlights on and the halogen bulbs of the outer city burnt bright above trucks of stubbled persian care-frees singing to themselves and to the buzzing swerving ecstatic traffic. And on the streets boys bounced footballs in the front of tumbling down restaurants and shrouded hidden women with jet black head-scarves billowing in the wind of passing traffic, staring straight stern and solem as they went to buy bread from glazed and glittery eyed bakers who toil and knead in the foggy smog of their cracked kitchens . And men meet and greet on the street with a leathery slap of hands and a rat-a-tat in their rough and tumble tonue that sounds so cool and more people stroll steadily on. And above everything the silent mountains all jagged and cragged gleam white and glow with snow as the city hums and beeps and toots and slaps and swerves and tumbles and rumbles below.
[Iran: The former US Embassy which was raided in 1979 amid fears that they would disrupt the revolution, now referred to as the US Den Of Espionage and used as the base for a militia committed to defending the revolution]
And then the Iran-Azerbaijan-Armenia border where the Iran side of the river which acts as a border, is safe and passable, but on the other side there is the every now and then shell of a village left over from the Armenia-Azari battles of the the 1990s and landmines scattered wherever and everywhere. And it was one of the most beautiful beautiful frames we’ve seen but we couldn’t stop and photo anything because we weren’t meant ot be there anyway and there were real soldiers kitted out in helmets and guns and sandbags ready to annoy us. And we climbed to a ninth century Azari fort miles high in the air and as we arrived at the top to look out across the dips of valleys and lips of mountains, all sweaty and puffed and sore jointed we found that we were not alone but had in fact happened upon a group of mumbling muslim prayers from Tabriz who had climbed to the top to rock and sway to the setting sun. And we caught our breath by hardly breathing and watched and listened.
And we climbed back down, slipping on our arses and landing in icey muddy gloop.
And through Kurdistan, yes, Kurdistan where protestors milled and waved banners, and then across Turkey in a few crazy days of seeing the countryside through a window.
And it’s strange how after almost six months of first-hand experience of how friendly and warm everyone around the world is and how safe we have felt everywhere, all it takes is a few dozen nutter terrorists a couple of thousands kilometres away to make us afraid again.
[Iran: US Den of Espionage]
But what’s life without risk?
And I just thought we should bring everyone up to date… We came up with a name for the car as we crossed the Yangtze River in China; ”Ping”. Anyone guess why?