The Silk Road

The End

2007-08-30T22:33:00.000Z

And so my trip now draws to an end. After two months of travelling across China and a detour into Tibet, I find myself at the end of this extraordinary journey. To the highlights of the previous 3 months in the Middle East and Central Asia, I can now add: lunch with Pakistani Finance minister at the Shandur pass; the remains of the Silk Road in an incredible desert setting at Turpan; an unforgettable day looking round the incredible Buddhist caves of Dunhuang followed by a microlight flight over the sand dunes; gazing up at Everest Base Camp; gazing down from the Shug la pass on a trek between two of Tibet's most significant monasteries and finally, the Great Wall of China.

It has been an unforgettable trip. There have been so many good times that I can genuinely say that I could divide most of the trip into two week sections and call them once in a lifetime experiences in their own right. It is partly this fact that has convinced me just how much can actually be achieved in a two week holiday. Combine this with the fact that nearly every country in the world is extremely affordable compared to Britain and I am determined to continue to exploring the more far flung corners of the world, even if a six month sabbatical is not possible every year. My 'to travel' list is growing daily ...

If I had to single out a handful of highlights, they would be as follows.

1. Wandering in total silence through the ancient ruins of Palmyra in Syria
2. Exploring beautiful Esfahan and uncovering the intriguing Iranian culture by talking to the friendly and inquisitive people
3. A walk on a high altitude pasture past a shepherd and his yaks, in the yellow glow of dusk at lake Bulunkul in Tajikistan
4. Sitting on a moraine above Nanga Parbat base camp looking up
5. Soaking up the sun and the crystal clear views of Everest on our final morning, after two days of almost continuous rain
6. Being quite taken by surprise by the sudden, dramatic views down into the clouds from the 5200m Shug la pass on the second day of my trek in Tibet.

(I couldn't get it down to five)

And of course there were some less good times. Those that remain particularly vivid in my mind are:

1. An 8 hour drive across the worst road ever imaginable in the Karakum desert in Turkmenistan, after a night of drinking vodka - Russian style - with our guide Oleg
2. Adjusting to the most depressing town on the Silk Road; Nukus in Uzbekistan
3. Having no choice but to stay in a disgusting hotel in Osh in Kyrgyzstan, another serious contender for the above trophy
4. The attritional battles with our drivers for control over the jeeps we had paid for in Tajikistan and Tibet
5. The torturous 12 hours around Tingri in Tibet, during which time we came to realise that we would not reach base camp on that occasion
6. On a number of occasions politely asking for help from Chinese strangers and being completely ignored, as if invisible

China

Further to the last point above - which infuriated me more than every other low point on the trip put together - it has been fascinating to visit China at such as turning point in its history, despite its many frustrations for a traveller. As expected at the outset, visiting China was often an interesting experience (as opposed to a simply enjoyable one) - but interesting it certainly was.

The first thing that struck me was how far from united so much of China is. The Tibetan 'problem' is well known, but as soon as we set foot into North West China we quickly realised that there was a similar Uighar and Mongolian problem. While insignificant compared to total Chinese population, these provinces make up perhaps half of China's landmass, while the total number of Uighars is one and half times that of the population of Great Britain.

Islam stretches deep into today's China, but only tiny minorities exist east of the Great Wall in cities in the ancient Empire proper, like Xian and Beijing. Sadly, China appears to have used the war on terror as a pretext to persecute political dissenters, particularly Muslims. Further east, there were signs of a once powerful Buddhist influence, but the real legacy from the past is the highly pragmatic Confuscian bureaucracy that propped up the Empire for so long, in complete isolation from the rest of the world.

This legacy remains all too visible today: at the borders, in the banks, train stations and in the hotels. Before long you are drowning in pieces of paper, issued in triplicate and each carefully stamped two or three times. The 'long arm' of Beijing is also very much evidence; it expects the citizens of Xinjiang to set their watches in line with the capital even though this means that in the west, the sun does not set until midnight in high summer.

But beyond the Confuscian ideals upon which the Communist state has drawn so heavily, there seems to little else that remains from the past. To me, the pace of change and the sense of both individualism and capitalism is the most powerful I have ever encountered. The latter is acutely ironic for a country that still claims to be Communist. Change is clearly happening at a startling rate, but the Chinese people are forgoing political liberty in return for improved living standards. The question, of course, is whether the Party can continue to muddle along by delivering growth through piecemeal reform, or whether wholesale reform will be required (which may in turn undermine the Party). Whatever the outcome, the challenges facing China today are nothing less than daunting.

Returning home

And so, now back to life in London. It would not be true to say that I am relishing the prospect of 9am on Monday morning, but after 5 months living out of a backpack, it feels like as good a time as any. The sense of saturation that many people speak of is not something I have felt acutely, but I do at least now understand the concept. I have had a unique opportunity to step back from my life and reflect upon it, which has been invaluable. But now, the greatest draw of returning home is to see friends and family. It has been a while ...

JM

Beijing

2007-08-30T15:41:00.000Z

I had less than a week left. And having seen results of the relentless pace of change in other major Chinese cities such as Xian and Lanzhou, I was by no means champing at the bit to leave Tibet: I expected Beijing to be a vast, sprawling city , enveloped in smog where the sun never quite manages to shine.

I was delighted to be proved wrong. The sun shone and I found Beijing to be a wonderful city; I thoroughly enjoyed my final days in China, easing myself back into the creature comforts (primarily food, drink and shopping) that await me in London. In addition, my friend James decided that as I had walked with him at the beginning and at the end of his epic journey to Jerusalem, that - having also been there at the beginning in Damascus - he would fly out to mark the end of my (somewhat less impressive) trip.

If China is the world's spiritual home of concrete, Beijing has a lot to live up to. Its centrepiece, Tian'anmen Square (the world's largest) rises to the challenge, with no question of greenery; red flags provide the only relief from the grayness. Beijing's roads are also quite extraordinary: every major route through the city is literally the size of the M25. And this vast capacity still does not prevent total gridlock. At the time of my visit the government are experimenting with ways to solve the traffic problem: one solution be trialled is to take 50% of cars off the road (determined by numberplate) at any one time. Only in China...

Tian'anmen Square

But other than these concrete indulgences, Beijing struck me as a clean, vibrant city with many beautiful parks and tourist attractions to visit. I spent a pleasant afternoon exploring the Temple of Heaven to the south of the city centre, as well as wandering up north from the Forbidden City through Jingshan and Behai park with James.

The Forbidden city itself is impressive, although much of it appeared to be in the process of renovation for Beijing 2008 (as was Chairman Mao's mausoleum... and Everest Base Camp it seems...) We walked through courtyard after courtyard and after several hours we had still barely scratched the surface.

Outside of the city lies, of course, The Great Wall. Unlike most other 'must see' tourist sights in China, which tend to be ruined by this very fact, The Wall easily exceeded my expectations. Before James arrived, I walked about 10km along the Wall from Jinshaling to Simitar, both of which lie further away from Beijing and the huge tourist crowds. It was a beautiful day, the views in Mongolia were stunning and at times I was quite alone as I walked. (Most of the time, however, I was 'helped' along the way by people muttering "hello water" once every five minutes or so! )

The wall is magnificent, even if it was complete folly. Despite the official Chinese version of history, it never prevented an invasion and was virtually a bottomless pit into which Imperial China poured resources - both people and money. Nevertheless, walking along it as it snakes up and down through the hilly countryside was a wonderful experience, even it did made me empathise for those who had once hauled the stones up there to build it.

Back in Beijing, the choice of food, coffee, alcohol and shopping was eye popping. Ironically, people seem to gaze longingly into the western priced super brand stores such as Gucci, before heading around the corner to The Silk Market, where it is possibly to find the same brands, ripped off and sold at knock down prices. (Although knock down the prices you must, as the first starting price is often not far off London prices - it's a long way down from 450 to 15 yuan for a pair for Calvin Kleins...)

The pre Olympic buzz in Beijing is also extraordinary. Everything is being renovated, the (state controlled) television runs stories daily as if it were a month away, and there is a tangible sense of excitement in the city. Even the taxi drivers are learning English.

The competitive pressure on China seems to be enormous. I watched unbelievingly as a crucial swimming event was reporting on CCTV9, the amusingly named Chinese English news channel. The headline was "China Goldless" and the report proceeded to work its way through every event naming and shaming the individuals who had failed to achieve even a bronze medal. There was no mention of any other country at event level, although at the end the reporter mumbled something about Australia taking home more medals than anyone else. China is on show next year and I cannot imagine the lengths that the country is going to to bring home its best ever haul of medals.

The days seemed to flash past and suddenly it was time to return home. But while Beijing is a fun city, it can never quite compete with London in certain respects. One major consolation of returning home will be the first decent steak and a properly served Gin and Tonic in six months. London's Calling?

Just before jumping into the taxi to the airport

JM

Walking in the clouds

2007-08-21T10:52:00.001Z

Before leaving Tibet I was determined to experience some of the its wilderness: Tibet makes up around a tenth of China's land mass but less than 0.5% of its population. The average altitude on the Tibetan plateau is 4500m, and it is the source of the drinking water for c40% of the world's population. In other words, it's very high and very wet.

So, after Tom and Debs had left for London, I made enquiries to see if I could join up with others looking to go on a major trek. I had set my sights on a 80km walk between two major monasteries outside of Lhasa - Ganden and Samye monasteries. It is a tough, 4-5 day trek, taking in two passes over 5000m.

Through the noticeboards at the various hostels and travel agencies, I was lucky enough to find a lovely Ukranian couple, Igor and Polena, who wanted to do the same thing at the same time. I had been wondering about doing the trek without any help, but the prospect of carrying all my sleeping and cooking gear, plus 5 days worth of food at this altitude, meant I was quickly won round to having a cook and some yaks to carry our gear.

We left immediately and headed for a Ganden monastery, itself at 4500m. A politically significant monastery, it felt almost eery wandering around what is now a shell of a thing: it once housed 2000 monks (before the number was restricted to 100) and many of the buildings were reduced to rubble by the Red Guards in the 1960s.

Nothing could diminish the views of the valley below, however, as we walked around the kora (pilgrim circuit), just behind a smiling old lady in traditional clothes (complete with the same style sunhat that all Tibetan women of her age wear) and her her two young (grand?) children, clad in jeans. Smoke from burning juniper piles filled our noses as we went, and the woman ahead of us patiently stopped at each shrine and stroked every stone of significance along the way.

We descended from the monastery, picked up our animals and walked up the valley to our first camp site. We were able to enjoy the stunning views back down the valley for a short time before - as happened every night between 6 and 7 o'clock - the heavens opened and it rained, more or less incessantly, until around 8 o'clock the following morning.

Sheltering from the rain!

The climb to the first 5200m pass was long and pretty tough. Luckily for me, my longer than expected exposure to base camp and its environs (see separate posting!) held me in good stead and I was completely spared from altitude sickness. However, walking at this altitude feels like 50 years have been added to your age; a tight chest is something you have to put up with.

Prayer flags greeted us at the top of the pass, but the best was to come on the other side. The sky had cleared and the vast, green valleys opened up below us. As we descended, we found ourselves walking in the clouds. The wind would propel the cloud along the valley floor, into the steep mountains, at which point it would soar vertically upwards. It was unlike anything I have ever seen and utterly captivating to watch.

The view from Chugla Pass

The following day we enjoyed a rather more straightforward climb to another pass of similar height. What followed was a steep descent alongside a stream which rapidly turned into a raging torrent, with incredibly lush, green hills all around us. We passed herders' camps, complete with the massive fierce dogs, thankfully on leashes, for which Tibet is infamous. (To date I have seen nothing but cuddly, but rather irritating, chiwawas in Lhasa... a little disappointing if you've invested hundreds of pounds in a series of rabies jabs).

Our trusty yaks

The more we descended, the more stable the weather seemed to become. By the time we reached Samye monastery, the sky was blue and the sun shone brightly. Mercifully, we evaded the police and their permit bureaucracy (we didn't have one as the office was closed for days and we needed to get going) and explored Tibet's first every monastery, where Buddhism challenged the incumbent Bon establishment and where The Great Debate saw to it that Tibetan Buddhism took a more Indian, as opposed to a Chinese (Zen) path. The atmosphere in the assembly hall, full of monks chanting from their prayer sheets was magical; we had to tear ourselves in order to catch the ferry over the river and head back to Lhasa.

Samye monastery

JM

Impressions of Tibet

2007-08-21T10:04:00.000Z

Stunning to look at...

En route to Everest and on a separate foray to Lake Namtso (north of Lhasa), we had the opportunity to explore some of Tibet in our Landcruiser. The landscape, although at times desolate (the sight of a tree is a rare thing), is extraordinarily picturesque; my burn rate of rolls of film increased dramatically.

Phunstoling monastery

We took a detour off the 'Friendship Highway' (the overland route connecting Tibet and Nepal) and visited a quiet monastery, well off the beaten track. Tucked away at the end of deserted valley and at the foot of a giant sand dune, Phunstoling monastery was quite a different experience from the busier monasteries we had seen so far.

The monks greeted us warmly and led us around the complex, opening up the chapels for us to see as we went. After this, we climbed to the ruins left by the Cultural Revolution and took in the magnificent views over the valley.

When we descended back to the monastery, we found the monks scattered across the courtyard, chanting prayers as they sat in the shade underneath the trees.

Qomokanga mountain

The following day we decided to take on a day trek and see how high we could climb. Despite the ominous clouds and some rain, we pushed on up the valley through a hamlet and stopped below the glacial wall where the snowline began. At perhaps 5400m, this was the highest we had been so far. All possible in a few hours walk from the road...

A herders' camp below Qomokanga

Lake Namtso

Lake Namsto, the world's highest salt water lake at c5000m, deserves its reputation as a Tibetan 'must see.' We spent two nights in what can only be described as extremely basic accomodation, but were able to enjoy a full day of sunbathing in perhaps the fiercest sun I have ever experienced. But despite the sun, the ambient temperature was simply perfect; the cool mountain air made it very comfortable to sit and relax. The only issue was later discovering the odd gap in my sunscreen...

The bright blue of lake Namtso is set against a backdrop of green pastures and snow capped mountains in the distance. Despite being well visited, the vast majority of the huge lake remains deserted and completely unspoilt; it was a perfect place to unwind after the trials and tribulations of trying to get to Everest Base Camp (see separate posting).

Yaks grazing near lake Namsto

... but culturally suffocated

But for all Tibet's beauty, it is hard - even as a passing visitor - not to feel uncomfortable. The scars of the Chinese 'liberation' are all too plain to see, but the really heartbreaking thing is that two generations of state controlled press and education appears to have reduced Tibetan resistance to pragmatic acceptance.

I was initially incredulous at the China's apparent desire to once again tolerate Buddhism in Tibet (after all, there is perhaps no better draw on the tourist dollar in all of China) while at the same time clamping down on the Dalai Lama, banning all images of him as recently as 1996. It struck me as rather like tolerating Christianity but persecuting Christ.

But the apparently contradictory position is because of the indivisible nature of religious and political power in Tibet. One of the strikings thing about many of the monasteries in Tibet is how huge and imposing they are - the Potala Palace being the best example; they seem designed to give an impression of military might as well as religious significance. Indeed, a (very) brief glance at Tibetan history seems to reveal exactly the same kind of political power struggles that existed in more secular states.

So the Chinese crushed the political influence that lay in the monasteries. Every monastery now has a quota of monks; numbers in the greatest ones have collapsed from one or two thousand to the same number of hundreds. Once again, the symbolic Potala has been hardest hit; it lies empty like a vast museum, save a handful of Chinese appointed monks. (I was not able to see it because it is now nearly impossible to get hold of a ticket, thanks to the hoards of Chinese tourists who pour in to see Tibet. Presumably they are in total ignorance of what their government has done to it, along with other Tibetan monasteries.)

Nevertheless, even though the monasteries bear the scars of Chinese occuption, visiting them remains a very moving experience, perhaps because Tibetan customs are so far removed from our own. Where else is it possible to imagine a pilgrim prostrating themselves on the ground, at every step they take?

But under the surface, it is hard not to detect a prevailing pragmatism which is eroding the very essence of Tibetan culture. The odds are - and always have been - so stacked against Tibet that the people have no choice but to accept the situation and get on with their lives. The number of Han Chinese now probably matches the number of Tibetans in Lhasa, while China's total population of course dwarfs the Tibetan total, at around 5 million. Despite the extraordinary numbers of Han Chinese in Lhasa, The Chinese government continues to deny there is an immigration 'programme' and is not in the habit of releasing population statistics that might contradict this position.

Strict control of education and media means that both Chinese and Tibetan youngsters have grown up with a version of events that I shudder to imagine. As early as 10 years after the invasion this was beginning to take effect; I was stunned to read that some young Tibetans also participated in the Cultural Revolution (although the vast majority of the damage was caused by Chinese Red Guards roaming the country).

Nor should the degree of intimidation be underestimated. Again, it is hard to guage this as a visitor, but everyone we spoke to was extremely muted about the situation. Of course, they cannot trust every passing tourist, but the other reason must be the severity of the punishment meted out to political 'troublemakers' - special prison camps have been used in the past, and - in the absence of a release of the vast numbers of people held in them, one has to assume they are still in use.

For me, the most striking summary of the entire situation was a young Tibetan we met. Aged 21, he was educated in Dharamsala (effectively a mini Tibet since the Dalai Llama moved there in 1959) and consequently an independent spirit. While in India he had 'Free Tibet' tatooed on his arms and made the mistake of falling into the hands of the Chinese border police because his paperwork was not in order. A policeman whom he knew previously warned him to deal with his tatoos, and so he burnt them off with a cigarette butt before anyone else saw them. The scars looked horrendous.

He told us sadly how few (at least young) people in Tibet think like he does anymore. A tiny proportion of Tibetans are able to leave the country for their education, the rest learn the Communist Party's version of events at school. Our conversations with other Tibetans, even when in a safe environment, seemed to endorse this. The situation was described to us as "difficult:" many young people went to school with Chinese people and made Chinese friends, meanwhile all future prospects lie in co-existence with the Chinese.

It is impossible to blame the Tibetan people for adopting a pragmatic approach; they have no other choice. It is also impossible to deny that Chinese rule has brought many economic benefits; the government has invested over $1.5bn in transport infrastructure in the last few years. I have even found the devastation of Tibetan culture by the Chinese more understandable (but still unforgivable and tragic) in light of what China did to itself during the Cultural Revolution.

But is hard visit Tibet today without a twinge of sadness. The country has always been at odds with the rest of the world: while Buddhism waned elsewhere, it grew stronger in Tibet; while other nations carefully separated church and state, Tibet fused them together under the Dalai Lama as late as the 17th Century. For right or for wrong, Tibet appears to have been always fiercely uncomprising, and this is no longer the case. Their culture can only now be described as increasingly commercialised and they have been obliged to accept the Chinese way; pragmatic acceptance of better living standards over and above coherent political and religious ideology. The tragedy is that while the Chinese people have chosen this way (albeit implicitly), the Tibetans have had absolutely no choice but to accept it.

JM

Everest

2007-08-20T14:40:00.000Z

Chinese whispers

All we wanted to do was see the north face of Everest from the Tibetan base camp. How hard could it be?

Agonisingly difficult, apparently. As well as our difficult-to-obtain-but-completely-ineffectual permit to enter Tibet (no one checked for it subsequently), we needed an "alien" permit to visit the Everest region, a guide and a ticket to the Everest region.

Throwing money at the Chinese bureaucracy

I am now in a position to say that this rivals the bureaucracy (and frustration) of Turkmenistan... and as we were to find out, unlike Turkmenistan, it did not even guarantee results. We arrived at the checkpoint at the turn off to Everest Base Camp and were told in typical Chinese style that EBC was closed. No reason, no explanation and certainly no apology.

And so began the Chinese whispers. A number of explanations surfaced, and some of them blossomed in the information vacuum left by the authorities. These ranged from the mundane (the condition of the road), to the intriguing (something to do with the 1 year "we are ready" event for the Beijing 2008 Olympics), to the paranoid (the location of the massive Chinese standing army in Tibet). By the end of the day I had reported to the BBC bureau in Beijing that the Chinese army were amassing troops in the region (true), that there was trouble at the Nepali border (true), that it was eventually closed (true) and wondered out loud whether this might mean a 'situation' was developing (not true so far...!).

Perhaps Tom, Debs and I have all spent too long working in professional services, but by a day or two into our little trip, we had identified a bewildering number of 'stakeholders' all of whom had a different perspective on us achieving our simple objective of getting to Everest.

They included: our driver (as distinct from the owner of the jeep and the manager of the jeep); our guide; the travel agency (through whom we had booked the trip); the 'Group Leader' (who it transpired was the government bigwig who had closed the mountain on behalf of the Chinese government); and the Everest region ticket sellers (who worked on behalf of the Chinese government, and rather than being a helpful source of information, sold tickets regardless of whether the lucky purchasers would be allowed access to base camp).

This quality of information (low) combined with this number of stakeholders (high) resulted in a situation which would have been hilarious had not Tom and Debs flown half way around the world to see Everest.

It all came to a head as we sat huddled around a phone in a small room in Tingri at the end of an abortive first day. We were there in order to attempt to buy another set of 1000 yuan (75 pounds) tickets so that we could try again the following day. Predictably, the ticket holders were delighted at the prospect of taking the money off our hands, but could offer no guarantee that they would actually be of any use.

At this point, we discovered something about the Tibetan way. We knew that many Tibetans (and Chinese) like to avoid confrontation at any cost, but we discovered that in the case of our driver and guide, this extended to a complete refusal to address the harsh reality of the situation and instead to invent numerous obstacles (as if the Chinese government wasn't enough), all the while refusing to actually state that our situation was hopeless. The driver kicked the ball into play by declaring that the alternative road to base camp was so dangerous that that owner of the Landcruiser required that we should accept liability for any damage to the jeep.

Looking down at our contract that plainly stated (in English... therein lay the problem) this was not the case, we begged to differ and decided to call Tenzin at the travel agency through whom we had booked the trip. But by now Tenzin had decided that the situation at EBC was 'political' and therefore anyone who even asked how it might be overcome was on the verge of dancing naked at base camp waving a Free Tibet banner (his words, not mine). Tom consequently received an earful down the phone for 10 minutes and we were disowned by the travel agency if we so much as attempted to go any closer to Everest.

At this point anther phone was thrust at Debs, without so much a word as who it might be. A man told her that, while the road was perilously dangerous, everyone realised how much we wanted to go to base camp and so we would try the following morning. Delighted that someone was finally talking our language (literally and metaphorically) - and that this was in fact the 'manager' of the jeep - we began to to discuss throwing caution to the wind and risking the road (and liability) despite what the Tenzin had said.

Shortly afterwards, we were somewhat surprised to learn that everyone else's understanding of the above conversation was that we would not be able to attempt the alternative route. As we sank into total confusion, our guide attempted to clarify things by reminding us for the fifth time that buying tickets for the following day might be a waste of money, because they did not guarantee entry beyond the checkpoint.

Finally, the driver intervened and in an instant earned his wages for the entire trip. While we had spent the best part of an hour trying to decide how to proceed, he pointed out that the sky outside had cleared and Everest was visible in the distance... This farcical situation had meant we were missing the very reason we were there.

Everest in the distance (c60km) from Tingri

We went outside and enjoyed the view and agreed that we were not going to resolve the situation. That night at supper, our driver declared that he was more than happy to attempt the drive to base camp if only he had a "partner driver." We thanked him, said we would be delighted to pay for a third helper and left him at 10pm, drinking and playing cards, knowing full well that said 'partner driver' would not materialise by 8am the following morning...

Tingri was as close to Everest as we would get on that occasion. We will never know the reason, but the one year before the Beijing Olympics event is the most likely. The following day, a multiplicity of sources confirmed that both roads remained closed. We had no choice but to head back towards Lhasa.

Take 2

Three days later, just as we were readying to leave Lake Namtso for Lhasa, we found out from Tenzin that EBC was open. A mad flurry of rearranging Tom and Debs' flights followed and we signed up for second trip to base camp.

We drove immediately to Lhasa, swapped vehicles, driver and guide and headed out towards Tingri. Without a hitch, we passed the numerous checkpoints and found ourselves picking our way up the rough (but hardly life threatening as we'd been led to believe) track to base camp.

There we discovered that the weather was an even more formidable opponent than the Chinese government. Spring, not the rainy summer months, is the time to see the mountain - it is then that the expeditions attempt to reach the summit. We arrived in the pouring rain and spent much of our time at base camp huddled in a tent playing cards.

But we were extremely lucky. We enjoyed good views of the mountain both evenings we were there and spectacular views the morning we left. Base camp sits down the valley from Everest, behind a massive terminal moraine which straddles the entire c1km wide valley floor. Beyond the moraine are the white seracs of the glacier and finally the bright white north face of Everest.

What surprised me was how high the snowline was. Due to the time of year, the mountains were brown for another c1000m above base camp, which itself is 5200m above sea level. It was also very hard to believe - from the bottom - that four vertical kilometres remained above us to the summit.

Whenever Everest appeared from behind the clouds, it always seemed impossibly large. But the more time we spent gazing at it, the 'tamer' it seemed. Then we would return the following day and be amazed once again by its size. (What is also certain is that the mountain looks considerably bigger 'in the flesh' than in a photograph...) But despite this, the one thing we all agreed that remained constant was the burning desire to know what it must be like standing at the summit.

JM

Lhasa - arrival in Tibet

2007-08-15T13:18:00.000Z

Having spent a few days alone in Xian after Helen headed home, I was very much looking forward to meeting up with Tom and Debs - friends from University who had decided to join me in Tibet for their summer holiday. We arrived more or less at the same time and spent a relaxing few days in Lhasa acclimatising to the altitude.

Lhasa could not have provided a sharper contrast with the humid, smoggy cities of Gansu and Shaanxi province. The air is clean and crisp - if a little thin at 3600m. A poster in a travel agency proudly named Lhasa the Sunshine City, due to an average of 3,000 hours of sunshine every year. That equates to an extraordinary average of 8+ hours of sunshine every single day. And Tibet is not famed for its mild winters.

Beyond the weather, the Tibetan style buildings lept out in contrast to the entirely functional, concrete monotony of China. Black framed windows set into the white washed walls and red underlining the roofs both created a sense of character that has been entirely lacking so far.

After just a few hours in Tibet, it is hard not to notice some quite different characteristics in the people (as well as a number that are shared with the Chinese). Despite an equally challenging language barrier, the Tibetans' attractive features are constantly adorned with an infectious smile that is hard not to love. As a visitor, you feel far more welcome than elsewhere in China.

Doubtless this is due in part to the fact that Tibet has had more contact with foreigners in recent history. Although Britain established contact with Tibet as early as the the 18th century, it soon after closed its doors to all foreigners for over a hundred years. It was not until the Great Game was played out east across Central Asia right into Tibet, that foreign influence arrived onto the plateau in the early 20th century. Interestingly, before this time and since, of all the non Asian powers, Britain has had a disproportionate influence on Tibet.

Today tourism is clearly a major pillar of the Tibetan economy. Lhasa is a crazy melting pot of religious ritual and naked capitalism that somehow seems to hold together. The best example of this juxtaposition is the Jokhang kora, the pilgrim circuit around Tibet's holiest temple: bazaar style haggling at the stalls lining the street provides the backdrop to countlesss pilgrims who shuffle clockwise around the temple, spinning their prayer wheels and chanting out loud.

The Jokhang kora

It is refreshing to once again see old buildings alive with people acting out ancient traditions, albeit in jeans and contemporary clothing if they are young. A vast number of pilgrims of all ages lined up outside the Jokhang when we visited, and we were pleased to feel jostled along inside by Tibetans moving around the temples, as opposed to tourists wielding their cameras. Here historical buildings appear to have a value beyond restoration into sterile museum pieces and extraction of the maximum possible revenue from tourism.

Perhaps because as a tourist you are simply a (lucrative) byproduct of what is going on anyway, it is impossible not to feel privileged to be in Tibet. The religious buzz in and around the Jokhang is extremely moving, while from the outside, the massive Potala Palace (the traditional residence of the Dalai Lama) is as imposing as it is impressive.

So first impressions of Lhasa are overwhelmingly positive: it appears to be a thriving city in which Tibetan culture is not only allowed some freedom to express itself, but is showcased to visitors from around the world. The most interesting thing to understand over the next few weeks is to what extent Tibet is really functioning under the surface.

JM

Xian - the end of the Silk Road

2007-07-31T12:07:00.000Z

It began to sink in as we stood on the old city walls of Xian overlooking the Western gate through which the silk caravans would have passed: this was the end of a long road that has guided my route from Damascus.

Xian, the ancient capital of China, is of course much more than a Silk Road town. The influences of the road remain: there is a Muslim quarter and mosque and round bread loaves and kebabs of Central Asia stubbornly refuse to disappear completely from the street stalls. But for the first time since Iran, I find myself out of the once nomadic steppes and deserts and back into a civilisation steeped in history.

Not that it is very visible today. Apart from the restored old city walls and the odd symbolic bell tower, everything is new; Xian has apparently embraced capitalism with an insatiable appetite. Familiar brands dominate the high street, including Starbucks (perhaps the best soya cappuccino I have ever had in my life), McDonalds, KFC and clothing brands too numerous to mention, ranging from Gucci to Etam.

The sun rarely shines in Xian. Instead a heavy, humid haze hangs over the city, meaning it is impossible to see more than a few hundred metres. Despite the bad weather affecting China at moment which must play a role, this is clearly the effect of pollution. Having spent the best part of a week in Xian in high summer, even immediately following rainfall, I never saw the sun break through enough to cast shadows on the ground.

The City Walls of Xian enveloped in smog

Initially creating an aura of mystery, I quickly came to miss the complete lack of contrast in the light; it reminded me of skiing in flat light! Consequently, the time to enjoy it is at night. The city comes alive with its own lights and the people crowd the streets everywhere to such a degree that would have alarmed me had I not experienced Oxford Street.

Nevertheless, it is a fun city to spend a few days and indulge in some shopping. This we did with considerable dedication before heading out to the Terracotta Army, the jewel in Xian's crown of tourist attractions.

Shopping in the Muslim Quarter

The most impressive thing about the Terracotta Army is that any individual could conceive of - and execute - such an idea: to create a 6,000 strong army of warriors to protect his own tomb and his soul in the afterlife. Perhaps this is best example of the (justified) Chinese conviction of their superiority over all other races in ancient history which in turn caused the country's isolation and for her to be so dramatically overtaken by the rest of the world in the last 500 years. Of course, all this looks set to change now...

It is the scale of the army that will remain with me. The crowds around us and the distance we were from the soldiers sadly destroyed any sense of atmosphere and prevented real appreciation of the detail, but scale of the emperor's ambition came through very powerfully. Yet it is the detail makes the whole even more impressive: every soldier has a unique face, each was hand made and hand painted and equipped with weapons of the day. It is for this reason that the Terracotta Army is called the Eigth Wonder of the World.

Xian sadly marks the end of Helen's trip. In two weeks, we have moved from Central Asian Plov to Chinese style quail, from local beer to Starbucks, from a yurt to a four star hotel and from sand to the lush green terraces of Shaanxi province. I think no other two week period of my trip so far has seen such contrasts. I have enjoyed having her along enormously and will miss having someone to laugh at the trials and tribulations that are part and parcel of travelling in China.

JM

The Northern Silk Road to Xian - Dunhuang & The Hexi Corridor

2007-07-28T15:18:00.000Z

Both the Buddhist caves and the sand dunes of Turpan (see previous posting) served to whet our appetites for what was to come in Dunhuang, another oasis town this time where the Southern and Northern Silk Roads merge into a single a route towards Xian.

The Mogao caves were once a complex of over 1000 Buddhist caves, literally hidden away in the desert outside Dunhuang until an itinerant monk happened upon them around the turn of last century. He subsequently devoted the rest of his life to restoring and protecting them and they remain an incredible sight today.

At first the caves were used as retreats by a few monks, but in time their proximity to the Silk Road resulted in a huge increase both in the number of caves and the level of ambition of artwork within them. The caves became a display of devotion and were generously endowed by westbound merchants who hoped to secure their safe return and eastbound merchants who had made it back to the safety of China. At their height in the Tang dynasty (7th to 10th centuries) the caves were a thriving community of 140 monks and nuns, along with numerous local sculptors, painters and calligraphers.

The caves are awe inspiring. Upon entering the first, all that is visible is a huge fold of cloth sculpted into the rock. As the eyes become accustomed to the gloom, they are drawn to the two enormous feet (the big toenails are the length of my forearm) on either side. At this point they slowly are drawn upwards to take in the enormity of the 35 metre high seated Buddha.

We saw just a tiny selection of the caves, but enough to appreciate the quality of the art and to notice the foreign influences - as well as goods - that travelled down the Silk Road: Indian faces and Buddhism shared the same narratives as local people, customs and Taoist ideas. Despite being extremely busy, the Mogao caves were nonetheless a highlight of the entire Silk Road.

The only way to follow such a morning was to opt for a complete contrast. We hired bikes and rode towards the massive (300m high) sand dunes that literally bump up against the outskirts of Dunhuang. As with Tian Chi, we were somewhat surprised to be welcomed by a hefty entrance fee, which presumably funded the camel festival-cum-theme park and wooden steps that had been built up one of the dunes.

We turned our backs on it all and set out to find our own, quiet dune, when suddenly a microlight circled over head. Immediately I knew I had to try it and it conjured up images of the English Patient for Helen; we knew we could not pass up the opportunity. We swallowed our pride, paid our dues and enjoyed a brief, but exhilarating and spectacular flight over the dunes.

The dunes from the microlight

Once back on the ground, we left the camels where they were and trudged up a huge - and almost too hot to walk on - dune, well away from the crowds.

The Hexi Corridor

We were to find last of the desert in a town called Jiaguyuan. Its significance lay in its fortress which - thanks to the Great Wall - guarded the pass into the Chinese Empire through which all travellers had to pass: the Hexi Corridor. For the caravans it offered either the first or the last security and civilisation for months.

Even today, its location is striking. Both the Wall and the Fort have recently been restored and cut an imposing shape in the wilderness. We cycled out from the town to where the wilderness begins. From a turret on the wall at the top of the hill, we looked out to the West: the Hexi corridor is hemmed in by snow capped mountains to the south and the desert to the North. To savour the moment, we walked a short distance into the Gobi desert and sat for while, looking back on the Great Wall of China.

Ahead of us to the east lay the part of China that was driving the economic growth that constantly dominates the headlines. Here the news makes fascinating viewing: every year on year trend reported is a massive increase. The media must contribute to the optimism and energy that you can sense in China, although of course it is closely monitored by the state. Nevertheless, I was surprised at how openly (but not non critically of course) the discussion is around the biggest some of the biggest challenges that China faces. These include the undervaluation of the yuan and the sustainability of the unusually high level of savings - changes in either of which could seriously undermine Chinese stability.

The environmental cost of the Chinese miracle is also visible here for the first time. Well documented in our media, I had initially been encouraged by the widespread use of recycling bins upon arrival in Kashgar. But as we rode back from the Wall towards the town, it was impossible not to notice the countless factory chimneys on the outskirts of the town, spewing black smoke into the bright blue sky. The wind carried the smell to the back of our throats and the smoke hung in the air, hinting at the smog to come in the more urbanised east; the contrast with the wilderness could not be more striking.

Our final stopover before Xian was an unexpected surprise. The small town of Zangye somehow had more atmosphere than anywhere Helen and I had found so far. It was neither a tourist town like Dunhuang nor a sprawling concrete mess like Urumqi: it was simply a pleasant place to pass the time. It had a delightful pedestrianised street where people seemed to be taking time out from the hectic pace of China; a welcome change from the highly functional norm for Chinese towns. We duly joined in with the merriment and tried a local dish called Big Plate Chicken, comprising a whole chopped chicken cooked in a tasty hot sauce. Some pieces were rather less appetising than others...!

Dunhuang

JM & HM

The Northern Silk Road to Xian - Tian Chi & Turpan

2007-07-24T23:56:00.000Z

Within a week of Helen (my sister) arriving, I had experience a number of firsts for the trip so far: gin & tonic; rose wine (Chinese, not recommended); red wine (better, but nothing to write home about) and a night in a four star hotel. As someone who appreciates travelling in style (as well as being happy to rough it I should add), Helen is the perfect travel companion to begin the transition from Central Asian simplicity to East Chinese modernity.

The quality and variety of food continues to improve as we head east, and while it remains possible to to pick up a bowl of noodles for a dollar or so, the gap with more expensive restaurants is widening.
Street markets are now the exception rather than the norm, with shops now replacing them on the high streets - increasingly with price tags and familiar western brands.

But first, so that we could compress the entire transition into two weeks, we spent Helen's first day in China heading for the Kazakh border in order to spend a night in a yurt. The wonderful thing about Xinjiang is that it has absorbed so much of Central Asia. Billo and I found a taste of Tajikistan in Tashkurgan (en route to Pakistan) and Helen and I were to find a taste of Kazazhstan in the north of the province with the Kazakh shepherds who live around Tian Chi - the 'Heavenly Lake' - set among steep, tree lined hills with snow capped mountains in the distance at an altitude of 2000m.

The Kazazh yurts

Idyllic as it may look, this was indeed roughing it: our beds the floor of the yurt and there were no such luxuries as electricity or running water. For food we were offered plov (rice fried in ripe mutton fat, mixed with pieces of ripe mutton) and noodle soup - the Central Asian staple diet. These proved less appealing for Helen when it transpired that the 'vegetarian' version of plov is involves simply picking the mutton out!

It would also be misleading to describe Tian Chi as a little corner of Kazakstan. Parts of it were most certainly Chinese. And, we are rapidly coming to discover, (to quote from the film Borat) "the cultural differences are vaaaaast." It seems that the Chinese tourists' idea of appreciation of one of the most stunning mountain lakes I have ever seen is exorbitant entrance fees, a circus of shops and loud music blaring from speakers, tour boats (complete with air horns despite there being just three of them) and visiting a two year old 'temple' with no apparent raison d'etre other than revenue generation.

I would like to briefly explain what I mean by 'exorbitant' entrance fees. At 100 Yuan (13.5 dollars, excluding transfer from the car park and entrance to the temple which increases the price by a further 50%) this is completely out of kilter with other prices in China. Indexing this to the cost of a cheap meal in China, this is like charging 100 pounds to go around Kew Gardens. The price appears to be the same for locals, making tourism totally unaffordable for the vast majority of Chinese people. Nevertheless, the site is packed, showing just how important China's 'mass affluent' population already are.

Once you are in, it is carnage. The noise is unbearable and a scrum of people jostle for position, posing for a snapshot which invariably involves a V sign, a flexed arm muscle or both arms raised towards the sky. Around the lake is a catalogue of overkill: a two lane tarmac road stretches much too far around it, while concrete 'toadstools' (to sit on) and giant 'leaves' (to shelter under) adorn the largely unnecessary concrete stepped walkway.

Fortunately, we have discovered that the horror is inversely proportional to the distance in metres (in particular vertical metres) from the entrance at which everyone is dropped off by their vehicles. Our yurts, at the far end of the lake, were situated in total tranquility with just a handful of other foreign tourists besides ourselves.

Tian Chi - peace at last

The following day we walked around the other side of the lake and sat, quite alone, at the top of hill overlooking the lake as the eagles circled around us, ridingthe thermals. The lake can indeed live up to its name, but very much in spite of the best efforts of the tourist industry.

Turpan

Next we travelled to Turpan, an oasis town on the Northern Silk Road (I had cut north from the Southern Silk Road in order to meet Helen) which - at 80m below sea level is the hottest place in China. However, in the same way as I have seen in Iran and Pakistan, an extensive irrigation system has transformed the surrounding area in a green land of plenty, famed for its Delicious grapes and sweet water melon.

Sitting under the vines that have even been extended to the main pedestrian street in Turpan eating fruit proved to be an extremely pleasant way to pass the time in the sweltering 40 degree heat. We once ventured out on bikes to explore the town, but we driven back into the shade within a couple of hours.

The vine trellises of Turpan

But we did spend an interesting day visiting two towns nearby Turpan. The first was Jioahe, a 2000 year old former garrison town, perched on top of a steep sided plateau that had been created by a fork in the river. Amazingly intact considering its age, it is possible to walk around what were clearly once streets and see the exact layout of the town.

The ancient desert city of Jiaohe

The second town, Tuyoq, bore an incredible resemblance to Jiaohe but remains inhabited by a devout Muslim population who seem determined to maintain their traditional way of life. The town contains a temple which is believed to be a religious site mentioned in the Koran and is therefore a site of pilgrimage.

Tuyoq

Beyond the village, we chanced upon some caves set into the cliffs containing Buddhist wall paintings. We had the place to ourselves (apart from their elderly minder who enthusiastically opened them up for us), making them very atmospheric in the solitude. Sadly, the faces of every Buddha had been systemically destroyed by the Red Guards of Mao's Cultural Revolution of the late sixties, in which he instructed China's youths to destroy all evidence of 'bourgeois thought,' which included cultural heritage.

That evening we sat on the sand dunes just outside Turpan (it was a relief to find desert 'proper' after the flatness of the Taklakaman) and watched the sunset before sleeping out under the stars outside our Uighar guesthouse. The contrast from the freezing cold evening at Tian Chi could not have been more marked.

JM & HM (co written on the train)

Kashgar & The Southern Silk Road

2007-07-19T09:08:00.000Z

Kashgar

Kashgar's location has always been significant: it is the Silk Road hub that connects China with Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan via two high altitude mountain passes, both of which I have been lucky enough to experience in the last few weeks (and one of them twice!)

I had expected Kashgar to bring to a close the Central Asian chapter of this trip and had even braced myself for the more testing aspects of Chinese culture that I had read about, such as the staring and the real difficulty being understood even if attempting Mandarin.

All of these concerns proved misplaced - at least for now. Kashgar, like most of Xinjiang province, is far more Central Asian than it is Chinese. The local Uighar people look different from the Han Chinese, speak their own language, are Muslim and have the same customs and food tastes as their Central Asian neighbours - as one person put it quite simply: "I am not Chinese."

The Uighar people in fact have a history of resisting Chinese which extends to the present day, despite the mass migration of Han Chinese into the province which has done something to diminish the Uighar's domination of the population figures in Xinjiang. Within a few minutes of meeting them, a number of people have expressed their dislike for the Chinese (i.e. Han Chinese) - citing reasons as diverse as cultural differences or discrimination in areas such as finding work.

So Kashgar is a muddle of contradictions: a gigantic statue of Chairman Mao (hailing a taxi?!?) is a short walk away from the Id Kah Mosque. Amusingly, the Xinjiang museum attempts to smooth over the cracks in the region's history with an upbeat historical narrative of how regional culture has all contributed to the greatness and unity of the motherland...

Kashgar is most famous for its Sunday market - a magnet which brings thousands of Central Asians together every week to buy or sell just about anything imaginable. Billo and I managed to experience it en route to Pakistan.

Our visit to the animal market got off to a bizarre start with the tourists (and there were rather more than we were used to) beating the locals to it and somewhat outnumbering them. Within an hour or so, however, the market was in full swing with cattle, sheep, goats, donkeys, horses and the odd camel changing hands at a furious pace. The sheep were even given the salon treatment to ensure they fetched the best possible price.

The rest of the market was so sprawling it felt more like an area of
town than a market as such, comprising indoor bazaars and a mass of street markets. The real buzz was invariably the latter, where we watched people scrutinizing everything from water melons to the sales pitch of some obscure Chinese medicine. The variety of ethnic groups at the market, each betrayed by their wonderful local hats was wonderful. We spent as much time looking for people as we did for things to buy.

An unexpected highlight of Kashgar was meeting two like minded Londoners - literally as we were waiting at the traffic lights on our rented bikes. Fred & Cederic (from Switzerland) completely humbled us and our little trip by having cycled from Tehran to Kashgar. We enjoyed a couple of great evenings swapping stories and helping them celebrate the end of their trip (it made us think of the bad weather we had experienced at the Torugart pass in a completely different light) with some good food and several very good Chinese beers. Their trip may even have inspired us to seek out some adventure of our own on the Karakorum Highway...

The Southern Silk Road - a road less travelled

The Chinese traders had a tough deal. Heading west from Xian, they had to leave the protection of the Great Wall and contend with the Taklakaman desert in Northwest China - just over a quarter of million square kilometres of some of the most inhospitable nothingness on earth.

Of course they skirted around its edges it rather than battle with the sand dunes in the middle, hence the Northern Silk Road via Turpan and the Southern Silk road via Lop Nor and Khotan. The two roads were reunited at Kashgar, whereupon the Chinese caravans would head up into the Pamirs to exchange their wares (which would either head south into Afghanistan and India) via the Kunjerab pass (see the Karakorum Highway posting) or north to Tashkent and Samarkand (see the Pamir Highway posting). Meanwhile the Chinese merchants retraced their steps 3,000 back to Xian, once again braving the deserts and marauding bandits as they went.

Of the two routes, the Southern is the older and historically more significant - many of the famous travellers (including Marco Polo) took it. In its remoteness lay its attraction to the caravan trains - even the bandits thought twice before attempting it. Today it still lacks any major cities and is certainly the road less travelled. Armed with a Mandarin phrasebook in a Uighar speaking province I was to experience the vast emptiness of the Taklakaman desert first hand and find virtually no one who spoke English for the best part of a week.

Even the desert was not what I had expected. Instead of the evocative sand dunes at the heart of the Taklakaman, the landscape was a simply vast formless desert stretching out to the horizon. In the course of a week of bus journeys, just a few dunes (often stitched together with carefully planted grasses to prevent them from shifting onto the roads) and the odd (two humped) camel was all that interrupted the flatness between the Silk Road oasis towns that remain today.

Instead of searing heat and glaring sunshine, the desert was both windy and cloudy, meaning that the sky muddled together with the horizon in a dusty haze. My first stop was the dusty town of Khotan, famed for its carpets, silk and jade production.

I arrived expected a tour of the carpet and silk factories and hoping to buy a carpet. Quickly my expectations adjusted to the difficulties of traveling where it is hard to communicate and there is absolutely no tourist infrastructure: one factory was closed (the second attempt was more fruitful) and in the other one my 'tour' involved me poking my head into various buildings to see what was going on. The speed with which the women worked (while keeping up an impressive level of banter) was as incredible to me as my inability to tie one knot was hilarious to them.

Women at work at the carpet factory in Khotan

I couldn't leave without seeing the silk production process, and when I finally made into the silk factory, it was was worth the effort. From the silk cocoon, one of which I was able to take away with me, I saw the silk threads being wound onto individual spindles by machines and then eventually being cross-weaved into wide sheets of silk. It was fascinating to watch and the process from start to finish is so incredible that is hardly surprising that many people in the west used to think that silk grew on trees.

Beyond these 'sights' there was little to do other than wander around the few oasis towns and surrounding countryside where the bus stopped and I would spend the night. Each town had a street market that was alive with a Central Asian buzz and the irrigated outskirts were made up of lanes of flat roofed mud houses, each with livestock outside and wheat or maize smallholdings nearby.

The country lanes just outside Ruoqiang

Even in these small towns (which must be rural backwaters compared to the cities that are driving China's economic growth) the charge for modernisation was hard not to notice; sparkling new constructions adorned the few 'downtown' streets, even though the tarmac gave way to sand just a few hundred metres away. The pace of change is clearly rapid; my impressions and experiences were quite different from the descriptions I found in the various books I have with me; yet both were published within the last five years. It is clear that even the remotest parts of China are rapidly being hauled into the twenty first century. Travelling overland right through China will be a fascinating experience; moving east is like travelling through time.

JM

Chitral - the Kalasha valleys and lunch with the Finance Minister

2007-07-11T05:18:00.000Z

After Billo had left Gilgit for his marathon week of traveling / partying (involving a 16 hour bus journey to Islamabad, a flight to London, a flight to Glasgow, Greg and Morag's wedding, another flight to Spain and another wedding!!!) I decided to head into North West Frontier province, which borders with Afghanistan.

NWFP is a mixed bag. Peshawar, Chitral and the Swat valley are perfectly safe for travellers. The Tribal Areas (about a quarter of the province), on the other hand are not: they are run according to local traditions, and - while overseen by a government intermediary - Pakistani laws do not apply and the government has no authority. Consequently, they are closed to foreigners (and non local Pakistanis) except for a few roads like the Khyber pass for which you require an armed escort.

Not so for Chitral, fortunately; the only thing that betrays the fact that you are in NWFP is the need to register with the police literally 10 times en route from Gilgit and again upon arrival. Chitral's attraction is its isolation until very recently; by road it can only be accessed via one of two 3000m+ passes, both of which are impassable in winter. Like many of the other places we have visited on this trip, the spotlight of the 'Great Game' also shone on Chitral about 100 years ago, when Britain saw it as a possible bridgehead for a potential Russian invasion of India.

Getting there was quite an ordeal. On the way there, heavy rain in the preceding days had quite literally obliterated the road; it was not even possible to see where it had once been. I had no choice but to leave my jeep on one side, roll up my trousers and wade through the freezing thigh deep water. After walking a few kilometres on the other side, I was lucky enough to hitch ride in another jeep all the way to Chitral. In total: two full days to travel perhaps 400 kilometres.

Ominously for the return journey, it poured with rain when I arrived in Chitral. This made what is a not particularly picturesque administrative centre even less inspiring. I quickly made plans to explore the Kalasha valleys.

The Kalasha valleys

The Kalasha people are a proudly non Muslim tribe. Their worshipping ceremonies differ by having dance as an important component and their women wear a head dress of brightly coloured beads which is perhaps more reminiscent of African tribes than anything I have seen in this part of the world.

The people farm wheat and millet and live in dark, multi storey mud houses which are set into the hillside. Women have a quite a different status to Muslim women in Pakistan: they are allowed to leave their husbands at will in order to live with another man (although they are not allowed to take their children with them.) As a visitor, the contrast is marked: the women approach you and greet you with a warm hand shake and "Schpata!"; most Muslim women in Pakistan on the other hand - even if accompanied by men - never initiate conversation nor should you do so as a strange male.

The Kalasha also have a bizarre belief that chickens will bring the demise of their people. Consequently, no Kalasha person keeps chickens, although eating chicken or eggs seems to be acceptable!

I planned to walk up Bumboret valley - the most picturesque of the three - to stay the night in a Kalasha guesthouse. The following day I wanted to trek up to two 3000m passes and drop into the top end of another Kalasha valley where I would spend another night before returning to Chitral. This was relatively ambitious - I would be climbing the passes in one day instead of the recommended two - but very doable if I started early and had a guide. Getting lost with Afghanistan only 4km away and the in midst of the Hindu Kush would not be ideal.

I enquired at my guest house and was presented with a kind local man who spoke no English. I was comfortable with this so long as he was clear on where I wanted to go before we left. All we needed to do was climb and end up in the Rumbur valley - how hard could it be?

Very hard in fact. Things didn't look good when my man didn't seem to know the way out of the village. A man called down to me in English, "use your eyes - you know better than him!" This did not inspire great confidence in him. He kept trying to descend and I kept insisting we at least traversed the hill to find the route to the pass, if not climb. He caved in far too easily for my liking, but seemed to know where he was going after asking a number of loggers along the way.

The climb up to the first pass was long, extremely steep and rather sweaty, but it was cool at the top with a cloud sitting amongst the craggy peaks. The views down into the valley were magnificent.

But it was the descent that was to prove so much harder. After a few false starts down the mountainside (retreating back up the hill because it was too steep), in my frustration (I was the one carrying a rucksack up and down!) I suggested we descend slowly anyway. Once again, my 'guide' was lacking in any better ideas.

Unfortunately, the mountain got steeper rather than shallower as we descended. It was actually quite dangerous and I narrowly escaped serious injury twice. On one occasion, the mountain was simply too steep and I began to slide down the scree towards a steep gully... my guide finally came in useful by helping me me off the face out of harms way. On the other, I had to climb across a rock face (not ideal with a rucksack) in order to avoid a large cliff. In the end, the most effective way down the steep, slippery slopes proved to be half running, half swinging - Tarzan style - from handful to handful of fortuitously placed thick green plants...

The descent

It was an enormous relief to reach the bottom!

Towards China

If the journey to Chitral had been testing, the trip back to the Karakorum Highway was another story. I walked out of the village and hitched back to Chitral, only to find further complications with the road. There is distinct catch 22 in these mountains: if it rains the roads are washed out, but if it is hot (it had been for two days) the melting snow also washes the road out! There were no buses back to Gilgit.

I took a minibus as far as I could go, before hitching a ride on a jeep, perched on top of some wheat sacks. I have discovered that this is infinitely preferable to the cramped and sweaty interior: the sun is relaxing, the air cooling and the views simply stunning.

The journey to a the half way village called Mastuj took twice as long as it should have: we picked our way along hair-raising tracks around landslides which seem to have hit the road every few hundred metres and waited an hour or so for a tractor that literally had to be pushed around the hairpin bends of one hill.

Mastuj was the end of the line for now. The water across the road ahead was apparently too deep to cross either on foot or by vehicle - at least until a new causeway had been built. Luckily for me I met another likeminded English guy called Jamie who was in the same predicament: he had left the Kalasha valleys the same morning and also needed to get to the border in order to meet up with someone. We kept either other sane (and played a lot of chess) while watching an entire day drift by with no news on the road. However, we were looked after very well by Khalid, the young guy who ran our guesthouse, and shown around the beautiful orchards and gardens of the village.

The following day our luck changed. We were waiting at the roadside to hitch a lift and a convoy of smart 4WDs pulled up. We eyed them covetously. Within a few minutes we had been introduced to the Finance Minister of Pakistan, his grandfather (a Field Marshall) and offered a ride in the security Landcruiser at the back of the convoy (complete with AK47 on board). He was on holiday with his family and heading over the Shandur pass towards Gilgit.

The 3,800m Shandur pass is famous for two reasons. First, when the British took Gilgit in 1892 and encountered local hostility into trouble a relief force hauled cannon over the pass through waist deep snow to save the day. Second, it is home to the world's highest Polo field and the annual contest between Chitral and Gilgit - something which appeared in Michael Palin's recent Himilaya documentary.

Frustratingly, the polo tournament was due to start just four days after we passed through. Nevertheless, we were able to stop and soak up atmosphere of preparation and the stunning scenery and were generously offered a picnic lunch with the Finance Minister's entourage.

Our luck continued when the party stopped at a hotel for the night and we were able to continue onwards with one of the many local police escort cars that was heading in our direction! In all, it took three and half days to make it back the 400km to Hunza, but it was an experience I would happily repeat.

JM

End of part 1

2007-06-26T15:51:00.000Z

Three months ago, Billo and I sat drinking a beer overlooking the Mediterranean in Beirut. Yesterday we sat drinking fermented grapes (it would be wrong to call it wine) overlooking Nanga Parbat - one of the world's highest mountains.

It has been an epic journey: We have travelled by land as far away from the sea as it is possible to go. We have visited ten countries for the first time (eleven if you include our brief illicit visit to Afghanistan) and met all the Stans except Kazakhstan. And that wasn't for the lack of trying: Billo even bought a visa but we simply did not have the time.

In three months, there is no doubt that we have packed it in. We have visited the oldest city in the world, the largest bazaar and surely made a dent in UNESCO's list of World Heritage sites. We have seen a bewildering array of mosques, minarets and blue tiled domes. Our journey has taken us across sweltering deserts, up high altitude snowy passes and across some of the most hair-raising roads on earth. On foot, We have trekked in the Pamirs, the Karakorum and the Himalaya, taking in a 5000m peak and the base camp of one of the world's few 8000m+ peaks.
We have stayed in a 19th Century traditional Uzbek house, a Kyrgyz yurt, a Tajik mud hut, a cave, a tent, a number of Soviet monstrosities and on two occasions - unexpectedly - in hotels that seemed to be making money charging by the hour...

We have travelled mainly by bus and car, although jumped at the chance to use the Russian railways when we could. We have seen petrol vary in price from nearly a dollar to around one cent per litre. We have grown accustomed to buying a seat in a taxi and waiting it out until the car is full. We have had our eyes opened to the meaning of "full" - 6 people in a Lada Niva and 40 in a minibus being the most memorable examples.

We have never been able to spend more than 20 dollars on a meal for two (and only this much on a handful of occasions) and once had a delicious cooked lunch with tea and bread for $1.50. Alcohol has varied wildly in price and in quality: we paid over 15 dollars for a 1.5 litre plastic bottle of fermented grape juice in Pakistan and yet found some outstanding draught lager for 30 cents a pint in parts of Central Asia. We also tried fermented mare's milk in Kyrgyzstan; not something we needed to try again.

The trip has fallen into three parts. The first in the ancient civilisations of the Levant and Iran, which ooze culture and in whose history the Silk Road was a significant, but by no means dominant part. Here I was blown away by Palmyra and Esfahan in particular.

The second part was the Central Asian republics of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, where the Silk Road made radically shaped the culture of what were previously entirely nomadic peoples. Here I found Samarkand the most impressive.

And finally, our journey took us into the mountains of Tajikistan, Kyrgistan and Pakistan where the Silk Road has made very little impact at all; no more impact, in fact, than the Russians or British empires managed to in their heyday. Here the experience was completely different: I have been astonished at what we have seen in Bulunkal in Tajikistan, at lake Song Kul in Kyrgyzstan and, by the fact that the Karakorum highway is ever open and finally by the sheer unparalleled beauty of Passu and Karimabad in Northern Pakistan. We arrived loving the mountains and having seen a few in our time, but the convergence of some of the biggest mountain ranges in the world has exceeded our wildest expectations.

The people we have met and the hospitality we have been shown has been truly humbling. We have never felt unsafe in any of the countries. We have often felt we have countries like Iran and Pakistan to ourselves, as people have stayed away since 2001: a treat for us, perhaps, but sad for the people trying to make a living in tourism.

Finally, we have appreciated the the little things that you notice and pick up when travelling: taking our shoes off before entering a house; eating cross legged on the floor; learning the local way to count bills that have been hopelessly left behind by inflation; removing sesame seeds from their cases with one hand; playing backgammon Uzbek style; urging on a horse Kyrgyz style (Choo!); and in every single country seeing people greet one another by touching their heart and uttering one of the first Arabic phrases we heard in Syria: salam aleykum.

I am now half way to the China sea. The time has gone too quickly and it was sad to bid farewell to Billo and draw a line under our hectic and adventurous final weeks. Thankfully, once I have travelled across the desert I will be joined by my sister Helen and then by friends Tom and Debs in Tibet.

And now, I need to cut my hair for the first time since February.

JM

The Karakorum Highway

2007-06-25T05:42:00.000Z

The Karakorum Highway (or the KKH as it's called) was a 20 year joint project started by China and Pakistan in the sixties. Running 1,300km through the mountains, it connects Islamabad with Kashgar in north west China via the 4,900m Kunjerab pass.

Before the road there was nothing but Silk Road donkey tracks cut into the rock - sections of which are still visible today. No Central Asian four abreast camel trains (as illustrated in Marco Polo's Travels) made it down this branch of the Silk Road.

Today it is tarmaced and wide enough for two vehicles. Or at least, that's the theory. The Chinese side is so smooth you feel it is rather too easy going, but at the border there is a sharp line where the tarmac ends and you begin a somewhat rougher ride. In fairness, this is partly due to the fact that in China the road climbs gently up onto a plateau - the Pamirs are to the east and the road runs parallel to(and less than 100km) to our route north on the Pamir Highway in Tajikistan.

All this changes abruptly on the Pakistani side of the pass. The road free falls into the gorge, twisting and turning as it descends. The mountains loom so large that they fill the entire window; you have to tilt your head right back to see any blue sky.

The road really has no right to be there. At every turn we pass, yet another 45 degree plus gully hangs over us which serves no other purpose but to spew thousands of tonnes of rock down into the gorge (and onto the road) whenever there is any rain. Rocks as big as houses sit precariously on knife edge ridges waiting for a nudge from above; looking up is like peering into the barrel of a loaded gun.

Needless to say, the KKH project has never ended and will never end. Within an hour of crossing the border we saw why. Heavy rain had sent a deluge of water down the mountain, leaving the KKH under a considerable depth of water.

The Karakorum waterway

Our bus stopped,we donned our packs and clambered up the hillside around the flooded area and rejoined the road further down to find a waiting bus. Happily, the entire contents of Kashgar's Sunday Market which had taken so long to get through Chinese customs had to be unloaded once more and carried over by porters before we could get going again. In all, it took 2 days to travel the 400km from Kashgar to Sost, the official border station in Pakistan.

For the last month we have been in some of the world's biggest mountains. Here you cannot fail to notice the importance of water - with a little help from gravity. Often you can see the grain of the rock is not horizontal, betraying the massive forces at work that create the mountains. But if the plates create them, it is the water that shapes and colours them.

From the peaks the melting snow trickles down, carving geometric crease marks into the mountainside. Like a network of leaf veins, the streams combine and cut deeper and deeper canyons until a there is a roaring river - sometimes a hundred metres or more wide and running at more than 30km/h - at the bottom of a deep gorge, like that through which the KKH passes. The muffled knocking of massive boulders being moved downstream can sometimes be heard over the noise of the water. It is all quite humbling; as I found out later in Chitral, falling in means certain death. All this continues year round, despite the sweltering summer heat and lack of rain due to the massive amount of water stored as snow at altitude.

Hunza

Once we had cleared customs we found ourselves in the Northern Areas of Pakistan. The only part of Pakistan to fight to be part of the country at Partition, the NA now finds itself in limbo due to the Kashmir question. It is not an official province (and therefore has no representatives in the National Assembly) because for Pakistan to grant it such status might imply some sort of finality to the disputed border of Kashmir.

Hunza was virtually undiscovered before the KKH was constructed. The road has transformed the region, but it remains incredibly beautiful. We stopped at a small village called Passu, which sat right underneath some jagged, fairytale mountains which I could have spent days simply sitting and looking at.

The Karakorum range offers world class trekking. In a just a few days you can wander through green fields right up to glaciers and the foot of some of the world's highest mountains - including, of course, K2, second only to Everest.

So we decided to spend a day exploring the Passu glacier and the Upper Hunza valley. The former spilled down the mountainside to within site of the KKH: white at the top, grey further down and black with earth and rock at its end, out of which poured icy blue water.

Glaciers may move very slowly, but there is constant movement on the surface: the noise of trickling water is frequently interrupted by the noise of rocks tumbling down the steep surface of the ice as it melts from underneath them.

We crossed the glacier in search of a path that would take us higher to a viewpoint over the valley. Despite our best efforts we could not find it; it later transpired that it had been more or less destroyed by landslides.

Crevasse jumping!

Instead, we headed back down into the valley, where the vivid green grass contrasted beautifully with the rusty mountains and snowy peaks.

We wandered through villages and crossed the river on one of the famous suspension bridges. Initially rather dismissive of these (it's only a bridge, after all!), I found these considerably more hair-raising than expected: steel cables for handrails and under foot, along with a vaguely straight / flat piece of wood stuck between the cables below once every metre or so (the bigger gaps were quite alarming) to step on! Meanwhile, the brown river raced past below...

We then took a bus down the KKH to Karimabad, one of my favourite places on the trip so far. Perched above the stunning Hunza valley, the view takes in not only the pyramid shaped 7,800m Rakaposhi in one direction, but also Karimabad's own 7,400m Ultar.

The view from the balcony of our (10 dollar) room

Hunza people are extremely friendly. By and large they are Ismaeli - a Shia spin off sect whose Harvard educated spiritual leader (Aga Khan) lives in Paris - which means many have a more relaxed interpretation of Islam. We were lucky enough to meet a guide called Elias, who was about our age, extremely laid back and exactly what we were looking for.

Within a few hours we sorted all of our treks and were at the top of the hill for sunset overlooking the Hunza valley with five of his cousins, enjoying a surreptitious fermented grape juice (not to be confused with wine which tastes quite different...). Later that evening we found ourselves dining with the Argentinian ambassador and his wife with whom we had shared some of the pain of the crossing from China. It was a memorable evening in Hunza.

Our trek the following day up to the foot of Ultar took us along the irrigation channels that have transformed Hunza from an arid mountain scape to a lush green valley. It is impossible to exaggerate the extent of the work completed by the Hunza people and their forefathers; from the top of the mountain they risk life and limb to carve channels into the cliffs, in doing so tapping into and distributing the life-giving water to their fields and the village below. To this day the tribes are allocated sections to maintain; anyone who does not help with the work must pay instead.

Nanga Parbat

The following day we jumped on a bus with Elias and headed down the KKH through Gilgit to Nanga Parbat - the world's 9th highest mountain and in the 8000+ club - for a 2 night trek to base camp.

The jeep ride up to the trail head from the road raised the bar once again for hair-raising driving, outdoing the descent from the Kunjerab pass by some margin. The single dirt track was built up on piles of slate onto a rock face that formed the steepest and deepest gorge I have ever seen. The wheel of the jeep was often less than a foot away from the edge, and - had anything gone wrong - the jeep would not have stopped tumbling for 1000m+ vertical metres until it hit the river at the bottom. Nanga Parbat has the greatest vertical drop from peak to mountain base of any mountain in the world (and a 4000m sheer face on the other side...).

Once at the trail head we hiked up for a few hours to Fairy Meadow to spend our first night before heading up to base camp. This was far more comfortable than we had expected, as the mountain is a signficant tourist attraction for Pakistanis; we immediately resolved to rough it the following night and camp up at base camp. But once over the shock of all this luxury, we enjoyed a delicious supper of daal and chappati and kicked back on the day bed with some more wine under the starry sky.

The climb up to base camp, though not particularly demanding, provided what we were looking for. We had the mountain to ourselves and were able to walk right up above base camp to the end of the Great Morraine and sit looking up at the mighty face of the mountain.

Below the Raikal glacier snaked down into the valley with stunning seracs (ice spikes) near the base camp.

Nanga Parbat was the perfect way to end Billo's leg of the trip. We were both sad not to have more time to explore the embarrassment of riches that the KKH has to offer.... not least K2. Another time, perhaps....!

The green jailoos (meadows) of Kyrgyzstan

2007-06-17T08:51:00.000Z

Kyrgyzstan, unlike much of it's neighbour Uzbekistan, has not been shaped by the Silk Road. It has a population of just 4 million and just two major cities. One of these, Osh, was an important stop over for the caravans descending from Kashgar and the Pamirs onto the Central Asian steppes. But by and large the country is a rural one with the keeping of livestock, particularly horses, being the most important occupation.

The green plains, populated by grazing herds of cattle, horses and sheep, struck us as soon as we descended from the pale coloured, lunar Pamir plateau. Every house seemed to be a smallholding, with a few goats milling around outside next to a donkey cart. Beyond the scattering of houses was the grass plain that so massive that sharing it informally seemed to work very effectively.

At our request, our jeep dropped us in Saray Moghul, a small village near the Tajik border tucked below Pik Lenin - a tantalising non technical 7000m mountain which takes 3 weeks to summit. For now we could only look ... another time perhaps.

There are no hotels in Saray Moghul, but within 5 minutes of wandering around looking slightly lost we had an offer to stay in someone's home and an escort in the form of a man on a donkey. Further offers quickly presented themselves, without a word being understand by either party. In the end we stayed in a Community Based Tourism 'homestay' (a network of B&Bs) as they had served us so well in Tajikistan.

We wandered into the village and found the wise old men of the town playing chess. One man invited us to play and promptly thrashed us (both playing as a team) while literally twiddling his thumbs and pinning down a conversation with his previous victim. Once we stepped aside - thankfully only then - did we see up close how chess is meant to be played. The open moves of the game were played out at a rate of about two a second, with aggressive moves being slammed onto the board and the opponent's piece removed in one motion with the right hand. The piece was then added to the spoils of war in the left hand.

We decided that we should stick to what we do best and bought one of the wonderful Kyrgz felt hats that the majority of men wear in almost every occasion. Once again escorted by another kind man who spoke no more English than we did Kyrgyz, we strolled around the village in the late afternoon sun, the wind moaning as it whistled between the houses.

We could have spent days in Saray Moghul, but the following day we tore ourselves away and headed for Osh and then to Bishkek; we had a few things to do and visas to sort out before we could once again escape to the idyllic countryside. Osh was grim but Bishkek fairly pleasant, with its strange muddle of Russian and German influences (every taxi in Kyrgyzstan is an ancient Audi.) Bishkek was also a hit with us thanks to its variety of cuisine, the presence of Diet Coke in its shops and a shop stuffed with (almost certainly fake) North Face gear at giveaway prices. We had no choice but to invest.

Then to the jailoos, the summer pastures for which Kyrgyzstan is famous. At the country's fringes are the huge mountain ranges of the Pamirs to the South and the Tian Shan to the East and much of what lies between are the meadows which the shepherds make their home every summer.

During Billo's fleeting visit to the UK, I hiked up to Altyn Arashan, a hot spring in the hills near the shores of Lake Issyk Kul in the east of the country. After a perfect soak, I stayed in one of the handful of huts in a green alpine valley otherwise populated only by livestock. This I explored on horseback the following day and had a particularly memorable sandwich underneath the glacier at the top of the valley in a field which was bright yellow with buttercups.

Once reunited with Billo, we decided to spend a couple of nights in a yurt (a traditional tent) with some shepherds en route to China. The place to do this is Lake Song Kul, and once again the system is similar to that of a homestay; shepherds sign up up to a network called Shepherd's Life and receive tourists at agreed rates.

We arrived unannounced at our yurt to see our hosts' three year old daughter wrestling with a horse on the end of its bridle. Her parents were out milking the horses and so there it was far from a fanfare on our arrival. But this was what made it special; we were guests but felt like observers who were fitting into the family's routine. A cup of tea eventually arrived and after this we headed out alone on horseback onto the jailoo.

On our return we were lucky enough to see a yurt being put up. Yurts are circular felt tents about 20 feet in diameter with a cone shaped roof that tapers to a small hole in the ceiling which lets light in and smoke out. In just a couple of hours we saw some flimsy wooden trellises bound together and strips of felt wrapped around the outside to form a sturdy temporary home. A heavy chest is placed upwind, the door downwind and a piece of felt can be pulled across the hole in the ceiling using rope on the outside in case of rain.

And it did rain. That evening the thunder rumbled in the distance and lightning lit up the entire sky. The wind howled and the rain swept across the plain, but amazingly we remained warm and dry in our yurt and awoke the next day to blue skies and sunshine.

For me, this is tourism at its best: by being there we put a value on the shepherds' traditional way of life and at the same time enjoyed an incredible experience that felt as genuine as it could be. It will be interesting to see how scalable such an initiative could be; most of the pleasure came from the absence of other tourists and feeling we were observers rather than having an experience artificially created for us. But already there are signs of this breaking down; a few commercial / non working yurts were visible elsewhere on the jailoo.

Nevertheless, I hope that this kind of tourism will prevent abandonment of the countryside and its way of life in favour of the cities which are so unremarkable. A traditional way of life need not stand in the way of 'progress' - already the shepherds are modernising life in a yurt: using solar panels to provide light and tractors to bring the yurts up to the jailoos. Perhaps the important will remain, such as the ongoing commitment to their herds and the shared use of the jailoos. Certainly, the delightful Kyrgyz felt hats and the repulsive fermented mare's milk (the drink of choice even amongst toddlers) seem in no danger of obselence despite the advent of leather jackets, beer and vodka. Perhaps tourism can play a part in helping local people find a sustainable future in their beautiful countryside.

JM

The Pamir Highway

2007-06-11T13:54:00.000Z

Most of the nations in Central Asia were invented by Soviet Russia, perhaps with deliberately artificial borders in order to counter pan Turkism and pan Islamisn. Whatever the aim, the borders are a complete mess, with ethnic groups spilling across into neighbouring countries to the extent that they dominate major cities.

A few political boundaries in the region do make sense however; those shaped by the mountains. The three massive ranges of the Tian Shan, The Karakorum / Himalaya and the Hindu Kush are responsible for both the definition and the isolation of China and Tibet and the separateness of the Indian subcontinent to the south.

The meeting point of these three ranges is the Pamir mountain range, which includes two peaks of over 7,000m and the source of the Amu Darya (Oxus) river. The 'Pamir Highway' is road through it connecting Tajikistan's capital, Dushanbe, with Osh in Kyrgyzstan.

Getting around in Tajikistan is extremely difficult at the best of times: after our night in a cave (see separate posting) we spent 8 hours travelling 170km to the capital Dushanbe and nearly died in the process.

[A brief explanation of the above: a 5km tunnel under construction; water flowing like a river through it; traffic using it anyway; total darkness; a breakdown somewhere in the middle; a subseqent huge backlog of traffic in either direction; no ventilation whatsoever; eyes stinging with fumes; "isn't this an effective way to kill yourself?!?!?;" don't panic; car eventually towed out of the way; big gulps of fresh mountain air...]

Consequently, we planned our trip on the Pamir Highway with some trepidation... some of the toughest terrain on earth combined with very little traffic meant it was going to be challenging. In the end, we concluded that without a LOT of time on our hands we would need to hire a jeep; on the Pamir Highway we sometimes saw only one other car in a day. The result, sadly perhaps, is that what could have been one of the most adventurous weeks of travel turned into one of the most comfortable (and costly!).

But this did not make the journey any less spectacular. The scenery was quite simply the most breathtaking I have ever seen in my life ....

Our journey took us from leafy Dushanbe east along the plains to Kalaikhum, where we picked up the Afghan border and followed it south into the Wakhan Valley. Well east of the bulk of Afghanistan, this sliver of land to our south - the Wakhan Corridor - is part of Afghanistan at the insistance of the British, who - in the 'Great Game' - were determined to maintain a neutral buffer zone between Russian influenced Central Asia and India. Our trip then took us north up onto the Pamir Plateau over passes exceeding 4,500m and right next to the Chinese border before we crosswed into Kyrgyzstan and descending onto its lush green plains.

Below are a few extracts from my diary along with the odd photo:

The Climb into the Pamirs

We drive along the plains east of Dushanbe, where men and women are bent double tilling the fields with wood handled hoes. We pass a women in a brightly coloured dress, flicking a rope across her donkey's flanks as the dust billows up from passing traffic.

The mountains bgein to loom large, cloud appears in the blue skies and a rusty red colour appears along with the greens of the plains. The road winds in a series of tighter and tighter hairpin bends, hugging the mountainside more and more closely as we climb. We cross countless streams that run unchecked over the road. The air is cold and a strong wind is blowing as we approach the snowline and the first major pass, at an altitude of 3,200m.

Our ears pop as we descend from the pass into a gorge in which a brown river roars.

We pass one of many rusty Russian tanks by the side of the road and the heads of two small children pop out as we approach.

Our progress had slowed considerably. But worse was to come. Heavy rain during our first night in Kalaikhum was making our driver nervous but we foolishly thought nothing of it.

We set out out early but come to a halt in a valley with half a dozen cars. We wait there for four hours before seeing why: the rain water had simply deposited massive piles of rock and earth onto the road overnight and each had to be cleared by rather a small bulldozer.

Clearing the way

The Wakhan Valley

The tight canyon with steep moutains on either side eventually opens to up to reveal a wide valley with the river at its centre. At first, small oases of green offer a burst of colour in contrast to red brown earth. Larger expanses of cultivation appear. A man works the field with a plough pulled by two oxen. Women tend the fields squatting on their haunches. Surprisingly, there are poplar trees everywhere: lining the roads, marking the orchards and separating the fields.

We stop to enjoy the surroundings: to bath in the natural hot springs and to wander through a village and climb up hillside to take in the view. One highlight is 工a 12th century fort with breathtaking views over the valley.

The Yamchum fort

The Pamir Plateau

The valley floor rises as we head up to the plateau. The shepherds are on the move; the occasional flock of sheep and goats blocking the road is now an occurence every couple of kilometres. Whole families, along with their donkeys and their dogs are taking their herds 200km to the high summer pastures.

The desolate landscape is beautiful but living must be very difficult. The cold wind is strong and brings rain suddenly with very little warning. We are now well above the treeline and so the shepherds must add firewood to the things they must take with them. Their huge dogs are not merely companions; they protect the flocks from wolves at night.

We see an Afghan shepherd on the other side of the river with Bactrian camel in tow. After some discussion we agree that this is surely time for an illicit visit to Afghanistan. The icey water and our nervous guide sees to it that our visit is extremely short... but still, a visit nonetheless!

The wind howls outside of the car and the rain turns to snow as we climb towards another - this time 4,300m - pass. The scenery can only be described as desolate now; quite different from the lush Wakan Valley.

We arrive in Bulunkal and huddle around the stove of our homestay drinking tea. Towards the end of the afternoon the weather clears and we walk to Yashil Kul and admire the view, soaking up the complete silence.

Lake Yashil Kul

As the shadows begin to lengthen, we descend onto the plain, back towards the village. We walk through a herd of Yak and stop to talk to a shepherd who lives in a hut a few kilometres away from the village. The wind prevents significant build up of snow here, even in winter, but temperatures in January must be almost unbearable.

Yaks graze on the plateau

The next day we discover that the patches of white on the grass that we thought were snow are in fact salt. We stop and walk to a salt lake just off the road.

A salt lake just off the Pamir Highway

Another excursion off the road sees us walk for an hour across the grass plain through herds of yak. We are heading for a remote Chinese shrine which shows how the Silk Road was important for the ideas it carried as much as the goods for sale. As we approach, a solitary Kyrgyz girl kneels in front of the shrine. She speaks no Tajik; without crossing the border, we are now in an area of the Pamirs populated largely by Kyrgyz people.

A Kyrgyz girl prays at a Chinese shrine

We continue towards a town called Murgab. The scale of the emptiness surrounding us is striking.

The plateau and the mountains beyond

The view from the top

As we near Kyrgyzstan we are at our highest point yet. We seize the opportunity and climb a 5047m peak not far from the road. The air is noticeably thinner on the way up, but we are rewarded with stunning views of the brilliant blue lake Karakol from the top. We stand looking over the plateau below - we are higher above sea level than the summit of Mont Blanc.

We both agree that we could have spent days soaking up the views from any of these stopping points. This is a road like no other I can possibly imagine. Except, perhaps, the Karakorum Highway. Which we will be travelling in three weeks time...

JM

A night in a cave in Tajikistan

2007-06-08T15:26:00.000Z

The trouble with crossing the border by land is that a hut in the middle of nowhere doesn't tend to have some of those facilities you take for granted in an airport. Armed with just an out of date Lonely Planet (which describes Tajikistan as "cutting edge adventure travel" and consequently devotes just a few pages to the entire country) we crossed the border near Samarkand, heading for Penjikent in the north of the country.

We left the friendly Tajik officials in their portacabin behind, both wrinkling our noses in disgust at the yogurt balls (probably mare's milk) that we had so kindly been offered.

What we knew: that there was some trekking to be done in the Fan mountains; that the currency was the somoni; the exchange rate in 2003-4; and that in the same year the minimum wage had been trebled to $1 per month.

What we did not know: what the current exchange rate was; whether we had to use the black market to change money (in Turkmenistan you'd undervalue your money by four times if you didn't); where we might stay the night between the border and the capital Dushanbe (more than a day's drive away); anything at all about Penjikent; and finally whether it was a problem with we had neither a sleeping bag nor a tent between us.

Many of the answers were of course to be found in a chaikhana (teahouse). Having installed ourselves there, we then proceeded to glean as much information from the as we could from the poor waiter who was trying to serve everyone lunch. He went and asked someone at the table opposite the exchange rate: this person later turned out to be the clerk at the bank. (Given the next question about the black market this was a little bit embarrassing.) He changed a small amount of Uzbek for us so that we could pay for our tea and he pointed us in the direction of a hotel in Penjikent which turned out to be a dirty flight of stairs with no one at all at the top of them.

We were sure that already we knew enough about Penjikent and so determined to head for the mountains. There seemed to be a shaky consensus that a bus would leave at some point in the afternoon towards a village called Panjrul which we knew to be trekking distance from the trail head. After one of the best Plovs we have had in Central Asia (this one had chick peas and vegetables in addition to the standard fried rice with mutton) we set off for the bus stop.

The journey to the village was extraordinary. It took more than two hours to travel 30 kilometres (I think I could take on that pace with a pair of trainers) and just when we thought the minibus was bursting at the seams, somehow another gaggle of fifteen women by the roadside managed to squeeze in. There were literally 40 people in the bus: 25 seated and 15 standing. Needless to say, we were a source of immense amusement.

Menacing dark clouds were looming overhead as we drove east: this was not on the programme - our books had told us to prepare for "frighteningly high temperatures." The rain began to pour and finally the bus came to a stop in a tiny village and we found ourselves the only remaining people on it. We had negotiated our ride this far, but - particularly in light of the weather - were quite keen to see if we could go further up the valley to a village called Artuch. Known accommodation was a further 6km slog further up the valley from here, and it was already late afternoon. The driver saw our plight and duly extracted 5 times what we had paid so far to go what amounted to one fifth of the distance.

By the time we had bumped our way up the rocky track the rain had stopped and the sky had begun to clear. Things were looking up; we could walk the 6km to the Alplager (base camp hut) with our packs. Meanwhile, a young girl nearby continued to stare at us as if we had just stepped off a spaceship.

At this point a man approached us and suggested with hand gestures and pidgin English that we stay in his house ("sleeping?") and do the walk in the morning.

Artuch village

Delighted, we accepted and tucked into some delicious noodle soup. Over supper Haratcha told us he could offer us a guide and even a donkey to carry our packs.
We debated both for some time, wondering whether we could make it with our full 20kg packs (books, books, books!) across a 3800m pass, finding shelter for two nights along the way. This was the ideal option, as it would get us much further down the tortuously slow road towards Dushanbe. However, it later transpired that even if we would make it, the donkey would not. Therefore, we opted for a return trip to the pass with lighter packs and no donkey.

At this point Haratcha presented our guide to us with a flourish...

... Afrosyb, his 15 year old son who had been standing there all along!!!

The next day we began the trek up. We walked across deep green alpine meadows and crossed countless icy streams, all the while surrounded by the steepest mountains I have ever seen. The sharp contrast to the flat, tan coloured desert and steppes of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan made the towering mountains even more impressive.

We passed the Alplager after an hour or two, and then the track narrowed to a steep and winding rocky path that seemed to give way under every footstep. The altitude was also surprisingly hard going, but after a good 7 hours walking we finally the high altitude plateau where we would spend the night.

Once again, the weather had closed in, and we wondered how we would cope without a tent. Afrosyb showed us the solution: a cave!

Your room, Sir....

Afrosyb had wandered off to catch some supper in the turquoise blue lake, so we kicked back by the fire in the cave and the snow began to fall outside. Towards the end of the afternoon the sky cleared to reveal the dazzling white 5000m peak in front of the cave. A spectacular sunset followed...

Afrosyb had caught supper in a simple but highly effective way. He placed a net over a hole at the centre of a stone dam he had built across the stream and walked around the pond poking under stones with a stick and making noises. This is fishing as it's meant to be; it was very little effort and delivered the goods!

Freshly caught fish

At this point our fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants approach began to unravel a little ... As night fell the temperature dropped like a stone. We both put on EVERYTHING we had and climbed into our borrowed (and not particularly warm) sleeping bags and proceeded to shiver our way through the night. To cap it all, the next day it emerged that our 'guide' had brought way too little food (i.e. bread) with him and furthermore deemed that the sugar he was carrying was his and not ours! (Sugary tea is always a good energy boost).

So we completed our climb to 3,800m on starvation rations, literally spinning out tiny chunks of Snickers as long as we could. Food REALLY tastes good when you actually need it... The view from the pass was spectacular (photos on the proper camera, sadly...), and we felt no small sense of achievement; we had climbed 2,000 vertical metres from the village.

Grr...

JM

Uzbekistan - where the old is new and the new is old

2007-06-07T12:03:00.000Z

If one country exemplifies the Silk Road it is Uzbekistan. Located between Persia and China the independent Khanates of Khiva, Bokhara and Samarkand thrived on the trade that passed through the barren deserts of Central Asia. These settlements stood alone in what was otherwise an area populated primarily by nomadic people.

Even after maritime commerce undermined the importance of the Silk Road the three cities made the headlines as recently as the 19th Century, as Britain and Russia eyed each other's empires suspiciously across expanse of Central Asia in what has been called 'The Great Game.' Russia sought aggrandisement and the primitive armies of the the Khanates proved no match for her modern armies. Britain, on the other hand, primarily sought defence of her interests in India, although some argued that a 'forward policy' in Central Asia was the best means to achieve this. Both sides sent ambitious young officers (all under 30!) into the region, often undercover on reconnaissance missions.

By the end of the Great Game both had broadly achieved their objectives: in ten years the Tsar had added an area half the size of the United States in Central Asia to his empire and Britain had successfully maintained a neutral buffer zone in Afghanistan and Tibet.

As I sat on the Transcaspian railway between Bokhara and Samarkand I read Curzon's account of its strategic importance as he travelled along it around 150 years before. He predicted that the railway would transform Central Asia from a curious wasteland into a fully mobilised frontier of the Russian empire. He was right: as we cruised along at a comfortable 110km it was hard to imagine the camel trains toiling through the desert, fighting off attacks from nomads so that they could sell their wares in the bazaars ahead.

But Soviet Russia tried hard to bring the old Silk Road cities to life. The old towns - in the case of Bokhara, shelled by the Red Army - have been painstakingly restored to their former glory. The old is brand new.

The results are spectacular. The Registan of Samarkand was for me undoubtedly the highlight, but the imposing walls of the desert town of Khiva and the mosques of Bokhara are also impressive.

Timur's Registan in Samarkand

The Ark in Bokhara

The walls of Khiva

But somehow the atmosphere is not there. Such is the extent of the Soviet restoration programme that, as a visitor, you feel you are rattling around in a vast infrastructure that rather dwarfs the fairly small number of tourists. It also lacks character. In part, this is because the line between museum and museum shop is non existent: local women are given free rein to set up shop inside the historic buildings, while they nominally check your ticket (for the twentieth time). The magnificent Coronation Rome in the Ark of Bokhara, for example, was almost completely masked with wall hangings for sale which were draped around it!

The other thing that was noticeable is that the sights are empty. This is of course inevitable, but is in sharp contrast to the spectacular - but living and breathing - mosques and shrines of the Middle East. Doubtless there are more tourists in high season, but we felt rather outnumbered by the caretakers / saleswomen, while the 'museum city' of Khiva was like a ghost town after the last day trippers had left.

I am sure that is overly simplistic to say that restoration 'ruins' these places - a charge that is often levelled at these cities: we saw photographs showing just how little would have remained with no restoration effort. Nevertheless, for me the feel of these places was no match for Palmyra in Syria, whose heyday was many centuries before these cities. Both Bokhara and Khiva felt a little too removed from the new towns; for this reason Samarkand was my favourite, with its stunning medressas (religious schools set around impressive quadrangles) and mausoleums of Timur and his relatives found scattered in the midst of the bustle of the bazaar of the new town.

Pilgrims pay their respects iShahr-i-Zindah (The Tomb of the Living King), Samarkand

In a museum we did find some fascinating old photographs of the fierce looking Khans in their massive wool hats, sitting in the very rooms we had just visited. These did the most to bring the Silk Road to life and so we bought a few copies to take away with us.

The extraordinary stories in Peter Hopkirk's book, The Great Game, also fired our imaginations to bring the cruelty of these once filthy slave towns to life. Most are too incredible to be fiction. In Bokhara, for example, we visited the 'bug pit,' a 25 foot hole into which prisoners were lowered and left to rot with all the wildlife that the desert could throw at them. One Great Game British officer, spent three years in it before being lead out to dig his own grave in the plaza outside the Ark, at which point he was beheaded. The reason? A volatile Emir (leader) of the city who was irritated by the Briton ignorance of Central Asian social etiquette at a time when he believed that Britain's disastrous foray into Afghanistan meant that it was not a power to be feared.

So the old is strangely new in Uzbekistan. In addition, the 'new' Uzbekistan sometimes felt more than a little tarnished; very little seems to have sprung up in recent times to replace the Soviet legacy. One small example that sticks in my mind is our hair-raising crossing of the creaking 'temporary' military bridge over the river Oxus, in our a tiny shared taxi crammed with four passengers and all their luggage. [It was the Russian equivalent of a Smart Car, which boasts a fuel efficiency every bit as amazing as its lack of comfort. As the man next to me turned Doctor Alban up to full blast on the stereo on his lap, the man in the front turned around proudly showed us a small bag with powder in it. "Narcotics, yes?" he grinned.]

Nukus, Karakalpakstan (North West Uzbekistan) - functional

We saw many other examples of the decaying Soviet legacy, but perhaps the most haunting image was our visit to the once thriving fishing port of Moynaq. Once on the Aral Sea, it is now a forlorn desert town more than 150km from the water, with rusty fishing boats decaying in the sand.

Formerly the Aral Sea shore, Moynaq

The reason for this is simple: the Soviet drive for cotton production led to a massive irrigation programme on the barren steppes on Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The Oxus (Amu Darya) and the Syr Darya rivers have been bled of water, resulting in a fall in the level of Aral Sea by 16m in 30 years. The water has become saltier and the climate drier - both are impacting the people as well as the wildlife of Uzbekistan.

Sadly, the solution is far from simple to execute. Although the situation could be reversed within 3 years if irrigation were to cease, there are now far too many mouths to feed that rely on the agricultural economy created in the last 50 years.

So Uzbekistan is a strange place to visit and not an easy place to love. The two Uzbeks we spoke to at some length were both bright, young people whose ambitions were set firmly outside of their country, perhaps in order to overcome the problems inside it.

Kuat, a teacher and a 'revolutionary' (i.e. a member of a young persons' democratic society) lamented the lack of civil liberties and what he believed was the government's deliberate policy to keep the autonomous northern region of Karakalpakstan (including the Aral Sea) in abject poverty, thus ensuring its reliance on subsidies from Tashkent. This in turn ensures that it it will not exercise its constitutional right to independence from the rest of Uzbekistan. He planned to leave the country and his family (again) in order to earn a meaningful wage - away from the endemic corruption of Uzbek officialdom.

Sabina, an incredibly erudite girl of 16 is already a successful businesswoman in Bokhara, selling handicrafts to tourists. She, along with her sister, provides for her widowed mother, despite the arrival of of a new stepfather on the scene. Clearly highly successful, she seemed upbeat about her future, but once again planned to leave her country and come to London to study in the near future.

For us, no Silk Road trip would have been complete without a visit to Uzbekistan. But while the brand new looking old cities were impressive, they were perhaps a little less evocative of the past than I had hoped. Meanwhile, for me, the newer Soviet legacy that survives in contemporary Uzbekistan feels rather tired and a little depressing.

JM

Mongols, The Karakum Desert and Gas Craters

2007-05-20T23:26:00.000Z

Getting into Turkmenistan is not easy; the bureaucracy is quite astonishing. In order to obtain a letter of invitation ($40) which is in turn required to obtain a visa ($40), we had to hire a guide from our supporting travel agency ($$$). Of course, this in no way precluded a 2.5 hour border crossing involving painful attempts at communication with no less than five sets of officials. The frustrating thing was that all of them sat next to each other in a room no more than 30 feet long, but - despite the fact they could communicate rather more easily than we could with them - they did not speak to one another, meaning that each time we had to restate our country (and then spend five minutes exchanging names of Premiership footballers), our business ("Tourist!"), our route through Turkmenistan.

Wary of the corruption of Turkmen officials, we were also interested to find out the 'receipt' for our entry tax would cost $1. Our polite suggestion that perhaps we could live without yet another piece of paper was not well received, and after a minor stand off we thought that if it would make the pain go away, then two dollars was worth paying. We were in - and this is what we needed to navigate the bureaucracy:

The Silk Road caravans from Iran would have headed to Merv and straight to Bokhara (in Uzbekistan today). But having got into Turkmenistan, there was no way we were going to leave so quickly: from Merv we headed west to the capital, Ashgbat (see separate post) and then north to Konye Urgench through more than 800km of the Karakum desert where temperatures reach 50 degrees in summer. By then we would ready to leave the country.

Luckily our guide, Oleg, was not only a nice guy but was also extremely enthusiastic about the history of the Silk Road in Turkmenistan. Merv and Konye Urgench both provide examples of how the path to prosperity for Silk Road towns was not without danger. Both were enormously important trade hubs in the day and major beacons of Islam (although Merv predates Islam) but both fell foul of the Mongols. In return for not paying their taxes, the Mongols rerouted a river through Konye Urgench and slaughtered perhaps as many as one million people in Merv.

One of the few buildings still standing in Konye Urgench

Looking out of the window of our car, as the outskirts of Ashgabat thinned the Karakum desert quickly greeted us. The road was dead straight as far as the eye could see, with only mirages and windblown sand dancing across it in the distance. We drove for five hours stopping only once to refuel.

The petrol station

We had arranged to camp overnight at the Gas Craters in the middle of desert. As its name suggests, a Gas Crater is a large hole in the ground out of which seeps natural gas. And that is where the story dries up: a description rather than an explanation. Almost certainly man made, these holes originate in Soviet times (nuclear testing was also carried out in Central Asia) and no-one knows how or why they were formed.

We saw three. One was just a hole, the other bubbled with gas and the third - where we camped - was alight. Interesting by day, it was truly mesmerising by night, emitting an orange glow that lit up the sky and - although burning quite peacefully - managing to create a passable impression of the entrance to hell.

Several chicken kebabs and two bottles of vodka (with Oleg leading the drinking, Russian style) later in the evening we found ourselves almost hypnotised by the fire and by several flocks of birds who were lit up in the night sky as brightly as fireflies. Transfixed, we watched them circle the crater and swoop down towards the fire.

It isn't every day you sit round the gas crater drinking vodka and watching the birds....!

JM

Ashgabat - you have to see it to believe it

2007-05-16T13:00:00.000Z

Ashgabat is surely unlike any other city in the world. At the heart of the small (in population at least) Central Asian republic of Turkmenistan is a quite extraordinary waste public money. Despite the fact that the country is the hottest and driest in the region, there are literally thousands of fountains and water features set amongst carefully manicured and watered lawns.

Monuments, ministries and museums abound, including: a 12m gold statue of Niyazov, the late president and self styled 'Turkmenbashi' (or ruler of all Turkmen), which with outstretched arms, rotates througout the day to face the sun; a massive monument to mark the recent declaration of neutrality (at which the international community must have heaved a sigh of relief); the tallest (and most grotesque) fountain in the world and - perhaps most ironically - a Ministry of Fairness.

Fairness is not something normally associated with a dictatorship. Amongst a catalogue of extraordinary decrees, Niyazov closed all hospitals in the country outside the capital so the sick would have to come to Ashgabat, renamed the words for 'bread' and April with the name of his grandmother and outlawed ballet and opera on the grounds of being 'unnecessary.' He also blessed his subjects with a book outlining his view of Turkmen national identity and his version of history. The book is compulsory and imposed on the educational system. Needless to say, there is also a monument to the book in Ashgabat which opens once a day and passages are recited from it.

The book

We found all this construction in Ashgabat initially impressive, often tasteless and increasingly unsettling. Unsettling because downtown Ashgabat is eerily deserted and clearly nothing more than veneer designed to impress the President and any official visitor who does not care to wonder why it is so quiet.

Downtown Ashgabat - heaving

It is not clear whether anyone is allowed to enjoy it all. Armed guards prevented us from approaching public buildings - most ironically, we were prevented from approaching a massive open air television, thereby slightly calling into question the reason for its existence. The thousands of park benches - often in beautiful surroundings - were also deserted; we suspected that the police discouraged locals from using them so that they remained 'tidy.'

The official restaurants were empty - some staying in business only thanks to state subsidy, others decaying just a decade after their lavish construction. The array of 30 themed state hotels were a serious overkill for the supposed 3,000 tourists that visit the country each year. Ours, the Hotel Asia, was almost completely deserted except for a Chinese business which had rented some office space on the first floor (the rest of which was literally gathering dust). Even the stunning replica of Istanbul's Blue Mosque - built to celebrate the return of religion to the country - is unused: 3 deaths during construction were seen as a bad omen.

So it seems that most people working in Ashgabat are either state workers or prostitutes. The former are either the notoriously corrupt police (who extract bribes for 'motoring offences' by day and (we were told) sometimes beat up or rape innocent citizens by night) and hundreds of mostly women who toil in the blistering heat for $100 per month to maintain and keep clean the fountains and vast public spaces. Meanwhile, the prostitutes are busy; they approached us in the shops by day and in the discos by night.

This bizarre place came about because of an extraordinary set of circumstances which combined to fuel the ego and indulge the delusions of grandeur of the former President Niyazov. Selected as Moscow's yes man under the old regime, Niyazov was far too comfortable with the status quo to want independence for his country, but he was forced to accept it in 1989. So, he duly gave his communist party a shiny new name that including the word democratic (and promptly banned political opposition), renamed the country and mainted the bureaucracy. Of course, the one big change that was pushed through at independence was a total clear out of anyone of Russian origin from positions of power and officialdom in the name of nationalism.

It is perhaps lucky to be handed a power structure with yourself at the top of it, which you can control with vice-like grip through Soviet style bureaucracy. But to be able to tap into the vast revenue potential of the country's natural gas resources gave Turkmenbashi spending power too. Add to this extraordinary position the tragic earthquake of 1948 which literally levelled Ashgabat, and this former town planner was gifted by fate a blank 'canvas' in order to express his 'creativity.'

We were allowed to explore Ashgabat - and only Ashgabat - without a guide. Therefore we seized the opportunity to track down the 'real' Ashgabat. Perhaps as many as one million live in Ashgabat, away from this eery madness - it is just a question of looking a bit further afield. The real homes are tucked away in sprawling concrete high rises, almost completely out of sight of the bizarre centre. On one evening we finally found a restaurant with some atmosphere; a terrace overlooked by high rise buildings - effectively in a housing estate and proudly removed from Niyzov's downtown area.

We also found the real Turkmenistan at the down-to-earth Torkuchka weekend market. Here we spent a morning wandering through the rows of lorry containers and corrugated iron stalls, which displayed for sale everything from car parts to carpets to the crowd that flocked there from Ashgabat and outside. We loved feeling as though we melted into the scenery here; tourism is not yet developed enough to create a signficant market and the hard sell culture that comes with it.

The market - a far cry from the fountains of Ashgabat

It is a fascinating time to visit the country. Turkmenbashi clearly lived in his gold domed Presidential Palace (no photos allowed!) in a bubble called downtown Ashgabat. Now that he lies in his massive mausoleum just outside the city, will the bubble burst? It is too early to tell, and we not able to get much information out of anyone we spoke to. Since his dentist (thankfully also the former of Minister of Health) has taken over, the main change has been a relaxation of the grip of the police. It also appears that the new President has decided not to replace the ubiquitous portraits of Turkmenbashi with his own. In the critical power struggle for oil and gas, he also appears to have thrown his lot in with Russia, recently signing a major deal with Putin and Kazakstan. We can only hope some of the benefits are spent on the people rather than massaging the presidential ego.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saparmurat_Niyazov#Personality_cult

JM

Iran - khoda hafez (goodbye)

2007-05-08T15:11:00.000Z

I arrived in Iran with few preconceptions. I was determined to get behind the headlines and Ahmedinejad's war of words with the US. I had read two books to give myself a brief introduction to Iranian culture: We are Iran - an edited collection Iranian blogs; and Persepolis, a well known (graphic) novel by Marjane Satrapi about her life during and after the revolution and her love / hate relationship with her country. If anything, I expected a groundswell of opposition against an overtly oppressive regime.

So how is Iran today, more than 25 years after the revolution that created the world's only Islamic state? In our brief two week visit (spent mostly in central Iran, but also in the North, Tehran and the East), my impression is of a proud and deeply conservative people and a state that taps into that conservatism rather than imposes it by force.

Iranians' pride in a culture which is deeply rooted in the past is unquestionable. Their awareness of it is both broad and deep, spanning the arts (back to the great poets), politics (back to Cyrus the Great) and of course religion. It does not appear to stop abruptly before 1979 as Turkey's appears to pre Attaturk.

This pride manifests itself in a strong sense of identity and separateness from (and sometimes even contempt for) Iran's neighbours: in Farsi not Arabic; in being Aryan not Arabs; in being Shias not Sunnis. This identity has withstood constant foreign intervention (whether Arab or 'Western') ever since. Iran is a case in point of the complexity of the Middle East and how dangerous it is to think of a heterogeneous thing called 'Islam.'

That we would find such a conservative people - both young and old - surprised me enormously. Superficially, this is expressed in Iranian politeness. Ta'arof is a social code whereby you must refuse any offer 3 times so as to allow the offeree to escape from the offer without losing face. For example, in Tabriz a young man we met in the street suggested we come to his house within 30 seconds of meeting us. We declined once and that matter was finished; textbook Ta'arof!

Iranian hospitality is genuine and generous, however. In Shiraz, 60 year old Mahmoud took his duties very seriously, refusing to allow us to pay for anything and seeming almost protective at times when others came to speak to us. In general, we found Iranians to be sincere and warm. They are people of smiles more than raucous laughter.

More profoundly, perhaps the conservatism goes some way to explain the total lack of overt criticism of the regime we found, even when gently probing for it. Of course, this is not to say that opposition does not exist, nor can we really know how much fear of the regime still remains, but desipte lengthy conversations, we heard nothing either from Mahmoud who spoke warmly of the days before the revolution or from Eshan, a 25 year old who at least in terms of clothing, football and music was as 'Western' as we were.

Police presence on the streets in Iran is minimal: less than Syria and far less than Turkmenistan, which is a true police state. Perhaps the lack of activity in the evenings suits the importance Iranians put on family life: we did not see a curfew being aggressively enforced.

Of course there are many (vocal) opponents of the regime and this culminated in a string of reform bills in 2003. But if our experiences are at all representative, they seemed to suggest that mainstream Iranian society is actually rather conservative. This might explain why Iran swung to the right in its most recent elections and why an initially socialist revolution in 1979 could be so spectacularly hijacked by the right.

There are forces driving change, however - both economic and social. And both are felt most acutely by the young. Making ends meet in Iran is tough - with inflation running at c15% p.a. and property prices soaring way ahead of this, particularly in the capital (which is bigger than London). Many prices, particularly but not exclusively 'Western' clothes and food, seem out of kilter with earnings (the average salary apparently being 200 USD per month). We heard from one man how the government is under competing pressures on the one hand to decrease the massive subsidies of fuel (diesel coming in at a whopping 1p per litre!) and on the other to keep inflation under control and maintain the popular vote.

Jobs are hard to come by, putting a premium on education. Ali, a school teacher in Tabriz, told us of fierce competition in University entrance exams: only 10% of male applicants are successful, resulting in 16 hour days of revision. Even if they make it, they must then complete their 18 month military service before getting job. By this time, a young Iranian man will want to marry (which requires a sort of reverse dowry payable to the bride's family) and to buy an increasingly unaffordable house to live in with his wife.

Competition for jobs may also be putting a premium on the English language. I was astonished by how much people valued talking to us in order to practice their English. This combined with new technology (mobiles are ubiquitous in the cities and the internet increasingly tolerated) will allow increased access to English language media. This suggests that the days when middle aged people who have not encountered English for decades (we met two) must surely be over. It will be interesting to see whether the traditional social activities that we saw spanning young and old in Shiraz will stand up to increased choice amongst younger Iranians.

So my sense is that Iran is changing, but at its own pace. Perhaps the conservatism has become more pronounced in recent years - it is hard to know without previous experience of Iran. Either way, the liberal reforming zeal that achieves some coverage in our media is perhaps no more the whole picture than it was in 1979.

JM

Esfahan nest-e jahan (is half the world)

2007-05-08T14:42:00.000Z

Whatever superlatives exist regarding Esfahan, it manages to exceed them. Somehow picture postcard beauty is matched with a lively contemporary atmosphere.

Its centre of gravity is the Imam Square - the second largest (after Tiananmen - more on that in a couple of months...) in the world and the vision of the seventeenth century Shah Abbas the Great. Two tiers of arcades surround the square, each containing miniature, carpet and Gaz (local nougat) shops and the odd teahouse. At one end is the massive entrance portal to the breathtaking blue domed Imam Mosque and at the other the entrance to the bazaar which takes you 2km north to an equally imporessive Jameh (Friday) mosque, which allows you to walk through 1000 years of Persian architecture. In the middle of the square, as ever, is carefully kept green grass and a pool; horse drawn carts take people around the outside of them.

Iranians flock to the square in the late afternoon, creating the buzz that makes Esfahan so special. On more than one afternoon we sat eating tea and sweet pastries overlooking the square, simply watching the world go by.

Anywhere else and this would be enough. But Esfahan has more. To the south of the square is the river, and across it is a number of stunning bridges, carrying a steady stream of people to and from the shops of the south, including Jolfa, the Armenian district.

The promenade by the river past the bridges which are illuminated at night suggests a Florentine appreciation of the water. Somehow Esfahan oozes romanticism despite the fact that it is officially forbidden before marriage and overt displays frowned upon even after it. Needless to say, the young were out in force by the river, parading their wares - or, if lucky - on a surreptitious date. As the light faded, the couples moved closer...

Words, least of all mine, are inadequate to attempt to describe Esfahan. I will add some more pictures and let them speak for themselves. These are the images of Iran that will remain etched into my mind.

JM

Yazd - kicking back with a Russian beer in the desert

2007-04-30T10:52:00.000Z

Marco Polo passed through this oasis town on the Silk Road. Its setting, high on the Iranian plateau is dramatic: sandwiched between the Dasht-e Kavis desert to the north and the Dasht-e Lut desert to the south with snow capped mountains including the 4000m+ Mount Sir in the distance.

The maze-like old city is light brown; it is entirely constructed from mud and straw. Rising out of its lanes are numerous badgirs - wind towers designed to circulate breeze into the buildings below. Thanks to these and to a (necessary) local obsession and expertise in distributing precious water through underground qanats, our stay was extremely comfortable in the desert.

Wind towers

Our hotel, aptly named The Silk Road Hotel, was one of the best we have found so far: a restored traditional house, its rooms are set around a tranquil courtyard with a fountain at its centre. Many a happy hour was whiled away during the heat of the day - reclining on the elevated tables, sipping sweet black tea, playing chess and reading.

The hotel stocked the finest beer in Iran. When I say beer, of course I mean non alcoholic malt drink. At worst, this tastes like cold Horlicks; at best it's a passable attempt at the amber nectar. Our Russian discovery, with a subversive 0.5% alcohol, came as a major excitement - we had been without beer for over a week and would settle for anything that passed as the ice cold refreshment we so missed. It also provided another excuse not to over-exert ourselves.

When we did venture out of our little beer soaked paradise, we discovered that Yazd remains home to a number of Zoroastrians - the religion of the First Persian Empire (see Persepolis) and one of the first religions to put forward the idea of a single, omnipotent God. This God is represented (rather underwhelmingly in my view!) in an eternal flame in Yazd which is said to have been burning since 470AD.

Far more impressive were the Zoroastrian 'Towers of Silence.' In order to preserve the purity of the elements, the Zoroastrians refuse to either bury or cremate their dead. Instead, they are simply left in the Towers of Silence. Priests watch over the bodies, to see which eye is plucked out by the vultures first - it is believed to be a sign for the afterlife. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this practice has been discontinued since the 1960s.

The Towers offered a stunning view over Yazd and out to the desert and mountains beyond. The city has grown considerably beyond the Old City and now has population of 400k. But from the hilltop outside Yazd, the Towers offered exactly the tranquility their name suggests.

JM

Persepolis - when Persia ruled the world

2007-04-30T10:26:00.000Z

After its (of course now historical!) tradition in wine making, Persepolis is what now makes Shiraz a household name. It is one of the biggest tourist draws in Iran, offering a glimpse of the First Persian Empire in c500BC. At its height, it was the greatest Empire the world had seen, stretching from Egypt to India across Syria and Palestine right up to the Danube. For the first time in history, the Persian Empire pulled different peoples into a common (if loosely governed) experience. It laid the foundations for classical civilisation and the world's most widespread religions.

Persepolis itself provides evidence of a cosmopolitan exchange of ideas across the empire. Conceived by Darius the Great, its columns have Egyptian and Ionian influence and its bas reliefs contain Greek detail. Its purpose was to demonstrate the might of the Empire and therefore, quite amazingly in my view, the city was used just once a year as the place where the subjects from the different nations in the empire would come to pay homage to the great Persian kings.

Today, thanks to Alexander the Great who razed the city to the ground in 330BC, there is a hint of Ozymandias about the arrogance of Persepolis. The stone is now yellow instead of the highly polished black marble in its heyday. The huge entry staircase and standing columns give some idea of the scale of the place, but - perhaps more than Palmyra - quite some imagination is required to feel what it was once like. Fortunately, the sand has preserved very well the stunning bas reliefs (of countless subjects bringing tribute).

We had found Iran quiet (in terms of tourists) and so were intrigued to see how crowded Persepolis would be. Although far from deserted, the site was quiet and about one quarter of its visitors were foreigners. This has been the story since 9/11 all over Iran: people we have spoken to involved in tourism have had to diversify (into carpet exports, for example) to make ends meet. Entrance to Persepolis was just 25p - less than the cost of the can of Coke we bought next to the ticket office...

The heyday of the First Persian Empire is still remembered by Iranians today. Before the revolution, the Shah attempted to tap into national pride by harking back to the days of Cyrus the Great and visiting his tomb. Today, one of Tehran's football teams carries the name Persepolis - something that would be hard to imagine for, say, Stonehenge! Persian greatness in ancient history undoubtedly contributes to Iranian pride and a strong sense of identity quite separate from that of its Arabic neighbours.

JM

Shiraz: the culture that holds it all together

2007-04-27T09:15:00.000Z

After the rather characterless sprawl and noise of Tehran, the wide green boulevards of Shiraz were a welcome surprise. So as soon as we had settled into our hotel, we thought we would go and see for ourselves a legendary Persian garden.

The Iranians are clearly proud of their parks & gardens: every town has them, and they tend to be far more intricate than your average London park. Every garden is carefully tended, water is major feature of most and many have a highly decorated building at their centre.

They are also extremely sociable places, particularly in the late afternoon and early evening. We found ourselves in Melli park, a small park across the road from the shrine of the 14th century Persian poet, Havez. Immediately it became clear how much more open and relaxed Shiraz was than Tabriz. We chatted for half an hour or so to a softly spoken driving instructor, who had taken his three young children to play in the park. Then, as we moved towards the shrine, we were again befriended by Mahmoud, a retired man in his sixties with youthful looks and enormous charisma, who reminded us both of a mutual friend, RD-L.

We joined him and three of his friends on a bench, and in due course were joined by four university girls in chador. Assuming we were in safe hands as far as the 'red line' (see previous entry) goes, we saw for ourselves the product of the strong (and mixed sex) Iranian education system: a barrage of questions regarding our impression of Iran and Iranian women.

We then all wandered up to the shrine of a poet who has an extraodinary presence in everyday Iranian life: nearly ever city has a road named after him, most houses have a book of his work and most Iranians can quote him. People mill around his tomb paying their respects and there is a wonderful teahouse in couryard next to the tomb which is - like the park we went to in Tehran - both the place for the young to be seen and to date. There we sat drinking sweet black tea and eating nuts, feeling completely at home with Iranian men and women we had only just met. To the sound of
Persian music, Mahmoud then recited some lines of Hafez in Farsi - magic.

Iranian society is conservative: politeness is very important and confrontation is avoided if at all possible. We noticed with interest that Mahmoud simply chose not to translate for us when he felt our the conversation was heading in a direction with which he wasn't comfortable: he would not allow the girls to exchange email addresses with us and - slightly harshly, perhaps - was happy to make us squirm in our seats with their questions on the veil but wouldn't pass on our questions in reply about their views on it! This conservatism was particularly interesting coming from a man who had alluded to how things were better before the revolution (although wouldn't be drawn further).

Mahmoud invited us to breakfast the next morning at the tomb of Baba Cui, who was the mentor of Hafez. We met at 6am, picked up some bread and drove with him to the foothills of Shiraz. It was Friday, the day of rest, and so we joined a stream of hundreds of people heading up the hill to enjoy their day off work. The sun was already warm and view over the lush, green city was spectacular.

At the top was a little square next to the tomb where people young and old were singing and clapping and celebrating the lives of Hafez and his mentor. We sat just above the square and at our breakfast - sangak bread and a tasty green gunk that served as a dip. Some passers by gave us all tea and it later transpired that noone knew them; they had shared the tea they had carried up the hill with total strangers.

The strength of Iranian culture which is deeply rooted in the past along with its ability to appeal to all age groups really struck me. Here we were in place where retired men and teenaged boys (complete with American football shirts - one with BUSH on the back)chose to spend their spare time. Cynics could argue that it is due to a lack of alternative social activities, but nevertheless the net effect must be a positive one.

Nor is this cultural expression tied to religion. Quite the opposite in fact. The Mullahs frown on such merrymaking: singing is discouraged in public and we were told that the clerics had moved in recently on the square with their prayer books in an attempt to encourage more 'appropriate' activity.

This hasn't stopped the locals, however. The days of the morality police (who would issue on the spot floggings for violation of the law requiring appropriate covering of the skin) are thankfully over and the clerics realise they cannot suppress such well-meaning gatherings. As we sat, clapping and shouting drifted from the trees on the hillside and walked over to find a dance in progress. This consisted of a few (male) dancers hopping and shaking their shoudlers to a drum beat, egged on by forty or so whooping onlookers (including some women towards the back). Thankfully we managed to esccape thge 60 year old moustacheoied man who told us that everyone was demanding that we dance!

A few (younger) people were quite vocal about how absurd they thought the rules are. Mahmoud, as ever, spoke of the positives of the dancing rather than criticised the regime. What's clear is that the 'red line' is constantly being pushed in many aspects of life. Someone mentioned that to me that one of the dancers had been drinking illegal whisky... I just hope that one or people overstepping the mark won't give the Mullahs an excuse to try and clamp down on such harmless fun.

What is clear is how strongly Iranian culture runs right through the people. Add to this a nearly universal faith (90% of Iranians are Shia Muslims and it seems that it simply the degree of devoutness varies from person to person) and an strong awareness of foreign intervention in Iranian history (old and new) and the result is an extraordinarily powerful sense of a unique, shared identity and a willingness to defend it to the last. Rightly or wrongly, the USA (and most recently the British seamen), are widely perceived to be aggressors seeking to challenge this identity.

JM

Iran - the 'red line'

2007-04-24T14:46:00.000Z

I write from an Internet cafe in Yazd, a oasis town in the desert of central Iran. We've been here a week and I feel I'm just about getting to grips with this fascinating - if a little confusing - country. Clearly Iran has very strict rules and it's important to be aware of the 'red line' as Ehsan, a guy of 26 from Esfahan told us... The problem is that in our experience, attitudes to the regime and the rules vary wildly depending on where you are: it's often very hard to know where the line is! We have created a 'Mullah index' - where 10 is reserved for Qom (a holy city from which the revolution originated) and 1 is .... somewhat more liberal than 10!

The way people have react when they see us has varied. Our reception in the north was cool to say the least. At the border, the official thought that if he asked us enough times whether we were English or Irish we would finally say that we were Irish. Clearly he was both confused by the inclusion of Northern Ireland on our passport and perhaps a little surprised that anyone from the land of wandering sailors ("did they go to prison when they got back?" we were asked innocently by a local) managed to get a visa.

The first thing we noticed in northern Iran, during our stay in Tabriz, is that we were largely ignored. The town was modern and clean and extremely crowded, and everyone appeared to be very busy, giving off an impression of I'm-just-doing-what-I-need-to-be-doing that is all too familiar back home. Chris found this absence of "hello mister... how are you?" refreshing; I was initially a little concerned that we'd wander round in a bubble and only get to look at (beautiful) buildings. While we were encouraged by how similar some of the stock Farsi phrases were to Arabic and that getting to grips with written numbers was fairly easy (interestingly, they are written left to right while text is written right to left), it was immediately obvious that not many Iranians speak English.

By contrast, our reception in Shiraz (3 pushing 2 on the Mullah scale) in central Iran couldn't have been warmer: lots of people keen to talk to you and hospitality to match that we encountered in Syria. (See separate posting on Shiraz). We now might be able to hazard a guess as to what it's like to be a celebrity: polite and enthusiastic responses to a never-ending barrage of (often unintelligible) questions from total strangers.

After suffering the agonising embarrassment on our first evening (in the north) of being told it was illegal to play cards and in light of the cool reception so far, we were on very best behaviour. We were wandering around looking for a place to have lunch, did a U turn and nearly bumped some young girls; we realised they had been following us. They offered us help and so told them what we looking for. At this point we felt an atmosphere of extreme hostility coming from a number of men nearby, and from one man in particular who was deploying what can only be described as a death stare. Sensing this, (and now understanding why one of the girls had been literally shaking) we made our excuses and scarpered around the corner. 10 minutes later in a restaurant, one of the girls slipped in and gave us her number: after all, it would be us who would cop the blame! But we had learnt our lesson: don't talk to women in public.

So for some, playing cards and talking to strangers of the opposite sex is crossing the 'red line.' For others it is not. Two days later we were sitting in Shiraz having tea with four young women in chador... And a week later we were playing chess in Yazd like it's going out of fashion...

The only other evidence of hostility we have encountered in Iran is sprayed over the walls of the former US Embassy, now hilariously called the US "Den of Espionage." Messages of aggression aimed at the "Great Satan" abounded; we couldn't help wondering who wrote them, how widespread this view was and whether it extended to people like us.

Our experience in central Iran is encouraging; indeed Iranians are clearly concerned about the impression of them that is painted in our media. Playing the 'celebrity' game is back on the cards for us: every day we skip from one unsolicited conversation with a total stranger to another and photo calls in public with giggling girls (and occasionally men, somewhat alarmingly!) abound... but the 'red line' isn't clearly defined at all.

The clothing debate is widely publicised. By and large, it appears that men can wear what they like (tight T shirts and Elvis haircuts being the thing to be seen in at the moment). Women on the other hand, must of course wear the veil by law. Needless to say, "the veil" ranges from head to foot black 'chador' at one extreme, and at the other a brightly coloured head scarf worn so far back on the head it barely stays on, a figure hugging thigh length coat /'manteau', jeans, strappy shoes and all of this topped off with uber coiffured hair pouring out of the front of the scarf and masses of makeup (so much makeup in some cases that it would be dubbed trashy anywhere in the world!).

However, I read in the news that the clerics are giving up. They attempt to stop the way women (and men) bend the rules, and they are particularly keen at this time of year (the beginning of summer. (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6584789.stm). We recently saw a victim of this policy: a girl being driven off in a police car in Esfahan.

The 'red line' in fact cuts right through Iranian society, making a geographically based Mullah Index somewhat flawed. As a visitor you sense you are given a wider berth on these matters, but it is important for us to keep our wits about us. Things have got more relaxed as we headed south, but we will have to adjust back when we head north east towards the pilgrim city of Mashad...

JM

Turkey - The Marco Polo interchange

2007-04-20T14:47:00.000Z

Reluctantly we left Syria for Antakya (ancient Antioch), which had its heyday as Silk Road town under the Romans. From here we follow in the footsteps of Marco Polo, leaving the the northbound Silk Road in an arc across central Turkey and then pick up the main Silk Road that connected Constantinople with Persia.

Two overnight bus journeys took us across Turkey, first to Malatya and then to Van. The former is an unremarkable town, famed only for its apricots but is a good stopping point to explore nearby Mount Nemrut. Here we stood at the top of a 2000m+ snow capped mountain, and stood next to some huge ancient statues of king Antiochus admiring the a breathtaking view of the vast plains of Anatolia.

Van is one of the most easterly towns in Turkey and is a University town and gives it name to a kind of cat that has one blue and one green eye. We took a boat to an island on lake Van to see an old Armenian church; one of the few that has (just about) survived the Turkish government's attempt, on the grounds of 'nationalism,' to move on and 'forget' the Armenia atrocities of the early 20th Century. I was disturbed to read that Turkey has found it easier to deny Armenian history in South East Turkey and to destroy (or deliberately allow to fall into decay) monuments that provide evidence of it.

Military presence became more noticeable as we headed east; a reminder of the troubles with the Kurdish insurgent group, the PKK. "There is no problem with the Kurds... Turkey is full of Kurds," a local told us. "It's just Syria playing games - giving money to these people so that Turkey remains weak." A sweeping statement that we didn't believe tells the full story, but perhaps a policy that does not appear inconsistent with the Syrian government's support of Hezbollah in Lebanon against Israel.

Turkey is a country of contradictions. Our route through the conservative, religious centre and east had lead me to expect a completely different world from Istanbul and the Mediterranean coast. But the competing draws of modernisation from the West and the strong traditional Muslim values stretch deep into the country.

"We want to be like France, England and Germany," Kemal told us - a small man of about 50 in bell bottom jeans, a massive moustache, shoulder length hair and a sweep over that failed to conceal a bald patch. And the evidence was there on the streets of Malatya: western clothes shops and more mobile phone shops and Internet cafes than I have seen anywhere, let alone in a medium sized city.

Other more religious Turks would disagree with Kemal. We chatted to a barrister over Kebabs one evening, who clearly adored football (as do all Turks) but as a devout Muslim clearly found his faith causing friction with some aspects of looking west in the name of modernisation.

So it seems that the combination of fierce nationalism, an obsession with modernisation and Islam leave Turkey somewhat isolated. "No country is our friend because we are in between the Arabs and the West..." Kemal told us. But nevertheless, he had great plans for his country: "Turkey will be a great country; we have everything we need - tourism, oil...we can be the world's greatest nation on our own."

For us, it had provided a sharp contrast to Syria, with a bigger dose of Western culture (and prices to boot) and scenery that lead us to believe that we had already arrived in Central Asia - vast green plains that gave way to an almost lunar topography, which was enveloped in a blanket of snow as we climbed towards the 5000m+Mount Arrarat. In fact, the surroundings of the palace above Dogubouyazit (the frontier town near the Iranian border) looked almost Tibetan!

But for now... onwards to Iran - a country with more in common with Syria, perhaps?

JM

North towards Constantinople

2007-04-20T14:06:00.000Z

From central Syria, the trade caravans heading east would have followed the Euphrates south to Babylon. Today this would be somewhat foolish, so instead we followed the silk road north west towards its terminus at Constantinople / Istanbul.

Avoiding Iraq provided a great excuse to be distracted from the trade route by one of the finest medieval castles in the world - Krak des Chevaliers. In the 12th Century, the Crusaders took an existing fort and so successfully improved its fortifications that it held out against Saracen attack for over a hundred years. When it finally surrendered, marking the end of the Christian control of the Holy Land, it was again strengthened by a second defensive wall.

Rolling thunder and lightning flashes provided a dramatic setting as we walked up to this huge, imposing castle which is perched on top of the hill. We spent several hours exploring the maze of rooms and corridors before walking around the battlements, from which there was spectacular view of the lush green Syrian plains stretching out below.

We continued north to Aleppo. Now Syria's second city, it's success on the Silk Road is illustrated by the fact that it now houses the world's largest bazaar. This city of a thousand mosques is also one of the more religiously diverse in the Middle East, with Christians making up nearly half of its population. That it is one of the few remaining examples of sustained religious co-existence that William Dalrymple finds on his travels in the Middle East forms the basis of his strongly argued book, From the Holy Mountain.

Aleppo's rich history collides with the present just beyond its impressive citadel and the labyrinthine bazaar. There must be a yellow taxi for every one of the thousand mosques in Aleppo (and 1000 satellite dishes...). Crossing busy three lane roads with no traffic lights and certainly concept of pedestrian right of way is an experience.. you simply walk out, confidently, into the oncoming stream of traffic and miraculously the cars flow around you. A certain understanding of Syrian road etiquette is required, however - if you attempt to walk in front of a car that has already slowed for someone ahead of you, it will accelerate straight at you.

Once this lesson was complete, Aleppo was a pleasure to explore: in my view it somehow managed to surround its ancient core with a more characterful bustling modernity than Damascus. In addition, it has some excellent restaurants and 25p fresh fruit smoothies to keep the energy levels up as you wander around.

We were sad to leave Aleppo and Syria and with them the Arabic section of our journey. Our brief introduction to Syria and Lebanon had been captivating. We had scratched the surface of an embarrassment of cultural riches (and at the same time scratched our own heads at the extraordinarily haphazard approach taken to conservation and heritage) and had found a warm and welcoming people (unsolicited, we had be given lifts by a Beiruti couple and an Aleppan man and housed and fed by some Syrian teachers). Syria, in particular, is without doubt a hidden gem; I would wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone!

Palmyra - Syria old & new

2007-04-13T14:18:00.001Z

We did not expect to gain insight into contemporary Syria at a former Silk Road caravan town which, predating Damascus and Aleppo, was so prosperous that it dared to challenge the Roman Empire. But thanks to another example of Syrian hospitality - this time of a French teacher we met on the bus to Palmyra - we ended up staying in the home of four teachers. Of similar age to us, they showed incredible generosity and taught us more about what it is like to be Syrian in two days than we have learnt in our trip so far.

But first, ancient Palymra. Its setting alone, near an oasis in the middle of the desert about 150 miles east of Iraq is breathtaking. The town (previously known as Tadmor) was to provide a vital stopping point for the caravans of spcies, perfumes and silk from the East as early as the 19th century BC.

When Rome invaded Syria in the 1st Century BC, the Empire's trade poured through Palymra, and the city enjoyed unprecedented prosperity and a degree of autonomy thanks to its remote location. It was at this time that the awesome site, much of which is visible today, was constructed: including a colonade one kilometre long ending in a huge arch, and impressive amphitheatre and a vast temple built to honour the Babylonian equivalent of Zeus.

At sunset we climbed up to an imposing (and more recent) citadel, which was perched on top of steep hill and offered stunning views over the site and the desert beyond. We both agreed that the place somehow created the most vivid picture of its former self than anything we had ever visited. The stunning Roman columns glowing in the sun perhaps contrasted with the town's harsh setting to convey a sense of opulence - the carefully constructed water and drainage system must surely have been like paradise to the caravans as they pulled into the enormous marketplace after an arduous journey through the desert.

Brimming with confidence, Palymra made a bid for independence. The city rose up against the Persians and finally against Rome under the intriguing Queen Zenobia, who in her rein took back all of the Syria which had been lost. Rome retaliated however, and in 274 Aurelian's army brough Palmyra under heel. It was never to fully recover, later being ecclipsed commercially by Damascus and Aleppo.

These ruins were undoubetedly the highlight of the trip so far. Yet we were also lucky enough to experience a glimpse of Syrian culture too, thanks to our hosts Yasser, Nassan, Feras and Belal - the first a French teacher, the others teachers of religion. Showing incredible generosity, they housed and fed us and walked around the sites with us when they had finished work. All of them worked in Palymra during the week, returning to their family homes in Homs (2.5 hours west) at the weekend. Despite their modest house (we slept on the floor, having refused to take their beds when offered) their would neither allow us to leave after the first night nor to take them out for a meal.

Through them we discovered a national obsession with mobile phones, but not yet with the internet (although email was beginning to take off). They told us that we both should be married by now (!), but were keen to compare their lives with ours as dating in Syria is a no-no and living with female friends unheard of. We found that Arabic was indeed quite tricky and our woeful pronunciation hilarious. It was obvious how much their faith permeated throughout their language and every aspect of their lives. It was also clear that they dervied real pleasure in hospitality; we were very lucky to have spent time with such kind, genuine and well educated people. Hopefully they learnt something from us too - about our culture and about our language... There was no doubt that they loved the two cards games we taught them - playing Blackjack in Syria with peanuts as chips to the sound of "Hit me" in sploken a thick Arabic accent is not something I will quickly forget.

JM

Beirut - a tale of two cities

2007-04-11T20:30:00.000Z

We decided to go to Beirut. Partly because James had shown how easily it could be done, but mainly because Chris wanted to. For me, going to the sea meant that my trip would span all of Asia from coast to coast.

The drive over the snow capped mountains from the Syria down to the coast was spectacular. However, as we neared Beirut, evidence of the recent conflict became clear as our car picked its way around a road bridge destroyed last summer by Israeli bombers.

There are many reasons why Beirut might be described as two cities: the old and the new... the Christian and the Muslim... However, what follows are some more light-hearted observations during a fleeting visit.

Buoyed by rave reviews in our guide book about the buzzing nightlife and fantastic cuisine, our expectations were high. We hunted down the hostel with the best review in the heart of Beirut and were somewhat... disappointed to find one of roughest places I've ever encountered located on what must have been Beirut's premier road for "super" night clubs. We checked in and headed out for supper, only to wander through deserted streets (each signed with a district, rarely with a street name) before finding our lovely (albeit tiny) restaurant. Finding a drink after supper proved even harder - of the two recommendations in our guide book, one was closed and the other did not serve alcohol. Having trawled most of Western / central Beirut by this point, we had managed to bump into an off licence and therefore resigned ourselves to drinking a quiet beer on the peer looking out to sea. Lovely, but not quite what we'd expected! The next morning we were determined to find the people in Beirut. But again, we found an impressive - but deserted - newly built "Downtown" area centred around a Rolex clock tower.

At this point I had to contact James for advice on where we had gone wrong. Some advice followed by text and also a kind invitation to his fiance's family house for lunch. We discovered over lunch that the 'heart' of Beirut had shifted away from the normal "downtown" area due to the ongoing Hezbollah demonstrations, which were based out of hundreds of tents in the town centre. This fact was then conclusively proved on Saturday evening when we visited the heaving bars of Germayzeh. One single lane road in particular was packed with bars all of which were overflowing with people. Amusingly, because cars are such a big deal in Beirut, everyone had to pull up to their bar of choice (music up, windows down and top down (if possible), although this meant enduring at least a 30 minute wait in horrific traffic. But most importantly, we had finally found the real city of Beirut. We were very impressed (perhaps a little intimidated by the scene, particularly decked out in our finest "travel gear!") and had an evening out with James, Zeina and Christina (a friend of theirs) which was a reminder of the London nightlife that we won't see again for some time.

If there's a moral to this story, perhaps it's that things change very quickly in the Middle East. Bur encouragingly, despite enormous difficulties, people quickly adapt in the attempt to continue living their lives.

JM

Damascus - "Salaam 'alakum'

2007-04-11T16:57:00.000Z

With a claim to be one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world with significance to the Silk Roads (connecting Babylon with the Phoenician ports such as Tripoli), Damascus is a good starting point for this journey.

The drive from the airport sets the scene for any contemporary Middle Eastern city - flat roofs, satellite dishes, hectic roads and what little Latin script there is on the billboards dissolving rapidly into Arabic.

But the heart of Damascus - the old town - is far from ordinary. Entering via a covered souk, you are confronted by an amazingly powerful array of smells: spices, perfume and apple tobacco. The remainder of the old town is a maze of narrow, irregular streets with ancient houses sometimes appearing on the verge of toppling over. The only large open spaces are the huge marble courtyard of the Umayyad Mosque and the stonework of the Azem palace.

The Syrian welcome (salaam alakum in Arabic) was a warm one. I arrived the day before Chris and a single stroll through the old town resulted in tea and a chat with one stall owner and greeting another two by name when we returned the following day. Normally these conversations tend inevitably towards the sale, but on this occasion it was me who eventually felt duty bound to talk about what was in the shop.

When Chris arrived we explored the Old Town further, before meeting James (Carty) for lunch, who had come over from Beirut. (Joining him for a couple of weeks on his epic journey last year was one of the reasons I decided to do this trip - see Why entry)

After some delicious mezze washed down with a fresh lemon and mint drink we bid him farewell and continued to explore the bustling night food market. Damascus had been the perfect introduction to the Silk Road.

JM

Why?

2007-02-05T22:28:00.000Z

A number of people have asked this, but I think the route speaks for itself...

This trip is an extraordinary opportunity. Somehow I appear to have temporarily extracted myself from my job without terminally damaging my career (I hope), allowing me to put on hold my life in London and embark on the kind of travel that isn't possible while in full time work.

Why the Silk Road? My decision was the product of a collision of factors. Most recently and significantly, I must credit James (Carty), a friend of mine who recently decided to walk from London to Jerusalem (see www.walkingtojerusalem.org). I joined him for the last hundred miles into Jerusalem and it reminded me of a kind of travelling I haven't done for some time. He also made me realise that the kind of adventure travel my father did in his youth, including driving across the Sahara, was still possible.

Of course times have changed; my reaction to to my father's advice to "take some morphine with you... just in case" is a case in point. But some of the places I will pass through on the Silk Road have only recently been opened to all but the most seasoned travellers. Other parts are changing so rapidly that they will be unrecognisable in as little as ten years. So it's a fascinating time to go.

So it is then, that a thirst for adventure, a fascinating (if brief) introduction to the Middle East last year and a lifelong passion for the mountains made The Silk Road the obvious candidate for what I expect to be one of the most exciting six months of my life.

In addition, I'm unbelievable lucky that Chris - a friend and fully signed up member of the increasingly ambitious (mostly financially, it seems) annual ski trips - is up for the Middle East and Central Asia. He's been out in Whistler since January and I'll be heading out there to join in the vital 'preparation' for the Silk Road!

JM

The route

2007-02-04T23:25:00.000Z

There is no single "Silk Road" - instead a network of trade routes which allowed the Silk caravans to make their west to Europe from China and the copper, tin, gold and furs that were exchanged and made their way back in the opposite direction.

No merchant travelled the full 9,000 miles from the the Mediterranean to Beijing; the distance was spanned with multiple trades. So to travel the entire length of it is not to follow the caravans. It is to explore the some of the driest plains and the the highest mountains on earth. It is also, apprently, to join "one of the few clubs to count as members Alexander, Ghengis Khan and Marco Polo!"

Despite the absence of a clearly defined single route, once you have decided you must see the great cities of the Silk Road (Samarkand, Bukhara) and that you must not see the hotspots of Iraq and Afghanistan, a route begins to emerge.

We will begin in Syria. From Damascus we will head north into Turkey and south east into Iran, past the Caspian Sea to Tehran. Here the roads fork - with one option to bear north east through central Asia and the other head south of Afghanistan into Pakistan. We will take in some of Iran before taking the former.

Next are the Stans: Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, up into the awesome Pamir mountains of Tajikstan (a slight detour from the trail through Tashkent) and up into Kyrgistan. Here we will attempt to cross into China via the notoriously unpredictable Torugart Pass.

At this point, no altitude junkie in his right mind could pass up the opportunity to head south past K2 and over the Karakorum Highway into Pakistan. This is still "legit" Silk Road though; apparently you can see the camel trail chipped out of the cliffs as you descend from the Kunjerab pass.

Sadly, I will then bid farewell to Chris and return back over the Karakorum highway into mighty China. My sister Helen will join me here, and I look forward to contrasting the vast and empty expanses of the Taklakaman desert in Xinjiang province to the every increasing population density as I head east and ultimately into Xian. Here the pollution is such that the snow is black winter.

Then to Tibet, a place which intrigued me when I was in Nepal nearly ten years ago. Here I hope to meet up with Tom and Debs and spend 2-3 weeks, perhaps heading to Everest base camp.

Then down from the Tibetan plateau and east towards the sprawling expanse of Beijing, by which time I expect the Silk Roads of Central Asia to feel like a distant memory.

JM