Our Journey Along the Silk Road (Take One)

I am obviously still working at glacial analog speeds when it comes to the digestion of and reflection upon travel experiences. I just can't seem to get the distance and peace of mind to consider my impressions of where I've just been with anywhere near the light speed expected from a blog.

I did upload about 2/3 of the photos we took -- and they do still say that a picture is worth a thousand words, don't they?

But I think by now -- a full two weeks since returning from Bukhara, and almost a week clear of hosting our first visitors in Dushanbe, which came on the heels of our journey -- I've got a handle on what this trip meant to me.

Our journey along the rough outlines of the Silk Route got off to quite a rocky start the Friday we set out. Given my experience with air travel to Moscow, and now our record on regional overland travel, as well as an indirect experience with flights from Urumqi (in western China), it is really starting to sink in just how difficult it is to get from point A to point B when one of them involves Tajikistan. So, I guess in a sense this trip was important just simply for being my first chance to get out of Dushanbe, see more, experience more, get more frustrated, and then just let go and enjoy the journey for whatever it throws in your way.

We made every effort to ensure that our plan to trace a big circle on our way out to Bukhara and back to Dushanbe -- out the northern route and over the mountains, and back the southern route through the plains of southern Uzbekistan and then into Tajikistan through Tursunzode -- wouldn't be blocked. Our main fixation was the scary Anzob Tunnel (which in fact was not very scary at all this time around -- no random sharp pieces of metal jutting out of puddles, in fact no standing pools of water, and a portion of the tunnel even luxuriously illuminated for easy navigation). We'd heard that not only was the tunnel a frightful passage but that it was closed from 9am into the evening while work was being completed on it. Dan's contacts assured us that it would be open, though, and that there might be only uncharacterized "delays" on the roadway north and west after passing through the tunnel. Unfortunately our drive proved that our main concern paled in comparison to the obstacles we hadn't even really considered, and it turned out we probably should have pressed for a bit more information on the nature of those "delays."

By about 11am, we had made it to a point some thirty kilometers after the tunnel's end, where freshly laid, smooth asphalt snaked down the mountain right into the midst of a cluster of about 20 vehicles stopped on either side of the highway. They were being held in place by a roadblock enforced by the Chinese construction workers who, as a rule, speak neither Tajik nor Russian nor English. We waited for over an hour while Dan gathered all the information he could -- the basics were that the crew working on this portion of the new road had stopped all passage (apparently as they have been doing every day, which called into serious question the helpful informants we'd consulted ahead of time), beginning at 7am and most likely continuing to hold traffic in place until 6 or 7pm with, of course, no alternate route provided.

At this point, let me make one thing clear: this isn't just "a route" north from Dushanbe; it is THE ONLY route north and the only auto route connecting the north and the south of this country! (The old route, which the tunnel and surrounding road now bypass, goes over a mountain pass whose roadway, we discovered later in the day, since we had oh-so-little to lose, is now poorly maintained and suffers from rockfalls and blockage by snow well into June.)

When noon rolled around and the speculative limited opening of the roadblock didn't materialize, Dan decided to storm the roadblock and bluster his way through on the basis of the red diplomatic plates, but even that didn't work. It turned out that the block wasn't just a formality; there really was no way to pass the big construction machine that was literally straddling the road atop a precipice -- there was just mountain to the right, air to the left.

But we did succeed in stoking the anger of another group of Chinese road workers, who got really furious at us. One of them started screaming at Dan in Chinese, trying to get us to back up. Dan took the bait and entered into a shouting match with him (neither side apparently understanding anything the other was saying) until, as Dan describes it "something in me snapped and I screamed viciously at him." Yep, that about sums it up. At that point, Anya started crying, my own grip on my armrest ratcheted up another notch, and luckily Dan fairly quickly saw we weren't doing anyone any good and backed down. (The incident of course provided narrative fodder for the remainder of the trip and well into the past week at home in Dushanbe, with frequent asides from Anya about how "the Chinese man made Daddy reawwy angry.")

Since my other blogging weakness is showing terribly at this point (can't seem to make these posts short and snappy, can I?), and since, beyond our Beckett-like meandering through the mountains, nothing much else really happened over the course of this portion of the trip, I'll close out the tale of the folly of Day One of our journey here and tell about The Rest of It in the next post. But not without giving you a few more quantitative yardsticks of our experience (with apologies to Harper's):

Time spent in the car, from departure to dejected return home, in hours: 10

Of that, time spent stopped at the construction roadblock, in hours: 1.5

Quantity of angry Chinese road workers who yelled at us at any point during our sojourn: 5

Routes attempted to cross the mountains and reach Aini and points beyond: 3

Routes successfully navigated: 0

Combined sheep-and-goat herd traffic jams encountered: lost count at 7

Passengers taken in along the way: 1

Types of wild plant advised upon by hitchhiking safed: 2

Of those, types dangerous or poisonous to touch: 1

Cups of tea we got away with drinking in typical Tajik forced hospitality to thank us for the ride (per adult): 3

Minutes of cellphone reception while in the mountains from approximately 10am to 6pm: 0

Minutes of hailstorm and rain encountered on return leg to spend the night at home in Dushanbe: 15

Accidents/pairs of wet undies produced in our car over the 10-hour pointless journey: zero!!