Apologies for the break – I was busy finishing a piece of writing and didn’t have any spare time to continue the Pamir roadtrip story.

Where were we? We were still on Day 2, having just arrived into Khorog, and were exploring the gardens at the Serena, while Dan napped off his stomach bug. We can cover the remainder of that day plus Day 3 (In Khorog) here.

By about 5 in evening Dan forced himself out of bed to show us a bit of the town, and we went to have a bite to eat and a pleasant time relaxing on the tapchans at the Chorbogh teahouse (operated by the group of Aga Khan organizations, just like the Serena – the AK development network seems to kind of run the Pamirs, or at least Khorog). The teahouse is situated just on the banks of the river Gunt, in a corner of the Khorog city park, with a raised platform hanging out over the river and the icy blue-green water rushing by below.

The town itself feels quaint and small, although it also has the bustling feel of a regional hub, and the center of town right next to the bazaar housed a constant crowd of travelers and touts and small-time sellers and minibuses and SUVs – the marketplace for anyone wanting to depart the Pamir region for west-central Tajikistan and not aiming to pay for one of the very limited airplane seats out of town (meaning almost any ordinary traveler).


Khorog is a border post, founded in the 1890s by the Russian military as the boundaries between British-controlled Afghanistan and Russian-controlled Central Asia were firmed up, so in a sense, although the town is picturesque, it isn’t surprising that it also has a hint of the rough and ready menace of a border station. And maybe because our visit coincided with a holiday weekend, including Tajikistan’s independence day, for which there was a large public celebration in the city park, there was also at times an ever so slightly trashy feel – drunks hanging around on the edges of the park, groups of men ranging around after the late afternoon breakup of the local football match, and literally lots of remaining litter lying around in the park after the main heaps of trash had been carted away on the actual holiday. So Khorog was a pleasant break during our travels but certainly not home to us, as tourists and visitors.

We had a peaceful stay at the Serena, got rested up, and refroze the ice packs from our cooler. Continued to meet up with random travelers you’d never imagine would bother to make their way to Tajikistan, although I suppose that for them that’s the point: the Pamirs in a real sense are the end of the world, following in Marco Polo's footsteps, that kind of thing. On our first evening we’d already met up with a group of San Diego based travelers in Kalai Khumb who were making their way from Osh in Kyrgyzstan (I was surprised, given the relatively recent violence there) to Dushanbe, by way of Khorog. They claimed they’d visited (or would soon have visited?) every country in the world. “There’s a group of us,” their ringleader noted, by way of explanation. Who knew? In Khorog we crossed paths at the Serena with a French family traveling in a 2-car caravan. They had driven overland all the way from Europe and aimed after an exploration of the Pamirs to end up in Tashkent, where their university-aged son had a reservation to fly out in a few weeks’ time.

We also spent a thoroughly enjoyable morning in the Khorog Botanical Garden, perched up on a hill above the Shakhdarya river, on the southeast edge of the narrow town. (Khorog is situated in a narrow gorge, where the Gunt runs westward and intersects with the northward flowing – at this stage – Oxus. It basically has room for one main east-west street on the north side of the Gunt and a few secondary ones parallel to it.) Not much more to report on here except a slow meander through the semi-wild gardens and admiring (and taking snapshots of) the flowers, groves, and the imposing and tacky new mansion the president of Tajikistan has built for himself at the edge of the grounds. (The Serena, where he used to stay, apparently is no longer good enough. But thinking about that made us realize, kind of ickily: ‘wait, if we splurged to stay in the deluxe suite at the Serena, probably we’re sleeping in the same bed where Rahmon has slept!?’)

The brief R&R was good for our peace of mind, and Dan began to feel better. After a phone consultation with our Dushanbe medical provider, he decided to get his hands on some metronidazole, on the suspicion that he’d gotten giardia. We had a moment’s doubt about whether we could find it in Khorog, but then we realized that the prevalence of stomach bugs in this part of the world meant that actually this was probably the easiest medicine to get your hands on in a local drugstore. And we were right. He started to improve after 1 or 2 doses of the meds.

On the negative side, Monday morning we got a phone call from Dushanbe, alerting us that, in addition to the recent 25-man jailbreak and reported suicide-bombing at government buildings in Khujand, there were now reports of a bomb (or a fight? in Tajikistan rumor is king) in a local Dushanbe nightclub on Saturday night. That was slightly unsettling news, although the rational mind would tell you that in the remote eastern Pamirs you’re about as safe from unrest and political violence as you can be in Tajikistan.

Another negative that was nagging at both Dan’s and my mind, as we prepared to set out on our eastern loop through some of the most remote and unprovisioned territory in the country, stemmed from the unfortunate fact that the X-Terra’s “Service Engine Soon” light had lit up just as we pulled into Khorog, and it hadn’t yet gone off. Although the message was ominously vague, after consulting the owner’s manual, we’d established with pretty good confidence that in fact it was primarily a warning about the emissions system. Bad gas from a brief refueling stop in Kulob, perhaps? We weren’t sure, but we convinced ourselves that it probably didn’t mean we were in danger of breaking down. We hoped.

After our second morning enjoying a hearty breakfast in the Serena dining room, overlooking the sunny garden and riverbank, we gassed up again at the much more trustworthy-looking main gas station in Khorog (hoping the possibly bad Kulob fuel might get diluted?), and set out southward on the road toward Ishkashim.

Sadik Graduation: A Bit of Cultural Context

I posted a video clip and some photos today from Anya's preschool year-end pageant. There were a whole lot of dance numbers and a wonderful spread of food, with the landlord's plov as the centerpiece. The evening was a lot of fun, not least for us personally because of how Anya showed to what extent she has come out of her reserved shell in the last several months, capping this year in preschool with a dance "solo."

I guess I feel the need to explain a bit, though. There was one number that made us feel a bit uncomfortable for the way race played a role, and although I loved Anya's own Eastern dance number, it occurs to me that it's possible someone unfamiliar with the cultural context might wonder what was happening with her short routine.

First, race. The kids did a group routine to the tune of "Chunga-Changa," a song from the Soviet-era cartoon "Katerok (Little Boat)." You can see the original 1970 animated version here. When we saw Anya come out together with her classmate O. to dance in costume amid their peers, we were a little surprised that the one child with an African parent was cast in a piece with that name, in outfits made to look like classically imagined "native dress."

The song is a little paean to a simple life of plenty on the desert isle to which the Little Boat in the cartoon gets blown off-course in a storm: the lyrics celebrate the "miraculous island's" blue skies, year-round summer climate, and the diet of coconuts and bananas that one apparently adopts once one is grounded there. On that level, one can probably read the song and the cartoon scenes as a simple daydream about escaping the life of shortages and difficulty in the Soviet Union. The trouble for a person born in the post-Civil Rights United States comes in where the somewhat stylized figures of black children enter (which is almost immediately), complete with curly heads of hair and what look like grass skirts. To me this looks like the product of a centuries-long distance from African and Afro-Caribbean colonialism, and the twentieth-century relationship of the Soviet state to the Third World and Africa and the Caribbean, with a dash of Russian old-school Romantically informed views about the immutable and inherent qualities of race (and, for that matter, gender).

Obviously, cultural relativism in this situation could be seen as no different from agreement and support. I'm still honestly not sure what to think of the way the teachers staged this piece, but I guess for now I think it's best to assume that this is primarily about a fondly remembered Soviet-era cultural artifact and that the bit was being staged with all the best intentions, and basically to leave it at that. (After all, so much of what the kids in our sadik do, especially at their pageants, comes from exactly the same nostalgic place: witness fondness for the Soviet incarnation of the Ded Moroz-Baba Yaga story that people in the post-Soviet world are truly loathe to part with.)

(I should mention too that this dance number at the preschool was preceded by an intro about how delightfully international our particular group of kids is, and more generally praising in broad strokes the multitude of difference kinds of people and nations in the world, complete with each kid waving the flag of his or her parents home country. Never mind that that becomes complicated with so many of our preschool's families in dual national households: the point was just to do one of those simple celebrations of the "thousand flowers" blooming together, to praise the "friendship of the peoples." More Soviet-era concepts re-imagined in the post-Soviet (re-)developing world, where expat NGO and diplomatic families and some locals can afford to pay for a better quality private day-care/preschool than what is offered officially on the local market.)

True, after seeing the dance number, there may be a place for commenting to the teachers about the role they chose for O. (I will note that O.'s European mother didn't seem to mind a bit that her son was cast in the piece, although she could have simply been keeping her reaction inside. When I talked to some of our fellow parents about it later, we all agreed that she and her family have to be used to the very different views about race that people hold in the former Soviet Union. Whether that makes it OK is a different question, but I wouldn't be surprised if in fact she wasn't phased by it.) But are our own American views and cultural associations with race so perfect that we can go around lecturing to Tajiks or Russians about their assumptions?

It might also be appropriate for us to engage our kids in conversation about race after the performance, but I tend to think that 3 and a half is young to have a talk about these things. I think my view is that here, as in other aspects of our social relations, it's probably better just to model tolerance and openness to our kids, rather than to have overt discussions about how the world works (and ought to work), to show by doing rather than to instruct by talking. (Part of that I hope is the way we interact with O., and I do think that part of the reason it took me a split second to notice the weirdness of the casting in the dance number precisely because I don't notice O.'s race. It's only because of the dance number that I'm even thinking about his skin color, really.)

Incidentally, if you want to know more about how race is discussed in Russia and in the former Soviet Union's cultural sphere, this Russian-language article on Wikipedia is actually quite insightfully written. There are a few spots where I start to wonder what the author's own biases are, but for the most part I think it explains really well the differences I've noticed in over 20 years of direct contact with Homo sovieticus and visiting his (and her) habitat.

OK, with all of that as prelude, just take a look at the photos and videos for yourself. I will try to explain my position on 3-year-olds doing something that resembles belly dancing next time, but in the meantime I'll just say that I look at the whole belly dancing thing as an art form, and one whose moves and shiny costumes truly fascinate kids. I'm really glad that Anya, whose dancing always has an Eastern flair to it, probably because she's spent these formative years in Central Asia, did this particular dance for her little year-end solo.

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!!

Baba Yaga (Bzzz Bzzz)

I was reminded a few days ago that, while it is clear from my recent Anya language update that Baba Yaga is beauty-challenged in the nasal department, not everyone may know who she is. As usual, Wikipedia offers a not-too-shabby overview of the classic Slavic fairy-tale witch character. (Apparently Georgii Milliar, in the picture here, was the actor who played Baba Yaga in several Soviet films from the 1930s to the '60s, and sort of seems like the quintessential B. Y. to those who've seen his performances. He's profiled in Russian in the link.)

But Baba Yaga also typically plays a central role Soviet/post-Soviet kiddie New Year's celebrations like the ones we've been taking part in.

For some reason the article I referred to in last year's rundown of this holiday unfortunately has disappeared (together with the source, Moskovskie novosti). But if you look at the many Russian party scripts posted online for ensuring a fun New Year's holiday, my memory of that description is confirmed: Baba Yaga actually shows up in these rote celebrations as more of a laughable, bothersome hooligan character than a truly scary witch. She plays the humorous foil to good ol' Grandfather Frost/Dedushka Moroz and his sidekick Snegurochka, threatening to break up the party because she's been left off the invitation list. The MC (Russian events always need to have an MC...) tries to talk her out of ruining it, high jinks ensue. But ultimately the kids win out with Ded Moroz and Snegurochka's help, and the forces of good reassuringly overcome what was surely in the Communist era meant to be a mildly anti-Soviet example in Baba Yaga.

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I threw these notes up last week and then, wouldn't you know it, we had the chance for yet another of these staged New Year's gatherings, and my understanding of Baba Yaga's role was borne out and then some!

On Wednesday, Anya's sadik had a field trip to the Dushanbe "Lukhtak" Puppet Theater. I had asked ahead of time what the performance was slated to be, but all the teachers could tell me was it would be in Russian. What they weren't able to predict was that it wouldn't really contain any puppets. (The closest we came to real puppets was the small crow character who outs Baba Yaga after she puts a spell on Ded Moroz in her attempt to spoil the kiddies' fun. Otherwise, all were live actors.)

The show was not so much a play as an extended version of the yolochka party -- unfortunately not the most captivating format for the 2-year-old set when seated in the audience instead of watching more free-form in the lobby. The performance did include some chuckles for the adults, though, beginning with the fact that our "host," the little girl Mashenka, got a phone call a few minutes into the proceedings (when she came on stage with a cellphone on a lanyard around her neck, I first thought this was an indication of a low level of professionalism and concentration on the part of the Lukhtak company, but it soon became obvious that it was an intentional prop). Her half of the conversation allowed us to surmise that it was Snegurochka calling to let her know that Ded Moroz was on his way. Mashenka was only slightly disappointed when Sneggie told her she wasn't going to make the party because she had to greet some guests from Paris.

In another beat or two our attention was drawn to a little alcove at stage left, where Baba Yaga was just waking up, and generating giggles from the older kids as she stretched her limbs, stiffly attempted her morning "zaryadka" (exercises), and admired herself in the mirror as she got dressed for an aerial tour of her woodland fiefdom. (Curiously, Tajik ideas about how a humorous witch ought to dress have a suspicious amount in common with the way crunchy Western NGO-types tend to dress on the weekends, right down to the brightly colored fleece zip-up vest....) At this point, Anya decided she was scared of B. Y. and started crying and protesting, so we had to take a break.

But the funniest part of the "play" for me was when Baba Yaga got her present from Ded Moroz (she'd been convinced to reverse her spell on Ded M., so he'd made his grand entrance, echo-laden mic effects and all): a yellow and black striped floppy hat, whose corporate origins the 4-year-olds next to us immediately identified with enthusiastic shouts of "Beeline!"