Day 9 - Sarytag to Dushanbe

I woke up early today, partly from the rooster crowing and partly from my back simply protesting the bed. As I stepped into the hallway and looked outside the view was staggering, even better than last night.  It's a magical spot and in another time, I could see how beautiful a multi day trek out from this location would be magical.

I took a shower in a very makeshift shower...I've never seen anything quite like it, but I managed to get some hot water going and was able to get the grime off from the day before. Dave manages a hot shower but when Cadence goes to use it she has problems, luckily there is a spout and she's relatively short so she manages to get some hot water by ducking under the water.  Brian mentions later that he has to do the same in his bathroom. Very makeshift! I wish I'd taken a photo of the plumbing.

Cadence was feeling better today, and I decided to give her Gravol right away so that it had time to take effect before we got in the car.  It was another long drive today, so best if we didn't have more puking!

Once we were packed up we headed over to the main house for breakfast.  The breakfast was good but most of us were feeling a bit trepidatious about what we were eating this morning. They served nice hot tea though and even snickers bars, so those seemed like safe options! haha.  The water we have found to be really clean and good throughout the trip.

Once we are all paid up we hit the road.  It's funny as Zafar was asking how we booked everything and we told him booking.com and apparently one of the things that he works with people in the region on is how to put their place up on booking.com. I tell him that it had been hard to find accommodation in these regions that I wanted to visit and I certainly would have welcomed more options, but there just weren't any. 

We hit the road and we have to backtrack quite a ways...down the long steep gravel/dirt road and back out to the highway.  Somehow moving from crappy road to better and better roads makes us all feel a little better than last night!

We stop at the lake and decide to hike out to the waterfall and back. Its a nice walk along the river and the waterfall is pretty neat. Its hot out though - and we are all feeling a bit sluggish today.

We load back into the van after our walk and off we go.  We are on our way to Dushanbe where we will spend the night before we fly out to Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan tomorrow.

The highway is pretty good, its winding, but so far Cadence is surviving! We go through a tunnel at one point that is over 6km long and its still under construction so there is no ventilation or lights. It's pretty nuts and afterwards we find out that many of us were silently calculating if we could survive getting out of there if there had been an accident. Jeez. I need to google about asphyxiation by carbon monoxide poisoning. Or do I?? But as I mentioned before, the amount of mountains in this country has to cause major infrastructure issues.  Like in the case of this tunnel that they need to bore through 6km of mountain to reduce driving time by a few hours.  It can happen of course, but it would be costly and take a long time.  We are ultimately happy to have the mostly done tunnel to help us reduce our driving time.

The rest of the drive is mostly uneventful. We stop along the road for a break at one point and the view is stunning. It's a remarkable country.

As we near Dushanbe we Emily notices that most people seem to have outdoor pools along the rivers edge. Very enticing but we push on.

Once we get in town we meet with Zafar's manager and get Brian's passport back.  I guess I forgot to mention that his visa had come in yesterday during the drive.  Whoot!

We are happy to have his passport back in our hands and we pay our fee for the expedited service that we are very happy to have received. We then get dropped off at our hotel.

The temperature outside is definitely in the 40's and the girls don't want to leave their room.  I'm jonesing for some good american style food and find a pizza place with a 4.7! Us young folk take off to get some pizza (yes, I include Dave and myself in the young crowd still). We are all grateful for this place, its air conditioned and has cold drinks, a cute vibe and amazing pizza. It is just what we need.  After we gorge on several large pizzas, we grab pizza and drinks for the girls and head back to the hotel.

I'm feeling a bit done in and the heat is not inspiring much desire to go out and explore...we saw many of the sights coming into Dushanbe and I don't have it in me to go out right now.  Most of us feel the same way so we bunker down until supper time.

We grab cabs once its dark and head to a suggested restaurant near the opera house.  Bruce gets into it with the maitre d at the adjacent restaurant that is trying to pass off his place as the one we want.  Kind of funny - but he's in no mood.  lol.  We finally find where we are going and its a super neat place. Very eclectic with bits and bobs all over the place to look at. We get some drinks flowing and order some food.  It's a nice atmosphere but the kids are tired and Cadence still feels a little off.  Dave takes Cadence back to the hotel and its not long after he's back and we've eaten that we decide we'd better take the other two back as well.

I will say that Dushanbe is a really cool place at night, they really show off. As we saw in Uzbekistan, the light shows at night in the cities are amazing.  They have these cool lit up walkways and light up their buildings. Its really neat and invigorates the pedestrian areas. I think more could be done in Vancouver like this, lighting is obviously more affordable over here.

We get back to our hotel and tuck the girls in.  I had noticed earlier that our beds were really hard, and once we get to our room, I turn to Dave and am near desperation for how we will possibles sleep on these things.  I ask him to see if they can send us more duvets or pillows.  It takes some repeated discussion but we manage to get another duvet and we fold the one we had before and the new one in half and lay them across the middle of the bed.  It takes the bed from solid granite to solid marble! Hah! Honestly, I've never slept in anything so hard before.  My back is going to be trashed after this trip.

I spend the night laying flat on my back until it goes numb, then rolling over and sleeping on my side until my hip and shoulder go numb, then over to the other side...its a fitful sleep...these guys are not getting a good review!

Day 8 - Samarkand to Sarytag, Tajikistan: The good, the bad, the ugly

This day will be one for the history books of our family...

We had arranged the next section of our trip through Stan Tours which was a group that we found while watching video blogs about the Stans.

I had mapped out this trip itinerary based on some other tour itineraries I had found, and we had managed the first part by train and plane, but this section was either bus or private van, so we opted for private van and Stan Tours organized our drivers for us for Tajikistan and later in Kyrgyzstan.

We had arranged for pickup at 9am from our hotel so we got up and had breakfast provided by the hotel in their interior courtyard. They served quinoa and eggs with sausage and cookies. Something we would get served several times over the coming weeks. Not a what the girls considered an awesome breakfast, but my mantra with them has been that when they are served food, they need to try and eat some of it, as we don't know what our next meal will look like or when it will come when we are traveling for long days. So they need to put something in their tummies when the opportunities arise.

When our driver arrived we went out to load up and discovered we had a mini bus all to ourselves. We all piled in and off we went. Dave noticed that our bus seemed a little empty and low and behold, we appeared to have forgotten Emily and Brian behind. Lol. They had lost their passport holder and unbeknownst to us were still in their room searching. Our poor driver had to turn that big bus around!  Thankfully Emily and Brian forgave us for our transgressions and off we went.

Once we were officially all on the bus we were off towards to Tajikistan border. As we left the city we quickly were in rural farmlands. It was a lovely winding drive... however I made a fatal mistake.

We would need to get out and walk across the border where we would meet our second driver and our guide. It was only about a 45 minute drive on this side of the border so we had opted not to get a guide.

I had been nervous about this particular border crossing because I had read online that it had only opened up again the year before, and I wasn’t sure how smooth the process would be. I had also read that they could search your phones and deny your access if they found things they didn't like. My poor brothers were diligently deleting photos from their phones during the drive. We would need to be processed out of Uzbekistan and then walk about a mile and be processed into Tajikistan.

The Uzbekistan customs went fine and we walked across the border to the Tajikistan customs building. It’s a long process running 11 people through passport checks and taking photos of us and we had needed visas for this entry which meant further scrutiny and paperwork. We were all though when all of a sudden, I heard the custom agent say that there was an error or Brian’s visa. My hear literally sank.  What are the chances that the last one they check is the one with the issue?  We thought we had sailed through and most of the group was outside waiting to head off.  Unfortunately, there was an additional digit on his passport number on his visa. As Brian asked “so what do we do now?” I wasn’t really sure what would happen. This was uncharted waters and language was definitely an issue.

Luckily it was at this time that our guide from the Tajikistan side appeared to greet us. He had somehow gotten into the border crossing zone to meet us. We informed him of what was going on and he assured us that this happens often and that he would see what he could negotiate.

After some discussion he was able to negotiate that Brian could enter the country but would need to forfeit his passport to the border until we could present a valid visa. We would have 24hrs or else Brian would need to leave the country. Talk about stressful!

Zafar assured us that if we could get the visa expedited, that his passport would be safe and that he would arrange for the transport of his passport to Dushanbe for the following day where we were flying from.

It seemed like our only option so off we went to his office in town to see about getting a new Visa. Our guide, Zafar, in addition to running a local hostel, is also the tourism head for this region. We lucked out with having him on our side as he had connections we would need to get this visa expedited.

So once all of this was negotiated, we headed outside of the final barrier to load into our van. I should mention that during the border crossing process, Cadence had mentioned to me that she wasn’t feeling well. Remember my fatal error? Argh...it was letting her sit in the back of a bus knowing that she gets carsick sometimes.

During our mile walk across the border I had dug out some gravel for her and suggested that sitting at the back of the bus probably hadn’t been that wise. Unfortunately, as we loaded our bags in front of the Tajikistan border building, I turned just as Cadence started to throw up. I gather that the men sitting on the front steps weren’t happy about this type of arrival into the country, but as any mom would in this situation, my focus was on Cadence and making sure she was ok.
We were in a bit of a hurry to get to the town to apply for a new visa, so once she was stable enoough, we got her clean pants and shoes and did the best we could with baby wipes, it would have to do until we could get to a bathroom. We have a long drive today so I’m feeling pretty nervous.

We get to Zafar's office and he and Brian made an online application for a new visa. It took us over a week to get ours the first time, so I'm not sure what our chances are here.  Once it’s processed and paid for again online, Zafar starts to make calls.  We decide that we should get some lunch while we wait, and I managed to wash out Cadence's poor hair  (and my sandels) in the bathroom sink so at least she's feeling a bit more clean.

We aren’t sure whether to hit the road or wait and see what happens with the visa. If something goes wrong. He would need to leave, and if we get too far down the road it will make things more difficult for us. There are a lot of unknowns here, so eating seems like a good way to pass the time for now.

Zafar takes us down to a Restaurant by the river and we eat bbq kebab and soup and bread. It’s quite a lovely spot, but I wasn’t able to google vet it which makes me nervous. I flat out refuse to eat at anything less than a 4.0 google rating while travelling. It’s kept my family healthy on past trips and I don’t want everyone sick. Call me “unadventurous” (my brothers rag on me about this) but my goal for eating is always a "as high as possible" google rating and I read reviews!

As we wait for our food, as we had suspected, getting a new visa would come down to money. Zafar got a call that someone could expedite the visa within the hour for $50usd. It seemed like a good deal so we took it. Apparent typical processing time, even expedited was a couple days, and we only had a couple of days in this country!

We decided to push on with our itinerary, and after lunch got driving.

We were headed to Iskanderkul Lake where we had booked a guest house stay with a local. Tajikistan is a small Country that is made up of over 50% mountains over 3000m. It has some of the highest mountains in the world.  It is therefore difficult to provide infrastructure, but provides amazing landscapes, beautiful lakes and it’s a hot spot for multi day treks, hiking, biking and other outdoor activities.

The countryside was beautiful, but the roads were rough and windy.We make a stop on the side of the road to buy fresh apricots from some local women. They are lovely, and a man gifts us another bag and welcomes us to the country. People are truly amazing here.

Cadence hasn’t eaten anything for lunch and I have her another gravel and we sat her near the front.

As we climbed towards our destination, and wound corners, and our driver wasn’t making it easy on poor Cadence. Its a fine line as we don't want to arrive where we are going at 10pm, but I would also like to survive the drive!

We stopped at a natural waterfall along the side of the road, and poor Cadence was sick again. Thankfully we had access to lots of fresh water to clean her up and get some drinks. It's going to be a long day.

After several hours of spectacular scenery we arrived at the lake. We decided to stop for a break here and stretch our legs and there was a small boat on the lakeshore which Zafar organized for us to take a couple of trips in.

You can’t swim in this lake, they claim the undertow is too dangerous, but it was beautiful and we loved getting out in the boat. The owner even let Avery drive the boat back and she did a pretty darn good job!

We headed out and understood that we were close to our stop for the night...on the map it looked close! What I didn’t realize was that the road would get progressively worse as we climbed to our destination. I'm pretty sure the whole van was wondering where the heck I had booked us for the night.

Fortunately as we emerged into the Sarytag valley, the scenery would not disappoint. It was spectacular with high mountains on all side. Our guest house was probably the furthest one in the valley along the winding dirt road, something that would prove to be a theme for us, but we could see the big house nestled in the distance. It was cool and calm and I was delighted to see this part of the country and experience a guest house stay.

These guest houses are summer homes and in the winter they move into the nearby village. Apparently there are dangerous wolves in the winter which come down from the mountains and make this particular region to dangerous to stay in.

We get settled into the guest house after a warm greeting from the owner. Brian, Emily, Robert and Erik stay in the main guest house and the rest of us stay in an outbuilding off in the distance. It’s not glamorous, but it’s authentic, and I like authentic. I want to see and experience how people live while we travel, not just stay in hotels and get the tourist perspective. The beds here are terribly uncomfortable, my back is majorly protesting at what I’m putting it through. The price you pay for authenticity!

In the distance we can see the highest peak in Tajikistan, Chimtarga peak, which sits at over 5400m. It’s pretty amazing. It's moments and places like this, after a long day, that make it travel worthwhile.

We have a late dinner on the terrace and they build a nice fire for some of us that can manage to stay awake...which is not me! Cadence had gone to bed almost as soon as we arrived, as had Robert.

I crawl into my bed and after 5 mins or so, move Fiona from the floor mat into the bed. That bed is killer...I'm hoping the floor will be better and Cadence had Dave's spot in the bed, so he was on the floor too.

We would find out in the morning that Robert had been violently ill during the night and likely woke up everyone in the main house, I too had a rough night.  I’m putting money on that lunch and unfortunately our tummy problems would start around this time. I knew getting sick here would be a possibility. We did pretty well so far, and it’s nearly impossible to trace this sort of thing. We will just continue to try and be as careful as possible with our food.

We survived the day though, and tomorrow will be a fresh start! 

Day 7 - Bukhara to Samarkand

We woke up and had another good breakfast at the hotel. Today we would leave for Samarkand but we had all morning to spend exploring. 

Brian and Emily wanted to buy a rug for their apartment and we wanted to do some shopping too so we agreed to go out together...but first I needed to figure out how to buy tickets for the fast train this afternoon using a mostly Russian website. After several attempts and about an hour later I managed to figure that little puzzle out. 

We packed up our bags and headed out. There are merchants throughout these large dome structures and you can walk along and duck in and out of shops.  It’s still pretty early so it’s not super hot yet and we stop at a shop that is selling Brass Aladdin lamps which is what Fiona really wants as a souvenir. The man that owns the shop is very friendly and speaks very good english he invites us in to see more of his brass work and his rugs. Everything is beautiful, the craftsmanship is remarkable. 

The girls pick out some beautiful brass dishes and Fiona gets her Aladdin lamp. Brian and Emily also find some rugs that they really like in both silk and wool. They decided to look further down at other options before starting the haggling process. 

I’ll say that I’m a bit disappointed by the haggling here. In most countries where haggling is expected you can get a real back and forth going, it’s part of the fun and the game of it. Here, they don’t really move on their price and they will Not chase you if you walk away. I had read conflicting stories about this in books but I’d say after experiencing it for a few days, that you can expect them to come down a little bit on price, but not half or more like you can expect in other places like Africa or India or Mexico. I like a good haggle so found this less fun, and ended up losing out in a few things I wanted during my learning curve. 

Brian and Emily went back to the first place to buy the rug they liked their and we left them to their haggling while we wandered off in search of other treasures. I really wanted some beautiful Christmas ornaments but lost out on those, but Cadence and I successfully haggled a pair of harem pants for her. We finished off with a coffee and then headed back to the hotel to get our things out of the room by noon. 

We’ve managed to secure one room with a late check out so that at least we have some place to store luggage and get away from the heat until our train departure.

We decided that the lunch spot yesterday was so good, and didn’t make anyone sick, that we go back again. It doesn’t disappoint. They also put on the masters which seems to at least give the illusion that it’s cooler.

After lunch we head back to the hotel together our belongings and wait for our cabs to pick us up.

Our cab driver from when we arrived has arranged to pick us up and take us to the train station. He also has arranged transportation for us once we reach Samarkand. I’ve hung onto his information for anybody visiting these areas in the future. He was really great and said that he could’ve organized a lot of other transportation for us in the Stans had we not already organized something.

We arrive at the train station and after a short wait they begin loading. This is a fast train that is supposed to go over 200 km an hour. They tell us that the travel time should be about an hour and 40 minutes. However we notice that the train doesn’t hit it’s 200 km an hour speed until very late in the trip. We actually hit 230 km at one point however the train is very much delayed. It takes us well over two hours to arrive.

After we de-train in Samarkand it feels somewhat cooler, I’m sure that’s not the case but I’ll take it anyways. Our taxi drivers are waiting for us as planned. We load up and head for a hotel. Samarkand seems quite nice at first glance. It is much larger than Bukhara. 

We get dropped off at our hotel which is tucked into an alley. It’s not a five-star hotel but it does have a lot of character. After we drop off our luggage we head out to sightsee. We don’t have a lot of time in Samarkand as we are being picked up to head to Tajikistan tomorrow morning. It’s always nicer to sightsee in the evenings anyways and we do have a lot of daylight left.

Right behind our hotel is the Registan. It is magnificent in the light of the setting sun. We unwisely follow the first few uncles over the barricade so that we can get a closer look. We notice the security guards eying us and it’s not long before they track us down and tell us that we need to pay the entry fee. Whoops! 

As we wander around the site a group of young teenagers approach us and ask if they can interview us. They are students learning English and their mission is to find English-speaking tourists to ask them about themselves. It’s very cute to hear them speaking english. So earnest! 

We stroll through Amir Temur park and head to the Plaza hotel to take out money. This continues to be not super easy here but the machines work and we take out what we need for dinner and manage to withdraw some USD. We don’t want to get stuck with too much of one currency as we can’t always exchange it easily when we cross a border. 

We carry on until we reach the restaurant we were suggested for dinner. It’s a pretty modern spot and the food is really good. We’ve been well up until now so fingers crossed that we stay healthy....foreshadowing....we don’t! 

We grab a taxi back to our hotel and unfortunately the power is out in half the place which means no AC. Cadences room has AC so we move the girls in there for now. Cadence has been bunking with her uncles Erik and Robert. I’m sure they are being a terrible influence! They went out looking for the nightlife scene so their beds are not required just yet. 

They get the power back on for us shortly thereafter. It’s no surprise that power is an issue here given the demands that must be on the system to run all the air conditioning units. 

Our AC works so well that night that I’m actually freezing! I hear the for others it didn’t work so well. The beds are not super comfortable and unfortunately this will be the theme for the next while. They appear to prefer thin sleeping pads that honestly make me feel like I’ve slept on a bed of stone. I’m officially missing my bed. 

Day 6 - Bukhara

The hotel, Hotel Malik’s, puts on a really nice breakfast for the guests. It’s pretty common for most places to include breakfast. As I mentioned, we did almost all our hotel bookings through bookings.com, and so far things have worked out well. 

After breakfast we head out individually to explore. We also send out clothes to be washed. All these hot days have not been kind to our clothes!

Bukhara is known for its beautiful turquoise domes and amazing tile work. Its also known for lots of opportunity for shopping. It does not disappoint. I’ve never seen architecture so beautiful. 

We wander the streets and domes looking at the wares for sale, we visit a beautiful mosque and we stop in a German style cafe (their description- not really very German but the coffee was good!) where I get a real latte! It’s called Cafe Wishbone. 

The heat deserves some description here, it’s really really hot. It’s also really dry though, the humidity index is incredibly low, so while it’s 47° or more, who knows, it is somewhat bearable is small doses and with lots of water. 

I had bought mini rechargeable fans for the girls as well as these cool cloths that you wet and then shake and somehow by magic they stay cool. These things are genius and the girls have been using them constantly. 

We wander through the streets of Bukhara and find a great place for lunch. It’s outdoors but in a beautiful courtyard. The food at Mavrigi is amazing and well worth the heat. We discover as we leave that we are right around the corner from the hotel which is very fortuitous as it’s now getting to the hottest part of the day so we head to our rooms to rest until later when the temperature drops. 

Our laundry gets returned beautifully cleaned and pressed. It’s such small things like clean underwear that can make a girl happy!  

We look up restaurants for dinner and make a reservation and what we understand to be one of the nicest dinners options in town. 

As we arrive at Ayvan Restaurant and the room is majestic. Apparently it was built in 1886 by a Jewish merchant.  Unfortunately their power is partially out which means no AC. It makes for a very hot meal. The food is good, I think lunch was better, but it’s good and the room is really amazing. The power comes on in time for dessert so we linger a little longer in the cool. 

We decide to stroll around the main square on our way back to the hotel. It’s alive with people and families and we enjoy taking in the atmosphere before heading back to our hotel. I’m looking forward to another great sleep!