Filling in the Middle of the Map VI

That night we crossed the Oxus, dim in the fading light, which helped to preserve the great river’s mystery, which had held spellbound dozens of writers and explorers. But in this parched part of the world, water is far more important than lore, and the river’s output was abundant to support a number of empires, most notably those of Alexander, and Genghis Khan (though centuries apart).  In modern times, overirrigation had greatly diminished its flow, dramatic proof being the Aral Sea, now one-tenth its previous size.    

The morning dawned to skies as magnificent and blue as the day before.  It was still early when we arrived in Bukhara, beginning the day with a visit to the Kalon Mosque and its adjacent minaret, now off limits, but the scene of a handful of legends involving the ingenuity of the few who survived being thrown from its 47-meter height. The courtyard of the mosque was simply immense, and could handle ten thousand visitors, but we had it to ourselves this day.  Between the sky and its dome and the tilework, it was like a multihued demonstration of the color blue.   

The next two days I spent wandering, exploring all the hidden corners and back roads.  A carpet seller explained heft and weave, all in a flawless London accent. Sellers huddled in the crumbling Abdul Aziz Khan Madressa, their business pitch much more solid than the edifice around them; Char Minar stood alone in a sunken courtyard, quiet and atmospheric and somehow reminiscent of a space shuttle.  Historically there had been snakes here, but I found that difficult to believe, considering it was now hemmed in by houses; I stroll through the labyrinth of covered bazaars, the sellers friendly, unaggressive.  I returned late to buy a drum the following day, but seemed to have chosen the only salesperson in town who took Sundays off;  (I’d eventually but one in a caravanserai, from a musician whose 10 years old son out tapped a few licks before handing it over.)  I also bought a hand puppet for my daughter, its creator considered a national treasure.  Nearby, a European couple sat on the sunken steps before the Ismail Samani Mausoleum, dazzled by its 1100 year beauty.      

   

A walk at dawn took me down the alleyways, away from the polish of  the UNESCO funded main sites.  I popped into a few madrasa and found that I had them to myself; making it far easier to find contemplation at a time before the symbiotic dance of tourist and merchant got underway.  My feet led me to the infamous Bug Pit, where a pair of poor, cocky Englishmen found ample time for contemplation, and hopefully reflected on their arrogance, which ultimately got them killed.  I sat out front after my visit, looking over at the hulking Ark across the sands, most of the once proud structure reverting back to desert.  In her spreading shadow, three boys played with a Spiderman doll.

I cut back through the carpet marker, locals mainly, as the sellers had no real interest in me.  I settled eventually with a coffee by the pond Lyabi Hauz. I attempted to get involved with my book about Ibn Battutah, but was often pulled away by people who wanted to take a photo with me.  The most persistent were a group of girls, in high school probably, who had dressed up for a Sunday on the town.  (I’d run into them twice more before the day was over.) 

The final evening , our group watched a concert in the Namozgohk Mosque, where on a massive carpet had been laid across the courtyard, and a series of local dances were performed.  It was difficult to assess which was more beautiful, the movements or the costumes.  Between dances, four models drifted through wearing a stunning array of clothing that ran across the centuries.  Swallows flitted above, alight on the bounce of the notes emitting from the percussion and strings.  It was a magical evening, culminating in a dinner in the sprawling home of an apparently successful merchant, who joined in on stirring a massive pot of plov bubbling away in a fire pit at the center of a courtyard.  The Uzbeks had proven to be wonderful hosts, as open and inviting as their spacious architecture.  But sadly we’d be crossing the border that night. 

On the turntable:  Dave Douglas, "The Infinite" 

Filling in the Middle of the Map V

-->

We were somewhere outside Samarkand when the desert began to take hold.  The infinite grasslands had disappeared, replaced by wasteland devoid of all life but for the scrub of small plants.  Where the odd village did appear, the old concrete buildings of the north had been replaced by less solid dwellings of baked brick.  Children ran along the dusty lanes between them.  The livestock too had mainly been replaced by high electrical lines, and when finally some sheep did appear, judging from the distance between shrubs, I imagine they’d be hard pressed to find food.  Yet despite the dry, parched look to things, there was far more water to be seen, in the form of broad rivers, narrow irrigation channels, and oasis-like collective pools. Most of the latter were surrounded by dense, multi-colored clusters of vegetation.  This abundance of water may help explain the profuse flowers sprouting acre after acre from the arid earth.   But between these, salt stains bleached the landscape like some weirdly abnormal pigmentation.  Coming from nowhere and heading toward the same, two men bounced across this desert on a motorcycle. 

 So it was some surprise to come to the train station in Urgench , just outside Khiva.   This tidy looking town was filled with squat, boxy buildings, and an elaborate canal system that demarcated the perimeters of the multitudinous rice fields here.   A tractor was busy tilling one field, pulling a plow atop which two men were squatting in order to force the blades deeper into the dry soil.  Not far off in another field, an old couple clad in traditional dress labored heavily with their hoes, under the watch of some fresh new homes.  A fleet of green Scoda trolleybuses, the last such buses in Uzbekistan, provided service for the few residents here.  Yet most of the homes looked unfinished, despite the odd car here and there. 

With all this cultivation, it was easy to see Khiva as an oasis, and the compact nature of the walled, fortress-like town confirmed it.  I found it the most splendid place so far, the absence of cars within adding to the ambience.  There were very few temporal markers within, making it easy to forget the century.  The only touristic elements were the sellers of hats made from various furs, but they stayed close to the main gate and once through this initial gauntlet, the place was mine.  Narrow lanes led between the usual mosques and madrases, but they too took on the uniform look here of plain brown, baked soil walls.  The most impressive building was the Kuhna Ark, and climbing up and around its multi-level, angular dimensions was a return to the games of childhood.  This spirit remained with me as I climbed on all fours up the steep, spiraling internal stairwell of the Juma Minaret, the only light coming from a few small windows, and the screen of my iPhone.  The views from the top were of a film set, Tatooine to my mind.  I could imagine the traders here in days past, elbowing their way through the masses, adorned in a fashion show with origins all across Asia.  It was the birth of the global economy.

            

These ancient roots can still be glimpsed in the bazaar just outside the East Gate, where sellers sit on blankets in the shade, under the gaze of camels bellowing obstinately in the corners. A box of onions has been left in the streaming sunlight, each orb gleaming like the top of a minaret.  I found myself caught up in the sprit of the place, coming away with a fur hat befitting a Mongol horseman, as well as with a tube of toothpaste. 

Under picture perfect blue skies, I wandered the lanes again and again, before winding the day up with a cup of tea in one of the squares, taking a hint from Katya, the town’s famous camel, who lazed about in the shade nearby. 

On the turntable:  Duke Ellington, "Ellington at Newport"

Filling in the Middle of the Map IV

Samarkand.  Now we were getting into the classic Silk Road, the names reverberating with legend.  Sadly the weather was still not in our favor, the skies dark with the threat of rain.  I am sure I shared with my fellow travelers the desire to see these old cities and their monuments beneath the flawless blue skies of the travel posters.    

Our first stop was Gur-E-Amir Mausoleum, Timur’s burial place.  This is one of the most visited sites in Central Asia, probably so that people can guarantee the old murderer is still dead.  The dark skies begat strong icy winds that seemed fitting somehow, until the novelty wore off.  There were a few dozen other visitors braving the cold, a good number of them (male and female alike) asking to pose for photographs with me.  This had happened quite few times over the past few days, and strangely it was only myself and one other fellow who were asked, every time.  The attention was quite fun, today made more ridiculous by the felt hats (his with the sad droopy ears of a basset hound) that he and I had bought as protection from the chill.  Yet we were just a sideshow to the magnificent structure rising behind us, the tiles and domes a bright blue that wasn't diminished in the least by the grey above.

 

A shade of blue equal in brilliance could be found a short drive away at Ulugbek’s observatory, it a spiraling mural behind a proud statue of the man.  This grandson of Timur proved a better astronomer than ruler, and was particularly shortsighted in not foreseeing his eventual murder by his son (who in turn was killed by a group of amirs, limiting the Timurid dynasty to a mere century.)  Despite Ulugbek’s constant reaching for the heavens, the madrassa he founded here was more earthbound, lacking the towering domes and minarets common to the style, and of a hue more akin to the swirling sands.  The real masterpiece was just in front, a large tube-like structure that crawled up this man-made hill like the noborigama kilns of Japan.  Entering the tube was like climbing into a massive sextant, the parallel grooves burrowing three stories downward. 

Old Samarkand itself too is subterranean, as the Mongol invasions of the 13^th century obliterated it completely. (It was Timur, surprisingly, who rebuilt the city just to the west, serving somewhat like Shiva in bringing creation out of destruction.) The Afrosiab kept a 7^th century fresco that depicted a Sogdian king receiving dignitaries from as far off as China.  Yet the deserted hillocks and dusty plain outside betrayed little of the great city that had dazzled Alexander 1700 years before. 

After lunch, our group went on to a carpet factory, but LYL and I decided to go to our hotel and rest, the street in front so pockmarked it was like multiple speedbumps.  Though the rambling traveler in me hates to admit it, it was pleasant to catch up on the world after three days without wifi.  Dinner beckoned eventually, a perfunctory meal served in a somewhat sterile, oversized banquet room.  But the highlight of the evening was a good night’s sleep, in a room that refused to move. 

The sky this day too was bleached out, the surface of The Registan, not to mention my spirit damp with rain.  Nonetheless it was a majestic sight, these three madrasas staring each other down a square that had once served as marketplace and execution ground.  The age of each of these structures was betrayed by their inability to stand up straight, none more so than the minarets, and a shoddy Soviet reconstruction job did little to prevent them from leaned in odd directions as if blowing in the wind.  But despite the imperfections, their beauty was mesmerizing, little doubt since Timur had deliberately brought here any artisans that he had captured during his wide raids. Even the poor weather couldn't hide the intricate detailed of their facades, of lions and blue onion domes.  The inner courtyards were all flanked by doorways that led to shops now occupying the former student cells.  In one, a musician demonstrated his merchandise, playing each and every instrument with perfection.  Here again I found my own personal Silk Road, one defined by music, the sounds overlapping across cultures.  

Most impressive to me was the Tilla Kari Madrasa, the most weathered of all, but whose solid gold interior froze me for a good ten minutes.  Each and every madrasa or mosque I had visited so far had not failed to stun me, their colors hypnotic, with the intricacy of their spirals, the honeycomb geometry of their stalactites, the flawless slope to the ceilings.  It made it worth it I suppose to sit through all those seemingly useless algebra classes back in school, to be able to stand beneath these domes and marvel at their perfection.           

We followed a long promenade toward the central market.  Sunday strollers smiled and meandered with little regard to destination.  I paralleled one old man, beard stretching toward his chest, his posture and spectacles marking him as a scholar.  I wondered his view of life, the political and social changes that had determined his life trajectory.  Yet he pottered on.

Likewise, what changes had been seen beneath the domes of the Bibi Khanym Mausoleum, itself curling with gravity toward the earth?  The interior was a ruin and off-limits, bricks strewn about where they fell.  Despite this, sellers peddled their wares in some of the less dusty corners, perhaps a spillover from the larger, bustling market next door.  I gave this a skip, having earlier spied a shop advertising coffee.  After a week of instant coffee on the train, the strong ground of Arabian coffee nearly took off the back of my head.   

This all focused my attention on the ride to come, along the streets of new Samarkand.  There were many signs here for avocat, the legal profession apparently quite lucrative.  There was one store called Papa Jobs, which appeared to repair Apple computers.  On one corner, a man gave a handful of money to a babushka.  A towering mansion looked constructed as if by a child, its owner constantly building and adding to it in a childlike lack of self-control.  And as the road took us more and more into suburb, there was a marked increase in fish sellers  

We arrived at a quiet estate on the outskirts of town, the compound a handful of buildings made of earth and barely hewn tree limbs.  A waterwheel jutted from one wall, its spindly arms pounding sticks of mulberry into pulp to be used as paper.  It all had a delightfully quiet dignity, a place of repose after a week in near motion. 

This motion propelled us again back to the old city, for a visit to Shah-i-Zinda, the part of Samarkand that I had most wanted to see.  This place too was reminiscent of a noborigama kiln, each tomb the size of a small mosque, climbing side by side up the slope toward the ancient city.   A trio of old women clad in black set the tone for the visit, sitting upon a bench at the base of the hill, opening their palms toward the sky, toward the old teachers, toward God.  Yet further up was spoiled somehow, mainly by the number of tourists clustering in the narrow confines.  I hadn't really been bothered by tourists on this trip, as the scale of things thus far (as true for the work of Christianity as for Islam) had been large and momentous, the body given space by the open courtyards, the eyes pulled heavenward by the pitch of arch and dome.   

Nowhere else was this as true as during a return visit to The Registan, this time at night.  The madrassas simply hung in the air against the dark, their surfaces miraculously devoid of any color but for a brilliant white, minarets holding up the featureless black sky.  It was if encountering the gates of heaven itself.   

On the turntable:  Dean & Britta, "13 Most Beautiful"

Filling in the Middle of the Map III

The rain kept up, heavier this time, as we awoke at dawn in a small station in Kamashi, not far from the Afghan border.  While the war across that imaginary line hadn’t touched this mountainous region, the roads certainly looked as they had.  We bumped and bounced along in a mini-bus, like in the spin cycle of a washing machine, what with the rain drenched windows.  We turned off onto a series of smaller and smaller roads, which surprised in getting better the further out we got.  It was near smooth sailing into the village of Langar Ata, where a local family was awaiting our visit.  The dozens of people there attested more to an extended family, spanning many generations.  The paradox of a visit to a local family or tribe is that you are generally visiting with a headman or a home with great wealth, which are by no means the average citizen of a place.  As it was, they entertained us with songs of welcome and demonstrations of their traditional ways, though the sight of the older women tying a young child to a wooden plank bed while affixing a sort of catheter to prevent bedwetting was a hair shy of child abuse to many of us. Happier children could be found at a school up the valley, where we broke into small groups to eavesdrop on a few classes, the kids as interested in us as we were in them.  I felt a bit sorry for those in PE, running and running in circles around the gym to flash of our the cameras.

Lunch was had back on the train, probably so as not to burden the family with feeding 70 plus guests. Outside the windows the sky was beginning to lift.  A herd of camels passed by for ten minutes or so, hundreds and hundreds of them.  A guy on a donkey talked happily on his mobile. Later, from far off, I saw a pair of pillars stuck into the sand.  Upon approach, I realized that they were men walking to who knows where.  Their shadows were the tallest things on the landscape. 

Late afternoon and the train arrived at Shahrisabz, a name too complicated for us to remember, so LYL and I simply used Shishkabab.  Riding though the outskirts of town, I pondered the infinite number of shapes that broken concrete could take.  (This game can be played almost anywhere in Asia.)     

Shahrisabz is the birthplace and supposed burial site for Timur, who in his day buried up to 17 million others, or 5% of the world population at the time.  A massive statue of the man stood on the site of the old city, of a scale quite befitting history’s biggest mass murderer.  The body density and epic-hero tough guy posturing seemed modeled on Steve Reeves, circa Hercules.  Timur unchained roamed the length and breath of central Asia, from Turkey to north India.  But it was his rambling nature that was his demise, and he died during an ill-advised winter campaign against China, bought down by a common cold.  He had requested to be buried here in his birthplace, but as bringing his body through the snow-covered mountains proved impossible, his tomb was instead in Samarkand on the opposite side.  

The town had once been heavily fortified, and only the walls and the main gate remained. The latter was quite magnificent in scale, despite the broken arch being half of what it had once been.  No doubt it would have been an imposing sight when seen on approach from horseback.  Known as Ak-Saray, its 65-meter height was now a towering ruin of stone and broken tile, despite the warning written upon it:  "If you challenge our power – look at our buildings!"

Outside the town’s walls were follies of a more recent vintage, in the form of comfortable and expensive looking flats.  The ground level housed shops of various sorts, but the apartments above looked empty.  It all had an admittedly lovely uniform beauty, their rows ringing the walls as if an outer layer to the once great city that had stood here.  But these were as equally empty and unpopulated and hollow.  A blatant abuse of UNESCO funds, though the organization has since threatened to revoke World Heritage status should the construction continue.

A far better use had been the mosque, and its attendant courtyards.  With its pond and small, covered pavilions, it was much as I imagined the gardens of ancient Islam to look.  I could picture men walking in conversation, debating the Koran as they strolled the broad walkways beneath the trees.  Had they known of the tombs beneath?  In later years, a number of houses had once been built upon the crumbling walls themselves, and one day a young girl had gone crashing through. Dazed, but unhurt, she found herself looking at a number of stone sarcophagi.  Inscriptions showed that it had originally been intended for Timur, but instead was the slumbering place for two unknown corpses, who sleep on to this day.  And in the new homes just beyond, built from foreign plunder befitting the spirit of Timur, no one sleeps at all.

On the turntable: Dooble Brothers, "Best of the Doobies"

On the nighttable:  Selina Hastings, "The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham"

Imbibing Bibliophile #22

Travels in Alaska, by John Muir

Baranof Island Brewing, Redoubt Red Ale, et al.

On the turntable:  Elysian Fields, "Queen of the Meadow"

Filling in the Middle of the Map II

-->

It was a horrible night’s sleep, the train bucking and heaving like one of the horses out on the Steppe.  (Our guidebook had predicted this and had recommended sleeping pills.)  I passed the morning horizontal in my berth, reading until I needed to shut my eyes again.  (Considering the landscape, it would have been easy to count sheep, though I’d have had better luck in counting the water bottles littering the rails, whose number seemed infinite.)  It was only after lunch that I stretched my legs and disembarked at Turkistan.  

This modest sized town had built around the burial site for the great Sufi mystic Kozha Akhmed Yasaui who taught here in the 12th century.  His teachings were made accessible to the common people in the form of poems, yet his greatest admirer wasn’t common at all.  Finding only a modest tomb here when he passed through in 1389, the ruler Timur  (known more widely as Tamerlane) ordered the construction of the current mausoleum, though it went uncompleted at the time of his death.  This unfinished quality is one of the structure’s greatest charms, with the spiky appearance of ancient scaffolding, and swallows flying in and out of small holes in the tile.  Despite its rough appearance, the structure is considered the first, and one of the best, examples of Timurid architecture, rivaling the more polished structures of Samarkand to come.  This building style travelled south to inspire the Moghuls of India, whose Taj Mahal was a masterful monument to the unboundless expression of love.  To add a flourish of delicious irony to the scene , a wedding party was busy photographing themselves in front of a stretch Hummer, which are obnoxiously ostentatious on the streets of LA, but looked even more ridiculous out here on the steppe.

We wandered the site, finding each of its faces equally picturesque (which could be said about all the important holy sites in Central Asian), the changes in light creating subtle shifts in the shades in the blue of tile.   Our final stop was the Underground Mosque, where Yasaui had spent much of his final years.  There was a complexity to the simple honeycomb of interconnected chambers, the centerpiece being the sunken room where the poet had pulled words from the darkness, which continue to teach into the current age. 

It was raining the following day in Tashkent.  In this weather, the plain white facades of the Soviet-era buildings betrayed their recent age, little surprise considering that a powerful 1966 earthquake had left 300,000 homeless. (Soviet censorship left no record of the number of fatalities.)  It was at the Earthquake Memorial where we began our visit, the rain running through the crack that stretched across the surface of the plaza from a pair of Soviet-era figures projecting strength.

Even in the rain, Tashkent was an attractive city.  Stalinist buildings on one block, followed by a style softer and prettily European.   Most of all were the trees that lined every street: bigger, older plane trees near the center, the newer sections shaded with poplars.  The gloom of the sky was befitting more the Soviet era, so it was that to which my mind was fixed and stayed through most of the day.  But the faces around me were certainly more Asiatic than they had been in Kazakhstan, and the Caucasian Russians from beyond the steppe were in little evidence here.

A handful of these people carefully trod the slippery marble of the Khast Imom Square, which reflected perfectly the flanking mosque and madrassa.  A number of people had set up shops in the former student cubicles, selling carpets and clothing and felt hats.  I bought a puzzle-like bookstand from one, which could be manipulated into various shapes and sizes, even for an iPad.  Yet it was I who was truly manipulated, as I found the same item next door, at a much better price. 

I’m not usually much of a shopper, but in the spirit of the Silk Road I felt the need to buy trinkets along the way, as if picking up breadcrumbs.  My main take-away at the central market was my life I suppose, crossing six lanes of fast moving traffic.  (I tried to find in vain the punchline to what could become a classic Russian joke: “Why did the Chechen cross the road?”)  Other than that, I attended to the needs of the belly.  The aroma of fresh flatbread was too tempting to resist.  A seller handed us one fresh from the oven while behind him, others previously baked stood vertically in a cabinet like a collection of old books.   We loaded up for our continuing journey by buying cashews and other nuts from a seller in the domed court the serves as the heart of the market.  How lucky we were, I thought, as our own trip was merely a fraction of what the full China to Europe expedition would have taken.  Even by rail a traveler could expect two full weeks, four if by ship.  A minor investment, considering the eighteen months it had taken for the previous millennium. 

As LYL collected our booty, I peered over the railing at the floor below, littered with the jigsaw puzzle pieces of cow and sheep and chicken.  (It reminded me a visit to deep China twenty years before, though it was the terror in the eyes of the living animals, all too aware of their fate, that led me to vegetarianism, since lapsed.)  Again, how lucky, how spoiled, we were, to be spared all this horror and gore in our comfy dining car.  Just then, a pair of blind men strolled past, arms around each other, in song.    

We descended eventually into the city’s famous metro system, then embarked and disembarked at a handful of stations.  Each stop of the 29 stops on the line had its own unique design, from Islam to Baroque to Space Age.  Photography of these true works of art was prohibited as they are considered military installations, although plenty of photos could be found online.   In riding along, admiring each of the stops, you found that it truly was the journey, not the destination. 

After lunch at Pilgrim (the design of which was the only thing “Silk Road’ about the post-quake city, though the wifi too proved nomadic, wandering here, wandering there.), we walked through a park whose colorful trees defied the gloom of the day.  A handful of families in smart dress were paying homage to deceased ancestors at the Crying Mother Monument built to honor the 400,000 Uzbeks killed in the Second World War.  As in all Soviet wars, the death tolls were particularly high amongst recruits from the rural minority poor, though I suppose that was equally true worldwide.  These thoughts of war reminded me of why the name Tashkent seemed so familiar, less for the Silk Road, as for news reports sent from their during the first, heavily televised Iraq debacle.   I remembered well Christiane Amanpour reportage from here, probably fresh in mind since I happened to see her on a television monitor in the Seoul airport a few days before.  The US military used bases in Uzbekistan during the their war in Afghanistan, though this relationship was terminated after a 2005 massacre in Andijan.   (There was a similar agreement in Kazakhstan, and upon the eventual removal of US troops at the end of major operations in 2014, their GDP dropped 3%.)

I pondered this all as I walked past the massive governmental buildings at the monument’s far end.  Where politicians find comfort in the self-aggrandizement of such structures, the common people find it in art and music.  Luckily for us, we’d get a taste in a modest hall, where a tuxedo-clad orchestra played through a number of local and European standards on folk instruments. It was a wonderful blend of folk Uzbek and the high culture of the Russian orchestra.  Music is the heart of any culture; it is there in the religion, in the festivals, in the tales of the storytellers, in the rhythm of the man at work.  Most of all, it is in the imagination, offering a promise of the delights to come. 

On the turntable:  Devo, "EZ Listening Disc"

Filling in the Middle of the Map

-->

The faces I saw entering the plane were anything but Korean.  They had more a Caucasial flair, subtle changes in light and shadow took the viewer from one side of the Urals to the other.  Both the men and the women had hints of the usual beauty of the Eurasian, but the features were arranged in a way I’d never seen before.  It reminded me of a similar encounter I’d had years asgo in Miyako airport as I watched deplane a group of islanders to the south.  It was an encounter with a new race, and my eyes couldn't help but trace those new contours. 

Little surprise this, for the Kazakh people had always been the closest to Russia of all the Central Asian republics, and over the weeks to come I was to find that they were closest to their northern neighbors not only in looks but in character.     Before sitting my seatmate asked me which of the bags in the overhead bin was mine, then removed the suitcase beside it, dumping it into the aisle before replacing it with a multitude of shopping bags.

In those bags I suppose lay the appeal of Seoul to the Kazakhs, as that city had daily direct connections to the capital, Almaty.  Beijing only had four, and Tokyo none at all.  It helped add to the appeal of the city’s mystique, and why it was our transit point for our journey down the Silk Road, despite it never truly being a historical part of the old road.   (I’d discover later that Koreans conscripted as slave labor by the Japanese during the war had been liberated in the Sakhalins by Stalin, who sent them to Almaty expecting them to die.  Their community instead flourished.)

The Silk Road, singular, is a bit of a misnomer as it was actually a series of trade routes, which spider-webbed outward across Asia.  The best-known curves northwest out of Xi’an, and it was this route that was traced by our plane, above wide dusty expanses of empty space.  Every half and hour or so we’d fly over a cluster of roads and structures, and quick glimpses at my GPS revealed names of old desert oases that had hidden Buddhist treasures since antiquity.  The last of these Urumqi was shaded by the heavenly Tien Shan, which from 10,000 meters was a network of steep crags, horribly scarred by the ravage of glaciers.  It looked a foreboding landscape, and it was little wonder the Taoists believed it to be inhabited by gods. 

Onboard I had plenty of entertainment as well.  An oxygen mark had been given to one woman a few rows up, her face pale and covered in sweat.  She didn't look to be in any danger, but she was in obvious discomfort.  Across the aisle, I noticed another woman in tight sportswear who moved with a certain feline-like grace.  He lithe figure was betrayed by the multiple cans of beer I saw her upend into her mouth.  (Tallboys I might add.) As the plane made its gradual descent, the beers took their expected effect, and she began to sway and dance in the aisle to whatever was playing through her headphones.  

These proved a distraction later while in the immigration queue.  She became entangled while being questioned by the officer, and the spiraling movements she made as she tried to remove them was an encore of the dance she’d done high above.  I’m not sure what it was she was being asked, but the belligerent tone she gradually undertook resulted in her being led into a room by a gentleman in a very smart military uniform.  Kazakhstan suffers from the highest rate of alcoholism in Central Asia, though I doubted she was about to get the AA treatment. 

The country recently did away with visa requirements to most countries, so LYL and I were processed pretty quickly.  Due to the long queues, our bags were no doubt dizzy with the multiple revolutions they’d done as they waited for us to retrieve them.  They were quickly chucked into the back of a waiting Landcruiser that cut though the mist toward the city proper.

Americans of a certain generation grew up under the spectre of the Soviet Union, and despite Kazahkstan no longer being part of that confederation, the bleak landscape reminded me of nothing but (as had a previous winter visit to its satellite state of Poland, whose skies never cleared over a week’s time).  Such it was that our hotel felt even more like an oasis, its drab grey exterior hiding a kaleidoscope of color within.  The scale too was immense, startling after the claustrophobic confines of Japan.   Pillars rose like redwoods, and our room was nearly the size of the cabin of the plane.  There was a swimming pool somewhere on the premises, which I imagined to be Olympic-sized.  But we never found out for the fatigue of travel quickly overtook us and we drifted off in this cavernous expanse.

We met our group in the morning.  Though we’d booked in Singapore, it was actually a German tour, which provided comfort in presumed precision.  As one employed in the tour industry, I found their approach brilliant, in breaking up our large party of 60 into smaller groups of 12.  Maximizing profit without sacrificing the intimacy of a smaller tour.  We, the red group (no pun), were led to a waiting coach where we met our guide, a local Kazakh woman in a purple tutu and heeled shoes whose loft mocked that of the mountains behind.  We were whisked around the usual monuments to Soviet grandeur, figures in heroic poses held steadfast in the solidity of marble and stone.  The most audacious was the Golden Man, whose glittering glory towered high above the broad and ceremonial Independence Square. 

We’d see a more accurate replica of the Golden Man not longer after, in a display case at the Central State Museum.  There has been some dispute over the gender of the person who had worn this 5^th Century, costume, as the skeleton within was too badly decomposed to determine accurately.  Yet it was the costume itself that dazzled, made up of 4000 separate gold pieces.  The superhero quality to the whole thing seemed fitting, in a city whose former name of Ala-amaty conjured up images of the mythically remote, where the Tien Shan rose dramatically from the seemingly endless Steppe.  And the leaders in this part of the world continued with the myth making.  The current leader had been in power since the dawn of independence from the Soviet Union, 26 years and counting, and monuments to his rule could be found in a room filled with awards and accolades from across the globe.  You could almost believe that he actually had received  98% of the votes in the last election. (Though to his credit, his recent reforms have proven much more democratic.)

The day was clearing bright and blue as we were driven around the city streets, where I was pleased to see some late sakura that I’d expected to miss in Japan this spring.  This delight turned to glee at the sight of a sign for Nomad Insurance, but the highlight was the faux Apple Store, here in the city mere miles away from the hills from which sprouted the genetic ancestor to every apple tree in the world.   

Our eventual stop was Panfilov Parkat whose centerpiece was the magnificent Zenkov Cathedral whose angles and spires had the beauty of the most perfect wedding cake.  Indoors all was dark and peaceful, as candles lit up the framed faces of Jesus and Russian saints, beneath which babushkas quietly swept the inner sanctum.  (This peace was similarly echoed at Central Mosque later on.  Kazakhstan was founded as a secular state, yet unlike during the Soviet years, open worship was encouraged.)  The nearby Folk Museum was an equally marvelous structure, yet one in more subdued hues.  A funny reverse parallel then, as what was celebrated within was a music bright and upbeat, guaranteed to get the fingers tapping rather than entwined in prayer. 

We’d hear this music firsthand at our next stop, Kok-Tobe.  A cable car had taken us there, moving slowly over a neighborhood more weathered than the more orderly Soviet boulevards of the city center.  Our restaurant was shaped like a massive yurt, capable of seating a hundred or more.  Two young musicians sung and strummed, as behind them ran a video presentation of some of the country’s beauty spots.  As we waited for our inevitable first meal of horsemeat, I slipped outside in order to find the rumored statues of the Beatles (continuing the Apple motif).  There they were the Fab Four, framing a bench upon which tourists sat and posed.  I looked past the goofy grinning faces cast in bronze to the nearby peaks, towering and jagged and snow capped in early spring.  It wouldn't be long now before we left them behind. 

Our train was powering up at the Almaty’s Central Station, our guards waiting on the platform for us.  (These men and women would prove to serve a far more important function in fetching us tea and coffee at all hours over the next ten days.)  Our cabin was homey and comfortable for the two of us, despite the confined space.  But it was easy to forget this latter aspect in losing yourself in the endless breadth of the landscape.  The Tien Shan, who had dazzled us with her multi-textural hues of blue, white and grey, began to recede, and what followed dazzled in the opposite manner with its absence of notable features.  Gazing at the emptiness of the Steppe, is much like looking at the sea; it has a meditative quality, where the mind, tiring eventually of grasping for details, begins to slow and settle into quiet, allowing deeper thoughts to arise.   It was the landscape of dreamers. 

Yet this supposed absence was deceiving.  Herds of livestock appeared now and again, in massive numbers spread across the earth like waypoints.   Cattle, sheep, and goats lowered their heads to graze.  Horses held theirs high as they raced along.  Two-humped Bactrian camels bobbed theirs in time to our rattling train, their humps the highest things in sight.  There were sometimes men with these herds, walking along with a stick in their hand, occupying their minds with who knows what.  This was the rate at which time had passed for centuries, moving no faster than the movement of a single foot.  Yet my own train, and its precise schedules, was the physical manifestation of industrialized time, quite arbitrary really as it moved toward the greatest pacesetter of all falling in the west. 

On the turntable:  Devo, "Devo Live"

On the nighttable:  Jung Chang, "Empress Dowager Cixi"

Sunday Papers: Jack London

"The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time."


On the turntable:  Devo, "Post Post-Modern Man"

There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/j/jacklondon182851.html

Knowing Tranquility IX (Shiraishijima)

In his Inland Sea, Donald Richie seems to have given Shiraishijima a miss, but I intended to spend two days there, in order to walk the island's 88 temple circuit.  On a previous visit years ago, I'd met Amy Chavez, whose writings I had long known.  No one has done more than Amy in introducing the pilgrimage to the English-speaking world.  She is as passionate about the restoration and upkeep of the route (and the island in general) as she is about writing.  After a quick swim and a bath, I meet Amy at her Moooo! Bar, where we discuss logistics and admire the astounding colors of the sun setting into the petrochemical haze of the mainland.   

I meet Amy at her house the following morning at 6, and after a quick caffeine fuel up, we march up a flight of stone steps toward the forest.  Temples 80-84 are pretty straight forward, but T1-17 required a bit more work.  After ducking through a tunnel of overgrown bamboo we zig up and down the hillside in search of the telltale stone figures tucked away beneath the large stones that give the island its name.  I find the whole layout quite odd at first, until Amy mentions that the "temples" were placed where they were since they either marked a physical anomaly on the landscape, or had once stood beside homes.  The latter are long gone, though one hulk of tumbled timber lies rotting away where dreams once lived.  Now and again we come to a remaining well, which serves as waypoints of sorts, and eventually drop down onto the lovely gold crescent of a deserted beach.  Despite its beauty, there is a certain taboo about swimming or development, due to a legend that states that the bodies of feeling Heike warriors had washed up here.  This belief led eventually to the Shiraishi O-dori, danced every August in order to appease the souls of these centuries-long dead.

Amy needs to open the bar to the day-trippers on this sunny Sunday morning, but not before pointing me on my way.  Despite having a simple map, I immediately become lost, and in what would become a theme for the day, I find myself exploring many of the side trails, until finally figuring out the right path.  Maps are interesting tools in that they not only teach you the terrain, but also allow you some insight into the mindset of the mapmaker, in particular how they orient themselves to the landscape.  You will inevitably make a few mistakes, because the way that you see things is not always the way that they do.  Over time, I begin to understand why things are represented on paper as they are, and also in what types of places the stone Buddhas have been placed.  Thus educated, I push on more quickly.

The trail leads upward.  My greatest trouble is the overgrown paths, not yet cleared after an unusually long rainy season.  Despite brandishing a stick before me like a sword, I am quickly covered with cobwebs and other debris.  I'm not usual squeamish about spiders, but there is no possible way to enjoy feeling a web break across your face.  In some sections, bamboo grass spreads across like a curtain, and one leaf slices open the tip of my finger, which bleeds profusely and refuses to clot.  It is still dripping when I reach T23, and I smile as I remember that the deity here is the Medicine Buddha. 

A final short rope rappel drops me onto a small empty beach and T25 hiding on a cliff face.  Looking across the water I see Kitagijima and the roads I'd bicycled the day before.  I strip off my sweaty, cobweb covered shirt to wash in the sea, then I splash my face and torso, before sitting awhile to dry.  I eventually walk the length of the beach twice, and even climb back up the hill a bit to find the trail but it alludes me.  There is one section that might be it, but it is covered in vines as thick as wire.  I am not too pleased about playing Robinson Carusoe, or in facing a long return the way I came.  It is then that I see a motorboat drift quietly offshore.  "Oi!" I call, and the boat moves closer.  Once in earshot, I ask if they can take me across the bay to the houses a 100 meters or so away.  Prop raised, the boat comes closer in, and I help offload supplies, as the six people aboard had intended to spend the day here.  Once unencumbered, I climb aboard and am whisked across to freedom.

I attempt the approach to T26 from the opposite side, but the trail at the top is too thick, so retreat.  My disappointment at this doesn't last, as my intention is to was the pilgrimage route, and that doesn't necessarily mean I have to actually see the temples themselves.  This justification allows me a way out for the temple I subsequently miss, even if I know that they lies somewhere nearby, unseen in the thick of jungle.  Rather than beads on a necklace strung out in a logical line, many of the temples are up short paths spurring off the car raod that circles the island.  The trick is to find the entrances, hidden by growth.  I find the dirt road leading to T34-36, but somehow miss them.  Likewise, I miss T42 but this time I'm not looking too hard, as I've run out of water and the heat is rising.  Luckily there is a house nearby, and the man inside allows me to fill up.  He surprises me in not knowing the location of T42, which can be no more than 20 meters from his house.  

I give up and continue to follow the road.  This southern edge of the island is heavily quarried, and has few houses.  It takes me a while to find the trail upward, and after finding T43-44, the brush forces me back down again.  It is simply to high, too thick.  I am comforted by the fact that there are no vipers on Shiraishi, but the vegetation is tearing me apart, legs cuts and scratched, arms bleeding, feet stinking from open sores.  I am usual careful in what I wear while hiking, but the concept of "island" fooled me into wearing shorts and sandals.  But even if I had been properly dressed, the novelty of bashing through the jungle is wearing thin.     

I follow the road again to the next trail entrance, and attempt to backtrack toward T45.  I do find T50-51, but from there the brush remains impenetrable, turning me back once again.  There is only one more short section before I return to the island's main beach, now busy with day-trippers.  I rest in my room for about 30 minutes to recharge my phone and myself.  Then set back out.

The final sections are much easier going, though I do accidentally follow the well groomed hiking trail up the ridgeline that is the island's summit, over and around large boulders overlooking the waters that had covered them millennia ago.  The Buddha statues are more closely placed up here, easier to find.  I do allow myself a diversion down to an actual temple, Kairyū-ji, which still serves the spiritual needs of the people here.  Likewise, the Benzaiten shrine on a island just offshore.  This I reach not long afterward, to find a prayer ceremony going on, to mark the lowest tide of the year, which allows the worshippers to walk across the rocky seabed. One woman slaps dead an ant on her leg in the midst of chanting.   I turn to find Amy here too, and she leads me to the path up to my final temple of the day, T71, handing me off to Sanchan, who is a bit of a legend due to his popular bar sitting just below the Buddha's gaze.  

I would have liked to talk more with Sanchan but I am too beaten and worn out for chitchat.  I've done over 24 km over tough terrain on a very hot day.  Instead I have a quick swim, though it isn't as pleasant due to the low waters and the weeds, and I've had enough of the feel of vegetation on my skin.  Afterward, I have a beer with Amy, giving her some feedback on the map and the trail conditions.  We agree that it is currently a two-day route, but once cleaned up, could be done in a day.  She is intending not only to improve on the existing map, but is also sponsoring a trail race in order to raise funds for signage and trail cleanup.  But I am pleased with myself for my toils, especially when she tells me that I'm one of the first non-islanders to have done the whole route.

But not just yet.   I again meet Amy at 6 a.m. for another coffee, then we return to the bamboo tunnel to visit T85-88.  It is a bit of bashing back through the growth before we pop out of the jungle at the port.  It has been a pleasant couple of days, discussing many elements of island life, namely population growth and disappearing traditions, and the frustrations of island political decision making being made in an office on the mainland.  

It is toward there I'll head next.  I have yet another swim, and shake the crabs from my sandals one last time.    

On the turntable:  Deep Purple, "In Rock"