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Saturday 2004-05-08 - Damascus, Syria
We’re there, but we’re not in yet!
We’re at the airport of Damascus. Three in the afternoon, a slight delay but nothing dramatic. Arranging the group visa on arrival isn’t the problem … the problem is we need someone from the local agency to come pick us up with a letter of invitation — and he isn’t there. Marie Josee, our tour companion, can’t go outside to see if he’s there, and he can’t know we’re here if he’s waiting outside. Ultimately, she manages to call him: he’s in the car on the way to the airport (he says). Finally, he arrives (it’s quite a way to the airport): he had our old travel scheme (arrival late at night), not the new scheme with arrival in the afternoon.
While waiting, we amuse ourselves looking at other passengers arriving. The variety is enormous, from plain-looking demurely-dressed ordinary people, to very modern-looking young people in tight-fitting fashionable clothes, to chique-looking Arab businessmen in full regalia. As we will find out later, they afford us a preview of the kaleidoscopic diversity seen on the streets of Damascus.
Finally, after three hours, we’re in. Then we find our luggage and one of our suitcases has been forced open. It’s not clear if anything’s missing, but the suitcase itself is damaged. More waiting time, to get a declaration; they can look later whether anything is actually missing. Half an hour’s ride to the city, and then we finally arrive in our hotel where we’re welcomed with a nice cup of tea.
Thursday 2004-05-13 - Aleppo, Syria
“In my next life I wish to be your hat”
The Syrians have a wonderful gentle kind of humor, of which we had a nice sample before at Krak des Chevaliers: Entrance fee is 150 Syrian pounds for foreigners, 15 for Syrians and 10 for students. After Carla and I paid our 150, Thom followed and said: “I’m Syrian.” “That’s 15 dollars, sir” was the immediate reply.
Today we roam around the very extensive Souk of Aleppo (much nicer than that of Damascus, with many very old vaults over the streets and khans — storage places — and caravanserais); it couldn’t be any closer since our pleasant hotel is right in the middle of the souk. Here we encounter more samples of Syrian humor. Many traders try a little ruse to talk you into their store but it’s all a game and they readily admit it’s just a trick to get you inside: “You have to try something to sell something” one apologizes laughing. What’s amazing is how many Syrians here speak some Dutch, or even have a portrait of our queen in their store: another conversation piece of course to get you inside. Farther on in the main street we chat with a small group of young men; one of them looks at my hat and tells me: “In my next life I wish to be your hat.”
Sunday 2004-05-23 - Doğubayazıt, Turkey
Zero Stars
Our hotel in Doğubayazıt used to have two stars, but looking at the sign on the façade we note all stars have been covered up carefully… still, the sheets and towels are clean, and the bathroom works — that’s all that really matters and we’re here for only one night anyway.
Monday 2004-06-14 - Mary, Turkmenistan
Destroyed by the Mongols
Ancient Merv, an old center on the Silk Road, was located a way from present-day Mary. It was — especially for the time — a huge city of which only ruins are left now, spread over a large area. Obviously, arriving here around seven in the evening, we will have time only for a few highlights before it gets fully dark — and we still have to have dinner as well.
There were several large citadels here, as well as forts. When the Mongols arrived here on their rampage across Asia, they didn’t know how to tackle such a large city: they’d never encountered anything like this. At first they roamed around for six days failing to find a way in. Then they laid siege but after half a year they’d gotten nowhere: the city still thrived. At last a spy overheard two women chatting to each other, saying they’d never have lasted this long with out the tunnel through which water and food was brought into the city… Now the Mongols finally had a way in. The two women were stoned to death for thus betraying the city but that was not all. The Mongols offered to spare everyone if only they would move out of the city; the people took the offer but found they had been fooled: nearly all were killed. One of the survivors, an Arab who lived here, was tasked with counting the dead. He recorded the counting took him 6 days, and he counted 1.2 million bodies.
The city was then abandoned for about two centuries, after which people slowly began to move back, but soon left again. New Mary was built at a distance from the old site but the extensive cemetery at Merv has been in almost constant use — a pity there’s no time to walk around there, I love to look around cemeteries. We have time only to visit a few forts and the mausoleums for the two women who were stoned to death; then we run up the hill of another fort on a hill to watch from there the beautiful sunset over the site. A few more places viewed in the dusk, and then we ride back to the city.
In Mary we have a late dinner in the open air; my chicken kebab tastes very good, but it’s also very cold outside by this time: it’s nearly 11 pm! Our hotel is of the “Russian” type with a key lady and no restaurant. (No choice: it’s the only hotel in town. A new three-star hotel has been built but not opened yet.) Our bathroom looks terrible with a jumble of broken tiles but it has been cleaned and the plumbing actually works. The hot water is turned off at eleven though, so my shower is only lukewarm.
Thursday 2004-06-17 - Samarkand, Uzbekistan
Evening light
At 4:30 we arrive in Samarkand, in Mr. Furkat’s pleasant family hotel: a shaded courtyard with fruit trees and seats with fresh fruit (small apples, apricots and prunes all from their own trees) and nuts on the tables — a real Uzbek tradition — and free coffee and tea. And it’s at a very short walking distance from the Registan complex making it an ideal location to stay in Samarkand. Carla and I first walk to the Chorsu cafe, on the corner of Tashkent street and just around the corner from the hotel, for a (draft) beer on the terrace: this is my favorite place to sit and watch people in Samarkand where mainly locals come to eat, drink and sometimes play a game of chess, and many people walk by on the way to and from the bazaar.
After that, we stroll to the Registan complex, just now basking in beautiful evening sunlight, where we enter (without buying a ticket) through one of the ‘secret’ back entrances to make pictures. A watchman approaches us — not to chase us away but to tell us we should climb the minaret (we decline) and feel free to take pictures now; and if we want, we can come back early in the morning (between 5 and 6) and will get in for free, too, he assures us, so we can take pictures in the morning light. Like last time, I take a lot of pictures, it’s very beautiful in this warm evening light.
Saturday 2004-06-19 - Tashkent, Uzbekistan
More catching up
I’m puzzled that the road to Tashkent looks unfamiliar — it takes a while before I realize I’ve never been here: both times before in Uzbekistan I’ve flown to and from Tashkent. Along the first stretch the landscape is pleasant to the eyes: rolling hills and low mountains with a wide plain in-between covered with fields where mainly grain is grown. Lots of small farms, with low walls up and down the hills all around their property. Later, we see a lot of beehives along the road where farmers are selling honey. When we get somewhat higher, we can see the Shardara reservoir in the distance before us but the road doesn’t pass along the lake; far to the right we see the snow-capped mountains of what must be Tajikistan, but apart from that the landscape isn’t as beautiful any more.
In Tashkent we’re staying at the Orzu hotel, a familiar place to me. After a nice dinner outside (I have a delicious “Lens soup” and a Kazakh beer) I walk 50 m, back down the road where there is what they call here an “Internet Club”, one of very many in this city. Their connection here is very fast (supposedly they have an ADSL contract with a Chinese provider). When I arrive at 8:15, it’s still very quiet but by 9 the place is packed with all machines in use, sometimes two to a machine. While game-playing costs 400 so’m per hour, Internet access is 800; after I explain I’ll be online only part of the time, the price becomes 600 per hour! After two hours of fast typing to update the travel blog I need to pay only 900 so’m though — and all of Turkmenistan is up-to-date now.
Back in the hotel I treat myself to a nice beer paid with my last so’ms: all that typing made me quite thirsty!
Sunday 2004-06-20 - Osh, Kyrgyzstan
Getting used to camping
Osh, geographically still in the Fergana valley although thanks to Soviet administrators it’s part of Kyrgyzstan now, not Uzbekistan, is not far from the border. We go straight to our ‘hotel’ first: it’s what used to be a sanatorium in Soviet times but turned into tourist lodging - and very basic. There are simple rooms (though with decent beds), with shared bathrooms and washrooms for every couple of rooms. This serves as a good preparation for the next four nights when we’ll be camping in nature, without any facilities at all…
After we’ve checked in, the “truck bus” takes us back into town where we have some time to change money (there are a lot of money changers on the market — as expected at a typical border town) and then roam over the big market which covers a long stretch along the river, at some places on both sides. It’s a nice market, once of the largest in Central Asia in fact, and apart from a few things we buy for dinner (it’s too early for us to eat dinner now), I do a bit of other shopping as well. There’s even time to take some photographs although by six the market is beginning to close down.
Osh is not only a bustling border town but a smuggler’s center as well where a big part of the opium trade passes through. Looking around it’s not only obvious a lot of Uzbeks live here among the Kirghiz — there’s a lot of money around here as well although most people doing business on the market are clearly not part of that economy.
Thursday 2004-06-24 - Tash Rabat, Kyrgyzstan
What is Tash Rabat?
The Tash Rabat building, located at 3100 m height not far from the Chinese border, is somewhat of a riddle. It’s often called a caravan serai in the tour guides but looking at the structure that actually sounds rather unlikely: there’s no place to stable animals here; and usually at a caravanserai there’s a large open courtyard inside the outer walls but this smallish building is completely covered and has a large domed central hall with lots of rooms around three sides of it. Other theories are it could have been a mosque, a prison, even a Buddhist monastery. Unfortunately, no real scientific investigation or excavation has ever been done here; until that happens (if ever) it’s all guesswork.
It’s quite cold up here (again) but luckily we can sleep either in a yurt, put up for the purpose by the family living across from Tash Rabat, or inside their house (for which they free up their own living room and kitchen and sleep in a small side building). Although it costs a little extra, I’m quite glad to be able to sleep inside where it’s warm tonight: last night in the tent it was so cold I didn’t sleep well.
Thursday 2004-07-01 - Turpan, Xinjiang (China)
Hot!
Turpan lies in a basin, the lowest point of which is at 154m below sea level: the second-lowest on earth and sometimes called the “Oven of China” because it’s so hot. So hot, in fact, even I think it’s hot! (It wasn’t this hot last time I was here, but that was at the beginning of October — now it’s summer.) Our hotel, the Turpan hotel, is along the renovated Nian Qing road though, a pleasant avenue completely shaded by grape vines with walking paths on both sides, and the central road accessible only for public transportation. The hotel is OK, nothing special, but doesn’t offer a place to sit outside in the shade — no problem: the local branch of John’s Cafe across the road does. While the kitchen here isn’t as good as that in the Kashgar branch it’s a nice place to gather for a meal or drink — or just sit and write. After a drink in the shade, Carla and I brave the hot sun to find the bazaar, about the only ‘sight’ in Turpan I haven’t seen yet and rumored to be nice.
The rumor is correct. It’s a really very nice bazaar, and since most of it is covered we can stay in the shade to look around and shop a little. There’s a pleasant kind of organized disorder — or is it disorganized order? Trades and goods each have their own corner or street, a whole hall of restaurants, another with just dried fruit and nuts, a street with shoes, and so on, but it isn’t all straight and new either and large enough to get lost in the labyrinth of streets and halls. We see all kinds of foods that are new to us; frequently we are offered a taste if we just look (pickled whole garlic bulbs for instance — I get a clove to taste and it’s very nice) and we end up buying a bag of spicy rice crackers: nice with a cold beer). The people, both buyers and sellers, are a mixture of Uyghurs and Chinese here, all very friendly. I also get myself a nice pair of red-and-black fabric shoes I can use as house shoes — I can use the salesman’s stool to try them on and they cost me only 15 Yuan (1.50 EUR); I don’t even bother to bargain!
Friday 2004-07-09 - Beijing, China
Broke in Beijing
I wake up before five; I slept well but not long enough. An hour later the train attendant comes by to wake us up (if necessary) and swap our little cards for our train tickets. We arrive in Beijing at 6:40.
I’m so tired after my too-short night, the first thing I do when we get our room in the Dong Fang hotel is go to bed for a nap — while Carla goes out with Thom to the Forbidden City. We were told that to view the Forbidden City you’d need to walk around some four or five hours, something I’m sure I can’t manage anyway with my still-hurting foot. When I wake up again it’s 12:30. I’d like to go out for a short walk, but first I’ll need some cash: I’m nearly broke. But before that — and before I can go out at all — I’ll need to have my passport (left at the check-in desk for registration), and I can’t get cash without a passport either.
When I arrive in the lobby and ask for my passport, explaining why I need it, a small opera results: our passports are locked away, it seems, and the lady who has the only key (really?) has gone to the bank to get cash, I’m told; she’ll be back in an hour. I insist they just cannot ‘lock up’ their guests by holding on to their passports: the lady with the key should have left that key behind so guests can have access to their passports. Obviously, things don’t quite work like they try to make me believe: apparently no one present has sufficient authority to open the (locked?) drawer with the passports. When I propose the assistant manager (“#0059” says his name tag, he doesn’t seem to have a name) call the lady with the key that seems to give him an opening; he suggests I sit at the lounge bar to wait … and less than 10 minutes later a bell boy appears to tell me my passport is here. Of course the lady with the key (does she even exist?) is nowhere in sight; I suspect they just decided to open the drawer, maybe without proper authorization.
Anyway, that’s really just the short version of what happened; then actually getting cash involves one non-functional ATM (in the hotel), one broken ATM (at a bank) and a bank teller at yet another bank. But I have my passport, and cash, and now I’m ready to explore Beijing a little — at my snail’s pace.
Sunday 2005-09-25 - Xiahe, China
Also Buddhist country
The last stretch of the road before we arrive in Xiahe is nice and smooth again. We’re staying at the best hotel in town: the Overseas Tibetan Hotel (Hua Qiao Fandian), owned by a Tibetan. The whole place is attractively decorated in Tibetan style — it seems the paintings were done by some of the monks from the Labrang monastery — and there’s an excellent restaurant with a Chinese and a Nepali cook; our rooms have a private bathroom (with warm water for a few hours in the morning and the evening). Last but not least: in the lobby are three workstations providing Internet access for a reasonable price (5Ұ per hour). The restaurant is busy, it seems to be the best place in town: people staying at other hotels often come here to eat.
From the roof of the hotel one has a nice view of the Labrang monastery, the reason for our stay in Xiahe. Climbing the steps isn’t all that easy though: we’re at 2890m now — and not acclimatized to such a height yet. Slowly, slowly does it.
After dinner, after a long wait (the three stations are almost constantly occupied), I catch up a bit with my blog.
Wednesday 2006-09-06 - Namp’o, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
Three sets of slippers
Unfortunately, we don’t stop in Namp'o city on the way to our Ryonggang Hot Spring Hotel. First, we're on an enormous 10-lane highway (with very little traffic, and we note it's easily wide and straight enough to serve as a landing strip fro a large plane -- only half joking) but soon we turn off and drive through the countryside. Most of the landscape is very flat but with rather "pointy" hills sticking up from the flat base. The main crops I note are rice and maize. I ask Mr. Pak but unfortunately we can't stop for a picture of this typical landscape.
With all the rice paddies, there are obviously a lot of wetlands here, and when we arrive at the hotel grounds, large flights of Great white herons fly over.
The hotel is actually a kind of resort, with a central “recreation center” that also houses the reception and a dinner hall, and a number of houses scattered over the nicely landscaped grounds. When we (my room mate Thekla and I) arrive at “our” house, a lady welcomes us and shows us the ropes: downstairs, just inside the door, you take off your shoes and don a pair of slippers to walk over the marble floors and stairways. Our room is upstairs, and inside the door we find a set of regular discardable “hotel slippers” for walking about in the room (leaving the first set of slippers at the door); just inside the bathroom door is a third pair of slippers for each of us (one blue, one pink), and we’re to wear these plastic slippers inside the bathroom. It all sort of makes sense, but it’s a little elaborate…
The lady immediately opens the lower tap above the enormous blue-tiled bathtub, out of which comes hot, salty spring water, supposed to have healing qualities. Thekla and I opt for the most practical solution: we share the bath (easy since there are two seats sculpted in the bath tub).
Dinner is in the big, brightly-lit dinner room in the recreation center, where we are served by ladies in traditional costume; apart from the big slices of white bread (which I don’t touch), the foods is Korean — and delicious.
Saturday 2007-04-07 - Sey’un, Yemen
French fries for dinner
The road to Sey’un now curves around the mountains on our right, and we’re in a different valley of the Wadi Hadramawt area. It’s the main valley of the Wadi Hadramawt river, a very wide and flat area here, flanked on both sides with table mountains formed by water draining into the valley — a fertile area in the middle of the desert. Along the way, we make a short photo stop to take pictures of old Shibam — from a distance; tomorrow we’ll return to visit the town.
The Al Ahqaf hotel in Sey’un is nice and comfortable, and within walking distance of the city center. After writing a bit, I find out that through some miscommunication I’ll have to go out for dinner alone: the others have either already gone out, or don’t want to have dinner at all. I head into town, and on the way meet some of the others just coming back; they give me some tips for where to find something to eat. French fries sounds good to me, and sure enough at the market place I find a man with a little stall selling french fries (called “chips” here, clearly inherited from the British occupation), and little samosas. A customer next to me translates when I ask what’s in the samosas: onions (pointing at them) — that sounds good to me and I order fries (the last!) and three samosas. A piece of newspaper at the bottom of a little plastic bag to soak up the fat, that’s how my food is packed, some salt put on it before it’s handed over to me. I walk quickly back to the hotel (it’s only 10 minutes or so), buy an alcohol-free beer in the lobby, and head up to my room, where I use the metal tray for the glasses as a make-shift plate. The food is still warm, and the samosas turn out to contain not onions but potatoes, but they’re very tasty.
Monday 2007-04-09 - Wadi ’Adim, Yemen
Camping under the milky way
From Tarim we go into the valley of a side arm of Wadi Hadramawt, the Wadi ’Adim. The landscape is stunningly beautiful here: weird shapes both in the totally bare table mountains and in the water-eroded layers of sediment; in the middle of the wadi valley we see open water for the first time in this area. The available water enables the thick palm groves to be grown here (date palms); around the fringes there are fields with other produce. Although the surrounding mountains are bare, the wadi bottom is green and lush.
At a nice spot we go through a ford to the other side of the river where our drivers can have a quiet qat-chewing session in the shade, and we can go for a walk through the palm grove. Theoretically, we could walk to the village (that was the idea) but although we can see it in the distance, the water-eroded thick layer of sediment is hard going: you constantly have to find your way around deep grooves — there is no way to walk in a straight line. We only make it to a lonely little house; nobody home but a little goat. There are some small fields nearby so somebody must live here, but we see no one.
The qat session (and our walk) over, we go further into the wadi. Suddenly we go halfway up the mountain where there is a stony plateau. Here we set up our camp, with a nice view of the village Ghayl ’Umar in the middle of the lush palm grove. The idyll is somewhat spoiled by the sound of a generator belonging to the tank station at the foot of the mountain, but once it gets dark it’s offset by the sound of frogs calling to each other near the river — hearing that it’s hard to believe we are actually in the desert.
One of our drivers, Mohamed, cooks us a nice dinner, with some assistance from Hussein (mostly holding the lamp) and Khamal, as well as some of our group to chop the vegetables. Gradually the stars come out, and the Milky Way appears above us in all its glory — a sight we can rarely see any more in our crowded and light-polluted country. On Hussein’s assurance that it’s not going to rain tonight, I left off the outer tent when I set up my tent and go to sleep in my sleeping bag with a light breeze caressing my face.
Tuesday 2007-04-10 - Al Khuraybah, Yemen
They bite!
Where the lower part of Wadi Do’an is dry, the farther we go up it becomes more humid and green - now we see a string of palm groves again. We end up in Al Khuraybah where we are going to spend the night in Hotel Ribon — actually a funduq: simple lodging in people’s home.
To my surprise they have prepared a single room for our group: 12 mattresses neatly arranged on the floor; I had expected separate rooms for the men and the women. On each mattress is a pillow and a sheet; most of the windows can be opened and have a screen against mosquitoes; there are also two fans on the ceiling: we won’t be bothered much by insects here. In the hall are two bathrooms with shower and toilet. All in all, simple but functional and clean.
We put DEET on our small areas of bare skin (face, neck and hands) and head downstairs to the restaurant. We can sit inside or outside, it makes no difference: since there is more water here, there are mosquitoes everywhere — there’s no escaping them and they are especially nasty here: they simply avoid the little areas of skin covered in DEET and go for the rest, biting right through our clothes, even socks! Our bedroom may be mosquito-free (our hosts even sprayed it for us), but we already get an ample portion of bites before retiring for the night.
Wednesday 2007-04-11 - Al Mukalla, Yemen
Bath slippers
I have a nice room in the Corniche hotel along the boulevard in old Al Mukalla — alas not with a sea view, but instead a view of the nearby mosque from my own little balcony — and I have three beds to choose from.
Most hotels in Yemen provide bath slippers, and so does the Corniche, but they clearly have their own ideas about this service here: in front of my bathroom I find two differently-colored right-foot slippers of two different sizes.
Wednesday 2009-05-20 - Mashhad, Iran
This looks familiar
At the airport our bus is waiting for us; fully in style for Mashhad as an Islamic religious center, the bus is green — very green: not only green on the outside, but the curtains and lighting inside are green as well. Our driver wears a green shirt.
I can remember very little from our last time in Mashhad, except for the crowdedness of Hajj, with people picnicking outside everywhere, not just in parks, but even on the strips of green between the road lanes. That, and the inside of our hotel room, where I sat down at a little desk and Carla took a picture of me writing — but not the name of the hotel. This time, it´s not Hajj time and there aren´t such big crowds but still here and there people are picnicking (Iranians seem to like to do that). The hotel lobby has old-fashioned but rather comfortable chairs. When Carla and I inspect our room (quite roomy, but with old-fashioned furniture), we suddenly note that the little desk and the wall paneling around it, look quite familiar: the layout of the room is different, but that little hand-made desk is exactly the same shape: we must have ended up in the same hotel: the Pardis hotel.
