June 7, 2012

I had a very pleasant nigh sleep and got up at six to pester the hotel employees to find me some hot water. There was no one at the lonely table serving as their front desk, but another guest, apparently checking out, signaled for me to wait. I did my best to mime the need for hot water to make coffee, but the woman understood I wanted tea until the man into back into his room, which contained an electric teakettle and showed it to her. She came back later on with a ceramic teakettle full of hot water and I was happy.

Eraj was sleeping like a log and fortunately the Internet was operating at a decent speed, so I decided to revise the blog entries I had been able to write here and there, but which were sketchy at best. By nine o’clock, I was getting hungry and tried to rouse Eraj from his sleep so we could get ready to have breakfast in town and find out about our next destination, but he just turned around and went back to sleep. I remembered we had bought some fruit the day before at the market in Istaravshan and after washing some apricots in the bottled water, I ate a handful of them as the that fruit here is very small, more like a small plum than apricots we are used to seeing in the states.

The day was clear and slightly windy when I set outside to take some photos of the surrounding landscape. I decided to let Eraj know I was going to walk into town while he continued to sleep for I was really hungry. It was ten by then, and he seemed genuinely apologetic for having slept so late and pleaded that I wait for him so we could go together. We walked to the taxi stand a couple of blocks away from the hotel and spoke to some locals, all of whom wanted to send us in the direction of Iskandarkul Lake, which I had already visited. The other option was to just drive on to Panjikent as there was nothing worth seeing in between. We had a sort of brunch at 11:00am where I finally got to eat some insipid plov, salad and flat bread. The owner of the little place didn’t sell any soft drinks or water and I went next door to buy some for Eraj.

Back to the hotel to pack and to listen to Eraj pleading to stay put since that had been the nicest hotel he had ever stayed in. I agreed it was a very clean, quiet and orderly place, but there was nothing to do in town. There wasn’t even a place to get a taxi or mini-van to Panjikent and another traveler told us he sometimes waited for hours before finding a car heading there. It was 11:45 and I didn’t relish the idea of spending an afternoon under a concrete bus stop being pestered by kids selling some type of milk balls. There must have been a dozen of these pre-teen boys harassing passengers as care came around, many of them being automatically stopped by the traffic police in search of bribes. At one point, one of the police officer grabbed the bag of goods of one of the kids and refused to give it back. To the others, he started gathering small rocks and lobbied them with full force. It was almost comical, if I wasn’t aware that this was the only way the kids had of making a living here, to see the children playing cat and mouse with the uniformed guys.

Eraj found some shade across the street and upon the suggestion of the other traveler, placed our suitcases on the curb so as to alert other drivers that passengers were waiting. An hour and a half later, we had not found a car going to Panjikent and had to settle for jumping into a mini-van willing to take us closer to our destination. The van was full of sacks of flour and other agricultural good while a woman carrying a small child seemed to have been moving based on all the packages surrounding her. We went through some gorgeous canyons surrounding the Zarashon River and came to stop to unload some passengers in some godforsaken place. One woman, traveling with a 6-7 year old girl, squatted on the side of he road and started to wail, an action quickly followed by the little girl.

All I could find out was that her blood pressure had shot up to 200 and she was in extreme pain. The rest of the passengers were left in the tin car while some of the male ones accompanied the woman to a nearby doctor. I thought the driver would continue his journey after that having done his good deed for the day, but “This is Tajikistan”, as Hillary likes to say, and we were made to wait until the woman got an injection to bring down her blood pressure and could resume her journey. The one hour ride turned into a three and half hour one. We were dropped in the middle of nowhere, but the young guy traveling in our direction reassured us it was the right spot to be in when cars heading to Panjikent came by.   Fortunately for me, a rough pit toilet had been carved nearby and a pipe offered water to clean our hands and faces as the road had been extremely dusty.

By four o’clock, an SUV approached to let out a passenger and he reluctantly agreed to accommodate all three of us and our substantial amount of luggage for 40.00 somoni each. Eraj was furious and wanted to turn down his offer feeling we were being fleeced again. I adamant about paying the fee as I didn’t to risk spending the night in some forlorn village in the middle of nowhere. We were sandwiched between the trunk and the last seat and poor Eraj could barely fit his long legs into the space. Mercifully for us, a woman travelling with two children got off after a short distance and another problem arose. She swore she had purchased some tools while in town and now couldn’t find them. The driver, not a very pleasant fellow on good days I assume, was practically fuming when having to bring out every single package and bag from all crevices of the SUV to demonstrate that he was not hiding her purchases. The meek woman got on cell phone, probably to break the news to her husband and after much discussion and to and fro allowed us to proceed.

We were then able to switch seats to the middle one and struck a conversation with a woman from Khujand that had married someone in Panjikent and now lives there. She is a lawyer and works on social issues and I spared no punches in asking her about the mistreatment women receive in Tajikistan. She felt that the situation was improving rapidly as village girls are being granted scholarships to study in the capital and even abroad, married women received money from the husbands working abroad and other receive training in their villages to make things they can sell and make money from. Her picture was too rosy and in great contrast to the living conditions I had seen traveling around Tajikistan. I didn’t want to antagonize her anymore and dropped the subject.

The driver directed us to a hotel that was closed, but he was so adamant it was still in operation that he came out of his car and banged loudly on doors and windows to get somebody’s attention. The lawyer woman recommended the “Touristic” hotel and there we went. It reminded me so much of the “resort” hotel in Istaravshan as it was another ruinous place with small rooms, skimpy lighting, lack of running water and beds so narrow I’d be afraid to roll over in it at night for fear of ending up on the floor. There was an A/C unit on the wall, a mini-fridge that never got really cold, a small TV and only one light bulb in the middle of the room. It was past six and we had no time to go into town carrying our belongings looking for a better one. 150.00 somoni for the two of us seemed like extortion for the decrepit condition of the room, inexplicable since there were at least four men hanging around doing nothing the whole time but we paid nonetheless.

We went out to dinner to “Dilovar” the best restaurant in the area, supposedly, and the place was deserted. It was large, bright and even had the tables numbered. I had to beg for them to turn down the darn TV with the non-stop videos as I had gotten a horrible headache from the potholes on the road. There was nothing on the menu that appealed to me, so I asked the server if she could make some French fries for me. My choice of accompaniment for these fries were fried eggs, a hot dog or a cutlet, something I had never been able to find out what it is made of. I settle for two fried eggs and had French fries that seemed to have been boiled instead of fried that soft and colorless they were.

When I asked to use the bathroom, the same server took me outside the building and to the back where I had to step into another vile squat toilet built over planks. I told Eraj how incongruous it was for the owner to have bothered to build such a luxurious building for the restaurant and never having had the forethought to include a bathroom in it.

We walked to the nearby stadium where we had seen that the festival had already started, but got there as they were conduction the closing the ceremony.  The stadium appeared to be full of mostly teenager kids, all of whom seemed to be staring at me. I got a few shots before the sun disappeared completely and refused to walk past the government building because the sidewalk lighting ended just there.

I got some 3-1 coffee packets, Eraj ate some ice cream and I had to rush into the room for my stomach had suddenly become very unsettled. Despite the promises that hot water would be available upon our return, there was no water of any kind and I used my drinking water to brush my teeth. The Internet connection didn’t work in this much larger city and I gave up on trying to do anything else for the night. Eraj turned on the TV at a soft volume, and I went to sleep.