CENTRAL ASIA (13/02/2007 - 15/03/2007)

We Spent ten days in Tashkent. We stayed in a pretty hotel, the innkeeper is a very good guy. We rested on a small tottering bed, and we drunk a lot of vodka (they demonstrate their hospitality in this way). We got easily the visas that we needed (Kirghiz, Tagik, Kazak and Russian). We arranged the Tagik one with an agent, his name is Sadoullo, who was very nice and… hospitable. We was again drunk.
To get the Russian Visa you need a letter of invitation, and right at the moment we had just a print of the e-mailed copy of it. Fortunately they accepted it. Also they asked for a flight reservation. Why, if we exposed our intention to cross the country overland? There was no way… so we did it (for free, but a waste of time)
The pack sent by Andrea (Claudio's brother) arrived at the hotel. It contained spares (window, an axle of transmission and cable of the speedometer) and sweets made by the mom! We fixed the car, and we hope to have not such kind of meetings anymore (fucking guys in that village in Kazakhstan).
We left for Samarkand. Along the road there were at least 20 check points, there is a Kazak enclave and the road passes through it.
We met a friend of the innkeeper of Tashkent. He invited us at the birthday party for his four years old son.
In the late evening the children went to sleep and the adults took the famigerate bottles of vodka. If we’ll continue to care of traditions we’ll become adducted!
We got the University to meet Shoya, a friend of Andrea. She teach Italian and she was keeping the lesson when we arrived. She had the opportunity to have two Italians and asked to Claudio to explain the comparatives of majority and minority to the class. They brought into laughter when he said that he never heard about!
Class: "Are you married?"
Claudio: "No, we are fiancé since one year"
Patrizia: (annoyed) "They are almost two…"
Laughter from the class
Class: "Claudio, what did you give as gift to Patrizia for St. Valentine?"
Claudio: "Uhm… nothing…"
Laughter from the class.
Shoya told us that she earn 30 us$ per month, so she has to do also the guide for tourists, to earn what she needs to live.
Bukhara is also nice (it seems…Genoa). Mosques and Madrasas are not decorated like in Samarkand. Becouse of their colours Bukhara is the Earth, Samarkand is the Sky.
In two days from Bukhara we got the border to Tagikistan.
We got Dushambe and so the house of Zarina, daughter of Sadoullo. We stayed at her house for 12 us$ per day (Dushambe is expensive) and she arranged the permits to drive the Pamir.
We were ready to drive from Dushambe to Osh in Kirghizstan.
We filled the tanks and we moved the luggage from the top to the inside. We worried for the rack.
Along the road we saw a lot of abandoned military vehicles of the Soviet Union.
We spent a night among a wonderful family. Around a stove, at the light of an oil lamp, we talked about our different cultures. In the morning, with -5°C the children were playing outside in t-shirts.
We gave a lift to an old man walking to the mosque 20 km far away.
At a check point we gave some gasoline to the soldiers for their generator. They were in the darkness.
In the villages they use oil lamps and wooden torches both in Tagikistan and in Afghanistan. We drove on the frontier.
There is a traffic of opium, so it’s unsafe to camp along the road.
There is a kind of competition between the two countries. For example, if an Afghan village has the electricity Tagikistan make up for asphalting the road.
An ONG named ACTED made a project for the Pamir road. There are inns with fixed prices along the road. Paying a little amount you can have the dinner, the breakfast and the bedroom.
In Kalaikum we filled the tank for the first time. We argued that the fuel was diluted with water, but we had not other choice.
We drove right on the border to Afghanistan for several hundreds of kilometres. We took a maximum speed of 30 km/h because of the bad road (however we broke a spring) and we saw signals of "beware of mines". A morning in the dust on a car window we red "Un saluto da un altro Genovese, Khorog, 2007, Feb. 26" (Hi from another genoan).
Close to a 4200 metres high pass the temperature of the inside was -12°C. The oil of the engine was thick and the engine completely covered by snow because of the wind.
Once we cleaned the sparks connections and the distributor the engine turned on, but we heated up it for one hour.
Because of the fuel diluted with water and the altitude it had the power of an autocycle.
Finally, on the pass, in front of us was the magnificent Pamir Plateau, the top of the world, where Himalaya, Karakorum, Hindukush and Tian Shan begin.
There is not snow in the winter because it’s too much cold.
The Chinese border is thickly covered by barbed wire. The border is not natural like the Afghan (the Pyant river).
We got the Kirghiz frontier, stronghold by a barrack, and then along a bad road (maybe the worst) Osh, where the Pamir ends.
We were used to the mountain people and worrying about the city.
On the road to Bishkek we could again drive at 80 km/h on a asphalted road. We could hear every noises from the car.
We got Kazakhstan once again. We drove on the steppe from Almaty to Astana. We made the last ordinary maintenance at the car, so it was ready to run for the last 10000 km. We used a 10 W 40 lubricant. Before we used a synthetic 5 W 40, because of the low temperatures on the mountains.
We found however -20, -23°C and in the nights we brought the battery with us in the room. In the mornings we had to wait for the sun to turn on the engine. The ice formed into the inside lasted till the late day.
We got Russia. It was nice to see again the trees, almost non-existent in Kazakhstan.

Claudio & Patrizia