Greg and Mandy's Travels

Back on the 1960s with the cotton industry established, and the area designated to provide cotton to the whole of the Soviet Union, they needed bulk water to grow it. So they created 150 water channels to take water from the Aral Sea in the north west, and then piped it to various areas of the country. Unfortunately the term Aral Sea is a misnomer. It’s actually the Aral lake. 

At 66000 sq kms it was the 4th largest lake in world. By the fall of the Soviet Union some 30 years later there was only 8% of the water left, and it won’t ever recover as the rivers that feed the lake are in Russia, and the water has been diverted for their own use.…

Bukhara is the cotton bowl of Central Asia, and we passed hundreds of small cotton farms in the bus. The plants are around 60cm tall, and not as prolific as in Australia. They are irrigated from above by plastic hosing strung through the tops of the bushes. 

Not sure about the planting, but all picking is done by hand. There would be 50 or so labourers in every field, and it seems that there was a percentage of balls left on the plant. Maybe the hand picking is less efficient, or maybe they have bloomed after the pick. 

In finished paddocks, there were labourers with scythes cutting the plant to a couple of inches (though we saw a couple of tractors), and others gathering the cut bushes.…

Restaurants in central Asia are different to the west. In the west, a restaurant is one big room with lots of tables. In central Asia, a restaurant is a series of rooms off a corridor or central area. Bit like a hotel corridor. Each dinner party has their own room. 

It’s great. It’s quieter and you can hear others talk. For a group like ours, we can have a single conversation, or the tour leader can talk about the next day. A family group can sing Happy Birthday, or a couple can whisper sweet nothings.

Last night there would have been 30 rooms in our restaurant over two floors.…

Are you ready for a huge substitution game? A big coding puzzle?

OK, so:

B is really V

X is really H

H is really N

N (backwards) is really I

3 is really Z

P is really R

C is really S

Y is really U

W is really SH

BI is really Y

Got all of that? Good! Now you can read Cyrillic.

Don’t believe it? Let me prove it to you.

Start with an easy one. What do the Cyrillic words ‘mnhn mapket’ mean?

Mini market. Bet you got that one.

OK, a bit harder.

How about ‘catnh’, and ‘takcn’?…

The day dawned sunny and warm, with not a sign that it had been raining and snowing the day before. 

There is a law in Tajikistan that you have to display the president’s picture for two weeks before and after every public holiday, so that ensures that there are permanent pictures displayed everywhere.  Lots of them. He is basically president for life, as he is the only candidate in every election. 

He has two sons. One is mayor of the city, and the other is head of the parliament. No prizes for guessing who will eventually be next president. 

Tajikistan has the tallest flagpole, the biggest library, the largest palace, and so on.…

Some times I might embellish a story a little, but let me tell you without exaggeration that today was seriously challenging and rather dangerous. 

There are two major cities in the country, Khujan (koo-yarn) and Dushanbe (doo-shan-bee) which is the capital, and today we had to drive between the two. As 93% of the country is mountainous, this involved scaling two mountain ranges with a valley in between. Up until 2018 the country didn’t have an all-weather road between the two, so the Chinese helpfully constructed a brilliant toll road between them, and two 5km tunnels, one at the top of each range to cut off 1000 metres of climbing.…

Off to the border for our most complicated and potentially hazardous day. But before we leave Kyrgyzstan I need to tell you about caps. Traditionally the Kyrgyzs wear different coloured caps depending on their age. Children under 6 wear a light blue one, the young children wear another. After puberty, the colour changes again, all the way up to 63 when you get your white cap. Way to go, labelling people as old. 

Off to the nearby border after breakfast, passing a convoy of 75 empty buses with a police escort front and back. 

A bit of background. When the Soviets carved up the Fergana Valley in the 1930s into four districts, they paid little attention to which ethnic groups lived in each district.…

After grabbing a boxed lunch from the foyer of the hotel (which everybody threw away), we boarded the bus, and headed off to the airport. The security check at the airport made me pull out my perfectly legal screwdriver from the bottom of my checked baggage before I could get into the terminal, but at the second security check after getting our boarding passes they missed all kinds of things. Looked like they were going to confiscate the screwdriver, as the girl didn’t know what it was! However Valentina spoke to her severely and I finally put it back in my suitcase. …

Do you know that traditionally Kyrgyz people could only count to 7? Their counting system went – one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, lots.

Anyway, we were up for our early breakfast on cushions in the yurt, before heading to the bus. Whilst talking of yurts, you may be interested to know that the centre motif of the Kyrgyz flag is a stylised centre hole in the roof of a yurt, and the forty bumps on the circle represent the forty tribes gathered together in one yurt. Nice flag actually.

Headed off through another 100km of bumpy, unmade roadworks. Passed by a black Mercedes limo with heavily tinted windows, and the number plate ‘AK47’.…

A bit of a ragged start to the day. One of our number was sick, and Valentina was simultaneously trying to assist her and herd cats at the same time.

After breakfast we headed down to the Russian Orthodox Church where the lady attendant couldn’t believe her eyes when a group of Australians rocked up. She scampered off to get her phone and show us some pictures of Australian flowers that she had been sent by a friend in Australia this morning. She was most impressed. “You people grow your own flowers while we have to buy them” came the translation.…