Any comments or questions about this site, please contact Bob Zolnerzak at

bobzolnerzak @verizon.net

 

 

 

FIVE STANs 1 of 2

FIVE STANS - May 10-31, 2010

MONDAY, 5/10/10: Totally rushed day, trying at first to keep up with periodic WP51 entries, but then just note them down on a card which I never have a chance to transcribe. Manage to get Mildred's paper notarized and faxed to her, got to the gym, got all my pills packed away, and started frantically packing the last items while eating the third HH meal of the day: tilapia with vegetables which I hardly taste. Had phoned for a $44 car at 6:30 to JFK, and really panic when the phone rings at 6:19 to say it's waiting downstairs. Spartacus's wheel-on doesn't seem to take much, but then I'm not TAKING much, wearing a flannel shirt and my OAT blue jacket because it's cool out today. My wheel-on weighs 19 pounds and my shoulder bag only 11, for a total of 30 pounds. Push everything into place while rinsing off my dinner plate and turning off my computer and all the lights, and making sure my phone message is changed, and get out the door at 6:28 to meet Ms. Potoski, elegant in sunglasses, who asks where I'm going and enthuses over the five Stans. Down to the car, shaking my head at the proffered trunk for my luggage, and pile into the back. He turns around and I make my first notation in my pocket notebook: Into car 6:30. Down Clermont and Park and other new streets before getting to Atlantic Avenue around the 1300 block, and there's not much traffic, so we pull up in front of Lufthansa Terminal 1 at 7:09PM, sky quite clear, lots of planes taking off. But the first board I look at gives an estimated time of departure at 11PM! To security at 7:33, having to take off belt and emptying ALL my pockets, but all the containers go through OK and I'm through at 7:42 without having been stopped. Real pain putting my shoes off and on. Sit at gate and close eyes at 7:47PM. Find my mouth gaping open a few times. Look at watch at 9:11PM. Drink and pee at 9:45, no sign of anything. Announcement at 10:35PM: board at 11, leave at 11:30. 11:29 there's a long line, and when I ask, there's no row order, but it goes VERY quickly and I have a good seat at a window way behind the wing, and get two women out of the way so I can go pee at 11:38 in the back before the flight starts, and then start looking at the Tribune and USA Today that I picked up at the gate. Back out at 11:46 for a 7:50 flight.

TUESDAY, 5/11/10: Off at 12:03AM. SHIT!! I realize I left my blue jacket on my seat at the gate! Hope it's WARM in the Stans! Fantasize that the two Italians sitting across from me would have seen it and flagged me down with it, but that doesn't happen. Now typing at gate B24 I get INUNDATED with kids ALL AROUND! At 12:23 they get ready to serve dinner, so I take Ambien and simvasatin with saliva and put in earplugs and put on eyemask. Nice views over clear lights over Long Island and Massachusetts, though slightly bumpy. Then I pull down eyemask and seemingly doze off. Wake to a rocky plane at 3:55AM to find my shade pulled down. Open it to pure black. At 6:30AM note a dream of meeting a high lord, then losing a cap, and then have to look for a jeweled costume, and then a blond four-year-old living deity leans close to me as if to kiss me and asks, with a perfect American accent, "How're ya doin'?" I'm flabbergasted. Breaks in clouds over the North Sea in bright daylight. Had changed my watch by six hours, and it's 1:22 to destination at 12:35PM. So I'll arrive at 2 and my next plane's scheduled to leave at 1:50! Small breakfast at 12:48: tiny fruit bowl, roll and butter and jelly, and a Quaker Oats no-fat granola bar, with a glass of apple juice with which I take my morning pills, noting that I've only taken 7 fish oil capsules. Fantasize that my continuation Lufthansa flight 648 is THIS one. Pee at 1:25PM as we're bumping down toward landing, but the two women had gotten up and it was my only chance. Keep asking attendants for connecting flights, but they only tell me to look at the board, which starts with Bangkok and doesn't mention Almaty. Bumpy on the way down at 1:44, uninteresting farmland, suburbs, and light-industry area before the airport. Land 1:50 and a rush to the exit. Can't find any Lufthansa Service Desk, and when I do, it's got a long line in front of it. If my flight was delayed over TWO hours, why can't my connecting flight be delayed at least ONE hour? Decide to dash the long way to my announced gate B62 to find it empty, and call over someone from B61, and then three of them gather around their computer terminal at 2:36 and try to make sense of something, and then one woman comes back and tells me to try the "No Smoking" area for Service, then the "Smoking" area across the way. Back up the elevator, but the smoking areas are only for smoking. Find the FIRST Service Center and there's no one there, and finally accost an unoccupied woman at a regular Lufthansa gate, who starts checking at 2:36. She notes down that I'd ALREADY been rerouted to LONDON to get to Almaty, and I lamented to her that NO ONE on the plane knew ANYTHING about this. She said I have LH4740 at 1810 from FRA-LHR, then KC902 at 2105 from LHR to ALA, suggesting I get in about 6AM!! I say I have to have a boarding pass, and she generates them from my passport, my old boarding pass, and my Lufthansa frequent-flyer card, saying that I have window seat 14A at gate B24 from Frankfurt, but that I have to check in at London to get my KC (which may be Kunden) boarding pass: I have a seat, but it may be pretty full. Get told all this at 2:56PM, figuring it's not THAT long until my 1740 boarding time, so I commandeer a table at a window which has TWO kids screaming around it, and then a family of about SEVEN sits a table over to my left, and then the place starts filling up with LOTS of screamers. I decide to get out my Neo and catch up with this by 3:32PM: tired, thirsty, not terribly hungry, not really knowing what to do next. What I'd LIKE to do is SLEEP! So another adventure starts: can't describe my "certainty" that if I could just GET to the gate in time, they'd take me on, but when she checks at 2:36 she says the plane to Almaty LEFT at 2PM, essentially on schedule. Sure, MY flight leaves two hours LATE, but my CONNECTING flight leaves ON THE DOT! Can't even find a water fountain to trust that the Frankfurt airport's water is pure. Now 3:35 and debate taking 2-3 chairs on which to stretch out. 3:41AM decide to read papers. OTHERS should be at B27, NOT B24, as I find out when I'm confused about a flight being delayed. Start a sudoku. Boarding announced at 5:44, by row. On line 5:51, at 6:01 seat 14A is over ENGINE, not wing. One-hour flight. Back out at 6:11 and change runways for "bad weather." Off at 6:38. #1 of Frankfurt at 6:32. Cheese sandwich at 7PM, with glasses of orange juice, apple juice, and water. #2 England at 7:38PM. Land at 7:44. Walk a MILE to 8:01 as all speed past me on moving walks. I'm exhausted! 8:02: See that KC is Air Istana, in Terminal 4, so I sit and wait for bus. Pee. Bus goes 8:12 and to Terminal 4 at 8:23. Call all these hours in Britain one LESS than stated, because I didn't bother to change my watch back. Security again, and there's a long line at Istana at 8:30, but it turns out that's not even the right LINE, it's with the unoccupied Indian at the left end, who just SAT there while I SAT waiting for the long Istana line to move. My saying the sign should be behind her meant nothing to her. Out at 8:53, ANOTHER long walk to gate 25, which opens at 9:05, but it takes me longer than that to get there. Boarding at 9:35 [2035 on ticket]. Drink and pee at 9:10. Dinner on board, they say, but maybe a NINE-hour flight. DAMN! Get in at 9AM! Gather "cocktail" of valium, simvastatin, and evening pills at 9:28. 9:30 "ready for boarding." Board at 9:37, to loud music. Delay to get FOOD delivered; at 10PM he says they'll leave in 30 minutes. Back out at 10:23; they seem to be speaking Russian! Off at 10:42. LOVELY town lights in Britain, then into darkness at 11:04. Board reads 6:26 to destination, arriving at 9:30AM. Four hours' difference in time.

WEDNESDAY, 5/12/10: They pass out a goody bag with eyemask, slippers, and toothpaste and brush. At 12:44 comes a packet of crackers and a glass of orange juice, me resisting the free wines and boozes. BIG dinner at 1:08AM of beef and vegetables and shrimp and crab appetizer and roll and butter and a chocolate mousse-like dessert, again with juices. Watch Bullock's award-winning movie, whose name I don't see. Not that great, as expected. 1:44: I convince them to put on the map after the movie finishes, and by chance we're passing the enormous lighted expanse of Moscow! 3:54 to destination. Sun is coming up about 5AM. 2:25 seeing fires, rivers, lights, clouds, villages, industries, canals, LIGHT in Russia, past Moscow, I am seeing, and a SLIVER of a moon, lit from bottom LEFT---sun over the Pacific? HUGE rivers with NO lights or towns on banks at 2:30. 2:34AM take a photo of the sun's rising rim! #11 at 2:36 on my watch, Europe time. Big river to east of Nizny-Novgorod. 2:42 three hours to go, arriving 9:30AM. 3-3:20 it gets cloudy, but clears up again. I drink water, girl naps in aisle seat, hemming me in. Huge SALT pans in Kazakhstan at #15 at 3:58. Music plays ALL through, wonderful (unusually scored) classical music. 4:31: 1:12 to Almaty: 5:43 is 9:43, so I change watch and camera to 8:36AM. Pee and wash face at 9:20, and land at 9:43 in Almaty! Wait to get off at 9:54, 12 degrees outside. Out at 10:07 to see NO sign for Mir. People assail me for taxis, I try the information desk, which recommends the only hotel, the Marriot. Desperate but still think to WAIT, guide might be LATE, then woman GIVES me 2000 tengri, and driver takes me to Dostok Hotel by 10:22, driving LONG way through town with SPECTACULAR snow-peaks in the background. Complain to the poor hostess at the desk, who says my roommate is registered, and she'll call MIR to see what happens. Guide says he'll send a car for me, since a taxi to the mountain-top lunch would be too expensive. Someone will meet me in the lobby at 12:30. At 11:04 I get 8000 tengri at an ATM with my Schwab card, woman saying 2000 is about $17, so 500, smallest, is over $4, too much for a tip, and NO ONE has smaller change, so the hostess insists the bellboy doesn't NEED a tip, even though I offer him a $1 bill which he refuses. He also insists on carrying my bags to my room, down an elegant hallway, and the door opens IN, strangely. Need my card for lights, and I take time to put everything out of my bags onto one shelf, Richard having hung up NOTHING, only leaving a dop kit in the bathroom and putting stuff on the night table on the INSIDE side of the bedroom. I think to go downstairs early, but decide to type, putting on a North Face shirt and taking my flannel shirt as the "fleece" recommended for the mountain. GOT to buy a JACKET. Unpack to 11:40 and start typing to 12:12, and decide to stop and go downstairs in case my ride arrives early. Then realize I have on nothing identifying me as being from Mir, and seem to remember having received no nametags, so I'm back to the room to attach my spare Mir tag to my shoulder bag. Sit in the lobby from 12:21 to 12:31 when Naïd arrives and takes me to his SUV and drives me toward what I learn are the Tien Shen Mountains looming over the south of Almaty. Fantasize going WAY up above the snowline for lunch, but we stop after passing under a pointed wooden arch in the roadway before a dilapidated concrete building behind which are large yurts where I figure we're having lunch. He tells me to walk around a bit, and from 12:55-1:30 I look into the hills, saying, "I'm actually, finally, in Kazakhstan." Then a car pulls up and four entertainers appear, and then the bus with the 11 others arrives, one wife staying in the hotel for now. Michel, the guide, is on the young and nerdy side, apologizing for not having me met at the airport and promising to find out why and criticizing the person who didn't show up. But I keep praising my anonymous benefactor, and everyone admits she was wonderful. Into a large carpeted yurt to sit on half-foot-high carpeted stools and get served many dishes by a handsome Kazakh waiter (having been explained that a Kazakhstani is anyone who LIVES here, despite ethnicity, while a Kazakh---well, is a Kazakh). The soft dumplings are good around tender meats, but the later "soup dumplings" are filled mainly with gristle and are largely avoided. Thinly sliced carrots, good fried breads, larger mediocre buns, a tomato and cucumber salad, and a plate of bananas and grapes and oranges, one of the latter of which I have later, are also provided, along with free wine, beer, and vodka, which slightly tempt me, but I settle for a large tasty glass of apple juice. Eat, and then entertained by the performers, of whom I record a bit, and people introduce themselves to me, primarily Judy across the table, another "J", and a tall thin guy who talks a lot. Richard Thomas is enormous and rather quiet, not to mention seemingly zonked from lack of sleep. Finish lunch at 3:05. Odd note: "lbig blog: zinan even trama." To Ethnographic Museum at 3:45 "for 45 minutes," and Nazirah talks about the yurt to 4:46 while I wander around looking primarily at the wonderfully worked iron jewelry. Then we're to the "Gold Room," which in some ways has things very like the Hermitage, and a book that I buy on Almaty for 3500T from the shop says that some of the items ARE in the Hermitage. The "real" Gold Man is in the current capital, Astana. That goes to 5:05 and we're back to hotel where Nazirah says she'll meet me "on the half hour," and I get up and empty my bag of the liter of water given by Michel and get down to sit in the lobby until she comes in from having waited outside to 5:40. We walk to the Cathedral, while she tells me of the famous 126 fountains of Almaty, the first being in front of the Opera House that I noted on my way in from the airport, along with the television tower that's 350 meters high but "being on a 1500-meter elevation, is the tallest in the world," per her. Past broken sidewalks to a wonderful part of the park that houses the brightly-painted Ascension Cathedral where deep-voiced prelates are praying inside, and she says photos are not allowed, but I can take them anyway. Take a number WITHOUT sound, and then THINK I turn on the sound but they're STILL silent. Oh, well, I have others. We pass the VERY impressive Revolution Monument, where I take more pictures, and then we leave the park for her famous "hitchhike" for which I give her a 1000 note, the "rest" for her, and she ends up paying 400 for my ride to the hotel and her ride home. Great day, but I'm exhausted. Back to the room to find Richard in his underwear changing his pressure socks and talking about his habits while I exchange mine. Oh, we're told that breakfast tomorrow is at 6AM, bus leaves at 7 for a VERY long day on the road, and bags outside door at 6:15 and meet in lobby to identify them being loaded into the bus at 6:45. Back to room to put more things away to 6:57, ready for bed. Wash face, pee, take evening pills, pile stuff around to 7:17 and get to bed at 7:21, turning off the brilliant small reading lamp, shutting the non-opaque drapes partway, putting in earplugs, and getting to sleep almost immediately.

THURSDAY, 5/13/10: Wake at 1:14AM, happy to have slept almost six hours, and put on slippers (amazed that Richard's bright reading light is still on) and go to john to type dream to 1:20AM. Nose is BLOODY when I blow it after shitting: dry from planes? Back to bed feeling slightly chilly, and tried Actualism twice before obviously falling asleep and having a phantasmagorical dream. Start typing at 3:43. Catch up with yesterday to 4:09AM, nose dripping and chilly in doorless glass-walled toilet area of bathroom, determined to take my duvet-filling back to bed for my less-than-an-hour sleep before Richard's alarm goes off at 5AM and I can start packing. Put Neo on file 3 in case I add nothing more later. So I slept 7:30-1:13 and, taking a while to get back to sleep, maybe 1:43-3:43, almost eight hours already. Up when Richard taps me at 5:28. He's down at 5:45 to check breakfast, because the telephone contact knows nothing about an early breakfast. I stuff stuff into bags and put big bag out at 5:53 and go down at 5:57. His bill was billed to my name, and MY bill had the bill for the room, which she assured me the company, not I, would pay for. Someone said they didn't have my credit card number anyway, but I still mistrust it. I sign new zero bill at 6:02 and have good breakfast to 6:25. 6:45AM: Decided to type this in file 4 while sitting on the smoke-smelling cold bus before leaving, after checking that my bag was already put inside. We'll be sitting on the bus most of the day. Slept just under nine hours last night, and definitely feel better, but need one more night to catch up. Didn't feel hungry, but gorged on smoky herring, three olives with two pits, a roll and butter, two small salami slices, a glass of cherry juice, a fruit yogurt, a half-slice of French toast, and a bowl of fruit. Took a picture of the military-looking hotel with the front end of the bus in it. Richard is unfortunately hard of hearing, so there's lots of "What?" going on. My passing of my indexing card to Michel for his eight-or-nine-country West African tour told everyone that I was an indexer, so the topic came up again at breakfast. My loose tooth feels VERY erupted, and I should have kept my toothbrush out, but I didn't. Sun bright, and tourists debating about why the company decided that we would NOT fly today. But others, including me, said we preferred being on the ground. Bus starts up at 6:52 as all board. Farhard is guide, a Kyrgyz. Leave 6:59. Mountains are about 20 miles away, rising to about 12,000 feet, identified on our itinerary when I finally read it this evening. Almaty has about two million people. Kazakhstan is the 9th largest country, but has only 16 million people. 9:10 for a pee stop in a garage where I buy a SuperSnickers for 150, later seeing it for 130. Coins for 150 change. Move at 9:20 to a back clean window; the bus DOES have a bit of an exhaust smell, and it's GABBY back there; Lisa, the photographer, being the loudest, with her husband across the aisle, in front of me. 9:36 stop in village. Buy what I think are slivered almonds for 40 but they turn into pumpkin seeds which have to have their husks spit out. Leave 9:56. Medey lunch was at 5000 feet and pass is at 6000 feet. #73 warrior Ryimder Memorial at 10:35. 11:06 off at gorge and sheep at 11:31. Rape-yellow and snow-white, tiny villages, cows, horses, canyons, birds, streams, rocks, fatigue, political talk, and Presidents-for-life, among other things. Oil and gas pipelines in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Algeria, to China (who needs it). #91 Karkara Mosque, last village in Kazakhstan at 12:23PM. Chicken sandwich, French fries (cold) and apricot juice in field with Atlanta couple to 1:15PM. And a Snickers bar for dessert. Leave 1:25. Stop at border 1:40. Through at 2:57, last alphabetically, easy, having done doublecrostic. 93% of Kyrgyzstan over 5000 feet. Bishkek WAS Frunze. Kyrgyz means 40 daughters. 5PM, two hours to go. Pee at 5:35, but I've got to shit! Mountains, snow, FINALLY a good road after HERDS of cows, goats, sheep, and horses, of which I take lots of movies. GORGEOUS countryside. Sun, fleecy clouds, blue sky, more horses than cars, many mule carts too. Pee 5:33; lake is 180 x 60 km. Dinner tonight at 8. Tomorrow breakfast at 7:30, luggage out at 8:15, depart at 9. Get to hotel at 6:55. Meet in hotel at 7:55, but Farhard says meet in restaurant at 8, no need to backtrack to hotel. We're up two flights to 219, where others with 20X are somehow lost. I'm in to john at 7:03, shit only a bit, but it feels good. Bags come at 7:17. Sort ALL my bags into 5 bags, which FIT into suitcase. Down at 7:55 and sit next to widow who lives outside Atlanta and appears to be traveling with a former kindergarten teacher. Atlanta couple pleasant, but LOUD couple next to me drive me CRAZY. Everyone given a jigger of vodka, infinitely refillable, which I refuse, having only water with an interesting mixed salad, GREAT meat and sauce which some like and some hate, and a chocolate cake which is quite dry. I excuse myself, get my key at 8:56, and at 9:07 decide to shower, causing a FLOOD on the floor that takes three towels to wipe up for Richard's comment, "It looks better than when we arrived." I dry and comb my hair and type this to 9:51, later than I'd hoped. Richard "understands" Lisa, the photographer, so she doesn't bother him. Hm. Leave lights on and shades open while Richard continues in bathroom. If I sleep at 10 and get up at 7 I'll be OK. Bed 9:57PM, asking to be up at 7:15. Sleep quickly even with full lights on.

FRIDAY, 5/14/10: 1:04AM: THINK I had wakened before at 1:15AM, but clearly that can't be true, or is just part of a previous dream. Type to 1:08, ready for more delicious sleep, having had over three hours' sleep already. 4:09AM: Wake with dream, followed by a quick flurry of blurred yellow mympths. Type to 4:13AM, having slept almost six hours and feeling much better---though how much my eyes will close on the bus TODAY is hard to predict. Pee and shit, then pee AGAIN; have to Vicks bloody nose, too. Wake in light at 6:15AM, feeling I've had quite enough sleep at maybe something close to eight hours, minus various wakings. Ask Richard if anything much happened after dinner, and he said, "Nope." I pee, let my hair uncombed, and dress at 6:25AM to go out. Totally deserted grounds, except for a wet swimmer who pads toward me and greets me with "Zdrastvitya," or however it's spelled. Down past the dry central fountain, the villas under construction with ornate indoor lighting ornaments still outdoors, and go to the beach, where surprisingly strong waves wash against pristine sand, the water showing absolutely NO sign of ANY life whatsoever. A few birds fly over the sea, and crows make the highway area raucous. On the pier is a nice little coffee shop for two, with many docking areas for what, I'm sure, they hope to be docking yachts, and stairs going down into the pure water which doesn't appear to be very deep, but it's hard to say. Mountains across the lake are spectacular, but it's damnably difficult to get a picture that captures the EXPANSE of the horizon-filling peaks covered with snow. Take shots back over "The Village," and Lisa even HAS the DVD of the TV series, which she loves, and agrees that this reminds her of that. I chat with the two women from Connecticut about NYC and the advantages of living in Brooklyn Heights and the intricacies of the Mitchell-Lama Housing regulations. Talk about some of my travels so that, when I get back to the room with Richard at 8:25AM---happy to see the bags still outside, so I close mine and add it to the stack---he says, "When you next have an audience for your talk on Namibia, I'd be happy to hear it." I'm flattered. He uses the bathroom while I type, and then he exits and says, "It's yours," and I shit again, filling my crack with paper against the day in the bus, and wash my face and hands and glasses in the too-hot water. Then when I exit HE goes back in, and I finish this to 8:41, pausing to talk about the good breakfast. Two women pass me at 7:15 and ask where breakfast is, since they conclude that the restaurant from last night isn't set up for breakfast. As I stand in the doorway, a grumpy male worker unlocks the door so that I could go in if I like, but I try to find the reception to pick up a brochure about the place in general, but it's still locked. Take a photo of the map of the complex, and then go into the restaurant to ask the bartender for green tea. Sit at the head of the table, and the two women join me, and I have bread and butter and cheese and a good cup of hot green tea to start, and then they bring out a container of yogurt, rather good, and then a large bowl of rice gruel with a light coating of butter on top, which everyone agrees is quite good, and then comes a plate with a small square of red-pepper-infused omelet, rather tough, but good with the bread and butter and sliced cheese. More cups of green tea, and then see tall glasses of orange juice at the other end of the table, and we get two glasses of that. Up to finish this, pleased with the day, and feeling totally caught up with sleep---though my eyes closing on the bus will be the acid test. Now at 8:45AM decide to see if I can find a brochure and get onto the bus. On bus 8:54. "Caprice" is the name of the resort in the "swoosh" on the brochure, and there ARE fish in the lake, though fishing itself is restricted to certain months of the year. The complex is a year old, and all of these are private investments: the government seems interested only in corruption and getting paid off. Michel keeps comparing each country to the other, with Kazakhstan being the biggest, most prosperous, and closest to Russia, and Kyrgyzstan is noted for being mountainous, which it certainly proved to be throughout the day, when we seemed constantly in a valley between two ranges of perpetually snow-capped peaks. More horses than cars, lots of cattle on the level spaces, and one wondered what, if anything, happened on all those mountainsides. The plans keep changing [maybe, afterwards, because of political violence in areas of Kyrgyzstan during this time!]: we didn't fly today because the weather was supposed to be bad, but it was glorious except for a few moments of rain. Then the airport was supposed to be closed, but some of the Peace Corps people seem to have been able to use it. We're supposed to fly on Saturday, but now in the afternoon, rather than on a 8AM flight that would have required us at the airport at 6AM. Michel keeps talking politics, and I'm not really that interested. The guy at dinner talks of shooting in Bishkek, which I'm glad we don't hear. Bus leaves at 9:06AM. Stop at "extra" petroglyphs, quite interesting, 9:24-9:52, from 600-800BC, one on "hunting snow leopards" which he says still exist hereabouts. #135 reindeer at 9:42. We're in Saka. Merv was once the largest city on earth, and Balkh was important at the time of the Silk Road: a misnomer because there were MANY roads, and silk was hardly the only goods transported. Lilacs everywhere, and unknown fruit trees blossoming white everywhere one looks. And lots of iris growing in the highway divides in Bishkek. Bit of rain at 10:42, but it stops so we can take pictures of a cemetery from the last century. Pee at noon, and even now my eyes are starting to close. Still need more sleep to catch up? 1:30-3PM lunch at a manager's house, starting with a cole-slaw-type salad that seems ubiquitous. Wheat beverage is fermented, alcoholic, and looks and seems to taste awful. A concentrated yogurt seems slightly alcoholic too, so I pass on it, but gorge on two portions of regular yogurt, one filled with raspberry, another with apricot preserves. The dried fish looks awful, the meat-noodle dish isn't nearly as rich as the night before last, and I have lots of bread to fill up. Dessert of fruit good. Then drive a small bit to watch 14-to-16-year-old boys doing "push-from-horse," "grab a coin from the ground," and "horse race" games, which I catch, I hope, on video. That goes to 3:22, the day stretching out. Finish Buryan tower at 4:07 with $4 book showing good old carvings (bal-bals), and I love my little chipmunk peering out, though Lisa is totally unimpressed. 7PM bus to dinner tonight with entertainment. Almost a million people in Bishkek, and it seems appropriately traffic-jammed. 5:30 to Golden Dragon hotel where the bed seems very hard, and they "modify" it by putting a duvet atop the bed, so I sleep under the coverlet. Lie on bed and actually nap to 6:33. Get pills and get out a change of underwear and put on blue pants for the first time. Down at 6:55 to bus. Tomorrow breakfast at 7 and leave at 9AM. Peace Corps talk to 8:06, really awful for people and situation, though 140 "are doing great work in the villages. Can only be here for 2.5 years with one renewal." Music over at 8:44, fairly interesting, and then meal is same salad, toughish meat, and lots of rice and French fries that I don't eat, and then a bowl of fruit for dessert, with a surprise birthday cake enormous for my neighbor's birthday. I have water while others choose wine, beer, or vodka; I'm feeling slightly out of it. Flight tomorrow at 4:50PM to Tashkent, where we stay one night, go to Fergana Valley next night, and return to Tashkent where we can leave stuff for a day, including laundry. I count money to $840 which we need for changing countries tomorrow. Back to hotel at 10:15, get out clean underwear for tomorrow, and get to bed at 10:30.

SATURDAY, 5/15/10: 12:38AM: Pee and type dream to 12:44AM, debating catching up with my notes for Friday, but there's not enough time to do that and sleep a good amount tonight. 4:06AM: Wake with a SERIES of dreams. Up to find Richard in john, so I put on bathrobe and pick up laptop, then he exits and I enter bathroom and type to 4:14AM. Back to sleep and get up at 6:04, thinking Richard's gone, but he's fussing in the bathroom, seeming to use every towel available, so I use a bath towel to dry my face and start typing, finishing up to date at 6:35AM, ready to pack my bulging bag and get down to breakfast, making sure to pack my luggage with time-wasters for plane-wait and border crossings. Pack everything with SOME difficulty into my bag, with the zipper having trouble always at one particular side near the bottom where the tines just don't want to come together. Lots of puzzles in my shoulder bag. Back at 6:50AM to type, too early for breakfast, Richard reading the local English-language newspaper that seems filled with totally uninteresting country-details when I page through it. 6:51AM: Well, the trip isn't working out THAT well. Maybe I'm still a bit tired, or jet-lagged, OR it's the normal "oh-what-the-Hell-is-TODAY-going-to-bring" feeling. Both Michel and Farhard are physically totally uninteresting, no one else on the trip gives me a thrill, and only the ladies seem eager to talk to me. The males of the couples, except for Atlanta and Lisa's man, seem totally interchangeable and I'm as yet too lazy to hunt out the passenger list to try to assign names---primarily because there isn't anyone (at this point, anyway) that I'd really care to get to know any BETTER. Counting off the countries: Kazakhstan essentially over, but don't we return there for a return flight at the end? Record that the Golden Dragon Hotel is at 60 Elebaev Str., 720005 Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, to get the spellings accurate. We're leaving here this afternoon, and Michel said we'll be staying ELEVEN days in Turkmenistan, so the other two will pass in jig time. He keeps contrasting the histories and customs and languages and topographies and economies of different countries, but I guess the fact is that I just don't really CARE. Lisa and others seem to talk more about Armenia and Georgia that any of THESE. Name-dropping of countries is rife, but I stay mostly silent until asked, for instance, "How many have been to MacMurdo Sound?" Seating has usually been at one large table, where the loudmouths (and there seem to be MORE of them as time goes on) monopolize the decibels, except for last night's restaurant with two tables for 8, which we managed to fill with the 13 tourists, the two guides, and the Peace Corps guy, who seems rather unhappy most of the time. The mouth-flute was strange, and the tooth-anchored, open-mouthed, tongue-manipulated flute seemed worthy of a close-up, but I didn't have the nerve to take my camera right up to his face. Not to mention that his was the most ATTRACTIVE face so far. None of the local costumes are in any way sexy, and no one seems to have taken up the lovely science of body-building. Can't even seem to find much in the line of souvenirs to pick up, though I would have been slightly tempted had the larger book on Kyrgyzstan at the Buryan Museum been cheaper than $8. Enough English is around to make basic demands OK, but sometimes there's just a basic nod. Atlanta wondered whether the lord of the manor took the long walk to the outhouse at night---clearly he didn't want the tourists, whose shoes he wouldn't deign to touch his carpets, despoiling his private bathroom. Most johns just piss-stained planks in floors over shit-pits, which the women must just hate. And I have to be careful to reserve my shit for the hotels, too. Already counting: let's see, SUNDAY, tomorrow, will be the last day that has THREE OF THEM left in the trip. Can't hold out much optimism for better food, and sadly I can't even get muzzily drunk to just enjoy what happens from moment to moment. At 7:05 Richard announces that he's going down to breakfast, after checking that the luggage should be put out at 8:15, as I recall. He makes absolutely no comment about my typing away, but I DO wonder whether his fetish for keeping the window open might stem from my five-day-old socks, though he DOES say that most hotels are interested in steam-heat temperatures. At least going last to breakfast will determine where I sit, which probably WON'T be with the core of loud-gabbers who gravitate to each other to see who can out-shout the others. Let's see what's on TV now at 7:06AM! I guess it'd be better if I picked up the TV remote rather than the temperature control! TV OK for Leptis Magna, not much more. To breakfast 7:30AM. Everyone finishing by the time I get there, but someone points out that they have omelets on order, so I get a ham, mushroom, and cheese omelet with two (small) slices of dark toast with butter ("How many?" "Four?"), quite good. Everyone leaves until the Atlanta couple arrives, and I think she might have problems: she described sugar as cheese, and when I left and said I'd meet them on the bus, she asked, "Now?" and I said, "No, at 9." Good cherry juice, as usual, and they poured me another cup of hot water for my green tea. Cherry yogurt finished off the meal, and when I waved away the banana after I realized I could have an omelet, they presented the banana to me in a plastic box to take with me. Then, though I had the last banana from the tray, they found two more to give to the Atlanta couple when they asked for them. Back to the room at 8:15 to find Richard lolled in bed with the cold air rushing into the room. I type to 8:20 and figure I'd try to shit---and then a porter knocked on the door and asked if he should take the bag down that I had just put outside the door, so I don't have to lug it myself. Force a shit at 8:30 and take a nice wooden comb. Settle for sudoku until 8:55AM. [Start this at 5:43AM 5/17.] Leave for bus at 8:52, bags packed away already, and at 8:56 I make sure my bag IS in the baggage car, apologizing to Michel, who says it's OK. To an old school building with the best students in the city at 9:02. The squat blonde principal speaks no English, so both guides translate. Same awkwardness as ever: we file into the rooms, the students smile at us with embarrassment as we equally smile back, some tourists taking photos already. Some students are demonstrating at the board: one with triangles, another with words, and in a physics class the teacher swings a pendulum for us. I peer into notebooks, but I don't find any neat enough to comment on. They ask where we're from. The classes seem VERY motley: the math class clearly has students from about age 15 down to maybe 8: a tiny fellow with an intelligent look in the last row. Also, they are all colors: some look almost Spanish in darkness, others are quite blond with blue eyes who seem more Nordic than Tatar. The teachers bustle about keeping students responding, and we all "remark" about how well-behaved everyone is. Pass through hallways lined with exhibits: photos of the prize-winning students, an aquarium (with no fish that I could see) in the middle of a fenced-off room with many dozens of plants, large and small, in pots that the students are growing; another area with crafts, and other areas MEANT for something, but dusty and empty. From room to room; at one point, oddly, seeming to meet the same students. The teachers are very officious, and one seems to speak only French, which Michel tentatively handles. This finally ends at 10:14 with everyone congratulating everyone for being here and behaving so well, and we're out at 10:32 to Alatov Square with the huge Liberty statue, ill-placed in the sun, replacing the "big Lenin" which has been moved to the BACK of the State Ethnographic Museum which dominates the square across from the pair of flanking three-story buildings decorated with garish posters of Kyrgyzstan progress, past and future, which had been Communist offices and are now, Michel says, totally empty. Into the State Museum first "for 45 minutes" that stretches out interminably, dimly lit, no photographs allowed, even of the immense central stairway with a gigantic sculpture hanging from the far side. Stones, coins, graves, history, with WWII featured on the second floor with letters, mementos, photos, battle reconstructions, weapons, and other totally uninteresting objects. Copies of Lenin's letters seemed to occupy many of the vitrines on the third floor, with books from the 1800s illustrating something or other. I wandered, searching for the maybe 10% of the displays that included a third line of English explanation in addition to the lines in Russian and Kyrgyz. Undue attention to felt: history, production, tools involved, types from different areas, various uses. That was also true of the second, Arts and Crafts, Museum a hot walk away where I hoped we were going for the bus but passed an ugly Möbius strip into an enormous central hall with massive displays of felt surrounded as if in a glass atrium, and to every side were other, windowless, rooms with different kinds of art: one with OLD portraits, worse than anything the Brooklyn Museum could ever display, of solemn ancestors, with absolutely no sexual or erotic content WHATSOEVER. Another section was devoted to glossy primary-color photographs of old men, children, political gatherings, factory openings, AGAIN totally devoid of any real EMOTIONAL content or appeal (namely shirtless workers with large muscles). Another huge area of contemporary art which was, if possible, worse than the other two, with few people going through (except for a rival guide loudly explaining the central felt exhibit, to Farhard's annoyance). It was also hot and uncomfortable and everyone just wanted to sit down, but the only seats were backless benches in the entranceway. Some modern jewelry was of passing interest, seeming to illustrate some literary work, or poem, with chunks of found mineral, some cut stones, elaborate filigrees of gold and silver, all broach-size and seemingly of great significance which was totally lost on us. Ah, yes, one LAST area, when I thought I had finished, was devoted to MILITARY history: old, highly decorated, generals, virile soldiers, bloody battles, allegorical sweeps of angels rescuing lost souls from crater-filled battlefields, slogans and flags and medals and memorials of battles done with the most pedestrian artistic attempts at grandeur. Kids were taking iPod-type photos of the jewelry though it was forbidden. I sit at 12:43, which should be the end of our allowed time, as we stagger out of rooms and sit. I'm thirsty, moving away from exhibits, and sit. Then I sit on bus doing puzzles, for a rest, like the half-hour watching TV before breakfast. To bus at 12:50, out of Murnoho Restaurant at 2:22, not that good. Told it's a 1:30 flight but we gain an hour. Tashkent has 2.5 million people. To airport at 3:15, all bags on together. Onto airport bus with screaming baby at 4:23, and onto tiny plane with only twelve rows of four seats each; I'm in 11A thanks to Michel's acceding to my request for a window in the rear, and a tall young Chinese-looking sportsman sits next to me and alternately stares past my shoulder and rests his head against the seat-back in front of him. We're off at 4:47. Change watch to 3:48 from 4:48. We parallel the snow peaks for a long while, over villages and towns and farmlands which get sparser as we approach the mountains, but again there are the large sheds: barns, Michel suggests, right at the base of the mountains at the ends of dusty roads leaving the main highways. There appears to be four or five passes through the thick set of mountains, though it's not clear how they could travel so far without any services at all. Over some peaks, and then things level out and finally we start down about half an hour before landing, having been given a bun with chicken inside and a dark-chocolate bar with a box of apple juice, which at first my seatmate refuses, but when he sees what I get he asks for some too. No real view over any major city as we land at 5:14. To passport line at 5:30, total chaos as people ignore the signs over the kiosks and go where the lines are shortest. Then to the money-declaration line (which even Michel admits has no purpose except to keep highly paid customs officials working) at 5:55, and pass that at 6:08, almost last in line, and to bus at 6:14. Bus off at 6:22. Meet at 7:15 for dinner. Go to room 444 up a glass-walled elevator looking out over a couple of teenage men at the swimming pool. 26 million in Uzbekistan. Tashkent 3 million. To room at 6:43, then at 7:30 to Iran-dished, Persia-labeled restaurant, sitting along a light-snaked platform where six whores dance with bent legs in skimpy sequined costumes and shake their booties, and then two men, maybe twins, one of which, Michel reports, has a Hebrew tattoo attesting "I love you forever." They COULD be sexy, but their pants aren't form-fitting enough, and their chest harnesses disguise whatever nice musculature they may have. They do the one-arm lift, the cantilevered "diving board" pose, and a few others, to embarrassed applause. Then the houris come out again and dance in front of us, and only three locals at the other side of the room give them appropriate gifts of cash. We're a dud as far as they're concerned. Out at 8:40, Richard falls on the sidewalk with a sick thud. I hang back completely, and then, for some reason, everyone is LAUGHING in the bus. Bus alive with talk of cooking and cards. Breakfast tomorrow at 6:45, 7:45 check luggage, 7:15 luggage out, leave at 8AM. 8:50PM to bank line, each taking FOREVER because they ONLY have 1000 notes, worth about 66 cents, and so $100 is about 160 notes, a real stack. I cash in $20 fairly quickly, not bothering to recount the 31 or 32 bills and a few smaller notes to 9:08. Bed at 9:40.

SUNDAY, 5/16/10: 1:10AM: Wake, Richard is sleeping with a light on in his face, and I pee and type dream. Nose is dripping; can't shit anything. Type to 1:14AM and pee again. 4:22AM: Wake about 4:15 to Richard standing at his luggage, and about five minutes later he's in bed, so I ask how he is: he's been in a nurse-practitioner's office in the hotel for antibiotics and bandaging, and he's going to go slow---nothing extra, just get on the bus and ride---and not going to give in laundry, "So I can bail at any time if I have to." What may have been minor is exacerbated by his lymphadenopathy. He took a bath recently and found new abrasions; he seems cautiously optimistic. I then go to the john to shit, and type dream. Finish dream at 4:28AM, ready for bed again. Try Actualism to get to sleep, but it really doesn't work because my mind is occupied by extraneous (or basic) thoughts. So at 5:25 I get up, surprised to see that it's light out already, and Richard is fussing about his luggage. I ask if the bathroom's free, and he says yes, so I go in to add two areas to my File 4---interestingly hitting "file 4" rather than "4" so that I get the file, rather than the label. 5:27AM: Actualism led me to think of 1) I've GOT to get out the passenger list so I can identify the names of the people, their characteristics, so that I can INTERACT with them, rather than methodically shutting myself off from them, thereby making the trip much less valuable. The trip ITSELF is not QUITE as fascinating as I'd hoped, so I tend to retire more and more into myself, my puzzles, and my ego-centered thoughts, rather than expanding out to my fellow-tourists, their backgrounds and foibles, and maybe, in some way, making the tour itself more interesting and valuable. So I've got to get the name-list out of my bag. THEN I kept thinking of my "bucket list" of places that the Marj-like woman has said she's exhausted. I again fantasize about a trip that would "fill in the gaps" of previous trips: Hue, Huelin, Komodo, West Africa, Libya for Leptis Magna, and probably a dozen other places that I can go to, gradually, over the remaining years I have. Which leads me to John's wife: what IS her condition: Alzheimer's, or just a sort of aging "sweetness" that makes her smilingly absent. How does the photographer's (Lisa's?) husband put up with her? Who are all the "single women" who sort of run together. Who's the single younger guy who seems one of the more pleasant people? Who haven't I even TALKED to yet? I have to open up to people WITHOUT "going out of my mind with drink" in order to lower my tendency to judgmentalism and increase my impulse to taciturnity. I'm hoping, by writing this out, to clear my mind so that Actualism WILL work, and between now (5:35AM) and 7AM I can get some more sleep to ready myself for another day. Pee, just to do it, and deodorize myself to pleasantize me. I must say it feels good to just IGNORE how my hair looks! Up at 6:43, dress, and find passenger list by 6:58. Odd cured beef with spicy outside is called bastyrma, maybe like pastrami. To room at 7:40 and Richard is in the bathroom so I can't pack until he leaves, when I tell him to tell Michel I'll be late. Out at 7:55, last, he checks in my last bag and says I can be with him and Richard in Car 1 for the ride to the Fergana Valley. Great. I'm given the website wildfrontiers.com.uk for West Africa. Pee stop at 9:40. Views start with just fields, some LOADED with poppies, and we get passports out at 10:04: they're checked at 10:41. Pass is about 6500 feet, and we stop for a photo. Craggy hillsides, deep gullies, cars racing around curves, endless rows of concrete abutments, loads of very slow trucks, many appearing to be military. No photos of bridges or tunnels, many armed militia along the way. Richard moves to the front seat and Michel, now next to me in back, exchanges nice information about restaurants and food and history, while reading "Tamerlane" in his spare time. We change to bus at noon. Take family dinner and rose photos when I pee and pay 600M for SUPER ice cream bar, about 40 cents. 12:24 off bus at Palace built in 1864-1870 with 6000 workmen, different regional styles of tiles, some old, some new; wooden doors, colorfully painted ceilings and walls, some of stucco; lots of rooms of artifacts: books, photos, histories, coins, tools, more felt, Anwar (which I later call Avram, or something, so global-check needed) talking and talking in the hot rooms, everyone dutifully listening while I roam ahead or behind to get away from his drone and just looking at HIM, rather than at the STUFF. Much shopping, of course. To 1:26 for HOT 30 minutes to lunch. Palace was Qoqon = Kokond. Guide's family lives near King's Highway in Brooklyn! Ceramics factory for lunch with FABULOUS roses and BEAUTIFUL plates of which I take pictures, but not of the PROCESS, of which I have loads from before. SAME salad, soup, dumplings, but I indulge in Coca-Cola. Pee twice to 2:15. They demo and sell and talk to 4PM! Bus goes at 4:17. Satkak "park" 4:56-5:18, first for silkworms BEFORE spinning cocoons, then to great time noted in File 4, lasting to 6PM. A real RIOT. 6:45PM: EXTRAORDINARY "culture park" on the way to Fergana. Anwar thought everyone would be leaving, and indeed many cars and buses were on their way out as we beeped our way through the crowds. Then he said we had to climb 50 steps to the memorial to the local hero who threw himself into a fire of natural oil at the base of the hill on which his memorial was erected in about 1210AD. The climb was arduous, but the kids at the top insisted on having their pictures taken, and Anwar had to forcefully bring us together to tell us the brief history, and then lead us back through a sales area, and down another flight of steps where the sounds of an amusement park grew louder and louder. I heard the whirl of a Stand-and-Whirl, and also the almost airplane-engine sound of what could have been a Chair-a-Plane but which turned into a set of rotating swings. The Stand-and-Whirl had only about three people on it, and it was slowing down, so I continued up the hill where the Flying Chairs were almost filled, and I practically had to fight off the effort of the operator to get me to get on myself, but finally they seemed to understand the word "photo" and I took the movie as it started up, and then moved closer to the steps, as he suggested, so that I could capture the incongruous two little airplane propellers that furnished the movement of the chairs as the riders started their screams. Then I turned around and saw many family groups eating from enormous bowls of food and stacks of bread, and thought that those would make good subject, and everyone absolutely enjoyed being photographed and then shown the results of my pictures. I just loved the ease of operation of my Olympus, which Richard actually seems eager to buy, though he was rather turned off when he estimated that it weighed two pounds, more than I would have thought. Tried to take a couple shots of sexy older guys without trying to arouse any suspicions of why I might want attractive young men, but they looked at the photos and smilingly gave me "thumbs up" for my efforts. In a couple of cases a more mature teenage girl would have a camera of her own and insist that her friends grab each of my arms, and she took a picture of me and them, I think totally unironically. I was so enjoying myself that I later remarked to Richard that I must be schizophrenic: 99% of the time I absolutely hate kids, but this time they totally enchanted me. He identified the reason: they were all very well behaved, not at all rowdy, though very enthusiastic, and, except for the last fellow with the speech impediment who kept insisting that I take his picture when I was just trying to follow everyone to the bus, they accepted with joy when I took their pictures and also accepted with---well, acceptance---when I didn't take them. The families were the most interesting with the mothers and aunts---and very few males in such groups; though I made up for it by taking pictures of ONLY male groups, though they tended to look rather glum, even though they approved the final product. I even risked three rather attractive 15-year-olds in a group, and they made a joke about how one of them looked---actually rather simian, I thought. Everyone was having the same fun, particularly the Marj-Mahle type, and even Lisa said she'd never had so much fun, admitting to me that she was 60, but wasn't about to have any more birthdays. Anwar seemed pleased at our pleasure, and left us outside the hotel, saying he'd meet us at 7:30 tomorrow morning, which meant we had to have breakfast at 6:30 and get ready for another busy day on our way BACK to Tashkent. This doesn't even begin to mention the unusual photographs of live silkworms moving over their leaves, past already-built cocoons of other larvae, and tomorrow we're promised a factory where the cocoons are unwound by machine and spun into threads. One of the kids of the family even enjoyed thrusting a live worm toward the mouth of his younger brother, who didn't like that at all. But the family posed eagerly, looking at each photo, rather surprising when Anwar said that this was about the FIFTEENTH YEAR that he's visited them, and I'm thus sure they've had HUNDREDS of pictures taken of them in the past. Kids weren't as interested as young children, and teenagers didn't compete with how each other looked. And the seeming twins were very gracious in their identical dresses. And now it's 7:03PM, I haven't begun to unpack my shoulder bag for the evening, and have to nudge Richard awake for his required ten minutes to get ready to be in the lobby at 7:15 for the bus ride to the manager's house for dinner, made easy by the fact that our room, 3, is directly opposite the reception desk. AND Richard took the bed under the air conditioner which he insisted on turning up rather high as he crawled into bed. I'm going to wear a heavier shirt, fearing it might be chilly later in the evening. Stop this now at 7:05PM. Leave hotel 7:15PM. Monday breakfast 6:30AM, leave 7:30 in cars again. Got to hotel at 6:17PM, and lie down at 6:23, exhausted. 6:45PM: Can't resist writing in file 4 about the "culture park" experience. Out at 7:15PM, last to bus; and Rustan, doctor and inspector, talks. We arrive at 7:30, and out, stuffed, at 8:50, totally bored with the food and the talk and Lisa's LOUD talking that I actually ask to QUIET! Leave to hotel at 9:08 and bed at 9:15, exhausted!

MONDAY, 5/17/10: 1:49AM: Wake and pee and type dream. Type, and feel vaguely sick to my stomach, but it's still early and I have a lot of sleep yet to get, so I might feel better later. Nose dripping again, and remember feeling concerned yesterday when Richard announced he might not be feeling fully energized because he's taking mefloquine against malaria, which I wasn't aware was a danger here. Finish here 1:55AM. 5:15AM: Simply can't get any more sleep: tried Actualism, but it didn't work. Looked at my watch twice at 3-something, again at 4-something, and my tooth was aching and I wanted to brush my teeth, and I wanted to catch up with my journal, so I got up at what turned out to be 5:15AM, which was EXACTLY eight hours after I got to bed at 9:15PM last night. Pee, but don't feel like shitting. Now to my teeth. 5:38AM: Finish teeth, even to rubber tip and toothpick and brush, and then water down my hair and debate starting my journal when I hear Richard's alarm ringing. I ask if he's up, but he wants to get 20 more minutes' nap. I ask if my light would bother him, and he says no. I do NOT mention my typing, and hold my breath as he lies down. Type to END at 6:36 when Richard returns to say it's RAINING in the space we need to walk through to breakfast. I'm SO glad to be caught up! Leave for breakfast 6:45AM. 7:21AM: Twelve people sitting at two tables for six force me to sit alone, but I was glad I arrived late, since those who got there at 6:30 had nothing but TEA until they unwrapped cold cuts, cheese, and bread at 6:45, and finally brought out yogurt (with great, very fluid, light-yellow honey) (an opinion with which Michel agreed, though he doesn't like the "chemical" additions of most flavors). Too much bread and butter, so I leave it (though I finish the apricot juice that took three minutes to drip out of the glass serving cylinder). Back to room to find Richard in the john, having had to come back to me to get the key when the desk clerk wouldn't let him in. Raining slightly, which makes my umbrella handy. To bus at 7:30, earlier than I thought, and I should have tried to shit but couldn't. My Neo-bag-slot's ZIPPER is stuck in the middle and I struggle and struggle and FINALLY right it. Off bus in rain at 7:40 for the Ahman Al-Fargoni market dome, from 800AD. Start market 8:20, at 8:35 we have "ten minutes free" which ends at 8:55. Into bus at 9:07, bored with underpopulated market. 9:28 picture of Constitution Book Monument, very historically important. At 9:34 we stop for "one-hour silk," and I feel worse and worse, sit a lot, take only a few pictures, and get on bus at 10:28 to look for puzzles. Nothing. How could it have been that I can't find ANY puzzles or magazines that I was SURE I wanted to bring with me for my overnight in Fergana. But they're not there! Did I leave them? Did someone TAKE them? Did I FORGET them? Anyway, now I just feel SICK! It may be that I'm constipated, which seems to be more and more common when I travel. Michel asked me, when I got on the bus at 10:25, how many times I've seen the silk-making process, and I hazarded "Seven," and when he asked "Where?" I started with Kashgar, then Xian, Beijing, Nanjing, and maybe a few other places, but he'd never been to Nanjing so he didn't know, even when I hazarded that it had Sun Yat-Sen's Mausoleum. I don't even feel like typing. I'm just feeling WORN out---maybe Richard's lassitude is contagious. Then people start boarding at 10:38. Am I really starting to be sick? Bus leaves at 10:41, requiring 1-1.5 hours to Qoqon. For Tuesday Michel announces breakfast at 7 and departure for city tour at 8. He also says we should be back at the Tashkent Hotel at 5PM, and there may be an Uzbek opera in the PM, during the intermission of which we could have dinner in the buffet on the top floor, all of which he seemed to imply he'd PAY for, for those of us who wanted to attend an Uzbek opera. I was definitely interested. Today's schedule: the cemetery, lunch, drive to Tashkent, and dinner on our own. We're off by 12:05 to the cemetery in the increasing rain for very muddy paths, and it's not really that interesting. I bring up the "green" of Sufi tombs, and Anwar says there's an accommodation for Sufis nearby, cells for six of them, but the area is Sunni, not Sufi. We go first to the men's cemetery on the right, many taking pictures of the painter finishing the ceiling of a mosque being reconstructed on the site, but I don't find it very interesting: first, I'm cold in only my flannel shirt in the windy, cool, rainy day, and the tombs themselves are in rather dilapidated states: flaking paint, chipped corners, crowded positioning, puddles sometimes covering the entire paths we have to negotiate to get from one area to another. Even the central monument is broken at the top and sides, and pictures are obstructed by trees around it. Take a few shots in the rain, "just to prove that I was there," but am feeling increasingly chilly, almost flu-ey, and am not very happy about Anwar trying vainly to make the place very interesting. First time I remember hearing that you ENTER a cemetery on the RIGHT foot, which is the "clean" side, and EXIT on the LEFT foot, the "dirty" or "ass-wipe" side. The boards on which we walk are sodden with rain and worn around the edges, some of the floor tiles are broken, and even the "royal" tombs in the central enclosure aren't interesting: no particular pattern to their brick construction, not even worth a cursory photograph, but maybe that's more reflective of my grim mood than of the intrinsic interest of the place itself. Then, interminably, we go to the female side, not really anything different from what I can see, and take a photo or two, and then we make our way out an exit and down a side road toward a main street that shows no evidence of our bus at all. Stop by the entrance to a madrasah, which he characterizes as NOT having minarets in the corners as do mosques; though he seemed to say we could enter, we didn't. Others dutifully took pictures, but I couldn't see any reason: my umbrella was starting to leak through, the back of my shirt was wet, and I was shivering. To a corner with a lot of traffic, dodging in and out of construction barriers on the side of the road, and finally he stops traffic so that we can cross the street to the bus. Was at least pleased that the wet back of my shirt wasn't uncomfortable in the seat on the bus. Finally out of the rain at 12:42. I have awful thoughts that I have severe constipation, wish I had had time to shit this morning, not being able to since I'd erroneously thought we'd had another fifteen minutes before we had to be on the bus, and harking back to the awful days in Barcelona when I was stuck in bed doing nothing, burdened with constipation and illness. But then at 12:58 we stop in the silk factory, where one of the guys mentioned, "Wasn't there a FREE john across the way?" while we pay 200M to wait in line, and the Australian pisses me off by paying AFTER I did but barging into the one-hole facility BEFORE me. He probably didn't even realize why I gave him a stony stare when he opened the door for me to come in after him. Warned Richard, waiting after me, that I might be a while, but he was patient with the information. Got in to the hole in the ground, positioned my feet [and VERY bizarrely, right at the moment I type those words, a very loose sort of diarrhea slips out of my ass into the toilet on which I sit, typing!], and very quickly let loose a few satisfying turds. So I WASN'T constipated. Shit a few more, and maybe could have continued, but Richard and others were waiting outside, so I used the supplied paper and wiped and wiped and stuck a piece in to protect my shorts, and flushed it all down and left, feeling triumphant. Bus goes at 1:05. Get to the wood-carver's house for dinner, again going in through a garage-like door to an inner court and up a few steps to a porch on which we leave our shoes, and, with stocking feet trying to avoid the wet spots on the porch, enter the house where a large table is set for the 14 of us, Anwar only serving. I have a cup of green tea, and then see a cardboard box of apple juice with pulp, and think this might be a good way to counteract any incipient constipation, so I end up having four or five glasses of it, which gets VERY pulpy at the bottom of the last glass, which probably proved part of my later downfall. Figure I'm stuffed up because I'm eating too much bread, so I pass up both kinds of bread and all the salads, and have only another cup of tea, more apple juice, and the chicken soup with noodles that one of the gallbladder-less women said was bad for her system because it had so much fat in it, which I frankly hadn't noticed. Nancy, to my right, isn't feeling well either, and she leaves the table to be sick but then returns. I eat nothing; people are solicitous around me, but I say I just don't feel hungry, and even Michel admits to "having a brick in his stomach" from feeling too full to eat much. I leave the sales area where everyone's gathering after the meal, and get into the bus to put on a SECOND shirt, which makes me feel better, and then the same five cars drive up at 1:51, so I get into the back of #1, as before, and Nancy is put in next to me so she can get to the hotel first since she's not feeling well. Michel sits in the front seat, and Richard seems uncomplaining as he goes to car #4, which Nancy says he won't like because it's not nearly as big as this car, but later he only complains about the exhaust smell that permeated his car. We start back at 2:18; it's still raining, though strangely the mountains [start file 2 10:41AM 5/18] still show their silhouette on the skyline. [And AGAIN a stream of diarrhea!---now I AM worried! SURELY I want to go quickly back to the nurse!] Close my eyes for a while, but then the rain stops so I start watching the scenery, but then poor Nancy has to throw up and can find no place to discard the plastic bag which I'd suggested she get in case this happened. We stop at 3:18 to wait for Michel at an ENDLESS checkpoint. He's back at 3:34, saying they checked EVERY visa number in EVERY passport. The whole thing took about an hour. 4:39 another stop at a checkpoint, and at 4:55 another pee stop. Watch the kilometer-markers go slowly downward from 168, happy at 150, missing 100, listening to Nancy talk about her single-parent son she had at 40 who is now 25 and friendly with her, and Michel talks about disastrous tourists, one of which he had to send HOME, and I repeat my "horrible mother on plane to Russia" tale. Kilometers get down to 10 when we're in the outskirts of Tashkent, but then exasperatingly they're back up to 43, and we drive ENDLESSLY in traffic, stopping at stoplights, turning down road after road, passing sights I don't remember seeing, but nothing really noteworthy, just driving and driving, and FINALLY stop at the hotel at 6:30. Out to get a key for room 462, Michel saying he's in 463, and I get directions to the nurse from Richard, and I go directly to her; she opens to my knock on the door, and I explain my situation to her in as much detail as she can take. She takes my temperature at 37.3EC, which I translate to 99.8EF, not really right, and she says 37EC is normal, so 37.3EC is only SLIGHTLY a fever. She puts the thermometer in my armpit. My blood pressure is 130/80, better than I would have expected, and she gives me a number of pills: Ugel, black carbon, NOT to be chewed, clarified by Michel, who enters just after I suggest she phone him because she's having trouble with translation, two now, and two tomorrow morning; pink pills, one at 7:30 (twenty minutes from 7:10) and another in AM; green print and white: one tablet before sleep and one if necessary for fever, in AM. She says I should drink ONLY bottled water, NO cherries or strawberries, and take BLACK tea with SUGAR. She asks for $20 for the pills, and when I ask for a receipt she essentially says she can't do it. I leave the nurse at 7:17 and get back to room to separate out pills and phone room service at 7:30 for a pot of black tea ($3) with sugar and a "fruit presentation platter" ($8), and when I ask what's on it he says banana, cherries (to which I say no), apple, kiwi, and orange, saying it will be delivered in 10-15 minutes. I sit and wait, and it finally comes at 7:57PM, delivered by a rather sweet boy with a pot of tea, only five sugar packets, and the platter has four little slices of orange, four segments of plum with skin, four quarters of apple with skin, four thin slices of kiwi, and about six mouthfuls of banana. I eat it all, feeling rather full, and strangely the hot tea is HURTFUL to my throat, as if it had an irritating substance aside from the heat of the water. I force myself to three cups of tea, leaving one in the pot for the next morning. Finish the fruit and at 8:45 get into bed under the duvet, but decide it's just too uncomfortable, so I take off the cover, put it on the bed, and put the body of it under the luggage rack. Richard is semi-sleeping, semi-awake through all this. My stomach is still very uncomfortable, and I'm still feeling full and gassy, so I get the duvet-stuffing and pile it up under the pillows so that I'm actually resting on a WEDGE of support from my waist to my head at 8:52. But as I change position from my left to my right, thinking to "clear out sections of my gut," I suddenly get that sour-saliva secretion that bodes vomiting, and dash into the bathroom, heading at first for the sink but then for the toilet, but don't QUITE make it, and vomit into my hand, spraying a red-violet mess over about six foot-square floor tiles at the base of the toilet, and much, thankfully, INTO the toilet. Repeat with another surge, directly into the toilet, and am surprised how EASY the vomit is, as if I REALLY would benefit from it. Sit for a while, waiting for another surge, but then begin to clear things up with toilet paper, and then wet my personal face towel to clean up the residue. Back to bed feeling SOMEWHAT better, but still feel as if there's a residue, and rather than going to sleep and waking with an accident, I decide to get up at 9:30 and stick my finger down my throat and AGAIN vomit twice, this time neatly, and feel better for having done it. Get back to bed and to sleep at last about 9:45PM.

TUESDAY, 5/18/10: Pee at 12:02AM. Take pills at 7:10AM. Richard is going stay in the room and then be picked up for lunch at 12:45PM, I find, as I phone Michel at 7:30 to tell him I won't be going on the tour this morning. I say I might join Richard at 12:45, depending on how I feel. 9:25AM: Get up to pee and type dreams. Shit very loosely and then decide I MUST take a shower. My shit is loose and QUITE ochre in color. By 10:09AM I've showered, put out the "Do Not Disturb" sign with the remains of my room-service from last night, and started catching up with yesterday's notes. AGAIN I shit: take two Imodium and MUST get to nurse!! Now 10:57AM. 11:34AM: Back from SIMILAR nurse, who seemed to understand English better---unless she was faking it---and she couldn't see Richard NOW but could see him at 2PM, to which he agreed on the phone, but I'm not sure how he thinks he can get back from lunch at that time. She was very sympathetic, and wrote down very clear instructions and times for pills, though one will be quite a pain to take at 2AM! Typed at 12:06PM: Caught up with yesterday, had hassles with the shift from file 1 to file 2, and MAY duplicate some data with what I've written on my note-card for today [moved when proofreading 6/5]. Then start diarrhea when catching up on journal, and at 11:05 RICHARD wants imodium if I get some from the nurse. Get down and there's a similar but different nurse who seems to understand English better. Tell her the whole story; she starts letting me write down times and directions, then writes out her own set of times: Take two levomychetin with water right then, then another every eight hours: 6PM today, 2AM tomorrow, 10AM tomorrow, 6PM tomorrow, 2AM the next day, and follow with the remaining 3. She also gives packets of fruity-looking "faiberleks" that she directs very specifically with "not hot, not cold" water, stirring and drinking it at 12:15PM and 7PM tonight. Which, by coincidence, I just take now at 12:15PM, almost reaching for the sink-tap for the "room temperature water," but pouring it from my water bottle. It has a fruity taste, rather unfortunately reminding me of the pulp-filled apple juice from yesterday's lunch. But at least I haven't had the urge to shit since the last time. When I ask about Richard, she says she CANNOT see him now, which would be most convenient, but I phone him and he agrees to see her at 2PM. I thank her and leave. Oh, someone brought her a GORGEOUS piece of highly iced cake, which we laughed about, and then I asked if I could eat my saved "cookies," meaning the brownies in my black bag, and she says, "A little bit OK." When I ask what to have for lunch, she says, essentially, bananas, bananas, bananas, and chicken soup is also good. Richard asks about today's tour, and I say I'm hoping to get to some museum with the group after lunch. She also specifies NO gas in the water, and NO other fruit, and NOT rice---and now I feel a slight urge to shit, sadly. Also have to root out clean socks and, I believe, my last clean short-sleeved shirt, now at 12:22PM, caught up again. For Wednesday: 6AM breakfast, luggage out at 6:15, leave 7AM. Michel is on our floor at 12:45, and we walk to the side of the Opera House for the World View Buffet, where we peek into the auditorium and I film some aerobics, then up for pumpkin soup and some chicken, all of which seems to sit well with me. Zaire sits next to me before I realize he's the local guide. Fear I may have to shit after eating, but nothing comes out, which makes me happy. Richard wants to get back to the nurse by way of the bus, so we leave at 1:50 and let him off and go to the Applied Arts Museum, which doesn't allow photos inside of the embroidery, jewelry, tools, and paintings, but I take shots of the souvenirs, a guy painting a miniature, and a woman doing needlepoint. Fantastic private mansion converted into a museum. In the souvenir shop find books on Tashkent, Bukhara, and Samarkand for 24000, for which I have 25000 handy, just over $15. 3:10 to memorial park, which turns out to be a madrasah converted into shops, so I go out to photograph the sports complex, a place for daters, some of whom I photograph, and the blue dome is the Legislative Hall, while the white building with the fountains is a 4000-seat concert hall which had been Communist headquarters. That goes to 3:44, then we're to subway, 25-cent fee, for two transfers in elaborate stations with no photographs allowed, with soldiers with guard dogs making sure the law is kept. Also noted many cars stopped on the roads for registration, which Zaire said was normal. Out of subway 4:07, passing huge mogul's houses and poor Russian adobe huts, monuments, madrasahs, and MANY memorial parks and squares to 4:23. Walk to bus to 4:29. Off to Catholic Church, only three of us, 4:40-5:08, good stained glass and light interior, and then at 5:08 to Russian Orthodox church, service going on, and back to hotel at 5:44. Richard looks at my pictures, and I lie down at 5:03, then pee and take my pill at 5:56, but then decide to read "Tashkent," featuring lots of rebuilt madrasahs, finishing at 6:47, when Richard tries calling Room Service and seems not to be able to talk to them, and I suggest we try Taxim, which I hope is what I think it is: part of an international chain, with good cheap food, that accepts credit cards. Type to 7:01 when I can mix my medicine and leave. We leave to an English-speaking graduation ceremony in front of the Opera House, and I think Taxim is STRAIGHT LEFT from the hotel, so we go an extra block, but it just doesn't LOOK like it, and Richard is beginning to flag, and so I make a turn to pass the bookstore and look down to THINK I see the Sushi Bar sign, and wave him on, and there's a band playing outside the Sushi Bar, and there, on the corner, is Taxim. A hostess encourages us to sit down: no credit cards, but she'll take dollars. We sit and look at the menu. I have a double burger and apple juice, and he a single burger, standing on his head to insist on no seeds (anaphylactic, he explains to me) until he thinks to bring out the card on which it's written in Russian, and she COOKS a special roll which he finally eats, STILL slightly suspecting sesame seeds. The burger is pretty awful, and I find a wilted sprig of lettuce, but we finish, watch the passing crowd, including a flamboyant gay in chinos and a pink, collar-turned-up gay guy with his somewhat less ostentatious friend. We rather like the passing scene, and I think Richard forgives my preliminary misdirection. Back to the hotel at 8:56 to jazz music coming from it, and I try to get to bed by 9:05, leaving packing for tomorrow (and he set one of his two alarms for 2AM for my pill), but he keeps TALKING about past travel adventures, and I probably doze off, without earplugs to hear the alarm, about 9:25PM. Wake at 11 and back to sleep.

WEDNESDAY, 5/19/10: Woke a few times before 2AM, when I took my pill, and then slept through to 5:20AM, then Richard was already up, his 5AM alarm having not wakened me. I pee, don't have to shit, and record a dream before packing at 5:30AM. Finish at 5:45, not the first to put my bag in the hall, and finish typing this to date at 5:57AM, ready for my shoes and breakfast. Can't find my room card, but Richard takes his and we're down to the bar to find that the waiter was SLEEPING when they got down at 6AM. Some are drinking coffee, and the waiter comes out with trays of croissants, pots of yogurt, and offers juice, so three of us take apple juice. Suddenly think that I have to pay the bill and I think he says 70,000 sommes, for which I'm startled, thinking it was the room rate, but he says it was food from the Opera Bar. I said I had only Room Service. He finally converted it to $11, which I said was correct, and got a $10 bill back for my $21, and a receipt. Back to tell Richard it's OK, and then we're back to the room to chat, and the phone rings, Michel saying there's a full breakfast now, and I specifically ask if there's bananas, and he asks and gets told "Yes." So I go down, having found my room card in my shoulder bag, and find NO bananas; Michel apologized, but it clearly wasn't his fault. Take my shoulder bag out to the bus to find no luggage out, but as I turn, the cart comes out and I point to my bag and they load it, and I board bus to pass by a few taken seats and choose the one on the right, which I calculate, since we're going south, I think, to be out of the sun, and start typing when others board and chat, and now at 6:48 we're reminded that Michel hasn't returned our passports yet. Everyone's feeling better, particularly Linda, who attributes her cure to Coca-Cola. Everyone straggles out in the bright early-morning sunshine. Leave at 7:04. Capital moved from Samarkand to Tashkent because Russians didn't like the power of the name of Tamerlane, who wasn't Russian. Tamur equals iron; and he limped, so he was LAME. Bukhara was always the Moslem religious capital. Parks and squares built by government decree, dispossessing shops and apartment buildings and private homes at whim. Michel says that something has changed every time he comes through: a restaurant gone, a new park, a new green area where once had been buildings. In Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan it's still very SOVIET, with very little impulse for change or reform or doing away with previous restrictions and controls. They're both very near the bottom of some International Panel on Human Rights, being like 176 and 177 out of 180, only Afghanistan and Somalia being lower on the scale. Imprisonments, torture, blackmail, lying: all in a day's work. Some head of a company shot himself when he was about to be found in his office filled with unopened envelopes of embezzled cash. The government subsidizes everything and makes all the profits, none of which go to the people, who have no rights. Any "movement" figures are persecuted and killed. No free media; Internet strictly monitored. Photos of children picking cotton (schools closed for 2-3 weeks during the season) forbidden because "it doesn't happen." Stalin ordered vegetables and fruits destroyed to raise cotton when the cotton prices rose, and since it required lots of water, their situation is going to get very bad with less water in the future: evaporation from open canals and water-conduits, sometimes all filled over vast areas, extraordinarily great, and they're not at all willing to consider change. At 7:45AM we "violated" the speed limit (though practically every car was passing us) and driver had to pay $3.50, "typical nuisance tax" on a luxury Chinese-made bus only six months old. 8:07 stop at ordinarily busy fish market for a photo of catfish, but restrictions stopped only May 15, or maybe it'll be June 15. #370 Sir Darya river (Darya = River), the second major after Amu Darya, both being depleted like the Aral Sea and they're not about to do anything about it: disaster looming. People can own houses, but the state owns all the land. A Tatar (which is what Tamerlane was) is a "Turkized Mongol." He professed to be equally a Muslim and a local pagan shaman, but he killed Christians, Moslems, Jews, and pagans, by the hundreds of thousands indiscriminately if they didn't pay the ransoms for their lives that he demanded. He had eight wives and many sons, many of whom were incompetent, and one was even killed because he "wasn't working out." One wonders if he might have been gay. He said that if they moved his body there would be a disaster: the day they exhumed his body in 1941 to investigate his red hair and blue-green eyes (how, one wonders) the Germans invaded Russia. They day they reinterred him, the Russians won the Battle of Stalingrad. If you believe it. I take 10AM pill. Highest Pamirs, now visible, are 23,000 feet, but the highest are only near Afghanistan. Still roses everywhere, of which the country and women are very proud. Pee stop 10:10-10:20 (Michel pays for all), and Chuck pays 1500S for a Twix bar, saying, "It's a brand." 10:40 photo of Tamerlane Pass, always a checkpoint for invading armies: best place to get from here to there. The Tajiks are descendents of Soghdians, who lived in this area for millennia. Others descend from Turkish races. To Samarkand "in good time" at 12:45. #381 Hotel Afrasiab (former name of Samarkand) for pee stop in deep basement and am asked for $35 for a two-page stamp "album" that I merely take a picture of. Off for lunch at 12:24, raining, leaving shoes on porch hoping they won't get wet, but they're moved inside. Long table around drummer, string-player, and dancer who does five different dances, mostly looking the same, in five styles: 1) Samarkand, 2) southwest area, 3) Koraison area where we'll visit in the south, 4) a Tajik Merry or Marry song, and even a fifth, not really described. John said she danced too long. I go to bus after waiting in line to pee in single bathroom inside garage door. Swimming pool empty, soup not bad, and I had two dumplings with lots of gristle, and green tea and water and a meat pastry. Tor is the name of the stringed instrument. Out at 2:04, rain clearing, and we go first at 2:34 to Tamerlane's tomb, with him under jade in the center; his teacher at his head, unexhumed because he was a cleric; Uleg Beg at his foot; the smaller ones his grandsons; the larger ones his sons, on left starting with C, on right starting with M. Pay 1500 to take photos. Good shot of stone base of Tamerlane's throne. Back to bus 3:05, now in SUN. To Registan 3:09, back to bus at 4:30. Into all three madrasahs, taking FIRST label LAST, mostly looking the same inside, lots of sales areas; I buy 1050S of stamps for 1000S. Guide "impels" me to pay $3 to climb awful high minaret for great shots behind giggling Russian girls ahead of me and a quartet coming up right behind me, guard pissed because I won't give him the $5 he wanted, after starting at $10. Try waving from the top, but no one sees me. Dash back, exhausted, to bus about 4:35, but Larissa excuses me and I show my photos around. Michel is in room #202; they won't give out two cards, we're in 304. Dinner at 7 tonight, breakfast at 7 tomorrow and leave at 8:30 for tour. Lie down at 4:50 and up at 6:48 to dinner. Need WATERPROOF pants and top for Rwanda's difficult jungle climb. Boots and long socks. Pekseker-hilarity (name on sugar wrapper) dinner, not bad ham-egg-omelet-like salad, beets, chicken, potatoes, water, and edible cake for dessert. Up at 8:20 to AGONIZE over miscounted pills to 9:37! Take "6PM pill" at 9:40PM, refusing to wake at 2AM again. 9:50PM: Richard is taking an AGE in the bathroom, after having chattered on about various subjects while I crashed my head against the wall repeatedly trying to figure out how I could have been SO incompetent in counting out my extra pills: missing MANY calcium, some others, and including extras for some unknown reason, taking over an HOUR to puzzle it out. FINALLY at 9:51 he leaves the bathroom and I go in. Bed at 10:03.

THURSDAY, 5/20/10: Sleep through to dream at 5:20AM and lie thinking all might not be terrible, deciding to wear a simple white T-shirt today. Finish typing the dream and peeing, feeling only slightly sore in my thighs from my minaret climb yesterday, and thinking I might even be up for a shower later, having been warned by Richard that the tub's bottom is very slippery. My teeth feel OK, my stomach isn't aching very badly, and the pain on coughing seems to have lessened. I might even survive the rest of the trip! Will take another pill now at 5:25AM even though it's not REALLY at the scheduled 5:40AM time. Take quick shower 6:15-6:30 and type 6:37-7:06, ready for breakfast after Richard leaves with the only key. Leave for breakfast after catching up on typing. Settle at small table with the two women traveling together: fuzzy-haired Marj-like Nancy, and pleasant, blonde, considerate (offering me sommes for photos) Mary, who goes by her middle name of Laurie, who are 60 and 65 respectively, still speaking to each other, and maybe going off to a museum rather than rug-shopping this afternoon. So they agree Lisa is youngest, and I still don't know Graeme and Judy and Chuck's ages. Bring a cherry-labeled bar for possible snack. Feel like shitting, but Richard is again in the bathroom. 8:12: Manage to squeeze out a small turd, so at least technically I'm not constipated, but I still feel like my stomach could use a good cleaning out---which is NOT the same as wishing for diarrhea! Sad how travel in such an exotic area of the world can be so centered around one's asshole. Think to go down to find Michel and talk about possible trips this afternoon. Hand Richard my Samarkand book to let him see the Observatory which is now closed to tourism. Go downstairs at 8:22 to try to talk to Michel about other things to see. To bus at 8:29 and off at 8:36 for two hours at the corner of two madrasahs and the Central Market. But it starts with Larissa's tour inside the Bibi-Khanum Mosque at 9:11, where she says essentially everything was reconstructed in the 1960s, including parts which look as if they could use instant reconstruction now. #489 Uleg Beg's Koran stand of massive blocks of stone is standing in the middle of what would have been the sand area, except that this, to be impressive, had been totally paved in marble. Inside all three buildings in turn, two of them merely impressive hulks which Chuck remarked would take millions to reconstruct just by themselves. Some are attracted to $20 wooden plaques of willow which someone remarks are clearly PRESSED, since they couldn't be CARVED and be sold for such a low price, but they were probably hand-painted. But why not hand-stamp-painted, like the wooden stamps displayed for coloring "home-made" hangings? Lots of pictures, lots of tourists. I walk through the market, which is remarkably clean, and see loads of fresh vegetables and fruit, but not a single banana. Nor any attractive male human. Spices, candies, bee-swarmed hunks of crystallized sugar that I was offered a hunk of after I photographed it, and I sucked on it for the next few hours, scandalizing Nancy and Mary for AGAIN threatening the health of my bowels. Later saw Lea trying on some clothes while John stood patiently by, and then sat on a shaded stone wall, saying "No" to whatever the woman next to me had been selling, and others came and sat, and then at the end I stood up to take pictures of the oldest madrasah on the hillside next to the tombs, and then we gathered at the bus at 10:49, and drove up to the graveyard at the back of the Shah-i-Zindah Complex, where we climbed over tombs and up a grassy slope that Michel said may be filled with snakes, with interesting etched portraits of the professors, cantors, doctors, and other titles of the rich and not-so-rich. Then down to an alley of tombs, taking shot after shot in buildings that started looking very much the same. Photos, legal for 1500S, hot, and I took some groups of old women, and some teenage girls screamed and insisted that they take their picture with ME. Why was I the one usually picked? Cute of them, and flattering, and the others in the group may have been a bit jealous. Up many steep stairs, with my thighs reminding me sternly of my climb yesterday. Used flash a few effective times, too. Hard to communicate the sheer strangeness of BEING there, with all these tourists, with these ancient tombs, in this totally alien culture. Back to bus at 11:55 after going way down the street to get a good angle on the complex, and then hurry across the trafficked road to get on the bus and drink deeply of cool water from the front well. Then Larissa found that the "moved" Art Gallery that didn't answer the phone was indeed open, and we went up a double flight of stairs, my thighs sore again, into a one-room studio with paintings five tall on the wall, a too-tall, too-thin (at least for THIS group) stringy-haired blonde model in high heels modeling some of the outré garments the artist was trying to sell. Most of the men sat glumly on sofas while their wives tried on truly outrageous wraps, shawls, jackets, and schmattas which were of the wrong color, texture, and material for the heat of the day. Men were given books of artworks, photos, collections, and at least there was ONE DECENT BICEP of a worker in a photo. This travesty ended (though I think a few women DID buy things) at 12:46, and we're told that the bus will leave at 5:45PM for dinner. To hotel to shit a quarter-brick and back on bus at 1:04 and to lunch at the Astoria (of all places) Restaurant for the eternal cauliflower, which is actually beginning to taste good, eggplant also tasty, roasted red-pepper shells, and then a bean soup with a dash of cream on top which benefited from some pepper, and then deeply fried chicken with French fries that I had a few of and then decided enough was enough. Surprisingly delicious vanilla ice cream for dessert once everyone got rid of their cherry and most of their apple slices, which I ate anyway. Out at 2:10 and Michel calls me off the bus to let Larissa lead me on a LONG walk to an oversold Jewish museum for a 4200S entry fee, a woman unlocking a suite of rooms from the prior "rich, but not really" house, except for the concert hall, double-height. Some slight diggings from the past, some few photos, woman turning on air conditioning. Upper floor has nothing in English and is ONLY very Jewish, so I go through quickly, dismayed that I smell slightly of shit. Leave at 3:06, hot, and start walking, taking longer than I would have thought, and getting VERY tired. Come to an outside cafe that I THINK should be near the hotel, and then the street narrows drastically and I think I MUST have gone wrong. Three giggly girls pass and ask where I'm from, and I reply, "Where is the President Hotel?" They laugh at me uncomprehendingly, asking me again and again where I'm from. I go back to the main intersection to find someone adult to ask when I spot the hotel on the OTHER side of the street, not what Larissa had said at ALL. Cross and go up to the room at 3:30 and have to knock TWICE to get Richard to open the door for me. Shit a bit and take my 1:30 pill at 3:35PM, not really giving a damn, and lay down at 3:55 totally naked and worn out, thighs sore, feet weary and feeling dirty, Richard sacked out in the other bed with the curtains closed and all the lights out. I'm up at 5:07, just about when he is, and I sort through the pills to take from the last Monday night, which has no calcium, and leave at 5:43 for Valentina's. Michel almost gets lost and has to scout out the apartment, and we enter to sit on carpeted benches to be entertained by a seven-girl almost-half-hour hallucinatory fashion show with veils, masks, whips, fake Cossacks, fringes, sequins, wisps of every possible color on every possible fabric, people clicking away with cameras while I take a couple of movies that I hope in SOME way captures the phantasmagoria of the scene which ends at 6:22 (and I'll have to check my film to see what time it started). Valentina Romanov comes out at the end, and the women get up to try on shawls, blouses, hats, shoes, gowns, wraps, and half-dresses, while the husbands look on and Richard and I essentially stare at the floor and eat the plain and sugared peanuts. I look through one of the scrapbooks, which belie Michel's comments that she never repeats herself: it seems really that that's all she DOES. Women put on and take off the same stuff three or four times, and it's a good thing there's no bargaining (except that Michel returns his commission, which Graeme---well, actually, Judy---won't say the amount of) or it would have taken TWICE as long as forever. Men start griping about going to dinner, and AT LAST we leave at 7:02, still broiling hot out, me sadly in my non-cotton blue shirt. Friday: breakfast at 7, bus leaves for Tajikistan at 8AM, new money form has to be filled out once, and twice when we come back. Only about an hour to travel to Penjikant, but the border may take an hour or longer, and they really MAY check the amount of money. Get to dinner at 7:20, really not hungry: have a few appetizers, three small pieces of beef, a few refreshing glasses of water while everyone else enjoys their beers, and four tiny pieces of dessert cake, at which I leave, just when Richard is coming upstairs. I again try to shit and can't---maybe I should try taking the carbon pills, since I DO pass gas while straining to defecate. Fill out the money form to 8:13, pack some things away for tomorrow, and type 8:30-8:45, really fearing I'm not well. Saw a number of mosquitoes at the show tonight: could I be getting malaria? Just don't feel like doing much, though it MAY be the disappointment with what I'm seeing: all the madrasahs are starting to seem identical, and I don't need any more tombs or shops. Get out clean shorts and socks for tomorrow, checking that I have a lot of both clean on this LAST DAY OF THE FIRST HALF OF THE TRIP! Hoped I wouldn't be counting so early, but I'm even starting to REALLY fear the difficulty of the OCTOBER trip. I'm just not in the best of spirits. Maybe going to sleep early and not peeing much at night will let me feel better---or at least cure my thigh-aches. Most of the time tomorrow seems to be on the bus, so I take sudoku and a puzzle to pass the time. Finish now at 8:48PM, still thirsty, feeling slightly guilty about having taken the LAST bottle of water out of what looks like the bus's workers' dinner compartment. Has Richard stopped hanging his clothes in the closet next to mine for fear of his clothes absorbing my smells? Bed at 8:54PM.

FRIDAY, 5/21/10: 2:08AM: Wake, lovely after five hours, and type dream. Thighs still sore, though I note with thankfulness that my coughs no longer hurt my stomach VERY much, but improvement is still to be wished for. Days left in the trip can now be counted on the fingers of two hands, a nice event: these being the first recordings of the second half of the trip, which is turning out to be even more exhausting than I'd anxiously anticipated it might be. The BOWELS are of such CONSTANT concern! Type to 2:15AM. Wake about 5:40AM and lie thinking about how disappointed I am about this trip and what I could do to improve it. Taking a shower seems like a good idea, so about 5:50 I get up and wash my hair and even shit (after the shower, of course), but I'm really depressed about how HARD it is to take a shower, and how SORE my thighs continue to be, and trying not to think of how many more showers I'll have to take before this trip is over. Get out my New Yorker to read before breakfast, and type this from 6:14-6:18AM, when Richard's alarm rings and he, at long last, shuts it off. At least I'm finished in the bathroom. Read a bit of New Yorker, listen to Richard talk about his quick-drying T-shirt, give him Michel's "do not change bed" sign to copy, and start to dress at 6:45, figuring there's going to be a run on the omelet station. Wait and wait, have fruit and cereal, and finally I'm first for an onion, cheese, and ham omelet by about 7:20, with two buttered rolls, ideal! Up at 7:40AM to find door ajar and bathroom door closed with Richard behind it. Pack a shirt for cold, put on my shoes, and put the Neo on my bed with the "do not change" sign at 7:45. Leave at 8AM on AWFUL roads; this is clearly not the MAIN way to Tajikistan, and surely not how one would get to Dushanbe, the capital. More and more people stare at us until finally I ask Michel how many busses pass this way, and he suggests maybe three a week. Hordes of cars at markets along the way, and finally a cluster of cars at the border at 9:07. Walk with our possessions to the end of the first line at 9:11, just to have our passports looked at, to 9:17. To SECOND line at 9:20, which is supposed to be in alphabetical order, checking in detail at the start, but, as observed, they get tired after a bit and at the end they just ask for the last four or five passports that are quickly processed by 10:10AM. Passports are checked AGAIN 10:17-10:18, just as we cross into Tajikistan. Two SUV-type vehicles are waiting for us, and I make a beeline for the more elegant looking one, but people have taken the front seats and I can only sit in the rear, which turns out to be VERY hard and bumpy and hot. We're loaded at 10:24 and the cars go at 10:25. It DOES seem that there are almost no tractors in the fields, as if we've gone back a hundred years, and more and more people stare at us and wave as we pass. Michel goes on and on about how bankrupt the country is, having to mortgage their only money-producing aluminum plant to China and their electric-generating capacity to Russia, so they're essential in hock to other countries, with very low income, existing mainly on remittances that the 5.5 million traveling Tajiks send to the 5 million Tajiks remaining in Tajikistan. It had always been the poorest from Czarist, through Communist, and into present times, and it's getting even worse, and Michel can see no way they can get out of their mess, having had a disastrous Civil War in the 90s that left 60,000 dead and 600,000 homeless, and a catastrophic flood in the south a month or so ago that left many more thousands homeless. Clearly the government has no power in the mountains, into which their neighbors accuse Tajikistan of allowing Muslim terrorists and drug traffickers to cross at will. No one is willing to help them, and barely the IMF and the World Bank pays for some few poor life-saving things. We arrive at the excavation site at 11:58, and the short stubby enthusiastic guide points out the outlines of the ancient Sogdian city of Penjikent, comprised of five neighborhoods, that sat here between 500 and 800AD, before being destroyed by the Arabian invaders. A set of new excavations, by Americans who have already set up a little museum under the four "umbrellas" we see in the distance, date from the 0AD era. We climb a hill, my thighs still sore, to photograph the poppy-strewn excavations with streets and buildings shown in outline, and some shops and buildings reconstructed. Hardly anyone else there, and I get some great shots of flowers, too, close-ups that Laurie (which seems to be the name Mary goes by) congratulates me for finding. Out to a viewpoint, with cow, over Penjikent below, with the minaret and blue dome of the main market, and the featureless mass of buildings covering the valley below the hill. Then it starts to rain, umbrellas come out, and we're back to the busses to drive to the museum in town, following Michel WAY around to the back, in the rain, to the johns, and then take our shoes off in the main room and get to take photos of the major exhibits, though they refuse to put extra lights on. Much of it is uninteresting, but I take a few pictures anyway. Michel says it's a much better museum than it used to be, thank goodness. Ask to see stamps, she says $2 for two I point to, and she gives me three of one and six of another, and I say I just want ONE of each, and then some others to make up the $2. She gives me about 6 in all, including a 1K Russian stamp, I find out later. Probably got rooked. I look before and after the guide talks about the items, and take #608 of Samani, who seems to be the local equivalent of Tamerlane here. At the museum to 1:02, still raining out, and go to record some of the prayers at the mosque, I think maybe the only time I've shot Muslims praying. Then a few shots of the market just to prove I was there, crowded with wet people, and back to the bus to go to lunch to 2:30, annoyed that the dancer won't dance where I can film her, but then she's not that great anyway, taking ages to lift her veil as a new wife. Typical foods, a decent soup, a few bits of meat atop a pile of rice, and then peanuts, good maple-caramel candies, and then additional candies in a cardboard boody (or whatever the skullcaps are called) that the person honored didn't seem to want. Ask for the john and the guide shows me a private one where I can sit down, where I think I can shit, but I can't really, still having gas and constipation at the same time. Out at 2:30, rain stopped, and drive to the school, where the CUTE kid who had joined us at the excavation is sitting in the classroom with all the kids learning English, and I manage to film him: I hope he comes out (um, yes). Slight embarrassment when we're asked what we like about Tajikistan, and some woman has the wit to say the people are always smiling nicely. The students admit they have NO chance of leaving the country, and they'd really like some books in English, and John gets the address to send books to, while some of the women make sure they know how to send books to them. That goes to 3:25, me apologizing for our group being an hour late, and we drive to the border at 3:54 to fill out duplicate money forms to 4:07, at which time the passport has been shown and stamped once already. Rain stops, we wait at 4:16 for some final check, and suddenly the guy leaves his cage and says the computer isn't working; he'll be back in five minutes. Michel says, "Yeah, five minutes," and convinces the people checking tourists into Tajikistan to check US OUT of Tajikistan. So we again go through one line for the passport and another line for the money forms, of which precisely NONE are checked. I finish (last) at 4:42, walk with sore legs to the welcoming bus at 4:47, and get told that Saturday's breakfast is at 7 and we gather to check luggage at 7:45 and leave at 8AM for---somewhere. Then we'll be in Bukhara for three nights, at what he extols as a "boutique" hotel. Back to hotel at 5:40, scraping the top of the bus again with the trees on the roads that clearly aren't meant for such traffic as this huge bus, and we can go to the room to relieve ourselves and be back on the bus at 5:55. I change to a white shirt after shitting a tiny bit AGAIN, and washing my face, and down next-to-last before Richard, and the bus leaves at 6 to the Registan, where we enter the left madrasah, pass the stairway where I climbed the minaret, and see a new sign in the hall indicating "Picture Gallery," and enter an enormous room (where DO they keep it inside the building?), newly painted and carpeted (and furnished with all manner of souvenirs) where we sit in 13 neatly aligned chairs in two rows and watch a series of dances by one, two, three, five, then six women, and I'm appalled to find I have only a minute and a half of movie left, and NO stills really work, but then the dancers or the dances aren't THAT great, and I record a few minutes of some before it's over at 6:48 and we're told we can shop. I go into the next room where they have an incredible set of star-charts on display, which I take pictures of, and go into other side rooms and photo the main room while the women AGAIN buy things, and we're out to bus at 7:12 to return to the hotel, where I cross the street to take great shots of the statue of Tamerlane with the half-moon above his head! Back to phone room 304 from the desk to get no answer, and a bellboy takes me up on the luggage elevator and opens the door for me so that I can try to shit AGAIN, change into my slippers, and go down to dinner at 7:36, having a plate of appetizers, a few glasses of water, and then a plate of a few meats, carrots, and three or four pieces of cake, and find that Richard says that he learned how to eat FROM me, which is interesting. Lisa (who hadn't come to the dance performance) held forth on cameras, saying it might be possible for me to delete photos while STILL maintaining, say, #380 where I took it. I'm up at 8:15, look through the stamps I bought, sort some things out, aware that we're leaving tomorrow, and change my camera disk at 8:41 for only, I think, the second (well, maybe the third) time, JUST past the halfway mark, so I may fill BOTH disks before the end of the trip. Then get to typing, after peeing, and finish up to date at 9:19PM, Richard not up from dinner yet. He's been eating cherries as if they're OK, and I have NO idea what he does each evening. Sort of debate packing, but decide to leave it for the morning, since I'd frittered away more than an hour since I finished dinner. Put the dried umbrella away for future use, and piled assorted change on my table to be packed away tomorrow morning. Yes, definitely I'm tired enough, now at 9:20PM, to go directly to bed. Bed at 9:41; sleep quick.