100 Days of Hitchhiking - Greece to China

Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

Sat, 06 Jul 2019 12:00:00 +0600

— Day 98 — I'm on a plane to Barcelona, 11000m airborne, over 6000m higher than even the highest pass we crossed in the Pamirs. I did not hitch this ride. Instead of sticking out my thumb and willing a hopeful, non-threatening smile to my face, I instead used a search aggregator to find me the cheapest flight out of Bishkek, thumbed a few buttons, and sent some money to a corporation (Pegasus Airlines, in this case) to allow me passage on one of their flying machines. My thumbs still did most of the 'work', but they required slightly more movement as they punched my credit card details into my little black mirror and willed a boarding pass to appear in my inbox. It's a different kind of magic than that which got me here, and though impressive, it lacks the human touch that I've grown so accustomed to. I've spent a significant portion of this chronicle playing in the vast sandbox of narrative, molding words in an effort to capture external experiences through the limitations of my internal lens. The focus of this brief summary will be less on the narrative and more on the subjective shifts I've noticed within me throughout. With this intention, Brian and I held a closing ritual the other evening, joined by Delphine and cold beers on a hill overlooking smoggy Dushanbe. We each listed and discussed shifts we've noticed in our relationship to ourselves and the world. It ended up being a pretty extensive exploration, and I'll include a non-comprehensive sampling here. * Consistently deepening surrender; building and then abandoning attachment to specific narratives * Less fear accompanied by a more intimate relationship with the world * More comfortable reading people intuitively (eg. intentions in the eyes) * Increased courage to disagree with people, set boundaries, and state own beliefs * Appreciation of power of narrative in parallel to power of immediacy * Increased confidence and value in self-expression (published writing, especially) * Increased embodiment through noticing disembodiment * Increased action from intuition, noticeable decrease in blocks and filters between self and world. More comfortable approaching strangers and following playful instinct * Embrace of inner polarities such as 'engineer vs. artist', practicing acceptance of these contradictions instead of forced reconciliation * Stronger, 'clearer' relationship with my best friend, along with useful exploration and communication of patterns of codependency with him as a traveling partner —— Now that that's out of the way, here are the cold hard facts : Total driving distance: 10950 km Total driving time: ~198 hours 16 countries 162 rides ~51 hours spent waiting Average time per ride: ~1.2 hours Average distance per ride: ~67.5 km Average waiting time per ride: ~0.3 hours 43 nights with 24 hosts 33 nights in hostels/homestays 11 nights in the tent 7 nights on cargo ships 3 nights 'other' 'Special' places: * Meteora, Greece * Sheki, Azerbaijan * Khiva, Uzbekistan * Almaty, Kazakhstan * Issyk-Kul (South shore), Kyrgyzstan * The Pamir: * Karakul, Tajikistan * Wakhan Valley, Tajikistan * Khorog, Tajikistan * Jizeu/Jizef, Tajikistan –— “How can it be described? How can any of it be described? The trip and the story of the trip are two different things. The narrator is the one who has stayed home, but then, afterward, presses her mouth upon the traveler’s mouth, in order to make the mouth work, to make the mouth say, say, say. One cannot go to a place and speak of it; one cannot both see and say, not really. One can go, and upon returning make a lot of hand motions and indications with the arms. The mouth itself, working at the speed of light, at the eye’s instructions, is necessarily struck still; so fast, so much to report, it hangs open and dumb as a gutted bell. All that unsayable life! That’s where the narrator comes in. The narrator comes with her kisses and mimicry and tidying up. The narrator comes and makes a slow, fake song of the mouth’s eager devastation.” ― Lorrie Moore, Birds of America

Another visit to Nail, the Kindest Camera Master. He diagnosed my broken lens with a fried motherboard, and sold me another [better] one for only 50 USD.

Dushanbe, Tajikistan

Mon, 01 Jul 2019 12:00:00 +0500

— Day 92 — With that delightfully synchronous timing that traveling seems to highlight so well, a friend of mine forwarded me a poem she thought I would appreciate just as we began descending from the Pamir Mountains. It's written by her friend Nayeli Špela of Slovenia, and now that we've descended, it feels right to include it here, at the foot of the mountain. JOURNEY I will meet you at the foot of the mountain. Stand beside you, when you are looking up. Seeing all the challenges you need to face in order to come to the top. I will be sensing the wind that is moving you forward, asking you to trust. Trust that the mountain already accepted you, that the path is already ready for your journey. Everything is ready. Everything is waiting, so that your mind calms down. Stop calculating the steps and the directions you need to take, to come to the top. Stop searching for a map that does not exist, not on this journey. I will meet you at the foot of the mountain, singing, rejoicing your decision to go. Celebrating the courageous fact, that you are willing to take with you the backpack full of fears and doubts, grief and sorrow, melancholy of what was lost... Determined to find yourself again. I hold your hand, which is trembling. Shaking out of the awareness of the decision that you have just made for yourself. I hold you softly, with a touch that is not holding back, but moving forward. With the reminder, that you are supported. That the spirit in you, that you are so eager to find, is waiting for you too. Waiting for you to find him, embrace him, embody him. And this will not happen on the top of the mountain, dear. It will happen on the toughest parts of the road. In the moments when you will be ready to let go. When you will start emptying your backpack of stuff, you do not wish to carry anymore. Making space so what is ready can be seen. What is waiting to be met. What is longing to be reunited. What is heavy, to be forgiven. I am meeting you at the foot of the mountain, dear. Because I know it's not my journey to walk, it's yours. And I can only watch from the distance, the amazing power of life that happens, when a person decides to live it, to rediscover it, to own it. To reclaim every lost piece of yourself, you have forgotten along the way, and embrace the readiness of being yourself. You look at me with the vulnerable and humble gaze. Unable to say a word, yet I hear you saying them anyway. It's the silence of the mountain that now speaks, and we both know it's more powerful than what we imagine. It's the voice of the ancient, of the wilderness inside of us, of the one we have kept imprisoned for so long. And you know exactly where she is inviting you. It's time to go. And I will meet you at the foot of the mountain, when you return. Welcoming whoever is coming back. Smiling at the familiar face I know, yet I have never met before. — Days 93-96 — Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, is 40 degrees and cloaked in soupy smog. We've been periodically checking the air quality index to discover that we are occasionally the most polluted city in the world, hitting AQI highs of 180+ and competing for the title of Deadliest Air along with cities like Jakarta, Santiago, Dhaka, and Shanghai. It has a very post-Soviet dictatorial feel to it, with vast promenades, parks and monuments built not to please but to impress, and what is reputedly the world's second-tallest flagpole looming over the central square. We're staying in the comfortable apartment of a new friend that we met on the Tashkent Metro. Delphine is originally from Belgium, but is living in Dushanbe while working rotating shifts at the Doctors Without Borders station in Kabul, Afghanistan. We spent our four days in the city enjoying a small vacation/decompression to celebrate the conclusion of our hitchhiking trip before catching a flight to Bishkek, and then another to a regional Burning Man event in the Spanish desert. Delphine took a couple days off work, and the three of us lounged, explored the city, and even ended up at Dushanbe's Ismaili Centre, a bastion of the clear Ismaili minority in the vastly Sunni population of Tajikistan (outside of GBAO). Our relaxation was interrupted by a bacteria that wormed its way into a dish we shared at a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant we had dipped into during one of our walks. My aggressive digestive system escaped blissfully unscathed, but Delphine and Brian had an interesting 'run' with it, and spent the next couple days more-or-less housebound while their bodies purged themselves of whatever had violated them.

A mother cat and her litter keeps us company at a Ukrainian restaurant

Architecture of Dushanbe's Ismaili Centre

A smoggy farewell

Jizef, Tajikistan

Sun, 30 Jun 2019 12:00:00 +0500

— Day 91 — We joined our new friends on a daytrip to the tiny mountain lake villages of Jizeu and Jizef, a 20ish kilometre roundtrip hike from the road. The lake and its surrounding oasis have been described as 'the Pamir's Garden of Eden', a fantastical metaphor which didn't truly impact us until we stumbled into it. Irrigation streams have been dug throughout the valley, diverging several kilometres upstream and sustaining many acres of lush terraced grassland, wildflowers, forests, and mountain herbs. Birds sing with a lightness that knows the privilege of living in an oasis amidst barren cliffs, donkeys graze on grassy islands that emerge from the water like lilypads, and children of the village play and build damns in the river, honing their skills for their generation's contribution to the community's canals. Before we doubled back after circumnavigating the small lake, Gulcha, the English-speaking owner of Jizeu's only guesthouse, invited us in for tea. He explained that he had grown up and spent his while life here along with the 85 other inhabitants of the scattered settlements. In its idyllic isolation, the community had a monasterial quality to it, and Gulcha's serene presence aligned well with the imagery. We hiked back down the valley, stopping to explore a small manmade cave dug into the cliff, and returned to the car to continue along the aggressively-eroded roads before night fell. The Afghan settlements on the other side of the border became more and more lush, and we admired the cliffside aquaducts that fed the cascading fields with mountain runoff. We made good ground before the sun disappeared behind the mountains and decided to stop driving for safety's sake, setting up camp in a field off the highway to rest up before the bumpy 12-hour drive to Dushanbe that awaited us the next day.

Mobbed by tiny apricot salespeople on the road to Dushanbe

Khorog, Tajikistan

Thu, 27 Jun 2019 12:00:00 +0500

— Days 88-90 — The valley steadily descended along with the river that it hugs, and we eventually made it down to ~2200m elevation. It feels so good to take a deep breath and actually get a lungful of oxygen. I am able to notice the subtleties of my body so viscerally, and my mind has double the bandwidth it had two days ago when I was at double the altitude. We arrived in Khorog to find a vibrant town tightly nestled in the mountain valley. It is the capital of Gorno-Badakhshan and home to about 30,000 people, who congregate in the lush park on the Gunt River beneath the dappled shade of poppler trees. I haven't found such openness and genuine warmth in a community in a long time, perhaps since we passed through Albania three months ago. A visit to the beautiful new Ismaili Centre next to the park provided some answers as to a potential source of this. Ismailism is a branch of Shia Islam that emphasizes education and inspiringly-inclusive worldcentricism in addition to a depth of faith. As our guide explained, 'the centre is not just a space for spiritual searching, but for fostering a deeper appreciation for pluralism as well'. During our tour around the complex's school, prayer hall, community centre, and library, we learned that over 90% of the Pamiri are followers of Ismailism and its open-minded Imam the Aga Khan. Incidentally, the Aga Khan Foundation of Canada also supports a cross-border market North of Khorog, despite the border markets on the Afghan side being shut down. They open the borders from 10h to 15h every Saturday, during which hundreds of Afghans, Tajiks, and even Kyrgyz pour into the square to trade goods. After sharing some chay and a plate of plov with some well-dressed young Afghan men at the bazaar's osh xhana, we spent a couple hours wandering and engaging with merchants and shoppers alike. With the influx of Afghans, the cultural atmosphere was noticeably distinct from others we've come across in the Pamir. There was a sense of play that we haven't experienced elsewhere, with people communicating heavily through direct eye contact in a way that had me feeling refreshed, vulnerable, and connected. In the midst of the frenetic market, I also noticed a grounded stillness in each individual that coexisted with the warmth and openness. After my 16mm lens malfunctioned a few days ago due to an especially aggressive bump in the unpaved Wakhan road, I reframed the loss as an opportunity to take my 60-year-old Soviet-Uzbek 50mm out for a spin. Though challenging to capture the vastness of mountains through my newly-reduced angle of view, here I delighted in capturing depth in eyes as opposed to breadth in landscape. Even the Afghan soldiers who patrolled the square allowed for intimacy through their eyes and body language, happily agreeing to pose for portraits. Later that afternoon we were enjoying coffees in a nearby cafe, and I struck up a conversation with a young couple from Vancouver. Janet and Ben ended up offering us my 162nd (Brian's 91st), and last, hitchhiking lift of the trip, and we woke up at the break of dawn the next morning to join them on the long journey down from the mountains. -- 162. Ben and Janet, from Vancouver

Ishkashim, Tajikistan

Wed, 26 Jun 2019 12:00:00 +0500

— Day 87 — We woke at 7 this morning to a jaw-dropping view of the sun kissing the Pamir and Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Jun was already halfway up the adjacent cliff. We had packed up our tent and were peering at him in the distance, wondering what he was up to, when suddenly he was airborn, suspended by the steady air currents that supported his paraglider. He surfed the morning drafts gracefully and eventually descended a few metres from our camp. Quickly bundling his parachute, he got behind the wheel of his 4x4, ready to brave the toughest roads of the Pamir. The next 40km made the crumbling roads of Georgia's Svaneti look like child's play. The single-lane road was embedded into eroding cliffs that plummeted a shear several hundred metres into the canyon that separated us from Afghanistan. Every once in a while a river would run through the road and under our car, as if to remind us that we weren't the only ones eroding this precarious passage. We eventually made it to the floor of the valley, where we were greeted by the lush terraced oasis-village of Langar. We strolled around town for an hour, enjoying an enthusiastic welcome by the villagers and a small taste of the Wakhan way of life. The Wakhan Corridor is home to a unique and ancient culture that owes its now-convoluted borders to colonial empires with rivalrous incentives. Born from a diplomatic tug-of-war between the British and Russian Empires in the late 19th century, this peninsula of Afghanistan extends like a curious finger between Tajikistan and Pakistan, originally serving as a buffer between the two hungry empires. I noticed that someone had uploaded a pin titled 'hot springs' on maps.me, and sharing our curiosity, Jun and Changa ventured a few kilometres off-road to a small mud hut that was padlocked shut. While one of the local boys jogged off into the hills to find the owner of the key / keeper of the springs, the four of us were invited into the adjacent Pamiri home for the typical assortment of tea and snacks. The grandmother who ran the household was mortified to learn that not only am I not Brian's wife, but that I am not even the gender she presumed me to be. She grabbed my hair in disbelief as her understanding of the world recalibrated to include effeminate white men with long hair. Full of salt tea, bread, and goat yogurt, we made our way to the natural spring bathhouse where we spent the next hour. Between the rush of oxygen accompanied by the drop in elevation and the borderline-too-hot mineral water, I distinctly noticed the knots in both my mind and body melt into the pool, allowing room for renewed clarity. I love the recurring role that banyas have played throughout this trip, seeming to appear at the most opportune times. As we passed through the bigger town of Ishkashim, I approached a group of outgoing young locals loitering outside a storefront. I had heard rumour of a weekly market that occurs on the Afghan side of the border, temporarily allowing visa-free travel between countries in the remarkably safe bastion of the Wakhan mountains, and wanted to learn if it was still operational. With clear regret, they replied that it had been shut down two years ago after a very brief burst of Taliban turbulence in the area in May 2017. I shrugged exasperatedly and sighed 'fucking war'. The group of friends chuckled lightly, mimicking the gesture but showing a deeper exasperation over the forces that isolate their home and destroy lives as well as the local economy. The four of us loaded up on groceries and continued another 8km North, setting up camp on the Tajik side of the Panj River that marks the border between the two countries. A thunderstorm descended on us as the winds picked up and caused my tired tent to leak throughout the night. We woke to wet sleeping bags and a sunny morning, and hung our damp gear while a shepherd aggressively herded her sheep along the Afghan shore 20 metres away.

The Banya

Wakhan Valley, Tajikistan

Tue, 25 Jun 2019 12:00:00 +0500

— Day 86 — It is our fourth day of hitching the Pamir, and I believe we've found ourselves in the most remote hitchhiking spot of the trip. Here the Pamir splits off into a dirt road that winds down into the Wakhan Valley, eventually hugging the Afghan border by a mere hundred metres. We've heard this route is intense and beautiful once you descend the mountain pass. At the present moment, however, we are stranded in a huge swath of high-elevation desert at 4000m, more than a day's walk from the nearest human settlement of Alichur. Cell reception is, obviously, out of the question. There is deep freedom in this isolation, and I'm reminded of feeling dwarfed by the scale of Jordan's Wadi Rum Desert earlier this year. The sun beats down with less atmospheric resistance at this altitude, and the temperature seems to fluctuate between 10 degrees and 25 degrees depending on which direction the relentlessly restless winds are blowing. We have 6L of water between us, and enough basic food to keep us fueled into tomorrow thanks to our visit to Murghab's shipping container market. With these limitations in mind, we've decided that if we don't catch a ride within the next 27 hours, we're going to give up on our dreams of visiting Wakhan and hike back to the Pamir, where we're much more likely of catching one of the few trucks heading to Khorog. — Later — We ended up spending the next seven hours at that spot. A handful of cars passed heading North, and the only car going in our direction didn't take us in. At some point, a group of four cyclists rolled up from the southern hill. Of the four, three were of the common species we've encountered during this trip; the enduring, adventurous, long-distance/high-altitude cyclist. They have a recognizable look to them, with noses reddened from many kisses with the sun, cheeks beaten by the mountain winds, rugged smiles tinged by solitude's cold embrace, and a glean in the eyes that shows they've pushed their limits only to witness their illusive boundaries retreat back into the horizon they're peddling towards. The fourth cyclist was a Romanian man named Adrian, who had joined the others for a quick jaunt on a borrowed bike. He had left his family and converted firevan 10km back, and after saying goodbye to his brief travel companions, sat with us for a while before returning. He's on an indefinite roadtrip with his wife Roxanne and their two daughters, 'home'schooling them as they skip through the world as nomads between contracts in freelance telecommunications consulting. We met the rest of his family a few hours later when they rolled up in their convoy of two. They had joined forces with aFrench-Tibetan family embracing a similar lifestyle, and the three girls were sitting in the back of their firevan watching Avatar: the Last Airbender on a roadworn tablet. I felt deeply inspired by their worldview and way of life, unburdened by the fears that keep so many people from living outside the parameters of social normalcy, allowing themselves to raise their young family in a refreshingly worldcentric lifestyle. Hearing we had been surviving off nuts, cheese, bread, and carrots, they gifted us a can of Iranian eggplant spread and a bowl of delicious soy-based leftovers from the previous night. Before continuing on their way to the nearest alpine lake, Pascal, the relaxed French father, pointed to my Tibetan Kalichakra necklace and said warmly 'I would wish you luck, but with the Kalichakra around your neck, you won't need it'. He was right. Within five minutes of their departure, our second gift of the day arrived in the form of a rugged Hyundai 4x4 and the kind South Korean couple who had driven it across half of Russia to find us here. They took us in after hearing we'd been waiting for seven hours, ratchet-strapping our backpacks to the roofrack and clearing us some space to lie down atop their gear in the back of the SUV. We cleared the mountain pass (and yet another military checkpoint) together before descending into the valley through a variety of switchbacks and steep cliffs.The road was beginning to get *very* treacherous as the light faded, so we pulled into a cliffside plateau to set up camp for the night. After pitching our tent, we contributed our sparse ingredients to a feast of spicy Korean-style ramen that helped soothe the bite of winds descending upon us from Pakistan's Hindu Kush mountains across the canyon. Changa and Jun generously shared drinks in addition to most of the meal. Lit by a display of stars unlike any I've seen in many years, we gratefully toasted the Wakhan and new friends over titanium mugs of sweet wine and Kyrgyz cognac. -- 161. Changa and Jun, from South Korea

The Middle of Nowhere

Yet another military zone

Jun sets sail

Alichur, Tajikistan

Mon, 24 Jun 2019 12:00:00 +0500

— Day 85 — Despite including over 45% of Tajikistan's landmass, the region of GBAO accounts for only 3% of the country's population. Most of its ~200,000 inhabitants are not ethnically Tajik, but instead a medley of Pamiri ethnicities that speak not just Tajik and Russian, but an array of other corresponding languages and dialects. The diversity of mountain cultures is remarkable, and you can usually tell the cultures apart from their aesthetic hatwear, from Wakhan to Ruhshon to the Shugnon valleys. There are even many ethnically Kyrgyz here, with their familiar smiles and signature peaked white headwear. We stopped by Murghab, another outpost where the road branches off into China, where we said goodbye to our new friends and loaded up on food before reentering the higher passes. The market was housed within a patchwork of repurposed shipping containers. Though its supply was barren to say the least, we left with enough fuel in our packs to keep us going for another couple days. Continuing onwards, we finished the day by pitching our tent at 4000m on a quiet shoreline just beyond the town of Alichur. The temperature hovered just above freezing as we were lulled into our respectively restless sleeps by the incessant serenade of howling winds. -- 159. Silent man in a van

A shepherd, his dog, and his yaks

The propaganda of President Emomali Rahmon makes it even as far as Murghab

Shipping container market

Lenin at 3700m

A boy, his ball, and his goats

One with the Pamir

Karakul’, Tajikistan

Sun, 23 Jun 2019 12:00:00 +0500

— Day 84 — Three cars passed while we spent the next two hours waiting, sheltered from the rain by our 8x6' tarp. A French couple going in the opposite direction stopped to say hello and offer us a cup of coca cola. No sooner had we sipped the sugar water than I heard the sound of an oncoming SUV and sprinted back to our hitchhiking spot. The 4x4 that stopped was occupied by another young French couple and their driver Aliakbek, heading into Tajikistan with two open seats in the car. David and Noémie live in Paris where they practice law and medicine, respectively, and were on the first day of a six month adventure through Central and Southeast Asia. They had already ascended 2100m from Osh in a single day, and eagerly accepted the Acetazolomide we offered them in preparation for the remaining 1200m to come. -- 157. Arshol and his wife, traveling merchants who sell vegetables to the local nomads. 158. Noémie, David, and their driver Aliakbek — Later — I'm writing this from the floor of a cozy homestay in the 3900m village of Karakul, Tajikistan. The lightheaded sluggishness that accompanies the rapid increase in elevation of the last couple days is very noticeable, but I'm going to make the best attempt to record our day regardless. My thumbs are punching out words at half the speed they normally do, my brain grappling with prose that would normally flow freely from mind to screen. After climbing over a kilometre in elevation, we eventually found ourselves in a snowstorm as we crossed the 4300m border into Tajikistan. Brian's border curse reared it's ugly head once more at the Kyrgyz exit point, when the officer was unable to find his visa registered in the system. An hour of anxious waiting and what appeared to be dozens of frustrating phone calls later, the guard inputted the visa himself and let us pass. On the Tajik side, we watched Aliakbek pay a few hundred som in bribes for having more people in his car than he's licensed to cross the border with, which we later reimbursed. I have now crossed 23 borders on this trip, and they represent the one reality of the world that I have utterly failed to embrace. Rolling into Karakul as the sun set, we decided to sleep in the same homestay as our new friends and accepted their invitation to continue with them to Murghab the next morning. Karakul is located at almost double the altitude of the highest permanent settlement in Europe that I visited 6 weeks ago, and I have deep admiration for the people who live here. The sense of community is profound, with villagers mingling like family while helping each other refill water from the pump wells that populate the town. Rusted oil tanks and decrepit soviet infrastructure have been cut and welded to serve creative new purposes, such as dehydrating the yak and sheep dung that keeps the villagers warm year-round (and us, through our second night in the Pamirs). Flocks of curious and outgoing children followed us as we explored, shouting misshapen 'hello's that were returned by our equally misshapen 'salaam's. Our host, Han, is a teacher in the village's tiny school, and children eagerly recognized her named when we mentioned her during our strolls around town. — Day 85 — There were many people we met along the way who were promised selfies from the Chinese border, so after a morning stroll soaking in the wabi-sabi of the Karakul, we took a brief trip to the mangled barbed wire fence that lines the highway. This inconsistent tangle of metal is what separates Tajikistan from the Chinese borderzone. Otherwise, the mountains on the other side of it were, as always, indistinguishable from those on ours. Selfies procured, we climbed back into the 4x4 and continued working our way deeper into the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (GBAO) of Eastern Tajikistan.

A selfie at the border, as promised to the many who we met along the way

Peering into the Chinese borderzone

Sary-Tash, Kyrgyzstan

Sat, 22 Jun 2019 12:00:00 +0600

— Day 83 — We made it to the Chinese border today, finding ourselves turned around as expected by the Kyrgyz guards of the lengthy borderzone's first military checkpoint, who wouldn't let us get any closer without a Chinese visa. The kindest of the posted guards flagged down a driver going in the opposite direction, who took us 50km back to Sary-Tash as night fell. The town is the last outcropping of civilization before the Pamir Highway enters the inhospitable mountains that loom in the distance. Some of these peaks rise to over 7000m, and the elevation awaiting us is starting to feel very real. We struck up a conversation with the only other travelers at the guesthouse, two Russian men who had biked most of the Pamir in just eight days. They were on their way down, and offered us the remainder of their 'Дракарь', a Russian brand of the acclimatizion aid Acetazolomide. Acetazolomide works by inducing a fascinating causal cascade through the body. Its direct effect as a mild diuretic is the activation of kidneys to secrete more bicarbonate in the urine, which in turn causes your blood to become more acidic. Your body then seeks to neutralize the high pH by increasing the depth and frequency of your breath, which accelerates acclimatization. Common side effects include numbness and tingling in the extremeties, ringing in the ears, loss of appetite, vomiting, and sleepiness. Some of these are also symptoms of altitude sickness, which confuses the culprit. Regardless, we gratefully accepted the drug and, after some useful research by Brian, started taking doses of 125mg every 12 hours for the next two days. -- 153. Kanakbek, from Osh 154. Bulukh, trucker 155. Damir, trucker from Sersha 156. Arstan from Osh — Day 84 — We hitched out of Sary-Tash this morning and caught our first ride in the back of a mountain pickup along with several boxes of vegetables. The wife of the driver would sound a siren every every few minutes, and it eventually occurred to us that we were riding in the back of a traveling market, delivering groceries to the nomads scattered throughout the vast plateau. The siren sounded one last time as the truck pulled up to its final stop at the foothills of the mountains surrounding the Kyzyl-Art Pass. A couple Kyrgyz families poured out of the nearby yurts and after greeting the traveling merchants, invited us all in for chay and a bowl of kumis. The fermented, effervescent horse milk is slightly alcoholic, and loaded with nutrients at this time of year when the mares are giving birth. We sat with the family in their cozy yurt, attempting broken small-talk across languages and enjoying watching their comfortable dynamic. The youngest children stared at us openly and curiously with an intelligent yet disarming innocence, while the older ones helped serve tea and snacks. We eventually said goodbye, paying the eldest son a few hundred som for their hospitality. After gaining some advice from the neighbours, communicated through maps scrawled with sticks into the dusty Pamir, we hiked onwards to a more strategic position where two roads meet before entering the mountains. We noticed our endurance waning with the altitude, and vaguely wondered how we would feel after climbing another 1300m later that day. Three cars passed while we spent the next two hours waiting, sheltered from the rain by our 8x6' tarp. A French couple going in the opposite direction stopped to say hello and offer us a cup of coca cola. No sooner had we sipped the sugar water than I heard the sound of an oncoming SUV and sprinted back to our hitchhiking spot. The 4x4 that stopped was occupied by another young French couple and their driver Aliakbek, heading into Tajikistan with two open seats in the car. David and Noémie live in Paris where they practice law and medicine, respectively, and were on the first day of a six month adventure through Central and Southeast Asia. They had already ascended 2100m from Osh in a single day, and eagerly accepted the Acetazolomide we offered them in preparation for the remaining 1200m to come. -- 157. Arshol and his wife, traveling merchants who sell vegetables to the local nomads 158. Noémie, David, and their driver Aliakbek

The first post of the Chinese border

Layering up as we begin to climb in the merchant's truck

A proud merchant, and nomadic Kyrgyz restocking on his supplies

Jalal-Abad, Kyrgyzstan

Fri, 21 Jun 2019 12:00:00 +0600

— Day 82 — We managed to hitchhike a ten-hour drive through Kyrgyzstan's vast mountain range today, from the North of the country to the South. After five cars helped us crawl out of Bishkek and its sprawling suburbs, we found ourselves at the last outpost before the road switchbacks into the mountains. A Mercedes pulled over for us after an hour of waiting, and the young couple behind the wheel happily took us all the way to Jalal-Abad. Jodar and Nura are business consultants from Bishkek and both spoke excellent English. The rest of the afternoon and evening was spent chatting with them about the ways of the world and consulting in developing countries while weaving through the mountain passes and valleys that punctuate Kyrgyzstan's landscape, passing over hundreds of yurts clustered in villages along the way. We were treated to delicious midnight lagman by our hosts and eventually pulled into a guesthouse at 1am, very sleepy but pleased with our fortunate success in making up for time lost to Aeroflot's mishap. -- 147. Serge, from Ukraine 148. Irkin, from Issyk-Kul 149. Mischa 150. Raslan and his father, from Bekitay 151. Murat from Sosnovka 152. Jodar and Nura, from Bishkek going to Jalal-Abad for business consulting. Drove us 9 hours through the mountains and treated us to delicious lagman.

Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

Wed, 19 Jun 2019 12:00:00 +0600

— Day 80 — Today while enjoying a ride from three young Kazakh businessmen, the driver asked if I was Muslim. I replied no, explaining my relatively-agnostic worldview. My answer to this question is usually followed by a noticeable silence, but this time I decided to push a little further. I asked in genuine curiosity if they thought that by not being Muslim, that means I'm a bad person. They replied that everyone is born a Muslim, regardless of whatever culture and beliefs come afterwards, and that I am just a 'musafir', a traveler; someone light on material possessions, and a guest in their home. They proudly explained that their act of taking care of me will be reflected come judgment day, and to them it doesn't matter whether or not I am a practicing Muslim. Along the same vein of hospitality, they treated me to a bowl of 'kozhe' (fermented milk with barley) at a stop along the highway before saying their goodbyes. -- 143. Bakha, from Shymkent 144. Almat and Nurlan from Taraz 145. Merik 146. Yerdan, technician — Day 81— Brian's flight back to Kyrgyzstan was delayed 24 hours, and when he arrived in Bishkek, he learned that 'Aeroflot' had 'misplaced' his backpack. Now we're enjoying the fun dance of chasing contacts within the Russian airline to get more information while coming to terms with whatever this means for the final leg of the trip. If we get delayed much longer, we probably won't have time to hitchhike the Pamir Pass, which was actually the inspiration for the entire journey. — Day 82 — Another 24 hours and many phone calls later, Brian's bag arrived on a flight from Moscow and was dropped off at the hostel. We swung by Osh Bazaar, our now-regular pitstop for restocking between adventures, and refilled our traveling pantry before beginning the long journey through the mountains to Tajikistan. These extra couple days in Bishkek have given me a chance to do some more research in preparation for this final stretch. The Pamir Highway through Southern Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan is the second-highest highway in the world, after the Karakoram Highway that snakes through Pakistan and Western China. The Pamir Mountains are nicknamed the 'Roof of the World', where the Himalayas meet with the Tian Shan, Karakoram, Kunlun, Hindu Kush, Suleman, and Hindu Raj ranges. Some passes of our route will exceed 4600m in height. For the first time in my life I found myself consulting altitude profiles, timing the hitchhiking so as to mitigate the risk of altitude sickness (which may just be inevitable, depending on our constitution and our luck). Knowledge of the remoteness of these roads adds to the anticipation of the climactic nature in these final few weeks. We've heard that as little as 7-10 vehicles pass per day, even during the summer months, and we are mentally and logistically preparing ourselves for varying degrees of strandedness. I am feeling restless, ready, and alive.

A new local friend keeping me company in the purgatorial Bishkek

Almaty, Kazakhstan

Fri, 14 Jun 2019 12:00:00 +0600

— Days 75-80 — As I pulled into Almaty, I realized that I was really looking forward to some downtime. In the last week I had hitchhiked over 1500km, camped in the eye of a storm on Lake Issyk-Kul, got caught alone in a blizzard at 3300m, and been adopted by illicit marijuana-harvesting Muslims in the world's largest cannabis field. My mind and body were feeling a little strung out, and I promised to treat myself to several days of reprieve in order to rest and process. It is my belief that experiences, no matter how enriching at the time, are only valuable if I allow myself the space to integrate them. The day I arrived, the government had complicated communications with my couchsurfing hosts by shutting down access to various social media platforms (WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook). There was general discontent around the 'election' that occurred a few days earlier, and police lined the streets in front of my host's apartment, ready to arrest any citizens collecting in protest. I've been warned by several people to be careful, as foreign journalists have been detained recently for unclear reasons. Supposedly if you comply and remember you are innocent it's hard to end up in Kazakh prison, and I didn't run into any problems regardless. In fact, despite the pressure obviously building beneath the surface, most of the city seemed very much alive and convincingly at ease, leading me to believe that the tensions probably aren't ready to successfully catalyze a nation-wide revolution just yet. The discontent IS apparent to me in the prominence of creative expression, with a some insightful graffiti and a high degree of educated young artists prowling the streets. There were thousands of people out at night publically dancing, singing, and playing games along the utopic pedestrian promenades. Whereas the political capital of Kazakhstan lies in the manufactured skyline of Astana to the North (recently renamed to pay homage to the former dictator 'Nursultan', an egomaniacal decision which is scoffed at by pretty much everyone I've spoken with), the cultural capital thrives in the ecclectic avenues of Almaty. The wealthy, modern city of 1.8 million is one of the few Eurasian metropolises, and is therefore unlike any city I've ever visited, weaving Western/European, Russian, Chinese, Turkic, and Muslim influences into its own traditionally-nomadic tapestry of Kazakh clan culture. The intricacies of 'horde' politics were explained to me by Maha, a perceptive human I was fortunate enough to meet during a social evening in the warm home of the talented artist that I approached at the Kyrgyz border. There is a deeply fractal ethnocentricism baked into Kazakh culture, with society divided by three main hordes, dozens of sub-tribes, and even more sub-clans. These remnants from the invasion of Genghis Khan are relatively institutionalized in that they influence broad-scale politics even today and are strategically exploited by Nursultan Nazarbayev and his political elite. The communist regime under the USSR didn't eradicate (and instead leveraged to their advantage) the tradition of clan culture, and also didn't permanently oppress religion to the extent that it did in other corners of its empire. Islam is still very prominent, though its roots grow from a Sufi foundation that leaned toward the mystical than toward the legalistic. That being said, Soviet remnants are still very apparent in the culture, with very close political ties to its former occupier and Russian ethnicity still representing a significant minority of the demographics even in the Southern city of Almaty. There is a unique flavour to this Soviet influence, and the absence of open smiles is an attributed trait that never ceases to surprise me. Despite the lack of extroverted warmth that I enjoy engaging with in more multi-active cultures, Almaty is a very comfortable place to lay low for a few days. It boasts clearly intentional design, tree-lined boulevards, excellent cafés, sprawling parks, and beautiful surrounding mountains and lakes. I spent my brief visit building a little home for myself here; enjoying the company of new friends, going on long walks through the gardens, and frequenting new favourite restaurants - feasting on lagman and traditionally-prepared horsemeat (a Kazakh staple). I spent my last afternoon in the vast Soviet-era bathing complex of Arasan, hopping between Turkish-style hammams, dry Finnish saunas, cold-plunge barrels, and impressively-hot Russian banyas, where the locals flogged my naked body with their oak leaves when I expressed my curiosity as to what their bathing practice was.

The women behind the meat, part I

The women behind the meat, part II

The women behind the meat, part III

The women behind the meat, part IV

The women behind the meat, part V

Shū, Kazakhstan

Wed, 12 Jun 2019 12:00:00 +0600

— Day 73 — Brian flew to America this morning for his sister's wedding, and I decided to hitchhike back to explore Eastern Kazakhstan. Before leaving town, I visited a master camera technician that Yura had referred me to last week, swinging by his workshop in a khrushchyovka basement in Central Bishkek. For the very reasonable fee of 1000 com (15 USD), he cleaned my light sensor, lens, and camera, including disassembling the body to remove the fine alkali dust that hitched a ride from last year's burning man. It feels almost as good as new despite a couple years of love and abuse. I caught a marshrutka to get out of town and was through the border within an hour. It's fascinating how much the social system of 'queueing' varies here. I was once again greeted by a jostling mob of people, and flowed upon the sea of elbows until I found myself on the other side with yet another stamp in my passport. I befriended an artist from Almaty in the mosh, and I'll be meeting up with her and her husband when I get there in a couple days. Today's direction though, was westward toward Chuy Valley. The ~32,000 sq.km swath of rolling plains is the putative birthplace of cannabis, with a climate that sustains over a million acres of wild plants. This coverage makes it the largest cannabis field in the world. Psychoactive use of the local drug dates back 2500 years to the ancient Scythians. Even today there is ritualistic harvest and use of it that has evolved throughout millenia despite thousands of people being thrown into the infamous Kazakh prisons every year for drug trafficking crimes under modern regimes. Up to 6,000 tons of weed and 40 tons of hashish are produced here annually, supplying the vast majority of the Russian market. I've found that marijuana has given birth to many fascinating microcultures throughout the world and centuries, from Northern Africa to Europe to Central Asia. Lured by my curiosity, I stuck out my thumb beyond the border town of Korday and within minutes was picked up by a couple young guys in a cargo van. When they heard I was planning on camping in the wild (a freedom which is perfectly legal and encouraged elsewhere in the traditionally nomadic realm of Kazakhstan), they cautioned against it, warning that I could end up in prison if the police find me camped near any fields. Aware that cannabis fields are hard to avoid in this land, I heeded their advice and asked if one of them had a floor I could crash on or a spot in their yard where I could pitch my tent. Ulmar generously obliged, proudly citing his Muslim hospitality, and we spent the rest of the ride semi-chatting in broken Russian/English/gestures assisted by Google translate. The sun was setting by the time we pulled into the village of Shu where Ulmar introduced me to his friends. Amir and his wife Inzhu live in a tent outside the partially-built home of his family of four (with another little one the way). Amir had just returned from a clandestine harvest of wild weed himself, and unveiled a dense bundle from within a cloth. While drying the leaves over a plate of steel and a cardboard fire, Amir explained one of the more unique rituals of harvesting weed that people still use. Men strip naked, shower vigorously, and ride horses through the meadows of head-high plants. The resin that inevitably coats them is scraped off and processed into the hashish which eventually makes its way to international markets. Apparently this form of 'guerilla harvest' is still used today as an alternative to the riskier mass cultivation of domestic plants. After indulging in some of his harvest followed by chai and wafers in his tent, we moved on toward the home of Amir's older brother, where I was introduced to five more of their friends, all in their 30s and 40s. It became apparent that I was the first Westerner that many of them had spent significant time with, and their curiousity was surpassed only by their hospitality amidst a barrage of excited Russian. All of them work in the trades as either mechanics, electricians, or teachers of one or the other. A round of 'salaam alaikum' and general introductions later, Ulmar quickly ushered me to the 'banya' to bathe. I took the hint, assuming my several days on the road were beginning to show. The house had no running water, so I assumed he was taking me to a water barrel outside and was utterly unprepared to find a complete woodfire sauna with a basin and hot water awaiting me. After I bathed in hot water and the feeling of gratitude, I did some breathwork in the sauna and grounded. It occurred to me that I haven't been centering as much as I'm used to, awareness of my breath being lost in the distractive current of fast-paced travel. It also occurred to me that just 30 hours earlier I was fighting against a blizzard at 3600m, and with a deep inhale I renewed my intention to ground daily and give my mind and body a rest when I get to Almaty. I spent the rest of the evening eating homemade food and sampling the local specialty with the group of friends. There was one man who was especially quiet and avoided eye contact with me. At one point he stepped toward me and said abruptly 'I am a Muslim. Are you?'. I was a little taken aback and felt disappointed, like I'd been labeled as an outsider by him in a way that created a new barrier. I explained that I wasn't, but that I appreciate and share many values of Islam; family, community, hospitality, the importance of intention, freedom from materialism. Some of these landed, and I noticed the tension ease as the circle nodded in approval. His demeanour didn't change much though, and despite my attempts at building rapport throughout the night I got the feeling that to him I remained an Alien. Driven paranoid by their lack of data privacy, the group of men refrained from cell phone use and spent much of the evening lamenting the authoritarian government under the cover of hushed voices, hinting at an upcoming revolution the seeds of which are taking root in Almaty. I'm excited to see what I uncover when I arrive at the eastern metropolis in a couple days. Due to awkward last-minute scheduling, I'll be staying with four different couchsurfing hosts throughout the next week, which will give me and my curiosity plenty of coverage. As I lay down in my makeshift bed on his floor and revisited the flow of events that placed me here, Amir's brother sat next to me and spent 15 minutes playing me the Muslim call to prayer through his smartphone. The pleasant lullaby served as a timely reminder of the cultural value system that I have to thank for being so utterly spoilt as a guest in its hospitable land. *names have been changed -- 140. Ulmar and Imir from Shu of Chuy Valley — Day 74 — We swapped gifts after a hearty breakfast of eggs and kielbasa. I sketched the group of friends around Amir's living room table, and wrote a quick letter expressing my sincere 'Ракмет'. I also left him a shell from the ocean and a collection of coins that I've accumulated from ten countries I visited this year, from Jordan to Azerbaijan. He was afraid that the coins were payment, but when he realized they were just parting souvenirs he relaxed and received them gratefully. I'm feeling slightly overwhelmed as I write this this; not entirely sure what to do with the immense hospitality I've been offered throughout the trip, beyond feel grateful for it. I suppose I can make some vows: continue hosting couchsurfers when I have a home base again, always look for an opportunity to help someone from abroad, never pass a hitchhiker again if I can help it (intuition and situation provided), and show up to the world in a fuller, deeper, more intentional way with every day that passes. The rest are easy, but this last one requires consistent attention. Amir took me on a little roadtrip after our exchanges, picking up Ulmar on the way. As Ulmar walked toward the car, a man chased after him screaming a slurred string of aggressive Russian. The catalyst of the conflict was unclear to me, but when the drunk man grabbed him by the collar and started swinging clumsily, Amir and I stepped in and de-escalated. Having spent much of my life avoiding places where very drunk people congregate, I had never actually had to de-escalate a fight before. It was a little scary, with a similar uncertainty to stepping in front of a raging bull. The technique I intuitively settled on was to stand beside them with my hands placed passively and defensively before me, calmly speaking assertive but pacifying English, almost the way I would speak to a panicked, barking dog. Fortunately, Ulmar wasn't retaliating, which made the job a lot easier. Eventually the man backed off, and we hopped into the van and peeled off into the highway. While driving away, they told me that the man was an alcoholic police officer, accompanying the explanation with the gesture of flicking their necks with their forefinger (common in Central Asia for 'drunk'). I didn't get any further information on the backstory, and after some unsuccessful probing let the topic rest along with my curiosity. Before dropping me off at the highway junction, the two friends took me on a small sidetrip down a long dirt road to show me just how vast the world's largest cannabis field is. As we rolled through the dust, thousands upon thousands of wild cannabis plants streamed past the window in thick patches, impregnating the air with a fresh, herbal smell. I gazed at the field and imagined horsemen riding through them naked but for sweat and sap, and smiled at the thought of hash harvested like this making its way to European coffeeshops. We bade our farewells soon afterwards, and I made off in the direction of Almaty. The rest of the hitch was effortless, with a couple kind truckers picking me up a hundred kilometres from the city and treating me to a delicious lagman at one of the Central Asian highway stops that have now become so familiar to me. -- 141. Rashit and Oorlan, truck drivers from Astana 142. Ruslad, an off-duty police officer from Almaty

They had a map of Canada on their wall, and said that me turning up was 'fate'

Cannabis growing from a crack on their porch

More highway lagman. Also smiling in photos is just not a cultural trend here. Very soviet that way.

Ak-Sai Glacier, Kyrgyzstan

Mon, 10 Jun 2019 12:00:00 +0600

— Days 70-72 — I returned from Issyk-Kul craving physical exertion, and found it among the dwarfing cliffs of Ala-Archa Gorge. The route was ambitious, ascending over 1100m elevation to arrive at a 3300m base camp at the foot of Ak-Sai Glacier. Brian hadn't gotten much sleep the night before and, listening to his body, turned back after the first couple kilometres of climbing. I agreed to check in when connection provided and meet up with him in Bishkek the next day. No sooner had I left Brian when I passed a group of hikers who excitedly told me they had turned back when confronted with a snowstorm at 2700m. One of them showed me a video of the conditions, and although it looked intimidating it didn't appear impassable. I had enough layers and gear on my back to keep me warm [enough] through a night of winter camping if I got stranded, and vowed to exercise extra care when placing my feet so as not to roll an ankle and trap myself in the ice. I continued deeper into the dense fogbank, greeting wild horses and marmots in the plateaus along the way while noticing the temperature drop a few degrees with every hundred metres. At one point I had my head down to observe my footing on the slick mud and rocks when I heard some foreign footfalls. I looked up just as a herd of a dozen longhorned mountain ibex bolted across the path just three metres ahead of me. Throughout the rest of the hike when I heard the tumble of rocks I would peer into the mist and catch a glimpse of a horned alpine resident peering curiously back at me. The rain turned to sleet around 2700m as promised, and before long I was clambering up a ridge in ankle-deep snow feeling grateful for the layer of goretex that lines my hiking shoes. The only piece of gear I found myself dreaming of was a pair of gloves as my bare hands plunged into the snow for purchase on the steeper slopes. A deeper sense of isolation accompanied the blizzard as visibility dropped to a few metres. I found myself vaguely appreciating how the lonely claustrophobia induced by white-out conditions is unique in that the walls trapping you are simultaneously infinite yet suffocatingly impenetrable. Light began fading as I approached 3000m, but I decided to press on instead of turning back, determining that I had equal chance of making it to the base camp as I did of ducking below the cloudbank by nightfall. I eventually came to an slick clifface, and as my stiff hands closed around the icy anchor rope, I felt my first flash of genuine fear of the trip. This fear quickly converted into a crisp boost of adrenaline that propelled me up the face and settled into a cold motivational fuel that powered me through the final stretch. Despite this, the last kilometre was honestly the most difficult leg of hiking I've done, with my energy steadily waning as my focus narrowed to the bare necessities of my immediate present. Riding a wave of euphoric relief, I arrived at the base camp as night fell and was greeted by only one other traveler along with his Kyrgyz guide. Oleg is from Russia, and was spending ten days at the camp summiting the nearby peaks, training for climbing the five 7000+ m mountains in Russia. Off the mountain, Oleg is Head of the Department of Oriental Studies at Moscow University. He spent the last 15 years living in South Korea and shared stories of his research trips to North Korea while I ate my dinner of nuts, cheese, carrots, and bread in the frosty hut. We swapped contact info before calling it a night, and he promised to show me the remote corners of Korea next time I end up in that part of the world. I fell asleep cocooned by all my layers within my sleeping bag and woke up sweating against a sunny morning. After a breakfast of nuts and dried apricots, I climbed another few hundred metres to a 3600m plateau and watched as the thick clouds rolled back up the gorge, trapping me in my now-familiar white prison. Following the subterranean gurgle of water, I dug up a glacial spring and refilled on water before descending back into the wall of flurries, driven by gravity and the thought of the hot shower that awaited me in Bishkek. -- 137. Kirik, from Kaji-Say 138. Shakent and his kids. Brian drove whole Shakent took shots of vodka.Nurlan, from Bishkek 139. Nurlan, from Bishkek

A new friend

Wild horses grazing on the plateau

The cloud follows me up the valley

Another new friend

The Loneliest Outhouse

Ratcek hut base camp

Shivering wildflowers

Hello again, old friend

Ak-Sai Glacier

Alpinist plotting

Mourning fallen climbers

Ducking back beneath the cloud

Lake Issyk-Kul, Kyrgyzstan

Fri, 07 Jun 2019 12:00:00 +0600

— Day 68 — After spending a few weeks hitchhiking across the dusty steppe cities of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, we have been craving nature and the cradled isolation that only mountains can provide. Following some bits and pieces of information from other travelers, today we hitched from Bishkek to the Southern coast of Issyk-Kul, the world's second-largest alpine lake at 1600m elevation. We were dropped off well after the sun set, and as we hiked off the highway toward the water, we spotted some flashlights hovering in the distance. We approached to discover a group of drunk young men from the local village. They welcomed us enthusiastically and invited us to join them in celebrating one of their 19th birthdays, plying us with vodka and a bottomless mountain of Issyk-Kulski Kurdag, a hearty meat and potato stew that had been simmering over a bed of hot coals. Several shots and selfies later, we set on our way again much to the chagrin of our hosts and found a place to set up camp for the night. Now I'm listening to waves crashing as I write this from the comforts of my tent, staked to rocky shores of this 700m-deep bowl of water rimmed by looming mountains. -- 130. Nurlan, from Krasni Vostok 131. Young family from Bishkek 132. Man in black Alto 133. Maxar and his minibus with the sick family through the mountains 134. Almaz from Bishkek, in his truck 135. Ulmar, from Bishkek — Day 69 — I had spent some time perusing satellite images and chose a remote slice of shoreline that looked like it would offer comfortable camping refuge for a day. The next morning we broke camp against violent gusts of wind from an incoming thunderstorm and hitched another 40km to my chosen spot of wilderness, bracing ourselves for a very wet, very windy day. Much to our surprise, the storm(s) never descended upon us and instead circled us playfully for the next 14 hours while we lounged on the beach. After hours of observing storms come and go, lightning striking over the distant lake and mountains, it finally occurred to me that we must be in the center of an immense and violent weather system. Such a huge body of water provides both the moisture and the thermal mass to fuel fierce weather, and we were grateful to be escaping the full force of it, if only just barely. Beyond the swirling formations of dark clouds that courted us, layers of glowing mountain ranges extended as far as the eye could see, crisp white peaks highlighted against a distant blue sky. Before us, the sapphire waves curled and broke onto the orange sand, forming a lens effect that allowed us to see dozens of metres into the water with a crystalline clarity. I had a sudden realization that this was the most stunning environment I'd ever experienced, and there was a pleasant sense of stability in the absoluteness of this knowledge. For this reason and others that will remain comfortably beyond the scope of this intimidatingly-public chronicle, this was by far the most intense, introspective day of the trip. As we sat awestruck in the sand, two miniscule events of consciousness completely at the mercy of forces including but far beyond the dance of atmospheric thermodynamics that dwarfed us, Brian and I each devoted significant time and attention to observing and exploring subtle questions and patterns in our behaviour. For over 12 hours straight, we practiced an authentic relating tool called 'circling', wherein communication is very intentionally altered to reflect the immediate, vulnerable reality of your experience with one or more people. I have never before gone so deep with it, and came out with a more complex, albeit currently less grounded awareness of the subtleties of self, vulnerability, and human connection. I'm still integrating it and will mostly leave it at that, but some thematic takeaways/reminders of the day were: * Life is play, even at its most serious * Listen to your body * To experience true vulnerability, identify and hold space for the parts of you that are afraid of being seen, and then let people see them. For me, this is a very 'masculine-feeling' part of myself that takes the form of a deep, powerful, oddly benign rage that I'm grateful for. * Human interaction is an unconscious dance of improvised, co-scripted maskwork One of the reasons traveling is so important to me is because it's an experiment in which I am the control variable. As environments change, I can observe the parts of myself (and the world), that remain, shedding barriers and frames that weren't 'mine' to begin with. For me, the constant challenge and expansion of perspectives leads to intention and change I'm deeply grateful for, and today was a fun reintegration of some buried ideas. The other day my friend Rory shared some powerful words of desire from Terry Tempest Williams that shook me, and that my mind has kept returning to: 'I want to feel both the beauty and the pain of the age we are living in. I want to survive my life without becoming numb. I want to speak and comprehend word of wounding without having these words become the landscape where I dwell. I want to possess a light touch that can elevate darkness to the realm of stars.' -- 136. Bakbek and his boss — EDIT — This day inspired a poem several weeks later, which I'll include in its rightful place here: When was the last time you saw into someone? Just as two frequencies sympathize, Eye contact builds resonance too. Your gaze meets another. You see them, React to them, Experience them. They see you seeing them, Experience you experiencing them, React to your reaction to them. What happens if you don't look away? Like any good feedback loop, you iterate. Your gazes cascade and compound, Melting into a complex adaptive dance Between whirling dervishes of swirling souls. As your collective rate of iteration increases, Constructive interference climbing in amplitude, You may notice a voice, Urgently whispering 'look away'. But if you stay with this level of sensation, Allowing your heartrate to climb Along with that tightening whine of feedback, Your two beams of consciousness may meet In that space that cannot locate itself For a time that cannot be measured. You may catch a glimpse of the shadow that exists between You. No, within You. No, beyond You. The connection is severed. You both look away. What did you just see? Did you see Yourselves in that abyss? Or was it the thing that wears your many masks? Nevermind. Let's get some food, I'm starving.

Highway squat-stop

Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

Thu, 06 Jun 2019 12:00:00 +0600

— Day 67 — Yesterday after we crossed back into Kazakhstan, we realized that Brian had the wrong dates on his Kyrgyzstan e-visa. Since they only grant visa-on-arrival at Bishkek airport, the solution he settled on was to fly the 600 km distance from Shymkent to Bishkek, while I did a hitchhiking sprint to meet up with him by that evening. I managed to slowly close the gap to the Kyrgyzstan border, but kept getting hit by a thunderous hail/rain/lightning storm that was following me East. Not many cars were stopping, and with every truck that passed I was hit with a wall of cold spray and highway silt. Night fell but I wanted to keep going, determined to make it to a warm bed in Bishkek. Hitching at night is difficult but not impossible. Cars are both more scarce and less likely to pick you up, but the greatest challenge is the inability to see into the eyes of the drivers. I rely heavily on eye contact as my method of knowing people before getting into a car with them, as it is much easier to hide bad intentions in the teeth of a grin than it is in the eyes. Fortunately there are other ways to read people, and my final few rides to the border were smooth beyond being followed by a rambunctious drunk man for several kilometres as I made my way through the border town of Korday. I arrived at the border at 23:00 and was greeted by yet another chaotic 'queue' to exit Kazakhstan, with a jostling mob of 50 people crowded around a single border exit guard. It took some time, but I made it through and entered Kyrgyzstan with a sigh of relief, catching a final ride to Bishkek from a kind lady I approached after the border. -- *Random thoughts on language: Even compared to East and Southeast Asia, I've never traveled anywhere where so little English is spoken. Of my last 50 rides, I would guess about three of the drivers spoke English. Whereas English became the language that 'united' most of the western world, here it was obviously Russian that was the common tongue of the Soviet Republics. Growing up in 'The West', I didn't truly understand the vastness of the USSR. Only now am I beginning to wrap my head around how little I knew of this entire world that was built behind the iron curtain, where Russian was the language of the people and the future. With my barren vocabulary of conversational Russian, I intuitively rely on maps to communicate where I'm going with drivers. Unfortunately, that's also a language that many people don't speak. This is similar to what I've experienced with taxi drivers in Seoul, who rely solely on landmarks and voice navigation. I consistently take the fact for granted that visual mapping, like any language, is something that is learned. -- 123. Baoca, in a car full of onions, carrots and people, heading to Sastobe 124. Viktor, a truck driver from Shymkent 125. Oolan, from Taraz 126. Mirlan, from Akchulak 127. Double-decker coach bus heading to Almaty 128. Borjan, from Almaty 129. Aysada, from Bishkek. Works in the multi-level marketing machine that is Amway.

Picked up by a double-decker bus

The best market we've come across so far

Gambling

Shymkent, Kazakhstan

Wed, 05 Jun 2019 12:00:00 +0600

— Day 66 — Eid Mubarak! Ramadan has ended, and today is Eid al Fitr. Most Uzbekistanis are at home celebrating with their families and the streets of Tashkent are quiet, though not entirely deserted. After buying a 1957 f/2 50mm USSR lens from Yura for my own future portrait photography, we swung by a market before hitchhiking out of the country. It was the emptiest market I've ever seen. The vendors welcomed us and seemed comfortable with their slow day of sales, lounging outside their stalls enjoying a day of peace. We bought some scarves, wished them Eid Mubarak, and headed North toward Kazakhstan. -- 122. Sheku and Achtar, from Turkistan

An enthusiastic shopkeeper wanted a photo

Tashkent, Uzbekistan

Mon, 03 Jun 2019 12:00:00 +0500

— Day 64 — I came down with a head cold during our trip across the desert last week which evolved into a minor flu that followed me through Khiva, Bukhara, and Samarkand. It culminated in a fever last night, which blissfully broke after 12 hours of sleep. Today we enjoyed a very easy hitchhike to Tashkent (catching one ride all the way to our host's apartment), and I progressively felt more and more 'alive' the closer we got to our next destination. After arriving, I meditated for the first time in a week and as I watched my thoughts flicker across the field of my mind before settling, I realized that I haven't been mindful of where my attention has been drifting throughout the past few days. It's sapped all of my limited energy to fight the flu while navigating the logistics of travel and trying to remain present to the experience and the people around me. Although it's been an incredible few days, I haven't had the mental bandwidth to process and integrate as much as I usually do, and as a result I haven't been writing much. It feels like a fog is lifting from over my mind, and I am so grateful for my returned clarity of thought after having experienced life without it. -- 121. Rustan and Ahriden, from Jizzakh - golden ticket all the way from Samarkand to our host's place in Tashkent — Day 65 — I suspected Yura was a unique host from his couchsurfing profile and references, but I was still not quite prepared for the world that awaited us in his apartment, buried deep in a moldy khrushchyovka in Southwest Tashkent. Over dinner of exceptional plov at a bustling local 'osh xana' down the street, he explained 'I don't live in Uzbekistan, I don't live in Tashkent. I live in my world, my laboratory'. Yura makes his living from refurbishing and selling Soviet camera lenses on ebay, and spends the rest of his time working on his artwork while fine-tuning the instruments in his impressive collection of photography paraphenalia. Lenses and miscellaneous relics of the USSR are piled high throughout his apartment. He excitedly showed off his collection, which included a 27kg Soviet military lens of which he was particularly proud. Yura's main photography project is a series of striking portraits of travelers from all over the world. He shoots his subjects through an apertureless f/3.65 365mm lens onto an 18x24cm negative. To accompany the photo, he has his subjects answer a series of questions on the back of a negative, the text of which he then inverts and pairs with the resulting positive. It's a play of self in relation to world; an intimate exploration of light and dark, subject and object, hidden and seen. He invited me to take part in his project during our last night with him, so while Brian was out with an awesome human we met in the metro earlier that day, I found myself sitting in a dark study at 3am, gazing into the depths of Yura's lens. I understood what Yura had meant by 'laboratory' when he killed the overheads and switched on the strings of red christmas lights strung throughout his apartment, essentially turning his entire home into a darkroom. He takes himself and his work very seriously, and as soon as the white light was replaced with red, the ritual began. As he slowly adjusted and finicked with his equipment over an ambient soundtrack of droning synthesizer echoing from the tinny speakers of his iPhone, he explained his Zorastrian reverence of light, his patient mastery of the medium through which he sees the world. The depth of field of his lens is stunningly shallow, and adjusting the focus was a 30-minute process that required statue-stillness on my part. This was challenging, because Yura's apartment is utterly infested with thousands of cockroaches (a problem which plagues many festering khrushchyovkas), and I had to embrace the distraction of his tiny roommates as they crawled up my legs and got caught in my hairs. With the focus set, he removed his bowler hat from the lens, put it on his head, and counted to three before slowly sweeping a radiating lamp across me, painting his subject's face with the light that he worships. We took two of these portraits, and each capture was followed by immediately developing the negative in his moldy bathroom-turned-darkroom. The whole process took several hours, and by the time we were finished I was grateful for the unique experience but very ready for sleep. Here are Yura's questions, along with my answers: -- Questions: * Who are you, how old are you and where are you from? * Why do you have such a name? * Where do you live and what do you do? * What languages can you speak and why? * Where have you been in which countries? * Why did you go there and what did it give you? * How did this affect you? * What are your plans for the future? Answer: I am known as Escott. I was born in Toronto, Canada 27 years ago. Escott is the middle of my three names, and was passed down from my Great Grandfather, a Canadian diplomat who worked alongside Lester B. Pearson to found NATO and the United Nations. To me, his name represents worldcentric values and action, and although it is an odd name, it is one that I am happy to bear. I have no 'fixed address'. My last residence was in Berlin, and the closest idea of a 'home' to return to is amongst the ocean, mountains, and trees of the western Canadian rainforest. Although my education is in mechanical engineering, humans are more beautiful to me than machines and my life and career reflects this. Using artwork as a medium of communication has been consistent throughout my life, in the form of design, painting, and writing. I am passionate about human connection in all its various forms, specifically fascinated by the worlds we build through interactions. I speak English, French, and elementary German. English is clear, scientific, and global, French is fluid, romantic, and rich, and German is pragmatic and structured. I love how different languages alter the flavour of my thoughts and the structure of my mind, and I value the conversational intimacy of connecting with someone in their native tongue. I've travelled through over 55 countries in varying degrees of depth, mostly in Asia, Europe, North America, and bits and pieces of Eastern and Northern Africa. I've hitchhiked through about half of them, which gives me a window into people's lives that I deeply value. I seek the stories that shape our identities both as individuals and as cultures and love observing the causal cascades of systems in culture, economics, and politics. Internally, intentional travel is an experiment in which I am the control variable, stripping me of the parts of myself that don't belong to me while helping me build a more complex model of the world. My future lies in the intersection between art, science, and human connection. I believe that through more intentional design of systems and the reunion of the worlds of art and science, we can heal individual and collective traumas by catalyzing growth and development. My current study on this trip is in the fears behind barriers, and how we can transcend the ethnocentric values that result in borders, suffering, and dehumanization.

Plov being served at the local osh xana. Tradition states it can only be cooked and served by a man, but during Ramadan the restaurants sneakily have women serving during the day, as all the more devout Muslims are fasting.

Yura and his кошка

Bathroom darkroom

Inverted negatives

Negatives

Inverted negative

Samarkand, Uzbekistan

Sat, 01 Jun 2019 12:00:00 +0500

— Days 62-63 — Samarkand, named by UNESCO as 'Crossroad of Cultures', is the crown jewel of Uzbekistan and one of the oldest cities in Central Asia, with a history stretching from the Iron Age through Hellenistic, Islamic, Mongol, and Russian eras. It is home to what is by far the most stunning collection of Islamic architecture I've ever seen. There was an impressive lightshow at the Registan the night we arrived (put on for the visiting president of the EU Council), and after the guards cleared everyone out we strolled back into Sher-Dor Madrasa unnoticed and had the entire site to ourselves to explore. There used to be a bustling market flanked by the three looming madrasas, and Brian and I enjoyed envisioning what this ancient Silk Road intersection must have looked like with merchants trading goods sourced from Far West to Far East. -- 117. Minibus driver inside Bukhara 118. Anjir, the marketing artist from Gijduvan 119. Sardor 120. Ahror, from Andijon

Hammam in the old Jewish quarter

Bukhara, Uzbekistan

Thu, 30 May 2019 12:00:00 +0500

— Day 61 — Bukhara is another Silk Road city with a history stretching back thousands of years. Located in the populous eastern end of Uzbekistan, the city has had time to develop the excess of tourism infrastructure that Khiva currently lacks, with Uzbekistan's maturing market economy/society showing itself in the prevalence of touts, souvenir storefronts, and tourguides. We found ourselves missing the intimacy and genuine warmth of Khiva, but admired Bukhara's sprawling tiled madrasas, ornate mosques, and towering minarets nonetheless. -- 112. Rasul, from Bukhara 113. Zahir, from Turtkul 114. Hanvar, from Bukhara 115. Gayrat, from Samarkand 116. Igir, from Bukhara

Treated to another highway lunch - fresh fish from the Amu Darya, this time!

Wandering angry man threatening a cleaner with a stick

Khiva, Uzbekistan

Tue, 28 May 2019 12:00:00 +0500

— Days 58-60 — Being 500km West of the nearest Silk Road city of Bukhara, Khiva is often overlooked. Coming from the western border though, it was our first stop in the country. Khiva is an oasis sandwiched between sprawling deserts and has a rich history as a trading centre for silk and slaves. The town is a reminder of the magic that exists in historical gems before the inevitable inundatation of tourists [like us]. The locals smiled and chatted with us in genuine pleasure and curiousity; interactions untainted by the transaction of wealth or the tiresome nature of template tourism.⁣ I've never been to a UNESCO World Heritage Site where the locals outnumber tourists by such a margin, and as there were only a handful of other travelers in the town, we were blissfully free to explore without the crowds of touts and bustours. Despite recent reconstruction efforts, the site felt untouched and 'raw'. During one of our walks atop the city wall, we stumbled upon an entire human skeleton revealed by a crumbling tomb. We woke up on our second day there to find the town alive in anticipatory excitement. Hundreds of villagers had bussed in from out of town, dressed in stunning traditional garb, and were rehearsing in the streets; music, dance, puppet shows, ceremonial theatre. At one point we were sitting in the courtyard of the Kunia Ark, with maybe five other travelers, when 30 actors and musicians paraded in and set up a theatrical rehearsal, complete with a 12-person band, jesters, and a mock court. We eventually learned that the catalyst for the festival was a visit from the German President, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, planned for the next day. Germany is Uzbekistan's closest partner in the EU, and has been investing in Uzbekistan since the fall of the USSR. One of Germany's motivations is the international propagation of basic human rights. Uzbekistan is historically notorious for being one of the worst countries in the world for political and civil liberties. In 2014 it boasted the world's second-highest rate of modern slavery at ~4% of the population (over 1.2 million people), second only to North Korea. When the dictatorial Islam Karimov died in 2016, his Prime Minister replaced him. The new regime brought along something that resembled a top-down revolution, with progress being made for the first time in decades (returning freedom of movement to its citizens through the abolishment of Soviet-style exit visas, opening visa-free travel to 45 countries, and general crackdowns on nepotism). There is still a long way to go, especially with respect to the blatant slavery in cotton production, but the relief of change was palpable in everyone we spoke with. We decided to stay another day so we could follow the president through his festival, and it was fascinating to witness the backstage preparation of a show produced solely to impress the representative of one of Uzbekistan's greatest benefactors. The next afternoon the whole town was standing at attention, and nothing could be heard but the hushed yet urgent shouts of security personnel and the occasional static of radios. The collective excitement was contagious, and I found myself holding my breath along with the performers, giddy with anticipation. Steinmeier finally arrived followed by a vast convoy of diplomats and security, and the ancient West gate of the city greeted him in an eruption of elaborate music and dance; dozens of trumpet blasts from the turrets, drummers lining the balconies of the madrasa, flocks of children spinning and laughing in a flurry of excited dance. We slipped in among the diplomats just a few metres behind Steinmeier and saw the city through his eyes as the guests were paraded through the cobblestone streets, suits and ties marching in stark contrast to the colourful composition of celebration that engulfed them.

View from the watchtower Kunia Ark

Waiting

The German Tourist

THE PRESIDENT IS COMING

Steinmeier enjoying the show

The Diplomats enter the gates of Khiva