Aboard the Cargo Ship on the Caspian Sea

From July 20, 2014 - updated (6/16/17): It's almost three years since we embarked on the cargo ship in Baku, deep in the night, uncertainty surrounding us, the ship's trajectory pointed northeast across the Caspian Sea. For some reason, this post of photos from life on the ship never published. And as a chronicle of our Silk Road trip, the blog would be incomplete without them.

Our cabin was sweltering when we first arrived, air barely escaping the AC vent. Dad made friends with the ship's engineer who was able to fix it for us.

One of the surprising things was that we never saw any other ships or boats or anything besides the blue Caspian Sea.

The toilet and shower leaked so much water on the floor that it was better not to use.

Lunch and dinner always started with a delicious soup. The captain and crew ate before us. We ate with the other passengers, a mix of Georgians, Azeris, Russians and a Chechen, who ate with his Russian girlfriend after everyone else was done.

The Chechen and I actually ran into each other in the empty cantina and after the mutual shock, we had tea together and shared photos on our phones of family and home.

There was not much to do on the ship and 28 hours felt like forever so we played at least a dozen backgammon games. Dad would not want me to share the results.

A view inside the cantina. You had to be on time for breakfast (7:15 AM), lunch (12:30 PM) and dinner (6:30 PM) or risk getting the scraps. Scorching hot tea was available 24 hours in tall kettles. There was no coffee.

The other passengers, big muscular round guys, spent the day playing chess and drinking tea. At night the vodka came out, and it did get a little loud, but nothing out-of-hand. These guys had to be ready to move and unload at 5 AM. 

Caspian Sea sunset.

End of the Road

On Day 24, the final day of our journey, we followed the Silk Road as far as we could to the Tian Shan mountains on the border of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan overlooking Almaty. 

A 4 km gondola ride took us to the Chimbulak ski resort, over 9,000 feet above sea level. From there, two more gondola rides brought us to the Talgar Pass, elevation about 10,000 feet, twice  the height of Mt. Marcy. 

We hiked up a trail that led to the base of a glacier but had to turn back 45 minutes in or risk missing the final gondola back down a thousand feet to the mountain hotel.

Almaty is one of the finalists for the Winter Olympics in 2022. Based on the infrastructure we saw, they could definitely pull it off. Being rich in oil and gas helps. 

 

The view from our balcony below. Good night mountains. Good night Almaty. Good night path that leads to China. Good night Silk Road. 

Our final Silk Road stop - Almaty

You can see in Almaty the quite remarkable reach Soviet culture, architecture and city design had from Central Europe to Central Asia. 

The ice cream is the same style that I could find in a village in Slovakia - lemon, strawberry, pistachio, stracietella (chocolate chip), plus vanilla and chocolate - in tiny scoops that don't leave you full for two days. 

Concrete, square, utilitarian blocks of flats, store fronts, houses of culture, oddly shaped fountains and war memorials all could be found in Warsaw as well as Almaty thousands of miles apart. 

And a broad grid of wide streets, convenient for tanks to roll down if needed, interlock with pedestrian underpasses that have been divied up to sell every conceivable consumer good - toys, school supplies, clothes, beauty products, food, etc. at each intersection near the center of town. 

Almaty is a fun clash of cultures with Russian overtaking Kazakh as the main language and people you see, Uzbeks and Chinese dominate the bazaar, and Koreans own swanky coffee shops, bars and trendy restaurants in the pedestrian zone. 

Here are some Images from Almaty :

McDoner - a clever rip off of McDonald's for Turkish kebabs. 

The city is full of fountains though this is one of the more modern ones. 

The national dish in Kazakhstan is horse meat. Here in the Green Bazaar line the prime cuts of my little pony. Dad and I tried some horse steak when we were in Aktau, Kazakhstan. Not bad, similar texture to beef, but needed a lot of sauce. 

This Uzbek seller, Hajaveer (how I sounded out his name) when he found out I was from New York, showed me a Ferrari on his phone. Not sure why. I bought some dates and pistachios from him. 

One of the most intimidating Soviet World War II monuments I've ever seen. Depicting faces from many ethnic groups, these soldiers look ready to march to the ends of the earth. 

This onion dome cathedral was made entirely of wood in 1907. While it's taller than Hronsek, the wooden church where Reni and I were married in Slovakia, it can seat half the number of people. The path to the church linked directly with the mammoth war memorial. 

There were over 20 high-intense games going on at once. The only sound was the swiping of chess pieces off the boards. 

Corn on Pizza

There is nothing quite like corn on pizza. Really. We've been enjoying this style of pizza once in a while across the Caucuses and Central Asia. When will pizza in the US wise up?

Uzbek Som

Traveling around with Som, Uzbekistan's currency, is a pain. $1 USD = 2,300 Som (official rate), but the black market rate is 3,000 Som for $1 USD. The biggest denomination is a 1,000 Som note. So 20 bucks is 60,000 Som. Try fitting that into your wallet. Bank cards are not accepted anywhere nor are there ATMs. Annoying. Changing money isn't difficult as every bazaar has a spot and it's surprisingly not shady. 

A shared taxi ride around town costs 3,000 to 6,000 Som, to the train station 20,000 Som. A Coca-Cola costs 7,000 Som or over 2 bucks while their national orange soda or super sweet tea costs 1,000 Som. Local Uzbek beer called Pulsar, which is a light lager and pretty good, costs 3,500 Som. The Danish beer Tuborg is the only western brew available and it costs the same as a Coke. 

We have been using Mark's school backpack to lug around the thousands of Som needed for commerce in the country. Every Uzbek carries a kind of purse or murse. Counting a 90,000 Som meal takes about 10 minutes after both parties have shuffled through the stack. 

Road to Samarkand

We had to be on the move a lot in Uzbekistan because our visa expired Wednesday July 30 and our train into Kungrad arrived the evening of Friday July 25. That gave us 5 days to get to and see the Uzbek Silk Road cities of Khiva, Bukhara, Samarkand, and Tashkent. All far away from Kungrad, a forgetful Soviet army construction, and Nukus, the regional capital of Karakalpakstan, the northwest state in Uzbekistan that also encompasses the dying Aral Sea, where we managed to find a place to crash after our 28-hour no sleep train experience. 

The distances are great in Uzbekistan, unfortunately the transportation options not so much. So Khiva had to be missed since it took 8 hours by shared Taxi to get to Bukhara from Nukus. As the sun set and the driver blasted melodic Arabic chanting during the final day of Ramadan, the same desert landscape passed by. But then the stars appeared. 

I was sitting in the back right side awe struck by the thousands of southern stars and luminous Milky Way. The Sky Guide app on the iPhone identified the jumpingly bright Scorpio constellation and the star Antares, one of only a few stars bright enough for Mark and I to see in Jersey City. 

The front seat passenger, a sugar trader named Javahir, was captivated by the Sky Guide app and we soon bonded - again without speaking each other's languages, only the joy of the stars in common. 

We made it to Bukhara after midnight. I already wrote about Bukhara so moving to Monday morning July 28 - this time we were happy to take the last 2 tickets available for a high speed TGV-like express train three hours to Samarkand. The regular train takes 8 hours. 

Samarkand! The fabled Silk Road city. Home of the Registan (see photos below), the name for three mammoth Madresses (schools) with intricate mosaic facades, domes, minaret towers, mausoleums, mosques and courtyards. All three similar in design but built hundreds of years apart. The oldest in 1420, the newest in 1660. Samarkand has been rocked by violent earthquakes over the centuries destroying the city numerous times, yet these three buildings still stand. 

We visited other famous Samarkand sites including Shah-i-Zinda, an eerie row of about 40-50 tall, artistic mausoleums, and Gur-e-Amir, another mausoleum housing the remains of Timur, the ruthless Khan who with a lame leg nonetheless conquered Samarkand and bankrolled the Registan. 

To see all in one day was exhausting and honestly the buildings started to blur into one. It is forbidden to depicit any human form in Islamic art and architecture to prevent the false adulation of people over Allah. So complex patterns and colors must be woven into the mosaics placed on the structures. 

Bukhara - Ancient Crossroads

Dad and I absolutely loved Bukhara, the ancient crossroads of the Silk Road. The architecture is stunning - a mixture of Maddresses, Mosques, and battlements. 

The Shashlik (BBQ meat) is so good with raw onions soaked in vinegar and spices. Yes, that's me eating onions below. 

There are over 140 Maddresses (Islamic schools) in Bukhara. Many of the kids would shout out to us "Hello! Where are you from?" Then run away when we said "America!" Then run back when we shouted "New York!"

Below Dad sits on the throne of the Emir in the Ark, which was originally a 4th Century fort that was taken over at least seven times and rebuilt bigger each time but to little avail - conquers include Alexander the Great, Ghengis Kahn, Timur (Tsmerlane), the Persians, the Turks, the Czar, and the Bolsheviks - all sat on this throne.