Alan Perlman

I was aflutter.

It had been almost three years since my academic semester in Kathmandu, and I was coming back. I was really coming back. Would the city look the same? Would I remember my homestay neighborhood? How would the family dog, Jenny, greet me? Probably with a growl. Definitely with a growl. For whatever reason, Jenny and I were never on the best of terms.

From Tribhuvan International Airport, my colleague and I arranged a local taxi and flitted through Kathmandu’s streets with chaotic gusto. Well, until we hit traffic. Two and three and four-wheeled vehicles contending for space with people and pushcarts, stray dogs and large, lethargic cows. Kathmandu’s congestion pockets were hustling and bustling away. It smelled the same—like diesel, mostly. I rolled down the window. That particular afternoon, the air was just crisp enough to flaunt the distant Himalaya.

It all felt so natural. The ethos of Kathmandu was within my grasp once again, and the feeling of dislocation that I often experience when hopping from city to city was gone. I was finally returning to a place I called home for nearly four months. A place where I discovered a passion for travel, a love of culture and a newfound understanding of world citizenship.

A lot had changed in the past three years. Nepal had abolished its monarchy. A ten-year Maoist insurgency—scattered with four cease-fires—had finally seen its end. King Gyanendra, before leaving the palace and retreating to the outskirts of Kathmandu, handed in his scepter, peacock-feathered crown and royal yak hair. Buildings rose and restaurants opened. Dense became denser, and urban survival masks became the new fashionable accessory for the pollution-conscious populace.

Of course, much stayed the same. Thamel, a bubble of tourism, was still Thamel. Lonely Planet trekkers, Europeans and Israelis and Australians, buying tiger balm, knock-off (and sometimes kitschy) media, clothing and outdoor gear. Banks, image developing centers, countless tourist agencies – it’s all here. You can book flights to Lukla, the launch point for all Everest-bound trekkers, or buy bus tickets to Pokhara (flying is safer!), a popular destination just west of Kathmandu. You could be an ice axe wielding mountaineer, neophyte Buddhist or substance seeking nomad and find a way to blend in. Thamel’s cramped streets will satisfy your every tourist need.

My colleague and I powered through work and spent the latter half of our week living Kathmandu to its fullest. We sipped hot ginger coke and raksi, a traditional millet (or kodo or rice)-distilled alcohol, typically brewed at home. We stuffed ourselves with samosas, lentils, and buffalo momos, Tibetan dumplings that cost about a dime each. At the Everest Steak House, a Thamel restaurant that offers 33 different styles of steak, we drank Gorkha beer and cheap apple brandy. We listened to music at Jazz Upstairs, met a professional photographer and made friends with a British girl working for Save The Children. We traveled to the Pashupatinath temple complex, to Boudhanath stupa and to Swayambunath, the temple where wild monkeys run amok.

It was a memorable week. The last morning, we rented mountain bikes and joined a group of eleven foreigners and locals, many of them working for the World Food Program. We biked to the edge of the Kathmandu Valley, past goats, chickens, dogs and cows, some tethered, most wild. Past burning piles of trash, steel welders and motorcycle mechanics, brick layers and momo-filled pressure cookers. It was so nice, after nearly a month of city-based work to travel outside of Kathmandu. To smell clean air and see rice paddies. To stretch my legs and cycle away. The ride was tough—my homestay brother watched me tumble off a one-lane track—but well worth the experience.

Returning to Thamel that afternoon, I felt spiritually renewed. The nostalgia and comfort of Kathmandu had officially set in, and I knew, I just knew, that I would be back again.

Nepal, until next time.

After Dushanbe, I flew to Istanbul and had a nearly a full-day layover. Upon landing I bid adieu to my colleague (I would be picking up another one in Kathmandu). Stuffing my pockets with a few bills, I stowed my luggage and picked up a map at the airport information desk. I bought a bottle of water and hightailed the metro into town.

Istanbul has to be one of the coolest cities in the world. Hands down. Besides being chock-full of history, it’s city proper is the fifth most populous and, straddling the Bosphorus River, spans both Europe and Asia. Interestingly enough, Istanbul has different telephone codes for each respective continent. Thankfully, calling the other side of the river doesn’t require one to dial at international rates – as long as the numbers are punched in correctly, of course.

Embodying a large part of Istanbul is the unique and distinct mélange of history and modernity. You can see it all around you; cobblestone streets and interstates, the wild humdrum of a bazaar and, within walking distance, towering skyscrapers and high-end boutique shops. After graduating college, I spent some time with my brother and two friends visiting a third friend from Istanbul, so fortunately I had already developed an appreciation and geographic understanding of the city.

I hopped off the metro in Sultanhamet, near the Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque, and began my walk. I walked past giant obelisks, into mosque courtyards, and eventually made my way up the main street to the hustle and bustle of the Grand Bazaar – said to be the world’s oldest shopping mall. I spent half an hour navigating the nooks and crannies of shops, browsing spices and art and clothes and Turkish Delight, anything and everything for everyone. I naturally became lost, giving way to the labyrinth and letting the soul of the bazaar sway me from stall to stall. Hungry, I darted back outside and headed down to the Bosphorus.

I walked across a bridge of restaurants underneath and fishermen above, past Kebap stands and Bosphorus ferries. On the other side of the river, I took the second oldest underground metro in the world, a funicular one-stop, 573 meter ride between Karakoy and Istıklal Street. I found a nice cafe on Istıklal and, by the time I made it to Taksim Square, the heart of modern Istanbul, it was time to head back to the airport.

All in all, a fun day. Until we meet again, Istanbul.

Where were we?

Oh, right. The gate at Kazakhstan’s Russian Embassy had frozen shut, and after a comical experience watching the security guard try to thaw it open (burning newspapers?), my colleague and I finally escaped the clutches of black hole bureaucracy, Russian transit visas in hand.

Or so we thought.

Although the official Embassy site states that Russian transit visas are 72 hours, our dear friend (remember Mr. Stick-In-The-Butt?) had written up our visas to expire in just one day. Normally, this wouldn’t have been a problem, as our transit flight out of Russia was scheduled to leave at 11PM. Lo and behold, our flight gets pushed back to 2AM and the immigration officials in Yekaterinburg refuse to let us into the terminal on the grounds that our visas had expired. Luckily, I bravely fought off bureaucracy by standing still and smiling (my broad Russian vocabulary of 20ish words wouldn’t have cut it), and my colleague and I finally jetted off to Tajikistan.

The whole experience—getting the visa, the transit, arriving in Tajikistan—was quite exhausting. I’m working on a short story to capture the details and included an excerpt below:

Inside the Dushanbe airport, the light—stale and spirit clogging—lends the building an eerie, post-dawn haziness. Its rays poke through low-level windows and highlight stained tiles. Passengers, bleary eyed from the red-eye transit, file out from the airplane, down a temporary plane-side staircase and into an off-white room. The room is empty except for a couple of police officers and one passport control official,  none of whom are pleasant on the eyes. The air is clammy and almost choking, like an ER ward at the end of a jampacked night of open wound activity.

The immigration line into Tajikistan, if you can call it a line, is seemingly endless. Slow and purgatory-like. A frustrating and dense funneling of people and bags and passports. Three steps forward. One back. People are pushing. One policeman, husky and prominently mustached, pushes back. Tajik murmurs ebb and swell with the wave of pushing, and nobody seems to be getting anywhere. It’s a chaotic and undignified struggle. Against the line. Against logic. The unruly crowd and their banter. The pushing. One passport control official processing an entire plane of passengers. Three steps forward. One back.

I’m hallucinogenic with fatigue. What time zone is it? I didn’t sleep much on the flight in. I can never sleep in the middle seat. The subtly awkward wrestle for space. The spilling over of broad-shouldered body mass. It’s too much unwarranted tension for shut eye.

On a lighter note, Tajikistan was fun!

Below are some highlights:

• Late one night, just before bed, an earthquake aftershock from northern Afghanistan sent my hotel room into a rumbling seizure for a handful of seconds. Considering the room was 6 floors up, it was a bit startling.

• One day, my colleague and I employed a driver to take us to the outskirts of Dushanbe in search of the only official car dealership in Tajikistan. Our driver, who refers to himself as Jackie Jackie Jackie, always spoke in the third person. “Jackie so clever! So smart! Tres bien!” When the Afghan-U.S. war broke out 2001, he ferried BBC employees from Dushanbe into Afghanistan.

• The only official dealership in Tajikistan is in fact Mitsubishi, and it happens to be run by an incredibly nice family. Takhmina and her brother Rustam took my colleague and I out several times during the week. On Halloween we saw traditional Tajik dancers and continued the night at a local karaoke bar. We also hung out at their family villa outside of Dushanbe. Fresh grapes! Mhmm.

• Following a lackluster dinner just down the street from our hotel, my colleague and I were stopped by a policeman who wanted to see our passports. I had mine in my pocket, but my colleague’s was still being registered with the hotel. The policeman ordered us to come with him, but there was nowhere to go. Thinking I knew what was going on, I asked, “Harasho? Harasho?” and tried to palm a wad of cash into his hand. He said “Nyet” and walked us farther down, first into an unlit alley, then back onto the sidewalk. I was scared. My colleague dialed the hotel on his mobile phone, but the policeman refused to take the mobile. Two kids, about my age, approached us after hearing my plea in English. They end up chatting with the policeman. Still not going anywhere. I grew more annoyed, raised my voice, took the cash out of my pocket again and nearly forced it into the policeman’s hand. My body language must have worked, because after he pointed at my other pocket (and both of my colleague’s), the policeman let us go. I saw a small smirk on his face. On the walk back to the hotel (I was still shaking in fear and frustration), I realized that I had only given him about $1.20. Cheapest bribe I’ll ever make, that’s for sure!

A fun week indeed. If you’re looking for the tastiest shashlik in Central Asia (or for a Mitsubishi Pajero…or for an entanglement with local law enforcement), then Tajikistan is your place!

Hope you enjoyed.

Greetings from Domodedovo International Airport in Moscow, Russia, where I’m en route from Astana, Kazakhstan to Dushanbe, Tajikistan. Below is a wrap-up of my first week on the road, complete with pictures and a comical adventure at the Russian Embassy.

First, I must say—how Sacha Baron Cohen came to choose Kazakhstan as the homeland of his Borat-personality is completely beyond me. Trust me when I say that Borat and Kazakhstan are about as similar as an ice axe and a potato.  Moving on.

Due to both language barriers and permission issues, I spent the majority of my week working; yet while my foray into Kazakh culture was short-lived, I managed to pick up a couple of information bytes you might find interesting:

• Astana is a relatively recent capital, having moved from Almaty in 1997. Behind Ulan Bator, Mongolia, it is the second coldest capital city in the world. I was fortunate enough to experience the first snow (and cold front) of the season. The formidable taste winter made it hard to get out of bed in the morning.

• Kazakhstan is the largest landlocked country in the world, therefore I was a bit dubious when I heard Astana had an aquarium that boasts over 2000 different kinds of sea life. Yep, it’s true. Turns out that the aquarium also boasts the longest distance to an ocean of any aquarium at just over 3000km.

In an effort to transform Astana into a new and distinct beacon of Central Asia, the Kazakh government has raised the foreign investment floodgate and allowed a deluge of money to pour in. One manifestation of this transformation can be seen in the city’s changing architecture—unusually modern buildings that are trippy enough to make one wonder what hallucinogens the architects had access to at the time of blueprint sketching. A big egg. A saucer arena. Lights. Lots and lots of twinkly, sporadic lights.

The best building to start at (and the only one I had time for) is Bayterek, the chief symbol of Astana’s new status as capital. While many locals think it looks like a lollipop, Bayterek was actually built to resemble a poplar tree. Something about a Kazakh myth with a bird that lays an egg in a poplar tree. I think a snake tries to eat the egg, and a brave hero kills the snake, or something like that. Anyway, the building is tall and pretty and lights up at night.

Oh, and it has a really cool deck that, at 97m high, overlooks the entire city. A prime place for some urban shots of Astana. The viewing platform has a gilded hand print of the Republic of Kazakhstan’s first president, Nursultan Nazarbayev. They say that if you place your hand in the imprint and make a wish, it will come true.

My wish, you ask? I wished for a Russian transit visa. Which brings me to the most ridiculous part of my week in Astana.

An Escapade at the Russian Embassy

With 2 days left in Astana, my colleague, out of breath, knocked on my door and told me the news—apparently, we needed that Russian transit visa after all. Getting from Astana to Dushanbe, as you might imagine, is a tricky process. While our company originally told us that the transit visa was unnecessary, they didn’t know that in order to pick up our bags in Moscow, switch airline carriers and fly to another domestic airport, we needed a 3-day transit visa. Oops.

Now, assuming one’s paperwork is clean, a Russian visa usually takes 2-3 weeks to process; yet after speaking with the Russian Embassy in the U.S., we learned that we could purchase an emergency transit visa at the Russian Embassy in Astana. It would cost between $50 and $100 and could be issued in 1 day. Simple enough, right?

Wrong. To make a long story short, the bureaucratic-blackhole-process took most of the day. The Embassy visa official, or Mr. Stick-In-The-Butt as I’d like to call him, was not the most gregarious of characters. Not only did he (purposefully?) withhold information from us, but somehow the price of the visa went from 8,000 KTZ (around $50) before lunch to 48,000 KZT ($320) after lunch. At one point I thought about a bribe, but the translator didn’t think it would have been a good idea. Hey, it worked in Nigeria!

After I turned in my application, Mr. Stick-In-The-Butt sternly stated (insert Russian accent here), “I need to ask you some questions.” Sure. No problem. I got nothing to hide, my friend.

Are you currently taking drugs?

What?

Are you on drugs? Because item 27…it is very strange, what you did here.

Item 27 wasn’t even a drug-related question. It had asked me to list all the information for the last two places I had worked. Since this is my first post-college job, I wrote, “THIS IS MY FIRST JOB – N/A.” He made me cross it out. We spent the next couple of minutes politely discussing the finer points of my entry into the Russian Motherland, then I sat back down for another 2 hours before finally receiving my visa.

Giddy as a school boy, I skipped out of the Embassy with my colleague only to find that we were trapped in the compound because, wait for it, the damn door had frozen shut. Icing on the cake. Fast forward 30 seconds and the security guard attempts to pry it open with brute force….to no avail. Fast forward 20 minutes and he tries his might with a hammer…again, to no avail. Fast forward 45 minutes and he tries, this time more cunningly, to thaw the lock by a newspaper-fueled fire…to no avail (I thought it was quite a nifty idea, actually). Finally, just over an hour later, a third-party shows up with a tool kit to save the day. Really? An entire hour?

A comical end to an un-comical day, and an interesting end to an otherwise standard week of scuttling from supermarket to mall and back. Hope you enjoyed the update!

Until next time, where I will report from Dushanbe, Tajikistan. Nazdarovye (Cheers)!