Category: Travel

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)!

It was just after I cleared immigration and was cruising back into the Syrian hinterland…when I saw it.

Atop an otherwise barren hill that straddles the Lebanese-Syrian border sits one of the strangest, most random franchises that I’ve ever seen. Dunkin’ Donuts.

By the time I pulled out the camera, the orange and pink sign was gone. Shucks. I guess that picture will just have to wait until next time I travel in this region of the world.

An Unplanned Vacation

Over the weekend, I took an unplanned vacation from my work in Damascus. Well, that’s not entirely true. I spent the better part of an hour figuring out if my day trip was even possible. After all, when you plan to cross country borders, it’s always a good idea to be prepared. Nobody likes to be yelled at, especially when immigration officials are involved. Trust me, I would know.

My plan, as you may have guessed from the title of this post, was to travel from Syria to Lebanon for the day. Getting from Damascus to Beirut, the two capital cities, is much easier than you might think. The highway is only a couple of hours long, and compared to other neighboring countries, the border is quite manageable. Since I only had one day to work with, I needed to start early.

From Syria to Lebanon (and Back) in $70

Hotel to Shared Taxi Stand: 200 SYP / ~$4

At 7:30am, I walked out of the Old City and hopped in a yellow taxi. They are everywhere. I asked to be taken to the shared taxi stand (there’s only one), about 15 minutes away with traffic. The ride was easy! The post-dawn hustle had already begun, and at that point I wished I had gotten an earlier start.

Shared Taxi Stand to Beirut: 700 SYP / ~$15

Immediately after exiting the taxi, a throng of men bustled over and asked, Amman? Beirut? I said Beirut. I was ushered to another group, where I forfeited my passport to a man with a clipboard. At least he looked official—I suspect he was checking for my Syrian visa. Before long, the man with the clipboard walked me to a white Mercedes with three other passengers, then jumped behind the wheel. He issued a short announcement, yalla, or “let’s go” in Arabic. Off we drove.

Exit Tax: 550 SYP / ~$12

I didn’t say a word until we reached the border. I was enjoying the quiet, wide-laned Damascus-Beirut highway, too tired to engage in any kind of conversation that early in the morning. I don’t think I’ll ever be a morning person. At the Syrian-Lebanese border, I paid a quick exit tax and was issued a receipt to give to immigration officials a few stations ahead. The building was, for lack of better description, crowded. Luckily, the foreigner line was manageable, and I was in and out of the masses in about 30-45 minutes of pushing. Secure Syrian exit. Check.

Lebanese 15-Day Tourist Visa: 25,000 LBP / ~$17

Station 3 was a quick drive-thru, a guard scanning our vehicle’s collective passports, and then poof, we crossed the invisible threshold into Lebanon. While I tried to negotiate a free transit visa (I would only end up being in Beirut for a few hours!), I settled on a 15-day tourist visa, no problems whatsoever. Before long, I was back in the shared taxi, and with another another 2 and a half hours before romping around Beirut, I passed the time in conversation.

The front-seat passenger, Milad, spoke English, enough to tell me that he was a dentist working for a German company. As for the others, squeezed in the back with yours truly, one was a law student, the other a Syrian pastry chef. A motley crew if you ask me. As we twisted our way down into the peninsula that houses Beirut, Milad indulged my curiosities about Lebanese-Syrian history and current affairs. As we chatted, we passed broken buildings, remnants of the Lebanese Civil War, standing in stark contrast to the amazing amount of construction. A city bombed, blasted, now being rebuilt, gradually regaining its status as a cultural and intellectual hub of the Middle East.

By the time I found my way to the streets, it was well past noon. I stopped in a small Internet-friendly restaurant for lunch then hopped in a taxi to explore downtown. Again, lots of construction. I escaped the heat by ducking into Al Hariri Mosque. I paced leisurely through downtown Beirut then, in an effort to reach Damascus that night, decided that it was time to head back.

Shared Taxi Stand (Beirut) to Shared Taxi Stand (Damascus): 800 SYP / ~$17

It was the same charade as my morning logistics. I found a taxi, asked to be dropped off at the shared taxi stand (again, there’s only one), and in a matter of minutes, negotiated my way into a car. The driver was at first hesitant when he saw my American passport, but once I explained that I had already purchased a Syrian visa, he let me join his group. The ride back was uneventful, as no one spoke English. I napped.

At the first border stop in Lebanon, it was another crowd of pushy stamp-seekers, and it was another 30-45 minutes of fighting for one’s place in line. After crossing back into Syria, I waited in a short line, showed my visa to the immigration official and explained that I had only been gone a short while and was more than excited to get back “home” to Damascus. Those without visas, especially Americans, can wait up to 8 hours to get through this checkpoint, so I was quite pleased to be in and out in under 10 minutes. I must have done something right.

Shared Taxi Stand to Hotel: 200 SYP / ~$4

I ended my day where I started my day, at the Damascus shared taxi stand, nearly 12 hours after I had started. I found a local taxi to take me back to the Old City.

Total Money Spent on Transportation to and From Syria and Lebanon: ~$69 (and some change 🙂

Petra was built around 100 BCE and served as the capital of the the Nabataeans, an ancient Semitic people that settled in southern Jordan. At the time, the Nabateans were undisputed masters of the Arab trade routes, so their architecture reflects a unique mélange of Graeco-Roman, Egyptian and Mesopotamian styles. As the title of this post states, Petra is an archaeological paradise.

When I left the hotel at 5:30am, I still didn’t have a bus reservation. The concierge had tried to sneak me onto a bus with an Air France flight crew, but since they canceled at the last minute, I was left high-and-dry the night before my trip. Luckily, when I got to the office in the morning, tickets were still available. Whew.

I bought a falafel sandwich, climbed into the bus, and promptly went back to sleep. By the time I woke up, we were well outside of Petra, and at 10:15am pulled into the Petra Visitor’s Center parking lot. I bought a day pass for 21 JOD (~$27), handed my ticket to the “tourist police” (I love that term), and began my day-long journey.

After 10-15 minutes I entered the Siq, a twisting narrow gorge that runs for 1200m. Flanked by towering, geologically exotic walls, I walked slowly, enjoying the curvature of rock, the delicate and creeping mid-morning shadows.

The Nabataeans used water channels to ferry water through the 1200m long gorge.

Bend after bend I meandered through the canyon, pausing to drink up the atmosphere. Before long, I neared the end of the canyon. Despite my shabby cinematography, I did my best to capture the end of the Siq as it opens up to the Treasury. Cue the Indiana Jones music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrA1qj4Khw0

Dwarfed by this otherworldly monolith, I felt like I was in a George Lucas dream. The Treasury (Arabic: Al-Khazneh) is the pride and joy of Petra, undoubtedly the most famous attraction amidst the Nabataean ruins. Fortunately, there weren’t any booby traps or 700-year old knights to distract my endless attempts to capture the scene with my camera. Just call me Indiana Perlman.

While I could have spent all day lounging and marveling, there was plenty more to see. I climbed up to the High Place of Sacrifice, where Nabataeans held important religious ceremonies and sacrificed animals to honor the Gods. Much of the path up the gorge was marked by stone-cut steps.

After the High Place of Sacrifice, I trekked back down towards Colonnaded Street, a once-bustling avenue in Petra’s city center. The marble pavement is still visible, as are a few columns. Archaeologists from Brown University have been excavating here since 1993.

When I was asking around for directions to the Monastery, a young, donkey-reigned child almost coerced me into paying for a ride. I told him that I wanted to walk, but he quickly pointed out that it was a two and a half hour climb. There was something about his salesmanship that didn’t feel right, so I decided to pass. That, and most of the donkeys looked flat-out fatigued.

So did the camels. Occasionally they would make these loud, wailing sounds that I would equate to a drowning hand-horn. Maybe they were just saying hello, but it sounded like they were pretty beat.

The Monastery (Arabic: Ad-Deir) is Petra’s second-most famous structure, another large, impressive, architecturally stunning chunk of carved-out stone. The guidebook mentions that it’s over 800 stairs to reach the Monastery. I stepped off 709, but who’s counting?

By the time I climbed down to the canyon floor, it was almost time to leave. I had been walking for more than 5 hours and hadn’t stopped to eat or drink anything. I felt like the fatigued donkeys and camels. I hurried back through the canyon, away from the Monastery, through Colonnaded Street, past the Treasury (stopped and took 20 more pictures), through the Siq, and finally emerged out of the canyon. I bought myself some ice cream at Indiana Jones’ Snack Shop, bid farewell to Petra, and promised that I would return again.

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It’s my last night in Amman, and I leave in a few hours for Damascus. Syria, here I come! Stay tuned for more updates.