The Travel Gods Must Be Crazy

by Sudha Mahalingam

  The two pilots, one in his fifties and the other younger, are happy to chat with us while the chopper is being loaded. They both hail from Delhi too. The flight is a memorable one, cruising low over some pristine jungles and mountains in a remote region of our vast country. Months later, we read in the newspapers that the flight from Yingkiong crashed due to bad weather, killing everybody on board, including the two pilots whom we had befriended. Saddened and chastened, we look back on a trip we had probably dreamt up . . .

  On the Roof of the World

  Already bitten once, I should have been shy the second time. But I am a sucker for long road trips—I like nothing better than rolling wheels under my bottom. So, in 2013, when I was invited to join an all-expenses-paid 5000-km, three-week road trip through the ‘stans’, I could not resist it, despite the Nikitin fiasco. Besides, this one was being organized by my friends at the India Central Asia Foundation (ICAF), an organization with deep roots and abundant goodwill in those areas, and as such bode a smooth trip. This journey held out the promise of lofty views from atop the Pamirs and Altais, Hindu Kush and Tien Shan and tantalized with the chance to glimpse the pastoral idyll of nomadic peoples who inhabit these remote mountains. It would take us through heritage towns like Andijon, Bukhara, Samarkand and Khiva, and other such relatively unexplored regions of the planet.

  The flip side, of course, was that this trip would be peppered with frequent stops in research institutes and think tanks along the way, not to mention mind-numbing seminars, soul-stilling speeches and never-ending toasts in official banquets. Well, there are no free lunches as they say! How the organizers managed to gather a disparate and mismatched group of fifteen idiosyncratic individuals on a trip like this is a mystery, but it spiced up the trip, at the least. Here we were, three frumpy middle-aged women (including this writer), roped in for their perceived expertise in matters Central Asian; three ultra-fashionable young ladies just out of their twenties, changing attires and accessories faster than models on ramps, included in the group for their imagined skills in film-making (more on this, later); and an equal number of arthritic senior citizens hobbling along, reeking of pain balms. Three other younger men who held the team together and oversaw all arrangements made up the complement. Unlike the Nikitin expedition, the ICAF trip would hire local vehicles in each country which would save the organizers the bother of obtaining the expensive Carnet de Passage.

  On a fine morning, all of us landed in Astana. In many ways Astana was a stark contrast to places that followed in our itinerary. The city shivered in subzero temperatures in the month of September while the rest of Central Asia basked in celebratory summer weather. Astana is the spanking new capital of Kazakhstan, built with all the lavishness that only oil wealth can afford; it had none of the charm of old cities like Almaty or Bishkek or the grace of historical towns like Bukhara or Khiva. The town rose like a giant plastic Legoland in the middle of a bereft steppe otherwise incapable of supporting human habitation. Entirely artificial constructs, Astana’s gleaming skyscrapers, festooned with glittering fairy lights, seemed all the more unreal because of the absence of people on its streets. Its broad and neatly laid-out avenues, glitzy plazas and snazzy shopping malls looked more like a gargantuan film set minus the actors than a living city. Oil wealth can certainly build new capitals—Nigeria built Abuja and Myanmar Naypyitaw—but it takes people to put life and soul into cities. Astana, established only in 1997, had not yet caught up in 2013.1

  We stopped in Temirtau, the steel city. Lakshmi Mittal’s Arcelor produced three million tons of steel, most of which went towards building the skyscrapers in Astana, 220 km away. After the dazzling perfection of Astana, Temirtau was comfortingly Indian. The hotel we stayed in was owned by Mittal and served Indian food alongside Kazakh and Russian fare. Mittal also ran a power plant that burnt coal from its own mines not far away. His company supplied water, electricity and steam to the city, and ran the town’s tram services. Mittal also owned hospitals and schools. ArcelorMittal and its subsidiaries provided employment to around 35,000 people in Temirtau, of which persons of Indian origin were just a handful—at the top. Incidentally, Nursultan Nazarbayev, the late President of Kazakhstan, began his career as a worker in a steel plant in Temirtau.

  The drive through the empty stretches of Kazakhstan brought us to the Chinese border in Xinjiang. While the expedition had no visas to enter China, the ICAF magic worked to whisk us across the border into a town called Khorgos. The town was a fantasy in the middle of nowhere. It was a beehive of activity with construction cranes crowding the horizon. A steady stream of Kazakhs queued up at the immigration booth, waiting to cross into China and return with manufactured goods to market back home in Almaty and other towns. The Chinese were eager to show off what they had done to Khorgos, now crowded with commercial complexes, casinos, hotels, hospitals, malls, theatres, sports stadia, etc., sprawled over more than 500 hectares straddling both the countries. But where were the people who would use all these world-class facilities, we wondered. Having visited other Chinese border towns like Ruilly on the Myanmar border, I realized most of it was for demonstration, not actual use. A neat ribbon of road, smooth as silk, led up to Turfan and beyond in Xinjiang. We had met quite a few shoppers from Almaty picking up everything from mobile phones to tyres and silk scarves in the sole mall that had just been opened. The three young ladies in our group lapped up fancy clothing, handbags and footwear as if they were not already carrying mountains of stuff on this journey.

  Sandwiched between the endless steppes of Kazakhstan and the barren desert landscape that makes up most of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyz Republic was a haven of verdure. Almost 80 per cent of the country is mountainous but the hills are interspersed with expansive pastures and lush valleys. Arable land is limited to the fertile Fergana Valley in the south, shared with neighbouring Uzbekistan.

  Exquisitely proportioned carriages on display in the Museum of Regional Studies in Kokand, Fergana

  It was therefore natural that Kirghizia had traditionally been home to nomadic tribesmen and women who kept moving with their portable yurts (cloth tent dwellings of nomads) and livestock. The horse and the soaring condor were their sole means of transportation and communication respectively until almost the twentieth century. Even in 2013, in the remoter parts, the nomadic lifestyle subsisted, vignettes of which we could glimpse as we sped through the highlands.

  Kirghizia, befitting the appellation ‘roof of the world’, is home to some of the most stunning mountain ranges of our planet—Alay, Tien Shan and the Pamirs—all of which we crossed at some point during our journey. The Tien Shan range (Heavenly Mountains) extends westward for approximately 370 km from the Chu River and forms part of the border between the two countries.

  The next leg of our journey—from Bishkek to Osh, the second largest Kyrgyz city located in the Fergana Valley—took us through the most spectacular landscape of the entire trip. Our delegation transferred to six smaller cars, and we braced ourselves for the very long and bumpy journey ahead. Following some terrorist incidents in the not-too-distant past, buses and vans were not allowed to ply on this route. On these highlands, there was a delicate peace prevailing for the moment, but in 2005, these highlands had seethed with ethnic clashes in which hundreds of people had died.

  There were no villages en route, only yurts, and nowhere to stay the night if we got stuck. As we neared the foothills of the Tien Shan range, one of the cars had already sprung a leak and was steadily dripping green coolant all the way, forcing us to make an unscheduled stop to fix the problem. Our Kyrgyz driver was unfazed. He did some jugaad and, voila, we were cruising again through tunnels and mountains, a stunningly beautiful route that needs to be savoured at leisure, not zipped through as we were doing.

  The flawless macadam wrapped around the mountains like a giant black serpent. At places, the road plunged into valleys that offered 360-degree horizons with brilliant hues conjured up by an abundance of ozone. The meadows—highland steppes�
�were draped in emerald. The slopes and valleys were dotted with grazing horses, their silken manes silhouetted against the setting sun. Tribes people in colourful clothes sold solidified mare’s milk, a delicacy in these parts. In certain stretches, there were apple orchards; almost all the fruit vendors were women, seated on low stools by the highway with their produce. We kept a watchful eye for the legendary Kyrgyz condor but found only lesser birds of prey.

  On the other side of the mountain ranges lie the Fergana cities of Jalalabad and Osh on the Kyrgyz side and historic cities of Uzbek Fergana which includes Andijon from which a mighty Mongol warrior went forth to conquer Bharat and established the Mughal empire. Separated by a quirk of history and caught in political crossfire, the people of the Fergana Valley have learnt to live with uncertainty. On Sulayman hill on the outskirts of Osh was a mazhar and shrine which, the Kyrgyz claimed, were that of Babur, much to the consternation of Uzbeks across the border.

  As we rolled into Uzbek Fergana, both sides of the highway had burst into a profusion of blinding white flashes as far as the eye could see. This was cotton country. September was also the fruiting season, and in villages and towns, every home was fronted with trellises, all laden with luscious grapes. Throughout the countryside, there were melons, watermelons, apples, apricots, quinces, persimmons and many other fruits that we did not even recognize. In parks, public spaces, cafes, restaurants and streets, there were fruit trees and the sidewalks were stained with fruit juice. No wonder Babur spoke so nostalgically of the sweetness of the melons of his homeland.

  Fergana was just as nostalgic for Zahiruddin Mohammad Babur, its most illustrious son. The legendary Uzbek boy who went on to shape the destiny of Hindustan for the next 300 years seemed to dominate the psyche and public spaces of Fergana. Besides Babur’s rather modest home in Andijon, now turned into a museum, there was a Babur Park, a Babur Monument, a Babur International Foundation and several other institutions devoted to the study of Babur’s life and times. Fergana was also known for its silk weaving and ceramics, besides other handicrafts.

  In our Tashkent hotel, when we came down for breakfast, the dining hall was ringing out with Tamil voices. Surprised, I went to investigate. A brief conversation revealed that the Tamil visitors, merchants and traders from the Tamil heartland, had never heard of Samarkand or Bukhara and could not explain why they were in Uzbekistan in the first place. Curiously, there were no women in the group. Then the penny dropped. Uzbekistan was fast displacing Thailand as the favoured destination of pleasure-seeking men on the prowl.

  Samarkand, the next stopover on our itinerary, was indeed the magnet of Central Asia and a prominent town on the ancient Silk Road. I had travelled through Uzbekistan exactly ten years before and visited both Samarkand and Bukhara. Known for its Timurid legacy, Registan, Samarkand’s city square, is easily among the most magnificent in the entire world, at par with Emam Square in Isfahan.

  Brown-hued and burnished, Bukhara, unlike Samarkand, was a quintessential desert town, an oasis stopover for weary traders embarking upon the punishing wilderness of the Kyzilkum and Karakum deserts, which they must cross to reach the markets in Byzantine. Bukhara’s architecture was stark, mostly unglazed and unembellished, emphasizing its rawness and aesthetics. The iconic Kalyan Minaret and Mosque dominate the skyline. Originally built as a beacon to guide travellers, the minaret’s unrivalled elegance belies its bloody past. Successive emirs used the top of the minaret to fling convicts down to their death in an age when cruelty was celebrated as the mark of manhood. We wandered through Bukhara’s labyrinthine alleys and climbed to the top of the Ark citadel to have a bird’s-eye view of this enchanting town.

  The very last leg of our journey took us through the Kyzilkum desert, and we had a brief stopover in stunning Khiva, a living museum of Persian and Islamic architecture, once a flourishing slave market and home of Al Khorezmi, the father of algebra. Mohammed ibn Musa al-Khorezmi’s systematic approach to solving linear and quadratic equations led to algebra, which has haunted schoolkids all over the world ever since. But his inflictions were not confined only to algebra. He fiddled with the geography of Ptolemy and wrote on mechanical devices such as the astrolabe and the sundial. He assisted in a project to determine the circumference of the earth and in making a world map for Al-Ma’mun, the caliph, overseeing seventy geographers. Al-Khorezmi’s statue dominates the square in Ichan Kala, Khiva’s nerve centre.

  Statue of Mohammed ibn Musa Al-Khorezmi at Khiva

  At the Mamun Institute in Khiva—originally set up by Alberuni himself more than 1500 years ago and functioning almost continuously except for a break of about 150 years—there is a museum that gives us a crash course on Uzbek history from the prehistoric times to the present. Al-Khorezmi occupies pride of place in the museum alongside Ibn Sina, the African physician who came to Khiva to heal and cure.

  We wrapped up our road trip in Urgench. The journey took us through over 5000 km of the most challenging terrain on earth which now survives only in our memory and a few stills shot by this author. For, our young film-makers missed one minor detail: they forgot to switch on the camera while filming. The trip was particularly memorable for the vast wastelands through which we drove without spotting a human for hours in this otherwise overcrowded planet. The mountains were aloof and lofty; the passes, teetering and dangerous; the river valleys obscenely lush and fecund; the wildernesses, withering and desolate. The cities were redolent of smoky shashlik and iridescent in their gorgeous architecture, the steppes were seemingly never-ending and the desert stretches, unforgiving. Ambitious monuments built by rulers with monumental ambitions dotted the landscape. More than anything else, the trip was valuable for the ringside view it offered of the three Central Asian Republics struggling to break free of the shackles of history and geography to find their rightful place in today’s world.

  From Ecstasy to Terror in Serengeti

  My journey to the savannah actually began in Zanzibar, an island off the coast of East Africa. After a few days in Zanzibar’s Stone Town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, I decide to check out Serengeti, for which the jumping-off point is Kilimanjaro, an hour’s flight from Dar es Salaam, the principal city of Tanzania. From school textbooks, we all know that Kilimanjaro is the tallest peak in Africa, but it is only during this journey that I discover how much Mt Kilimanjaro dominates the psyche of Tanzanians. The catamaran that takes us from Zanzibar to Dar es Salaam is named M.V. Kilimanjaro. The taxi that drives me to the airport in Dar es Salaam is sent by Kilimanjaro Cabs. At Dar es Salaam’s Julius Nyerere airport, I board an aircraft whose belly is emblazoned with the word Kilimanjaro; on board, I am served Kilimanjaro soft drink and Kilimanjaro toffee and offloaded in, you guessed it, Kilimanjaro airport to a glorious view of Mt Kilimanjaro, resplendent in its lofty snow crown.

  My family joins me at Kilimanjaro for a memorable wildlife safari that would bring us face-to-face with the most exotic and prolific wildlife on our planet. Paul Roberts Shayo, our safari organizer, is waiting at the airport to receive us and whisk us off to Moshe, a small town that sits adjacent to four wildlife parks in northern Tanzania: Lake Manyara, Kilimanjaro, Tarangire and Serengeti. The week-long safari will be in a four-wheel drive. Paul packs the vehicle with tents, sleeping bags, lanterns, cooking stuff, groceries, even foldable chairs and tables. Suvale, our cook, sits at the back amidst pots and pans. There are no permanent structures in any of the national parks except for toilets and showers. Travellers take their own equipment and bring it all back meticulously without leaving a trail.

  The next day, we drive to Lake Manyara in the hope of seeing the millions of flamingos that flock here to feast on the krill (small crustaceans) in its salty marshes. But the birds are at the other end of the lake and all we can see is a shimmering pink wave. But on this bank, there are other African game galore, especially large groups of hippos, dozens of giraffes, warthogs, zebras and gazelles. Manyara is also home to several herds of African elephants. We watch mesmerized
as a huge herd crosses our track, ears flapping like pankhas, or fans, in a Mughal court. One by one, they come straight at your vehicle, tower over you, just inches away from your nose, only to make a last-minute turn, deftly avoiding collision. It is a bit unnerving to have wild elephants come so close that you can hear their breathing and count the crinkles and creases on their skin. Unlike their Indian counterparts, females of the species also sport tusks.

  The highlight of the trip to Manyara is a lioness with a pair of gambolling cubs. The mother is busy tearing into a buffalo she has just killed while the curious cubs cross the dry riverbed to investigate our vehicle. The anxious mother abandons her kill and comes bounding towards them. With a nudge, she guides them back to their spot under a tree trunk where she can keep an eye on them while feeding on her kill. We move on, reluctantly.

  The next day, we head towards the Serengeti National Park. We go through a densely forested and hilly Ngorongoro Conservation Area before entering the park. En route, we make a brief stop at a Masai village. For a fee, the handsome Masai men and women, all decked up in their traditional gear—bright red and blue sarongs and mounds of jewellery made of cowries and horn—come out of their thatched huts and perform a dance. Then they jump one by one to demonstrate their agility, which once used to be judged by their ability to kill a lion with bare hands. We are taken on a round of the village and shown their way of living. Earlier, in Dar es Salaam, I had seen a few Masai tribesmen in traditional dress riding scooters, weaving in and out of the city’s horrendous traffic jams. Tall, ebony-hued, with chiselled features and shaven heads, the Masai are indeed strikingly handsome and their colourful attire sets them apart.