Home sweet home - London

And then it was over - admittedly over 6 weeks ago now, but just allow me to slide into a retrospective frame of mind for a bit and tie up the loose ends of our totally excellent adventure.

We flew into Heathrow on the 29th August to be greeted by sunshine, some warmth and the tube which, I thought was great, until we couldn't buy the tickets on our credit cards, find which District line train to change to for Paddington or find a seat that was not next to a smelly fat person. Geez louise. It got better soon, though as we met Steve at Paddington (he nicked off from work at about 1pm - nice one!) and then went onwards to his new flat in Maida Vale where we were staying until we could find our own place.

From there we headed off to the Waterway pub in Little Venice and drank heaps of beers while regaling the bar with stories of our daring and adventurous travel. At some point Kirsty joined us and I think we may have eaten some nice food too. The next day was a Saturday and we had some tickets to go and see the Chemical Brothers at Kensington Olympia so we had a nice sleep in and a walk around Maida Vale before heading out to see the band - wicked Audio Visual show - and have another great night out.

That more or less set the tone for the next couple of weeks as we sorted ourselves out administratively. We would go to the pub, whilst also finding a nice flat in a convenient if not fantastic part of town and Shell getting a job at Great Ormond Street Hospital. I was being a bit picky with the kinds of jobs I was putting myself forward for which was probably a bit dumb as the 2nd week we were here Lehman Brothers investment bank failed, setting off the stock market crash that engulfed the worlds finances and my prospects for getting a sweet contract.

Ahh well. I have actually managed to get a job with AOL Broadband and get to join Shell in the ranks of the employed, although she is now the breadwinner as she earns more than I do! I took a little longer than anticipated but it looks good for now.

So now we live, according to whom you ask, in either Maida Vale (the Real Estate Agent), Maida Hill (the closest post office), West Kilburn (the A-Z), Queens Park (the local council amenities) or even just good ol' London (the post code checking system on the Royal Mail website). We are sort of in a promontory of nice places in an ocean of crappy council housing. Allow my map to demonstrate the area. The green bits are nice houses with normal people walking along the streets, the yellow bits (which our house is in) are areas that are ok with the occasional dodgy off license or crappy pub but generally nice places. The orange areas are low rise council flat areas but still relatively normal streets but a higher incidence of dodgy off licenses and frequently large groups of people standing around not really doing anything except talking loudly.




The red areas are dyed in the wool council housing a la Atherton Gardens on Brunswick St in Fitzroy or the Lennox Street / Elizabeth Street complex in Richmond, putting even Melbourne's best attempt at horrible state housing to shame. I actually quite like our area excepting Harrow Road which is a crappy way to start the day. It's like Smith St in Collingwood without the charm.

Anyway our house is about a 10 minute walk from either Queens Park tube or Westbourne Park tube which is quite handy for getting around town. It is a 1 bedroom flat in a long row of terraces that has been recently renovated and furnished with a bit of style. We've got a nice kitchen, a big living room and a big enough bedroom AND there's also a rooftop terrace / decking thing on top of our bedroom so we also have an outside area which is really cool. You have to climb an extension ladder to get up there but it is a small sacrifice! We also have a very comfy sofa bed......

The only real problem we've had so far with the house was the small matter of the oven. As most readers would know, we love a good roast and Shell is a dead set genius in the kitchen so our oven generally gets a bit of a work out in normal day to day operations of the house. So we cooked a few roasts and cakes and stuff and we noticed that if we left the oven for over, say, an our or so, the house would gradually fill with smoke until the place smelt like a campsite. The first time we thought it may have been the baking paper that sort of caught on fire when it touched the grill element so we didn't think too much about it, until we had Matt and Eva over for dinner and managed to smoke out the house again.

Finally thinking something might be up I gave the oven a good clean out, in case it was some stray food causing the smoke and gave it another test but, nope, still more smoke. I began systematically dismantling the bit around the oven but not finding anything obvious and since it was neither my house nor my oven I decided to call the landlord. She organised a workman to come over and have a look, so Kevin came around and had a quick look as I explained the problem. He looked at the same things I looked at and couldn't see anything so he pulled the oven out, which actually turned out to be quite easy to do. We got the oven out and lo and behold pretty much the whole shelf was burnt to a crisp! There was a big hole burnt about 15 cm in diameter and it had started to burn through the next shelf down as well. This was not to do with the baking paper.

It turns out the oven was seriously faulty and hadn't been fused correctly when it was installed, so it was basically just waiting for the unsuspecting tenant to nick out to the shop for 15 minutes whilst cooking something for a couple of hours and burning the joint to the ground. Not the sort of excitement we need but the landlady was very good about it and had the oven replaced, by Kevin, on the same day.

Our days are now spent meeting up with friends, going shopping on the high street, drinking Pimms in the sun and generally enjoying life with practically no responsibilities! It's great, although we miss our families, our dogs, our friends and the Australian service industry (so far superior in every respect to the British standard that it is actually shocking) but I guess there is always a trade off to enjoying yourself.

Well until the next lazy Saturday morning when I feel like sharing my thought with the world, au revouir and Cole - can you throw the ball for Lily and give Burns a pat on the head and tell him he's a good boy!

Back to the real world - Helsinki, Finland

To mangle a quote from Tolstoy, all developed countries are pretty much the same, whereas all undeveloped countries are undeveloped (and a bit hopeless) in their own special way.

This was first and foremost in my mind as we cleared customs in our seats on the train from St Petersburg to Helsinki. Yet again it was a case of what a difference a border makes and for the first time in months we were now somewhere that looked somewhat similar to life as we know it.

Russia had been good to us. It was still a bit soviet at times and the wildly skewed costs of certain goods and services boggled the mind ($100 a night for a crappy hostel room with a shared bathroom, $10 for half a kilo of big caviar) but overall we'd had a great time and seen some truly spectacular things:

• Red Square - it was just like my imagination had decided it should be like
• The Hermitage - we actually got a bit bored looking at priceless painting after priceless painting, but there was some other really cool things like rooms where world changing events took place
• The Moscow Metro - these guys know how to build a train station. The subway stations are amazing, with many rivalling museums for their architectural skill and artistry. Being commies, the Moscow city fathers in the 30's decided that the workers should be able to enjoy the cultural highlights of modern Russia whilst on the way to work.

But it was still not quite right. Perhaps it was just the men going to work in business casual suits with socks and sandals, the falling apart look of St Petersburg's suburbs or the conviction of certain tour guides when they tell you that you'd be crazy to talk to a policeman in Russia, but you could just tell that while these guys are doing better than, say, your average Kyrgyz man in the street in Bishkek, Russia didn't have it all figured out yet.

The Finns, on the other hand, have. Whatever "it" is, they have worked it out, made it look good, surrounded it with a nice park and placed a statue next to it. Aside from the obvious stuff such as real prices (in euros! oh no), trams and shops for all the people selling goods (as opposed the junk, which we had seen quite a bit of) there was an obvious feel of prosperity to Helsinki, my impression of which that was no doubt fed by our stay at the 4 star Hotel Torni which was superb.

It's not like they had it easy either. Finland itself was only declared independent from Russia in 1917, which was followed promptly by a civil war (commies vs good guys and strangely for this area the good guys won!) and then a couple of wars against invading bad guys, namely the Nazi's and the Soviets. After the war the Finns, having very little aid from the West due to a couple of treaties signed with the Soviet Union, developed from a agrarian society to an industrialised economy. The US did provide aid on the sly to prevent communist overthrow of the democratic government, but most of their development was through trade, probably reindeer hides to begin with, but these days it's all about Formula 1 drivers and mobile phones.

Helsinki itself is great, located right on the Baltic sea with many lakes, rivers and islands. The architecture is really nice with most of the city built during the 1920's to 1950's in a nice and tasteful way. There's plenty of grand old buildings and statues and an excellent little tourist market they run each day down by the harbour where a lady sells baked potatoes out of one of those black kettle "Victorian Baked Potato" cookers that used to be at every holiday destination of my childhood. They were never as good as this one though, as the Helsinki version was piled high with smoked salmon and doused liberally in either a blue cheese or tartare sauce. Yummo.


There's a really cool old fortress on an island guarding the bay called Suomenlinna which was built by the Swedes in the late 18th century to ward off the pesky Russians, who periodically invaded. Unfortunately for the Swede's Helsinki fell to Russians for good only 6 months after they completed the fortress so now it sits up there with the 17" guns at East Point in Darwin as expensive, ultimately pointless military installations that now make excellent tourist attractions. We had a good time walking around the old walls and drinking "the best filtered coffee in the world", as proclaimed by a tourist magazine we got for free. We also ate some Reindeer burgers, went and saw the Batman movie and generally had a great time.

It was great to be back in the first world too, as we could drink the water out of the tap and eat ANYTHING! In fact it was the perfect way to finish off our holiday and move on the next bit of our adventure - getting jobs and going back to real life. How sad.

Mosques, Medrassas, Mausoleums and Minarets, Bukhara, Uzbekistan

I don't think that this blog would ever be complete without some photos of the majestic architectural sights of Uzbekistan.

My favorite city by far in Uzbekistan was Bukhara, I'm not sure if it was because we stayed in a nice hotel there or if it really was a stand out from Khiva and Samarkand!

A bit of history for you....Officially Bukhara was founded in 500BC, however the region around Bukhara has been inhabited for at least five millennium. The city has long been a center of trade, scholarship, culture, and religion and is located on the Silk Road, otherwise we wouldn't have gone there of course.

The most famous of all the architectural wonders of Bukhara is the Po-i-Kalyan complex, which means "The foot of the Great". This is a square with the Kalyan minaret towering over it at 45.6 meters high. Back when the Uzbeks were still enforcing capital punishment (which is frighteningly not that long ago) they would march their criminals/victims to the top of the minaret, put them inside a sack and throw them from the top of the minaret. Literature reports of sacks twisting and turning through the air as the victim inside struggled to free themselves in vein.

There is apparently a depression in the square below the minaret where thousands of bodies thrown from the top over the years had started to wear a hole in the stone. It was a chilling thought knowing all this and gazing up at the towering minaret, a very beautiful structure with a somewhat grisly past. We did look for this depression in the stone but were unable to find it, but I guess bodies are a lot softer than stone and a hessian bag would have made it a lot easier to clean up the mess.

On the two sides Po-i-Kalyan are the Kalyan Mosque and Mir-i Arab Medrassa , Kalyan Mosque is a massive and beautiful structure and in Soviet times was used to store tractors and other farming machinery. In the 14th century when Amir Temur (otherwise known as Tamerlane) was rampaging across central Asia he slaughtered basically the entire population of Bukhara within this mosque. I read somewhere that once Temur had finished the mass slaughter his men were wading through the mosque in blood that came halfway up to their knees. Disturbing when you know how large the mosque is, its large, so large you could fit a football pitch inside it, I'll let you do the math yourselves on how much blood that would be.

Opposite the mosque is the Mir-i Arab Medrassa which was built in the 16th century presumably by then the population of Bukhara that had pretty much been wiped out by Timur had time to repopulate itself and build this imposing structure. The Medrassa is still a functioning facility for the training of religious minds in Uzbekistan today. It has a beautiful mosaic exterior, the fact that its still a functioning Medrassa means that you are not allowed inside past the entrance hall.

Also of note around Bukhara are the trading domes, where trading still happens. Uzbekistan is famous for its carpets, embroidery and ceramics and there is plenty of that to be found within the domes of Bukhara. I bargained so hard for some ceramics in a store that the lady who sole them asked me "Where are you from?", I said "Australia" she then proceeded to say "Australian women are hard women!" whilst clenching her fists and banging them together. I think I might have got a good deal!

Into the bears den in Russia

Editors note: These blogs have been a long time coming as I have been at the pub for most of the last week. So the programme is Russia today, Finland by maybe Thursday and then a comprehensive London update after that, unless I continue to get waylaid at the Elgin.

We flew into Sheremetyevo UAC, didn't get much sleep last night.
On the way the paper bag was onmy knee, man I had a dreadful flight.
But now I'm back in the USSR, don't know how lucky you are boy
Back in the USS, Back in the USSR!!!!

Or at least that's what it seemed like we were arriving in what with all the invasions, diplomacy, border disputes, talk of sovereignty and insurrections we kept hearing about from the Caucasus on the BBC as we left Uzbekistan for Russia. We were half expecting to see the corpse of Lenin rise, smash its way out of Red Square and restart the Revolution; he would not, however, need to travel far to find the capitalists or even the tools of the bourgeois. He would probably get run over by one in a large black Mercedes or Porsche right out the front of the Kremlin where they scream around the corner flat out next to St Basil's Cathedral.

But, as so often seems to happen with these blogs, I digress. I actually didn't get much sleep that night, owing to a 4:50 AM flight from Tashkent that we arrived at the airport for at 2:35 AM. The previous night we'd planned on getting plenty of sleep but had ended up staying up late eating pizza and talking about pets with our new friends from Perth, Jasmin and Mark.

The lack of sleep affected Michelle somewhat more than me, which I could tell from the serve she gave a armed member of the notoriously corrupt Uzbek customs who dared tell her she was in a line for Uzbek nationals only. Allow me to relate the story, which we will now refer to as When Michelle Lost Her Mind.

When Michelle Lost Her Mind

A True Story

By Brock Mills

It was 2:35 AM when we arrived at the Tashkent Airport, tired and unkempt due to too many beers and not enough sleep the night before. Also weighing on our spirits were our very heavy packs that weighed on our backs. We were cheered by the existence of our flight number on the departures board (a welcome change from Vietnam) and by the nice Aeroflot employee who offered to upgrade us to Business Class for $100 each, an offer we would have taken had we actually had the money.

Having got our tickets and filled out the necessary forms, we headed over to customs where the procedure was mercifully straight forward compared to when we entered the country. From customs we went to passport control where there was a group of about 30 school girls from Russia in one line and about 3 people in the other line. We stood in the short line for about a minute when a young, armed Uzbek customs official came over and asked to see our hotel registration forms (Each hotel you stay in has to "register" you with the authorities and they all give you a little slip of paper, which you have to keep in case a customs official wants to look at them. Why? We have no idea. Blame the Soviets.)

We showed him our forms and he nodded. He then proceeded to tell us we were in the line for Uzbek nationals only and we had to get in the other line with the 30 Russian school girls. At this Michelle decided to give him a bit of what for, pointing out that the same "Uzbek nationals only" sign was above that queue as well, that the other queue was much longer and we didn't much feel like standing in this line any longer than is necessary. All said with the threat of violence in her voice that I sometimes fear. The official didn't know what to say as I'm sure he had never been spoken to in that manner by a woman in his whole life, and certainly not by one at the airport trying to pass through immigration without any problems.

Sensing danger, I tactfully defused a potential international incident, by grabbing my wife and dragging her over to the other line and hiding behind a large pole. I didn't say anything about it, until after we were safely in the departure lounge.

"Have you lost your mind?" I asked.

"Yes. I don't know what came over me.." she answered.

"Well luckily we didn't get shot. You should have a little sleep before we need to deal with any officials again". So she went to sleep and was much nicer to everyone after that.

And that was it. The Aeroflot flight was brilliant, almost the best food we had in Uzbekistan, with good service in a clean, comfortable and almost brand new A321. Some people were pretty surprised when told that we were flying Aeroflot owing to their poor safety record and Soviet standards of service but the flight was very good and there were no annoying holes in the hull, like what you get QANTAS at the moment. People did clap and cheer when we landed so I guess that the cultural memory of Aeroflot is still alive in people's minds, but they do that in Greece for Olympic Airways as well.

Now for all the trouble it took, which was considerable, to actually get permission to travel to Russia, what with all the visa support and quick processing fees and the like, actually entering Russia was so easy it was almost a bit of a let down. We lined up for 2 minutes at immigration (with Shell keeping her mouth shut) and then walked straight through customs and we'd arrived. A short 3 hour bus/metro/walk trip later we were in the heart of Moscow quickly coming to grips with the reality of being in the world's most expensive city.

Moscow is fantastic. We stood in the shadows of the Kremlin in Red Square, savoured the view of St Basil's Cathedral with the Onion Domes and the magnificent GUM department store in what is a place that far exceeded my expectations. It's pretty cool to stand in a place that you know so much about, mostly from movies and Cold War spy novels, and watch people simply going about their daily lives. I was hoping to catch some KGB guy following us from a distance, or perhaps see a dead letter drop in Gorky Park but we didn't get to see any of that. We did get to see the changing of the guard at the Kremlin and there were many large black Mercedes with tinted windows that may have contained Vladimir Putin or Dimitry Medvedev but that was about as far as it went. We did get to see these amazing office buildings they built in the 1950's that seriously look like they are out of Gotham city and there were quite a few gigantic churches.

Most if the stuff I'd read about Moscow said things like "it was a great city, but was ruined by the commies" and "90% of the old parts of Moscow were pulled down and replaced with horrible Stalinist towers". If that's the case then Moscow must have been one of the world's great marvels as it is still really good. It's a large modern city with some great Baroque architecture in the centre of town that has great weather in the summer, even into late August. A bit like Melbourne but not as hot and more daylight. And it has the Kremlin, Red Square, St Basil's Cathedral, Lenin's Mausoleum and all these icons of 20th century history.

We had a great time. We walked around town taking photos, we rode the subway to the souvenir market where we got some great Babushka Dolls, T-shirts and little badges. We managed to buy some train tickets to St Petersburg from a lady who didn't speak a word of English and we even went to the hands down best local supermarket in the whole world on Tversky Boulevard - it's in this amazing old classical building that sells caviar and all sorts of fancy foods we hadn't seen for months like bread and milk. We went through Cathedral Square in the Kremlin and even went and saw a rubbish movie out near the 1980 Olympic Stadium. And, apart from accommodation which is outrageously expensive, it doesn't actually cost that much to do things there. McDonalds is cheap and there's these Pancake places everywhere that will feed you for about $3 and even real food is comparatively inexpensive on a 1 for 1 basis with Australia. We got a really good pasta meal for maybe $8 AUD each, and they do good coffee.

My favourite part of Moscow though, was when we were having a beer at a sports bar before we headed off for our 2:35AM train to St Petersburg. We were watching the Olympics and more or less minding our own business when these Russian guys, who were obviously dying to talk to us, struck up a bit of a conversation with us. Before we knew it, everyone in the bar that could speak English was helping our new friend out with his questions as everyone became fascinated with our trip and the fact that we were actually real Australians in Russia. We talked about this and that - this guy used to be an officer in the Army, now was in sales of some sort and was going to buy a new car - and then we did some shots of Vodka. The manager of the bar told us he lived in Sydney for 3 years and wanted to go back and we all generally had a good time when he explained a concept of the Russian language I'd been missing. We were talking about Vladimir Putin shooting that tiger and our friend said "I've got a shotgun" and I said "Kruta" which is Russian for cool. He said "Nyet - Shotgun is not Kruta. AK-74; this is Kruta"

With that we left for St Petersburg, which I will probably write about in the near future!

Fear and Loathing in Uzbekistan

We are in Uzbekistan. Now, as a break from my usual ranting about wherever we happen to be, I thought today I would try to be a little informative about what we've seen and done. So here follows my observations and notes on the stuff out of the ordinary, you know, the little bits and peices that you may not know about Uzbekistan that will hopefully make your next trip there that little bit smoother and more comfortable....

GEOGRAPHY

Uzbekistan is in Central Asia and was formerly part of the USSR (or СССР as I now call them since I mastered the cyrillic alphabet). Some people may not know this.

Uzbekistan is one of only 2 doubly landlocked countries in the world (by doubly landlocked I mean only sharing borders with countries that are landlocked)

Despite being located in one of the more arid regions on the planet, and having only 10% arable land, they grow cotton here. This is insane and you can pretty safely bet once the Aral sea dries up completely they probably wont grow cotton anymore.

MONEY

The currency is the Uzbek Som, of which largest denomonation note is the 1000 som note. The current exchange rate for US dollars is 1331 Som to the dollar. Because of this here one usually measures one's currency in mass rather than cardinal amount. "That will be 2.5 kilos of som" is how one would normally pay for, oh I don't know, a sandwich or bottle of water.

GETTING AROUND

There are two types of cars on Uzbek roads: Ladas or Daewoos. I'm reliably informed that this is due to amazingly high taxes on car imports and Daewoo built a car factory here. The Ladas are all left over from the Soviet era.

Train puncuality must be a serious concern to the city fathers in Tashkent. I assume this lead them to ask the designers of their metro subway system to design some aspect of the trains to ensure passengers alight quickly and orderly. Being soviets and all their solution was, wait for it: KILLER TRAIN DOORS! The way it works is this. The doors for the trains must weigh about 300 kg's each and close at supersonic speed, so if you are passing through them, you make damn sure you are out of the way before they swing into action. People prepare to get on or off the train about 30 seconds before the train stops at the station. Then the instant the doors open people fight, push and scramble for the exit while everyone on the other side do the same thing. Due to the serious consequences of being caught in the doors, somehow everyone gets off or on very efficiently, if a bit scared and flustered. It's actually quite entertaining sitting on the train listening to the doors crash shut as a mass of humanity rushes either way through the portal. Not making it is trouble - there are severed hands and feet littering the tracks at the popular stations! (I may have embellished that last sentence a tiny bit..)

Uzbek roads are infinitely better than the roads in Kyrgyzstan and the Uzbek's get to live out the dreams of their Kyrgyz neighbours by driving as fast, or sometimes even faster, than the road and traffic condidtions or even laws of physics allow. Did someone leave a bit of a gap between them and the car next to it? Great! Invent your own lane by driving right bewteen them. Is there a slower car in front of you? Why not drive on the footpath to get past them. Don't worry about the pedestrians, they probably use the train and will know to get out of the way. Think you can go even faster around this corner? Then do it! The 12 cm wide tyres on your Daewoo or Lada will probably grip.

PEOPLE

There are still quite a lot of ethnic Russians living in Uzbekistan, mostly in the captial Tashkent. Thus whilst a visitor may think there are an inordinate number of prostitutes walking the streets here, they are more likely to be Russian women just going to the shops, or taking their infant child for a walk. In 6 inch high heels. And skin tight lycra. And with about an inch of makeup. Dressed like an actual prostitute.

HISTORY

Uzbekistan is home to many of the most ancient cities in the world, including Khiva and Samarkand which is 2750 years young! Let's hear it for Samarkand. There are also many of the most historically important sites in Islam such as the Registan and Mausleum of the cousin of the prophet Mohammad in Samarkand and the Chor Minor Mosque and Minaret in Bukhara. By the look of things they are also important sources of income for Islam in Uzbekistan as every one of these sites are full to the brim of carpet shops, ceramic vendors and, of course, money changers, conveniently located right in the temples!

FOOD

No meal in Uzbekistan is complete without mutton! Yep it's the national favourite. Usually it's cooked on a Shashlik which is a big metal skewer that they load up with the chewiest, gamiest pieces of meat available and also a nice big tasty piece of fat. Yummers! The places selling Shaslik are pretty easy to find because they generally the place that looks like it is on fire.

In actual fact I, and Shell, have really enjoyed Uzbekistan. This guy in Kyrgyzstan told us that in both countries you get to see the 3 M's (It may have been 4 but I can only remember 3 at the moment). For Uzbekistan that means Mosques, Minarets and Madrassas. For Kyrgyz it means Mountains, Mountains and Mountains, so the difference in countries was stark and a nice change. We have seen some dead set ancient history and had lots of fun haggling for souvineers, wandering around ruins and drinking many, many cups of tea.

But now we graduate from 3rd world to 2nd. Tomorrow morning (at 4:50 am!) we fly to Moscow and move one step closer to the real world, stuff like drinkable water, edible food, paying real money for stuff and, of all things, work. Sheesh. I'd like to say we are going to tourist it up big time for the next week, but we will probably just sleep in and spend most of our time taking photos of the weird stuff we see out the front door of our hostel.

I can't wait! Until next time, when I become your correspondant in Moscow, Bye!

Yurt Life Camp, Tash Rabat, Kyrgystan

We spent a night in the stunning valley of Tash Rabat in "Yurts" (pronounced Yurta in Russian). According to Wikipedia a Yurt for those of you that have not stepped inside Central Asia and seen one or heard of one either for that matter is a portable, felt-covered, wood framed dwelling structure used by the Nomadic people in the steppes (dry and arid areas) of Central Asia .

A Yurt is also known as a: ger in Mongolian, gher in Pakistani, boz üý in Kyrgys, kiyiz üy in Kazakh and Uyghur and last but not least kherga or Jirga in Pakistani.

In Kyrgys boz üý(боз үй), literally means "grey house", because of the colour of the felt. Which I think is a pretty good description except for the smell. It should be more like a "grey house that smells like farm animals" and it would be a more accurate description. Or even better still "grey house that smells like farm animals and will leave you and all your worldly possessions smelling like farm animals".

The family who ran the yurt camp had two boys (lucky them) who were about 4 and 7 years old, as soon as we got there the older boy had his ball out to play catch with us all. We had bought some Chinese kites at the Terracotta Warriors in Xian, these were a hit with the boys and made a pretty good sight with the kites flying against a background of mountains in the evening light.

Our Yurt accommodation was pretty basic but comfortable and in hindsight a lot better than hotels that we were to stay in in the future, we slept on mattresses on the carpeted floor, four people per yurt, we were nice and warm and toasty until all the peat or poo or what ever it was in our stove had all burnt away. We wanted to keep the Yurt camp family's puppy "Miro" cause he was so beautiful and so sooky and cold but I was a little worried that one of us would roll over crush him in our sleep, or he'd leave us a present in the night so we surrendered him to our drivers who thought he was just a cute as we did.

The toileting situation was pit toilets, two of which were full to the brim and particularly scary looking, one however was newly built and smelt of fresh paint, which in my mind makes for pretty good air freshener. Showers were non existent, but there was a mountain stream that I gave a miss and a portable sink for washing your face and brushing your teeth in. The women of the Yurt camp put on a pretty good dinner for us all, the highlight of which was the mashed potatoes and the vodka. Breakfast the next day was an equally good spread of pancakes, fabulous apricot jam, little fried dough bits and bottomless cups of regular black tea (finally).

After breakfast four of us decided to go horse riding for an hour, I still don't know if it was a great idea. No body got hurt or anything, but the horses either didn't understand English or they were just very disobedient and we would have covered more ground if we had of just walked for an hour instead! We were expecting a trail ride where the horses know where to go and for one of the local to come with us, but they literally just handed us four horses took our three dollars each and said see you in an hour. It was an experience none the less, especially for Jasmine who has never ridden a horse before. I led her around for a while until I got rope burn from dragging her horse along and realised that by riding one handed I could only ever go round in circles and had no chance of getting my horse to do anything I wanted. So then I ditched her and left her to work out how to drive herself. Brock's horse had a major flatulence problem accompanied by a hatred of all of us, so I guess you all know how that worked out.

While we were in Tash Rabat valley we also managed to look through the old stone ruins there. Tash Rabat means "stone walls" in Kyrgys. The ruins were an old Caravanserai used by the old Silk Road traders, or it also could have been a defensive structure, there are a few theories. The ruins were uncovered in Soviet times and make for some great photos in the morning light with the mountains as a backdrop (detecting a theme here?).

Tash Rabat was an awe inspiring place, it was the best of Kyrgystan all in one place, great food, vodka, friendly people and absolutely stunning scenery.

Yurts, Mountains, Horses, Mountains, Lakes and Mountains!

Welcome to Kyrgyzstan!

At least that's what we thought the sign said... It was written in Cyrillic so it was kind of hard to tell what with all the backwards R's and P's and C's and some other letter that we didn't know what the hell they meant.

Yes we had arrived in the frequently misspelled and rarely heard of back home Kyrgyzstan, and, as regular readers would no doubt be aware, we couldn't have been happier about it. As one of the republics of the former Soviet Union Kyrgyzstan was really only of interest to the Ruski's as a mountain getaway, know it all 10 year olds with the world map on their notebooks that listed all the member countries of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, the 5 million or so people that actually live there and, presently, Michelle and I.

Now to be completely straight with everyone we kind of chose this trip that came to Kyrgyzstan because no one has heard of it or really even knows where it is. There was no avid intrest in USSR history, or central Asian culture or even a firm idea about what was there; we just thought it would be cool to go somewhere that hardly anyone else we knew had, or would, go. The sum total of my knowledge of Kyrgyzstan was garnered from my friend from Renewtek, Djail, who is Kyrgyz and some unrelated reading about the dissoltion of the USSR that mention it in passing.

So it was now that our learning (and yours too, dear reader!) would begin in earnest. The first, most obvious, salient point about Kyrgyzstan is that it is quite mountainous. And I mean mountainous in the sense that the sun is quite a distance from the earth, or French people are rude and smelly. The whole country is mountainous ie mountains everywhere you look. Big mountains, smaller mountains, grass covered mountains, rocky mountains, snow capped peaks, peaks with glaciers, summits with snow on the north face, ragged pointy tops with snow on both faces, just lots and lots of mountains. It is, in fact, 90% covered in mountains. There are basically only 2 flat areas in the whole country, one valley where the captial Bishkek is situated that is perhaps 200 km's long and maybe 30 - 40 km's wide and the Ferghana valley that is mostly part of neighbouring Uzbekistan. For all the driving we did here, there was maybe 2 hours where we weren't encircled by, perched upon, or near the shadows of some fantastically picturesque mountain range.

And inhabiting this mountain paradise are the totally excellent Kyrgyz people. For all the different ethnic groups in Central Asia, such as Uzbeks, Armenians, Tajiks, Turkmen, Khazaks and Kyrgyz, almost everyone but the Kyrgyz are of Turkish descent. Apparently due to their nomadic nature they never really mixed with the neighbouring tribes and have maintained their unique culture since something like 2nd Century BC. Believe it or not, the mountains and surrounding valleys are deeply ingrained in their way of life with many farming horses and cattle and living in these round tents called Yurts. We saw them everywhere and spent our first night in Kyrgyzstan in one (see Shell's blog on our night at Tash Rabat). They aren't exactly backward though with many a post modern Kyrgyz yurt dweller quite happy to tie up his horse next to his Mercedes or BMW that are frequently parked besides the yurt.. There is also a large Russian population whom, despite being ethnically Russian and potentially predisposed to being lets say gruff, seemed to share the laid back and friendly Kyrgyz attitude that we met along the way.

So let's see: mountains? Check. Yurts? Check. People? Check. Aged and crumbling Soviet Infrastructure? Hmmmm, where to start. Lets start at the border. We crossed into Kyrgyzstan from China via the 3700m Torugart Pass. For such a high pass it was not actually that dramatic as to get there we pretty much drove up a valley and then up a mountain road that is not even as steep as the Mt Dandenong Tourist Road. The road up to the pass was typically Chinese: probably over engineered but comfortable and well made. Once we hit the border though, we were in a different world.

Firstly there was the immigration building. This totally 100% matched my expectations of what a Soviet built mountain administrative building should look like, expectations that were in no small part formed when playing the James Bond 007 game on the Nintendo 64, where you have to sneak through buildings shooting bad guys. The building itself looked like it had been on the wrong end of a couple of earthquakes; a roofline that was no where near 90 degrees and bits of concrete actually falling off the walls like water dripping from a tap. Inside it was more of the same: a marble floor with large cracks and peices missing from the pavers, hydronic heating pipes leaning on the walls and a bunch of fluro lights barely hanging from the ceiling that were not actually in use, the light being provided by a single globe dangling from electric wiring strung along the walls.

I thought it was great, although the toilet that I used was even more shoddily constucted than the rest of the place. It was almost as if they designed the shitter to retain the stench and attack the unsuspecting user as they entered. Had they invented the technology to dispense smells via the Internet you could feel my pain, but until then you will just have to take my word that it was bad and I could feel my eyeballs being burnt by the exposure.

However, in the Crappy Infrastructure Olympics that is Kyrgyzstan, the toilets in are no match
for the roads. To say they are bad is an insult to bad roads in the rest of the world, even Laos. You would almost think the potholes were dug on purpose, such is scientific precision and planning necessary to make a road as bad as these were. From gravel roads with spine jarring corrugations to tarred roads with ruts 2 feet deep and everything imaginable in between the Kyrgyz road system has to be felt to be believed. I guess that most of it is caused by the heavy truck traffic that rockets along roads simply not designed to carry vehicles that heavy, but for whatever reason it is hard work.

Generally most of the buildings such as houses and shops (but excluding border posts!) are in better repair than the roads but you wouldn't know it from looking from the outside. In fact lots of the building look as though they had just or were just about to collapse, however they seem to maintain the facade to ward off bad spirits or perhaps criminals as once inside pretty much everywhere was really nice. Special mentions msut go to the homestay in Kochkor whose interior looked EXACTLY like a house in Port Melbourne I went to an open inspection for that was owned by an old Greek couple. The only difference was the Kyrgyz house had carpets hanging on the walls where the greeks had pictures of the Madonna. Scary.

Another legacy of the Russian influence is the use of the Cyrillic alphabet which is inordinately confusing. A breif sysnopsis follows:

A is A
B looks like a 6
C doesn't exist
D looks like an A
E is an E
F is weird
G is a 90 degree angle
H doesn't exist
I is a backwards N
J is sort of an asterisk but is pronounced "zh"
K is K
L is like a square with no bottom with the left side falling away
M is M
N escapes me at the moment
O is O
P is like the aforementioned square without the bottom but is all straight
Q doesn't exist
R is P
S is C
T is T
U is about 60 different characters, all with subtle sounds that are very difficult to distinguish
V is B
X is nothing
Y is probably wrapped up in the U's somewhere
Z is a backwards 3

Complicating matters is the fact that many signs have whatever they are trying to display written in Russian and Kyrgyz (and sometimes English) so you never know what bloody language you are trying to read. Once you get the hang of it it is not actually that hard but geez louise you wouldn't want to be dropped off here your own just with a phrasebook and a smile. I, for one, would not get very far.

So that is a brief introduction to Kyrgyzstan. We saw the mountains, sunbaked and swam in a beautiful alpine lake, went on what must be one of the most scenic drives in the world along side a hydro electric resevoir and dam, watched the Olympic opening ceremony in a classy sports bar in Bishkek, stayed in a Yurt, rode horses through the mountains, drank many glasses of beer and vodka and generally enjoyed ourselves immensely, placing Kyrgyzstan well ahead of the pack of countries we have visited so far and making it our number 1 favourite country thus far on the excellent adventure!

Брок Миллс (Brock Mills in Cyrillic! Cool eh?)