MONGOLIA

Ah, I love how it sounds. I’m on my way to Osh, looking for a place to rest my body and what’s left of the mind. And I’m not finding any. Could it be this next town on the map? No, there are only three houses here. Or this place for tent on the river shore? Well, maybe this isn’t the best. Here, where there’s food and maybe they have rooms also? Well, where are they supposed to have those? This is a house of two on five meters. Though the day started grandly, it doesn’t seem to end in the same way.

Kara-Kol, pretty big town, but not big enough for an extra man. At the exit, cops. I see again the image of the pink stick waving (as a promise), I sigh and I pull over. The man comes to me; he has no intention to check papers or fining me. Just Doyle, where do I go to, since when and please give me your e-mail address. He also asks what I do for a living. Photographer. Aaa… so you’re taking me a picture. And he takes a hand-on-the-heap top model pose. I get down and he climbs in.

I ask him about gastinitsa and he tells me I’ve just passed by one. He writes me the name of the place on a piece of paper and I go back. I wander on a bunch of little streets, I ask three times three different people; one of them asks for five dollars to tell me. Ah, I find it, finally. I get off, exhausted, and I’m welcomed by a lady who is making a gesture (with her arms crossed) with a smile on her face: they don’t have rooms. Yes, that means one thing: I have to step on it until Tashkomur, fifty kilometers away, the only dwelling in the area that the guide says it has not one, but two hotels. And when I say I have to step on it, I unfortunately mean it. Dark is the last of the ingredients I’d like to add to the situation. I ride on some serpentines hanging on mountains and there’s a river running in the valley. The road is blocked from place to place by big stones or gravel fallen from the slopes. There are excavators and police, the traffic is stopped. And this is the last thing I need. I keep struggling and when there are two grams of light left in the air… Tashkomur. The town is on the other side of the river and I get there by crossing a bridge. I ask about the hotel and the first person who answers me, and I swear I heard it well, says the hotel I’m looking for is in this town, but fifty kilometers away. I ask – five? No, fifty. He is clearly telling rubbish, but I least get the direction. I go in that direction and I’m eventually saved by a kid riding a bike, who shows me the road up to the gate.

This is it, great. I get in, empty. I hear some voices from upstairs, so I go there. I don’t get to enter the hallway as a big dude three times my volume runs into me, launched, with his right hand stretched towards me. “You speak English?”. Yes. This is a freak, I’m telling you. He grabs my arm, walks me around and that English he asked me about is only five percent of what he’s talking. He asks for my passport, a copy of it, he tells me something about some registration, whatever, I don’t understand a damn thing. What this dude wants, who he is and especially if I can sleep here. We get out and he tells me that Doyle should be brought inside. Ummm, this is tempting, but he doesn’t go in through the doors, as the left side is not opening, it’s nailed. No problem. We go upstairs again. There are two people and a lady in a room up here, busy filling in some registers. I ask my freak how much is a room and he tells me with a smile that it costs twenty dollars, registration included. I don’t want any registration, dude. I only want to sleep. There’s no way we understand each other so I’m preparing to leave, as I’ve already spent half an hour without understanding anything. This is scaring him a little and he explains me he was actually joking, he is not the manager, he’s just the guard. Well, I’ve got that, but it still doesn’t happen anything. A policeman shows up and he wants the passport too. The guard proudly introduces him as the “police sheriff” and tells me that one of those people busy with the registers is the “police boss” in person and tonight, after these dudes finish whatever they’re filling in, we’re taking Doyle to sleep inside the police station courtyard. Really! Then, as we have the entire police of the town on our side, he asks me if I want some girls. He only has to make a phone call and he can bring me three of those. No, thanks. Then he asks me if I want something to eat. I’m boiling. I stop him and I explain him, as clearly as I can and sort of yelling, that I’m tired and dirty, I’ve been riding the whole day and I only want a room to sleep in. Just that. And I’m in a hotel, mind it, but everybody seems to be busy doing something fucking else. Yes, he finally gets it. A lady is called and she takes me to my room. It’s about three Euros. After I change my clothes, I hear a strong bang downstairs and I kinda know what’s going on. I get down and I see both doors banged on the walls and three boys walking around Doyle. That’s it; we’re getting him inside, with a trellis work put over the stairs and four people pushing the beast up. Doyle is sleeping under a ficus today, near the reception desk. I admit; this is not an image you see every day I’m going to my room and I’m carefully locking the door behind me, so that I don’t wake up with the wacko inside, in the mood for who knows what.

In the morning, after packing, I see two of the guys that helped me yesterday with the pushing. They’re chatting with a goat. I stretch the girths on the luggage and when I go to them to ask for help, I see the horned one has already passed away and they both have their hands full of blood. Well, I linger a little, as this is not quite an image I want to see in detail. They come to me later and we get Doyle out of the hotel together. I say thanks and I run away from this strange town.

On the road: it’s hot to very hot. I don’t like it, but I’m glad at the same time, thinking of those 4,600 m in altitude that are waiting for me few hundred kilometers away. On this road I find a new breed of participants to traffic. It is the one that accelerates like crazy when you try to overtake him and, if you manage to get to his window, you see him looking straight ahead very concentrated, with a grin of satisfaction splashed all over his face. Nothing spectacular besides that. The landscape is not the same as it was yesterday. It’s flat, full of heat, holes and radars. Only at about seventy kilometers from Osh I’m getting some shivers, after overtaking three military tabs in a row of seven. When I get in front, I see the entire row is led by a police car with the lights on. And that wouldn’t be too impressive if I didn’t see that all the cars on the opposite lane were stopping outside the road. How cool, I’m in the middle of an official row. I wouldn’t bother to ride this way if it only has moved with more than 50km/h and if all this equipment hasn’t generated this huge amount of smoke. The ones I’ve overtaken are now hurrying me from behind and they are again in front of me, one by one. I’m at the end of the road again. I remember a learning I’ve got from a truck driver – the easiest way to overtake someone who doesn’t let you overtake him is to pull over and have a coffee. This is exactly what I do.

I enter Osh one hour later. I look for the guesthouse Alexandru and Mark are staying in. The info in the guide goes something like this: take the first small street after a row of kiosks, then diagonally the third flight of stairs on the left. Asking for help is useless; no one knows where it is. Later on, when I manage to find it, it’s not hard to tell why. It is precisely the needle in the chariot of hay*. An apartment at the last floor of a block of flats among many other blocks of flats, with no road signs or something similar, where a smart ass stashed three-four beds in every room and now he’s a smart ass with guesthouse. In the evening I take a walk to the bazaar with the guys and a beer afterwards.

I like Osh. I have the feeling it’s the first time I meet the Orient on this road. Crowded, full of noise, everything meaningless. And the bazaar is the best of it. It’s the place for showing that dumb, all over the face smile of mine, that’s what it is.

I went to bed early and I’ve waken up early. I’ve waved the boys goodbye and started an intensive program of mint rubbing. First at the computer in the guesthouse and then during a walk in the town, in the bazaar, to be more precise. I got lost on the small streets and alleys, meandering and full of everything you can imagine. I’ve done this for several hours and then I’ve stopped at a restaurant and gambled the menu. I haven’t exactly got the best food in the world, but the thing lying on my plate was eatable. Then I’ve got to the sleeping place before dark, as they say lingering on the streets after dark in these places is not the best thing to do. I’m in bed, listening to some music and letting myself stolen by the sleep, thinking of the Tajikistan waiting for me in two days. Not white, I hope.

The packing nightmare has been pretty short this morning. I’m ready to go. I bravely face the traffic for about three traffic lights and then I’m out of town. There’s one more thing I should do. I have to change the tires, getting back to those for show, as Tajikistan is not the flattest playground to ride on. I stop at a vulcanization store and the team of fifty men surrounding me is ready to help. They are well-disposed, but I have to watch them intensively. They’re up on the wheel on their feet, they pull it all the ways, and they grab the brake disk. I stop all these sort of yelling. Slightly barbarian work, but well done. Bye!

I leave the oriental Osh behind me and I start again my fooling-the-radars play. Only one of them makes me a sign to stop, but slightly at the last moment and I pretend I don’t see them at the last moment too and I keep riding. I look at them out of the corner of my eye in the rear view mirror. No, I haven’t started any fire, I haven’t turned any destiny upside down. As I’m riding on, the traffic and the civilization slowly start to fade out. There are only few pieces missing, then there are still few pieces, but longer ones, then there are only few pieces of asphalt left and at the end there’s only me, the dusty road and few trucks. I realize that, the longer the time since I left home, the lesser the number of things needed for a feeling of anxiety with flavors of fear settles in. At this very moment for instance, I know for sure that what makes me feel uneasy is this grey in the sky. It’s high time for me to tell you something. Do you know how this path Doyle and I are bravely riding onto, which starts in Osh and goes on until Tajikistan? M41. Well… I know, it doesn’t tell too much to me either. What if I say Pamir Highway? Well? You are thrilled, aren’t you? Well, look at me now. This stretch, from Osh to Khorog, was made by the Russian masters in the 1930’s so that they can take troops, supply and other tricks, me among them, to this far off point of the Soviet empire.

The road is empty, I’m sort of scared, but we keep riding. I chat a little with a French bicyclist and then I move on. The number of trucks starts to increase and they seem not to do anything else but moving the gravel from one place to another. During such a maneuver with sand, they’re blocking the road, pushing some gravel from the slopes. I chat with few kids riding on donkeys, until I decide to ride on the river bed, as I’ve seen the other cars doing. It’s not the brightest idea I had today, as, after seeing a truck almost getting upside down when trying to get back on the road, I get stuck between rocks, without being able to move one centimeter in any way. Nevertheless, the relationship I’ve nursed with the children on donkeys starts to pay off and I’m out in five minutes with their help. Needless to say that meanwhile the traffic has taken its course and I’m the last one now.

The ascension to Taldyk pass begins – 3,615m. The road turns into something full of dust and the trucks make the view even more beautiful. In few minutes I almost see nothing. I still distinguish a group of bicyclists that are hardly struggling. Jamie and Suzie from England, who ride around the world and promote the solar energy. We stop to chat in the dust and we decide to meet at Sary-Tash, the town from across the pass, where all of us are ending this day.

I get on top. There are clouds, so no view at all. If I wasn’t seeing anything through this dust, well, now it’s as if someone has turned off the light. Luckily the descent starts, I get out of the clouds and I see the tiny Sary-Tash – the last place to rest in Kyrgyzstan. I see a road sign with “homestay” and I enter the gate of a yard where three bicyclists are waiting for me. A German couple and Charlie, from England also. Until I unpack and change clothes, Jamie and Suzie show up, followed by two Austrians in a Suzuki Samurai. One of them is a motorcycle dealer and tells me he has all the tools for mending Doyle if some trick happens to him. Thank you, but I’d rather don’t. The party starts all of a sudden. We take some beers and brandy from the store, the Austrians take some vodka out and Jamie finds a collection of hats in a room, very suited for today’s masquerade ball.

I don’t know what time it was when I parked, the sure thing is that we’ve left an army of bottles on the table and I know I fell asleep having in mind the chain of mountains full of snow that I was seeing from the threshold. The mountains I’m heading for, that I hope I’m passing by and that… ummm… good night.

* looking for the needle in the chariot of hay = Romanian saying; it means looking for something (almost) impossible to find.