The 5000 Project

The view from the bus from saraghs to mashhed was epic, vast giant snowless mountains which seem to put the country to scale, I had entered through these great mountainous walls to the new persian empire; An empire ruled by using religion as a basis for control with the people quietly terrified to stand up against it.

Every host that I stayed with, every person who approached me in the street, anyone who knew enough english to communicate – was vocally against the government and wished nothing more than change, one lady even whispered to me in the street ‘we are living in a prison’. Well, you might say, in most countries people are against the government to some degree, everyone whinges about high tax and poor choice of government spending – why is iran any different? Well, this is when I explain the problems and how suppressed individuals are.

Firstly, I arrived in the country knowing a bit about the issues, I knew that it was illegal for me to hold hands with a lady, anything more than that being highly illegal. When asking for directions to my host in mashhad, I purposefully asked males to avoid performing any crimes. When arriving at my host’s premises, I put my hand out to shake the female host’s hand (a couple hosted me) she was hesitant, but shook anyway – we entered the house, then she explained that simply shaking hands with the opposite sex is illegal. The list goes on ->

– Women aren’t allowed to enter a football match, this is to curb the mingling with males

–  Couples must show proof of marriage if walking together in the street, camping, or pretty much anything; else face harsh penalties. I met a couple on the train from mashhad to tehran the guy is iranian and the girl is sweedish, they met in malaysia and had been living there for many years, when in mashhad they were arrested when simply walking down the street together, not even holding hands. The girl was sent to a prison cell filled with iranian women, some of them were quite conservative wearing black chadors (full body cloaks, except for a small part of the face) – some of these chador clad ladies were crying, confused and scared as to why they were there. The couple were freed after a few hours, after confirmation that they are both tourists.

– All women must cover their heads. Many ladies only seem to cover the back of their head, showing a full head of hair at the front, in a quiet protest. Tourists must abide by this rule as well. Chadors must be worn to mosques. When crossing the border from Iran to armenia, all the ladies in the bus took off their headscarves almost as soon as they walked over the border line.

– Playing cards is illegal, as there is a slight chance that there may be gambling going on. A neighbour has the power to dob you in if he/she suspects sinister card dealings.

– Chess and Pool used to be illegal, these days chess is fine, it was banned in the early days of the revolution as sometimes it was used as an outlet for gambling. With pool, only recently it’s been grey-area’d – very difficult to find pool halls, it took us a good hr of driving around checking a list of addresses that used to have pool halls; Pool was banned due to a mix of gambling and, heaven forbid, women were entering the manly realms. This is all nonsense, poor excuses as a method to curb any kind of thought or emotion, the death of fun.

– All forms of transport have segments specifically for women, some city buses and trains have barriers denying entry to the male compartments. On buses that travel to neighbouring towns people generally just hop on the bus without arranged tickets with seat numbers, men and women cant sit next to each other, I was frequently moved to other seats that free up the original seat to strategically suit the placement of other women; I felt like I was forced into playing a game of retarded musical chairs.

– Alcohol is illegal, there is sweet tasting non-alcoholic beer in most shops that claim proudly to have 0.0% alcohol. They actually taste alright, as long as you aren’t expecting anything with a remote beer-like taste. There is a large drug problem in iran as it can be just as illegal as alcohol, if bribes are paid. I was hosted by people who drank alcohol, whiskey smuggled in from Pakistan mainly, they drank it very quickly, as if they had to destroy the evidence quickly. Punishment for alcohol without paying a bribe is 100 (can’t remember, don’t quote me) lashes of the whip.

– Homosexuality is not accepted. The government treats this ‘condition’ by sending gay individuals to a clinic to be treated with hormones, not unsimilar to a rehab clinic.

– Television is all religious and completely biased, from what I gathered from watching the nightly news, The syrian uprisings were terrorists attacks against the syrian government – they would zoom in on broken riot shields that have blood stained glass. Many people install satellite dishes to get some real (well, closer to real) information about the world, the police routinely gain access to apartment roofs and attempt to damage them. These days people just replace the centre core when they get damaged, and keep the dish.

– Iranian internet is practically unuseable, it’s almost a joke to have it connected; every single website that I normally access from other countries is blocked, almost everyone uses a proxy to make the internet useful. Google.com works, however the initial page is a fake google search page hosted by the iranian government, it then redirects to the real google when you click search, a method of tracking people’s searches.

– Job promotion in government and some non government industries requires obedience to the religious conservative rules; I met an iranian architect who couldnt get a promotion simply because she didn’t wear a chador to work (she just wore a headscarf), or attend ceremonies at the mosque frequently enough.

Certain mosques preach “Death to America” propaganda, people tend to go along with it. I heard about an american guy who witnessed one of these announcements, then the locals noticed he was a foreigner, they asked him where he’s from; he let them know that he’s american, they then warmly welcomed him to their country with open arms. Quite a contradiction.

I began to feel very confined and restricted for the first few days, until the people started to notice me, the only reason I kept travelling through iran was for the amazing hospitality of the people, there is a massive contrast between the values of the government and of the people.

Culturally they have this thing called Tar’of, where someone may offer too much but expect the offer to be declined about three times before they actually intend on offering it. I encountered this strange cultural trait for the first time in mashhad, I ordered a sandwich (there are more sandwich shops in iran than kebab shops) and after attempting to communicate, the shop attendant offered me tea; I accepted and attempted to communicate further, then he decided that my meal is completely free. This is a prime example of Tar’of, I declined twice, then he quickly retracted the offer and nothing more was said. It takes a bit of getting used to.

People in the street will sometimes offer their place to stay and there are so many couchhosts in the country it is extremely easy to find homely accomodation. The hosts pay for everything, it reminded me of indonesia – Helpful, warm, generous people. I felt as if they were trying to prove that they are not what the western media portrays.

Many iranians are immigrating to mainly canada or australia, there are lot of well educated people – everyone who knew a bit of english seemed to have an intelligent free-thinking way about them. The issue is, the people who could make change in iran are the ones fleeing for better lands.

There was a protest a few years back by the green movement, protesting the fact that the elections only list right wing religious candidates on the ballat sheets – many of the protesters were killed. People who actively campaign against the government seem to go away for a while and return as different people, rumour has it that the government uses methods of torture to break the rebels. Due to this, the people of the country seem to just endure the hardships, too afraid to stand up united even though a vast majority want drastic change. With the economic sanctions in place, I feel as if something may happen soon, if and when it does – I fear for what will happen to the amazing Persians that I have met.

Turkmenistan! when the soviet union collapsed, most ex-soviet countries took a rational look at what can be done to fix what was left over – The Turkmenistan appointed leader from USSR decided to go batshit crazy instead. He renamed days of the week to the names of his family members and banned radios in cars. He also constructed heaps of golden statues in his image with different poses and placed them all throughout the cities of his land, one with his jacket thrown over his shoulder, one sitting down with his legs crossed, one of his mother looking like mother mary holding the baby leader; the baby seemed to have the face of a man. The old leader died a few years back and with the new guy in charge I believe we travelled through the country during a drastic period of change, many buildings were brand new, including very flash train stations and nice mosaic-tiled bus stops; the people seemed to be reasonably happy and free too. It was a strange country though, although oddly modern when compared with most of Uzbekistan.

Reporters without Borders rates Turkmenistan second last in a list ranking press-freedom, north korea being the last on the list. All newspapers seem to have the current leader on the front page and there is only one internet cafe in each city, which requires passport ID before logging in to a heavily filtered net connection.

So, we arrived in Turkmenibat, went to the only hotel that seems to allow foreigners that didn’t look too flash and paid a good 5x more than what the locals pay, they didn’t even try to hide it, it seemed to be one of the countries laws. It cost $20 for a room with two single beds, we got it this cheap because we convinced the lady that we will only use one bed and one of us will sleep on the floor, somehow she trusted us; it’s pretty easy to sleep on a bed and make it look untouched afterwards. The room was probably the worst I had seen during my travels, the whole building looked like it was about to fall apart, very paper-street-esque.

We took a train to mary (ma-ree) and unfortunately for us, arrived at around 9pm – the only place of sleep we could find had a price of $40 each, we decided to go to a pub and ponder the qualm over pints of flat 30c beer. To our surprise the problem wasn’t solved after 4 pints, the bar was closing; then out jumped a local guy to our aide, he said that he can let us sleep on his floor as long as we get out at 6am, we agreed. We arrived at the apartment, and so did two bottles of vodka almost out of nowhere, which did not remain full for long. The local mafia (according to our hosts) rocked up and sat us down in the living room, they seemed to question us about our loyalties to america, asking us if we like obama, then one seemed to mime bomb explosions and mentioned iraq. They let us go after we convincingly explained that we have no allegiance to the US, I was quite happy about their decision. Afterwards they let us sleep in a different room only to be woken 1hr later… our agreed time of departure, 6am. Stumbling outside with our bags, I felt one of the nastiest hangovers in a few years, it took pretty much the whole day finding alternative accommodation for $10 each, quite a lucky find too.

The next day we met with some couchsurfers, all seemed to be american NGO workers for a group called ‘Peace Corps’, an NGO that is funded by the US government – quite a paradox. The crew explained some of the dilemmas they face working in turkmenistan, one of them mentioned that they found a bug (electronic) in their apartment not long ago, apparently many pubs and restaurants that are frequented by foreigners are bugged – although the NGOs (not US spies *cough*) didn’t seem too concerned about this, as the government is mainly worried about the information that the locals gain, the heavy punishments going to them instead of the foreigners.

One of the highlights of Turkmenistan was rocking up to a cheap motel pub to find that it moonlighted as a brothel for the iranian truck drivers, we arrived during one of the prostitute’s birthdays and managed to sit at the main table, eating the left overs from the night which included caviar; we guessed that the girls were paid a decent amount. Some guy lit fireworks within the pub, almost setting my scarf on fire.

The next day was new years, we spent the night being sober as by the time we went to find a pub or bottle shop – everything was closed, everyone seems to be with their families during new years – not drinking like there is no tomorrow. Crazy customs. There were, however, enough dangerous fireworks fired that night to cause an earthquake.

We left Turkmenistan over some of the worst roads I had encountered so far, upon arriving in Iran, I parted ways with the crazy czech. I was very happy to be on my own again, through what was to be the most interesting country I had come across; the new islamic persian empire.

Alright, I’m eager to blog about Iran – so I’m going to summarize Uzbekistan, as it’s mainly an isolated desert wasteland, many long bus journeys and a lack of communication with locals.

Khiva:
Tashkent->Organch->Khiva: ~$16

An ancient town in a dry desert, maintained as a tourist attraction, hotels within the old towns. A room with two single beds cost $10, so $5 each – the cheapest accommodation we could get in all of uzbek. Most of the time there was no hot water and we experienced 1hr blackouts every 4 or so hours, it seems that most of uzbek has the same power issues except for the capital city, tashkent. Khiva was old and impressive, but it was a bit themeparky – no legitimate businesses resided inside the old walls other than souvenir shops and hotels, the museums were cheap and tacky with no useful information. We didn’t stay long.

Moynuk:
Organch->Nukus->Kungrad->Moynuk ~$4

A collection of very cheap local buses later, after standing for 5hrs or so cramped between some overly invasive uzbekistanians (one guy was drunk, kept touching me and my belongings, then bought my water for an inflated price and sculled the whole litre – I was worried that he was going to piss in the bus afterwards, thankfully he didn’t) we finally arrived in a ghosttown called moynuk. The only hotel in this tiny town had no power when we arrived at night, most of the town had no power; this blackout latest the entire night. In the morning we were told there is water available for the town for only one hr a day (7am-8am), and it was used only for washing dishes and clothes; too polluted for anything else. You may be wondering right now what brought us to this place, well, 30yrs ago the town of moynuk was a thriving fishing port, situated on the banks of the aral sea, what used to be the 4th largest inland sea in the world… however as of today there is about 2% of the sea remaining.

You may now be asking how the hell an entire sea can dry up, well the soviet union constructed dams and irrigation channels directing water that normally flows into the sea from the mountains in the north; and channeled the water instead to farmland in the uzbek fields, for the immense cotton production. The problem with this is that uzbekistan is a very dry country and cotton is a very thirsty crop, the farmland required more water to sustain the agriculture, which hastily caused an entire sea to dry up. Today there are frequent ‘salt storms’ the wind blows ice and salt throughout the region and the effects of the dried sea is creating another desert to link up with the north eastern uzbek desert.

To make matters worse, the soviets used powerful pesticides such as DDT which is still today causing issues with contaminated water supplies. To make matters even worse, the soviets decided to use an island in the sea for testing chemical and biological weapons, the testing wiped out much of the wildlife in the area. I think that central asia was used as a testing site for pretty much everything they could think to test, perhaps even with the people as guinea pigs?

We walked down to the banks of the sea to find ships stranded on the dry sea bed, the haunting sound of salted wind whispered to us as we observed the spooky relics of an eternally lost age of prosperity in Uzbekistan. Yup, it was a moment worthy of fancy poetics.

Nukus:
Moynuk->Nukus ~$4

Met some russians in a hotel ($8 for a dorm bed), drank a fair amount of vodka. Took a bus to Bukhura the next day.
Now, the bus ride was quite something, it was run by a couple of charismatic iranians; the bus was very close to being unusable, none of the seats were in-tact, there was a giant hose coming from the back of the bus down the isle then back under the bus at the front, I assumed it was some kind of patch repair job. The bus was also very fumey and freezing cold, it seemed like the two guys running it were cowboys, reminded me of firefly a bit. 3hrs into the journey and the bus broke down, it took another 3hrs for the repair work – I had a feeling that this probably happens during every trip. The what was meant to be 8hr trip ended up taking about 15hrs… just to get to the border of the province, we arrived at the border at 10pm and the bus parked at a rest stop, everyone got out to have some dinner; we were ready to hop back in when one of the guys on the bus let us know that we will be here until 6am! as in, sitting or sleeping on the restaurant chairs for the next 8hrs!. We inquired as to why this is happening, turns out that there is a 10pm curfew for buses (and possibly cars) rather inconvenient. All up, the trip took 23hrs, when it was meant to take 8.

Bukhura:
Nukus->Bukhura ~$10

Really impressive old town that is truely functional, ancient buildings and heaps of mosquey things, bukhura was the capital of the timur empire which reached as far as europe. Timur was a turkish-uzbek dude who did pretty much the same thing as Genghis khan, after the Genghis empire, except noone seems to remember him because he wasn’t the first guy to rape and slaughter asia and europe originating from central/northern asia. He converted to islam and calmed down a bit, hence the many mosques. We stayed in a room for $12 ($6 each).

Nurota:
Bukhura->Navoi->Nurota ~$4

A few more busses and one small mountain range, we arrived at a tiny town called Nurota, Alexander the great built a castle here and married an uzbek lady. We hiked up the very worn castle hill, there were no signs anywhere with information and nothing to point is in the right direction (although it was pretty easy to see from the town). There was, however, a giant mosque at the base of the hill with a holy spring that contained holy trout which should never be fished out, else face the wrath of Allah.  This kind of overshadows the true significance of the extremely old castle. On the way down we spotted a museum; I was eager to read all about alexander the great in this region, unfortunately the museum was full of islamic artifacts, there was not one piece of information about the castle. I found that in many places within central asia, the islamic history tended to take over all other history or culture. There were no hotels allowing foreigners in Nurota, so our plans to hike through the mountains fell through. We hitchhiked back to Navoi, then took a bus all the way to Samarkand.

Samarkand:
Navoi->Samarkand ~$2

We checked into a hostel after walking 1.5hrs from the bus station, the dorm had no heating and the temperature all through uzbekistan was getting mighty cold. On the second night it felt so cold that I piled blankets from all the spare beds in the dorm, on top of me. Upon waking, I put my boots on and I could hear cracking of ice, the sweat on the inner fur of the boots had frozen; later that day I found out that the temperature that night got as low as -15c!
Samarkand was fairly average, more impressive mosquey things some of which had large christmas trees infront of them (new years trees actually, during the stalin days all mosques and churches were destroyed, traditions renamed. Father christmas is known is ‘Father Frost’). On the third night we decided to get into the vodka with a couple of other backpackers, suddenly a pipe burst in the ceiling and water came flooding down, we played ‘Magic Fountain’ by Art Vs Science on the laptop and proceeded to dance around the table, before deciding to get bucket. Vodka seemed to be the only way to attempt to warm up.

Next was the return to tashkent, visa pickup was uneventful – I cooked dinner for my hosts on christmas night, for them it was just another ordinary day. We took a bus back to bukhura, spent one night there, then headed for the turkmenistan border. The crossing was uneventful, they didn’t check registration at all (which is a good thing, because I had nothing for the couchsurfing nights) and, as all central asian police and border control officers seem to do, they checked my Iran visa (which has a nice photo of me on the visa itself) instead of actually checking my main passport page – proof that they have no idea what they’re doing.

We were in Turkmenistan! rated 2nd last in the Journalists-Without-Borders ranking of the press freedom of countries, North Korea being the last. Although it wasn’t anything like North Korea…