Those magnificent men in their flying machines!

"Tourist?" the pilot asked. I nodded.

"Ingland, Amerika?"

"Narvegia!" I replied.

He nodded and told the copilot.

O joy! O Happiness! I was finally on the flight of a lifetime! I had read about this, and seen some videos about this flight. The only commercial flight in the world using a double-decker Antonov 2p. A plane as old as I am. I had travelled to Fergana for this reason only.

The day before, I had walked up to the airport, and after some wandering back and forth, I finally asked the only guy who looked official. "Sokh?" He nodded and started a long monolog in Uzbek. I stopped him, and started writing on my smartphone. I showed him in Uzbek. His face lit up and he started writing a reply. It said he would put my name on a list for the flights on Wednesday the 17th. I had to be there one hour before. When I would receive the tickets.

I got up way too early, eager to get going. I had booked a taxi the day before. It took me to the airport way too early. But I did not want to risk being late because of something unforeseen. The guy recognized me from the day before. I handed over my passport, and after a while, a woman handed me two handwritten tickets. I was ready!

I walked through security and came to the gate. Ah! There it was, in all of its glory!

Shortly after, we were ready to board, I was first in line, wanting to get a good seat. But an old lady in a wheelchair took precedence. Of course. No question there. But finally I could climb (literally) onboard. There were only four rows of seats. Three seats per row. And luggage in the back. I didn't carry much other than my pc-bag. I laid it in the shelf above the seat. And sat down by the window. Row 2. Best view in the plane!

Not much legroom, but the seats were soft, so no problem

Soon, the captain started the engine, and it moaned and spat into life. Spitting thick smoke out the exhaust pipes on the sides. It was magnificent! We taxied out onto the tarmac, and off we went. First, the tail lifted until we were level, then...nothing. Or at least, that's what it seemed like. I was wondering when we would take off, and looked down on the ground, only to realize, we HAD taken off. It was such a silky smooth take off. Just letting the wings lift us into the air. Ah! I smiled so much I feared I would need surgery to remove my smile. 

We lifted slowly into the sky. Leaving the ground below us. Soon the landscape changed beneath us. Mountains and arid lands. 

Then we started descending into more green areas. We were nearing Sokh. And with a sharp bump, we landed. Ah! What a machine! What an experience! I loved every second of the flight!

Embarrassingly bad selfie

What a beauty!

I waited an hour and a half before my return flight. I jumped into the same seat. My camera ready. I filmed the captain again start the engine. But this time, the old engine decided to show us who's boss. A tremendous bang shook the whole airplane and made everybody jump. The pilots included. A solid backfire in the engine. The pilots laughed, and the engine slowly revved up. Almost unwillingly. But in the end, it gave up and coughed and spat into life again. The pilots spent much more time checking all the instruments this time, before we headed out onto the tarmac. A short while later, they revved the engine, and off we went. Just as silky smooth as the first time. 40 minutes later we landed with a bump back in Fergana. We got off the plane, and my smile wouldn't go away. It may not have been heaven, but it was at least way up in the skies. 

I recorded a lot of video clips that I put into a video. More the "live" experience than mere words can depict. Enjoy!

Trip of a lifetime!

Uzbekistan, ergo sum!

 This day, my main goal was to cross the border with Uzbekistan. Crossing the border was pretty straightforward. I got on a mashrut. Which contrary to normal, left on a set time. I thought the border would be a certain distance. But after driving for like a minute, we stopped again. I thought we had arrived at another bus station. But no. This was actually the border. The mashrut stopped first at the Kyrgyz side so we could get stamped out of Kyrgyzstan. Then we travelled like 50 meters, where a Kyrgyz border officer came on board to check our id's. He demanded to see my exit stamp. I showed it to him, and we were off again. For like 50 meters. Uzbekistan border. Time to get out, and bring all our gear. We went into a large hall with only one booth. Which was empty. We waited for a while, before an officer saw us. Far back in the room. He exchanged (shouted) some words with the Uzbeks in our group. After a while, a passport control officer showed up. And we could get ut passport stamped. Then customs. Which was just a guy telling us to put our bags on a conveyor belt into a x-ray machine. After we had all been scanned, with him mostly occupied with talking to another guy, we were let into Uzbekistan. An hour and then some later, we arrived in Andijon. Where I would spend the night.

As I got off the mashrut, I was immediately "attacked" by a taxi driver. I didn't understand what he was saying, (no hablo Uzbek) so a local guy translated.

"The taxi driver wants to know where you are going? Fergana, Tashkent, Kokand?"

"I am going here!" I said and pointed to the ground. 

He smiled. "Really? Andijon?"

He explained it to the taxi-driver, who looked at me with disbelief. Admittedly, Andijon is not on any tourist maps. That's for sure. And I didn't go here expecting to find hidden gems or anything. It was more a practical thing. Travelling all over the world has taught me never to trust timetables. So I could have made the train to Fergana (needed to buy the ticket too), but if anything went wrong, I would be stuck. So I opted to get stuck on purpose. 

So one of the things I did this day, was to buy a train ticket to Margilon. A city close to Fergana. That was my real first goal in Uzbekistan.

But my very first thing was to withdraw some money. It was a bit weird going to an ATM, and asking for 1 000 000, without it laughing at me. The Uzbek sum isn't exactly top value. 1 000 000 sum is about $85... So I felt rich until I started buying stuff...

I also had to switch sim-cards. My Kyrgyz sim only worked a couple of clicks inland. I found a local provider and got 24Gb for about 40 000 sum (about $3). One fifth of the Kyrgyz sim. Not bad. Some sim for sum...

With my phone online, and maps working again, I walked the couple of miles down to my hotel. 

It was a very old hotel. Located in a backstreet. Where cars had to drive slowly whether they wanted or not. I loved it. 

After unpacking my bags, I went outside and had a walk around town. Just to see if I could find something interesting. And I did. Below are some of the images I took during my walk.

The next day, I got up, had a shower, and walked to the train station. At the station, I bought some food and drink for breakfast. The woman behind the counter didn't have the full change, so she gave me a ball of something I had seen before. I assumed it was something sweet since I had seen some kids eating these with a great appetite. I put it in my mouth. Oh, the shock! The horror! It wasn't sweet. It was sour cheese. My brain went into self-preservation mode. "SPIT IT OUT!" it screamed. I wanted to, but the logical part of my brain stopped me. Spitting out a local delicacy onto the marble floors of the train station? Not exactly the way to get people to love tourists. I tried finding a waste bin. All the while my face shrunk into a prune. Despite my desperate attempts to hide my disgust. Keeping a straight face isn't easy when your whole body is dying. My brain trying to cope with not trying to vomit. But I found no waste bin anywhere. I had to chew the chewing gum texture. In the end, I managed to swallow it. I flung open a chocolate bar I had bought and devoured it. Just to get rid of the taste. YUCK! Sorry. You may love your cheese, but I cannot stand it. In my defense, cheese is one of the food items I am very picky about.

I got on the train, and found my seat. The car was hot. Steaming hot. Packed with people. I broke out a sweat. Immediately. And it stayed that way for the remainder of the 1 hour trip to Margilon. When I arrived I was stinky and sweaty. And ready for some air conditioning. But first, I had to find a taxi. Which was harder than I imagined. That is, not hard to find a taxi. But a driver that understood where I was going. Nobody knew the hotel, let alone the street in Fergana. Or even the area. But finally, I found one that was able to figure it out. And he zoomed me to the hotel. With only a little help from me and my GPS. 

I came to Fergana for one specific reason. Something I wanted to do ever since I saw it on YouTube. But more on that tomorrow.

The history of us

Osh is one of the oldest cities in the world. It was founded more than 3000 years ago. In the 8th century, it was a center for silk production on the silk road. The Fergana valley in which it is located, is a very fertile land. And many weary travelers on the silk road used to spend a few days here to rest after arduous travels across deserts and mountains. Osh has also been the unfortunate center of ethnic violence in modern days. This area is where a largely ethnical Uzbek population has been living for a long time. But during the Soviet era, the borders were set by the central government. And when the Soviet Union collapsed, those Uzbeks found themselves inside Kyrgyzstan. In 2010, Kyrgyz nationalist decided that Uzbeks didn't belong in Kyrgyzstan. In Osh, they started harassing and attacking ethnic Uzbeks. Some were beaten, and some were even killed. The nationalist violence erupting in both Osh and the surrounding areas forced around 100 000 ethnic Uzbeks to flee the land their ancestors had been living on for centuries. They all fled to Uzbekistan. Never to return.

I love old history. And the older, the better. Seeing artifacts from a time when a flint axe was the pinnacle of technology gives me chills. Today, all the technology we take for granted, has been crafted from knowledge collected and refined over millennia. In those days, just figuring out how to make an axe was basically an act of brilliance. And one of the things I wanted to see in Osh, was the ancient sacred mountain of Sulaiman-too. A place of worship of different gods for at least 10 000 years. And the best of it all : It has a lot of petroglyphs (stone carvings) from ancient people. I was looking forward to looking at the "handprints" of those ancient people. 

But before that, I also took the city in. Went to the bazaar, a local park, and "the tallest Lenin statue". 

I was most excited about seeing the "tallest Lenin statue", only to be disappointed by the fact that the statue itself wasn't really tall. It was just erected on a tall platform...

Lenin getting a makeover

The bazaar on the other hand, was great. I love bazaars. Although I am not very fond of crowded places, the bazaars are kinda different. There is so much to see (and smell), that I tend to forget about the bustle. And my favorite in all bazaars is the spice market. Just walking past the stalls and letting the delightful smells of the spices fill my nostrils? I always walk away with a smile. And I also love the brand fakes. I just had to buy a couple of Calivah Klaun underpants. This is also were I bought my Ak-Kalpak. The traditional hat worn my Kyrgyz men. This hat is even on UNESCO's World Heritage list. In Kyrgyzstan they even have a national holiday in its honor. How could I not buy one?

The park in Osh was lovely. With some joy-rides, a small train and some electric toy cars you could rent and zoom around the park in. I decided not to try any of them... But it was fun watching others do.

What to do when the producer has misspelled the text?

Use some tape to fix it....

Love tunnel

Nice old car on display

The noise of us.

Next stop was Sulaiman-too. I paid the entrance fee and walked up the stairs to the view point at the top. Only to be embarrassingly reminded in what terrible shape I was... I probably sounded like a whale scaling the stairs. Pretending to stop to enjoy the view every time I reached a platform. Gasping for air, I don't think I fooled anyone. 

As I finally reached the view-point on the hill, I looked out over the city. The noise of the city was the usual one. Traffic, mostly. But also some hammering and nail-guns popping here and there. And I thought about this mountain. How people 10 000 years ago would maybe sit here and look out over a totally different landscape. And the only sounds would be of nature. Birds, predators and prey. And the occasional words from others in the tribe. But none of the noise I heard. In our daily life, we tend to surround ourselves with noise. As if silence is dangerous, or at least scary.

And the worst part is that we want so badly to be heard in all the noise. So we need to scream more loudly to be heard. 

And this is also, unfortunately, how we treat those old voices too. I paid my entrance fee to the site. I looked at the map, and saw that the site was littered with petroglyphs. But no matter how much I looked, I couldn't see any. Only modern "I love X", "Y love Z", "I was here such and such date". All over the site. I checked online to see if I could find a better map of the old rock carvings. Only to be shocked to learn that all of the modern scribblings had been painted over by those modern ones. 10 000 year old messages being drowned out by the noise of us. I was angry. 10 000 years ago, someone used a primitive way of communicating ideas. Carvings that lasted 10 000 years onto the future. Our present. And here they are. Being sprayed over by us. Wanting to scream "Here I am! See ME!". A 10 000 year old voice being out screamed by our need for attention.

The only place I could find somewhat preserved petroglyphs were inside a Soviet era museum. But even there, the designers had managed to cover some of it up with a wall structure. 

Only part not destroyed, but partially covered by the wall

All in all, a frustrating and thought-provoking experience.

This was the last stop in Kyrgyzstan. Next stop : Uzbekistan. 

Over the hills and far away

 "You are going by taxi to Osh?" The receptionist in my hotel i Bishkek looked puzzled. "Why? There are flights there! The taxi will take more than 10 hours!"

"Yes, but then I wouldn't see the country. I want to see as much as possible." I replied. "Aaah!" She understood now. She booked a taxi to the western bus station. I wasn't going on my own. I was going by so-called shared taxi. A concept where the taxi leaves when it is full, and the passengers share the cost. For this trip it was 3500 som each (about 40 dollars).

I had taken a mashrut back to Bishkek after going to the fairytale canyon. It was again a beautiful ride through the mountains. But since I have already showed that in a previous post, I skip that here. Especially since the trip I was embarking on this day, was even more magnificent.

I found one taxi waiting and put my bag in the trunk. Being a foreigner, I was automatically given the front seat. And then the waiting game began. The driver shouted "Osh! Osh!" every time he saw somebody. But to no avail. After one hour, we were still only two passengers. I was contemplating just paying for the rest of the seats. But then suddenly the driver obviously gave up, took my bag and put it in another taxi that had a family of three in the back seat. Missing just one foreigner in the front seat... And we were off.

One of the reasons I wanted to take this long way, was to see the mountain roads. They were supposedly spectacular. And it didn't take long before we started ascending into the beautiful mountains.

Wow! I am lost for words! The contrasts! The colors! The patterns and shapes. And the beautiful rivers and blue-green lakes. My feeble attempts at photos does not do the views any justice. But I did attempt some. Enjoy the few photos I found "average". None were good.

Start of the mountain crossing

Far down to the bottom of the valley

The trail started becoming a criss-cross up the steep hill

Steep to the top

Tunnel the last stretch to the top

At the top

Starting the decent

A yurt on the mountain

Beautiful green lake at the bottom of the mountain

The driver obviously wanted to be a rally driver. He overtook cars and trucks through right turns, dived between pot-holes and rarely dropped below 100 km/h. Honking his horn all the time to get other drivers to get out of our way. Luckily, the view around me was so spectacular that I managed to ignore his driving. And the fact that he was smoking heavily. All the time...

After we had finished the mountains, our driver got more and more trouble with the taxi. The engine was faltering. And the car started jolting and breaking. The driver stopped and restarted the car a couple of times, and the engine ran for a while again. When we arrived in Uzgen, about 50 km from Osh, the driver gave up, got us another taxi to take us the last piece, and we were off again. A little extra adventure for the money. And I had reached my final destination in Kyrgyzstan. The ancient city of Osh.