Common Sense and Whiskey

No, You May Not Visit Turkmenistan

We're hitting the road again soon, for Turkey and Ukraine, and there is just enough time for a quick fly-in fly-out to somewhere else, so we made a bid to visit our first "'Stan."

We'll arrive at Ataturk Airport in Istanbul late in the evening, and Turkish Airlines' flight schedule works out great. It would allow us to keep pushing east. Just a brief layover in the raved-about new Turkish lounge, and off we'd go to Ashgabat.

Alas, it was not to be.

The Turkmen government requires a letter of invitation (loi) in order to grant a tourist visa. They're available through travel services (Uncornered Market blog does a good job describing how to get an loi), and we applied through a friendly, helpful service in Ashgabat.

We didn't invest much of our hearts in our quick little prospective visit, and it's just as well, because Turkmenistan didn't invite us, at least on the dates we could visit. This morning brought an email from our man in Ashgabat:

"Please, be informed, the Migration Service of Turkmenstan has announced some limitations on issuing LOIs (for tourist visas) for the period between March 11 till March 25. Now, we must shift the dates of your travel to Ashgabat before March 11 or after March 25. 

Please, advise if it is possible for you to travel to Turkmenistan during the period of March 9 till March 11?" 

March 9 till March 11 isn't going to work. Most places you get to choose your own dates to visit. Of course, this makes me want to visit more.

Next time.

Missing: One Formerly Great Inland Sea

Speaking of studying your maps like a good little schoolboy, I was in school during the Soviet period and learned all about the Soviet Union's great lakes. I knew them well, west to east, the Black Sea, then the Caspian, then the Aral (Lake Baikal was in Siberia and thus off schoolboys' maps). By now I've been to the Black and Caspian Seas, but I'm afraid we may all be running out of time to see the Aral.

Tom Bissell took us there and told us as much in his 2004 Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia, and now there's a nice update in Prospect magazine: the Aral Sea has shrunk to ten per cent of its original size and contends for "the worst pace on earth."

Name That Stan

Most of us world travel fans who studied our maps in school will be able to tell you that Ashgabat is the capital of one of the five Stans that emerged from the Soviet Union - Turkmenistan, to be exact. NPR reporter Frank Langfitt didn't know where Ashgabat is, but he filed an entertaining little piece yesterday on "extreme travelers," in which he interviewed two of the top-ten-ranked people at mosttraveledpeople.com.

Just personally, as far as "where you've been" websites go, I like passportstamp.com better. Mosttraveledpeople.com is klunkier to get your information into, and passportstamp.com lets you map your visited countries on a fun little map you can use elsewhere, like so:

"I bet it will be vaguely disappointing."

Featuring "soft tortillas overstaffed with supper tangy chicken."

Can I Use Mastercard to Lahore?

You never know, but Sarwar Sukhera sounds honest in this review of flying the friendly skies of PIA Pakistan International Airways:

"Overhead compartments are jammed with carry-on baggage that make one wonder why the designers never thought of building the main cargo area overhead instead of down there in the belly of the plane."

Oh, and it just didn't get any better. Imagine. Read the whole thing.

 

Feel Good Quotes from Jeffrey Tayler, Continued

Jeffrey Tayler's fun adventure continues. Now he's in Osh:

"The door swung open and banged against the wall. In sauntered a low-browed thug with a crewcut, in tight-fitting trousers and pointy black shoes, with, on his fat arm, a sloppy-busted, pot bellied Kyrgyz woman whose mascara-smeared eyes and ill-painted lips could only be those of a hooker."

- Page 225 of Murderers in Mausoleums.

Kyrgyzstan, We Hardly Knew Ya

Here's a totally gratuitous photo of my Kyrgyz visa stamp, from the ill-fated trip we never took. I only put it here today because it's the only @!$#! way I'm ever going to be able to use it.

The Central Asian State that Breaks Hearts

For a certain type of person, it's fun to be completely out of your element - to have nothing but your bags and your wits to get you by. All the better when you're in a place where, standing on the train platform, you can't even recognize the script on the signs.

For English speakers there is a decided difference between negotiating, say, Portuguese and Korean, and for that certain type of person, the more foreign the better. It's part of the allure. If you count yourself among those ranks (even if from your armchair), Slate has a story you'll enjoy, about Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

Air Miles? No. Free Psychological Counseling? So They Say.

In which we share one man's experiences with Ariana Afghan Airlines, a.k.a. ‘ScaryAnna’ by its frequent flyers. Among his observations: "To be honest it’s all a bit ‘inshallah’,  a sort (of) Muslim ‘whatever’ only with god in it."

The Kyrgyz Government is Here to Help

Kyrgyz Town Goes Without Drinking Water For Two Days - RFERL.org. The water department owes the electric department almost $100,000. Can't pay, don't get thirsty, apparently.

25 Photos from Kyrgyzstan

Pertinent with the squabble over the U.S. military base in Kyrgyzstan, more great photojournalism on Boston.com: Kyrgyzstan and Manas Air Base, with photos by Vyacheslav Oseledko.

The Hejab & the Miniskirt: Banned in the 'Stans

First it was Tajikistan. Now it's Uzbekistan.

In Tajikistan, the decree came down in 2007, along with "a ban on students' use of cell phones and private cars, and on lavish parties."

Shokirjon Hakimov, a politician and professor in Dushanbe, said at the time, "...it is an attempt to overshadow the problems in social, economic, political, and cultural life in Tajikistan and to direct people's attention to unimportant issues."

In Uzbekistan, it's not a cultural thing. Honest. Both the head scarf and miniskirt are unhealthy, apparently:

RFE/RL says that, "in a 25-minute long, prime-time television program aired this week," officials warned that "The hijab can also cause oxygen and calcium deficiencies.... As for women who wear miniskirts, they were advised to dress with "moderation" to prevent susceptibility to all kinds of infections and other unspecified health problems."

Quoted from Hijab, Miniskirt: Bad For Your Health, in RFE/RL's Transmissions blog, via  Foreign Policy's blog.

(Photo from EarthPhotos.com.)