The Diarrhoea Diaries

Dushanbe, Tajikistan's capital city, is probably the most pleasant of the Central Asian capitals. It has a relaxed feel with a European 'cafe-culture' atmosphere. Its broad avenues are lined with large shady trees, fountains take centre-stage in large well-manicured parks and many of the ornate buildings in its centre could easily have been transplanted from St. Petersburg.

I took a few days' 'rest' in Dushanbe. Until now, I'd felt like I'd seen Tajikistan from the window of a jeep, and so I relished the opportunity to do nothing for a few days. The only problem was that there is really no decent accommodation in the city, so I stayed at three different hotels in the hope that each would be better than its predecessor. None was.

Inge and Elke left a day before me and headed north to the Fan Mountains. I moved to my third hotel, the Hotel Dushanbe, and was pleasantly surprised that here (unlike the previous two hotels), I didn't have to fight with a belligerent receptionist, whose vocabulary didn't extend past the word 'Nyet!', in order to get a room!



I did end up with a much bigger fight on my hands later when, after having enquired as to the price of the hotel's laundry service, and stating clearly in Russian that I would have it done later that day (when I would have sweaty gym gear to add to my laundry bag), I returned to find that someone had gone into my room, taken my laundry bag from my pack and washed my clothes! They then tried to charge me the equivalent of $7 for the service. The argument that followed was a joke! The women couldn't seem to understand why I was angry, as if it were standard practice for them to go through a guest's belongings then remove them from their room without their permission! Begrudgingly, the laundry service was offered without charge, though clearly the point of the altercation was still lost on them! Things just don't work the same in Asia!


I took a shared jeep north to the town of Penjikent, near the Uzbek border. It was to be my last long-haul journey in Tajikistan and the scenery, as usual, was spectacular.

Up to this point I'd not really taken to the Tajik people as I had to the Kyrgyz. This changed as I headed north. Nadis, a lovely thirty-something Tajik lady, decided to befriend me and over the course of our nine-hour journey, I became the centre of my fellow passengers' attention! None of the other six people in the jeep spoke English, so I was left only with my basic Russian and my Rough Guide phrasebook to get by with. Usually, once it got to the point that the phrasebook came out, people would realise that my Russian wasn't quite as good as they'd originally thought and would dispense with the interrogation. Not Nadis! Whenever I couldn't understand a question, and a translation couldn't be found in my phrasebook, she would attempt to ask the question in several different ways, none of which I would understand. A man sitting in the front would periodically call his French-speaking friend, pass his phone to me and have his friend translate the question from Russian into French so that I would understand and the conversation could move forward!

It's little wonder I couldn't understand! The conversation changed quickly between unrelated subjects, from Nadis trying to marry me off to her sister, to whether I believed that the plot from 'Titanic' was based on a true story! Central Asians have a rather unhealthy obsession with this movie! I was told I looked like Leonardo DiCaprio twice(!!!) and was often made to endure Celine Dion's vomit-inducing theme song on public buses!

When I arrived in Penjikent I headed to the west of town to a well-known backpacker guesthouse, owned by Niyozkul Nematov. Somehow, Niyozkul's guesthouse received good reviews in the Lonely Planet guidebook, however my experience (and, I later discovered, many other people's) was far from positive.

Contrary to the LP review, I was told that the $10 per bed didn't include dinner, so I ate a shashlyk dinner (skewered flame-grilled meat) at a local restaurant. When I returned, I was invited to join Niyozkul, his manager and other guests at a table in the courtyard for a meal in celebration of one of the guest's birthdays - None other than my Italian friend, Marcello!

Niyozkul and the manager questioned why I'd gone to eat elsewhere - 'Um... You told me dinner wasn't included!?' - and then proceeded to tell me that they could provide transport to the Fan Mountains where I intended to hike the next day. Logically, I then enquired as to how much it would cost (a perfectly reasonable question given that I am a backpacker and have a budget to stick to), but Niyozkul avoided answering the question. When I asked a second time he shot me a menacing glare and angrily told me that business had no place at the dinner table and that if I wanted to discuss business I could do it elsewhere. Hmmm.... maybe you shouldn't have brought up the service that you offer in exchange for money while at the dinner table! That would constitute 'business' in my estimation!

I politely excused myself from the table and spent the rest of the evening in my room. Then, in the middle of the night, the next serious episode of food-poisoning began. All night and the whole of the next day I made frequent visits to the toilet (which was, thankfully, a western-style flush toilet!), barely being able to stand the searing, impossibly-bright sun that bore down on me every time I made the run between bedroom and toilet. I ached in every muscle of my body and lay in a feverish sweat in my bed, drifting in and out of a shallow sleep.

The manager tried to make sure I was OK a few times. He asked what I had eaten and then scolded me over my choice in eateries! He'd apparently had a similar issue after eating there a few years before. 'From now on, all guests must eat here!', he stated. Other guests were concerned that I was dying. The manager suggested calling in a doctor, and even Niyozkul eventually showed concern, offering me tea and bread!

Luckily, the next day, after a long night of sleep, I felt like a new man. I'd lost a full day, so had to cut my plans short for the Fan Mountains. Instead of a two-day hike, I would have to settle for one-and-a-half.

I needed a tent, and asked Niyozkul about the rentals that he had.

'Do you have a one-man tent to rent?'
'Yes'
'How much does it cost to rent?'
[With an annoyed expression] 'For you, it's free! Why are you always so concerned about how much things cost?!'

You would think that someone who runs a guesthouse catering to foreign backpackers would be used to cost-related questions! Or maybe the average Central Asia traveler is independently wealthy and has no concern for how much money they spend on a daily basis. Under normal circumstances I would've insisted on paying something (Heck, I'd even given the laundry lady at the Hotel Dushanbe some money despite our altercation!), but by now, I couldn't stand this guy, so I gladly took his tent for two nights - gratis!


I took a public bus to Artush, a short distance, but a three-hour drive from Penjikent. A Hungarian couple and I were amongst twenty-three people crammed into the bus, which would be better described as a minivan. One of the Hungarians spoke Russian and so we were able to communicate with our fellow sardines throughout the journey. Somehow, the people in the north of Tajikistan seemed a lot happier and more open than the locals I'd met in other parts of the country. They just seemed more welcoming, more genuine and interested in me, not the money in my wallet.

This was certainly true as I began my hike south from the village of Artush into the Fan Mountains. The first part of the hike followed a dirt road through fields of wheat and grazing animals. Whenever I passed a local farmer or child, I was not greeted with the usual 'Hello!' in English, which while usually said as a genuine greeting to a stranger, can often carry with it an air of contempt or sarcasm. Instead, these locals would put hand to heart and say 'Zdravstvutye' (Russian for 'Hello' or 'How are you?') with a bow of the head. I could be over-analysing it - maybe they said 'Zdravstvutye' because the majority of trekkers in the area are Russian and they assumed me to be also!

I had to move quickly to reach the Kulikalon Bowl before dark. After leaving the dirt road, I climbed up a steep path of loose dirt, finally entering the massive amphitheatre as the sun was setting. The bowl is encircled by lofty, flat-topped peaks. Glaciers drip off their summits like icing from a cake, feeding the painter's palette of bright turquoise and deep green lakes that are scattered across the floor of the bowl.


I found a spot to make camp next to one such lake, then sat at its shore watching the last red rays of sunlight disappear from the red rocky peaks to the east, all reflected in perfect detail in the still waters of the lake. It was far more beautiful than I'd imagined it would be up there. The calmness of the wind and intense silence added a feeling of extreme isolation and solitude, and the immense sky above was filled with the brightest stars you can imagine. Awesome.


The morning proved to be equally as spectacular with the sun catsing a golden hue across the bowl. I explored the area close to my camp, taking dozens of photos along the way. I encountered a group of local women on a lakeshore who'd come from their basic camp across the water to check the catch in the fishing nets they'd cast the day before. They invited me to come with them, and I watched as they pulled in three small fish from the net (not a great catch!), their bright red robes reflecting beautifully in the mirror-like water at their feet.

I broke camp and headed toward the Alauddin Pass. The day became hot, and when the trail climbed out of the bowl, the altitude kicked in as well. The pass sits at 3,900m, a height that I would laugh at by the end of my trip, but by this time I still wasn't used to high altitudes, so each step with a heavy pack became increasingly difficult.


On the final approach to the pass, the trail's gradient increased and after taking in the view of the lake-littered bowl below, I decided to ditch the pack beside a large boulder and continue with just my camera. I can't have been more than five minutes from the pass (where I would be rewarded with one of the best views in the park, over the Alauddin Lakes), I stopped to catch my breath and thought I saw two people hanging around where I'd left my pack. Realising that my wallet and my passport were in my pack, I made the decision to forego the view from the pass and bolted back down to where my pack was. Not the same boulder! The two people I'd seen were just trekkers, and had been nowhere near my pack. I couldn't bring myself to climb to the top again, so I never saw the view from the pass!


I descended all the way back to Artush. Along the road approaching the town, a family exited a farm with two donkeys laden with wheat. Sasha had been a passenger on the bus from Penjikent the previous day and recognised me when I walked by. He grabbed my pack and gave it to one of his nephews to put on the back of the donkey he was riding, so that I wouldn't have any load for the remainder of the walk.

I'd missed the last bus back to Penjikent, so intended to find a spot to pitch my tent and then take the 6am bus the next morning. Sasha and his sister-in-law insisted that I stay at their family's home that night. I accepted the offer, and it soon became one of the more bizarre nights on my travels!

Hassan, a young 17-year-old who was with the family when I met them at the farm, invited us all to his house for dinner where his entire extended family lay in wait to meet the mysterious foreign visitor. Several generations of his family and Sasha's family (which often seemed to overlap) were in attendance. Not one spoke English. Hassan had a book of basic English phrases that he'd learned in school, but appeared to have no idea what any of them meant.

We were sat in the living room, which in Central Asia rarely has furniture. We sat on a luxurious carpet with colourful carpets and tapestries on the walls. The dinner began with a large tray laid out on the floor, with sweets, biscuits and chocolates which I was encouraged to eat several times. I figured that this insistence to eat meant that this was dinner, so I ate. A lot. That was when the lamb came out! The most delicious, succulent lamb I'd had on the entire journey, and I could barely eat any! I'd just finished explaining that I was too full to eat more when the soup came out! Full of noodles, potatoes and peppers as with the usual Central Asian soups, this one had one thing that all others I'd eaten before had lacked: Spices! It was easily the best soup I'd eaten in Central Asia, but I couldn't eat more than a few spoonfuls. I felt like I was offending these incredibly generous people, but I just couldn't stomach any more!


After dinner came photo time! It began with one or two requests for photos to be taken, but before long I felt like a wedding photographer, only there was no bride or groom! Every possible family combination was covered: Sasha's two nephews; the two boys and their mother; the two boys, their mother and her parents etc, etc, etc!

Hassan forced not one, but two ice creams into my hands as I left. I somehow found a place in my belly for them on the walk back to the house through pitch-black laneways. Back at the house Sasha's sister-in-law dressed up her two boys in their best traditional suits and had me take photo after photo of the two of them as well as her and Sasha, to the point that I just had to say, 'Enough! It's time for bed!'.
Mattresses and blankets were laid out and we slept communally, as is the case in most houses in this region.


Sasha accompanied me back to Penjikent (where he, his wife and children live) the next morning. There was a swarm of locals fighting to get on the bus that morning. Somehow, Sasha and I pushed through the crowd and secured seats inside. Others weren't so lucky. Many were forced to stand, which is virtually impossible in a minivan, especially when there are several other people competing for the same space. In all, there were twenty-eight people crammed into the vehicle!

I met Sasha's wife, children and parents back in Penjikent and was aggressively forced to eat stale bread and jam by his father. I played photographer again, before forcing my way out and heading off to burn the fifty-or-so photos to disc for them. Having not spoken a word of English in two days, yet being the focus of Sasha's extended family's attentions, I was now just exhausted and starting to become frustrated by the whole experience. When I returned to give Sasha the DVD, I had to bluntly refuse more food, but was given a round of bread, so hard and stale that it could have been used as a frisbee, to take with me.

That afternoon, I shared a taxi with an Italian couple to the Uzbekistan border, preparing to leave the mountains behind for the next couple of weeks in favour of dry deserts and ancient silk-road cities.