Stage 16, 17 18: What goes on in my mind during 8 hours on the bike, water conflicts and the personality of survivors
10 Nov 2011



It is a tough road from Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, to reach Khorog, 525km away at the foot of the Pamirs, the Roof of the World. The road soon turns dirt, traverses narrow valleys and then starts climbing the 3,252 meter Sagirdasht pass. After a spectacular descend between narrow gorges the road reaches the Panji river, the geographical border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan, which the road follows for hundred of km.

I leave Dushanbe after an hearty breakfast at William's and cycle eastbound along wide fertile countryside covered in a yellow carpet of grainfields ready for harvest. Miles after miles. I lose myself in thought. What do I think about during so many hours - six, seven, even eight or nine- of monotonous cycling? What happens while I ride that makes the time to fly, that makes the experience an enjoyment?
Moving is a symbol of transformation. Being in motion significantly heighten thinking and emotional experiences: the oxygenation of the mind, the neurological reactions in the brain or simply the fact that a changing landscape keeps our mind focused on our thoughts, while the objects around us distract us when we are still. Ever experience how well we lose ourself in though when we look out of the window of a moving train, compared to the idleness of ideas during the times spent sitting in a doctor's waiting room? Aristotle founded the Peripatetic (which refers to the act of walking) School where he used to lecture while walking around the colonnades of the gymnasium where the member of his school met. John Hunt explains how good ideas are sensitive to the environment, they take their cues from the prevailing mood, they don't happen when you try too hard, they are not born perfectly formed and ready to go, they are fragile thoughts sometimes silly. Cycling or running are perfect to "allow ideas to germinate a little", to let them develop their own kinetic energy, to connect you with what the gut is trying to tell you and develop an instinct. An office room full of serious looking people, open only to sound and well developed ideas does not generate a brainstorm, only a fine drizzle.

So, what happen when I cycle that makes it so beautiful?
I think about the future. Creative solutions on how to realize better and differently planned projects. Imaging new possibilities for my life. Develop higher ambition on what I can do.
I think about the people I love. Their qualities while cycling becomes all that matter. They become perfect as their are, leaving a feeling of preciousness of having them in my life.
I live the euphoria that we see in children when, without an apparent reason, they suddenly start to run and their face is full of joy. There is a biological happiness in moving, in feeling the wind caressing your hair.
I train in thinking differently and being a risk taker. Cycling is an adventure, things do not go according to plan, you need to shift away of your preconceived model of how the world works and adapt to new situations, you take risks. Paul Arden, in trying to explain how the best people are able to take the most out of themselves, said that "risks are a measure of people. People who won't take them are trying to preserve what they have. People who do take them often ended up by having more". Adventure is not just life-learning: is unusual and exciting.
I connect on what is happening around and within myself. Cyclists understand their environment exceptionally well. We take notice of every slight inclination of the terrain, we feel how the winds blow, we look for obstacles, the speed we travel allows us time to observe nature and people. Cyclists understand their body exceptionally well. We pay attention to our efforts, listen what different muscles tell us, understand the different senses of fatigue.
The hours fly: I think, I live, I learn, I connect. Happiness is in the air.

Late in the afternoon I pass over Obigram, my intended destination for today, but it is not pretty so I decide to press on and follow the road which descends into a canyon. Coming from the other direction I meet a guy on a mountain bike. He wears a Bob Marley t-shirt and carries no panniers, nor any equipment for long bicycle touring. His name is Nikita, he is a russian topography engineer who works at the construction of a huge hydroelectric power station at Roghun, few kilometers down the road. He is 26 and accepted a job in the middle of nowhere just because Central Asia sounds adventurous and he plans to cycle and climb these wild places as much as he could. Nikita lives in the prefabricated village constructed for the workers of this project. After dark he come to visit me where I put up my tent and has with him a watermelon and a bottle of Georgian Merlot, which he had saved for a special occasion. As we eat under the stars, we hear noises coming from a bush nearby and Nikita jumps up and returns smiling with a porcupine. He tells me that the workers like to hunt them, breaking the monotony of the of countless sheep based meal. He assures me that its soup is delicious.

Nikita tells me how the hydroelectric project is strongly opposed by Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, whose water supplies originate in the snowed capped mountains of Tajikistan and Kyrgystan. Water shortages are already common because of Tajik's extensive use of water to make electricity, most of which is used by one of the world's largest huge aluminum plant. Being also one of the world's cheapest, makes it attractive to foreign buyers, thus pushing its production. The new power station is increasing the tension in the region. While Uzbekistan sees water as a product that they are entitled to,Tajikistan is increasingly pushing for something in return for water. They want energy in return, coal and natural gas which are abundant in the countries downstream of its rivers. Is water a right or can it be treated as a commodity? Because of population growth, the increase in industrial production and the migrations towards cities, water scarcity is becoming a major issues in Central Asia as well as globally.
With Nikita we can see how the rush to water withdrawals from government and private actors will potentially have significant environmental consequences and the risk of conflict. Uzbekistan has recently unilaterally closed the Penjikent border, forcing me to a 500km detour on my cycle route, which is rumored to be an act of retaliation to the hydroelectric project. The border closure is killing the economy of the Zerafshan valley in north east Tajikistan, which is dependent on cross border trade. Adel Barlow, the author of Water wars warns that "the fight over water privatisation in Cochobamba, Bolivia did turn into a bit of a water war and the army was called in. In Botswana, the government smashed bore holes as part of a terrible move to remove [indigenous bushmen] from the Kalahari desert. Mexico City has been forcibly taking water from the countryside, confiscating water sources from other areas and building fortresses around it, like it's a gold mine. In India, Coke will get contracts and then build fortresses around the water sources," taking drinking and irrigation water away from local people. "In Detroit 45,000, officially, have already had their water cut off."

Nikita lets the porcupine go, it will not become soup today. He leaves me to my thoughts. Whether earth's resources are limited or new discoveries will be made, whether new technologies will provide new solutions or not, the pressure is on and is man-made: both executives in the glittering metropolis and peasants in villages alike want more, more, more, in the quest of living better. We lost the ability to be content with what we have, challenging thus the sustainability of our own civilization. Tonight the usual beautiful silence of Central Asia is broken by the distant noise of the drilling and excavations.

I wake up to another clear day. As I cycle eastward the valley gets narrower then opens up and closes again, a continuous revelation. The road has become very bad. My speed significantly impacted, but I have no hurry and I lose myself in thoughts. It is hot and the few cars that pass by cover me in dust. I stop for the night where the river is in full rage and makes a 90 degree minder. A smaller river joins in amongst cliffs of bedded sedimentary rocks. At the end of the valley, the setting sun is colouring in pink a dome with a huge boxfold of vertical layers on the top of a mountain, a geologist marvel. There is a small open air restaurant, the only human presence in kilometers. A small pond next to the restaurant offers a great opportunity to refresh myself. Ah, what magic does the water hold, to wash away the toughness of a long day. I feel good. The owner allows me to sleep on the topchan on which I will be be eating my dinner of soup and bread. Before serving the meal he starts screaming, calling everyone to prayer, like a local muezzin, who instead of the neighborhood has only its family and a couple of employees to remind of one of the pillar of Islam. there is another man here who also likes screaming. Hidden on a topchan beyond a tree, the old man of this family is a bit crazy. Throughout the night I will be waken up by his loud lashing out of his trouble thoughts.
Another early wake up, some green tea and biscuits and I'm on the road again. I need to be independent as for hours there will be no human presence. The key need is water and I have with me a water filter. Choosing what to bring and what to leave behind is critical in cycle tours: it is a trade off between needs and minimizing weight. Anything you bring you sweat for it. Beyond the water filter my equipment consist of a 12 Watt solar charger, a first aid kit, which mostly addresses bleeding and gastro-intestinal problems, spare parts for the bicycle, one photo and one video camera, a watch to measure distance and speed, an iphone with books, maps and music and my camping gear.

The road turns south, it is the start of the 35km climb and dirt road to the 3,252 meter Sagirdasht pass, my first high pass of this journey. Music is a great supporter when the tough gets going so I play Manu Chao on the iphone to motivate me. I fill my water bottles on a small stream and I am ready to challenge the mountain. Before climbing the road drops for a few hundred meter, I am super-motivated and I gain speed. I lose control on the sand and fall. The head hit the ground first followed by my arm and my hips. I made a point of wearing a helmet at all times, despite the majority of cyclists I met on the road didn't wear one. A precaution which has just saved my life as I find a deep dent on the helmet around the temple area. The hip is bruised and the arm is all scratched up with some cuts that needs medication. I have not started the climb yet; my motivation is gone and I feel sorry for myself. How things change quickly in life! Soured inside and outside, dirt with blood and dust I start the climbing. I have no choice.

The road is horrible and it is difficult to drive the bike through the stones and the sands that covers the road. But it is beautiful: there is no human settlement in sight, the mountains drops dramatically into the valley and the late afternoon light brings a glow of magic to the landscape. My target is a a group of scattered houses of herders some 10km before the pass, where I hope to find shelter as I am in no mood to camp tonight. My climbing is slow and easy, taking in one pedal stroke after the other. It is a constant struggle between rational thoughts and emotional reactions as my sensory experiences travels to two distinct part of my brain: the neocortex, responsible for the IQ and analytical decision and the amygdala, which is our evolutionary defense mechanism. When the amygdala senses dangers it releases compounds of chemicals in the body which causes emotional and physiological reactions like faster heartbeats or the classic knot in the stomach. Survivors are those who are able to put in balance analytical thoughts with emotions. As Al Siebert puts it in his book The Survivor Personality, "the best survivors spend almost no time, especially in emergencies, getting upset about what has been lost, or feeling distressed about things going badly. For this reason they don't usually take themselves too seriously and are therefore hard to threaten". I cross a stream, I lose balance and put my feet down into the cold water to avoid falling. As I pedal on with wet feet, I grow annoyed: the amygdala has taken over and I need to balance the emotions with my thinking brain. To my aid come the sight of blue flowers which are growing on the side of the road.

Since I was a teenager I had a fascination with the Blue Flower. For the wanderer in the Romantic movement the blue flower (Fiore Blu, Die Blau Blumen) symbolises the sentimental dreaming of a state of lyrical beauty which is no more. The flower is the goal of his never-ending journey to find that state. In his masterpiece "Les Fleurs Bleues", Queneau parafrazises Baudelaire's Maesta et errabunda when the main character, the Duke D'Auge, explains the need to start wandering:
- Loin ! Loin ! Ici la boue est faite de nos fleurs.
- Bleues, je le sais, mais encore ?
He travels away (Loin! Loin!) from a degrading world to seek an ideal world where man are made of virtues, Eventually in the last pages of the books, while the earth is still covered by mud (la boue), "ici et la', s'epanouissaient deja de petites fleurs blues".
I encountered rarely blue flowers. The romantic philosophy implies a never ending search, but today they are here, lifting my spirit. I feel to be wandering in the right directionas the Duke D'Auge did. Survivors are able to balance their mind by stimulating and entreating the mind with games or poetry, as well as attuning to the beauty of the world. As I dream of the blue flowers, my negative emotions are gone. The valley is now cast in a beautiful red glow from the sunset and with joy I reach sight of the herders' houses.

Mr Pisandso is outside the garden path lined with yellow flowers which leads to a pretty house with blue door and windows. I ask for hospitality. He sees my wounds and promptly encourages me to follow him. I wash my cuts from the sand and administer a new medication under the interested look of his two children and his wife. As the sky is turing dark they warm up a bucket of water so that I can clean myself. I put on fresh clothes and I am asked to come inside the house for dinner. The simple shower, the warm tea, the fresh bread, the local family around me, and the landscape around us, are of a special kind and I found myself being happy. The grandpa encourages me to another slice of watermelon and the grandma become very much interested in my massage ball and following my instructions she joyfully uses it on her tired legs. I sleep well near Mr Pisandso and his dad. Early in the morning I am given a bowl full of sheep milk. Yesterday's bread is broken into pieces and put into the bowls. It is the breakfast that my dad always had during my childhood; a heritage of his humble upbringing in the countryside outside of Milan after WWII which has stuck with him, despite he could had had different.

Stage 16, 17, 18
Dushambe to Sagirdasht pass, 228 km
From Mashaad 1775km
To Kashgar 1250 km

See the photos of this stage at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Fioreblu-Infinite-Exploring/140716346008040

Stage 15: The magic of asking: have you been there?
17 Oct 2011



It is like a cold war movie. In the early morning mist, I am cycling past the Uzbekistan border post, after much checking and questioning, into the barb-wired no-man land towards the Tajikistan frontier, under the gaze of sleepy armed soldier behind and ahead of me, wearing different uniforms. Approaching from the other side are two cyclists. We meet in the middle of the bridge dividing the two countries. It is a welcomed encounter. Beyond the obvious pleasure of meeting someone who shares what you are doing, this is the best chance to get sound information about the road ahead: challenges, opportunities and precious advices to go beyond surviving and actually enjoying the road. When you share your travel plans at home of some destinations which are just a bit out of the ordinary, people are often too much willing to share stories they heard from friends of friends, adding their own insights to them. To some, Iranians during Ramadan would angrily not allow me to cycle because my obvious need of food and water would make me break fasting. The HK NGO who I first approached to link my adventure to fundraising for charity, at first was enthusiastic, but later decided to decline my offer as at Board level someone thought I was surely going to die and negatively impact they reputation, by visiting such dangerously sound countries. Others warned that it would take months to try to obtain visas, without the certainty of a guaranteed results, with loss of time and money. A common view was me being kidnapped along the Afghan border or savaged by bandits in the backroads of Central Asia. A doctor in a well known Central clinic suggested no less than 10 vaccines, including yellow fever which is not an Asian disease.

To make a decision on whether to listen or not to all those good-natured advices I do have a magic 4 words formula: "Have you been there?", I always ask back. This simple question saved me over and over again over from suggestions which are most time over pessimistic and sometimes over optimistic, very seldom accurate. If the answer is "no", I stop listening. Thank you for your concerns, but I need to research better, find somewhere else the truth about the place I want to be. The only way for a fair and up to date assessment of the challenges and opportunities of visiting either the center of Milan or the unhabitated valleys of the Pamirs along the Afghan border is the first hand experience of someone who have been there, recently. Meeting other cyclists who just did what I am embarking into is priceless, as it is the cold-war style encounter of this morning. When this happens, the conversation usually develops in the opposite fashion than those with people who never been there. You first and foremost talk about what you can do rather than what you cannot do. I told this French couple that the need to produce an official receipt, proving that you slept at a registered hotel for each night of your stay in Uzbekistan, of which people advise me of, is not implemented at land borders. The two French could now make a decision that many choose not to: camp or sleep in local houses without fear of being fined. In return I got useful advice on which road to take to reach Khorog from Dushanbe, and it seems that the summer road is not so dangerous as romantically suggested. "Have you been there?" This is all you need to ask.

The road to Dushanbe is easy and well paved. It goes about quickly as I observe the similarities and differences of two countries within few miles radius. Geography is always uninterested of the results of political negotiations. The determination of individual identities and daily life are instead impacted at different degrees: from the dramatic differences in the border areas of Tajikistan and Afghanistan, where different centuries seems to be at play; to the great similarities of the road I am traveling today, same faces, same cotton fields, same, villages, same foods at the shops,only different branded (but equally shabby looking) petrol stations; to the total disinterest of many nomadic tribes of central asia who for centuries have crossed borders like they really are, imaginary lines, to which they give no regards, save for the occasional crackdown of authorities, successful at different degrees. We think of borders as obvious boundaries, forgetting their arbitrary nature.

I am looking forward to Dushanbe. It is midway on my journey and I will have few days of recovery in the contort of William and Barbara's house. William is a British man in his fifty who works for the United Nations's Border Management of Northern Afghanistan project. Tall, strongly built, with a strong attitude towards comradeism and a passion for outdoor activities, he has lived his life in the dangerous spots around the world, providing development assistance to humanitarian crisis. His bookshelf is rich, a welcomed news for my days with him, with titles covering current central asia politics, military histories and travelogues of epic journeys during the days of the British Empire. Barbara is American, leads the work of a Belgian NGO and is full of the optimism and joie the vivre, which are much needed skills for living in places at the margin. They are great hots, and the days with them become in my imagination the equivalent of a sojourn at the British consulate in Kashgar at the beginning of the XX century, which is no more. All the great travelers in Central Asia spent days in the British diplomatic mission run by the Macartneys in Kashgar, whose hospitality was legendary. In his 1936's "News from Tartary", Peter Fleming called the chapter of his days there as Kashgar-les-Bains, to underly the contrast between the duress of his traveling trough the Gobi and the Taklamakan and the contort of the British Consulate: "One night we slept on the floor, drank tea in mugs, ate doughy bread, argued with officials, were stared at, dreaded the day's heat; twenty four hours later we were sitting in comfortable armchairs with long drinks and illustrated papers and gramophone playing. We stayed a fortnight Kashgar, leading a country-house life against an exotic background colored, in the early John Buchan manner, with international melodrama. We idled shamelessly in Kashgar, eating and sleeping and asking interminable questions to our long-suffering hosts". Like Fleming, I am idling shamelessly in Dushanbe: cheeses, French wines, William's books, Barbara's garden, lively conversations and the happenings of Dushabne's expatriate community.

Dushanbe Westerner society is composed of mainly NGOs workers and diplomates. A different breed from the classic Hong Kong's expacts of business professionals, managers and their spouses. These are people that have, or had, an ideal: making a positive impact on the world. Like Madina, the acting country director at Oxfam, a Pamiri woman who had the opportunity to complete her university education in Canada, which is a rare chance that many Tajiks dream about, got a Canadian passport, but decided to come back to her country, albeit on a foreign working visa, to work for Tajikistan development: she does disaster response and capacity building work. She tells me with passion about what her work. I ask her what is the biggest problem she faces in working towards making this country a better place. "When nature strikes hard, she says, its impact can be managed and mitigated. Bureaucracy and corruption are instead out of control, they are the biggest headaches in my work." The ideals that many people like Medina held often crushes under the weight of bureaucracy and the inability to counter the disasters of man's "Unreasonable Behavior" as Don McCullin, the war photographer, summarizes in a nut-shell what he saw while covering conflicts and famines for decades. Many of the United Nations employees who I worked with at PwC on private-public sector partnerships assignments gave me their CV looking for a career change. I though that it should have been the other way around: private sector people like me to dream of a chance to work for the UN, yet the opposite is happening. In his book " The White Man's Burden William Easterly makes a clear point of what I think may be the source of such frustrations amongst aid workers and skeptically from the public: " There are two tragedies of the world's poor. The first is the one we hear about: that so many people suffer so much for lack of inexpensive remedies. The second is the tragedy in which the West spent $2.3 trillion on foreign aid over the last five decades and still had not managed to get 12-cent medicines to children to prevent half of all malaria deaths. The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to get $4 bed nets to poor families. The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to get $3 to each new mother to prevent five million child deaths.The West is not stingy. It is ineffective." And why is it ineffective one wonders, since these organizations employ some of the best talents in the world as well as hire the services of leading professional firms for improving their efficiency. The answer I keep on getting back from NGO workers is the widespread corruption of local leaders and the bureaucracy of both developing organizations and the governments they serve. I ask William what impact he made here through his Afghan border management project and he answers: "none". He explains that many people are profiting from the drug corridor which crosses his border, the biggest flaw of narcotics in the world, which from the fields of Afghanistan travel through Central Asia to the wholesales markets in Russia and then to the streets of the world's cities. William believes that it is impossible to have a positive impact in the short term, disappointing the hopes of donor politicians who would like to see and ask for results within their own mandate. He tells me that there is a cultural problem in Afghanistan because of the lack of education opportunities, during the occupation of the USSR, then the Taliban regime and now the current struggles. He believes that the military should leave, they have been here too long and lost focus, a prerequisite for successful military campaign he says. Afghanistan should be left to development workers. While humanitarian emergency support, like what William did in Sudan, saves lives immediately, changing cultures and governance structures requires years after years of patient development work. And patient is a virtue few have.

There is a party in Barbara's garden today. William is hosting the leaving due of a local UNDP staff who got an employment opportunity in the West, like Madina. "This is what we all dream for, and the dream has come true for her. This is why we are all so emotional today" tells me one of the guest. There is an ex-KGB cornel at the party and Barbara jokes that there is one at every party in Dushanbe. The cornel incites the whole group to one shot of vodka after the other, despite we are in the middle of Ramadan, and the enthusiasm leads all the men in the two meters by two meters pool in the middle of the garden, engaging in bravado contests such as holding breath underwater, which seems to be a stander finale in central Asia parties and all-over-the-world military get-togethers. William also takes me at the local Hash House Harriers' run on the hills outside Dushanbe. It is a club of "beer drinkers with a running problems", popular in expatriates communities, especially in Asia. Instead of just running, people have to find the trail, previously marked to include several dead-ends, so that the stronger runners have to retrace their steps. This gives the opportunity to the slowest to catch up. After the run is all about drinking, they say in their constitution that they run in order to acquire thirst and satisfy it with beer, and we all go to one of the members' house and I experience more of Goliardic extravaganza.

At the Hash party I meet with Shamaila, Nicholas, Robert and Wesley, a team of US soldiers who are working in US Department of Defense's Civil Affairs program. In their late twenties, early thirties, with years of experience in the military, they are tasked by DOD to do practical humanitarian work: build school, hospitals and infrastructure in area of extreme poverty and pocket of instability. Despite the limits of being a four people force - DOD has currently two battalions, 4,000 soldiers worldwide in this program, which has been growing recently-, an a eight month rotation schedule, and the prejudice of some international workers who degrade them as spies, from the information I gather they seems to be very effective in their work. The quality of military engineering has been remarkable for centuries: engineering skills with an attitude of getting the job done. While a couple of people tell me that this is DOD's way to try to improve its reputation, it seems to me that focusing on the poorer of the poor has great consequences, be your aims of peace or evil; and the work of Nicholas and his colleagues is a force of good. This four reminds me of the work that others are doing in areas of extreme poverty in India and Pakistan: the Saudi-sponsored Wahhabi Islam whose disastrous impact Dalrymple vividly narrates in his book Nine Lives. Sufism, and in particular the "tomb worship" practiced by the dervishes is anathema to the leaders of the Madrassah now operating in Pakistan and India, who recruit children from the poorest households by giving them food and schooling that their family cannot provide. Dalrymple compares Wahhabism to the reformation in Europe where intolerance was widespread, art destroyed and people burned. Once the children graduates from the Madrassah they go on to convert to Wahhabism the whole of their communities. It is such a sharp contrast to the rich tradition of sufism, who spread peacefully in Asia because its central idea that God has love for all His creatures and that the shariah, the code of conduct in Islam, could not be separated from the mystical path, a contrast to the worldliness of the Umayyad Caliphate which ruled Central Asia when Sufism developed. The scene of Sufism's tomb worshipping at Sehwan Sharif so much violently fought against by the Wahhabis has beautiful attractiveness in Dalrymple words, a motivation for travel to discover the beauty of diversity: "The drumming rapidly gained pace, and the long line of dreadlocked dervishes began to move as they felt the rhythm pound through their bodies. Old men began to sway, arms extended or cupped in supplication, mouthing softly murmured prayers... One man fell to the ground in a gesture of namaaz, then amid the jumping, jerking, dancing men, stretched out full-length on the floor. The air was hot with sweat, and the rich, sweet scent of rose petals mixed with incense and hashish."

I walk through the large boulevard lined with trees of Dushanbe, heritage of the Soviet urban rationalism which is as tidy and practical as it is boring. Less bearable are the neoclassical theaters and government buildings, which litter not just Dushanbe (here they are just bigger in number), but also Washington, Rome, Beijing and Kinshasa: an aesthetic tragedy driven by the obsession to display power by the rising civilizations and, as John Berger cleverly notes when he critiques neoclassical painting, by the attempt of the ruling classes to see the classic face of his own behavior. The buildings become"an aid, a support, to his own view of himself. In those appearences he found the guise of his own nobility". Here and there are monuments to ancient heroes so common in the Stans, such as Timur in Uzbekistan and Rudaki here, which are a drive to legitimize a State using an heritage that has little to do with it. Tomorrow I will be back on the road, cycling away from the crowds towards places where nature dominates and is at its purest: the remote valley of the Pamirs, the roof of the world.

Stage 15
Sariosyo to Dushambe, 95 km
From Mashaad 1547km
To Kashgar 1478 km

See the photos of these stages at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Fioreblu-Infinite-Exploring/14071634600040

Stages 13-14 Conversations
13 Sep 2011



Early in the morning I say goodbye to the family of Mr Muysar and I start my climbing towards the main pass on the M39 road, which climbs southward towards Termiz at the frontier with Afghanistan. The mountains drop steeply into the valley. Near the streams, green villages break the monotony of the shades of brown in the landscape. One pedal stroke, followed by one pedal stroke, followed by one pedal stroke. Climbing is about getting into a rhythm, where the body finds solace in its repetition. Like meditating, when focusing empties the minds from thoughts, the body enters a state of trance where pain is somehow subdued. Without rhythm, climbing is unbearable; every turn in the road carries the hope of hiding the summit, just to reveal more turns, more climbing, more pain. In his mesmerizing insight of what goes on in the mind of a cyclist for each kilometer of a local race, Tim Krabbe, talks about gears, about shifting to a lighter gear, as taking painkiller pills. In Krabbe’s 1978 book, the strongest rides, the one who put more kilometers into their training, as cycling is a fair sport, keep their biggest gear squeaky clean, and “drops” the peloton. For the rest of us, the painkillers available unfortunately are counted, as there are limited gears to shift into, only rhythm can save us. Cycling is about climbing. It is in the mountains where the Italian Giro and the Tour the France become epics. On mountain roads thousand of fans camp, wait, and cheer the cyclists that, at that elevation, have become heroes. They are conquering the mightiness of nature by means of the most simple and the most clever human’s machine. The beauty of climbing is in the certainty that the act itself entails; as beings we find comfort in certainties. The pain of going uphill is certain, unavoidable, but also the summit, eventually, is certain. The descent is certain too. Certain are the rewards that come with it: great views, the thrill of speed, the magic of the wind in your hair, the gain of distance without effort, the muscles relaxation, the psychological confidence of having conquered the mountain.

I stop at the pass to drink and to take in the views. I start a scenic descent through gorges, cliffs and un-habitated valleys. I am filming my ride using the micro GoPro camera on my helmet, as I suddenly approach a military check-point, hidden by a sharp turn. The soldier who stops me sees the camera and its red recording light. Instead of the kindness I experienced so far from military and police, sympathetic to the effort of a cyclist, he becomes nervous, put a hat on the camera and urge me in a room of the small building by the side of the road. I know that if the officers see the footage, at best they will ask me to delete it. I start an improbable explanation that the camera is not working and try to divert their attention to my photo camera and the obviously unspying nature of its content. “Don’t I and the ice-cream seller look good in this photo? Isn’t Samarkand beautiful? Yes this is Turkmenistan.” Gopro is unusual in its hardware and you cannot see its content, so I leave it to them to figure how to make it work. They don’t and so accept my explanation and finally let me go. After the check point, the narrow valley opens into a landscape of successive canyons and hills with the hue of the desert until they will fall into oblivion in the Afghanistan plain.

I stop at a village to buy a snack and water. The men outside the convenience store gather around me, the interesting exotic foreigners, off the tourist trails. They want to talk regardless it is evident I do not speak Uzbek or Russian and they don’t speak Italian or English. It happens every time I stop. The conversation is more or less the same.
“Откуда Вы?”
“Italy” I respond, guessing, as this is almost always the first question.
“Один?”
“Da, alone”, as they showed first one finger and then two fingers during the question. The answer gets reaction of approval form the crowd and I gain respect points.
From here the conversation turns surreal.
“...Так кто ж ты, наконец? часть той силы, что вечно хочет зла и вечно совершает благо.”, looking at me puzzled.
I look back without saying anything.
”Однажды весною, в час небывало жаркого заката, в Москве, на Патриарших
прудах, появились два гражданина.” looking at me positively and searching for a confirmation
“Da, da”, I say.
“Первый из них, одетый в летнюю серенькую пару, был маленького роста, упитан, лыс, свою приличную шляпу пирожком нес в руке, а на хорошо выбритом лице его помещались сверхъестественных размеров очки в черной роговой оправе” looking at me cheerfully and laughing with his friends.
I smile back with open arms apologizing for not being able to express myself.

The conversation is successful nevertheless. The connection was made and they have enough material to tell a story to their family and a have laugh with their friends. How many conversations do we forget? Sometimes what is actually being said is meaningless, words of circumstances to achieve something more subtle, but key for human beings: making a peaceful connection. The awkwardness of not understanding each other is bypassed, pretending that words are understood, for the sake of this bigger goal, and I like to play with it. It is a game of sounds when, to a sentence in Russian, I answer with a line from a poem in Italian, astonishing for a second my counterpart, who proceeds with more sounds in his local language. Other time is a guessing game, because it is indeed possible to understand what a person would like to say gauging from what has been said or has happened before, from gestures, from circumstances. It is not too difficult to do it when I start the thread of the discussion myself, for example by asking directions. The dynamic of the discussion the locals engage into to provide an answer, being able to grasp geographical names or words which are similar in both languages, offer clues that sometimes give me the possibility of jumping into a conversation, and correct them about distances or the difficulty of a road. But nothing, in these encounters, is as interesting as my country of origin. Our ignorance of distant nations is embodied by few famous individuals who become more or less what the country is all about. Italy in Central Asia is 70% football, 25% music, 5% art. People like football, music and art. When I answer Italian to the first question which is always asked me, “atkuda?”, where from?, I got answered with a list of football stars: Buffon, Gattuso, Totti. To play the game, I tend to respond by adding the names of personal friends: Sgaragli, Policastro, Reboli and amuse myself in having them nodding at them like common acquaintances, which in turn makes me and my counterpart friends as well. “Sgaragli very good, he just got engaged”. “Da, da, Savagli very good” answers the Uzbek farmer. Football is universally positive and interesting, so Italians are met with excitement. In Turkmenistan, when I arrived at the truck restaurant on the main road to Mary, after a day on a secondary road in the Karakum desert, the two German cyclists told their country of origin and the locals responded “Hitler! Hitler!”, somehow less popular than Maldini. Today one of the man, standing clumsily thanks to few early shots of vodka, with excitement approaches me shouting “Raffaello!”. “Michelangelo!”. His friends explain he is an artist. He is determined to do a portrait of me impromptu, on the dusty road heading south. He is given a ball pen, a piece of paper and start drawing. The men behind him are loud in keep commenting on his work but every time he silences them with the authority that artists have over their creative decisions. I am given the portrait ceremoniously; it is always a source of pride to have something to offer to the foreigner: food, hospitality and today, something as sophisticated as art. I pedal away a little warmer on my spirit.

Thirty kilometers before Baysun, the mountain village where I am planning to spend the night, I finish my water. It is hot, uphill and not a soul is in sight. I struggle until I arrive to the village, stop at the first convenient stores and amuse the locals with the shows of a man in distress, gulping a liter of water in a single go, and devouring a bar of chocolate and some biscuits avidly before falling back on a chair and rest still, with sunglasses and helmet on. Energy recharged, I cycle through the village and I stop in front of the pharmacy, trusting the cleanness of the home of a doctor, and ask for hospitality. Dr Shoman agrees and few hours later me, the men in his family and his neighbors are sitting on a carpets and cushions, on the small water tank in front of his mud brick house in the arid countryside of Southern Uzbekistan, with million stars above us. Shoman ceremoniously breaks the round bread into smaller pieces and places them in front of the guests. We can now begin our simple dinner with eggs, soups, fruits and tea. When we have done eating, Muhabat, the doctor’s wife, takes away the cloth and the food, leaving us to a discussion in languages which are not understood. Next to us, she lays down the mattress, duvets and pillows, which is where I will sleep tonight, in the open air, together with their family.

The morning after we all wake up at dawn. I eat the breakfast as the sun rises and continue my journey. The road is easy, well paved and mostly downhill into the cotton fields, all the way to the frontier with Tajikistan which I may reach before darkness. On my last night in Uzbekistan I would like to explore one of the villages amongst the cotton fields which are the backbone of Uzbek’s economy and a key components of its culture, and sleep with a local family. With ten kilometers to the border and the stars low on the horizon I take randomly one of the small roads which go into the fields, towards a village which I can see in the distance. Abdullo is a well dressed man in his sixty and he is walking with his eight years old granddaughter amongst the small streets of the village, lined with short white walls which protect each house and its garden. I ask him for hospitality and, recovered from his surprise of meeting me, he takes me home. His porch is covered by vines and his first concern is to find a ladder, cut some grapes and offer them to me. Sovkhoz were massive farm throughout the Soviet Union with state ownership, and the people had no freedom to pursue other ways of life. Now, twenty years after the collapse of USSR, the Uzbek State still govern the activities of villages like Sariosyo, as cotton export is the backbone that keeps the State alive. The cotton farmers today still benefit little materially, but the welfare benefits of the Soviet era have been stopped, making today more difficult. The youth see television at home and have studied in higher education. They aspire to live outside cotton, challenging the core of Uzbek social order.

Stage 13-14
Dekhkanabad to Sariosyo, 228 km
From Mashaad 1452km
To Kashgar 1573km

See the photos of these stages at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Fioreblu-Infinite-Exploring/14071634600040

Stages 11-12: Generating benevolence
31 Aug 2011



At around six in the afternoon, when men are heading back home after working in the fields or taking care of their small business ventures in the villages, I start my search for food and shelter. I call it generating benevolence: it entails finding a human being and having him willing to draw on the basic human values of hospitality and assistance by way of sympathy, necessity and interest. On the high pastures in the Pamir or in the cotton fields of Uzbekistan a western man in lycra on a bicycle is as exotic and interesting to the locals as a nomad herder living in a yurt or a farmer of a Sovkhoz is to me. While tourists generally generate indifference or at best are seen as rich men to make some quick dollars out of, people engaged in sports are almost universally seen with sympathy. In the remote Wamena valley in Papua, tribesmen joined me barefoot for few kilometers as they saw me running by; in the Turkmen Karakum desert cars stopped to offer me water; in the remote beaches of the Philippines, in the plantations of Malaysia, in the slums of Jakarta people stood by the road giving me the thumbs up. When is clear that no options are available, rarely people do not assist, the only exception being Tibet which friends who are explores tell stories of inhospitability such as being sent away at dusk in winter, while on foot, to look for shelter at the next village 20 miles away, meaning a night in the freezing cold, or not intervening when their dogs attacked them.
Generating benevolence requires a sixth sense on how to pick who to ask for assistance, why him and not another, but I also rely also on few lessons from experience. A house with a well kept garden or with flowers, even if modest, is a sign of a good place to stay. A doctor is likely to have a clean house. I prefer to choose and generate benevolence rather than following those who approach me with an offer in the first place. My experience in Asia is that most of the times you are better off than a hotel or camping, and, most important of all, you are always sure of an interesting glimpse into the real life of the locals. A home does not lie, it says who you are. My private kitchen in Hong Kong is at my home or at my client’s home for the simple reason that is the most meaningful way I know to generate cultural exchange out of brief encounters of just few hours or few days.
On my second afternoon out of Samarkand, after a full day of ups and downs and in the heat, I am ready for a place to relax and recover. I am pedaling on a large valley with arid landscape and few scattered houses. The last village, Dekhkanabad, is already few kilometers behind and there is nothing more on my map which I can reach before darkness. I come across a series of small single-story buildings next to the road, several of them with the same business logo, each describing different services: auto repair, spare parts retail, used car reselling. Sitting outside is a robust but slender men, with a clear shirt, surrounded by teenagers with dirty clothes following his orders. He is my man, the groomed owner of a large shop, with a face which inspires trust. The evening after, in Boshun, I will go straight to the local pharmacy to find my man. I approach him with a smile and mimicking my need of food and a place to sleep, underlying there are no hotels around. I can see him contemplating his options while he appreciate my necessities, admire my cycling in his remote land and is intrigued in the novelty of being the host of such a diverse person, a break in the monotony of his days. In less than ten seconds Mr Muyasar point at himself, meaning I can stay with him. During this trip, when I am invited in someone home it entails being the guest of honor. Women would prepare a special meal, sometimes very simple and modest but still out of the ordinary for my host. Abdullo, in a cotton-field village, cut grapes from his vine as soon as I arrive, Dr Shadman, the pharmacist in the mountain village of Boysun, went to the bazaar to buy meat, Pisando, near the summit of the Kabukabot pass, walked to the house of his neighbor to get a watermelon, Najiba, at the Pamiri village across the river from Afghanistan, opened the home made syrup of apricot and strawberry reserved for special occasions. I am intrigued by the houses: in most of them there is a stove made of clay in the courtyard where the round flat bread is baked and flower could be milled manually, maybe a custom which is disappearing as everyone I stayed with had bought the bread from the myriad of bread shops available rather than making his own. The rooms in the houses are empty with floors covered with carpet and the windows with bright embroidery. In an angle few carved chest are used as wardrobes on top of which are piles of cushions. On the wall a poster of Mecca or the colored photographs of relatives passed away. There is no toilet in the homes I stayed, but I am always offered a bucket with warm water to clean myself. A tablecloth is set on the floor, or on an elevated platform, with cushions around it and the male members of the house join me for the dinner. The table is full of plates: eggs, rice, soup, bread, grapes, watermelons, biscuits and candies. Often my host calls his relatives or friends to parade me as a subject of exotic interest, proud of me staying in his home. They come, they are impressed by the occasion, they asked incomprehensible questions to which they all laugh even if I fail to respond, they enjoy the special banquet themselves and they leave happily. A soft mat is then prepared next to where we eat ,always outside, except in the high mountains, with the man of the house sleeping next to me and the women a little bit in the distance. I like to sleep outside, amongst the security of the households, looking at the stars. It reminds me of Sir Auriel Stein who after several months camping in the Taklimakan uncovering ancient towns was uncomfortable in the beautiful but closed room of the mansion of Sir George Macartney, the British Consul in Kashgar, and used to go out and sleep in the garden. At down breakfast is prepared with tea, bread and biscuits. I leave some money which is promptly refused at first but later accepted and the family sees me off after giving me something for the road such as few tomatoes, cucumbers, nuts or the dried fruits of the mulberry tree. Generating benevolence results in comfort, the warmth feeling of being given intimacy and the intellectual satisfaction of seeing something more than the surface. I look with wonder to other travelers and cyclists who set up tent on dung’s infested field at the village entrance or go to the local hostel.

From Samarkand I am going south, no choice. My next destination is Dushambe in Tajikistan and I was excited of the prospects of taking the historical road which, 50km out of Samarkand, already enters in Tajikistan at the ancient town of Panjakent, ride along the Zeravshan valley, crowned by the beautiful Fan mountains, climb across the Anzob pass, rest on the shore of the stunning high altitude Iskanderkul lake, the lake of Alexander the Great, and joyfully descent into Dushambe. But the Uzbek authorities just decided to close that border, part of an ongoing exchange of unplesanties with his neighbor, forcing me on a much longer detour. In Samarkand I had to cancel plan to cross the border north at Bekobod because the idea of riding through the Zamin Natural reserve close to the Tajik frontier is not an option, the place is off-limits to foreigners. Why would he ever want to go there, my contact person close to the government wonders. “No tourists ever visit the reserve unless they are spies. Plus, there is the highway which goes straight to Bekobod which will be much more comfortable for you”; and uninteresting and full of trucks speeding by, I add. Even my attempt to use the help of Silvia who works for a United Nations agency in Tashkent does not produce any results. “They are not even answering to our request or returning our calls. Silence is how local authorities say no” she explains. I am left with the road south. 488km to Dushanbe through the southern Uzbekistan, in the sparsely populated Surkhandarya province, where, off the highway, life has remained the same from time immemorial, escaping Soviet’s modernization or the make ups to accommodate today’s global tourism. Although is my choice number three it sounds like a lot of fun.

Leaving Samarkand marks the beginning of the mountains. After much desert, the road will start ascending, with much ups and downs. Ahead of me I have over 40,000m of positive elevations before I reach Kashgar, roughly five times ascending Mt Everest. Few kilometers outside Samarkand I start climbing the 2,000m Charvadar pass. The road winds through villages with alpine vegetation and streams which motorists use to fill up their water bottle, or clean their cars, while local women offers fresh fruits from metal caskets. I have difficulties of finding bottled water; of course: why anyone would buy it if it is given to you by nature for free? Finally I come across a small stall which sells five liter containers, bulky, but my only option. I quickly attach one on the containers on the back of my bike, very precariously since I lose it four times, before deciding to redo the whole pack on my back rack from the beginning. It takes no more than two minutes and I already paid for my laziness of not undo the whole thing and start over, when I have something to add, by losing my flip flops, my only alternative to the cycling shoes, while riding in Turkmenistan, but I still dread it as a bore and I am not very much willing to do it, if not utterly necessary. I reach the pass without much effort. In a way climbing is the most exciting part of cycling; anyway it is unavoidable, contrary to the wind which is a matter of chance. I approach the climb as a matter of fact, knowing that I will eventually reach the top and the descent, with the winds in my hair, will follow. I get annoyed with wind: why does it need to blow right now and in the direction opposite to mine? How long will it last? If you are fit, and I am fit, challenges are often more a matter of the mind rather than the body. I find more difficult dealing with winds than mountains. Beyond the pass I can see the arid plain which I will cross tomorrow. Tonight I will stop at the foot of the mountain in the town Shahrisabz, the birthplace of Timur the great, home of few historical buildings, which makes it a good day trip from Samarkand. I arrive late in the afternoon and the tourists are all gone, which leaves me free to roam through the narrow alleys undisturbed and enter the monuments without the need to pay the ticket since the guardian is already gone home. It is twenty minutes to six. While wandering next of the tomb of Jehangir, Timur’s son, I stumble into an open portico which is used as mosque and the men of the village are gathering for the prayer. Thought of to be Muslim, I am invited to join. The mullah in his black tunic and white turbant is by far the youngest men of the group and as the rays of the setting sun come through the large tree in the square, he leads the prayer. He reminds me of Ahmad, the student I met at the Mir-i-Arab madrasah in Bukhara. Sitting in the courtyard under the blue domes, he told me that he is studying to become a mullah in his local village in the Ferghana valley; the hottest spot in Central Asia told me a diplomat at the Italian embassy in Kazakhstan, strongly advising me not to go there, leaving me wondering if consular advices are risk adverse beyond reason. Religion revival in Central Asia is an hot topic. Many people I talked to expressed their views that after decades of forced secularization during the Soviet Union, Islam in Central Asia is becoming a source of fear in terms of extremist movements and religious takeover of the society. Ahmad is a calm young man with green eyes. He told me that while the inevitable, but exceptions to the norm, opposition movements to the current political system revolves around religion, most people don’t just fall pray of extremisms and Islam culture and values have been guiding the life of people of central Asia and their quest for meaning for long. What is interesting to notice and to understand is not extremism but the separation that is underway between the elders who are insular, adhere to conventions and follow Central Asia Sufi traditions, and the youth who are outward looking and are borrowing from other Muslim cultures. I can imagine him as he will lead the prayer in this community, just as this young man is doing here, hoping that things will be as they have always been.

I am up very early to engage the vast desert plain which leads to Guzor, where I will join the highway to Afghanistan and the road will start climbing again, before I will turn east and enter the core of Surkhandarya, on my way to the Tajik border. In the middle of the plain, after an infinite football field with rusted goals, I come across a bus stop which offers some shade to the scorching sun. It is taken over by a mum and her five daughters dressed in the traditional elegant floral outfit, which is in sharp contrast to the dozens of turkeys and their mess around them. They sell the animals alive to the few motorists passing by. A westerner equals someone with a camera in their cultural vocabulary and I am asked to provide one. They get very much excited by it and they joyfully play and take pictures of each other sometimes looking through the viewfinder, sometimes attempting to look through the lenses.
After one hour I left them I get my first flat tire on the worst possible place: a steep hill with no cover from the burning sun. I manage to change it quickly motivated to escape the heat and I push on to end the day in the nourishing care of Mr Muyasar and his family, whose benevolence I generate.

Stages 11-12
Samarkand to Dekhkanabad 211km
From Mashaad 1224km
To Kashgar 1801km
See the photos of this stage at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Fioreblu-Infinite-Exploring/14071634600040

Stage 9-10 The Golden Journey to Samarkand
29 Aug 2011



My Ancient Rome ancestors used to say: “Nomen est omen”, it is all in the name. Samarkand is the ultimate destination for lovers of epic journeys; for anyone who spent nights awake reading Jules Verne, Rudyard Kipling, Emilio Salgari, and dreaming of exotic countries. It is because how it sounds. Just say it: Sa-mar-kand. It awakes the imagination and the lust for travels. Timbuctu, Maracaibo, Zanzibar have magic in their name too, putting a spell on travelers to attract them for life.
Today I am leaving Bukhara with anticipation as I am setting off to meet what I have been idealizing for years. To make the journey to Samarkand is to graduate as a seasoned traveler. It is a journey I postponed for long, like I did about Lasha despite owing a significant collection on books on Tibet and living relatively near it. I think that fantasy should not meet too much with reality, the resulting collision may generate disappointment and I don’t see any good reason to kill a dream. But today destiny is happening and I sing euphorically as I cycle on the road to Samarkand. The verses of James Elroy Flecker’s poetry sealed this place as a myth in my world.

THE PILGRIMS:
We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go
Always a little further: it may be
Beyond the last blue mountain barred with snow,
Across that angry or that glimmering sea,
White on a throne or guarded in a cave
There lives a prophet who can understand
Why men were born: but surely we are brave,
Who make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.

A MERCHANT :
We travel not for trafficking alone:
By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned:
For lust of knowing what should not be known
We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.

The road is unchallenging. I skirt villages amongst cottonfields where I find food and water. They are hailed by concrete modernist road-signs: Vobkent, Navoiy, Kemsomoi. A dubious achievement of Soviet industrial planning to win over the desert - manipulating nature to serve men’s interests, the ultimate show of human power - and make of this remote province the source of cotton for the whole Union, but with dramatic environmental consequences such as drying up the Aral sea because of irrigation projects, creating the bizarre sights of abandoned ships in the middle of a desert. As cotton after cotton pass by, my bicyle makes fast progress and in two days I reach Samarkand.

In the Gur-e Amir neighborhood, of what little remain of Samarkand’s old town, there is a cherry orchard. It is not really an orchard and there is only one cherry tree, together with the plants of pomegranates, figs and grapes. But the four days I am spending here echo of cultural futility and the effects of social change which are the themes of Chekov’s masterpiece. This is the garden and the house and the Halboitar family: the home of three industrious sisters Kutbiya, Diyora and Aziza. Sitting on the table, under the cherry tree and sipping pomegranate tea, Flora, a childhood friend of the sisters, a guide who speaks perfect Italian, recalls of the New Years’ eve nights in the Eighties spent with groups of Italian tourists opening bottles of champagne in the Registan, the most majestic sight in Samarkand, the space surrounded by three madrasahs which was the hearth of the ancient city. Her words are melancholic of a time, the soviet time, now gone which she says was better than today. Kutbiya almost pours her cup as she counters vehemently asking if she had gone crazy: “we did not have clothes, or shoes, or freedom”. Flora insists: “we had job security, schooling and health protection”, but Kutbiya with sarcasm reminds her that she just bought a new house and last summer she went to Switzerland, something she not even dare to dream of thirty years ago. “You are missing our youth, Flora, and our idealism, not the USSR”. Aziza smiles at me and closes the argument quoting Churchill who, apparently, said that if you are not communist in your twenties you don’t have a hearth, but if you still believe in it at forty you are a fool. Chekov’s play continues as Kutbiya tells me of the wall that the government built around the neighborhood three years ago to hide the old city from the tourists’ eyes. The Berlin wall, she calls it. “They think that the old houses, the historical houses, make Uzbekistan looks backward. They grew up with Soviet mentality and they see as attractive the large boulevards and the fountains. Soon our neighborhood will be demolished, and for our home they want to compensate us with 20,000 dollars. What use can we make of it? This place is worth much more for our family, and not just financiall. They say we can take the windows and the doors with us; they don’t understand. We do not want to leave this garden and end up on a five floor cement building at the outskirt of the city”. As Kutbiya hungrily talks about her future I imagine on the other side of the garden the broken aristocrat Madame Ranevsky, who will lose her estate and social status in Chekov's play, attempting to explain to the student Trophimof, who insists she faces up with reality, how much the property means to her: "you look boldly ahead; isn't it only that you don't see or divine anything terrible in the future; because life is still hidden from your young eyes."

On my first night, I wander alone through Samarkand, without a guide and following my sixth sense. Pai Kabak, the quarter of women’s dancer is long gone. Sven Hedin, during his trip at the end of the XIX century, recalls how he was “ushered into perfumed rooms carpeted with rugs and divans along the walls. Beautiful women played the sitar and chetara, manipulating the strings with dainty little fingers. Others, with like skills and grace, played the tambourine. As the music rose in the night, the dancers appeared in light, floating garments, with movements full of grace. Some were Persians and Afghans, others had Tartar blood in their veins. And to the rhythmic sound of music from the stringed instruments, they danced in undulating measure like fairies in a dream, messengers from Bihasht and the joys of Paradise.” I take a taxi instead ten kilometers out of town to the observatory built by Ulugh Beg in the XVI century, a wonder of the ancient world. There is no observatory anymore, I just want to lay by it and gaze at the stars. Unfortunately there is no dark park around its remains as I imagined, but a stadium-lit unromantic plaza which conspires with the full moon to make the sky starless. On my way back into the city my disillusionment becomes apprehension as a young driver speed crazily through the streets blaring Russian hip-hop from his stereo. The day after I continue my wanderings and gaze at the sense of space that the Registan projects, and at the beautiful light games of the tiles of its medrasahs. The mosque Bibi Knamyn entails a sense of power proper for the man for whom it was built: the great local conqueror Timur, who, in the footsteps of Genghis Khan took by sword Delhi, Baghdad, Damascus, Moscow. It makes me think that little has change to the purpose of grandiose architecture. Those in commands remind daily to the common people of their strength by building the tallest structure visible from everywhere. Mausoleums, monuments, churches, factories and skyscrapers were built as power shifted from emperors to clerics, to industrialists to men of finance.

Back to my cherry orchard, the journey of nurturing the Samarkand of my dreams encounters what is one of the most powerful ways to tingle the senses and lighten the spirit: food. Kutbiya agrees to share with me a unique recipe of the common Plov, a rice dish eaten throughout central Asia. This is the Plov of Samarkand which for generations has been transmitted orally from mothesr to daughters.

KUTBIYA’S PLOV OF SAMARKAND
Stir-fry chucks of meats of any kind you find early in the morning at the bazaars in cotton oil. When coated add slices of onions and after five minutes putt in some yellow carrots, because the red ones are too sweet, which instead of doing it yourself you can ask the stall keeper to julienne for you as tradition demands. On top of it sprinkle some chick peas, cumin, bayberry, pepper and sultanas. Cover the pot, lower the heat and let it cook for 25 minutes or so. In the meantime cover the rice with boiling water away from the fire. When the carrots are ready add the rice to the pot and for ten minutes stir the rice from time to time taking good care in keeping separate the layer of meat and vegetable and the layer with the rice. As you stir you can recall and repeat the name of your ancestors to help you in making a succulent meal and keeping their memories alive. Mould the top of the rice into a dome shape and dig some holes in the rice to let the steam from the bottom layer to come out. It is ready in 20 minutes.

See the photos of this stage at www.facebook.com/pages/Fioreblu-Infinite-Exploring/14071634600040

Stage 9-10
Bukhara to Samarkand 265km
From Mashaad 1013km
To Kashgar 2013km

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