Rewriting History

Tajikistan ranks 122^nd out of 140 countries in terms of cultural resources in the World Economic Forum Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index. This gem of information may have escaped you but it strikes me as surprising given that the country can boast over five thousand years of recorded history (see History blog from August). We’ve had the Persians, the Greeks, the Turks, the Chinese, the Arabs, the Samanids, the Mongols, the Imperial Russians, the Soviet Russians and even, more recently, some Scots.. But, true enough, there’s not an awful lot for the culture seeking tourist to see. It’s as if everyone cleaned up carefully on departure to leave no trace – or someone else did, later.

I can see three main reasons for this. Firstly, the country is devoid of signage, maps and interpretation to avoid the security risk of anyone knowing where they are, so it’s difficult to find the cultural sites. Secondly, the best tangible relics are probably all in St. Petersburg (and what’s left probably went to London). Thirdly, whole swathes of history are “no-go” areas. The Soviets were not keen on much before 1917; their story seems to be that nothing meaningful really happened before the triumph of the proletariat, unless it could be dug up and given a scientific label.

The new, imposing National Museum in Dushanbe is a case in point. It’s big and airy, and there’s stuff from 3,000 BC; then lovely frescoes from the 8^th century AD; then pictures of the current President meeting Tony Blair and Barak Obama. If you like glass cases with odd shaped bits of stone and metal, with the added excitement of indecipherable labels in cyrillic, then this is your place. But what happened  between the stone age and Tony Blair?

Then there’s the National Museum of Antiquities, which is a much older building where they keep older bits of stone in older glass cases. This does house the world famous sleeping Buddha of Adjina-Tepe however. Excavated in 1966, it’s 13 metres long and over 1500 years old, the largest Buddha in Central Asia. It’s very impressive.

Sleeping Buddha

I exaggerate about the dearth of sites and artefacts a bit of course but it does seem that successive waves of rulers have either eliminated the past or rewritten it to fit their present. We found Lenin (below) for example on a bit of waste ground behind an office in a small town called Aini. This revisionism makes you nostalgic for dog-eared school history text books describing the Tudors and the Stuarts. (Though we’re not completely innocent given our own reinterpretation of history for the small screen. The recent series on The Tudors certainly revealed more than I learned at university).

Yesterday's Hero

Tajikistan is a new, old country… History is now being rewritten again, this time to create a national identity around two figures from safe berths in the distant past, Abu Abdollah Jafar ibn Mohammad Rudaki and Isma'il ibn Ahmad Somoni.

Rudaki is acknowledged as one of the founding fathers of modern Persian literature, and by modern we mean here 9^th century AD. He was a singer and a poet and a royal favourite of the Samanid dynasty but it’s difficult to tell how good he really was as most of his reputed 1.3 million verses have been destroyed long since. We have to rely a bit on hearsay so there’s not much in the museums. That’s Kate below getting inspiration from him in the park (a funny way to get inspiration you might think)..

Kate and Rudaki

Ismail Somoni  was the most famous ruler of the Samanid dynasty referred to above. He built up Bukhara as one of Islam's most glorious cities, attracted scholars, artists, and doctors of law into the region, developed the economy and organized a powerful army to extend his empire. That’s his modest new statue below. We also have somoni as the national currency, Peak Somoni  as the highest mountain, Somon Air as a national airline etc. etc.

Ismail Somoni

There’s a lot more rich heritage out there amongst the people of the country that is being suppressed however. I feel this can’t be good though I’m not sure how important it is. At least we don’t have people bleating on about historical injustices and fanning the flames of intolerance and prejudice, but where are the lessons from the past to guide the present?

There’s one thing for sure, we need a bit more than the lost verses of Rudaki to build up cultural tourism. Did Genghis and Stalin realise the damage they were doing to the future of the tourism industry when they rampaged around central Asia? I think not, and the new history should hold them to account.

Charm in Garm

A road less travelled this week; off along the ancient Silk Road to Garm and the Rasht Valley, to the north western edge of the great Pamir mountains. It’s less travelled by foreigners at least which, in Tajikistan tourism terms, means it’s like going to the far side of the moon because the Sea of Tranquility is getting too “trippery” with all those folk from Apollo 11…

It’s not clear why few foreigners come this way so it’s a fact-finding mission for me – again, that tough job that somebody’s got to do. The scenery is fantastical and almost lunar. The narrow winding valleys of the Fann mountains and Badakshan here give way to broad valleys and high plateaux. We’re going toward Kyrgyzstan and the nomadic tribes crossing miles of grassland with their yurts and yaks. It’s breathtaking.

On the way we are able to make a major contribution to the development of Tajikistan civilization by introducing the roadside picnic. You know, find a nice spot; park; get out; decide there is a better spot further on; get in ; move; get out etc. Get the flatbread and tomatoes and cheese and plates and fruit and apricot juice and water out. Drop a sliced tomato face down in the grass. Sit uncomfortably on some rocks and eat lunch. It’s not that we’re completely insensitive to cultural differences but we’ve only just noticed the puzzled stares from cars as they distractedly disappear over the side of ravines next to the road. Our young guide and translator, Masur, politely explains to us that Tajiks do not do this and simply find it bizarre. He is, though, intrigued by the whole idea and plans to introduce it to his friends.  In fact later in the trip – after we have visited his house – he produces home made bread, delicately-flavoured home made cake (similar to Greek baklava) and fruit from the family orchard to complement our two day old, slightly sweaty cheese.

Choosing the picnic spot away from the crowds

Could the introduction of the picnic spread goodwill and stem the advances of the Taleban in central Asia? We feel we may be on to something. We need a massive NATO picnic deployment offensive.

We stop for some impromptu dancing at a riverside wedding celebration before we get to Garm, a town still bearing the scars of Tajikistan’s civil war in the 1990s when over 50,000 died. Much of the fighting was in this area between militant Muslims and the Tajikistan army. The people are absolutely charming; how do these things happen?

We have tea in the living room of Masur’s childhood home in the mountains with panoramic views down the valley. You can pick juicy apples and pears from the window and watch chickens and a cow happily free-ranging in the garden.  We visit an exotic horticulturalist with his own botanical gardens and his own museum, with 3,000 year old coins dug up locally and pictures of his father wearing rows of medals from Red Army service at Stalingrad. We travel through to Jirgital, a frontier-like town not far from the Kygyzstan border, and see some of the lesser Pamir peaks, a mere 5,400 metres up (or, in Scottish terms, four Ben Nevises). 

The view from Masur's house

We learn about Buzkashi, a wild game in which men on horseback battle in a makeshift arena over possession of a dead goat.  The winner is the one who can hang on to the carcass for long enough to do a complete circuit of the field of play at a thundering gallop, and then drop it into a tyre placed in the centre.  Unfortunately, as it is only played in the snow and we are still in bright, sunny autumn, we can’t saddle up and give it a go. We meet the only woman in the area who plays, though, an American from California, and discuss the prospects of introducing this exciting sport into our respective countries. We decide a lot of the appeal might be lost if there were rules, a referee, padding for the players, commercial breaks and the substitution of a teddy bear for the goat. Some of it would not look completely out of place on the terraces of football grounds however.

Buzkashi (courtesy of Janice Setser)

Too soon we are trundling back down to Dushanbe, bowled over by another side of the country that we’d love to see appreciated by lots and lots of visitors but, at the same time, fearful of the consequences of tourism success.

Tourism begins at home

Kate, my better half, is here for a visit. As a tourism development advisor, I can claim my first big success; I’ve persuaded someone to come. I’ve found the elusive formula for attracting tourists. All you have to do is marry them and pay for the ticket and provide the accommodation….. This may not be the answer for mass tourism but it’s a start.

We’ve just been up in the Fann mountains north of Dushanbe. Our first stop was Iskandar Kul – Alexander Lake – named for Alexander the Great who passed here on his way to invading India in 326BC. Legend has it that he fought at the lake and his great war horse, Bucephalus, drowned there but occasionally comes ashore on summer nights bearing Alexander to excite the girls. Mmm..?

Iskandar Kul

The lake is one of the most beautiful sights in the country. The teal-coloured waters reflect layers of rugged peaks stretching all the way back to Uzbekistan and the air, at well over 2,000 metres above sea level, is crisp and intoxicating – like inhaling a very dry vodka martini.

We stayed in a little, lost, Shangri-la like valley up a very narrow road beyond the lake with some charming locals who, you felt, had relatives who knew someone who had known someone who had been with Alexander… Reality and myth seem to sit very closely together in this rarefied atmosphere. We sat on the floor and had the national dish, oshi plov  - rice fried with carrots and pieces of lamb – little bowls of green tea and lots of ‘non,’ (flat, oily bread), for dinner. There was very tasty water melon and chaka, one of the most revolting concoctions of salt and dried yoghurt balls known to man.We tried to remember not to blow our noses at the table or show the soles of our feet – two cardinal sins in polite company but Kate immediately did the former with gusto, stunned silence, and I fell over revealing the latter. Good job there is a degree of tolerance for foreign devils.

Homestay Sharboz

Afterwards, we trekked up the hill to the toilet, looked at the star filled sky and then lay on unsprung mattresses on the floor,  covering ourselves with more of the same to make a very colourful mattress sandwich. It was half past seven in the evening. I slept better than I have done for years…

In the morning, water was brought from the river and a fire was lit under an old iron boiler. We stood in a wooden cabin, filled a zinc bucket with warm water from behind the boiler and then poured it over ourselves with balers. It’s a cross between a sauna and a loony dook. Marvellous. Who needs a £20,000 fitted bathroom.

Our next homestay lay up a different valley where we traced a chain of 7 lakes ever higher towards the sky. Homestays are the local equivalents of B&Bs but with the added allure of being a bit closer to nature; best to block the door to your room at night, for example, if you don’t want to find yourself sharing with a goat by morning.

Afternoon tea

It’s getting cold at 2,000 metres in October but fortunately our host brought out an electric fire over dinner of fried lake fish and – rather surprisingly - crinkle cut chips. Also fortunately, we had a young lad with us to translate - an Afghan refugee living in Dushanbe who has acquired excellent English – and we chatted late into the night (to almost 10 p.m.).

Our host told us of his plans to expand his homestay with an extra storey on an outhouse and a swimming pool; we thought, but felt it a bit churlish to say, that it might be better to start with a toilet you can sit on rather than a hole in the ground that requires considerable fortitude to approach after dark and could lead to disaster if you happen to have a bad hip and a poor sense of balance. We talked of corruption, of the forced purchase by everyone in the country of shares in the Roghun dam scheme – which looks good on the paper, where it will probably remain forever – and the going rate for such crimes as having a roof rack without a licence. We agreed things were going to get better.

Solar powered tea

The next day we had solar powered tea and then drove to the seventh lake, had a picnic at the sixth and then walked back down; the mountain scenery fantastic, the feeling of the villages biblical. I estimate that there were about 7 tourists in this whole 60 mile valley and, other than us, they were expatriates living in Kabul and escaping the confines of a conflict zone. So there’s plenty of room, though we can’t offer the special spouse deal to all visitors I'm afraid.

Picnic at the 6th Lake

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Brides in the botanics

Sunday is a day for strolling in Dushanbe’s botanical gardens. Under a cloudless blue sky and a pleasant 30°C it’s a lovely time to study the local flora; and the most dazzling of all the flora are Dushanbe’s new brides, out in full bloom.

One of the many rituals of marriage here (see earlier blog, the Wedding, for more) is the parade of the bride and groom before their relatives and friends and what better place to do this than round the attractively laid out grounds of the botanical gardens. Literally dozens of wedding parties converge on this green corner of the city every Saturday and Sunday to celebrate and to see and be seen.

It’s really the parade of the bride. The groom is just there to give a contrasting dark background to the radiance of his partner. (Isn’t that just it, for life….?). Restrained simplicity is not the order of the day as she glides along in her stunning white meringue of a dress with the wedding party at a respectful ten paces behind. Photographers buzz around like paparazzi recording every step and expression and relieved parents sigh and beam and eye up the opposition.

Negotiating the bushes

Everyone joins in respectfully and so they should; this is the culmination of a big joint effort. Almost all the marriages in Tajikistan are arranged by the families. The bride and groom may look a bit tongue tied, but they’ve probably only met once before and then under observation. But negotiations have no doubt been going on for over a year through emissaries. Spies will have gone out from both camps to check on the other family, and friends of the prospective couple will have been cornered for interrogation. Educational attainment and job prospects have been weighed; relative ages, place of birth, photographs and, most of all, reputation of the other family are pored over. The question of money will have arisen. Weddings cost upwards of $10,000 – for each family – and in a country with a per capita Gross National Income of just over $2,000 per annum, this is a perpetual concern, especially for the family with daughters. How can I find the money? How can I not find the money? The deal is done.

Is the bride happy? She is certainly getting her day of superstardom but after this it’s probably farewell to any further education and off to live with the groom’s family – where she will be confined to the house for the first 40 days so that she can make a start on the next generation (presumably with some help from the man in the dark suit..). If her family have chosen well, though, she will settle in to a supportive environment with someone who shares her interests and cares for her well-being. Divorce rates are very low by western standards.

My language teacher faces a dilemma. She has just turned down a marriage offer for her 20 year old daughter. The prospective in-laws have had little education and their son doesn’t have a job. Both factors they consider could be very limiting for their daughter's future security and happiness. Not very romantic but probably a good decision, especially as her daughter wants to continue in college. But this is a country desperately short of marriageable men - due to migration, civil war and unemployment – and a woman not married by 25 is considered to be over the hill. Will there be other offers? Will she end up the second or third wife of an older man? Will she miss out on her day in the sun, her promenade in the botanics?

From Your Own Correspondent

The BBC caught up with me yesterday. “From Our Own Correspondent” on Radio 4 featured Jamie Coomarasamay reporting from Tajikistan. I feel the hot breath of state subsidised competition on the neck of my – and your – exclusive news service!

I’d like to undermine this upstart by pointing out all the inaccuracies in the feature but it was a pretty fair representation of some of the idiosyncracies of life in Dushanbe. There is a building boom here, with construction by the ever enveloping Chinese and financing from who knows where. Many feel they know exactly “where” and there are furtive nods and whispered asides to a great selection of conspiracy theories. But surely even gangsters and traffickers have more sense than to invest in rickety tower blocks in an earthquake zone where the economy is struggling and rents are low? The one theory I haven’t heard is that it’s a reborn Royal Bank of Scotland amassing another property portfolio. I might try and start that rumour myself…

Before

The greatest pity is that robust, quite stylish, Soviet 1930s buildings in beautiful, shady avenues are being replaced by glass and breeze-block towers on deforested highways. There’s an interesting article on this on the Eurasianet service http://www.eurasianet.org/node/67493 if you want to feel really fed up. (Ha, Mr Coomarasamay, one up on you there).

After

I have not – as yet – been to an early morning circumcision party in the Choikhona as Jamie recommends. I’m too afraid I might be invited but not as an observer… It could be another way to make me feel more at home. I have, though, roamed the Kafkaesque corridors of the National Library where you take books in on loan rather than take them out. And, of course, I have marvelled at the world’s tallest flagpole, the erection and maintenance of which is not as easy as it sounds. Just try beating 165 metres with a few poles tied together in your backyard.

The Flagpole

I have eaten the Plov and the Mantu mentioned as well as my favourite, a noodle dish called Laghmon. As with everything, done well, they’re all great. With no Michelin Guide here to the eateries I’ve had to trust to instinct in choosing where to eat. So that’s another potential career – food guide and writer – struck off my list. Given some regrettable choices I can only say that sometimes one’s best instincts seem to take a holiday.

Laghmon

The Presidential election is in November. If William Hill is prepared to take my house, my family and even my old model railway set, I’m prepared to bet everything on the result. This may sound rash but I have a pretty good idea who is going to win. I’m not going to tell you though as it will weaken the odds.

Whilst I hesitate to recommend the broadcasting competition I realise that, without listening to Jamie Coomarasamay’s despatch, the foregoing must appear more unintelligible than usual. It’s available on the BBC i-player (From Our Own Correspondent, Radio 4, 28^th September 2013) and downloadable as a podcast if you have the app. You can probably get it in Urdu and braille as well and free at participating stores etc. What it is to have rich backers.

We do, though, have our own You Tube site for VSO in Tajikistan which I have been asked to advertise and where you can find all that the state broadcaster fails to show - well, perhaps not all - including this feature on tourism in the country with some very unknown and inexpensive presenters; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zHIE_ofFPQ.

As I am advertising VSO I should add the disclaimer that the views expressed in this blog are completely personal and do not represent the views of VSO. Neither are they the views of the BBC – though I’m open to offers on that one.

Taking the Rough with the Smooth

My first Dangucha

This weekend started – as all good weekends should – on Friday evening. A Tajik colleague of mine turned up at my house at 6 p.m. with a giant pot of Dangucha, - a dish from his village the virtues of which he had been extolling for some time - freshly made by his wife, and complete with crockery, cutlery and table cloth…. We duly tucked in; he with a little more gusto than me. Dangucha is made from a sheep’s head, legs and stomach plus beans and corn. It’s not quite as good as it sounds… but it was a really sweet gesture.

Dushanbe Afghan Reel Society

It was then party-time. VSO runs a programme called International Citizen Service (ICS) in several countries across the world. In Tajikistan a dozen or so young people came over from the UK for 12 weeks and teamed up with Tajik and Afghan counterparts, stayed with local families and worked together to stage a one day cultural festival in Dushanbe called Rangorang. (I made a short and completely unbiased video of how wonderful this was which you can see on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvEQjwtMUJo). Tonight was the farewell party which was a great do, despite all the tears at parting. I learned an Afghan dance that I’m convinced is a local take on the eightsome reel.

Saturday morning was up to the local market again – where roast chicken futures seem to have taken a battering and I came away with my prize for a mere 17 somoni (£2.50) this week. Then it was domestic toil, I won’t go into it – I don’t want everyone crying while reading this – before the weekly connection with the UK via a trip to a local bar to watch live Premier League football. All was nicely teed up, with beer in hand, Liverpool v Southampton on the big screen and Chelsea v Fulham to come. 10 minutes into the first game, the screens went blank. The feed that we get from Russian TV was cut. This was either the dark hand of Vladimir Putin strengthening his grasp over central Asia – I think the most likely reason - or someone had forgotten to pay the bill. Either way, the manager did his best to get a substitute but I’m not sure the live coverage of Derby County against Reading with a commentary in Arabic was quite what we had hoped for.

Trying to look the part

Sunday is hike day. We take a minibus to some scenic spot outside the city chosen by our infallible local guide and tramp into the hills. It didn’t start well for me though. I was all set with hiking boots, rugged shorts, classy shades and a rucksack full of essentials. However, when I got on the bus to go to the rendezvous a young man immediately jumped up and offered me his seat. It kind of takes the wind out of your sails when you are setting off to conquer the mountains of Tajikistan and then someone offers you a seat on the bus because they think you’re too frail to stand up. Anyway, it was a great hike and I made it without the sedan chair. We went up to Obi Garm, a small ski-ing and health resort from Soviet times. Tremendous views and a pleasant breeze as we got away from the 35°C in the valley. I’m not sure I’ll try the ski-ing here though. The main lift centre, pictured, looks like it could do with a bit of TLC.

Obi Garm Ski Centre

Back exhausted, but a great weekend. There’s rough with the smooth, but all part of the rich experience. (At least that’s what’s going in the tourism brochures).

Badakhshan

I am in Tajikistan to help develop tourism. What a great brief that is! It’s almost as good as saying I’m in the pub to check that the beer is OK; actually it’s better. I have to get out there and see the country and sample the facilities. So some tourism promotion.

Since being here I’ve been lucky enough to go by helicopter a couple of times now from Dushanbe to Khorog in the Pamir mountains east of here. It’s a spectacular trip involving crossing northern Afghanistan, as you can see from the map, and then following the Panj river south.

Dushanbe to Khorog

This is Badakhshan, some of the wildest territory on earth and home to Shia Ismaili Muslims whose spiritual leader is the Aga Khan. The aerial hitch-hike is courtesy of the Aga Kahn Foundation which does an immense amount of charitable work in the area.

The views are stupendous. Is that Muminabad we’ve just passed over way, way below? Is that the Vanch valley on the left with Arnavad Peak at 5,992 metres and – beyond that - is that the Ismoil Somoni Peak at an incredible 7,594 metres? I haven’t a clue. It’s all just jagged, snow topped mountains dropping steeply down into scalpel cut narrow valleys. Note to myself for tourism promotion, get someone to climb up and label all the mountains…

Weaving between the peaks, Badakhshan

My sense of direction is not completely lost though. All this gazing at the view seems to have diverted attention from looking ahead where I see a mountain heading straight for us. I suggest to the pilot that we may want to veer left a bit. He seems grateful for the prompt, although I don’t think he feels it was absolutely necessary for me to bang on his ear phones quite so hard.

Left a bit.....

It is quite ethereal. Sitting strapped in air conditioned splendour, in comfortable arm chairs, taking pictures and looking forward to lunch in an hour. Below us is a world untouched by mankind for centuries (except for the Bin Laden lookalikes I feel I can see behind every boulder). The snow comes. The snow melts. The peaks glisten in the sun. The rivers run on cutting between the mountains. It doesn’t half make you feel insignificant. The terrain is so varied but so rugged. Tiny settlements cling to the banks of rivers where there is a thread of land but otherwise it’s miles and miles of defiant, raw nature.

It's a long way down - to nowhere..

It’s a mixed sadness and relief to reach Khorog and the small airstrip in the mountains. How did anyone get here before there were helicopters? And why? And I’m getting mixed feelings about why I should want to encourage them to open up to thousands more visitors..

Terra Firma, Khorog International