Adventures on the Silk Road

Last year my mother, who is significantly cooler than I will ever be spent three months travelling the Silk Road, which is an old trading route that runs from Xi’an in China through to Turkey, hitting most of the obscure-stans on the way. In case you have any lingering doubts about how top-notch my mum is, when was the last time your 67-year-old mama travelled independently through Uzbekistan? Also here she is in rural China holding a hunting eagle.

I don’t quite know why she had a hunting eagle.

HE EAGLE TOO BIG FOR HE GOTDAM MUM

When she came home I got to hear all of the stories, and this post is to share three of those.

All photos in this post by my mother, Mumbo. Mumbo has her own site which you are welcome to visit; it is primarily photography but also has a blog section stuffed with gems from her travels like: “We watched as a contingent of the Russian army rolled past […] I would have liked to take photos from the middle of the road but it didn’t seem prudent. […] most of the troops were quite grim, but a couple waved!”

1.    In Which It Is Indeed a Small World

Mum went on this trip with a friend of hers, Janet, who is also a Pākehā lady in her 60s. Mum n’ Janet were frequently a source of intrigue and amusement to the locals, as the spectacle of two older foreign women faffing about on a self-guided tour is somewhat unusual in rural Kyrgyzstan. (Alas it is far less unusual at Mum’s house when you are attempting to get her to quiz night on time.)

RURAL KYRGYZSTAN: QUITE A LOT NICER THAN YOU HAVE BEEN IMAGINING

One day Mum and Janet were walking down a country road in Kyrgyzstan when a carload of people pulled over to investigate and say hello.  They turned out to be an Kazakh family on holiday, and on hearing that Mum and Janet were from New Zealand, they became very excited and started asking if Mum and Janet knew Hamish!

Mum and Janet racked their aging brains but between them could not come up with any suitable Hamishes, so they explained that while NZ is small it isn’t that small, and eventually the carload of Kazakhs departed and Mum and Janet continued walking along the road.

About ten minutes later they rounded a bend and were confronted by a tall, blond young man wearing a backpack, riding a horse.

Hamish!  He was from Auckland.

Hamish had decided to chuck in his job and learn to ride a horse somewhere that wasn’t New Zealand. Mum: “He had never ridden a horse before he left New Zealand and spent the last two weeks learning horsey things. He was beginning to think he was young and daft. We were the first supportive people he’d talked to. I hope he’s safely tenting in a grassy, mountain field.”

As do we all.

---

2.    No Thank You, Tourist Yurts

So Mum and Janet set their agenda as they went along; they had their flight to China and first hotel booked, but from there they followed the Silk Road and stayed for longer in places they liked, and for less time in places they didn’t.

They booked the occasional place in advance but generally rocked up in town and found a place to stay.

“LADIES PLEASE REMOVE YOUR TENT FROM LIKE RIGHT ON THE CHINESE BORDER”

On their way through Kyrgyzstan, Mum and Janet told a taxi driver that they wanted to stay in a yurt.

The taxi driver took them to some sort of tourist yurt encampment (apparently this is a thing), at which they promptly said “no we want AN AUTHENTIC YURTSPERIENCE” so the taxi driver carried on down the road until he saw a likely-looking couple of yurts, which he then drove up to and asked, “can these two pay to stay with you for a couple of days?”  Which sounds odd on the face of it, but if a couple of charming older Chinese ladies turned up on your lifestyle block and offered to basically do a disorganised AirBNB and you didn’t have anywhere else to be, you can imagine you might well show them to the guest room.  (Guest yurt.)

So the random yurt family said yes, and then Mum spent three happy days following them around while they milked the horses and fermented the horse cheese and did whatever else a normal yurting family does in a normal yurting day. 

PICTURED: A NORMAL YURTING DAY. THE HORSE’S FRONT LEG IS TIED UP SO IT CAN’T FUCK OFF DURING THE MILKING. ALSO I SAID “WHAT DID HE DO” AND MUM WAS VERY DISAPPOINTED IN ME AND EXPLAINED ABOUT HOW YOU ONLY MILK THE LADY HORSES.

3.    Animal Noises: the Universal Language

So Mum and Janet arrived in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, and very much liked it and decided to stay for a few days. 

SAMARKAND: IT’S OK I GUESS

During this time Mum ended up going to the same restaurant for dinner every night during the week they were there.

Mum and the waiter (it was the same waiter every time she visited) had no common language and she couldn’t read the menu, so ordering was done via a series of animal impressions.

Mum would approach the waiter, moo, and look questioning. 

The waiter would shake his head sadly – no beef today – but in return would cluck inquisitively while flapping his ‘wings’, and Mum would nod enthusiastically, and thusly she had ordered the chicken.

The last night they were there, the restaurant manager couldn’t stand it any more and took the waiter aside and Had A Word To Him then asked Mum in perfect English what she would like.

Mum was worried that she’d got the waiter in trouble, but after the manager left, the waiter rolled his eyes at Mum, grinned, and baa’d.

 Like all of my best posts this post has no moral at all; except man, I want to travel the Silk Road, and also aren’t people the same everywhere?

DOES THIS KAZAKH TRAIN STATION NOT BRING BACK MEMORIES OF HOME?