Carpetblogger

Carpetblog Exposes Corruption!

Instead of being victimized by official corruption, or more likely, taking advantage of it, Carpetblogger seems to have exposed it! 

Almost certainly as a result of this post, the Bulgarian government is  shutting down the skeezy border "duty free" shops, that the Chiplomat and I concluded are best source of mobbed-up Moscowskaya vodka within three hours drive of Istanbul. Apparently the EU says such places are "a focal point" for corruption and organized crime. While this may be the case, I suggest the EU drive a little farther into Bulgaria and they might find one or two other focal points.

This is bad news for people who think Bulgaria is a good source of cheap vodka. It's good news, however, for people who want to think Bulgaria is anything other than the only ex-Soviet Republic that managed to join the EU.

Himalaya Pimp

Longtime readers may know that Carpetblogger and the Producer spent 2003 traveling around the world. In fact, on this day five years ago, we hiked out of Tiger Leaping Gorge in northern Yunan Province to see a Chinese dude pointing his fingers like guns at us and "pew! pew! pew!"'ing with glee as a means of informing us the US had invaded Iraq that day.

About a week or two later, we were in Litang, a Tibetan city in far western Sichuan. In many ways, Western Sichuan is more Tibetan than Tibet (a characteristic it shares with Ladakh and northern Himachal Pradesh in India). I suppose it's too remote for the Chinese to fuck up too badly. Indeed, Litang is one of the highest cities in the world. I haven't been able to find any news reports about violence there, but apparently it is a center of Tibetan resistance and has a strong Khampa influence, it's probably safe to say there have been crackdowns. Khampas are 100% badasses.

I dug up the email (I didn't even have a blog in those days!) I sent home about Litang. Even after 14 countries in 14 months, this place is seared into my brain.

There have been two times while traveling that we genuinely felt we had landed on a different planet. Burma was one and Litang, on the western edge of Tibet is the other. here's absolutely nothing remarkable about the town itself, except that it lies at about 13,500 feet on an enormous plain surrounded by snow capped "hills." It doesn't look that different from Baker City, Oregon, only there are more yaks.

To get there, we spent two days on dirt roads, crossing passes of between 18,000 and 20,000 feet high. Imagine driving from Portland to Seattle, along the crest of the Cascades, on unpaved forest service roads, in an 18 seat bus that hadn't had new shocks since the Mao administration, with 25 of your closest Chinese and Tibetan friends, many of whom are vomiting yak butter. One two-hour stretch crossed a boulder-strewn wasteland of eroded mountains and frozen shallow lakes. It was probably at least 18,000 feet high. No one lived there. I have never seen anything like it.

Litang's population is what truly distinguishes it from the rest of China. It is the largest town in the area and many of the nomads come down from the hills to deal in yak hide and to see and be seen at its markets. We were frequently greeted with a spontaneous "tashi delek," the Tibetan hello.

One thing that foreigners in China must accustom themselves to is being stared at. I feel like I was able to repay six weeks of staring in Litang. I couldn't keep my eyes off some of these people. I nearly got whiplash every time someone walked past me.

Hats and sunglasses are de riguer. The men, especially, wore, all manner of them, made from all sorts of material-- mostly fur. One guy had a two foot-tall fur hat, with a long tail down his back, and enormous Karl Lagerfeld-style sunglasses. Monks had red or gold caps. Some men wore hats of gold and scarlet brocade with fur ear flaps, and modern wraparound sunglasses with yellow lenses.

Some of the people were as dark as Africans. Others looked like they came from central casting for American Indians, with turquoise jewelery pinning thick braids to their heads. Some women wore their hair in the traditional 108 braids, wrapped with silver bangles. Every man had a knife strapped to his waist and the women wear all their amber and silver bangles, all the time. Many of them look shaggy, like their embroidered yak hair coats are a natural part of their skin.

The young men were truly astonishing. Most were tall, with long dark hair. They wore scarlet hip-length jackets with yak hair lining off one shoulder, and prayer beads around their necks. Huge round Elton-john style sunglasses and silver knives finished off the look. They walked with a swagger of indeterminate origin. I call it Himalayan pimp, but the look works.

I wouldn't have been surprised to see them all ride out of town in cloud of dust, back into the hills, leaving an empty city behind, and us wondering if it was at all real.

Other than staring at people, and being stared at ourselves, there wasn't a whole lot to do in Litang, so we sampled the local cuisine which is heavily reliant on yak. Yak is our new favorite meat. It's very fatty and a little gamy. It's great on noodles for breakfast and dried for long busrides.

Yak butter tea, however, is truly vile. I ordered a Tibetan breakfast one morning, and it came with the two staples of the Tibetan diet -- yak butter tea and tsampas, which are little baked barley biscuits. Both are staples of Tibetan hospitality. They look like little dried turds and are barely edible. Yak butter tea tastes like sour milk mixed with soap and salt. Yak butter has a very distinctive smell, and now we smell it everywhere, especially around monks, who light their monasteries with yak butter lamps.

(  Unfortunately, I took my photos in a media known as "film" so I can't post them without substantial effort.)

Within a few more weeks we were in Lhasa. Needless to say, we have been following the Chinese crackdown with interest and a great deal of sadness. I don't have a lot of confidence in the Tibetans' ability to govern themselves effectively (in a later email, I concluded they would be a lot better off if they stopped walking around in circles worshiping rocks and started organizing), but they deserve a lot better than this. 

I'm boycotting Beijing.

Are You Going To Kazbegi?

You certainly should! Carpetblogger and the Beirut Correspondent headed up to the Caucasian village in Georgia two summers ago and had a great time hiking around the Holy Trinity Monastery, listening to polyphonic singing and falling into pits filled with sheep heads.

Hans at Kaukasus alerted us to the helpful, well-written site Kazbegi in the Caucasus that details all the homestays in the villages located around the 5000 meter (16,500 feet) Mt Kazbegi. It includes great details that remind me why Georgia is such a bad-ass place to travel, such as:

"At the time we visited the homestays in Jutta, the village didn’t have any phone coverage. That’s why there are no phone numbers listed, ask the locals! But try to remember the first name of your host—because the surname for all the people from Jutta is the same: Arabuli."

"The friendly family might want to give you their huge Caucasus dog as a present."

A giant Kavkaz shepherd is the perfect souvenir from a trip to Kazbegi!

Booze and Bacon

The Most Important American Holiday is in one week. Thanksgiving rocks because there's no phony (or real) religion or rampant consumerism -- only food and friends and family. This is likely to be the first of several posts dealing with the First Annual Baku Diaspora Istanbul Thanksgiving.

We held two gigantic Thanksgivings in Baku (see here and here for previous years' shopping experiences). This year, about 30 folks are leaving a huge carbon footprint, journeying from America, Honduras, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Baku and Ukraine to come to Istanbul. For this, we give thanks.

One thing they all have in common --in addition to an appreciation for ass fat -- is a prodigious appetite for alcohol. As many reside in Muslim countries, they need a pork fix too.

Because we aim to please, advance planning is critical. Not only is crap Turkish wine and beer overpriced and packed with headache-inducing preservatives, Turks tax the hell out of imported booze. Also? Muslims don't eat pork, so it's hard to find in Istanbul. What is Thanksgiving without pork products?

So, faced with these vexing circumstances, and having had a few drinks, we were susceptible to manipulation.

On flawed advice from a drunk guy in a bar (is there any other kind?), La and I decided that we would leave first thing Sunday morning for Bulgaria. Since Bulgaria is in Europe, there must be a giant Carrefour with lots of pork and cute wine shops just over the border, a two-hour drive from Istanbul. Instead of sending us on a fool's errand, that drunk guy might have instead pointed out that we have a Carrefour and cute wine shops within five minutes' walk from our front door in Istanbul. Drunk guy has been stricken from the Thanksgiving invite list.

Regional experts know that Bulgaria produces not-awful wine (on the continuum of awful regional wine, Georgian is the least awful but it's a long drive from Istanbul. Bulgarian is the next least awful, followed by Moldovan. Then it's toss-up between Ukrainian and Turkish as most awful. Azeri wine is so awful, it's got an awful continuum of its own). Plus, as Christians, Bulgarians like the pig. What could possibly go wrong with this carefully thought out plan?

We left Istanbul's sprawl behind on a smooth, multi-lane, toll freeway, with modern green directional signs at a cool 85 mph, admiring small Turkish villages and neat fields along the way.  After a stop in the charming and historic town of Edirne with its lovely mosques and Ottoman wood houses, we pressed on to Europe. Yay pork! Yay wine!

Can someone please tell me who concluded Bulgaria is European enough to join the EU? As soon as we passed border control, we found ourselves on a Soviet-era, two-lane, unlined asphalt path with no shoulders, clogged with trucks. The border town of Kapitan Andreevo was so ghetto, we might as well have arrived in Belarus or outer Ukraine. Darkness fell as we drove on -- dodging oncoming traffic to pass  coughing Zhigulis and Ladas -- toward Svilengrad, 20 kms farther. We were sure that this city -- for which we had no map -- would have the Carrefours and cute wine stores we sought.

What Svilengrad had was no lights, decaying factories, rusting playgrounds and Soviet-era apartment blocks. Not only was there no Carrefour or cute wine stores, there was no evidence of any kind of commerce other than truckstop prostitutes and casinos. We dodged gypsies and stray dogs in the dark streets before finding a single shop selling fortified wine and some bloody pork chunks. The zombie behind the counter registered our presence, barely.

"OMG! This place is so not Europe! Someone tricked us into driving two hours to the former Soviet Union! Why would anyone ever come here? What the hell were we thinking? Get back to Turkey, stat!"

We jumped back in the car and drove back they way we came, toward the order and cornucopia of plenty that is....Turkey, also known as "not Europe."

Near the border, we stopped at some last-chance, fleabag roadhouses to see if there was any wine. They could have been in Warsaw, circa 1991, sharing the same smell of mildew, cement, cat pee and those fatty eastern European sausages cased in knobby brown wax and sold from plastic crates. Unwilling to take many risks on dusty bottles of unknown vintage, we grabbed just four bottles of dry "Melnik" red.

At the last border "duty free" shop, we found surprisingly cheap, high-quality Russian vodka and a cashier with no interest in looking at our documents. When we pulled out a credit card, however, she shook her head.

"Oh no, no credit cards here!"

"But it's Europe! What kind of duty free shop is this?" we whined. She looked straight at us without answering.

"Oh. That kind of duty free shop. Gotcha." We scampered back to the car.

You cannot imagine our relief when we crossed back into Turkey, which, as I've mentioned, is not Europe. Having learned a valuable lesson about Bulgaria, we'll be stocking up at The Greek Deli for our pork and probably, the cute wine shop five minutes' walk from my front door.

Next time, we'll go to Greece.

Carpetblogger's Kabul Security Assessment

Today, Carpetblog brings a new and innovative method of measuring improvements in Kabul's security situation by using the only yardstick that matters: one's ability to freely purchase carpets.

We proudly present the Carpetblog Kabul Security Assessment, developed after spending six days last week in the Afghan capital, two hours of which were spent carpet shopping.

If you remember last year, carpetshopping was conducted in one Chicken Street shop during Ramadan, under the watchful eye of an armed guard who hadn't eaten all day. Yoinks! Talk about tense.

For this year's carpetbinge, we had the run of Chicken Street, but it may be the case that we were more confident and committed to the project, rather than a noticeable improvement in security.

Assessment: A wash.

Fewer guns than last year

Last year, seven small carpets were purchased. This year, three medium sized ones, plus a bunch of suzanis and other assorted textiles that will be put to creative use. So that's a wash, too.

So, based on the Carpetblog Kabul Security Assessment, the situation in the Afghan capital is unchanged  from last year.

And, the Carpetblog Kabul Security Assessment reveals other important, yet unrelated, data: we like Caucasian carpets better than Agfhan carpets.

When we got back to Baku, we sold the three medium carpets (one of which Ruslan referred to as "the dog carpet,"a judgment with which we have to sheepishly agree) and bought a much more expensive one from Ruslan. That, if you're an accountant and keep track of these things, was definitely not a wash.

But this one might be our new favorite carpet ever. (Just like with kids and dogs, it is possible to pick favorites). It's a Bordjalou Kazak. Its colors are so spectacular, we had to have it, even though the price, even when measured in our new preferred unit of currency ("barrels"), was pretty "special" as Ruslan likes to say. It's going on the wall, away from skanky dogfaces.

ZOMG! The Carpetblog camera is broken! This is a crisis of unmitigated proportions, so no pictures of the new and spectacular Bordjalou Kazak are available at this time.

Excursion to The Country

Istanbul is a big city. Some 15 million people live here and it sprawls, L.A.-style, for miles in every direction. Since it seems that all 15 million are driving simultaneously, its traffic jams are epic. Sometimes its hard to get your head around just how big it is, especially if you're like me and prefer your feet to cars.

But now I know where Istanbul ends. There are no suburbs or exurbs or other visual cues that ease the transition from urban to rural. There's a dusty, truck-clogged highway lined by cement factories and coal yards and then, cherry orchards and wheat fields. If someone asks me where the gorge where we went hiking is, I'll say it's where Istanbul ends.

A multinational group met up in Bostanci, a outlying seaside district that reminded me of a denser, more chaotic Orange County beach town. Turks rushed to the ferry dock on this hot summer morning, with kids and bags of groceries and beach towels in hand, eager to stake out picnic space on one of the Princes' Islands, which lie just offshore. Palm trees line the streets and people rode bikes, walked dogs and rollerbladed in the seaside park that stretches the length of the Sahil Yolu (Shore Road).

It momentarily occurred to me that I live in the ghetto.

Rural Anatolya begins an hours' drive past Bostanci. You can see the gorge - Bali Kayalar -- from the highway. We stopped to buy five pounds of cherries from a guy sitting under an umbrella, selling them from big baskets. He explained he had just picked them that morning and expected them to all sell by noon. Best. cherries. ever.

For a native of an area with multiple national forests within an hour of home, Bali Kayalar doesn't exactly impress. But spending a Saturday scrambling over rocks and listening to frogs is a lot more fun that jumping over garbage and and listening to kids screech "Anne!" (mommy!) in the narrow alleys of Beyoglu. Turks aren't big hikers so it took nothing more than walking 100 yards up the river to escape the littered picnic ground and have the place to ourselves.   

Summer is here. The river's deep bowls were compromised, clogged with fibers of green slime, and its waterfalls sluggish. Local "crazy bloods" (as Turks refer to teenage boys) dove from rock faces 15 feet above one of the deeper pools, unconcerned about the water snakes. A breeze ruffled the leaves and pushed the heat from the rock faces downstream, making it easy to forget it was over 90 degrees. Climbers silently scaled the granite cliffs above the river.

I'm no climber, but it seemed pretty legit to me!

 

Crazy Blood

 

 

 

As much slime as water

 

 

Little Known Facts About Carpetblogger

This has always been a big week for the Carpetblogger/Producer family.

• In 1991, I moved to Warsaw;
• Although the precise date remains in dispute, our 16th anniversary falls this week (not of marriage, but of general affiliation. The former will be 12 years this September);
• We started our 14-month journey around the world four years ago.

The Carpetdogs recall this as period as"The Big Stay" during which we left them at home with a complete stranger, whom they turned out to adore. They still hold a grudge against us, however, and indulge in anti-social behavior when they see backpacks.

We started in China and Tibet and traveled overland through Nepal and northern India (a country for which I developed a deep-seated disgust) including Ladakh and Kashmir (both of which I rather liked, 'cause they weren't all that Indian), Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Poland, London, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and South Africa.

Random things always spark a series of "hey, remember that"'s.  Like "remember that time we ate ice cream with heavily-armed thugs in a warehouse in Lahore?"

Or, "Hey, remember that time those monkeys came into our room in Varanasi?"

Good times. We'd do it again in a second. Except the India part.

I-N-D-I-A = I'll Never Do It Again.

Ask Carpetblogger! How does one get to Afghanistan?

People who want to visit Kabul via Dubai have an embarrassment of choices: Kam Air, an Afghan/Kazakh joint venture that never runs on time and sometimes crashes; or Ariana Afghan  Airlines which relies on 727s that cannot land in Europe out of concerns about airworthiness, is never on time and sometimes crashes.

Flights in and out of Kabul from Dubai are frequently booked, so I was "lucky" to get tickets on Ariana when I showed up at the airport, cash in hand (the only way to buy tickets) the morning of departure. The flight out of Kabul, I was told, is known as the "happy belly" plane, since its cargo hold is usually filled with opium.

Interestingly, 727's, which started in production in 1963, are often mistaken for two of my other favorite jetliners, the Soviet-made Tupolev 154 and the Yak-42. Spare parts for the 727 are probably just as easy to come by.

Other than loading through the ass-end of the plane, there was little out of the ordinary about the flight itself. It seemed completely safe! Because it was Ramadan, fight attendants passed out food plates preceded by a plastic cup of dates, the traditional food to break the fast. No one started eating, however, until the pilot announced that, according to Iranian time (we were in Iranian airspace), it was ok to break the fast. I couldn't wait to dig in, unable to resist that stringy mutton and greasy rice!

airport entrance

Appropriate to its status as a post-conflict zone, the Kabul airport was pretty ghetto. Due to security concerns, cars are allowed nowhere near the terminal, so baggage get unloaded about a 10 minute walk away, in a dusty, concertina-wire lined parking lot.

Huge photos of Hamid Karzai and Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Lion of the Panjshir, hung from the freshly-painted terminal. It is impossible not to notice that Massoud's photos was 1 1/2 times as big as that of Karzai.

The view from the air was certainly welcome, though no more so than the view of the Arabian Gulf from my Dubai hotel room.

How to Buy Carpets in Kabul

A wise person once asked, "is it worth it to get your ass shot at to buy carpets in Kabul?"

This is the wrong question. How in the world can you come to Kabul and not buy carpets?

Indeed, everyone knows getting your ass shot at in pursuit of carpets in Kabul is completely legit.  But taking a few precautions to reduce the risks somewhat might be advisable.

Like bringing a driver and armed guard with you.

True, having an edgy, hungry, Afghan armed with a Kalashnikov guarding the door of your carpet dealer diminishes the quality of the casual chit chat and increases the general level of tension in the shop. Ramadan complicates things, since you can't have tea and snacks and everyone is crabbier than usual.

Even so, negotiations still take place. Foreigners still get ripped off. There's no point in waiting until things calm down.

'Cause the place is a basket case and "calm" is not something that's likely to appear anytime soon.

Buildings are low and mud colored. A thick layer of dust sucks out what little color the broken trees and bushes lend to the city. Any buiding of any importance, from an office to a health clinic to an Embassy to a goverment building is surrounded by blast walls and concertina wire, and heavily guarded. All are unmarked, to reduce the probability of becoming a target.

Kabul, and Afghanistan, is a tragedy. Things are getting worse, not better but this is not not news to Afghans.

The situation in the regions has been bad for months, and it's only since the suicide bombers started hitting Kabul did anyone outside of Afghanistan start paying much attention. People are edgy, dour and pessimistic about the future. Suicide bombers in Kabul are new; their randomness disrupts the carefully constructed wall of willful ignorance and intentional focus on other activities that makes it possible for foreigners and locals alike to function.

Predictably, the Taliban is gaining ground in some areas. People are sick of the lack of security and the fact that five years after the fall of the Taliban (still widely hailed) and something like 70 billion dollars spent, downtown Kabul doesn't have electricity most of the time and schools operate out of tents. And bicycles are being remotely detonated as buses of police rumble by.

Kabul is probably the most fucked-up place I've ever been. True, I was only here for a few days and was strictly limited to traveling between my office and UN-security approved guesthouse. But the work I was doing exposed me to the views of many Kabulis on a wide variety of current political issues. It was fascinating and so very depressing.

I did my part to contribute to the local economy -- eight hastily purchased prayer rugs and bags. They are gorgeous -- shiny and reptilian, just the way I like them.

What did The Producer say when I got them home?

"Why didn't you buy more?"

Why Did Constantinople Get the Works?

My top five favorite cities, in order include:

• Istanbul
• Cape Town
• Istanbul
• Istanbul
• Istanbul

I also have a list of favorite cities I have yet to actually visit:

• Barcelona
• Buenos Aires
• Beirut (I am waiting for prices to go down. Hey, wait a second!)

I hardly know what I am going to do first when I get to Istanbul tomorrow morning; go to the hammam or get a fish sandwich from beneath the Galata bridge.

Since we're on the topic, I have a list of cities I hate:

• India
• That city on the border between Tibet and Nepal with all the rats and rivers of garbage running down the main street;
• India
• Bucharest, though it hardly seems fair since it's better than the best city in India. It's just fresh in my mind right now;
• India