To Russia, With Mild Indifference

Walking into work I often pass long lines of people awaiting their turn to apply for an American visa. It’s complicated, time consuming, and expensive to apply. I have mixed feelings: proud America offers so much that people are willing to go through the trouble; guilty for the unearned privilege my passport bestows on me.  I don’t need to wait in line at a consulate just to take a vacation.

Well, let the tables turn…

A colleague from D.C., posted in Moscow, kindly invited me to visit. An attractive offer in its own right, coupled with the fact that Almaty to Moscow is a non-stop flight. We’re not exactly overflowing with options for non-stop travel from Almaty to anyplace remotely desirable, much less a truly great city.

But Russia has a complicated and expensive visa process ready to throw down with America’s complicated and expensive process any day of the week. Or anyway on Tuesdays and Fridays, when their consulate is open.

A visa requires $160, an application form only slightly less extensive than the one I filled out for my top secret security clearance for Uncle Sam, and an invitation from a travel agency or hotel. I instead had a US embassy invite from my friend to stay with her. When I spoke to a visa “expeditor” used by other Americans she was like, “What is this?” She eventually did check in with her contacts and told me that yes, I could use this invitation and stay with my friend. After that I guess she figured I wasn’t going to be a lucrative customer in need of hotel and other services. I never heard from her again.

While her indifference to my vacation plans was hurtful, I nonetheless headed to the Russian consulate with all my paperwork in hand. Here’s what I found:

1. The inside of the Russian consulate (sorry, no pictures. See below re: cell phone) looks exactly like you’d picture a 1970s USSR office. All brown and beige laminate and, on one desk, an honest to god rotary dial phone.
2. I am sure there are things that consulate staff care deeply about. Whether or not you visit their country is not one of them. Can an entire building be constructed out of laminate and indifference? This may be the physical proof. They aren’t mean, but they’re not going out of their way for anyone, much less non-Russian speakers. The website is in Russian only. The signs at the consulate are in Russian only. The announcements made by the guard as to which line you should stand in are in Russian only. The only thing he said to me in English was to turn off my mobile phone. “You call it cell phone,” he said when he saw my nationality. So he knows enough English to know that Americans say “cell phone,” but can’t be bothered to say “this line for visas.”
3. Waiting in line outside a foreign consulate for someone to judge your visa worthiness makes one feel very insignificant. Props to those who want to come to the USA enough to put themselves through it.

Who cares? I got my visa! Memorial Day weekend in Moscow. Kremlin, Red Square, Gorky Park, Lenin’s Tomb…all the hits!

And just as my first vacation was immediately followed up with a temporary duty assignment in Astana, my Moscow trip is to be even more immediately followed up with an assignment in Dushanbe. With only a 4.5 hour layover in the Almaty airport before heading out to Tajikistan, I figured I’d write the “how I got to Russia” explainer post to keep myself awake. I’ll post the full illustrated report after I recover from jetlag and puzzle out how to work Tajik internet.

One takeaway from Moscow: I have some new thoughts about how I want to be remembered after I die, courtesy of comrade Lenin. What’s an embalming and cold storage with viewing in perpetuity among friends?

Train to Turkistan

Google “Silk Road Tours” and you’ll notice Uzbekistan really has all the good stuff. But Kazakhstan does have one breathtaking monument from those silk road days–the unfinished mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi in Turkistan.

Naturally, it’s been on my top list of places to go/things to see ever since I got posted here. The question I’ve been grappling with was how to get there given that I don’t have a car, don’t have a lot of vacation time, and that it’s a 13-18 hour train ride away.

Well I finally got there and I’m going to tell you so much about it and post so many pictures that you will be all Turksitan-ed out.

In Foreign Service most people have their own cars. I know a few people who take the city bus but traveling in shared taxis or minibuses to far flung locales? This isn’t Peace Corps.

Trains are a different story. Even the ambassador occasionally takes trains. In fact, it was while working on travel plans for him that involved an overnight train that my idea of how to visit Turkistan was born. The town itself, I had read, could be seen in a day. And there is an overnight train from Almaty to Turkistan. So what if I took the overnight train on a Friday, spent the day on Saturday, and then took another overnight train back to Almaty? True, I wouldn’t smell very good at the end of this adventure, but otherwise, a perfect plan.

The Adventure Begins

Train travel is so popular that tickets can sell out weeks in advance, which is a bummer for someone like me used to hopping on a Moroccan train with little notice. Maybe without a seat, but still…

So I had to plan ahead and have the consulate travel office book me a ticket (on-site travel agents! I am so spoiled!). Then I asked my locally based colleagues what to expect. “Roaches” was the unexpected answer. WHAT?!

Yep. Long journeys mean hungry people who either bring food along or buy it on board. And where there is food, roaches will follow. Awesome.

Slow Soviet-era train (L) and “Less Slow” Talgo train (R)

Fun fact: there are no “high speed” trains in Kazakhstan–just slow trains and “slightly faster” ones. I spent time on one of each.

On the way there, my travel time was about 13 hours on the newer train (brand name “Talgo”). These trains have a cafe car (I didn’t try it though) and bathrooms that aren’t great but do have toilet paper. You choose between first class compartments with two beds per compartment and middle class compartments with four beds. I was in middle class both ways. There is also a small sink in each compartment. Sheets, pillow, and a hand towel are provided to everyone.

The soviet train took 17.5 hours to make the very same journey in reverse; while I still got sheets and a pillow and hand towel, sinks are only in the bathrooms, which tell a fascinating story of soviet-era industrial design. Everything is made of metal and toilet paper is for capitalists! I read that in soviet trains there’s an even cheaper class ticket called platzkart, where you don’t have compartments, just beds out in the open. The full scoop on trains is well-described on this website so I won’t go on and on but I will say that I’d consider platzkart in the future because if you’re going to be confined with a bunch of people you don’t know, is being in a small compartment of four any better than being in a more open space of 20? As long as you still have a bed?

I don’t think there was a cafe car on the soviet train. However, there is a car attendant who sells a few drinks and snacks. In the morning a woman walked through selling breakfast piroshky and at many stations there are vendors selling food on the platforms.

Everyone’s lifeline is the hot water tank, used for tea, coffee, or instant noodles. I wisely remembered to bring along my own cup so I could buy some instant (pre-sugared. BLECH!) coffee to get through my morning.

Hot water avalable with all the safety standards of Khrushchev’s USSR.

People were very friendly and kind to me, despite the fact that my Russian is still limited to hello (not technically true–“Hello” is really hard to pronounce so I just say “good day), thank you, 1-2-3, yes, no, and my name is…

Key to surviving my two-way overnight train journey was ambien. Key to recovering was ibuprofen. Who knew my body isn’t 23 anymore and can’t easily bounce back from two consecutive nights sleeping on a non-luxury train? My friends Mike and Lia and I have long harbored dreams of completing the Trans-Siberian railway journey but I may need to look into an epidural for that.

The good news is: no roach sightings!

Sunset and Sunrise from the train window

 

ANYHOO, what was it I put myself through all of this to see? The mausoleum of Ahmad Yasawi, the sufi poet who was born and died in what is now Kazakhstan. When he died in 1166 there was a small mausoleum built in his honor. Then Timur (aka Timur the Lame or Tamerlane) came to power as the self-described “sword of Islam,” splitting his time between cementing people into walls and patronizing religion and the arts, and decided to build a much grander structure to honor the man revered as a kind of Muslim saint.

Unfortunately (fortunately for those still uncemented into walls), Timur died in 1405, before building was complete. What we have today is only half-finished, with bits of 15^th century scaffolding still sticking out of the un-tiled side. While it’s a shame we don’t have the whole thing decked out in stunning tilework there’s also something beautiful about its unfinished existence. Approaching it in the very early morning light is highly recommended.

As cool as the unfinished side is, obviously you’re really here for the finished half. It does not disappoint.

There’s a small fee to see the inside of the mausoleum and a couple of nearby structures (an underground mosque, the old hammam), but the outside is really where it’s at and that is always free and open. Since I arrived at 6:15 am, I had the place all to my lonesome for a couple of hours.

Inside the Mausoleum is a Bronze Water Vessel Commissioned by Timur

I was curious about what crowds would eventually gather. After all, this is a holy pilgrimage site for Muslims, a weekend, and the day before the start of Ramadan.

Crowds did come, although nothing too overwhelming. The earliest arrivals clearly came to pray. But soon came tour buses full of adults and school children, and along with them ladies selling cotton candy and men selling camel rides. Visitors seemed to be mostly non-Western tourists from Kazakhstan and parts unknown. I was the only obvious westerner.

A man giving camel rides asked me in English if I wanted a ride. Why is it so obvious? Is it the fleece jacket? Probably I just “look” like I’d speak English somehow.

A high school age girl overheard him and asked, “Are you English?” “American,” I replied. Then came the request for a selfie with me. Third weekend in a row! The same thing happened at tree-planting and Tamgaly.

 

I thought this was a platform for taking picture

Nope! It’s for launching camel rides

I exhausted myself walking around the site and to a nearby mosque that, while not ancient, was quite pretty with a full glass wall I’ve never seen in mosque architecture before. They also had an attached cafeteria. Alas it was still a bit early for lunch.

I walked through the town and pretty much saw all I wanted before eventually heading back to the train station for my return journey.

Many of the train stations in Kazakhstan are from the Tsarist era

Perhaps unsurprisingly given the holiness of the site, the town seemed far more “Muslim” (as I am used to it) than Almaty, Astana, or Karaganda. Of course it’s a smaller town than any of those. Kazakh, rather than Russian, was the dominant language. I saw way more headscarves and far fewer bars which was kind of a bummer since I needed to kill time. It’s so interesting what “counts” when it comes to headscarves and “modest” dress. While lots of women in Turkistan wore headscarves, they were haphazardly tied, showing both hair and neck. Dresses were modest by US standards but ended mid-calf, showing leg. What would be SCANDALOUS in one Muslim culture is perfectly acceptable in this one.

When the train finally pulled into Almaty early Sunday afternoon I felt tired and achy, but accomplished. Where to next?

 

Mosaic of Turkistan, on an Almaty karaoke bar