Day 154: Sick and Shambling in Dushanbe

Long, long break.  I'm further behind the times now than I was when I completed my last post.  I shall do better.

I sulked around Turkistan for several days, then moved on the Shymkent, a larger town a little further south.  However, one thing I did do from Tashkent was visit the ruins of Otrar.

Otrar is a rather notorious town in history, yet is little heard of.  In the 13th Century, Genghis Khan set out to conduct some trade with his new neighbour, the Shah of Khoresm, of which realm Otrar was a border town.  Alas, the local Governor decided that there were spies among the Mongol merchants - as indeed, it is likely there were - and slaughtered them.  Not noted for taking kindly to foreigners slaughtering his subjects, Genghis Khan promptly declared war on Khoresm.  His troops flattened Otrar, then went on to flatten a good many other towns in Khoresm.  They quickly overran Khoresm, but with the bit between their horses' teeth they kept going - eventually all the way to Europe.  And all because of what was done at Otrar.

It's a weird and atmospheric site, yet it's just a big dusty mound with a few bits of it excavated.  Pottery shards crackle underfoot.  The excavations haven't found much of Mongol-era Otrar however; the Horde was very thorough about its sacking of the town.  STanding on top of the mound, I threw my mind back 800 years and tried to envisage the approach of the Mongols over the surrounding hills - not as a sea of nomads, for the Mongol Horde was not the numberless throng popular with schoolbook historians; Genghis Khan's largest army probably numbered no more than 250,000 men and it fought as "tumans" of 10,000 men, two or three tumans generally being considered a big enough force to capture an average city - but as a trickle of riders slipping through the valleys beneath yak-tail banners planted on the hilltops.  The land around Otrar is rolling hills.  The Governor of Otrar may not have known what he was up against until suddenly an entire tuman charged out of the valleys and drew up before his walls.  By then it was too late.

Shymkent offered its own attractions, including a large bazaar, but otherwise left little impression on my memory.  It was here, fresh from the feverish heat of nights in Turkistan, that I bought a small fan which accompanied me for many weeks until I (deliberately) left it behind in Samarkand.   And so to Almaty.

Almaty (formerly Alma-Ata, Father of Apples) was the capital of the Kazakhstan SSR, but after the breakup of the USSR local politicos ultimately decided that it was too close to Kazakhstan's neighbours and too far from Russia.  So they moved the seat of power north to the city they renamed Astana.  But Almaty is still Kazakhstan's beating heart, a large cosmopolitan city with good transport, that is well shaded by trees and well provided with cafes and small eateries, where the water is safe and the utilities are functional.  It's a great place to relax for a few days, a week, two weeks even, while sorting out visas and other paperwork.  It's also a good place to buy apples.

But it's not cheap.  I ended up sharing a 4-bed dormitory with a French traveller.  There were just the two of us there, so we were not cramped; and as he spent most of the day hiking or sightseeing, I often had the room to myself.  I would be asleep when he came in, he would be asleep when I went to breakfast, and after breakfast he would be gone again.  We got along.

And so to Kyrgyzstan - but that is another post ...