I feel horrible that I’ve been keeping such a huge secret from all of you loyal readers for so long.

There’s a reason why I didn’t write much about Kyrgyzstan a year ago—I was in a pretty bad car accident somewhere between the Chinese border and the tiny town of Sary Tash. A year later I am still missing ten hours and can’t tell you exactly what happened. I woke up the next morning in a Chinese truck with no memory of the accident. In fact, the only reason I knew I was in an accident (besides the inability to turn my neck) was because I had apparently had the foresight to take a picture of it before I blacked out.

Originally I had only promised my sister not to tell my mom until I got out of Central Asia, but then she thought it was a good idea to wait until I was out of the mountains entirely. Finally she told me just to wait until I got home. Now that she knows about the accident I can finally tell the story to all of you. The posts about the accident are back-dated but can be found here in Part 1 and Part 2. Now you can imagine how hard it was for me to travel back over that pass to get back into China, not to mention all of the other mountain passes I crossed in Tajikistan, Tibet and Nepal.

In less shocking news, the souvenir page and sketchbook are updated. I haven’t worked much on the maps but have my worldwide map finished, and created a lifetime travel route map just for fun. As you can see below, there really is a lot of the world I haven’t seen.

When I travel for long periods of time (I’m almost at five months now), some places and even countries fade from my memory quickly. When I left Bishkek in September, and then again in early October, it was a peaceful place. But today I got an email from Nargiza, the girl who posed as my translator at the Uzbek embassy:

hi Megan, i stady in university, nou im not working, today is not good because revolition. do you have pictures?

Now, I never said she was the best translator, but she got the job done. Notice how she casually mentions revolution? The Kyrgyz “Tulip Revolution” was only a few years ago and it seems that the current government isn’t cutting it. Or maybe in nomadic, herding societies like Kyrgyzstan’s the populace gets bored in the winter and stages revolutions as a form of entertainment.

In any case, some of my more involved readers might want to keep an eye out this week to see what the outcome is. I’m sure this issue hasn’t appeared in the U.S. press, but you can start with a short article here.

After sitting around in Osh, Daniel (the Australian thrid of Team America—the name they made up for our three-person travel group in Tajikistan), flew into town and in a whirlwind I was on a bus to Kashgar. Because there was an actual bus we were pretty sure that the border was open. We never got a confirmation on the border re-opening date but we were on schedule to cross into China on the 9th.

Around 8pm, when the bus was supposed to leave, we began to get on board. Another passenger who was late tried to make me move to the back of the bus, where five beds were laid out, but I refused. I was not about to spend the night squished between four smelly Kyrgyz, Uzbek or Chinese men. You’d be surprised what shrugging your shoulders and shaking your head can do when traveling—it’s gotten me out of some uncomfortable situations.

Around 9:30, after negotiating the sell of the remaining beds and filling up with gas, we set off toward Sary Tash and the Chinese border. Neither of us slept much at all because the road is only technically paved and it’s pretty bumpy in most places.

Somewhere around 3am we stopped and I peed in a frozen ditch on top up a mountain pass surrounded by snow and illuminated by a nearly full moon.

At 4am the lights were suddenly flipped on and everyone arround me began to furiously devor loafs of bread and bottles of Fanta—fasting for Ramadan was about to begin. A little while later a bit of music was played to signify sun-up. I was glad Daniel suggested one Snickers was not enough, encouraging me to buy more. One Snickers is never enough in Central Asia.

Although every long-distance bus I take stops all the time, this one barely stopped at all. We didn’t stop to eat (because everyone else was fasting) and we didn’t have many toilet stops because the fasting even includes water. By 7:30am when we arrived at the first Kyrgyz border checkpoint I knew I should go to the bathroom but didn’t think a militray zone was the best place to go off along the road. We were stopped for an hour while the bus driver delieverd a huge stack of passports, each filled with a 500com bribe. Daniel and I refused to put a bribe in our passports. We waited.

The drive to the Kyrgyz border was only thirty more minutes and I was excited to get there so early. I nievely assumed that because we got to the border when it opened we would get through both borders before lunch. While we waited I ran off into the shanty town near the border to deliver photos of the local kids I had taken exactly two month earlier. People in Central Asia rarely have photos of themselves and family photos are cherised. But the town was nearly deserted and the trailer of the little girl who stars in my photos was padlocked. I found a woman nearby who seemed to agree to deliver the photos—the family had gone to Osh for the winter.

The border gate opened and we drove inside, only to be ushered into a shed to wait for passport control. A bus full of people can take a long time to cross a border and we waited for everyone to be checked. There is about 10km of “no-man’s land” before reaching the Chinese border where we were stopped at a Chinese checkpoint. Usually you just show your passport and are logged into a book but we were all required to get off the bus.

Looking back toward Kyrgyzstan, a Chinese tower with a bright red flag billowed in front of a panorama of white mountaintops. All of the passengers were lined up in single file and told to put their luggage in front of them. I joked to the man next to me that it looked like they were going to shoot us but he was busy taking all of the contents of his bag out and spreading them onto the pavement. Apparently we had been instructed to take everything out for inspection but I decided to play the foreigner card and leave my bag closed. Besides, I prefer not to advertise how many expensive things I carry with me.

The Chinese military guards moved down the line looking at everything. The man next to me had what looked like a jar of mayonaise. He has to take a tast of it for the guard. Another man to my right sat while the guard took everything apart, reading personal letters and even then notes from medicine packaging. When he came to me I opened the main compartment of my day bag and pointed to a few things and opened the lid of my camera bag. He pointed to my big backpack and I made a bid deal out of opening it up for him, like he was really requiring a lot of me. He looked at the bag at the top (my toiletries) and let me go. It was all for appearances.

We pulled up at the Chinese border around 11:30 local time (1:30 Beijing time) and filled out the required forms, proclaiming not to have SARS. Daniel got as far as passport control but as the officer began to lower the stamp to his passport he stopped and declared that the border was closed for the next two and a half hours. I tried to explain to the English-speaking offical that we were tired and hungry and that he should let us go. With that everyone in the building cleared out, leaving us sitting on our bags. Four Swiss bicyclists rode up and had to wait was well, jeapardizing their plans to make it 50k into China that day.

The time passed quickly. I wrote in my journal, tried to get the muslim women to eat grapes (aka contraband plant matter in China) and didn’t use the public toilet. When the time came to line up everyone pushed to the front and I was suddenly at the end of the line. I was a little worried that I would pass the temperature test because I had a bit of a cold lingering from Tajikistan. But when I looked into the 6 foot tall scanner my temperature was well under the required 38 degrees.

It took a while to x-ray and then load up everyone massive luggage and we waited in the sun to finally leave to Kashgar. It turned out that over half of the bus passengers decided to take taxis from the border to Kashgar, saving themselves an hour or so. It amazes me that these people decided to take the bus but then were able to afford guard bribes and Chinese taxis.

The rest of the ride to Kashgar was uneventful, aside from a Japanese man being repremanded for peeing on the side of the road in front of a Chinese border control post. Good thing I held out! The bus ride was expensive ($50) and quite a hassle. If I ever find myself crossing that border again I’m taking a taxi.

Today I finally found where to buy fresh bread near my gueshouse in Osh. The directions I was given were classic:

Take a right after walking past the garbage cans and mini market. From there look for the Kyrgyzstan Resturaunt on your right. The sign is in Russian. In-between Kyrgyzstan Resturaunt and Kyrgyzstan Cafe there’s an alley with a toilet. Walk past the toilet and you will find a hole in the wall where the bread oven is.

Sure enough, I took a right at the first sign of a toilet and there was my fresh bread. Bananas are a touch more expensive in Osh than Bishkek (20 com/ 0.52 cents) but I found a good one this morning. I sat in front of the TV watching BBC World, CNN and World Fashion while eating my chocolate banana breakfast. Everyone working at the guesthouse is fasting for Ramadan but I’m not letting that deter me from hot bread in the morning. In fact, because I am apparently a horrible person, I secretly enjoy eating in front of fasting people.

In Osh I have only seen Diet Coke in one resturaunt, never for sale on the street. There is Diet Pepsi, and I’ve given in and bought a few. The street I’m staying on is littered with outdoor cafes where mediocre Central Asian “food” is served almost 24 hours. Because of this I’ve been lazy about going to the Western places on the other side of town. I tried to find pizza the other day but when I walked in the woman looked at me and said “niet pizza!”

Now that my new visa in firmly stuck in my passport I am spending most of my time in the guesthouse working on my web site. I’ve uploaded a few new things but have a lot more I can do. Every few hours I leave my room and turn on World Fashion to bother the guys working there. It’s a fashion channel but whenever I turn it on an underwear special is on. One of the guys called it a “sex channel” which I thought was pretty funny. They thought they got rid of all the “sex channels” on their cable. They could get HBO, E! and Cartoon Network but haven’t sprung for the extra fees. Every once in a while I scroll by just to see E! pop up… it takes very little to amuse me after this many months on the road.

and China won’t let me in.

Tajikistan started and ended on bad notes (waiting for permits in Dushanbe… almost getting into a fight with the militsia in Murgab and projectile vomiting at 3,800 meters), but everything in-between was completely amazing.

I flew on a tiny 17-seater plane with no computers on board. We soared through mountain passes and followed a gorge marking the Tajik–Afghan border. Two days later, after my homestay owner, Gulnara, cornered me and dyed my eyebrows, we left with our Pamiri driver in an old army green Russian UAZ jeep for Ishkashim. Because the weather was perfect we drove the route through the Wakhan Corridor to Murgab in three days instead of our planned four.

Along the way we stayed with our driver’s friends and ate more cabbage soup than I felt comfortable with. I blame the cabbage soup and lack of actual Coca-Cola for my demise into projectile vomiting our second day in Murgab. By then we kind of had electricity in the form of a generator, were all more than ready for some “civilization.” It’s pretty bad when Sary Tash, Kyrgyzstan looks like civilization.

Along the way we heard from one of the few others travelers we met that the Chinese border had been closed for it’s national holiday. We refused to believe that they would close the border for ten days—just think of all of the scrap metal they’re missing out on importing! Unfortunately, it turned out to be true although the re-oppening date has still not been confirmed. This morning I called the U.S. embassy in Bishkek who told me they have no information on the Chinese border and suggested I call the Chinese embassy. When I called the Chinese embassy and asked if they spoke English I was immediately hung up on.

Besides wasting my time (and money) as Tibet gets colder, this border closing is a major visa problem for me. I bought a Kyrgyz transit visa in Dushanbe that is only valid from October 2nd through the 6th—during which the border is closed. I have head rumors that the border will open on the 8th, 9th, 10th or 11th, so my visa will be invalid well before I can cross to China.

I went by a travel agent today to ask about flights to Urumqi. The agent started with “There are two airlines flying to China. One of them has just been arrested so your options are limited.” After a lot of searching it turned out that there were no seats on any of the flights until late October, let alone by this Friday so I can not leave Kyrgyzstan by air. I’ve thought about going through Kazakstan, but by the time I get to Bishkek, apply for a Kazak visa and take the train from Almaty to Urumqi I would be better off sitting in Osh and waiting for the border to open.

So, here I am in Osh… again. I’ve heard there’s a resturaunt that serves pizza. I just don’t know if I can stomach any more shashlick, plov, lagman or gulash after two months of the stuff. I’m certainly staying away from any cabbage soup. I don’t know when China became a promised land for me but I’m dying for some KFC.

Could it be? There’s new maps up! Okay, the Mongolian flag sucks and there’s no data for NW China or Kyrgyz but it’s something. If it makes you feel any better, I took a ton of souvenir and sketchbook photos for the relevent sections but haven’t gotten around to writing the code and resizing the images yet. It’s coming eventually.

I know this is going to shock you all… but there’s new photos up! I finally found a good internet connection in Bukhara and just spent three hours working on the site for you guys instead of siteseeing. I’ve gone on to post about Uzbekistan but am working on some stories about Kyrgyzstan for you as well. Check out the two new galleries (Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan) here.

It’s funny because when I was walking around for more than an hour looking for a hotel last night with 40 pounds on my back I was trying to figure out what was making my bag so heavy. When it comes down to it, my beloved 4lb iBook is the heaviest thing in my bag followed by my camera, my other camera and all of the assorted cords, plugs and adaptors. Every time someone tries to pick up my bag for me I try to warn them but they’re always a little shocked (that it’s so heavy and that I can carry it). In any case, all of those things are what make this site possible. There’s no way I would have time to sit down and write entries or organize images without my computer.

My iBook also helps me to feel a bit more connected to my other life back home. As a designer I actually really enjoy sitting down and drawing the maps for this site in Illustrator as much as sitting outside and drinking a beer or going to a tourist show. On that front I’ve started to feel a strange uneasyness lately and I’ve realized that it’s my body telling me it’s time for the fall TV season to start. I’m already going through withdrawl not knowing what’s going to happen on all of my shows. If course, I went through the same thing during Phase 1 and I’m sure my friends back home can keep me in the loop until I can catch up when I get back home.

My embassy outing yesterday did not go well. When I arrived my interpreter, Nargiza, talked to the guards who didn’t know if the consulate was coming to work or not. After some phone calls it was determined that he was at a conference and wouldn’t be in. We helped two other travelers, a Japanese guy and a British girl who was flying out the next morning at 7am. The appropriate word is “was” because she had no visa and no hope of getting on for days.

Nargiza called the embassy from the guards phone and made an appointment for me to come in on the 31st, two days later. We thought this was strange because the 31st is a Kyrgyz holiday so, although we will try, we’re not hopeful things will work out. Everything’s up in the air until then.

In brighter news, this morning I got the first two rolls out of the bread man’s oven and it was still steaming inside when I put chocolate and bananas on it for breakfast. Two newly arrived travelers from my guesthouse went to get an Uzbek visa. I actually asked them on the street (I was waiting for the bread) if they needed help because they were standing around looking at a guidebook. They dismissed me so I left them alone. I could have told them it was pointless to go to the embassy (because it’s closed) and to go to the embassy without a translator. But they were pretty firm in refusing my help so I’ll let them figure it out themselves.

I’ve been walking around town for the past few days looking for thermal underwear, a disposable camera and a sketchbook. I have given up on the sketchbook and bought blank paper. Finding something without lines or a grid was a feat in itself. I bought thread yesterday to repair my pants and will use that to bind a book myself. I saw some guys with papercutters in the “mall” in the underpass so they may come in useful. Today I found a fancy mall on the far South side of the city with a movie theater, food court and disposable cameras. I have been keeping my eye out for one since China and was starting to give up. All of the stores in Bishkek are having their summer sales so thermals aren’t quite in season, even in the outdoor shops. I have looking in at least five outdoor shops with no luck.

Tomorrow’s the big holiday and I will probably miss the national games in the hippodrome because I will be standing hopefully in front of the Uzbek embassy when they start. I’ve heard about a parade and the town has been decked out in flags and banners so there’s sure to be something worth seeing near the former Lenin Square. I’m always up for a few soldiers marching in unison.

I’ve spoiled you.

When I was in China and updating every few days I feared that you would get used to it! After a week sleeping in yurts on Song Kul Lake and hiking around Karakol I’ve come back to an inbox full of worried notes from friends, family and strangers. You guys had my sister worked up enough to start inquiring around to see if anyone had heard from me! You see, it has taken me years to train my family not to worry about me and now you’ve worked them up into a frenzy.

I am fine, in Bishkek dealing with a lot of red tape at the moment. My Uzbek LOI (letter of invitation) hadn’t come through the first time I was in Bishkek so I left for the lakes to give it some time to process. I arrived yesterday from Kochkor (where I bought a bright felt carpet) and my LOI was waiting in my inbox. I’ve had people who speak Russian call the Uzbek Embassy twice now to make an apointment for me to apply for my visa but each time I am told to call back the next day. Today it’s closed and I was told that it’s also closed tomorrow for some reason. The Kyrgyz Idependence Day is on the 31st and Uzbek Independence Day is on the 1st so I’m sure to run into some problems if it’s clsoed tomorrow.

The application process for Uzbekistan is really a pain. First you need to obtain a LOI from a travel agency ($37). The you need to call and be put on the waiting list to get into the embassy. When you go to apply you need a Russian interpreter with you to even hand in the application. I haven’t found an interpreter yet but I hope to get someone to help me, because the owner of my guesthouse has turned me down. I have met more than one American who has been denied an Uzbek visa, but no Americans who have even tried applying in Bishkek so I’m not sure what to expect. I also have no idea how much the visa will cost because costs are different for each nationality. I am expecting $100, a Swiss girl I know paid $72 last week.

Once I obtain an Uzbek visa I can pay for and confirm the flights I reserved from Bishkek to Tashkent and then from Tashkent to Nukkus. I don’t want to pay before I get a visa, but I have to pay before the 31st to keep my booking, so you see there’s a tight window this week with all of these holidays. After that I can run over to the Tajik embasy on the South side of town and apply for a visa there. I have been told that they ask for a LOI but if you don’t have one you can bluff your way through it. That visa was $50 for 4 working days processing or $100 for same day for an English guy in my guesthouse—I’m not sure what it will be for an American.

Everything hinges on geting the Uzbek visa tomorrow (or at last resort on Wednesday) for things to fall into place. I’m already spending a great deal of time in Bishkek for no real reason other than to deal with visas. However, Bishkek is the cheapest place in the region for me to stop for a while and my guesthosue is really nice and peaceful. I’ve found a small Chinese supermarket around the corner that sells cold Diet Coke (Diet Coke is hard to find when traveling) and every morning I walk out to Soviet Street to get a coke and a fresh bread roll for breakfast. I’ll keep you updated on the visa situation this week. My Kyrgyz visa lasts until the 7th, but my flight is planned to leave the 6th. I’ll be in Bishkek for a while so no reason to be worrying about me for the next week.

My headache persisted for more than a week, although I gradually regained movement of my neck. I didn’t want to go to the doctor down in Osh and figured my best bet was to see someone in the capital, Bishkek. Sema put me on a night minibus to Bishkek and we said our goodbyes, but I’m sure to see her again sometime, somewhere. Being Turkish, Sema could communicate (the Kyrgyz language is similar to Turkish) and made sure I got a good seat. She must have said something to the driver because he wouldn’t let me take the bus to my hostel alone. A poor guy from Azerbaijan was stuck escorting me to the hostel and wouldn’t leave my side until he spoke to the hostel owners. As soon as I had my bearings I had begged off, but he had persisted, and ended up becoming my Bishkek stalker—showing up at the hostel over the next month asking the owners if I would date him.

My head was getting better but I had no Tylenol left and didn’t want to chance buying a blood-thinning aspirin at the Russian-speaking pharmacies around town. My first day was spent visiting the Uzbek and Tajik embassies to learn their visa policies. But the Tajik embassy had moved and had been replaced with a Doctors Without Borders office. A doctor was leaving at that very moment and he suggested that even if I was feeling better I should see a doctor.

So I had finally found a reason to use an U.S. Embassy’s services abroad and logged on to their web site for recommended English-speaking doctors in town. The first on the list was easiest to find and within walking distance so I headed to the “VIP Clinic” which turned out to be a typically dilapidated hospital. Before I could see the doctor I was given a bill in triplicate and waited to see the doctor. Instead of an English-speaking doctor I was presented with a teenage interpreter who spoke English as well as I speak Chinese—not well. From her follow-up questions I could tell that she had no idea what I was saying. I didn’t want to spend too much time in the building, which had missing windows and hallways full of nurses in tall paper hats and cloth masks right of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest . They held up x-rays to show that I needed them and I nodded my understanding. Back downstairs in the administration office I was told that x-rays would cost an astronomical price. When I protested (I had learned the Russian word for “no” by now) I was promised that the English-speaking doctor would be back in the afternoon.

There was no English-speaking doctor in the afternoon and when I started to talk myself into getting the x-rays anyway I was told that the doctor I saw in the morning wasn’t around so I would have to see a new doctor and pay another doctor’s fee. That was it. I left in a huff, dismayed that the U.S. Government would recommend such a shoddy practice. On the way back to my hostel I sent an email to the embassy to expect me in the morning. The U.S. has a large military base in Kyrgystan and I figured they would have any facilities I needed.

The next morning, armed with the address and “American Embassy” translated to Russian, I hopped onto a local bus heading to the outskirts of town. The closest bus only came within a mile of the embassy so I walked down the long tree-lined street until I came upon a large gated community straight out of the Southwest USA. Beside it was the embassy and after two searches and an x-ray of all of my belongings I was allowed in. The first woman behind the glass wall asked me to wait and I was soon talking to a typical American man in a business suit. He looked at me and asked if I had contacted my family, because he noticed that my last blog post was from Kashgar. He didn’t want to field worried calls from my mom. I was a little shocked to have been investigated after sending an email the day before. He told me that there were English-speaking doctors in Bishkek, despite my experience, and that the U.S. government’s facilities were not open to U.S. citizens—they couldn’t help me. When I protested he leaned into the glass and whispered “well, this is Kyrgyzstan!”

All the stress and desperation poured out of me and I couldn’t hold back my tears. I had finally reached someone who could help and they wouldn’t. The officer must have felt bad and went back to talk to one of their nurses. She told him that there was one public cat-scan machine in Kyrgyzstan but if I was alive after seven days I was probably going to be okay. So, in the end, my diagnosis was “you’re not dead, so you’re probably okay.” I left the embassy with my permanent amnesia and throbbing head and continued walking all the way into town, lost in my thoughts and feeling let down by the very people I was taught to trust.