Azerbaijan

Richard W. Frank

Azerbaijan to Cyprus

Sitting in a smoky Athens cafe pondering the rings of dried brown foam on my coffee glass and the bits of feta, onion, and naked olive pits littering my salad plate I realized how unforgivably long it has been since I have written.

My first impulse was to make excuses: my caravan was lost in the steppes of Central Asia, and I was sold into slavery in Samarkand...I escaped and bought a horse and yurt in Kyrgyzstan and settled for a season in some verdant highland meadow, spent several months in a Pakistani jail for militant subversion....but the reality is a tad more prosaic (most of the time).

I could do a Sven Hedin and write a tome on the last several months: trekking in the Karakoram in the shadows of the mighty Rakaposhi and Nanga Parbat, finally making it over the epic passes of the Torugart and Khunjerab, riding the wild vales of Kyrgyzstan like the Duke and sipping mares milk after a hard day in the saddle, being hassled and occasionally arrested by countless border guards and omnipotent police, nights of terrorist vodka hospitality by old raisin men in white beards and iron stomachs, full moon over the medressas and minarets of Khiva and Bukhara, fishing boats lost for eternity on the undulating sands of the dying Aral Sea, mutton shashlyk cold beer warm bread bad Russian techno and a pretty girl under a starry Bishkek night, oil derrick flames lighting the cerulean Caspian Sea, lazy and hurried breakfasts of Nescafe and melon everywhere, finishing the Istanbul marathon amidst the cheers of 30,000 Turks (and the sound of my gasps for breath) in the shadow Santa Sofia, spending the night in a Turkmenistan psychiatric hospital with friendly old inmates feeding pigeons in the shadow of a slowly revolving 14m gold statue of the portly president Niyazov, and basically savoring the surreal and the bizarre that embraces (and occasionally suffocates) the Central Asian traveler.

Right now I am too caught up in the now to put into words what I have experienced; the last 13 months have been too quick, too exciting, too many experiences to treasure and be grateful for. Things to savor in the calm repose of sunset instead of the blazing light of noon...It also has something to do with the extortionate e-mail rates in Greece! It's either surf or eat....mmmmm...eat.

And yet the tune keeps rollicking along and I find myself thrust into a new day. My careful plans of a peaceful and remunerative winter working in Germany have been temporarily shelved as I have been offered an unique and serendipitous opportunity to realize my bar talk of "Hong Kong to Capetown without leaving the ground" by hitching on the 19m sailboat SVS Salamandra next month from Greek Cyprus to Kenya. Put up or shut up, eh?

I will have to spend 7-8 weeks with 3 and 6 year old British children (time to catch up on my Tellie Tubbies) but there should be several other "adults" to play backgammon and hoist sail with. In the current political climate this is the only way for me to get overland past the hot spots of Sudan and the Congo. Not to mention the opportunity to check out the pyramids, the snowy slopes of Kilimanjaro, the spice markets of Zanzibar, safaris into the Masai Mara and Ngorongoro Crater, Victoria Falls, and rafting the Zambezi....and, and, and…

Rollicking down the East coast should land me at the Cape in time to return to Europe in time to follow the sunshine and earn an Euro or two picking some Spanish tomatoes, French grapes, and Dutch belles.

Whew! I get tired just thinking about it...and you know how I try to avoid thinking. Thanks again to the fam. for bearing with me and to my scattered amigos-I will really put your hospitality to the test (it will just be a bit later than planned). Thanks for keeping my entertained with news from home and life in the real world-it makes waiting for hotmail to download like Christmas morning-the sweet agony of expectation...it means a lot to this peripatetic Yank. Now I must be of to stock up on sun block and slide film.

Until next!

Rich

On to Egypt