The centre of D.C.’s historic black neighbourhood, the U St corridor in the northwest quadrant was the scene of massive celebrations during Barack Obama’s victory in 2008 and again in 2012.

I didn’t realise it at the time, but my first glimpses of Washington, D.C., were probably the truest of them all. The view from the bus from New York coming in through the northeast quadrant of the city offers glimpses of a gritty urban landscape — shuttered shops, foreclosed houses and a less-than perfect geometric street layout. Although it was a shockingly hot August afternoon in 2011, I spotted several dishevelled homeless men slumped in the full glare of the sun, trying to get some sleep.

Yet, only a few blocks from the bus interchange, I found myself practically tripping on the steps of the imperious, stately Capitol building. Standing on the very spot where President Obama took his second oath of office on Monday, I was less than a mile from those images of destitution, but might as well have been in another city.

As a congressional reporter for a Maryland newswire, I got to know Washington as the Capital largely before I got a feel for it as any other kind of city. I spent six months working out of an office just a stone’s throw from the White House, poring over Bills and memorising (“memorizing”) the names and faces of congressmen, Senators and Governors. But that side of Washington is, in some ways, tightly bounded; once you leave the Mall and memorials behind, you’re in a different place altogether.

As the newly-minted administrative centre of America, Washington was plonked down on what was already a thriving trade port. Situated on the banks of the swampy Potomac River that ambles down from the hills of West Virginia, Washington was a place with its own rich history as a historically-Southern, majority-black city.

I lived in a house just off U Street, an area that’s the heart of the old black neighbourhood just north of downtown Washington. Most mornings — so long as it was warmer than 5 degrees — I jogged with my girlfriend around the neighbourhood, and we’d take it in turns to pick the route. My first choice was a no-brainer: south, around the Mall and the towering Washington Monument. But the very next day we headed east, leaving 14th Street further behind and entering a different neighbourhood altogether.

During segregation, the north-south meridian of 14th Street was the boundary between the black neighbourhood of Shaw, to the wast, and the mostly white Dupont neighborhood to the west. Before 1968, 14th Street — which is now a hub for some of the city’s most sought-after bars and restaurants — was a rare place where white and black businesses traded, albeit uneasily, side-by-side. The U Street/14th Street area changed irrevocably though in April 1968, when protests in the wake of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination sparked massive race riots. President Johnson declared a state of emergency and sent the National Guard in to reinforce overwhelmed police lines and drive out rioters in this strip of shops, theaters and restaurants just a 20-minute walk from the White House. The U St corridor was especially devastated.

One restaurant was famously spared — indeed, it even kept trading during the crisis; a green zone of sorts where both police and protestors could get a meal. It’s called Ben’s Chili Bowl, and it’s a humble diner still standing opposite the U Street metro station, serving up chili, fries and shakes just the way it did in 1958 when it first opened.

The lines go out the door almost every day and its walls are adorned with pictures of its founder Ben Ali and his family with celebrities from across the globe. President Barack Obama famously stopped by for a D.C. classic half-smoke (think a bigger, spicier hot dog) on his way to his first Inauguration in 2009; and he evidently recommends it to other world leaders. The picture of Nicolas Sarkozy with a half-smoke, beside a very uncomfortable-looking Carla Bruni, is my personal favourite.

Until 1920, when New York’s Harlem overtook it, D.C. was home to the largest urban African American population in the United States, with U St as its cultural, commercial and intellectual heartbeat. D.C. native Duke Ellington was the vanguard of an age of talented jazz musicians like Cab Calloway, Pearl Bailey and Sarah Vaughan. In the 1930s and 1940s, the scene was so magical it was dubbed Washington’s “Black Broadway”.

Some of the clubs from U St’s golden era were revived after the riots and decades of neglect. The Howard Theatre on T St — a beautiful Beaux Arts treasure where Ellington frequently played — was reopened in 2012 after a long-awaited, splashy renovation. My one regret from living in the U St corridor was missing out on the Howard’s gospel brunch, an experience combining two of the greatest traditions of the south: shrimp n’ grits and soul.

Across the other side of the city, perhaps, a very different social set would be brunching in Georgetown: the elegant, monied — and very European — old town of Washington, on the banks of the Potomac. But while those streets were full of visitors taking a break from treading the Mall and the Monuments this Inauguration weekend, they should know there’s a vibrant part of the city’s history, a little north, and a little east, that they’re missing.

Photo credit: Tessa Khan

The most useless sign in the world is triangular. It has a red border and a silhouette of a cliff-face with rocks tumbling irrevocably over the edge. Its lo-fi quality is almost cartoony, like something from Spy versus Spy. But its uselessness does not lie in the omission of detail but rather its purpose. How is someone to respond to a sign that warns of rocks falling on your head while you drive?

For me, the series of events occur like this:

1. See sign
2. Look up at sheer cliff
3. Examine rubble at base of said cliff
4. Freak out

I challenge anyone to come up with a more practical response.

The night after we had descended the glacier I slept terribly. A storm had closed in. It raged and did not stop. My dreams were invaded by the sound of rain as it hammered the roof. I remembered the ascent up when the rain was light. I remembered rocks strewn across the road ranging from pebbles to boulders the size of shopping trolleys, all freshly detached from the cliff.

We had to leave in the morning, our schedule sandwiched between the late ferry and a set time for the Iranian border crossing on the other. I woke long before dawn and lay in bed listening to the water as it ran from the roof and splattered on the ground. Eventually Marty woke up. We ate cold cheese pie, drank thick black coffee, then got into our riding gear and rode.

Riding down the mountain involved striking a series of balances. Take going past a recent avalanche that has partially covered the road in rocks, for example. Now, one must be travelling fast enough in order to minimize the time spent beside the unstable rock face and avoid the next avalanche. On the other hand, the road’s surface is now strewn with jagged shale. The big rocks are obviously a problem but the small ones that form gravel which can be just as dangerous due to slippage. This means the speed must be slow enough to weave one’s 250kg motorcycle through said rocks.

Now introduce to this scenario torrential rain. Rain is problematic because it reduces visibility both for you and other drivers. Another balance to be struck was how open one’s visor was supposed to be — too open and the rain would sting your eyes, not open enough and the visor would fog. It also reduced grip on the road as well as increasing the likelihood of more avalanches. Then add other drivers, cow shit on the roads in towns, livestock, pot holes, dark tunnels and road works.

I just rode. My mind was clear, engaged with the task at hand so that at a conscious level there was no room for extraneous thought. No mental run-time to admire the savage beauty of the dark rock gleaming like black diamond in the wet. Nor time to admire the rivulets that had worked their way down, cutting an incision into mountain so that now different species of mosses occupied different heights in the cut valley, bleeding into one another creating a seamless spectrum of colour. No, I just rode.

And yet there were surreal moments that could not be ignored. I rode towards three horses standing in the middle of the road. I was used by now to dealing with livestock and so slowed down, edging towards them. The two brown horses merely trotted slowly to the edge of the road, but a white horse had been spooked, her eyes wild and frightened. She galloped as if in slow motion on the road’s surface, droplets of rain, showered from her mane and back. She stumbled once, then twice, her hoofs slipping on the greasy road. I slowed to a stop, not wanting her to fall and break a leg, and watched her gallop off the road and disappear into an adjoining paddock.

We kept on. The ambling emerald river had become a foaming, muddy force of nature channelled by the valley it surged down. It carried with it anything in its path. The rumble of its raw power was the ever-present score to the proceedings. We stopped halfway down the mountain in a burnt-out bus stop and I was shivering from the raw adrenalin as much as from the cold.

“Did you see that rock that almost hit my head?” asked Marty.

I had not, everything focused through the mist of my visor to the road ahead hurtling toward me. Marty had narrowly avoided a mini-avalanche, being hit in the head by only a tiny rock, the vanguard, while the big one (“the size of a grapefruit”) sailed passed him. There was little time or advantage in thinking at this stage. I still couldn’t shake the thought that this whole thing had been a bad idea. It was the same distance up and down so we had no choice but to keep moving.

Eventually with my attention sharpened to a pin prick for so long that my nerves were like so many flailing live wires, we made it to the dam that marked the base of the mountain range. I could see the surging brown river empty itself into the emerald lake’s embrace, its journey was over. Ours was not. Yet.

The rain had been so heavy that the lowlands had flooded. We reached them to see the road inundated. Here we would have to forget any notion of remaining dry, or even getting dry, the budget soft luggage we had bought for our motorcycles pathetic at keeping out the rain. Now all our clothes were soaked. The water was so deep on the road I could feel it surging against my front wheel, trying to carry me off the road.

We made it back to Zugdidi just as the rain stopped. We rung out riding gear, placing it at different points in a restaurant and made the cavernous place look like a refugee camp. The question over lunch was “Do we ride on?” As far as I saw it, we could not get wetter and if we rode fast enough it would dry our jackets at least. So we did.

Our supposed destination is Vardzia, an entire village that had been carved into a mountain and then revealed after an earthquake had caused half the mountain to fall away. Now you could see the cross-section of the town like a human-ant farm.

We played chicken with a dense black storm cloud that teased us before setting in fully once we had left the paved road and hit the mud.

It was freezing, wet and night was falling but this was not what worried me. Rather the surroundings exhibited none of the characteristics there were supposed to in Vardzia according to the Lonely Planet. First up, there was supposed to be a river. There was none. Secondly it speaks of a hotel. None of the locals knew anything about the hotel. We were forced to call it quits and get out just as the last traces of day leave the sky.

The ride back was hard — I couldn’t see anything and kept spinning out in the mud. Then we hit the bitumen where cars and trucks loomed up just behind me, blinding me. I had one thought: a hot shower and dry clothes. Eventually we got to a hotel behind a service station. There was mud everywhere. I fired up the hair dryer and dug it into my wet boots with one hand and looked at the map with the other. Turns out there are two towns in Georgia called Vardzia.

K Johnson is blogging regularly for Crikey while on his six-month trip to the countries most tourists never visit — think Azerbaijan, Transnistria, Iran, Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Kurdistan etc. Check out all the past stories and adventures he’s written about for Crikey here. You can read more about him at his blog Red Ink Run.

A storm had cracked and crashed its way over the boat during the previous night, leaving in its wake an interminable calm. The barman who spoke some English was our Minister of Misinformation — always providing an entirely incorrect appraisal of the situation with false projections and a set of impossible scenarios that could not and would not follow. “Boat is broken down” he said at the bar, handing a German truck driver another espresso. You could rest assured it was something else.

The boat had not broken down. The storm had closed the port which meant more and more waiting. This four-day trip had now taken ten days if you include the time waiting in Odessa for repairs to be made. Everyone was a little strung out as we looked out of the foggy windows at the relentless rain and continued to smoke like the industrial revolution.

Big things seem to move slowly. So when the massive Greifswald finally began to dock in to the ugly port of Poti — all puddles, shipping containers and greasy green sea — it seemed to inch forward. Customs moved at a deathly pace, as did the fat lady in front of me in the passport queue.

But by early afternoon we were whipping through the Georgian countryside. The children, just out of school, looked at us like we were Santa Claus. The animals, on the other hand were indifferent. Doe-eyed cows, stood plump and awkward in the middle of the road and watched the cars go around them, while the pigs, all business, trotted up the main road as if to buy the newspaper.

That evening we stayed in the town Zugdidi and decided to try some famous Georgian cuisine. I don’t believe I have ever seen a Georgian restaurant outside Georgia, but if you ever get a chance to visit one, do it. Do it straight away. Don’t even finish reading this sentence. How was it? See, I told you so.

The Caucasus is in the vice-grip of empires (between Russia, Persia and Turkey) and incorporates all of these culinary influences. Yet of all the Caucasian countries, Georgia offers the most original cuisine. With three bottles of very mellow Georgian red, Marty and I ate, cursing the Ukrainian ferry company for committing us to our brutal schedule. But once the food arrived our wrath lost its edge.

We had chakapuli, veal soup with tarragon that tasted like a noodle-less Vietnamese pho. We had khachapuri, a type of cheese pie. The winner was pkhali, think baba ganoush but with walnuts, beetroot, eggplant and rubies of pomegranate resting on top. For an Australian palate that has long since had at its disposal a panoply of international cuisine, a range that has left this writer’s tastebuds a smoking ruin from the sensory overload, pkhali refused to be likened to any of the pre-registered flavours. It stimulated the base electronic charge from which, out of the primordial soup, a new flavour is born.

The next day, our destination was to be Mestia in the region of Svaneti deep in the Caucasian Mountains about 10 kilometres from the Russian border. We were to ride on a road which on the map had the shape of al dente spaghetti slowly lowered onto a white page. It was supposed to be a new highway but reports we had attained, from truck drivers interrogated on the Greifswald varied from “like Autobahn” to “not like Autobahn”.

Marty and I awoke in the morning, packed, got on our motorcycles and left straight away, our triple-red-vino hangovers close in tow. We passed village shaped blurs to the side, toward looming mountains to the front until we hit the foot of the range. Ascending for a few moments we reached a dam that reigned in a lake, which lay marking equilibrium between the mountains above it. I will never forget its completely opaque, emerald colour.

“Maybe it’s because of the limestone,” said Marty as we stood on the edge of the cliff looking out over the expanse. I had no reason to doubt him as he is bizarrely up to speed with Geology, forever pointing out sedimentary cross-sections and igneous formations.

Almost instantly after continuing on from the dam, a new world opened up. The sandstone of the lowlands was replaced by hard dark shale. The trees were a mix of dark green alpine and deciduous trees which, this being mid-autumn ranged from yellow to burgundy. The density of their foliage gave the mountainside a powdery texture, as if each tree was the dab of a paintbrush, dipped in different coloured powder then pressed onto the page. All this rested above the emerald river that fed the emerald lake.

As we ascended further, the mountains became more rugged and exposed black rock faces became more frequent. The road varied wildly from freshly paved to muddy sections of unpaved. Also it began to rain. Of particular worry were the tunnels, which were unlit, the road and my pathetic headlights quickly swallowed in the obsidian. When travelling through, torrents of water would gush from the roof and pound my helmet.

Eventually we made it up to the town of Mestia, snow-capped mountains surrounded the town, which seemed busy reinventing itself as a rough-around-the-edges version of St Moritz. We found a room in the guesthouse, little more than a freezing wooden box, and went out again to eat.

The next day the plan was to hike up Chalatis Glacier. A pamphlet we found in the guesthouse announced it was “an easy round trip of six hours”. Marty and I got up and went to have breakfast in a small café. We ordered “spicy soup with rice” which was hearty but not spicy nor with much rice and had a cow’s vertebrae partially submerged in the bowl’s centre. It was not yet 9am.

There were a group of five middle aged and weathered men, sitting at the next table, clearly in the more advanced stages of alcohol fuelled revelry. One plump one began a conversation with us in Russian:

“Where you from?”

“Australia”

“Ahhh you must drink”

One of them stumbled over to our table, placed two shot glasses the size of tea candle holders on our table and poured from a clear vial a liquid right to the top. I smelled it and my nostrils burned.

“To Australia” said the fat one and raised his glass.

The others murmured.

We all sunk the shot. It tasted like raki, kicked like mule and burnt like a thousand suns. It was chacha, a Georgian moonshine made out of prunes or some other fruit, probably distilled in a bathtub and stirred with an oar. Hoping our initiation complete, I went back to my soup, its taste now severely muted. My plan was to make a hasty exit but the five were seated between us and the door. As soon as I got the bill, their drunken attention became once again fixed on us.

I should emphasise at this point that this was hospitality, not some sadistic game on their part. But it was Georgian hospitality. You have most likely experienced it before but by some other name. It is the kind of relentless hospitality that flicks away your protests like flies, the kind that if repeatedly refused could cross the line into offense, the kind that stands over you, its breath smelling of Georgian moonshine, slams down a large shot glass for the second time and demands “drink!” And so we did.

We managed to extricate ourselves from the café but not before they offered to drive us up the glacier in their trucks — a task impossible not just due to their level of drunkenness but also due to the laws of physics. I have trouble remembering the next few hours. My supposed alpine rejuvenation was not really going to plan. I can remember yearning to pat a herd of cows as they passed us up the street. There was an old babushka sweeping her front yard with a branch, who scowled at us. But like most day-time drinking, everything came to a screaming halt. Luckily at that time we were at the base of the Chatalis Glacier, from which an ice cold river ran. I drank freezing water and looked at the spectacular scenery.

K Johnson is blogging regularly for Crikey while on his six-month trip to the countries most tourists never visit — think Azerbaijan, Transnistria, Iran, Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Kurdistan etc. Check out all the past stories and adventures he’s written about for Crikey here. You can read more about him at his blog Red Ink Run.

You can feel the tension in the Iranian town of Piranshahr. Here the police are more alert and better armed than in the rest of the country. They maintain a larger buffer around themselves, keeping locals at arm’s length in the crowded market places and the chaotic streets.

This region contains a majority Kurdish population who have historically represented a potent internal threat to the Iranian state. This slow burn atmosphere is lost, however, as we ride on the winding road up the mountain just to the east of the town, turning the town into something completely different. Here individual flat roofs, each glowing in the sun’s reflection contract to form a single intricate plate on the valley floor beneath the morning mist.

Marty and I reach the apex. Looking at the valley floor to the mountain opposite is to see the border with Iraq. This is our second attempt in as many days at crossing into Iraqi Kurdistan, the first aborted when we were informed at 1pm (incorrectly as it would turn out) that it closed at midday. Today the crossing is no less gritty, a line of stationary trucks snake across the valley below and up the mountain’s side. Feral dogs trot around, sniffing wheels while drivers sit in the dust around smouldering fires eating flat bread, smoking and drinking tea.

We drop down into the valley and take to the wrong side of the road to avoid the trucks. At the boomgate there is a glint of recognition in the guard’s eye as he waves us through. Inside, the great compound that is the border crossing is disorder warming up to chaos. Trucks are parked everywhere, men (nearly exclusively men) walk about with purpose, kicking up dust, clutching sheaves of paper. All under the watch of the stumpy guard towers that dot the surrounding high ground.

Marty and I park near the rear of the new customs building and wait. We are waiting for our contact from the trucking company to come and take us through the doubtlessly Byzantine exit procedure. We have our own sheaves of paper, covered in Farsi. They are stamped, signed in triplicate, stapled, sealed with wax and stamped again. It cost 500 euros each to bring these bikes into Iran, all sorted by a fixer called Hossein we had met through an internet forum. “You have to trust me,” he replied in an email when I asked him if he was sure he could get us in. It was a ridiculous answer to a ridiculous question.

But trust him we did, on the Iranian side of the border with Armenia he had met us, a slight man with a neckerchief, a fisherman’s hat and an emphatic manner. We had waited four hours, handed over the cash and were given this stack of unintelligible documents as a reward. “Please don’t leave without cancelling these documents otherwise they’ll skin me alive,” was the second last thing he had said, handing over the documents. The last thing was ““Now you must leave [Iran] into Kurdistan [Iraq]” this was about five minutes after we had decided to give Kurdistan a miss. It seemed too dangerous and too far. “We have nothing left to prove,” I’d said. Plus, we were not sure the border between Kurdistan and Turkey was open.

He sped off while I thought of spending Christmas in Iraq.

***
Ordinarily when arranging to meet someone amongst such disorder I would be anxious that we would not be found but, here at this border, just like everywhere in Iran, we are conspicuous. As we wait groups of men came in waves to look at the motorcycles. The questions are always the same and asked in the same order:

“Where are you from?”

“How much do they [motorcycles] cost?”

“How fast do they go?” one always asks, looking at the speedo as if that is an indication. I had a 1983 Toyota Corolla with a speedo that went up to 200km/h.

It is now 9.30am. The contact is half an hour late.

“Maybe they are out the front?” I suggest. We go around the building and park. Still nothing. A man approaches us. He is wearing a Goretex jacket and pin striped Kurdish pants (think MC Hammer or harem pants). “Where are you from?” he asks in perfect English, not a trace of an accent. “Australia. Why is your English is so good?”

“I used to live in London for six years. I work here in customs. What are you here for?” This man will henceforth be called Jacob. This is because neither Marty nor I ever found out his name. You will note that this omission is especially shameful given what follows.

Now Jacob is not working here in any official capability but decided to help us out anyway. We hand him our papers. He flicks through them. “OK come with me”.

“Should I go?” asks Marty.

“Yes” I reply.

I had been inside the customs hall the day before and knew what to expect. Imagine a large octagonal building, its floor shiny and new. Inside is a smaller concentric octagon, a bureaucratic inner sanctum formed by a perimeter of outwardly facing counters. Transactions are conducted over these counters between those crossing the border and bureaucrats.

It is difficult to overstate the amount of chaos I had seen here the day before. Six or seven deep clusters of men in front of each stone faced bureaucrat. They jostle, yell and wave sheets of paper. It was like the trading floor in the New York stock exchange.

Anyways I was not in the mood for locking horns with Iranian customs. Judging by the amount of paperwork required to get the bikes in it would take a while.

***

While I nod and smile my way through waves of Iranian Kurds that approach, Marty and Jacob wrestle with the Iranian bureaucratic juggernaut. Jacob takes the role of hero in this story and here is why:

Firstly, today there is a customs strike at this particular crossing and as such the bureaucrat drones would not sign on the dotted line nor rubber stamp our documents. Jacob was there to successfully plead our case, having to win over these drones time and time again.

Secondly, we had originally been told by Hossein that we would have to pay US$20 for each day we would spend in Iran after four days. This turned out to be every day after two ays. Jacob cajoled the drones to let us through on $10 per day. He concocted a story that our bikes had broken down working his way up the chain of command until at one point telling one official:

“Where is your self-respect? Where is your Iranian pride? These guys are tourists. It’s not fair they are being charged so much.” He had said, his finger jabbing the official’s shoulder.

It is worth unpacking this statement a little bit as it is a telling strain that I discovered in Iranian psyche. But first let me preface this by talking of my treatment at the hands of Iranian locals in general. In terms of warmth or eagerness to help it was unprecedented. People would approach us in the street and offer to pay for our meals or to take us around or even to provide a place to stay at their houses:

“Everything is free. You will be my guests,” one man had said when we were filling up our bikes at a service station outside Tehran.

Now back to Jacob. His “where is your Iranian pride?” demand is not an attempt bto cajole the official to overlook the fee, nor is he allowing the official to act out of petty self-interest by bribing him. Instead Jacob offers an ethically charged entreaty; he requests the official to put his self-respect and national pride above his legal duty. This is profoundly subversive as the request engages with the ethics of the law thereby undermining the law’s legitimacy and stripping the government of moral authority.

We came across many such acts of small scale subversion in Iran: a one fingered salute to a picture of Khomeini in a hotel lobby when he saw us or a man lapsing into profanity when discussing the government by a tearoom. Even though Jacob’s act was by far the most overt (and particularly courageous when considering it was in a government building) the message was always the same — “I have a need to go on the record and say ‘I vehemently disagree with this government’”

Furthermore the hospitality that was extended to us was extreme even by the standard of the region. This must be, in part at least, because Iranians are eager to provide a counter-image to the un-nuanced way they are so often presented in the mainstream Western media.

***

At midday, three hours late, and when the border is supposed to have long been closed, two men from the trucking company eventually find us. One we will call Piggy because of his porcine, rosy cheeks and thin eyes. He is wearing burgundy shirt is open one button too many. The other we will call Greasy because has his hair gelled hard which is dust free incidentally, indicating they had just arrived. Jacob spoke to Greasy and then to us. “He [Greasy] said you have to pay them $80 and if you don’t then I have to pay because no one was supposed to do business with you except for them.”

It is a tough position to be in. On one hand I don’t want to give Piggy and Greasy who are a day and three hours late $80 for doing nothing. On the other hand it would not be fair if Jacob had to pay for spending an entire day helping us out. Marty passes me the phone. It is Hossein. I state my strong disapproval with this situation but he washes his hands of it: “What can I do if they get greedy?” he asks. I pass my $40 into Piggy’s fat hoof and they leave.

We are now right by the exit. A tourist bus to our left rolls through a muddy puddle while to our right is an enclosed section surrounded by a high metal fence. Inside old Kurdish men and women and children are all packed as tight as cattle waiting in an unmoving pack to get their passports stamped, so they can cross. Jacob points us to a friend who we follow down a corridor to get our passports stamped.

When we return to our bikes. Jacob has gone. Marty goes to look for him. Later Marty tells me that Piggy and Greasy had taken Jacob aside. They had told him they wanted to charge us $25 per day (instead of $10) and pocket the difference. They offer Jacob some hush money saying “you did all the work” to which Jacob replies “you keep your fucking money”.

In a move that I will later regret as tacky I try to press $20 into Jacob’s hand for his work. “You keep your money,” he says refusing to take it. “Spend it on yourself. Never fucking come back here. Now go!” we wave goodbye to him and go through the checkpoint and into Iraq.

***

The Iraqi Kurdistan side is far more relaxed. The guards and locals are less intense. Hospitality is casually offered not urgently pressed as with Iran. We are still a novelty. Everyone says “welcome” as soon as they find out where we are from. Officials give us tea and soft drinks in a tearoom that looks and feels like a 70s police station the day before everyone breaks for Christmas (minus decorations of course). It takes hours but it does not feel nearly as long as the Iranian side. It is 3pm by the time we roll out into the sheer mountains and valleys of Kurdistan.

K Johnson is blogging regularly for Crikey while on his six-month trip to the countries most tourists never visit — think Azerbaijan, Transnistria, Iran, Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Kurdistan etc. Check out all the past stories and adventures he’s written about for Crikey here. You can read more about him at his blog Red Ink Run.

If you suffer from motion sickness, are a stickler for the law or have a problem with being gawked at — do not attempt the Albanian bus system.

I had been totally over-confident about this. I was well-travelled, having worked as a tour guide in Europe for two years, and I knew how to bus myself around. I had worked on boats in both Croatia and Greece, so I knew how to deal with seasickness. I had also mastered the art of “faux patience”, having calmly told passengers the location of the toilet over 1582 times, usually in the space of one night, even though I wanted to vomit on their shoes if they asked me once more.

To get to, around and out of Albania, there are two simple options: bus or taxi. Bus, the obvious choice for the backpacker, is, quite simply, a unique experience. No one sits up the back, the closer to the front the better, and the locals get pushy. At first I assumed it was because people knew the local driver and wanted to have a chin-wag. I quickly cottoned on that they were in fact chasing air. The driver was the only person with an operable, open window. Forget the snowflake sticker on the side advertising air-conditioning. This was just something the company was aspiring to. Possibly in 2024.

Post-communist Albania, the birthplace of dear Mother Teresa and anti-rust paint, is the most intense country I have ever visited. My home-grown Romanian friend, Vlad, had originally suggested the trip. We both had a week to kill and he was born and bred deep in the east, so he knew the ropes. Aged 14, Vlad had successfully bribed his science teacher at high school with the promise of an excellent bottle of whiskey if he passed him on his exam. Vlad “passed” the exam and his teacher went home for a tipple, from a bottle which Vlad had purchased himself from the bottle store next to his school. I was safe with him.

Our week long adventure involved travelling from Split, Croatia through to Bosnia, across the border to Montenegro then a hop, skip and jump before arriving in Albania. Vlad made it as far as the seaside of Budva, Montenegro before being called back to replace a sick guide. Who would protect me from exploitation now? Vlad had done an excellent job of reprimanding a cheeky bartender who served me a €50 bottle of wine when I’d only asked for the €15 one.

I had been warned about Albania. Two Europeans I had met a week ago said it was dangerous and they considered it a no-go zone. They said the only people stupid enough to visit were Australians and Americans because they hadn’t been informed.

Little did I know that travelling by bus actually serves as a social institution, and I was certainly not alone. The bus was packed to the racks. We make regular, jolted slow-downs (never coming to a complete stop) to deliver string-wrapped post parcels, drop off boxed lunches to the road workers and allow dusty school kids to run up and kick the wheels of the bus. Not because they’re aggressive, but because it’s something to do. People stared at me constantly. Not rudely, just because they know I’m not one of them.

The Albanians may be one of the poorest nations in Europe, but bloody hell they know how to multi-task. Just take the co-pilot driver for instance. He smoked, talked on his mobile phone and shifting the gearbox for the current driver, who was doing much the same as his sidekick. These guys seemed to have no concern over their jobs, despite employment in the country sitting at 40%. Their extra-curricular activities mean that as passengers, we (meaning just me) are constantly recoiling as the bus races through the tight country roads, half expecting to be hit by the trees passing by. Never mind the three men hanging out the door, vying for space. Balls of absolute steel.

For the first time in my travels I felt like I was getting myself into trouble. And it felt amazing. Nothing is safe, organised or dependable. A mule sporting bright pink pom-poms attached to its bridle pulls young, weather-hardened workers down country roads, with old car interiors serving as makeshift seats. I want to yell “STOP! STOP! I need a photo. No one will ever believe me that I saw this!”

No one on the bus is listening to music, I assume because they don’t have iPhones. When crossing the border into Albania, the passport stamp hasn’t changed date for three days, and no one gave a shit. Not to mention the universal head-shake laws of “yes” and “no” are totally reversed.

My earlier ignorance of these laws had prohibited me from paying for my ride.

“Do you take euros?” I had asked the bus driver.

Head shake up and down. A nod.

“Great. Here is 20,” I said, as I handed him the money.

Head shake up and down. No reaching for the money.

“Euro, no. Lek lek. Albanian money. Now!” he replied impatiently, looking at the line over my shoulder.

“But you just said you take Euros,” I retort.

“LEK only or no bus. Move.”

I certainly didn’t have lek. I didn’t even know that was the currency. We were still in Montenegro, which uses the euro. How exactly was I supposed to get lek right now? I flashed him my wallet which had only euros.

“OK, you pay me in Tirana.”

Hours later we arrived into the chaotic capital, driving past line after line of street vendors selling their wares. The city still showcased the scars of its volatile past governance with dilapidated, multicoloured apartment blocks clogging the streets. Albanians call their country Shqipëria, which since 1992 has switched from a tightly controlled communist regime to a free market free-for-all.

Recently, the population has totally exploded as exiles, once forced from their lands, can now freely move to the city. Neighbouring country Kosovo also used the country as an escape route in the spring of 1999 when nearly half a million refugees crossed over into Albania, desperate to leave behind the Serbian ethnic-cleansing campaign. What was once a massive strain on resources has turned into a positive as massive amounts of aid money poured into the country, decreasing inflation to single digits.

It was now my turn to fork out some money for the driver and his wingman who were holding my luggage hostage on the side of a busy main street. All other passengers were unloaded and gone, the bus engine was still running and I had just bought new undies yesterday. I hope they didn’t knick my backpack.

:One minute, one minute!” I gestured, running to an ATM about 100 metres away.

Card in. Pin accepted. Amount selected. Error. Card out.

I could see another ATM close by. It had one of those high-tech security doors where you need to swipe your card for access. I ran.

Repeat process. Declined again. Shit.

In my anxious quest for money, I hadn’t noticed the little crowd I seemed to have pulled. Two legless beggars had hobbled over to the area, stationing themselves firmly on the other side of the glass security door. They began to bang on the door, wailing, getting louder and louder, hands outreached for my money.

By this point I was beginning to totally stress out. I was in a foreign country, I had no money and I could see my bag capturers irritably looking around for me. They were going to leave any minute.

How the hell was I supposed to get past these beggars? I couldn’t just barge them over. They were already legless for Christ’s sake. I made haste for the door, eyeing them warningly, braced and ready to push through.

Within seconds a baton was reigning down over the backs of my followers as a bulky policeman, who must have seen my predicament, came to my rescue. He pulled them from the door allowing me to pass, following me close behind as I stalked back towards the bus. Did he want money too? Are you supposed to pay the police if they help you out?

Hands in the air trying to minimise the language barrier, I tried to explain my situation to the driver. I figured something was better than nothing, and pushed €20 towards him again. He snatched it off me, whipped a dismissing hand at me, kicked my bag over and left. Great, just great.

The policeman had stood firm for the duration of this exchange. He wanted a handout too. I was pissed off. This would never happen at home. I quickly reasoned that as a single, young and foreign female, I wouldn’t be too good at putting up a fight. I’d seen Taken. I shoved a €20 note in his direction.

He looked confused.

“I don’t want your money. I was just making sure you were OK!” he said in perfect English, shaking his head at me.

“Keep watch of your bag or it won’t be there soon,” he chuckled, walking away.

“And stay away from my legless friends over there or you will have no bag and no Euros”.

I was mortified. How embarrassing. I had no clue what I was doing or how to read these people. Was I really that stupid Aussie that ignored warnings? Was I ignorant? I had been bitten, swallowed whole and spat up again in the space of three mere minutes.

I plopped myself down into the gutter, right next to the donkey poo, just where I belonged.

It’s such a cliché to say a city is “sprawling”, but sometimes, it’s the only word. They’re the cities that reach into the horizon like a concrete Serengeti, with tangled freeways ducking and weaving through the landscape. They’re the cities that, come nightfall, look like an earthbound nebula pulsing below. They’re cities that, every time you think you’re about to break free, toss up another turnpike or roundabout, encircling you in its urban hedge maze.

Wuhan is that kind of city. It just sprawls.

Located in the Hubei province of China, Wuhan extends across the Yangzte and Han rivers and has a population of more than 10 million. A patchwork metropolis, Wuhan was originally three different cities — Wuchang, Hankou and Hanyang — that were eventually stapled together for administrative convenience. It’s a city that drops to sub-zero temperatures in winter, and steams like a fan-force oven through summer.

So what I’m doing there, rugged up to my earlobes and conspicuously foreign, is not entirely clear. Emboldened by a teenage diet of Richard Curtis movies, and the promise of some Kerouac-style travel material, I’d decided to throw caution to the smoggy wind and visit my boyfriend, who was over there teaching English at a local university.

Stepping off the fast train from Hong Kong border city, Shenzen — a randy locomotive he casually announced as we took our seats, “had slowed down a bit since that crash last year” — my initial enthusiasm evaporated. The night air was freezing, and the flashy new station’s modern design features were somewhat diminished by an inescapable, suspect smell. Mewing in the distance, a stray cat snuck under the taxi rank barrier and off into dark.

After a few more days in the city, my first impression of the place as a strange mix of new-age Chinese advancement and lingering underdevelopment deepened. A trip the riverside downtown area included a stroll down a glitzy shopping boulevard, but ended with a box of sedated puppies in fluro jumpers being sold next to a kebab stand. Along the riverbank, the middle-aged locals waltz to the nostalgic tunes of buskers while their children barter for rhinestone-encrusted iPhone covers at the local night market. Girls walk arm in arm puffing frosted breath, and boys skulk around display flatscreens in department stores.

But for all its conflicting new/old-world elements, Wuhan understands that one thing is universal and timeless: food.

As someone who notoriously exceeds her dumpling quota with every trip to Chinatown, the prospect of a holiday in the homeland seemed like a dangerous idea.

Compared to the gelatinous dishes of Hong Kong’s touristy diners, the Wuhanese enjoy tasty, simple cuisine prepared at greasy street stalls. Emerging at sundown, these footpath vendors skewer lukewarm fillets of chicken and lamb, char gilled over hot coals and lathered in a murky MSG lacquer. Mmmm, delicious and suspicious. What a combination.

But if you can find those few sparkling diamonds in the OH&S rough, they’re worth it. The traditional noodle dish of Wuhan (re gan mien) is best made fresh, with sesame paste and stock giving it a nutty warmth that proves ample defence against the city’s notoriously icy winters. Similarly, ultra-thin crepes stretched out on street food hotplates and layered with pickled vegetables, pork crackling, a cracked egg (it works, don’t worry) and coriander make for a good snack. Most restaurateurs will also spruik the local steamed fish, which is proudly served whole on plastic plates (You want a fish? This is a fish.)

Perhaps the only culinary pothole to avoid is the odd dog meat restaurant — don’t let the spritely spaniel on the sign fool you, that’s no vet.

Towards the end of my trip, I was looking forward to coming home and breathing the fresh air again. But in some ways, I was dreading it — Melbourne, with it’s neat little grid and wide streets would be easily to navigate perhaps, but like a lot of Asian destinations, something of Wuhan’s frenetic energy had proved infectious. And as I taxied back home from Tullamarine, I cracked a smile as I looked out onto the grassland that lines the freeway. Urban sprawl? What urban sprawl?

Catch up on part 1 (which includes an explanation of Nagorno-Karabakh, Russian tourists getting arrested for taking photos of tanks and eager tour guide Ashot’s #1 less for taking foreigners around Nagorno-Karabakh) here.

By 10am next morning I was crammed in the back seat of Ashot’s Lada with the two Japonski, as Ashot referred to them and Alessio. Marty managed to score the front seat.

“Three people OK!” Ashot said turning around to us from watching the road and veering towards oncoming traffic. ”Four people, politzia!”. He took his hands off the wheel and motioned writing a ticket.

“If politzia,” he pointed to Rui in the middle, “you down”. Ashot turned back around just before we hit the gravel shoulder and lit up a thin cigarette.

Lesson #2: Danger = Pliability: Control the danger and you control the tourists.

We were heading to a town called Gandzasar which sported a mountain shaped like a lion. We had seen a picture in a guide book which looked very impressive. As we passed a sign for the Halo Trust, a group responsible for clearing some of the nearby fields of landmines, Ashot turned around and made the sound of a lion clawing the dashboard.

Eventually we arrived. What lay before us was more like an instalment at a second rung amusement park. Think the Uluru replica at Leyland Brothers world. The rock formation in the side of the mountain was the real deal but it had been painted over and the face was accompanied by a lion’s paw made out of cement and rocks which just looked tacky.

To be honest I was there just killing time. My main objective was to go the ghost city of Agdam, an Azeri city that had been vacated and remained in no man’s land between Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan. When we had written on our visa application that we wanted to visit Agdam the lady at the embassy had instantly become suspicious.

“Why do you want to visit there? There are still landmines in the city. We cannot guarantee your safety,” she had said curtly, applying a thick layer of whiteout over Agdam obliterating it from our itinerary.

Ashot was no easier to convince. We seemed to have the same conversation over again.

“Now we go to Agdam?”

“There we have a problem.”

“What if I pay more?”

“Impossible, I will get put in gaol. But. There is a place from which we can see Agdam.”

We got back in the car which had by now developed an otherworldly reverberation which sounded exactly like Hypnotoad from the TV series Futurama. Ashot seemed sure it was the roof rack and he would reach out the window while driving to hold it in to place. When we stopped he would get out and fiddle around with it. Clearly the functioning of the car was balanced on a razor’s edge. I had turned one of the lights on inside the car, which had taken a lot of bashing and yelling by Ashot to get it off again.

Ashot entertained us by turning to Alessio. “No Italian car! This Soviet car.” He wrote 71 in the dust on the dashboard for some reason.

“Look no petrol!” He said beaming, putting the car in neutral, turning the ignition off as we sailed down the hill silent but for the reverberation.

After lunch Marty and the two Japonskis left for Yerevan (Marty had to work on his bike and the Japonskis had a brutal schedule to keep). Of course the ride back to Yerevan had been organised by Ashot, which introduces me to:

Lesson #3: When the show ends, make sure you’re the one lowering the curtain.

When we were bouncing along to get a view of Agdam, I asked Ashot what he was doing in ’94 (in the war). He pointed to the place on his shoulder where a lapel should be. “I was an officer.” Turned out Ashot, the same Ashot that chain smokes thin cigarettes, with the car that sounds like hypnotoad was a doctor in the Red Army. He fought in Afghanistan and operated in Berlin. He then pulled out a bunch of documents including his Red Army identity card and two medals that he received in service. He lifted up his t-shirt and showed a purple scar the size of a killer python that snaked around his right flank.

There is a moments silence in the car. He asked me my job. I told him I did mathematics at university. He looked at the book I was taking notes in and asked “Mathematics?”. He then grabbed the book and writes an easy problem which I solve. Then another one, harder which took a bit of time. He pulled the book back and, while still driving, finished it instantly.

“See! Soviet doctor.”

We stopped. He got out and waited by the car. I couldn’t see the city anywhere just some ancient ruins, part of the standard tour.

“Where is Agdam?”

“Agdam problem.”

“You said we could see it. Where is it?”

“We have to go further. But problem. Police. Passport”

He motioned ripping something in two.

“What about this?”

I held out 2000 Dram.

“Each?”

“Nope”

He sighed and got in his car. Alessio and I followed him. He sighed again, crossed himself then grabbed the gear lever covering with his hand a crucifix inset in the handle. The gear crunched and we sped off.

Considering the lead up and the money I had invested the result was pretty dissatisfying. We drove to a tank that was parked by the side of the road. This marked the edge of the disputed zone (the other side of which is still under military occupation). Agdam formed a sprinkling far off on the horizon, barely discernible from the haze. When Alessio jumped out of the car and into the field, Ashow yelled at him to stop.

“Mina, mina!” he said. Mines.

Apparently in that haze there was an abandoned mosque. You can climb its rickety minarets for a view of the entire city. I had supposed it would be the perfect metaphor – serving to be emblematic of the routed Azeri civilian population who fled Nagorno-Karabakh and are now mostly living as refugees in Azerbaijan. It also serves as a metonym, evidence of the war that resides throughout Nagorno-Karabakh: in the ruins, the tanks and the mines.

***

The next morning I went to see the Russians. I wanted to see if I could potentially bring out a message to their embassy and see how their story turned out. The night before I was sitting outside the largest hotel in Stepanakert. I announced to my friends that I would try and interview these four perhaps a little too loudly. A man at the neighbouring table got up instantly, went around the corner and made a call on his mobile phone. “I’m getting a weird vibe,” said Andrej, a friend we had met in Yerevan. “He was sitting there drinking water for an hour. It’s 11pm and it’s cold.”

We had moved from Ashot’s place to one which had a shower. On the way my paranoid mind picked up many anomalies. A taxi curb crawled next to me then sped off. Soldiers regarded me with special attention. People watched me from windows of apartments.

I knocked on the door. It opened to a room, beds lined the walls. A table had packets of biscuits and bottles of soft drink piled on it — clearly the result of being confined to the same room for a prolonged period.

“Hello, I just wanted to ask you a few questions about your trouble here.”

“They said we cannot talk about it.” Her tone was sure, not up for negotiation.

“Just one thing: did you get your passports back?”

“Yes. Actually we are leaving for Yerevan this morning.”

“Thanks.”

I left.

Later Alessio and I were waiting for the taxi back to Yerevan (organized by Ashot) when a white Lada did an untidy U-turn right in front of us and parked askew. Ashot jumped out, yelled something to someone in a passing car and came over. He handed me a scrap of paper, with the email address on it. Clearly it was one of the Russian women who had been arrested and wanted to talk but only once she was outside Nagorno-Karabakh. He gestured to the packet of cigarettes in my top pocket. I gave him a few. He got in his car, stopped lengthwise on the road, blocking traffic both ways, lit a cigarette and pulled off, the morning light catching the cracks in his windscreen making them glitter like diamonds before his disappeared.

Lesson #4: Be the single unifying force that advances the narrative, almost as if you were a figment of the author’s imagination.

K Johnson is blogging regularly for Crikey while on his six-month trip to the countries most tourists never visit — think Azerbaijan, Transnistria, Iran, Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Kurdistan etc. Check out all the past stories and adventures he’s written about for Crikey here. You can read more about him at his blog Red Ink Run.

Fanaticism thrives on peripheries. I was thinking about this when the mashutka (minibus) pulled up at the exit to the bus station and flung its doors open. In poked the head of a man holding a religious hologramatic picture of the Virgin Mary morphing into Jesus on the crucifix in one hand and a meat cleaver in the other. Fortunately this was no zealot; rather a travelling salesman that diversified a little too much. The pictures were a flop but two people bought the meat cleavers, one of them sitting right behind me.

The bus closed its doors and continued on. I was in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. Armenia is the oldest Christian country in the world, a fact that is formative to their national identity. The region in which they live also contributes to this. Armenia shares three of its four borders with Iran, Turkey and Azerbaijan, in which all Islam is the national religion.

The Nagorno-Karabakh War between Armenia and Azerbaijan was based on ethnic and territorial differences as well as religion. It ended with the creation of Nagorno-Karabakh, a de-facto state, closely allied with Armenia, and a mighty thorn in the side of Azerbaijan who will refuse any traveller entry to their country if they show evidence of having been there. This was my destination.

The autovakzal (bus station) in Nagorno-Karabakh’s capital, Stepanakert, is little more than an unlevelled dirt lot. When the door of the mushutka opened there was a crush from both sides, of people trying to get out — having been stuck in a bus tackling mountainous terrain for seven hours — and locals trying to ply the arrivals for business.

Let me speak for my generation for a moment — to everyone out there, in these troubled times, considering door-to-door salesman as a potential career option: don’t, unless you are part of that rare breed (see below). When I am approached for my custom, my gut reaction is to automatically refuse. It not just out of fear that I will get ripped off. The age of the door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman waiting on the threshold, all teeth and brill-cream has gone the way of DDT based fly spray. My generation aren’t interested in buying things any more; we buy the promises associated with things. We need to want it, to yearn for it, before we will even consider buying it. And to have someone approach me when I have not had time to yearn for it. Well, it comes off as just plain desperate.

Now to introduce the exception that proves the rule. Within that bus station crush was a man so entirely contradictory to the spit and polish salesman, his shtick so unadorned and relentlessly practical that it can only be described as raw salesmanship. His name was Ashot.

“You want taxi?”. He stood there with the reptilian eyes and brown teeth of a very heavy smoker.
“No, I don’t want a taxi. Some guy over there gave me his number with a taxi on it.”
“My taxi is better.”
“Well I don’t want a taxi.”
“You want hotel?”
“No, I want a homestay.”
“I have homestay. Very cheap. 4000 dram. Come look, if you like it you can stay, if not don’t worry.”

I had to admire the dexterity to which he batted to the side my every objection and the price was cheap enough. I looked at Marty and at Alessio, a happy go lucky Italian that had caught the bus with us.

“Fine.”

I had learnt a lesson in Ashot’s Guide to Taking Foreigners around Nagorno-Karabakh.

Lesson #1: You always have what they want. Even if they want something else.

***
We pulled up outside Ashot’s whitewashed house in his old dinged up Lada. The rust had worked its way through the white paint on a back panel like some peep show into crooked Soviet engineering. There were four women, mid-to-late twenties, clearly not from the region, sitting on steps, leading down into the floor below. They got up and said hello. One had yellow teeth, smoked and had a swagger that reminded me of a builder. She did the talking.

They were visiting from Russia. She told us that earlier in the day they had been caught taking photos of tanks and had been arrested. They had their phones, cameras and passports confiscated and examined for evidence of clandestine operations. They had then been brought to the police station and interrogated separately.

“They asked us ‘How much are you being paid?’ They thought we were spying for Azerbaijan,” she said dryly.

“They would not let us call our embassy.” She shrugged and blew out a lungful of smoke into the afternoon sunlight.

These four Russians were most likely not allowed to inform their embassy as some punitive measure by the local authorities designed to put the squeeze on them. Such a measure would be a gross diplomatic transgression in almost any country in the world but because Nagorno-Karabakh is not any country in the world, they can function below the diplomatic radar. In other words, shutting Nagorno-Karabakh out of the party cuts both ways.

These Russians were now under house arrest in Ashot’s other homestay/apartment/hotel/whatever-anyone-asks-for-at-the-bus-stop without their passports and had to wait there until summoned by the authorities. They had not been charged and were given no timescale as to how long their wait would be.

Ashot showed us the place, it was basic but clean. He asked where we were going tomorrow. Turns out his Lada doubled as a taxi. He would be there at 9am tomorrow to pick us up.

***

Stepanakert is the size of a small town but cosmopolitan like most capitals. The air is thin and cool. Its main boulevard ends in a public park in the middle of a large roundabout. The centrepiece of this park is a fountain with one of those light and water shows where multi-coloured lights illuminate jets of water as they shoot into the air. Right next to the park though, are a set of bleachers permanently set up, ready to watch the yearly May 9 day military parade.

We wandered around, drank, ate and drank again but we were at a loss of what to do. I was just about to suggest we return to the hotel when we were approached by a guy who asked us where we were from and what would we like to do.

“We are looking for an authentic Nagorno-Karabakh restaurant, you know, somewhere where the locals go” I replied, the usual backpacker’s banality.

“Let’s go!” He said.

Was this another exercise in brute force salesmanship or just local hospitality? We rounded the corner just as a semi-trailer loaded with two small tanks roared past and up the main drag.

About fifteen minutes later we were sitting in a swanky restaurant, drinking beer and I was gently grilling our host on what it was like to grow up in Nagorno-Karabakh, or Atsakh as they preferred to call it.

“We don’t like Nagorno-Karabakh, it is an Azerbaijani word,” he said.

He had a patrician nose and ruddy cheeks. His manner was strange, a kind of hot-cold mixture of hospitality and aloofness. Occasionally the conversation would grind to a halt, and he would look at one of the television sets that was blaring MTV to us all, from multiple points in the room (in spite of its swank) and tune out leaving an awkward silence.

His name was Aram, he was 23 and working as a tour guide, having completed his degree at the local state university studying English and German. He explained his family history: his parents had been expelled from Azerbaijan, as many ethnic Armenians had during the Armenian, Azerbaijani war of 1988 and they had settled in Atsakh.

I noticed that he always communicated with the waitresses all in Russian.
“Why are you speaking Russian?”
“I speak Russian to all my friends.”
“But you consider yourself Armenian”
“Of course,” he said with a shrug as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
“So why don’t you speak Armenian?”
“I am not patriotic.”

He then showed us a picture of a group of Poles that he had taken on a bushwalk in the surrounding area.

“You know,” he said “if a woman in Nagorno-Karabakh gets married and is not a virgin then it is a big problem. Would you like to go to a night club?”

What did that have to do with anything? This was going nowhere. The conversation seemed as if every line of conversation was cut and respliced randomly. We thanked Aram and said goodbye, heading back to Ashot’s “homestay”.

Once there we found that Ashot had managed to find two more lost souls and put one on the couch and one on the floor. They were both from Tokyo, one called Rui, who had been all over the world and one called Fiyou who was a photographer.

Stay tuned for part two next week …

K Johnson is blogging regularly for Crikey while on his six-month trip to the countries most tourists never visit — think Azerbaijan, Transnistria, Iran, Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Kurdistan etc. Check out all the past stories and adventures he’s written about for Crikey here. You can read more about him at his blog Red Ink Run.

Stepping my way past smiling custom officials I was somewhat apprehensive as what to expect from Myanmar. I hadn’t read much about Myanmar, but from what I’d seen posted on the internet over the past few years I was, well, a little timid. Yet, as the airport doors slid open, I was welcomed by a familiar face — Lionel Messi. Brightly illuminated, the giant billboard was one of many surprising western influences welcoming me to Myanmar.

Driving to our hotel I was surprised at the complete saturation of western advertising and the adherence to traffic laws. Having lived in Cambodia for the past two years, the Yangon evening air seemed fresh. As I commented on this and lowered my window ever so slightly, a travelling companion direct from Australia recoiled at the pollutants in the air.

As morning broke, we clambered downstairs from our windowless hotel room, spilling onto uneven footpaths stained with betel nut. Following a Lonely Planet walking tour we fought blistering heat through markets, tea houses, China & India quarters, pagodas and faces decorated with Thanakha. The lack of motos and English architecture did its best to fool me into thinking I had indeed left Asia.

With the sun descending, the appeal of a far less taxing method of transport led us on a three hour train journey around the outskirts of Yangon. Quickly hurried towards the last train of the day, we were ushered into a mobile oven with fifteen smiling locals. With a sudden jolt the industrial beast sprang to life, nudging forward into the surrounds beyond. The driver, delirious with heat, sought not to stop at each station, merely slowing enough for locals to leap on and off with their wares, children, or live stock. It was all very orderly and polite. We rose for the elderly, they rose for mothers with children, who in turn rose for us.

The next day our prop plane coughed and spluttered as it launched us northwards to Inle Lakon, a short journey over a lush green landscape before landing safely in driving rain amongst mountainous scenery. Arriving at our guesthouse the owner excitedly explained we had arrived during the Phaung Daw Oo Pagoda Festival, declaring it the best time to see the lake’s decorated royal barges.

Tearing a map from the wall he described several other locations on the lake we’d stop at during the day when I couldn’t help but interrupt him at the phrase “Jumping Cat Monastery”

“Jumping Cats?” I repeated.

“Yes sir, jumping cats,” he replied, pointing to a faded photograph on the wall of a cat leaping through a plastic ring held several feet from the ground by a jolly looking monk.

At 5.30am the next morning, silhouettes of fishermen dotted the lake as our boat putted towards the procession of Inle leg rowers. The rowers ceremoniously tugged four holy Buddha images clockwise around the lake in full pageantry, stopping at each village allowing people to pay homage. Young men danced and sang atop the barges as rows of stringy, weathered looking men impressively manoeuvred the lengthy vessels with their oars and legs.

After stopping at several bustling markets, sleepy stalls and pagodas we finally arrived at the Jumping Cat Monastery. Purring with excitement, I leapt from the boat towards the monastery doors. To my utter disappointment there were no jumping cats. While we were certainly not lied to about the amount of cats, we were horrifically deceived as to the lack of their activity. Everywhere I turned there were cats sprawled in the sun performing nothing particularly gravity defying. Frantically searching for a monk I asked if the cats were indeed jumping. “No, no cats not jump today.”

Fortunately, once on dry land, I was able to drown my sorrows in street stall chapattis filled with lentil dahl coupled with Myanmar beers.

Sometime during the next morning (or afternoon) feeling slightly (incredibly) hung over, we said goodbye to our gracious guest house owner and headed towards the airport to board another prop plane as a magnificent thunderstorm hung in the cool mountain air.

Cycling through Bagan reminded me very much of a bad relationship speckled with great sex. The bikes weren’t quite built for westerners and the temperature didn’t exactly lend itself to physical activity but the incredible peacefulness and beauty of the ride made the unpleasantness worthwhile. The vastness of the temple complex isn’t easy to come to grips with until you work your way atop one the 4000-plus temples. The beautiful Ayeyarwady River bounds the northern and western border, while the plain itself is littered with pagoda stupas, temples, ordination halls and monasteries.

While on the bicycles I instantly fell into holiday mode, enjoying the spectacular scenery at a snail’s pace. And just when I thought I couldn’t feel any more at peace, we were treated to the most amazing sunset atop the Shwesandaw Paya. Although one of the most famous pagodas to watch the sunset, it was not overrun with camera touting tourists. In fact, after some initial snaps, many tourists were drawn to sit and watch the sun set over the infinite plain. A light haze hung in the air, flocks of birds swarmed over the horizon as the pagodas slowly changed colour in the setting sun.

William Jackson writes: The smell is the worst part. It was described to me as “excrement — diarrhoea to be exact”. With a recommendation like that, how could I resist?

Stinky tofu (chòu dòufu) is Taiwan’s most notorious dish. A form of fermented tofu, it’s similar to blue cheese in that those who like it love it and those who don’t tend to gag on it.

It’s made by marinading normal tofu from a few hours up to several months in a brine of milk, vegetables and meat with variations including dried shrimp, amaranth greens, mustard greens, bamboo shoots and Chinese herbs.

One of the easiest places to find it in Taipei is the Shilin Night Market, the best known and largest night market in the city and a mandatory stop on every tourist’s itinerary.

Huge crowds mill through street upon street of stalls flogging enough clothes, shoes and accessories to dress a small nation and when they get peckish hundreds of eateries offer all kinds of local street food from whole squid on a stick to crispy deep-fried chicken feet.

I knew I’d found the stinky tofu even before I saw the stall — it didn’t matter all the signs were in Chinese. You can smell it from 30 metres away and the description I had been given was spot on.

The cubes of tofu were still cooking — a guy wearing a surgical mask was using scissors to cut them up as they deep fried in a huge vat of boiling oil — so I joined a small queue of people and tried not to gag.

Some varieties of stinky tofu are fermented in the fetid soup so long they turn an evil dark green-blue colour.

But when I finally got a bag – for about a dollar fifty with some chilli, vinegar and soy sauce — it looked indistinguishable from the normal variety.

I held my breath, speared a piece and shoved it into my mouth. The texture was crunchy on the outside and smooth and creamy in the middle. It was actually pretty nice, if a little bland – like normal tofu.

But as soon as breathed through my nose it was like I’d just slurped down a load from a baby’s nappy.

I managed not to vomit, breathed through my mouth and ate another piece. And another.

Pretty soon I was halfway through the bag, but the hint — the threat — of the stench was always there on the edge of olfactory landscape. I began to get nauseous and wondered why I was putting myself through this. Was it worth it just for bragging rights?

With only two or three chunks to go, I gave up, and threw the rest in a bin. At least I’d tried it.

Then I went in search of a drink to wash the foul reek out of my mouth.

Read more from Will over at his blog The Bearded Wanderer, where this post was first published.