A journey across Transnistria

My first visit to Transnistria followed on from a field visit to Moldova, once one of the wine production regions of the Soviet central planning system.  Moldova is holder of a Guinness World record for the largest single underground wine storage area –over 200 km of tunnels - Yes 200 km.

Moldova had gained its independence with the fall of communism and turned toward Romania as its bridge to the west whilst moving to the Latin script. The  Russian minority objected and a short war in 1992 ensued with Russia invited in as peacekeepers. 

The result is Transnistria a small section of eastern Moldova across the Nistria River which has remained determinedly Russian. 

It is not a recognised state and appears more Russian than Russia itself. Entering the capital Tiraspol was quite literally stepping back in time to another era.

Travel across the border is reasonably straightforward and Transnistrians appear to be able to travel to Moldova without any problems. However as it is only recognised by a few equally marginal states such as South Ossetia and Abkhazia you are likely to be without consular support if you have a problem.

The people are polite and always excited to try out their English language skills.  Chisinau to Tiraspol to Odessa is in the summer a journey through soviet history in the region but clearly in 2025 you may wish to review your holiday and adventure destinations for the time being.

The Battle of Talas

Based in Osh in the early 1990's, I needed to inspect factories in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek to see if they could supply the kit I needed for a NGO programme in the central Tien Shan mountains. There was only one route from Osh to Bishkek through the Tien Shan which at that time was difficult even in summer.

With heavy snow on the ground and no local flights operational, the only alternative route was considerably longer. Andijan to Tashkent and then through Kazakhstan via Chimkent and Taraz then back into Kyrgyzstan to Bishkek, effectively circumventing the Tien Shan range.

Fuel was purchased from vendors with glass jars by the side of the road. And then sliding from side to side into banks of deep snow I headed towards the Kazakh border and Chimkent. Away to all sides the snow lay deep and continued to fall.



Soon the snow was blowing horizontally

Back then Chimkent was still a lead smelting centre for the old centrally planned economy. Large clouds of dark brown smoke emitted from huge chimneys offered a distant welcome. One can only imagine what it was like to live there.

Between Chimkent and Taraz a local bus stopped. It was one of those moments captured in time as an old lady alighted and marched off into the deep snow with no destination in sight, The wind chill outside was more suited to a polar explorer.

Off into a polar landscape

The next way point on the journey was Taraz. Nearby in 751 AD the defining battle of Talas was fought between Arabs and the Chinese Tang Dynasty which changed the course of history for Central Asia.

The Abbasid Caliphate won and Chinese influence and Buddhism thereafter faded in Central Asia, with a corresponding rise in the influence of Islam . There is also a belief that Chinese paper makers captured during the battle facilitated the transfer of paper making technology to the Muslim world and later to the West. Until that point the Chinese had kept the manufacture of paper a state secret. 

Then finally I arrived back in Bishkek which is one of the most welcoming cities in Central Asia. Of recent construction, it remains a time capsule of Czarist and Soviet town planning with wide boulevards and a central monument to the Kyrgyz hero Manas.

Manas

The Epic of Manas is a poem of over 500,000 lines recalling his leadership of the Kyrgyz around the 16th Century, making it the third longest poem in history (after the Mahabharata and the Tibetan Epic of King Gesar). 

Traditional Kyrgyz storytellers known as the Manaschi, recite the Epic. Those few that can recite the entire Epic from memory are revered as Great Manaschis.

A winter in Osh - Kyrgyzstan

For over 2,000 years Osh has been a landmark of Central Asia.  Alexander the Great passed through on his way towards India and it was a key trading centre on the Silk Road. It is also one of the few cities left from the old days that retains its statue of Lenin in the central square.

Osh is a gateway to the Pamir Highway that leads to Kherog in Tajikistan and then finally on to Dushambe. It is an epic journey.

I have since been back many times but that first winter in the early 90's was a real shock after Africa. The cold and wind chill ensured every field trip required careful planning.

The old order had departed back to the Russian Federation taking its expertise and Kyrgyzstan existed in a surreal twilight zone, quite unsure of what was going to happen next. 

People made the best of a difficult time. Dances were held in the Hotel Osh. The heating had failed and in that sub zero freezer, people danced dressed in thick fur coats and hats. Stalls out in the snow sold shashliks and plov and champanski and beer. Soft drinks and beer were hopeless as they froze in the bottle before you could swallow them. Some local vodkas were drinkable, but many tasted suspiciously of diluted diesel.

Above Osh is the Sulayman Mountain, Kyrgyzstan's world heritage site. A mosque on the top was built by Babur a decendant of Tamerlane. Streams of ribbons attached to branches mark the way to the top, left to invoke prayers and wishes, particularly by women hoping for children.

On top of the Sulayman Mountain

Osh Market is one of the biggest in Central Asia and that winter it was encased in thick ice which made staying upright virtually impossible.

The crowd was so dense it was also virtually impossible to fall over, so when you began to slide it was a human version of pin ball as with increasing speed you bounced off the Kyrgyz around you until someone would grab hold until you regained your balance. Most fruit were  seasonally available and non existent in winter. The pickled variety for winter consumption left a lot to be desired.

Bus stop in the shape of the national hat

When spring arrived the city was transformed into a carpet of blossom. The snows finally melted and travel into the surrounding mountains was at last possible.

Hanoi & the hill tribes

Hanoi in the early 1990’s was different from Saigon. Much more a sense of State control. 

The museum's tribute to the war of independence included a panoramic model of Dien Bien Phu surrounded by French tourists of a certain age recalling their place in the battle. There are numerous collections of arms, munitions and pilots helmets recovered during the fighting.

A military history museum

The traffic in Hanoi even then was becoming a challenge. The side roads were still quiet, but in the busiest hours the main streets were a continuous flow of mopeds and motorbikes moving at speed and stopping for nothing. You really did take your life in your hands when crossing the road.  These days it's much worse.

Before the traffic really deteriorated

At night the streets came alive to the noise and smells of Hanoi street food. The locals set out their stalls on the pavement and start cooking.  My favourite was an elderly lady who turned the front of an oily garage into her emporium, producing the most amazing chilli beef on a two upturned crates.

The Hanoi Flag Tower.
Over 200 years old with views across  the city .

Hanoi was the base to travel upto the Sapa hill tribes for a proposed development programme. In the early 1990's  Sa Pa District was just opening up and outsiders were a rarity.

Sa Pa is a land to take your breath away, but only when the sun comes out. Otherwise the view is restricted to a few metres of fog and drizzle and there are many days of fog in Sa Pa.

Rice terraces

Zanzibar - The Spice Islands

Zanzibar is a unique place that draws you back. 

An immense sense of history pervades the main Island Unguja, from the first Portuguese explorers  through to the rule of the Omani Arabs and  Livingstone’s last lodging before he left for the interior.

The magical Stone Town is now a UNESCO world heritage site, and the cathedral of Christ Church  built on the site of one of Africa’s biggest slave markets with the altar sited over the location of the main whipping post.  The Cathedral also holds a wooden cross made from the tree under which Livingstone’s heart was buried at Chitambo.

It is also as everyone keeps reminding you  the birthplace of the Parsi - Farrokh Bulsara whose family practised the Zoroastrian religion first brought to these Island's by Persian traders around the time of the decline of the Roman Empire. Farrokh was better known to the wider world as Freddie Mercury – lead singer of Queen.

On the beach

Zanzibar also comprises the smaller island of Pemba to the north of the main Island.  Here there are far fewer visitors, but many who do come, often across vast distances are there as students. Pemba remains an important centre of learning for voodoo and traditional healers.

Stone Town remains a must see and my favourite place to stay is the great Emersons House, a restored Omani Palace. 

The east coast beaches border crystal clear waters and the smell of cloves drifts across the Islands from the plantations.

seaweed farming

   

 

There are many layers to the history and culture of this place including a volatile political record since independence from Britain in 1963.

When you scratch the surface, there is a great deal more to these islands than most travellers will ever see.


Sunset

30,000 feet over the Sahara - Flying in Africa & Central Asia

Across Africa and Central Asia international flights are by and large uneventful, with  regional hubs such as Abidjan and Nairobi perfectly OK.   However, mention old favourites such as N’djili and Murtala Muhammed and hardened field workers will wilt at the memory.

In fairness many of the truly awful anecdotes hark back to darker times.

Murtala used to be nothing more than an organised crime shakedown from the plane to and including the taxi outside.  No one who knew would go anywhere near the place. You either flew to Kano or over to Togo and drove back across the border.

These days it is a revelation in comparison. This was certainly helped by a shoot to kill policy, to deter the habit of blocking international aircraft taxiing on the ramp and then robbing the cargo hold as passengers looked on through the plane windows.

N’djili in DRC certainly has seen better days. Today it is OK getting in if you retain a steady nerve, though more of a challenge getting out. 

International flights from the better organised hubs can still be interesting.

Two from memory are a hard landing at night in Jomo Kenyatta. The pilot of the twin prop came on the tannoy to announce that whilst we may have considered it a hard landing he thought it was excellent, as the airport had just had a total power failure including the landing lights.

Having found our way into the customs hall by a set of stairs (it was pitch black), I spent the next hour  standing over the customs officer with my torch whilst he stamped everyone’s passports.

At Dushambe the plane was wildly overloaded.   The standing passengers forced off through the front exit, promptly ran to the back and returned through the rear exit. This continued in suffocating heat until the guards finally closed the front exit and stood with pointed rifles at the rear.

A vivid memory was an airbus flight from Abidjan on a European airline that thankfully no longer exists. Suffice to say it was the national carrier for a country created in 1831.

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Somewhere over the Sahara on a beautiful moonlit night one of the engines made the sort of noise you really do not want to hear at 30,000 ft, on a two engine plane.

Then slowly and inexorably we began to descend.

Absolutely nothing was heard from the flight desk as crowds began forming at the windows pointing excitedly. Time passed the dunes grew larger, and ground speed increased.  By now the passengers was really excited, some were kneeling and praying.

The sound of the landing gear going down caused even more panic as belly landings are not performed well with wheels extended. Looking out the windows there was absolutely nothing to see apart from high moonlit dunes, speeding past just below us. Then suddenly we flared and with a loud bang we were down.

All was still and calm. There was no communication from the deck. Time passed until an exit door slowly opened and a head appeared in the darkness. We were all marched down a set of steps and into a small passenger holding area. The crew disembarked separately and vanished forever.

It turned out that we were in the Algerian Sahara. Our onward journey to Europe was finally accomplished in one of the decrepit Russian planes that abound Africa.  After the fall of communism, they just never went home.

The pool by the Jacaranda - Nairobi Kenya

Travel has inevitably included many nights in far flung hotels ranging from rat infested hovels  to historic gems. Favourites have included Deans in Peshawar and the beach huts in Zanzibar - with revolving ceiling fans at neck height.  In Liberia Mamba Point was at one time one of the few safe place to stay in the country with nightly rates fixed accordingly, and Abidjan's Hotel Marly endlessly playing Celine Dion’s album 'D'eux' .

For Kenya, The Fairview was the traditional colonial hotel in Nairobi exuding character, with the  balcony of  The Norfolk  the place to meet.  However the old Jacaranda remains my favourite. That Jacaranda no longer exists in its old form. It was taken over by new owners  revamped and is now a modern hotel. Back then every day was a new adventure.

The Jacaranda became the base for many aid workers going in to or from Somalia during the fighting of the early 1990’s.

Sometimes water flowed from the taps and sometimes it did not.   One day a broken water mains was repaired when everyone had gone out for the day leaving their non functioning taps on, resulting in a spectacular waterfall from the top balconies with the torrent pouring out under the doors. 

On another day the pool was a sea of shampoo bubbles. It was the only place left to wash. It took some time to clean the pool out and refill it for its normal use.

The Jacaranda sometimes employed newly qualified staff fresh from catering college. 

Two stood behind me one evening having a blazing row - should I be served from the left or the right. Eventually the girl threw the bowl of soup to the floor and stormed off; I remained unfed.

I also managed to incur the worst bout of food poisoning ever and spent a night doubled up, but these are minor hiccups compared to the effect the Jacaranda had on those just back from the Somali bush.

The place was an oasis of calm in hectic Nairobi; the food by and large great; and the staff welcoming. It's attractiveness grew exponentially when camping out in some forsaken corner of unloved Somali desert.

The one distressing quirk was the outside door the staff   used to enter the kitchen. It always shut with a loud bang.  It did so with a group recently evacuated from Somalia sitting by the pool. You have never seen so many reflex dive for cover.