Spice Islands I

          Rainbowed shadow in Gunung Api crater           Bandaneira harbour           View from Gunung Api: Neira, Besar and Syahrir (Pisang) Islands           Bandaneira waterfront           Bandaneira morning scene           Bandaneira's Dutch cemetery           Decaying Dutch mansion           Prime banda nutmegs and mace           The Indonesian Pelni liner "Ciremai" departs Bandaneira           Full moon over Gunung Api Rainbowed shadow in Gunung Api crater

The Bandas were once the world's sole source of nutmeg and mace, the crimson filigree that embraces the nutmeg kernel. Together with Ternate and Tidore, the islands to which the clove tree was once endemic, these remote jewels of Maluku were the original fabled Spice Islands. Today the cultivation of those spices has spread far and wide and Maluku has lost its lucrative monopoly, but given the invasion, bloodshed and ruin that accompanied nature's boon, perhaps that's not such a bad thing.

At the end of the best trip ever...

          Summer camp in the Pshart Valley near Murghab           Best mates, Poi Mazar           End of the road, Bartang River valley           Momosaduk and Koban take a break on the Pamir Highway near Bash Gumbez           Entering the Wakhan Corridor behind our Khargush Pass guide :)           Ladies preparing vegies (yay!), Vanj           Rare high speed action, Murghab River valley           Main street strategy meeting, Khorog           Koban cools Uazie at 4000m near Kyzyl Rabat           Chai party, Poi Mazar Summer camp in the Pshart Valley near Murghab

Right now, Amber and I are holed up in a hotel room in Dushanbe, the stately capital of Tajikistan. We've just spent four gruelling weeks exploring the Pamirs by jeep. The mountains and the people who inhabit them are awe-inspiring and beautiful, but a "road" is just a concept out there and vegetarianism is a complete myth!

Our trusty Russian UAZ jeep needed many kinds of cajoling, with regular roadside TLC required for carburetor, radiator, starter motor, exhaust and tyres. Amber and I were required to push it to make it go on numerous occasions, but the beast was essentially indestructible and got us everywhere we needed to go. Some of the places we needed to go were on the other side of things we thought it impossible to get a vehicle to cross, but our intrepid driving/exhortation/TLC team of Kobanich and Momosaduk were supremely (and comically) competent.

In the end, there were only three things that denied us passage:

Not really about Tajikistan. Just sayin'...

I've just woken up, disoriented and lost, for about the 350^th morning in a row.

Slowly I fix myself, grasping at constants. The sound of a great volume of water rushing down rocks to my left. Futons and felt carpets beneath my head and hands. Unvarnished beams of poplar and willow, the faint scent of incense trapped in their grain. Dawn's light softly filtered through thin curtains, reflecting dully off whitewashed mud-brick walls. Much of that light is blocked by an enormous pyramidal shadow – one of many mountain heads closing the walls of this valley.

I am in Tajikistan. The range forming the gorge of Bartang Suu and the roaring of the cascades confirm it.

Tumbling Along

These blog-slack tumbleweeds figured they had better explain their current tumbles before you all give us up for lost.

I think we left off “catching up” in Jordan, which is a bit disgraceful because that was about 3 months ago and we've seen parts of seven more countries since then.

Temporarily skipping over Syria, Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan - I know, it's a bit of a skip, 6000 miles or so - we're now in Kyrgyzstan, land of the nomad, squeezing in some laptop time in our suburban yurt. (The yurt is a very cool domicile).

The Chinese, in their infinite wisdom (ahem) have decided not to issue anyone in Kyrgyzstan with a Chinese visa, and have thrown our existing plans into complete disarray. Thankfully tumbleweeds are adaptable little creatures, and Kyrgyzstan one of the loveliest places on earth to be “stuck”, so we're not suffering a bit from China's rejection. There's nothing like gorgeous summer pastures, wildflowers, rushing mountain streams and enormous skies to help get you over the no-visa blues.

We now have a good many friends roaming various parts of the globe, so just in case there's a chance of crossing paths with any of you, here are the new, improved and entirely China-free plans: