The road and the backpack

By Paolo Ghidini

A journey of wisdom lost and found

An ordinary 26 years old decided to quit his job and endure a two years round-the-world-trip. On the road he found friends, love, amazing sights and changed his way to look at life.

Take on this amazing journey across Asia, the South Pacific and South America, and you may change your idea about "backpacking", whatever your idea is.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paolo Ghidini
• Release date: Nov 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9788868558703

Book preview

PAOLO GHIDINI

THE ROAD AND THE BACKPACK

A journey of wisdom lost and found

The aleatory travel plan

(otherwise known as contents)

Prologue

1- First steps in Uzbekistan

2- Tajikistan: what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger

3- A new life in China

4- Meditations, beers and friends in southern China

5- Charmed by Myanmar

6- Back to reality. The Banana Pancake Trail

7- Good morning Vietnam! (ok, lame one)

8- Life along the riverside

9- Kia Ora – Welcome to NZ

10- Life in The Bay

11- Winter, waves, wonders

12- From Tauranga to Tonga

13- Under the wide and starry sky

14- Pushing

15- Up and down the country

16- On top of an apricot tree

17- Tango y Futbol

18- Mate country

19- Patagonian blisters

20- Viva la vida chilena!

21- Altiplanica

22- Andean Night Fever

23- Finding my way through Peru... on Jesus’ path

24- Quiteness, Quito, Quilotoa, and more

25- The road to wisdom

26- Caribbean chronicles

27- Coffee till the end

Epilogue

Prologue

Igasp, I crawl, I try to reach the next rock, the dust is everywhere, for god’s sake, I cant breathe, I just want to get out of here so badly and so I keep slithering through the narrow passage until I reach a dead end. No. No way I’m going to stop here. I haven’t spent all my youth studying nonsense just to die in the deep dusty darkness of a forgotten coal mine! I start scratching the surface of the rock, I scratch, I dig, I kick the wall, I cry and I’m pretty sure the stink I smell is coming straight from my pants but I keep kicking, scratching, pushing...

-komla pubhyuskin ye!*

What?!!?

-komla pubhyuskin ye, Mister.

*Not sure this is exactly what the man said to me, but, unless you speak Russian or Tajik or another insane Cyrillic based language, do you really care about it?

Damn it, heaven looks like old linoleum and broken neon lights and angels have mustaches and a... Tashkent Airport Security plate on their chest. It was just a dream. Jet lag hit me like a truck right in the middle, there, on the head and I fell asleep on the floor of a Central Asian airport. I had no idea what the man with the mustache and peculiar salami breath wanted from me, but I guessed he didn’t like me waiting there, tucked in the space between two closed shops. Well, you would think I’d have to have been pretty scared to have an official barking  some unknown Russian order at me in the middle of the night, but truly, the only thing I was worried about was survival, and survival meant taking a plane to Urgench at 5.45AM. And the airport waiting room clock displayed 5:00AM. Shit! Better get moving and fast, who cares about the man. Da, da, yeah, as you please. 

Finding out that no plane was leaving to Urgench from that airport and the consequent run through the shashlik (barbecue) morning sellers in a severe, deep onion and garlic smell to what I discovered happened to be the regional airport (a dirty shed, thank god just a few hundred meters away), doesn’t appear to you like a triumphal and epic way to begin my journey; the journey we spent nights talking and dreaming about, the adventure of a lifetime… Well, you should wait and listen to the rest. What follows is the account of that trip. As accurate as I can after two years. My journey to Samoa and back, all the way around. With me, just my backpack. Ahead, just the road.

What follows is the account of that trip. As accurate as I can after two years. My journey to Samoa and back, all the way around. With me, just my backpack. Ahead, just the road.

1

First steps in Uzbekistan

Next hing I knew, I was on an old German-made airplane like from the ‘80, with over-madeup hostesses and a big fella (again, with mustache and salami breath) sitting next to me.

Ok, I have to confess: again the desynchronosis condition, otherwise known as jet lag, struck me and I almost immediately fell asleep, but I clearly remember before passing out that I thought of you. I wondered whether you were happy or not, wherever you were in that moment, and that I wanted to make you know that I was finally doing it, that I was on my way east, and I imagined you would have been proud of me once you knew it... Anyways, those thoughts were lost easily with the rocking rhythm of the plane jumping up and down with the air currents and soon we landed on that concrete stripe placed in the yellow sand, which was the Urgench international airport.

As the heat hit us with force immediately after the doors opened, I regretted that I had chosen the airplane for the first part of the trip. True, I saved a lot of money, time, and hassle of crossing southern Russia, but I was coming from the cool Bergamo at the end of summer to the desert oven of Uzbekistan, and once there, it didn’t feel like a good idea at all. Here I was. Setting foot for the first time precisely in Central Asia. I never really understood why they call it Central Asia. I’ve always thought of it as kind of western, being an outpost of the former Soviet Union in the middle-east. What is Western Asia supposed to be then? Ukraine?

Perhaps because I had all these questions in my mind (of course not, but I like to think of it as this way) I’d been ripped off first thing in the morning: as I would have discovered later, I over-paid five times for the taxi ride to the mystic and secret town of Khiva. on the road, I started to see some typical aspect of an Uzbek landscape: cotton fields, sand, people selling giant watermelons by the roadside, people selling gasoline in bottles at the roadside, roadsides lined with cars queuing at the gas stations for gasoline. At least my taxi-driver looked and behaved like an honest man, and tried to make up for the previous cheating by dropping me off at the  cheapest guesthouse in Khiva, just inside the majestic ancient walls of the city. The 220 pound woman that owned the Otabek B&B inspired safety and warmth (geezz... it’s already 42°C outside...) and promised me a luxurious breakfast. Deal done ! 

I won’t describe you everything I saw on this trip, we are both travelers, we both know this isn’t necessary and it’s not the most important part of a journey. What really matters is the people we meet, the experiences we live, and the lessons we learn.

And so, here’s what the first day brought me:

People: I was enjoying the heavenly breeze coming from an electric fan on my wet skin after the shower, with just a towel wrapped around my pelvis, when someone knocked at my door: her blue eyes almost knocked me out (ok, maybe it was the jet lag, the heat, and everything else again). She had an honest, shy look on her face. I had just met Justine from Belgium. We were the only guests there.

-Hi... I’m sorry, I heard another traveler arrived... so I came here to ask if you were interested on sharing a car-ride to Bukhara tomorrow? There’s one place left to cross the Kizilkum Desert...

I would have liked to see the look on my face at that moment... comparable to the face of a tuna, probably.

-ehm... oook...

I had just set foot in Uzbekistan and I was already changing my mind on taking it easy, on traveling slowly... damn it! I thought: go with the flow man!

Experiences: I spent the whole day wandering around town, soaking up the magic and the exoticism of the place, between an Uzbek pop-star filming his new video-clip and the elegant women walking, or better said: floating in their long, colorful dresses, protecting themselves from the sun with elaborately designed umbrellas. At sunset, I played with kids by a statue of a man who’s believed to have invented algebra. A few years before I would have been happy to be there just to vandalize the statue, but right then I was happy and enchanted enough to forget my hate for mathematics sciences and let myself enjoy the light and the people. Someone even invited me to a dinner party! I didn’t understand what the party was for: a wedding? A birthday? A funeral? Anyway, the food was fantastic, the people too. Between a dance and a music performance, vodka flowed free and abundant.

Lessons: vodka gives you headache. Big headache.

So I found myself with a bad headache in the backseat of an old Russian car, pressed between the door and a Belgian woman. Next to her was her husband, a gray-curly-haired Mexican man, and in the front seat Justine and the driver, a man who reflected exactly the profile of a typical Uzbek man: slightly overweight, tanned skin, flashy large watch at his wrist, traditional cap on his head and, quite shocking for a westerner to believe, gold in his mouth (in the form of golden teeth).

Six hours aboard this little furnace, riding on a terribly paved road made for an endless ride that eventually ended in a parking lot just outside the car-restricted area of the Jewish quarter in Boukhara. After we (Justine and I) had found a nice B&B for a few bucks, we spent a couple of days discovering this charming town and ourselves. Between one stroll through the bazaar and a beer by the poolside (the heart of the town is a pool, surrounded by bars, restaurant and shashlik stalls) we talked a lot about our lives, what had been and what would be in the future. We came to kind of know each other’ s in such a short time. You know me, there’s never been anything particularly exciting about myself, living my whole 25 years of life in the same village, but this girl: man you should have listened to her. She was a great judoka, she speaks six languages fluently, she had recently broken up with a Afghan-war hero-chopper pilot-photo model-boyfriend and she had spent her previous nine months in an Iranian University to study her 7th foreign language! After all, who wouldn’t want to learn Farsi? When she talked about it, it sounded like the most natural thing in the world.

Here in Boukhara I managed to try most of the Uzbek cuisine: in addition to the ubiquitous shashlik, there’s the heavy greased plov (a pilaf-kind of rice) and the equally greased shurpa (a mutton meat soup): everything is about meat, and the fatter, the better! What really excited me about eating in Central Asia was the fresh food: melons, watermelons, apricots, raisins, grapes, walnuts and cashews are enormous and delicious beyond any imagination, even for an Italian used to Mediterranean flavors and a Belgian that just ended her stay in Iran. We shared a double bed room without touching each other, spending hours and hours talking before falling asleep. The morning soon arrived and we had to part, heading in different directions, but hopeful we would meet again a few days later somewhere else on the road. 

And as a matter of fact, we did. And more than once: separating and joining our path continuously, building a strong bond that carried us to the magnificent mausoleums and madrassahs of Samarkand, talking about life and death at the convivial Bahodir, on Tamerlan’s footprints at Shakrisabz, to the capital Tashkent, sharing meals, taxi rides, bread wheels and post-soviet filthy hotel rooms.

We got to understand the extension of this country and the diversity of its landscapes, from the desert dotted with oasis towns in the west to the fertile plans of the Fergana Valley where all fruits and vegetables are grown and the Soviets decided all the cotton of the Union should be produced, and even today Uzbekistan is one of the main cotton exporter in the world. Justine helped me so much on these first days on the road, she translated everything for me, allowing me to understand deeply all the different faces of a fascinating culture.

The last night together, in the Fergana Valley town of Kohkand, we touched, for the first time, and we felt asleep hugging each other. I didn’t know what that meant, probably nothing, or maybe everything: to share. In that hug we shared two weeks of our life, and two lives as well. She headed to Tajikistan the next morning, while I embarked on an overcrowded bus to Fergana, Andijon and the Kyrgyz Border, my next step toward the far east.

2

Tajikistan: what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger

By the time I reached the Uzbek Customs  on foot with my trusty backpack, I had already got used to this way of moving called independent budget traveling: packed like chickens in a local no suspensions bus or bargaining with seemingly shameless taxi drivers, walking for miles under scorching sun or trying to get the most comfortable position on a train wagon aisle, this is life for us.

Two buses, two shared taxi rides and two miles of walking are what ( I expected) separate Kokhand from the border. The unexpected was behind the corner: a soldier stopped me before even reaching the customs. Of course he was being kind and was trying to explain himself as best as he could but my lack of knowledge of the Russian language made it impossible for me to understand a single word. What was clear was that I couldn’t get through. Why  remained a mystery for hours. I spent hours in vain waiting under the mid-day sun, with an armed guard keeping his rifle pointed at me, trying to reach the Italian embassy by phone. In case you’re asking yourself: Yes, I was totally freaking out especially because the Visa on my passport was going to expire in two days time and I absolutely HAD TO cross that border. I remembered the story of an Italian dude kept in custody for a month in a cell because he overstayed his visa. While I do have an adventurous spirit, my idea of adventure isn’t at all about sharing a cell with some tattooed drug smuggler. Two and a half hours later, a senior officer finally arrived at the post. He spoke English and he revealed the mystery to me: as retaliation against the Kyrgyz new revolutionary government, Uzbek authorities decided to close all their borders with the neighbor country to every tourist or foreigners alike.

I was so frustrated while I crossed the valley back toward the Capital with a group of Spaniards.

Just a few days before, hearing some rumors about tensions between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, I had written an e-mail to my embassy asking for clarifications about the border situation. No problem at all! had been the answer. I couldn’t imagine that my first little odyssey wasn’t over. I discovered with a little of google-ing that my only two options were flying away from the country (too expensive!) or trying to get an express visa for Tajikistan and change my travel plan for good. That has been my choice. Unfortunately enough (but that was the mood of the moment: bad luck around every corner) it hadn’t been easy either. I had to face a corrupt policemen at the embassy first, get the proper documents through an unknown and unsigned agency then, catch a last minute shared taxi to the border and, once there, endure a two hour’s complete custom check, including coins, toothpaste and an interrogation about every single receipt of the hotels and guesthouses that I had stayed at.  Well, here, right in the middle of one of the most challenging periods of my life, precariously balanced between the harshness of the past and future adventures, I walked gloriously between those two remote frontiers, a smile on my face, heading into the