Eganistan

I f le w from Istanbul to Samarkand, whose name is so associated with the Silk Road that I can scarcely believe it’s a real place that exists in the twenty-first century. But the plan wasn’t to linger there. In stead, I wanted to shoot out as far west as I could and then work my way back east toward Samarkand. It seemed more fitting to have it as a culmination of my journey through Silk Road Uzbekistan than as the start. But it also has an airport with direct connections to Istanbul. On my flight from Istanbul to Samarkand, I was seated next to Murad, who was heading home to Uzbekistan after a year of working in Istanbul. He spoke good Turkish and Russian but no English and the conversation confirmed for me that my Russian, while poor, is still much better than my Turkish. He was interested to learn that I was Canadian and when he asked how a person might get a visa to work in Canada, I noticed a number of heads turn in the rows in front of me. “How do I move to Canada?” is one common ...

An abrupt change of plans has resulted in an abrupt change of scenery. I blame Azerbaijan.   Azerbaijan has a weird border policy. You can fly in, you can fly out, you can leave the country overland, but you cannot enter the country overland. They closed all their land borders at the start of Covid and decided they liked it that way and haven’t reversed the policy. Azerbaijan is not known as a beacon of political liberty.   It’s possible to get a direct flight from Tbilisi to Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, but, oddly enough, it’s actually cheaper to fly via Istanbul—two hours in the opposite direction. I suppose one consequence of Istanbul being a major international hub is that flights through there tend to be cheaper. Which works out well for me for the most part.   The whole “overland across Asia” plan was already severely compromised with the inaccessibility of Iran so I’ve decided to jettison it altogether. There were a few points of interest in Azerbaijan but nothing t...