Backpacks and Bra Straps (8 page)

By the time we’d absorbed this mini history lesson, we’d made our way into the cathedral. I was overwhelmed as I attempted to grasp the magnitude of the intricate details, the extravagance of the golden altar, the exquisite pastel paintings above, and the harmonious a cappella voices of the male choir echoing up through the giant domes. The ginormous, three-tiered candle chandelier alone was more than anyone could possibly absorb in one visit.

The cathedral’s ambience naturally compelled all who visited to reverence, so I was shocked when Bree whispered, “I don’t like feeling like I have to be all quiet and serious in here.”

“Really?” I began to explain the effect it was having on me. “This is a beautiful sanctuary, a lovely place to escape from reality. And the sound of the choir practicing is amazing. I just love it. I could sit myself down on one of these wooden pews for an entire day.” The chanting we’d heard in Buddhist monasteries had gently soothed me into a meditative state, whereas the singing here made me feel like a bird taking its first successful flight from the nest.

When I caught Arman smiling at me, happy to see me dreaming to the music, I had to thank him. “It’s so beautiful here, Arman. Thanks so much for bringing us.”

I couldn’t help but blush when he replied, “You very beautiful, too.” It was the first time I’d ever had a guy tell me I was beautiful, and it felt strange and lovely at the same time.

We covered another ten kilometres (6.2 mi) of Almaty on foot, and then it was definitely time for us to indulge in some Kazakh
plov.
This dish of rice mixed with meat, onions, and carrots was a standard offering throughout most of Central Asia. Mom paid the bill to show our appreciation of Arman’s many kindnesses, but he was noticeably disappointed when he found out what she’d done. He considered treating his guests to a meal to be a great honour, and we’d unknowingly denied him that pleasure. Just another minor clash of cultural norms…

After our private city tour, we took Arman on another wild goose chase. We still had some travel issues to sort out, and we figured it would be best to resolve them while we still had the help of a local. Though our Kazakh visa was good for thirty days, we were required to register within five days of arriving in the country. Ammon was adamant about avoiding a repeat visit to a police station because we’d failed to register, the mistake he’d made during his first visit to Russia. The only problem was, the registration office was nowhere to be found. Option number two was to register at one of the fancy hotels, but we soon discovered it cost a small fortune to do it that way. As it didn’t seem worth the extra cost and hassle, we headed back to our hotel empty handed, so to speak. Arman took us to a local, very modern supermarket where we could stock up on food before saying goodbye.

I went to bed that night thinking of how much I had learned since climbing aboard the train in Semey. What a surprise Kazakhstan had turned out to be! I never would’ve imagined we’d meet dear Arman Longsocks there. Who woulda thunk it?

The next morning we were going to attempt once again to register when Ammon burst in through the door and announced. “Pack your stuff, we have to leave.”

“Why?” Bree asked, lowering her toothbrush.

“They’re kicking us out. They’re doing renos or some crap like that,” he said.

“What?” Mom looked confused for once.

“Why didn’t they tell us that last night?” I asked, decidedly annoyed.

“We were lucky we even got to stay the night.”

“How is it that we’re always so very darned lucky?” I muttered.

Ignoring my gripe, Ammon explained, “We could figure out the registration and stay awhile, but since we couldn’t even find the place yesterday, even with Arman’s help, and since it took us so long to find these rooms, I think we may as well just keep moving. Maybe we just have to leave this country and settle for Kyrgyzstan visas.”

And just like that, our plans were tossed. We weren’t willing to risk getting stuck in an ex-Soviet country without valid travelling documents. Ammon knew that we could get a same-day visa application to Kyrgyzstan in Almaty for eighty dollars apiece. The express processing would be expensive, but it would cost less than registering in Kazakhstan and finding a new hotel. We quickly stuffed everything into our backpacks and were loaded up and gone within minutes. Wobbling down the same narrow metal staircase, we were unceremoniously spat out into the street and once again took off in “that” direction.

We walked a long way in the heat carrying our backpacks as we searched for the embassy, but when we finally found the address, a lady shouted from a window that it had been moved. We were all at the end of our ropes. Turning on our heels, we made a quick stop at an Internet café to get the new address. Taking off again on foot with the new address in hand, we finally arrived at the embassy nearly an hour later with another ten kilometres (6.25 mi) under our belts.

“Why do I feel like I recognize this place?” I said, suspiciously surveying the area before we stepped into the Kyrgyzstan embassy.

“Because our hotel is right around the corner,” Ammon said, too angry to care that we were mad at him for not having up-to-date information. “We’re not even a five-minute walk from where we started!”

If looks could kill, they would have – three times over – as we all glared at poor Ammon’s back.

100 Days
9

“W
hat is this dirty rat?” Ammon squealed.

“What? A rat? Is it dead?! Where is it?” I jumped around the room looking down at my feet. Ammon was backed into a corner, his fists tucked under his chin.

‘No! Eeew!” he continued with a shudder. “That! That thing on my bag.”

“Oh, that?” Bree said, waving it off. “That’s just my underwear.”

“That is not underwear,” he insisted. “That skimpy thing can hardly be considered wearable.” He was still cowering helplessly, not daring to even look at it.

“It’s called a thong, dummy,” Bree said, reaching it in one stride and picking it off his bag to rescue him from ‘the rat’.

“That,” he said, pointing defensively, “is not acceptable!” We’d been in the room less than twenty-four hours, and Bree had already managed to throw the contents of her entire bag around the room, which looked like it had been hit by a hurricane. She had never been what you’d call tidy. Having grown up sharing a room with her, I was glad to see Ammon and Mom finally getting a taste of what I’d had to deal with my whole life.

“What’s next?! Bras?”

I couldn’t help but laugh at my brother’s pale face. Even after so many months of being together 24/7, we still found ways to frighten him. Perhaps it was a bit too much for him. I imagine he sometimes might have preferred to travel solo.

Nudging me, Bree rolled her eyes at him, denying him any sympathy.

“Don’t bump me when I’m writing,” I snapped, but then softened the blow by announcing, “August 12, 2005. You know what’s special about that date? It’s our hundredth day on the road!”

“Wow, really?” Mom looked up, and even Ammon seemed surprised.

“Yep,” I said, flipping my journal around to show her. The top left column recorded the date, the middle always listed the places we’d seen that day, and, from the pedometer on Ammon’s belt, the distance we’d covered was documented in the third column.

We were in Bishkek, the capital city of Kyrgyzstan, when I got to write ‘Day 100!’ in the top right corner of my page. I very briefly toyed with the idea that I might one day be adding a zero to that, signifying a thousand days on the road, but quickly shut the thought out, lest the universe overhear.

It felt so unbelievable that I added a few stars to show just how extra special it was. And it was, for me to be adding any kind of doodling in my journal. Though she meant well, I always cringed when Bree wrote sweet little messages in it for me. My journal was something that had to be perfect – each line perfect, and each day ending exactly at the bottom of the page. Not a word more, not a word less. Bree’s journal, on the other hand, was a window into her character: she sometimes has more doodles than words, her notes fly off the pages, and her writing is very firm and heavy –bold and strong, just like her personality. Mom’s journals are very short and to the point. Like her, everything is simplified, bottom-lined, and straight forward. They were so short that I often teased her by suggesting that she add something like, “For further details, refer to Ammon and Savannah’s journals.” Ammon’s entries were precise and beautiful. Despite being right-handed, his was a tiny script with a decidedly left-handed tilt.

“That went by really quickly. How could we possibly be ready to go home in a year?” Mom said. Her question didn’t come as a surprise to anyone anymore. Now it was more like a confirmation. Even though we were nowhere near the time we’d planned to be away, I already knew this trip would last longer. Believing that we were over a quarter of the way through it was simply naïve at this point.

Bree suddenly jumped back into my bed and handed me her second ear bud. I crinkled my brows at her questioningly, but she only shook the ear bud again, insisting I take it. Putting my pen down impatiently, I heard the song “Here Without You” by one of our favourite bands, Three Doors Down. “A hundred days have made me older, since the last time that I saw your pretty face…” The lyrics were perfectly timed, in true Bree fashion.

“It’s crazy to think back to that first day in Hong Kong, isn’t it? It seems so long ago and yet so short at the same time,” she said, lying next to me.

We weren’t in a rush to go anywhere today, for a change. The last few days had been spent dashing from one city to the next. We’d walked until our toes bled and our hip bones and shoulder blades throbbed where the backpacks hugged our bodies, so we really embraced this chance to rest. Celebrating the momentous date and the respite from travel called for an early morning ‘passport check’. The new Kyrgyzstan visa was pretty and pink, and my passport was beginning to look so full that it was hard to resist examining it over and over. We happily compared documents for a while, passing them around in a circle to the tune of many ‘oohs’ and ‘aaahs’.

Now that I had been out longer than Ammon’s longest trip, I remembered how I used to sit at home, feeling like he was gone forever. Whenever he’d returned, he’d spend long nights with Sky and our parents, describing his worldly escapades. I was just now beginning to understand a bit of what he’d experienced. While I had lived the same boring routine of school and hanging out with friends at the mall and stuff, each day knowing I’d be safe and warm in my bed that night, he’d been out having this kind of adventure.

The last border crossing, from Kazakhstan into Kyrgyzstan, for instance, had really taken a long time. People stood so squished together that their boobs pressed into my back, and I just couldn’t get my head around how stupid and useless it was to be so pushy. It certainly didn’t make anything go any faster. While my passport was being checked and stamped, the people behind me were breathing down my neck and standing on my heels, impatiently waiting to smack their own passports down.

When Ammon had shown me his passport when he got home from one of his backpacking journeys, I never saw more than the colourful pieces of paper. Now, as I flipped from page to page, I couldn’t believe what we had gone through to get them. We’d truly earned these paper trophies.

Now, it was as if my eyes had been opened, and I was able to actually feel what the stamps and visas meant. Each one signified a border crossing, long train rides, friends made, and experiences engraved in my memory forever, like tattoos. Every colourful visa, each stamp and imperfect smudge of ink, represented a piece of my life that I could never either repeat or forget.

Heartbreaker
10

B
ishkek, Kyrgyzstan’s capital, sits in the Chui Valley at the base of the rugged Tien Shan mountain range. The city is very green, with blocks and blocks of parks and wide, tree-lined streets with hardly any traffic. In its centre is Ala-Too Square, a massive concrete area displaying a very tall freedom statue, surrounded by the parliament building and a large state historical museum. The spacious square was very clean and inviting, and it sported decorative fountains and lots of lovely outdoor cafés.

We were fortunate to witness the hourly changing of the guards when they stepped out of their posts at the military monument. Keeping their legs straight and stiff, the troops swung their feet high off the ground in unison. Mom said that she could stay there all day watching those soldiers march. We’d seen this particular goosestep cadence before on our travels, and each time it was a real treat to see such precision and expertise.

Watching the soldiers made me think of the many war memorials we’d seen since entering the countries of the former Soviet Union. Bishkek’s huge monument in the middle of Victory Square took up an entire city block.
Now that’s respect and patriotism for you,
I’d thought as we approached it from an enormously wide staircase. The three massive, rib-like arches that met at the top held up a giant funeral wreath with a crisscross in the centre. At the foot of an open eternal flame stood a statue of a woman who symbolized the wives and mothers waiting for sons and husbands who never came home again.

“It looks like giant whale bones,” Bree observed.

“Not quite. They’re red granite, and they represent the traditional yurt home used by nomads in the steppes throughout Central Asia,” Ammon said. Functioning in much the same way as a Mongolian ger, the yurt is a white, circular tent made of felt that is often more narrow and pointy at the top, a bit like a tipi. Both ‘ger’ and ‘yurt’ mean home, or homeland.

Looking up from the centre of the giant yurt, I recognized the ring crossed by two sets of three lines. “Hey, doesn’t that look the same as what they have on their flag?”

“Yes. Good eye, Savannah. It’s the centrepiece of the yurt’s roof, and it’s called a
tunduk,
which is actually a national symbol,” Ammon said, always a step ahead of me. “The flag’s solid red background symbolizes bravery and valour, the sun is peace and wealth, while the
tunduk
signifies family and home. Some say the sun’s forty rays represent the Kyrgyz tribes who once galvanized to fight the Mongols.” Despite this city’s modernity, I realized what an important role the nomadic lifestyle still played in their culture and history. We were planning a trip into the mountains soon to experience more of that culture. Meanwhile, I admired the sense of national honour that was displayed and interpreted through their flag.

People laid out fresh flowers at the foot of the dedicated statue, a sign that they still remembered the brave sacrifices made by the fighting men who had once defended their beloved land.

We got up, packed, looked outside, saw it had started to rain, and promptly sat back down again. We girls were unanimous. “It’s raining. We don’t want to go.”

“You guys are such wimps,” Ammon said, but that was about all the resistance he could muster. We took that as a clear sign that he was using our reluctance to move on as an excuse to chillax the same way we were using the rain. Truth be told, we were all still exhausted. We hadn’t taken a few days rest in weeks, and this was likely going to be our most comfortable accommodation in a while. We had electricity, good light for reading, even a hot shower with reasonable water pressure. Just a few blocks away, a small grocery store sold water and bread for our big jar of Nutella. When we got the urge to splurge, we enjoyed what we considered delicious salads at a nearby Fat Boys restaurant. Plus, with month-long visas in hand, we were free to legally stay for a few days if we chose to.

We had a pair of connecting double rooms, but the four of us huddled together in one as we read, played cards, and brought our journals up to date as the thunderstorms kept rolling in over Bishkek to hold us hostage. It was the first time in weeks that we’d seen rain, and the thought of going anywhere in it was less than appealing.

The last storm we’d witnessed was in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Lightning had ripped the skies almost constantly, and the thunder was deafening. A few people in our hostel had literally screamed in fear of the raging skies. The ground trembled and the windows nearly shattered from the mayhem exploding directly above us. Mom had smiled giddily at the window like a kid who’d just done something excitingly naughty. Though the storms Bishkek threw at us were not quite as violent, they were still electrifying.

“Isn’t it great? I just love powerful storms,” Mom smiled at each crack.

“Well, I definitely like Kyrgyzstan lots better,” Ammon said. “It’s apparently the least expensive of all the Central Asian countries. This is the cheapest place we’ve stayed recently, and it’s actually pretty decent.”

“What does that have to do with thunderstorms?” I asked.

“Nothing really, I guess. I was just thinking about it.” He crossed his arms as if nothing more needed to be said.

“Oh, well then…” I rolled my eyes at him. I was simply grateful to have a roof over my head. Hours passed as we played round after round of Jerk. Some nights, we played until Ammon begged to be allowed to sleep.

Throwing her winning hand down on the chair between the beds that we were using as a card table, Mom shouted, “Nine, eight, queen, jack,” her excited version of “Nine, ten, jack, queen.”

“Mom always knows the right thing to do,” I said, “but don’t you find that she just doesn’t make any sense at all sometimes?”

“Go put a hot pot of cold water on the stove,” Bree said, quoting one of our mother’s finest.

“You know what? You don’t have any water to sit on.” Ammon reminded us of another one of Mom’s famous mixups, by citing her version of the proverb, “You don’t have any ground to stand on,” and we laughed as Mom hurled the rest of the cards across the room at us. Some of them ricocheted off the walls, seemingly coming back like boomerangs for a second shot at decapitating one of us, and some hit the ceiling fan and were whipped back across the room for a third shot at it.

Once we’d all calmed down a bit, we decided to take a reading break for an hour or so. I pulled out my book from my daypack as if it were encased in precious stone. I’d started
Gone with the Wind in
the early stages of the trip. Despite the fact that I’d never before enjoyed reading for pleasure, I’d finally succumbed because Mom insisted, and then very quickly fell for the main male character, Rhett Butler. I was clinging to the novel now as I neared the end of the story, holding my breath each time I turned a page and savouring every word. When I finally had to stop and take a breather, Mom stared at me as I practically tore the book in two, cracking its spine in suspense.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

Too involved to separate fact from fiction anymore, I started ranting, “I can’t believe this is happening. I seriously feel sick.” I had let myself get so involved that I was on the verge of running to the bathroom and throwing up. “Reading can’t possibly be good for your health.” My skin turned deathly white as my stomach clenched repeatedly. Mom’s giggling made it clear that I was quite the sight to behold.

“Mom, it’s not funny! It really isn’t,” I said firmly, closing my eyes and lifting my head off the wall, and then letting it fall back again. “I literally feel ill. I’m sick, and you’re laughing. I can’t even believe this whole thing.” I was light-headed from the emotions surging through me as I inched forward, reading the final pages. I felt completely overwhelmed, going from pacing, to crying, to moaning like a heartbroken swan.

“You’re so funny, Savannah. Remember, ‘It’s just a book’.” She was making fun of my initial resistance to reading with a very clear “I told you so” tone in her voice.

“What a horrible ending that was!” I protested, but it wasn’t the story that was horrible; it was the fact that the story was over. I had a sudden urge to throw the book across the room, but instead clutched it tighter to my chest. I was so angry and frustrated and yet so in love. I’d always known I would have to say goodbye to Rhett; it was inevitable, but I never expected he would break my heart the way he did. I think the fact that he didn’t exist made it even more torturous. I wondered if a real guy could ever be as perfect, sexy, mischievous, smart, doting, and manly as my dear, sweet Rhett. There weren’t enough words in the dictionary to describe the love of my life.

I had come a long way from hating books – on that, Mom and I certainly agreed. But now that I’d finished reading what was obviously the best book in the whole wide world, I wondered what was left for me? I didn’t know what to do with feeling as though I had just been dumped. My first heartbreak. And from what? A bunch of words on paper! This classic love story was my introduction to all the commotion about love and just how complicated romance could often be. Was this how my first genuine romance was going to feel?!

Ch. 6-10 photos
here