One Night In Ashgabat

In Turkmenistan, tourists can only travel in one direction.

All of my stories about Turkmenistan begin this way. Most people think I’m making that up, that it can’t possibly be true. But I’m not. We were a group of about 25 cyclists, following the old Silk Route through Central Asia. We entered Turkmenistan by land from Uzbekistan. Our fixer, who could very well have been police, met us at the border. We were told we were allowed to travel in one direction, following one predetermined route through the country. There is something wonderfully poetic about that, about only being permitted to move forward.

But looking back, I think that of all the places on this big beautiful Earth, Turkmenistan just might be the most perfect location for a one night stand. Maybe.

It would only, could only, be perfect though if it included all the events that led up to it: the three months of cycling across Central Asia from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia to Ashgabat, the countless nights spent in tents trying to sleep, trying not to hear someone snoring nearby, wondering if a good night’s sleep was something permanently lost, like sanity and privacy and muscles that didn’t ache and creak in the morning.

And it would have to come after a night of energetic, joyous, rambunctious dancing on a stage in the backyard of a Turkmenistan hotel. A stage with a DJ who, once he figured out we were all English speaking westerners, played every song he had from the faraway land of the United States of America. It was a varied and eclectic mix, spanning decades and genres. A veritable “this is your life on music” collection.

At some point between dancing and ordering more beer, I remember Andreas leaning over to tell me that what he really wanted to do, what he thought would be the best world tour ever, would be a dancing tour where you’d travel from city to town to village to countryside, dancing every night with the locals. Such beauty in that, I thought, such wonderful, joyous beauty.

As it was, we weren’t dancing with the locals, not really, just ourselves because we were tired, had been on the road for months, were consuming seemingly endless amounts of beer, about to enter Iran in a few days where any alcohol was forbidden, and someone kept spinning the records.

We ran out of beer. We literally, the nine or ten or twelve of us, drank that hotel out of beer. I remember the bill coming and Ellen, our doctor, arguing with the waitress that we couldn’t possibly have drunk 67 bottles of beer. Apparently, we could have. Then there was vodka and some other delicious, way too sweet drink that Ben, one of our chefs, taught the bartender to make.

Turkmenistan has a curfew of 23:00. The bars and restaurants close and everyone is expected to go inside; inside to a convenient karaoke bar tucked into the same backyard of the same hotel, that is. This is where things get fuzzier, the dancing gets more intense, and people end up next to other people on couches, fingers intertwined, bodies leaning into each other.

I remember thinking that Andreas was incredibly drunk, yet still so in command of his limbs, his spinning, twirling, dancing limbs. We had spent all our money, or at least everyone but me and Mark, the bike mechanic leaning against me on the couch, had spent all their money. Andreas plopped down next to us, putting his feet on the table.

“No,” one of the suit-wearing Turkmen said, “No.” Then he pushed Andreas’ feet off the table and handed him the bill. Eventually, the bike mechanic and I located our money. It seemed like so much, even though we knew it wasn’t, not really. It was only that the exchange rate to the American dollar was so good. Eventually, somehow, Mark and I decided that we should go upstairs.

And this is how it happens, how it’s always happened, how it always happens; everything shifts just slightly, things fall into place and suddenly, there is desire and opportunity and life and pleasure and all the other stuff in between just skipped over to perhaps what some would call “the good part” but who knows, really. I mean, there are all kinds of good parts, lots of different places bodies can go, ways they can bend, things to crash into.

If someone had been watching from afar, or above, or wherever beings position themselves to view these parts of our lives, they would have seen a jagged map, crisscrossing the world, next to a bizarre checklist of seemingly unrelated events.

Cycle the silk road, eat too many carrots, fight the mosquitos, try to stay hydrated, sleep on top of a van, sleep in a hot, stifling Turkmenistan truck stop, listen to snoring, keep your beer cold in the river, don’t shower for days, stop brushing your hair, fix bikes, ride bikes, think bikes, and food, never enough food. All of the things, all of these things and more landing us together here in a room where the air conditioner only half works and the walls are thin but we don’t care.

In Turkmenistan you can only travel in one direction, the direction in which you entered the country. You can’t turn around and go back, not for anything. You must continue forward. Always forward.

Philosophers have always said as much. “Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forward.” “You can’t step in the same river twice.” “Don’t dwell in the past.” The only direction is forward.” “The past is the past. The only direction that matters in life is forward. Never backwards.”

And so it goes.

Back home in New York City, a few weeks later, someone asked if I was acclimated to being back home, to no longer pedaling my bike across the vast reaches of Central Asia.

I said, yes but the truth is, that way deep down, way beneath all of the normality of everyday life, past the coffee stops, and work and errands, and seeing friends, and going home, waking up, going to work, and then back, all the way to the very inner workings of the thing, the swirling mass of whatever it is that we humans call a soul, the answer is “no”.

Because, really, how could I be? How can I ever be? There will always be a part of me that remains un-acclimated, separate, apart from all the things everyone else thinks of as normal. And that part will be on a bicycle careening down some treacherous mountain pass, no other people in sight, wind in the hair and sun in the eyes, dirt bored into every pore, alive and free. That part will be in a thin walled hotel room in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, tired after a night of energetic dancing, entwined with the long lean body of a bike mechanic, so alive that that tiny, shabby room seemed the biggest, most beautiful place on earth.

So how do we, how do I, reconcile with “real life”? Can I?

I’ve done a lot of things over the past four months to try. I tell myself that a life spent on two wheels in foreign countries is not a sustainable one, is no way to live. You have to have some form of roots, some kind of system to keep you grounded. You can’t live your life in clouds, figuratively or literally. You just can’t.

A couple months after being home, Mark messaged me to ask some innocuous question about sewing machines. I answered. One of us started talking about riding bikes through Georgia and Armenia in the fall. Lots more messaging followed.

Come visit, he writes. I recall again what people say, about responsibility and what is expected, about not being able to live your life in the clouds.

“But what if you could?” something whispers in the recesses of my mind, “What if you could?”