Silk Road Travelogue

Link to Photo Album #1

This trip happened because you could fly to Tashkent from Kuala Lumpur for cheap, starting late 2025. It was about 3/4 solo and 1/4 day tours. By default, an intrepid traveller would come here to plow the Silk Road and hit Khiva, Bukhara, Samarkand, and Tashkent (in this order or the reverse). However, I went for variety, because these two countries have something in them for everyone

• Modern city with abundant amenities, cute metro stations, Korean food, some Silk Road stuff: Tashkent
• Nature + ski / hiking: Amirsoy, Chimgan, Shing Valley
• Silk Road stuff: Samarkand, (Bukhara and Khiva)
• Aral Sea ecological disaster-tourism, the second largest art collection in the former Soviet Union, fashion shopping: Nukus

The most useful languages to learn here are Uzbek, Tajik and Russian (as lingua franca). People in Nukus, Karakalpakstan speak Karakalpak, and people living around Chimgan speak Kazakh. A sizeable Korean community gathers at Sacred Heart Tashkent on Sunday evenings. When the usher found out that my Korean was dogwater, she switched to Mandarin for my benefit. These plus English makes 8 languages in total encountered on this trip

Part 1: Cities

Tashkent

TASHKENT: Cushy city I would describe as a mix between Paris and Seoul. You can tap into any bus and metro station with a credit card. I had thought Magic City was a tourist trap until I visited and realised it was really an Uzbek trap. Uzbekistan Ovozi Street is nice and leafy and posh. There are little corners around town where you can hide in and pretend you are in Korea; The restaurant "Makkeoli" served one of the best makkeoli that I have ever tasted

Nukus

NUKUS: Town at the edge of the desert in the Khwarezmian delta reminded me of Lincoln, Nebraska because the buildings were short, streets are in a nice grid and the airport is within walking distance to everywhere. I was here to see the famous art museum and buy clothes at Inddi Fry (they take online orders, so I probably didn't have to go in person, but I did anyway for the sheer hell of it)

Part 2: Mountains

Link to Photo Album #2

Chimgan

Here was where I first tried riding a horse unassisted. It started when I spied a posse of tourists on horseback riding to the mountain. Among them was a lady in a beige trenchcoat, the sort that every fancy urbane woman in Tashkent has on during the Autumn, but she steered her steed with ease, as if she had spent all her life on the steppe; her hair was blown about by the stiff breeze; she had the likeness of Siranush Harutyunyan; I was so awestruck that I found the next rider that came along and asked for a ride on his horse. The rider's name is Isobek, a Kazakh, and his horse is called Vasily. After some time messing about, Isobek gave me a crash course on horse controls and let me loose. I had been on many guided horseback tours where the horses were strung along by the guide and never got to steer the horse myself, so I thank this duo here for pushing me one step up!

Seven Lakes (Haftkul, Shing Valley)

Seven lakes lie along the Shing River. They are pretty as heck and are visited daily by daytrippers from Samarkand across the border. The village of Padrud was one of our stops. They are blessed with electricity 12 whole hours per day. The roads are perilously paved over scree and should be attempted only by donkeys or the pluckiest drivers

Part 3: Silk Road

Link to Photo Album #3

The Heavenly Horses

This was the 4th Century BCE. Alexander the Great had a fit and tore through Asia building cities named "Alexandria" instead of going to therapy like a normal person. On the ruins of Cyropolis he built Alexandria Eschate, the "Furthest Alexandria" (modern Khujand). The garrison installed here would grow into a network of Hellenic city states in the Ferghana Valley. These were known to the Han as Dayuan 大宛, meaning "Great Ionia"

It is now 104 BCE, in the reign of Han Wudi. The Great Ionians had developed a reputation for breeding the Heavenly Horses: absolute units, sturdier and hardier than any variety known either to the Chinese or to their frenemies to the north, the Xiongnu. (They allegedly also sweat blood out of their pores, but I have no idea what to do witu this information)

Emperor Wudi, who craved violence* and anticipated war with Xiongnu in the near future, sent an envoy to Alexandria Eschate asking to buy some sweet sweet Heavenly Horse. The court of Alexandria Eschate convened.

One said, "It's been nice doing business with the Han, but the Heavenly Horses are our only edge over everyone else. Should we really let them have it?" Another scoffed, "Let's not entertain these weaklings. They are too far away! Even if they send an army here, the Taklamakan Desert will claim them before they reach us"

So they roughed up the delegation, robbed them of all their treausres, and replied: "Come And Take Them"**

Naturally Emperor Wudi went apesh1t and sent forth General Li Guangli who slapped together a comically large army of riffraff and they crossed the Taklamakan Desert and ransacked the cities of Great Ionia and replaced the king of Alexandria Eschate with a new king and grabbed 3000 Heavenly Horses and went back to China through the Taklamakan Desert again, in the process losing 20,000 out of 30,000 men and also 2000 of the looted horses.

Reference: Book of the Later Han 《后汉书》; artistic license

*Note 1: "Wudi 武帝" is a posthumous regnal name; the character 武 was chosen to reflect the fact that this emperor habitually craved violence

**Note 2: Whether any Spartan individual was involved in the conversation is left to the reader's imagination

Clans of Zhaowu

The Sogdians had become overlords of the Central Asian Silk Road by the 8th Century CE. In the Chinese Annals (e.g. in the Books of Tang) they were known by their Chinese clan names (tied to the places of their origin) and collectively as the Nine Clans of Zhaowu 昭武九姓. Sogdians enjoyed a high level of prestige in Tang society and were often made governors of the northwestern commanderies. Unfortunately, the most famous Sogdian individual in Chinese history was An Lushan. He was very bad news (c.f. An Lushan Rebellion)

The Sogdian identity lives on today in the region of Sughd, the language of the Yaghnobi, the nation of Tajikistan, and every business in Samarkand who puts "Sogdiana" in their name for style points

Embodied Faith

Photo: Andrew Lin

Swing Dance Meditations Part 5: I was robbed

of an embodied faith when I obsessed over God in the realm of thoughts and ideas, over such a long time of my life. I learned and knew of what to believe, what to say, and how to make what I believe and say consistent to the teachings of the church, of all the little tricks of the mind that convinced myself of my own consistency. I did not live in my body. I wrecked my body on long commutes and sleep deprivation thinking that suffering will make me attain the greatest good. But when I tasted the teachings of Jesus channeled through movement and touch, tension and compression, and saw the thoughts and dispositions of my friends through the conduct of their dance, each of them unique and personal, I realise that I had deprived myself of the awareness of God's love in my own body: I did not know what it felt like in my body when I extended orthodoxy into orthopraxis, because I had not taught myself to feel, but convinced myself that feeling things were sinful.

I thank Jesus for not having stayed an abstract figure, but came to Earth as an embodied being. Humanity has a gnostic instinct that naturally elevated the mind and damned the body to Hell. By living among us he sticks a massive middle finger to our errors. He condensed the 613 Mitzvot of the Torah, implementable through blind faith, into the two axiomatic statements

1. Love God

2. Love your neighbour,

the "what" and the "how" of reciprocating his Love. Whereas the "what" involves the Creator God which is necessarily intangible and ineffable as in all of the other Abrahamic traditions, the "how" concretises it into action that allows the Love to bleed out from worship into our daily lives. Most importantly, as Jesus is incarnate and can represent the object in (1) and (2) simultaneously, these two axioms can even be thought of as a single axiom of the Incarnation.

Because of this, I do not shy away from feeling the sense of touch. I do not see the devil in the gleam in my partner's eye, because when Jesus comes to earth, he baptises our body, our senses and our pleasures. He baptises our blood and guts. He baptises the humble feeding trough where they set him down. He baptises the raggedy shepherds of Bayt Sahur; he baptises the dumb beasts of the manger in Bethlehem. May no one come and tell you that these precious things which he baptised can ever be unclean.

Baraat

Jai Mohan's baraat

My colleague Pritish and his elder brother Jai Mohan were married in quick succession, with Aryama and Krati as the respective brides. The family threw a party at the foot of Panchet Hill which lasted about 4-5 days. Because of this arrangement, the entourage from Singapore witnessed each public component of the wedding twice over. Now, overall, the Hindu wedding is a gruelling affair, lasting many days, often extending into the night. Pritish's cousins reported only sleeping two or three hours during the nights. It turned out that the time of the main rituals, involving wedding vows (7 vows from the groom, 5 from the bride), was decided by astronomical measurements, could only be fixed on short notice, and could land in the wee hours in the morning (which happened for Jai Mohan and Krati). 

The wedding vows were preceded by dinner and the processions, first by the groom, then by the bride. The groom's procession was called the baraat and involved a live brass band and vigorous dancing. Pritish's and Jai Mohan's cousins were the stars of the dance floor. Of course, I joined them...

And then afterwards they said I danced so well that I might as well be an Indian myself, and one of them offered to file paperwork for me to become an Indian citizen, and I became afraid, because I had committed to join them also for reception in Dhanbad without my other colleagues, and they looked as if they might eat me alive, when I got there. Fortunately, no one propositioned me for a dance during the after-party, nor made me marry anyone, which put my anxieties at rest.

Swing Dance Meditation: Part 4

Pritish's cousin Mansi reflected to us afterwards that there was an older guy who joined the baraat dance who couldn't dance that well (i.e. he could not do the moves quickly enough). The group slowed down to half-beat pace to match him, which made him feel included. When Mansi saw it go down, she deduced that I had gone through training. She was very thorough.

When Pritish's relatives recounted the moves which I pulled off, I couldn't recall most of it. I did remember copying some of their moves. When the dance-off happened, like with Archit or Vaiibhav, what I did was mooching moves off of my partner, spicing it up a little in some way, and throw it back at him. I hadn't trained for this — this was Bollywood dancing, heavy on upper-body movements, while Lindy Hop is more about footwork — but the way this was done felt like when I was dancing with coach Marsha Folkoff: very improvisational, very communicative and very freeform, not restricted to a particular system of dance.

People come to the dance floor with different mentalities, and their mentalities ineffably influence the way they dance. Broadly, there are people who say "I know all the moves and dance them well" and there are people who say "I want to be happy and to make other people happy". This latter category are people of my tribe, and I will seek them out and learn from them.

A Better Person

Swing Dance Meditations: Part 3

My Lent this year took an ironic turn. At the same time while I was screaming into the void saying "I am not in the wrong, my ex is; I want to become everything my ex didn't want me to become" I was also getting my shit called out in the dance floor, and somehow liking it very much.

For Lent, I wished for the harsh inner voice within me to be excised forever from me, but my teachers and my friends on the dance floor instead told me instead that the Harsh Inner Voice is good, because it drove them to improve their dance. I recalled that the Harsh Inner Voice has been, in my own past, a helpful voice. What has gone wrong since that time?

The harsh inner voice I wanted to excise said "you are not good enough", but the harsh inner voice that helped my friends along said "you can work on it here, here, here, and here". It helped that people said the latter out loud to me, in person.

In boxing class, we worked the bags repetitively, and every session I focused on something different. One day it would be shielding my face, the other day it would be posture, and the day after it would be which knuckles to land on... All these work by the fact that I am breaking one big task into small manageable tasks. Dance practice, from some angles indistinguishable from boxing practice, is very much the same deal: one day to focus on etiquette, one day to focus on switching between modes, and other days for other techniques, and so on.

Here I list some things that I have focused on in the past year. Since dance skills are often also life skills, these could help me become a better person overall:

Confidence. Ask her for a dance. Ask him for a dance. Deal with rejection and heartbreak. Try new moves from the last class. Try to make up some bullshit moves. Follow through with the bullshit moves. 

Situational awareness. The dance floor is crowded; move to a safer spot. Don't let you partner bump into other people. Listen for movements in the music. Be ready for surprises.

Empathy. Watch out for signs of distress or other changes in mood in your partner. Look out for people who look like they might like a dance. Do simpler moves with beginners. Be kind. Build each other up. Appreciate that people are all kinds of different. Accept them in all their differentness. 

Communication. Forming an intention. Communicate by touch. Be clear and firm. Move into a light dance mode where a verbal conversation can happen (I like this).

Ego death. Accept constructive criticism. Ask for criticism. Prioritise the partner's quirks over showing off own moves. Give partners credit for a good dance. Learn from other dancers on the dance floor. Be open-minded.

Self-care. Hydrate adequately. Take breaks (you have to do this yourself, because everyone and everything else can only push you to dance harder).

Self-knowledge and humility. What are my own preferences? What are my own boundaries? How do I play to strength? What are my deficiencies? What do I focus on next?

With my sister at the Halloween Party, Swingstation, October 2024 

FOOTNOTE: I would advise newer dancers (and my coaches would say the same) not to presume that your dance partner would remember or even be aware of your mistakes when you make them. The prevailing culture is that whenever something feels stuck, everyone defaults to blaming it on themselves. The implication is that everyone is more focused on themselves than on you than your anxiety-warped brain might imagine, and that in the end we all become our own worst critics. However, it would be a mistake to say that no one remembers the dance; I remember a lot of dances, most of them because they were very good.

I Can't Run Away From Myself

Lindy Hop Spiritual Meditations: Part 2

It was the Sunday after my-ex-and-I's wedding plans were cancelled. I was praying in St. Iggy's. It was a traumatic weekend, so I was praying extra hard. Being brutally honest, my prayers are most often a one-sided affair where I vent and Allah takes his time replying to my texts, to the extent I might doubt if he is really listening. 

To address this tendency, the Catholic praxis (as I was taught) would be to get one's ears perked up and predisposed to pick up Allah's hints, as the fact is that he is always saying something, even when he appears to be silent, and the rest of y'alls just too obtuse to hear anything most times

I heard Allah loud and clear that day. I was no superstitious oik who sees Jesus on toast or Mary on a daffodil, but I was pretty desperate, and therefore open!

You might have heard it said in spiritual testimony that the voice of Allah is "small, yet firm". I experienced it as a thought that builds and builds until it filled the room. The thought was this:

SHE CAN RUN AWAY FROM ME

I CAN'T RUN AWAY FROM MYSELF

During our last conversation and the unraveling of the last tendrils of our life together, my ex had played the psychologist and said I had "self-esteem issues". I have no idea which Sigmund Freud sleep paralysis demon inspired her to say this; besides, I am sure psychoanalysis was crossing a line, so it couldn't have been a thought from my own mind, or planted in me from her, because I was still very mad at her for leaving. So, this could only have come from above — I can't run away from my own issues.

The other odd thing was that I experienced this message as a Consolation. Imagine feeling at peace after being called out for your shit! Yet, here we are.

St. Iggy's