Turkmen Jewellery at the Met

In an act of great serendipity, the Met re-opened its Islamic Art galleries at the beginning of this month – soon after I found out that this collection included some Turkmen pieces. I made haste to the galleries.

Sadly, as with all museums, the Met can display only a fraction of its true collection. According to a small placard, 300 pieces have been donated to the museum courtesy of Marshall and Marilyn R Wolf. A handful are on display, tucked away in one of the Islamic Art galleries.

What you see here is the one cabinet of Turkmen pieces. (Focusing on the beautiful Yomut armbands/armlets, which can be seen in much greater detail here.)

What my low quality phone photos fail to fully convey is how amazingly beautiful these pieces are, how finely crafted. Close-up pictures of a few are available here; a huge selection from the collection is documented in an amazing book, Turkmen Jewelry: Silver Ornaments from the Marshall and Marilyn R Wolf Collection by Layla S Diba, which I bought in the museum bookstore.

I really loved this headdress, too.

This also shows a gorgeous section of tile (not Turkmen). The Islamic Art galleries as a whole are absolutely stunning and I strongly recommend visiting them. From the Ottoman carpets to the gilded and minutely detailed Qu’ran manuscripts to the Damascus room (which you are not allowed into; you must queue to admire it over a low barrier), it’s an excellent and diverse selection.

I asked one of the information desk people if any of the other Turkmen pieces were displayed elsewhere in the museum. He directed me to a cabinet alongside one of the dining galleries, which he knew contained Islamic pieces and might include some Turkmen work. It did! One gorgeous, quite large dorsal ornament.

That, sadly, was all – but I bought the book so I could see the far wider collection, plus it talks a lot about contexts and handily identifies which tribal group the pieces belong to (although then it says the origin could be ‘Central Asia or Iran’ which is less helpful). Naturally some of its information contradicts other books I have read, but hey, welcome to history. Much of it is incredibly useful.

I also popped into the hall of Assyrian wall reliefs, mostly so that I could point at them and go “One day I will read you!”

Yaroslavl

My brother told me the legend of Yaroslavl’s foundation:

In the 11th Century, Prince Yaroslavl was investigating the region for trading opportunities when the local people set a bear on him, attempting to drive him away. The Prince fought the bear – a sacred bear, apparently, and female – and won. Soon afterwards, he decided to found a city on that spot.

It’s certainly hard to go far in central Yaroslavl without finding some image of the bear, usually carrying a halberd. And in a park by the river there’s a foundation stone, commemorating the place where the bear was fought and/or Yaroslavl founded the city.

For a visitor, there’s not a huge amount to do in Yaroslavl. (For a group of students like my brother and his friends, the major activities seem to be sitting in cafés and bars, eating and drinking, as well as attending classes.) I stole my brother away from Frekkenbokken and Your Bar and Cocktail Bar, to see the major sights.

First stop: the Kremlin.

It’s a far less grand place than the Moscow Kremlin: the walls are plain, the buildings monumental but not to the same degree; it’s a peaceful, quiet place. We watched newly married couples walk around the green, garden-like area, having photos taken against the lovely backdrop.

(Yes, I am in all of those photos – one of my brother’s friends was quite camera-happy, and my brother and I decided it would be a good idea to have lots of photos to send our gran for Christmas, to displace the shrine for our cousins. ;D)

Then we climbed to the top of the belltower, which involved a wide array of stairs not always designed for tall people in mind. Eventually our unfit selves reached a roof, of sorts: all angled and a little bit alarming, although a sturdy rail kept us on it. The views were beautiful.

Second stop: churches! Yaroslavl is known for containing a lot of these; we visited 3. Firstly we went to one that caught my eye from the belltower, the Church of the Epiphany (I think?).

The bit we saw inside was not as magnificent – but then, nothing can compete with the Church of Elijah the Prophet, which inside looks like this:

It is impossible to tire of such beauty.

Finally, we went to the Assumption Cathedral, which is very shiny. The most shiny part of all was the area where people could buy shiny golden things of their own.

Aand that was Yaroslavl. We went on a day-trip to Kostroma, another Golden Circle town, which turned out to be fairly entertaining; we hung out in cafés; I spent some time working on the Turkmen YA novel; I realised that I really do love sushi rolls. It was very good to hang out with my brother, who I don’t see very often these days. Sometime next year, I will be visiting him again, in St Petersburg!

People kept asking me while I was there, and when I got home, what I thought of Russia. Well, that’s a slightly impossible question. I found what little I saw of the country interesting and enjoyable, and I definitely want to return and see more of it, beyond next year’s short trip to St Petersburg.

New York!

I don’t think I ever mentioned this, except on Facebook – I’m going to be in New York for a week in early November! I arrive 2 November, depart 9 November.

If you are in the city at that time, I would love to see you!

I am also open to the possibility of venturing further afield.

Moscow, Day 2

My second day in Moscow started at the State Historical Museum, which runs all the way from prehistoric flint tools to the 20th Century. My favourite sections were the ones showing ancient and fairly old pieces, often Central Asian – beautiful metal-workings, old coins, jewellery, funeral masks and lots of arrow/spear-heads.

I then went to Izmaylovo Market, which felt like a fairytale market: wooden buildings like slightly dilapidated palaces, a pirate ship, and the way everyone was packing up, as if about to carry the market to another place.

I bought some gifts, then returned to my hostel where I debated whether to go out wandering around another area of the city or stay inside, writing. I opted for writing: more of the Turkmen YA novel. Later I went out for dinner at a Georgian restaurant, which involved eating two different types of meat. Overall, a very chilled out day, which is half of what I want from this holiday: time to relax and write – and hang out with my brother, in Yaroslavl (which is good because here there’s not a whole lot to do).

Moscow, Day 1

I walked to the Red Square in a cold, grey drizzle, but even that couldn’t stop me from being impressed by its size and the colour of the buildings around it. The Red Square has been built with its own curvature, which makes it seem even bigger (and it really is big). In this picture, I’m some ways along it already.

After admiring the buildings, I went to the Kremlin – which has a slightly confounding ticketing system. To get into certain bits, you have to be there at specific times throughout the day. I wasn’t. I got in to see the cathedrals only, which were well worth the price of admission: a cluster of white buildings around a courtyard, each with numerous gilded domes.

My ticket got me inside all 3 pictured, which are phenomenally decorated: saints on the pillars, the Apocalypse and the Nativity and other Biblical scenes on the walls, a golden iconostasis in each, and more icons on the walls of some, and coffins of Tsars and Patriarchs. So much colour. Red and gold and blue and more.

Speaking of colours…

St Basil’s! Beautiful even in the rain. From the downstairs iconostasis, there’s a narrow staircase with huge steps that takes visitors up to a higher level, with many rooms and passageways, all decorated in the most beautiful ways.

I could have wandered through those passageways forever.

Instead I went back to my hostel, thinking that I would relax for a while before setting off to Yaroslavskiy Station to buy my train ticket to Yaroslavl – but it then occurred to me that I’d probably enjoy the metro a lot more if I went before rush hour. As it happened, my route took me through two of the most impressive stations.

Novoslobodskaya, which has these beautiful stain glass windows all along both platforms:

Komsomolskaya, which is more like a grand, luxurious ballroom than a metro station:

Ticket acquired, I returned to my hostel – and finally succumbed to travel-tiredness and napped, after which I felt even worse. But I got up, ate dinner, and afterwards read the entirety of Ursula Le Guin’s The Tombs of Atuan, the second Earthsea book and so far my favourite of the quartet (I’m now halfway through the third book). I’ve only just started reading Le Guin’s work, and I could just roll about in bits of her worldbuilding like a cat in particularly lovely dust. Earthsea is such fun to read.

Coming up! The State Historical Museum and Izmaylovo Market (which belongs in a fairytale, surely). Today is a transit day: soon I’ll be off to the station to locate my train to Yaroslavl, where I’ll meet my brother, who’s studying there.

keep on walking and don’t look back

Moscow! I landed in the late afternoon, then made my way to my hostel – lots of queueing and public transport.

Getting from the airport to the city was easy – a nice, simple train – but then I needed to navigate the Moscow Metro, which is intense. Paveletskaya is a busy stration: the entrance hall was just a solid mass of people, most pushing through to the barriers, some queueing. I wedged myself in a queue and shuffled slowly forward, while various people queue-jumped nearer the front. The machines were troublesome – although it seems part of the problem was people feeding them 500 ruble notes when they quite clearly (says the person who can’t even read Russian) took up to 100 ruble notes only. No really, guys, turning it the other way up won’t make the machine magically take 500s. But they also spat out plenty of 50s and 100s, which caused plenty of vexation. One woman had a long rant at the machine before storming off – after the length of the queue (she queue-jumped quite far back), I can sympathise. Fortunately the machine liked one of my lower denomination notes.

Ticket acquired, I descended.

I’m pretty sure Moscow’s subways are halfway to the centre of the earth. They’re also incredibly majestic, like buried palaces. I’m planning to spend some time exploring the Metro another day – without my suitcase, which even though it’s quite a small one (could have been carried into the plane cabin) was difficult to carry in the crush of people.

I quickly realised there’s no English underground. Fortunately I can read a reasonable number of Cyrillic letters, and I matched the transliterations of the stations I needed to various signs. If I didn’t find what I needed immediately, I kept walking, and suddenly the brown line platform turned into the green line platform! I’m still not sure how that worked. At the interchange station, later on, I went even further underground to the grey line. Coming out of the grey line at my hostel’s stop was one big escalator, on which I held tightly to the hand-grip. Vertigo, how you doin’.

Finding my hostel was easy, about which my only complaint is the over-softness of the mattress (sitting in bed now, with the excellent wifi). I actually like them hard. Where is my wood-hard one from Dunhuang? :<

After setting down my bags, I may have gone out and eaten Pizza Hut for dinner. >.> It was right there, and Russian Pizza Hut is about 10x nicer than British Pizza Hut, which is to say I actually enjoyed the pizza and haven’t added a new coating of grease to my heart. (I say that as someone who rarely enjoys pizza; yet, as with crisps, I seem to periodically go back to it, certain that this time I will love it.)

Tomorrow! Red Sqaure! Kremlin! St Basil’s Cathedral! Better food, I promise! More Metro! Walking! My feet and knee will hate me, but I will be happy.

Visa gets!

I have a visa! In 3 weeks’ time, I will be in Moscow, where I will be staying for a few days before journeying over to Yaroslavl.

So excited!

I had to visit the visa application centre several times. The first time, I found that I hadn’t included all the required information on my form. Some of it was my fault. Some of it, on the online form, was marked as non-mandatory. SECRETLY MANDATORY. Then when I filled in the form again online, the format had totally changed, which was a bit alarming; fortunately I got it all right and the visa people let me apply on my second visit. And then I went again today, a week later, to collect my visa!

Now I have to wait until closer to the time to figure out how cold it will be. The average temperatures for October are still above freezing, so I shouldn’t have to hurriedly buy clothes for real winter. =D (I am considering visiting St Petersburg in real winter next year, though.)

My brother, meanwhile, has apparently prepared for the Russian winter by buying a winter cologne. Dead by November, imo.

Russian Tourist Visa

Highlights from filling in the Russian Tourist Visa form, as remarked upon in Gchat.

me: a question on the Russian visa form: “Other surnames used (maiden name, pen-name, holy orders, etc.)”
HOLY ORDERS
Amal: Hee!
FATHER ALEX

me: “List all countries you have visited in the last ten years and indicate the years of visit:*”
nooooooooooooo
Amal: AHAHAHAHAHA
me: oh my god where have I even been in TEN YEARS

me: “Please Enter Valid Education Name” for the institution I went to
I put King’s College London
this is not valid
V: Oo
me: seeing if it’s the ‘
yes it was!
the form doesn’t like punctuation
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED

The form is now full of information and not very much punctuation. Now to take it to the embassy in the imminent future, so that I can find out if I got it all correct. =s

Cows!

When I last posted about India, I mentioned cows four times but didn’t include a single picture. This I intend to rectify now.

I assume most people know that cows are sacred to Indians and, among other consequences, are never eaten. Some will have heard that they wander around the streets of India freely. That if they decide to sit in the middle of a road, that’s that and the drivers simply have to drive around them.

None of this is a lie, from what I saw. I even had to step aside for a cow ambling along a pavement in Jaipur, not to mention the charging cow that almost took me with it in Jaisalmer. Generally they’re quite peaceful (except in Jaisalmer fort), apparently unconcerned by pedestrians, motorbikes and several lanes of traffic approaching.

There’s a sadder side to the story, though. Because most Indians are poor, the majority cannot afford to keep feeding their cow once it stops producing milk. They will not, of course, slaughter it as we would. So the cow is turned out onto the street, to sit in the middle of roads and eat garbage. A lot of the cows are horrendously gaunt. There are some cow shelters, often run by big organisations like temples – it’s considered good merit/karma to look after cows, so those that can afford charitable works will sometimes do what they can for local cows – but the cows outnumber spaces in the shelters. I learnt all this on my first night in the country, when I gleefully pointed at cows and the man driving me from the airport to my guesthouse told me about the difficulties they face. It reminded me of the elephants in Bangkok, brought into the city by mahouts who can’t find any other work for themselves or the elephants: an unpleasant situation for the animal connected to human poverty, with no easy solution.

They’re a memorable part of my two weeks in India.

Here are a few in the middle of a road in Jaipur, just chillin’:

I often passed cows on my way up a side-road to my guesthouse in Jodhpur:

One of several cows ambling past a small street-side produce market in Jaisalmer (outside the fort):

And a cow lurking near a tunnel full of cows in Jaisalmer:

Jaisalmer

In Jaisalmer Fort, always remember to look up.

I came here last in India and, after two days on a camel in the nearby desert, I had a morning to explore the fort.

The beautiful buildings aren’t just inside. On the way from my hotel, I kept ducking down side-streets (and a tunnel inhabited by cows) to find buildings with gorgeously carved facades. And there was always another side-street with more buildings, some so close you could barely make out details in the shadows, and I didn’t have enough time to explore them all.

And they were on the main road too, amid shop signs, electrical cabling, cows, bikes, an otherwise fairly usual street. Most of all, though, they were in the fort.

It’s not very big: you follow a cobbled path up the hill, through a few gates, and into an area of narrow streets lined with these yellow, carved buildings and an array of souvenir shops, bright with clothes and puppets, offering marvellous selections of print-blocks, massage balls, opium pots and miscellaneous metal knickknacks. Without a map you’ll double back on yourself soon enough. Avoid the cows. In Jaisalmer they nudge, hard, to the amusement of the nearby Indians, or they charge down the tiny streets and you have to be pulled aside by a woman running a shop whose proceeds go to help rural women suffering sexist oppression. The shop’s called Bellissimma and the owner, Bobby, is very pleasant to chat to, although she speaks English fast. She henna’d my left arm, after the one I got on my right arm in Jaipur almost entirely faded in the desert. If I recall correctly, various bits of it mean luck, love and health.

Nearby, a man who owned one of the old houses – they’re called haveli – invited me inside, saying I was free to walk through it alone. I passed through dusty old rooms, rooms with blue ceilings and decorative mirrors, and got onto the roof.

Of course, he had a shop and showed me various things, but was very gracious about my decision not to buy anything. If only I’d had more space in my bag and more cash. Swing by his place if you’re in the city.

Top left of that is a bit of Jain temple, one of complex containing seven or so. (Curious fact about Jain temples: menstruating women aren’t allowed inside. I assume we’re ~*~impure~*~ during our natural mostly-monthly process. Thanks, dudes.) They certainly are pretty, though. Imagine this, but lots of it:

And here’s a rooftop, glimpsed through a narrow vent-gap:

And a shrine inside one of the temples:

I also went walking around about half of the fort’s perimeter, which is an entirely un-used walkway. I got there around a cow, above a low wall, and walked among a light assortment of litter, excrement, thorny bushes and at least one shy street dog. It’s odd that no one’s developed it for the tourists. It gives good views over the town below, it’s a nice wide walkway, it’d be safe for children with not too much adjustment. It’s peaceful, though.

I surprised and amused three shopowners when I emerged from an overgrown, un-used plot adjacent to the walled-off walkway, and on I walked, retracing some of my steps until it was time to leave.