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Extract 7 - Merv

Merv: Kis Kala

After days of peeling back the successive generations of Merv like the layers of an onion, Kaan and I were about to penetrate to the core.

There it was: journey's end. A collection on the skyline of baked brick towers, mausolea and citadels, jutting from behind earthen walls like broken teeth from pitted gums.

The weather was on our side this morning, cloudy and cool. Kaan had looked at me with distaste when I'd arrived with the saddle, and had indulged in an enormous stretch before setting out.

Sanjar's mausoleum: the obligatory
tourist snapshot

His feet were a bit sore after yesterday's city streets, and he plodded rather slowly down the first long section of tarmac. But the kiosks on the edge of town were open early, and he cheered up when I bought a kilo of biscuits. By the time he had eaten half the bag, his stride had lengthened a good deal.

I also bought a litre of some vile fizzy drink; choking stuff, but today for once I was travelling without saddlebags, and must carry my liquid internally. Behind the stall was a running tap, and - the bucket being with the bags back at Kolkhoz Lenin, where we would return for the night - I cast around for some container to fill for Kaan. There was no need. While I searched, he stepped casually up to the running tap and sucked directly from it. Would he ever cease to surprise me, I wondered?
Cutting across the edge of Bairam Ali, I took to the fields. At once the great mausoleum of Sultan Sanjar rose above the surrounding mud-brick ramparts, a lighthouse drawing me in as it had generations of travellers.

...I stopped where a ditch had leaked a puddle into a grass-filled hollow, for it might be the best grazing all day. Kaan, though, pulled away to grub in the sand. It was a moment before I saw what attracted him. He was scoffing mulberries, fallen from the surrounding trees. Mulberry trees, host of the silkworm. It couldn't have been more appropriate; ambrosia of the Silk Road to feed my Celestial Horse.

And just ahead, waiting for us, a city older than the Silk Road itself: Merv, now close enough to fill the horizon.

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