Spotify Sundays: Joel Rapp on/in Uzbekistan
By Joel Rapp
September 2022
In 2014, Joel Rapp decided he was long due a sabbatical, and struck out from Sri Lanka in an attempt to circumnavigate the globe (mostly) on foot. In three years, he made it roughly halfway (the same, alas, cannot be said for Colin the trailer). Along the road, he encountered cold- and hot-blooded wildlife, over-curious policemen, and his first Wetherspoon’s. Today, he looks back fondly(?) on a 700km stretch of desert in Uzbekistan, and the songs that got him through, almost entirely intact.
Timbuk 3 – The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades
An ode to the eternal optimism of beginning something you really do not understand. Your trailer is full of water and food, your legs feel fresh, and the open road at dawn stretches before you. You are going to make this, no problem. Everyone who says this is suicidal is an idiot you were right not to listen to.
The melancholy that sets in about 50 kilometers outside of Kungirot, when the pavement ends and you stare at the dusty rut in the dirt that you intend to follow for the next 10 days. I cannot stress strongly enough how much the further you get from a city, the more all maps are bullshit.
Soon you realize that dawn is not early enough, that the rising heat of the day expends too much water, and that 3:00am is going to be a ‘late start’. This is also when you realize that among the things you won’t be doing much of in the next two weeks – like eating, and bathing – is sleeping.
The only source of water is maintenance taps along the train line you are walking parallel to. These are spaced about 100 kilometers apart. To cross that 100 kilometers, and be alive at the end, you need about 40 liters of water, carried in old plastic water bottles strapped to your trailer. Train station water is gray, and gritty. Best not to look at it, or think about it even, as you chug it down.
Slaves – The People That You Meet
Just a little shout-out to the once-a-day occurrence of a truck driver stopping to try and give you a ride while you try to explain to a person who only speaks Uzbek or Kazakh why anyone who looks like you do right now would be doing this to themselves on purpose.
Duran Duran – Union of the Snake
Most days the only living thing you see is the Caspian cobra – one of the world’s shittier snakes.
They like warmth.
You are warm.
The only locally-available food that will keep in these conditions is kashk. Kashk is a small, dried ball of sour yogurt. It looks like a golf ball, but tastes like a cue ball (or how I imagine a cue ball would taste, anyway). They are so small that a person could eat about 30 of them in a day, though I doubt anyone would willingly eat more than four.
The Pixies – Where Is My Mind?
After you have been alone, eating hard yogurt balls and drinking grayish, oily train-maintenance water as you trudge through darkness, for a week, the edges of reality start to merge weirdly with fantasy and memory. No shit, one time I hallucinated an entire Denny’s.
The main thing about having to drag a hundred pounds of water around at all times just so you can survive is that you have to put it all in you – so you cannot afford to put any of it on you. After 10 days of this you develop an outer layer of grit that goes well beyond how you merely smell in making you feel subhuman. By now anyone who sees you is just going to assume that you are insane, so at least the awkward-roadside-conversations part is over.
Lefa (feat. Lomepal) – Paradise
Yeah, it’s in French: it’s my list, fuck off. This one is for the feeling of seeing Aktau, Kazakhstan, on the horizon. Aktau sucks: but after two weeks, it’s like a miracle. Less of a miracle for the girl who works the hotel front desk, and has to let someone who looks like you do, pulling a fucking trailer through her lobby, actually have a room. But hey.
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A couple of bonus tracks, for the feeling of getting back to the world of people!
G Love and Special Sauce – Cold Beverage
For that first beer in a month, with 3mm of Central Asian dust still coating your throat.
Jimmy Buffet – Cheeseburger In Paradise
For the Aktau Burger King. I have eaten at multi-Michelin-starred restaurants that I was less excited about.
