Some pictures I omitted from earlier Uzbekistan posts.
Miscellaneous Uzbek Trivia
I thought i would post a few random observations that have previously been absent from my posts – Just a few things i found interesting:
Gold Teeth: Many women and men (but mostly women) of abut middle age or older here have a few or all gold teeth. I have been told that it is fashionable. It is quite strange the first few times a women smiles (not at me – they seldom smile at me) and you see her gilded smile. I guess it isn’t any stranger than people in North America getting their perfectly healthy teeth capped. I tried to explain to one guy in Bukhara that in certain sub-cultures in North America, gold teeth are popular (i.e. rap culture), which he seemed to think was very funny.
Car Theft: Apparently care theft used to be a big problem in Uzbekistan (mainly in Tashkent), so the government changed the law so that now, the first time one gets caught stealing a car he gets 15 years in prison. The second time one gets caught stealing a car one gets either life in prison or death by firing squad. (One Uzbek told me life in prison and another told me execution, so i don’t know which is true.) Now car theft is virtually obsolete.
Questions: Every Uzbek with whom i speak asks very soon upon meeting how old i am, whether i am married and how many children i have. They cannot understand that i am single and childless and thing it is even funnier when i say that i want neither marriage or children. Everyone here seems to have many children very early in the twenties. Kids are everywhere, like rats.
Cigars: If you are coming to Uzbekistan and are a cigar smoker, bring enough for your trip, because they seem to be nonexistent in the country. My cigars have attracted a lot of attention (in Bukhara they even became the subject of rumor); had i brought more i could have given them away to the curious smoker.
Vegetarians: Like most countries, Uzbekistan is not a great place for vegetarians. Breakfasts are usually ok and then it is pretty much bread and cheese and fruit for the rest of the day. There are lots of yummy looking bready/samosa-y looking things for sale on the street, but they all contain meat. On the plus side, the bread and fruit are really very good. And the tea is excellent.
Tattoos: I have been told that if you want to see people in Uzbekistan with tattoos, you must visit the jails. Muslims, of course, are not supposed to get tattoos and that rule (unlike the drinking rule) seems to be well-respected. I have worn long sleeves on this trip, but sometimes a tattoo peeks out from my sleeve and it always gets questions. Many people have asked me what they are and asked to take pictures of them. One guy said, “You are like pop star” because i had so many tattoos. I have nopt gotten any negative reactions, just curiosity.
Poverty: There are definitely many poor people here, but i have seen no one sleeping on the street and very few people begging for money.
Animals: Aside from birds and working animals like donkeys, horses, goats and cows, i have seen very few. I saw four cats in Bukhara and i have seen a total of three dogs. I don’t know where they all are.
Safety: Other than my little run in with the police, i have felt perfectly safe the whole time i have been here, even at night and walking alone. I feel the need to mention this because i know many people have other ideas about the country.
Reading: If you are visiting Uzbekistan, bring your own reading material and do not count on finding more. I brought one book (the hilarious and appropriate “Absurdistan”, which i recommend) and then was fortunate enough to trade it for another English book with the girl i met on the train to Bukhara. I read that and then read the one English book a my Bukhara hotel. Now i am without reading material and cannot find more. Because most travelers here are not native English speakers, it is difficult to find books to pick up along the way. I am even down to my final NY Times crossword. It may be a long flight home.
Uzbekistan: The Final Day
As it turns out, my crumby day yesterday did not last even one full day.
After my post, I returned to my hotel, the Gulnara Guesthouse. It is on the edge of the old town near the bustling Chorsu market. I cannot comment on the rooms, because, as I mentioned, my reservation was screwed up and the only room they had for me wasn’t really a room, just a cot and electric fan, but I must say that I am quite happy with the accommodations. The owners are friendly and the rooms are all located around a pleasant courtyard with a huge apple tree and laundry strung up everywhere.
It is definitely a backpackers’ place, with everyone there being young and traveling with large backpacks or by bicycle. Almost everyone there seems to be French, although the Japanese girl i met in Samarkand (and saw again in Bukhara) is staying there as well.
Anyway, after my post, I went to my room and spent about 4 hours napping and listening to repeats of Bill Maher and Ricky Gervais podcasts on my ipod, which cheered me up immensely. After that, I went for an evening walk and had tea and a cigar on a busy corner, where I was joined by some Uzbek construction worker with some basic English skills. He said he had only seen cigars “in films”. He asked to buy one from me but I had only one left, so i didn’t sell.
All in all, it was a pleasant end to what started out as a crumby day.
This morning, after breakfast, I walked up to the Khast Imom, which is the holiest part of Tashkent. It is a collections of newish mosques and mausoleums and a small museum that houses a massive and old copy of the Koran. Surrounding the buildings were some very well manicured park areas, which were also home to many large stork-like birds (like storks, but bigger and with more intimidating beaks).
I then walked past many large and largely unattractive apartment blocks to Navoi Park, which is a big park containing some odd Soviet structures and a man made lake with beach areas, little paddle boats and small fair area with rides. I wandered there for a while and had some ice-cream-like frozen substance. I have on this trip mastered the pronunciation of the Russian word for ice cream, which had previously eluded me.
Now I am just sort of pleasantly killing time. My flight is at 9:00pm, but i plan to get there nice and early, as I could not check in on-line. I plan to stroll through the market again, see if i can spend my remaining Sum and then I will probably just hang around in the courtyard of my hotel and smoke my final cigar.
I may post again either from Tashkent or Seoul, internet access permitting.
d
Night Train to Tashkent
My last day in Bukhara was pretty relaxing. I just went for walks and read a book and went out for lunch at an Italian restaurant. I know, Italian food in Uzbekistan sounds like a bad idea, and i’m not sure that it was all that authentic, but the vegetarian pizza that i nibbled at (usually i would have gobbled it down, but i am still feeling ill), was actually ok. They best part though was sitting at a proper indoor restaurant and smoking a cigar; it’s just so civilized.
They evening came and i caught the 7:40 night train to Tashkent. It takes about 12 hours, so i had booked a bed in a sleeper car, each of which holds four. Unfortunately i shared my car with four men. There wasn’t anything wrong with them, but sleeping in close quarters with 4 strange men who don’t speak English doesn’t thrill me.
The beds were comfy and it was nice to lie down, but the air conditioning that was allegedly flowing failed to cool me down at all. I spent the whole time lying in a pool of my own sweat and praying that some sort of a breeze would come, but my bunk mates kept the door to the car and the window closed, so no breezes were to come. Plus, i had a terrible case of food poisoning and had to urgently get up often to use the disgusting bathroom. Needless to say, i got very little sleep.
On arriving in Tashkent, feeling relieved, i caught the metro to my new hostel. Unfortunately, as i waited for my car to arrive, a police man or solider (I can’t tell which are which) with a machine gun took me off the platform and to a small room with a table, two chairs and another uniformed, heavily armed officer waiting. I had a moment where I was certain I would be raped. Neither of them spoke English and i refused to speak any Russian, lest i accidentally implicate myself in some crime. They inspected my passport, visa, registration papers, my money and searched my bag. Of the questions they asked that i understood were “why are you in Uzbekistan?”, “Do you have family here or in Russia?”, “What is your job?”, “How long are you here?”, “Are you married?” and “Do you have any children”. But most of the questions were just nonsense Russian to me. I think they wanted a bribe, but they didn’t ask and i didn’t offer. Finally, after about an hour of questions in Russian (no matter how many times i said i only spoke English, they kept speaking to me in Russian), they let me go.
I now know that it wasn’t a big deal, but in the moment, i found it unnerving and upsetting. Being interrogated for no reason by two men in a language you don’t understand is not a good feeling. I felt like i was in a Kafka novel or a movie where an innocent girl traveling ends up in a foreign prison.
Then, i finally arrived at my hostel, where frankly, all i wanted was a shower, a nap, and an hour or so of watching the BBC, but i found out that they had lost my reservation and were fully booked. The only room i could get was a tiny room with a cot and a fan. No AC and a shared bathroom. I really wanted something better, but couldn’t bear the thought of trudging around town popping into hotels, so i took it. It is a cozy little place and my room, such as it is, is only about $6 or $7 dollars a night.
Tomorrow night i fly to Seoul.
On every trip i have one day where i feel tired and fed up. Today is that day. Tomorrow will be better.
Yurt Sweet Yurt
After my last post, on my last night in Bukhara before going to the desert, I spent the evening until past midnight drinking tea and smoking peach shisha with the British girl i had met on the train coming here, as well as a couple from Switzerland. The evenings here are really perfect, weather-wise. Whoever suggested that I bring a jacket or sweater for the cool evenings was mistaken.
The next morning after breakfast, I was picked up my my driver who was to drive me to the Kyzilkum Desert (Kyzilkum means “red sands”, i believe). Normally they arrange these desert excursions for groups, but i was just one. I had hoped that others might have decided to go on the same night as me, but alas, I was alone.
So my driver, who did not any English, drove me for 3.5 hours into the desert. The drive was great. I was able to watch as the city of Bukhara and its outlying areas melted away, leaving only rural areas, then just occasional tiny towns, then just desert. As we drove, the cars began to be outnumbered by donkeys and carts. The desert was totally sandy in spots, and in others is was dotted with dry sage colored shrubberies. Often I would see a tribe of goats roaming without supervision, or a few lazy cows.
We stopped along the way at a couple of holy sights, but mostly we just drove in silence (silence except for the driver’s mix of 1990s dance and techno hits, that is).
Finally we arrived at the yurt camp. Twelves yurts arranged in a circle around a fire pit, plus a large dining yurt and a sort of a house (though ‘house’ seems like the wrong word – more of a ramshackle shack) where the family who runs the camp live. There were some outhouses and a couple of sinks that didn’t produce any water. It was all quite in the middle of nowhere. Shortly after arriving, i went on a walk and climbed to the top of the highest sand dune and do you know what I saw? An endless vista of sand dunes marked by the odd, solitary camel.
My yurt was delightful! Large and cozy with rugs on the floor and a little mattress (like a small, soft futon), a pillow and blanket. It was decorated with multi-colored textiles and decorative objects made of yarn hanging from the ceiling, like large mobiles. It stayed relatively cool in the yurt – cool compared with the 40 degrees outside. I had no difficulty napping or sleeping in it.
After resting for a while and enjoying a cigar, My drive took me about a half an hour away to a massive lake! What a surprise that was. The lake was huge and seemed to have a tide. The sand was beautifully soft and i waded out quite a ways into the water. We sat in a couple of old chairs left by the water and i dozed off for a while. After awaking, we stalked a tribe of goats who were at the lake to drink. Every time i got close to them though they ran off irritably.
After the lake we returned to the yurt camp, where my camel was waiting. I went off into the desert for about 2 hours just before sunset. It was lovely. I saw many long-tailed, hopping desert rats and a few rabbits. I also saw this one mud shack in the middle of nowhere with an old women outside. My camel was very docile and I found him reasonably comfortable (no more or less so than a horse).
After the camel there was dinner of vegetable stew, fresh vegetables, melons, and tea. After dinner I had another cigar and watched the stars come out. With no city lights or electricity to get in the way, the stars were magnificent. It was like being at a planetarium. I sat there until i remembered that i am afraid of the dark and then I went to bed.
I slept soundly and awoke when the sun started to slice through the gaps in my yurt’s roof.
After breakfast the next day, there was supposed to be more camel riding, but the camels had apparently disappeared during the night. I should point out that my driver, nor the host family spoke any English, so i didn’t do much talking during this overnight excursion. All i got regarding the lack of camels was “Nyet Kamel”. So we drove back to Bukhara.
On the way back, more desert scenery and silence and 1990s music. When Ice Ice Baby came on the driver and I both “sang” along – I did the verses and he the chorus. Vanilla Ice, bridger of cultural divides.
Yesterday afternoon after I scrubbed the sand and camel off of my skin (my clothes may just have to be burned when I return – I have basically been wearing the same outfit for 2 weeks in 40 degree weather), I spent the rest of the day smoking shisha and reading.
Today I have no plans. I am taking the 7:50pm overnight train back to Tashkent, which is supposed to take 11 hours, but I expect will take longer.
Bukhara has been amazing. It is definitely one of those places that is very easy to just hang around in. The yurt/camel thing was really good. I loved how desolate and quiet it was, but, not being a ‘camper’ by nature, one night was sufficient.
Tomorrow: back to Tashkent and the beginning of the long journey home.
Playboy mansion, Uzbek style
Last night, after i posted to the blog, I went for a walk around the neighborhood. It would seem that things only get busier in the evening. All around Lyabi-Hauz people and families – almost exclusively locals – were walking and sitting, eating sunflower seeds and ice cream, having dinner, and kids were running around playing in unsupervised packs. It was a delightful scene and made me wish we had more squares for congregation in Vancouver. I had a cigar and people watched until bed time.
I must also mention that i had the best dinner last night – something other than the bread and cucumber/tomato salads i have been surviving on. I had this delicious salad of warm, crispy eggplant and tomatos followed by a rice, bean and vegetable dish. It seems that they don’t hate vegetarians here after all!
Today i awoke with nothing planned for the day. I had basically seen all sights on my list, so the day was a mystery. The mystery was solved as over breakfast i was chatting with another guest at the hotel: a man from Istanbul who had arranged for a driver and guide to take him to some of the sights outside of the city. He invited me to tag along, and i agreed.
We first visited the Bakhautdin Naqshband Mausoleum, one of Sufism’s more important shrines. It was beautiful and very peaceful, surrounded by roses and filled by visiting Uzbeks. I filled my water bottle from one of the legendary wells from which pilgrims believe springs water that brings good luck and well-being. (I must say, I was skeptical of the use of the water bottle I brought – one of these ones that has a filter built in, so you can fill it from anywhere – but it has proved to be a great asset. I can fill the bottle from any random hose or tap and drink without getting sick. Plus, I have now drank water from 3 holy springs, so I am pretty much blessed with good health and luck for the rest of the year.)
We then went to the Emir’s palace, where he and his family, slaves and harem (about 40 women at any given time) would spend their summers. As far as palaces go, it was modest in size, but its decoration was stunning: elaborate decoration and design often inlayed with mirrors for a sparkling effect. One room, all in white absolutely glittered. There was also a pool in the the back where the harem would frolic while the Emir sat in a shaded area atop a platform to watch. The Playboy mansion, Uzbek style.
We visited another site before returning to Bukhara where I and my Turkish friend went on the hunt for a new memory card for my camera (because you can’t have too many pictures of blue-tiled mosques). A bit of lunch and then I retired for a short nap, which turned into a four hour sleep.
Now it is 9:30, but the whole town again seems to be out, enjoying the perfect evening air. Not being at all tired now, I will do something before returning to the hotel.
Tomorrow morning I leave for my two day desert safari adventure. As I understand it, we will be driving for about 3 hours, stopping at some sights of interest along the way, then transferring to camel, and heading into the desert, where I will be camping out in a yurt, then doing it all in reverse the next day.
I am very excited for this experience. I don’t usually like camping, but this is a special experience and a yurt isn’t exactly a two-man tent from Canadian Tire.
If all goes according to plan, you should hear from me in about 48 hours. Thanks for following along with me.
Good night.
Assalomu Alaykum from Bukhara
Here I am in Bukhara. I arrived yesterday afternoon after a pleasant train ride (first class really is the way to go on Uzbek trains). The AC was working, I had two seats to myself, we were only 1.5 hours behind schedule, and I spent the ride chatting with a British girl also traveling around Uzbekistan.
My hotel, the Komil Hotel, is perfect. It is in a 18th or 19th C home that is beautifully decorated and adorned with details carvings and design. The courtyard, breakfast room, and my own room are all like small, exotic palaces.
Bukhara is slightly more compact that Samarkand, and while Samarkand may have overall the more breath taking monuments, Bukhara is by far the lovelier city. Bukhara has not been restored and modernized the way much of Samarkand has. Its main streets are still an ancient feeling warren of dusty roads, sandy buildings and covered bazaars. At the centre of the town is Lyabi-Hauz, a plaza built around a pool, surrounded by giant mulberry trees and with stunning medrassas on either side – all dating back about 500 or 600 years. There is a pleasant poolside restaurant (where i ate last night and fed many hungry cats), and lots of inviting shops selling carpets and scarves and whatnot all around.
The monuments here are less tiled and colorful, and more the color of the desert, which means that wherever an azure dome appears it is astonishing. My favorite site so far though is the Kalon Minaret. It is 900 years old, about 50 meters tall and covered in rings of varying design. It is so enormous and so precise, that it is truly stunning. (Also, i like that at one point in history they used to put alleged criminals in sacks and thrown them from the top of the minaret to the ground in front of approving crowds. (This is why it is also known as the “Death Minaret”.)
So today i wandered, visiting the usual sights (mosques, medrassas, bazaars, and a fortress). I has some wonderful tea and a strange stroll through a very ghetto Uzbek “carnival”. It basically consisted of four rickety soviet-era rides, an ice cream stand and the world’s most depressing zoo. The zoo was a collection of trailers painted with pictures of men shooting animals, depicted with bloody bullet holes. In side, there were a few fowl and about 4 or 5 canine looking creatures miserably chained to posts or in cages. I didn’t go in.
I like it here. It is very relaxing and pleasant. Tomorrow i will hang out (I actually saw most of the sights I wanted to see today). The day after tomorrow i set out in to the desert for my camel adventure.
d
Da Svidanya, Samarkand
Today is my last full day in Samarkand. I have already seen the sights I wanted to see, so i am taking it a bit easy today. I walked for miles to find this lone internet cafe and I might head out of town to see this one rather ancient mausoleum, but other than that, I think I’ll just lay around.
I did not sleep at all last night, as i was quite ill. I am feeling better today, just weak. All I have been able to eat is tea and melons.
So, tomorrow, Friday, i catch the 12:00 noon train for Bukhara, which is supposed to be about a 3 hour journey.
I will check in when i can, internet access permitting.
d
The Old Town
One thing that is odd about Samarkand is that because of their vast tourism, apparently, they have really cleaned up the areas around the Registan. It doesn’t feel western, but it definitely feel new and tidy and organized. But I had heard that there was an old town worth exploring…if you can find it. What the city officials have done is built walls around the old parts of the city where the people actually live, so that tourists can be spared seeing the poverty.
I walked up and down this one street for quite a while, watching. I finally saw kids with modified prams stacked high with non (bread) coming out of a door in the wall. I stepped through and it was a different world.
Unpaved, uneven streets tangled together and lined with broken and haphazard dwellings. Kids walking around with non on their heads or carrying buckets of water. Corner stores guarded by odd looking chickens, broken windows, watermelon rinds and once beautiful mosques that have fallen into disrepair.
It is really wonderful. All of the kids were very friendly and wanted me to take their picture. As i was walking past one house, i was beckoned inside to watch how they make the round, golden non by sticking it to the ceiling of a wood burning oven.
It all felt quite authentic and was preferable to the more sanitized Samarkand that the city has put on display.
A note about the bread. I had last said that I didn’t care for it, but I must issue a retraction. There are various versions and, while i didn’t like the first one i tried, i have found another which is magnificent. It has the consistency of dinner rolls fresh from the oven, but with a slightly chewier texture. It’s very good indeed.
And they must bake thousands of them everyday. All day long, kids are schlepping the bread from the old town to the market, by pram, wheel barrow, and bicycle. The entire old city smells of baking bread.
I don’t how they can possibly consume them all (although this may help to explain the hearty girth of most of the women here).
d
Registan
Samarkand is amazing. It is a bit like Luxor, in the sense that it is just bursting with impossibly large, old and jaw droppingly beautiful monuments and mausoleums.
Obviously, the first place I had to go was the Registan. This is really the whole reason i am here, to see this collection of mosques and medrassas. It did not disappoint.
It is really hot here. It feels much hotter than Tashkent. The landscape is very deserty. On the train ride here, I watched as the land went from green and fertile to dusty and brown, with the odd, irrigated plot of land growing corn or green…something. It is definitely much more rural out here. People riding donkeys and tending to flocks of goats.
On my first evening here, I spent it handing out with Furkat at the hotel. We drank tea and ate bread and tomatos and cucumbers. I smoked a cigar. He told me does not smoke or drink, but then, minutes later he offered me cognac from a black bottle with cyrillic writing. “It is from Moldova,” he told me with what seemed like pride. We each had a glass of the vile liquor and i went to bed.
I have only met a couple of other travelers here. I met a couple from Colorado who have been on the road for one year. Staying at my hotel are two Japanese girls, each traveling solo, with whom I shared breakfast and as many stories as were possible given their limited English and my non-existent Japanese. It is nice to see other, solo female travelers.
It is so hot here that during the late afternoon, i retire to my room to enjoy the AC and have a nap, leaving me free for night time wanderings.
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