Samarkand, the Uzbekistan trip rolls on...

We were met at the station by a new driver (there are definitely some huge advantages to booking a tour in this country - not having to faff about arguing with taxi drivers about ridiculous fares every time you want to go anywhere is definitely one of them) and he drove us to our hotel, the Hotel Malika (not the hotel that pops up when you click on Samarkand, but a new one in the same group, very close to the Registan which is the main tourist attraction). It was a perfectly pleasant 3 star hotel, really clean with a good breakfast, and had obviously already attracted a loyal following from local tour operators because of its consistency of service and the good, functioning, pleasantly decorated rooms. 

One of the biggest headaches in running any business in this part of the world is achieving consistency of standards, and also in getting buildings to actually function. It sounds so basic, but then you see how places are built here and you start to realise why every building is riven with huge faults and that it is only a matter of time before they go wrong. 

Basically, all buildings are put together using a collection of impoverished labourers from the cheapest, nearest pool of labour, so in Kazakhstan there are a lot of Turkish and Uzbek workers, in Russia it is a standing joke that the Tajiks do this stuff (and that they are hopeless at it - see Nasha Russia - the Russian version of the BBC comedy programme Little Britain which has an hilarious skit about two Tajik decorators and their horrible Russian boss who just despairs of their incompetence and lack of language skills. I could not find any clips of these characters, but you can get the gist of the programme if you see some of the video clips on this site, they really show the gross side of Russia). I guess in Uzbekistan it is also a real mixture of where people come from. 

Anyway, these labourers appear at a site, a huge hole is dug for foundations, they all set up camp either on the plot itself, or if there is no space, on a nearby bit of waste ground like a bunch of gypsies, and there they live and work using hand tools and sweat until they get the job done. 

You never see any power tools, or accurate-looking instruments being used. I think they judge a lot of straight lines by eye, rather than using spirit levels. Work tends to be done very quickly, land is not given time to settle before construction begins even if it has been recently leveled,  so almost as soon as a building is finished, bits start falling down, or off the side/roof etc. And this is absolutely normal. 

But anyway, I totally digress. In Samarkand the main thing to visit is the Registan. A huge development of mosque buildings, minarets and domes which rather dominates the city. It is not a working mosque - the population, although something like 90% muslim, is only approximately 15% practising, and so there are a few mosques in and around town which are still genuine places of worship, but the Registan is purely there these days for its architectural and decorative merit. 

And a very good photo opportunity it makes too!  The stunning blue domes, wonderful and intricate patterned tile work that covers the monuments are all really attractive and impressive to view. 

   

   

  

Adventures in Uzbekistan Part 4

Our second day in Uzbekistan saw us embark on my favourite part of our trip: the express train journey from Tashkent to Samarkand.

    

I find train travel especially relaxing. We have lived in all sorts of wacky places and travelled as extensively as time and money has allowed. All of us, including the children, have made our journeys in some extremely dodgy vehicles, with or without seat belts, some I suspect without even a working fan belt, probably just some auntie's old stockings. I remember a driver doing an spectacular, controlled 75 meter skid while we were travelling at speed, and in the dark, back to Delhi from the Taj Mahal, our first born child asleep in the most flimsy, ineffective Indian car seat that I have ever seen, because there was a large concrete block in the middle lane of the motorway. In the middle lane! How can that not get moved out of the way?? And another time as we bounced along the wooden tracks of rural Cambodia, seeing my second daughter lolling asleep in her car seat (we had taken our own, the Indian lesson being well-learnt) with the car seat rolling according to the lurching of the minibus in an almost impossible, gravity-defying arc for every pothole that we crossed since the seat belt was basically a piece of farming twine to tie around the waist of the passenger. 

So we are used to long car journeys in very old cars on roads where most drivers have bought their licenses, and there is no knowing when you will meet a cow, donkey, crashed fruit van, or just a great, big, car-sized hole. It is never very relaxing. 

Trains, on the other hand, hardly ever crash. OK, when they do it is pretty awful, but the stats definitely stack up in favour of rail over road, and so I was really looking forward to experiencing rail Uzbek-style. 

   

We made our way to the impressive central train station in Tashkent and found our platform where the train (called the "Sharq") was already waiting. We had some reserved seats, found our carriage and bundled ourselves on. Where train journeys can take up to a week as they can in this part of the world (from Tashkent to Moscow is several days long), you are given heaps of room on your seat. The trains have a real old world charm about them, given that they feature their original fittings and were obviously made in the days before quick fit plastic seating and easy-replace modern trappings were invented. Every carriage has leather seats, wooden tables and the carriage sides are panelled in wood. Even the toilets were no worse than I have seen on some South West train services out of London Waterloo. 

    

Not that the trains are immaculate, Orient Express-style bastions of comfort and style. Many of the windows are permanently misted up with condensation between the double glazing, some even slosh an inch of water between the panes; the television sets (yes, television sets - the Uzbeks were obviously streets ahead of Mr Branson in their understanding of in-flight entertainment) are about 80% functional, although the whole train compartment must listen to the sound track to the film showing, usually the tale of a pair of Central Asian young lovers caught in the middle of some terrible strife between rival families... very dramatic stuff! But overall, the experience is very comfortable. 

   

The train chugs along at about 40mph, the perfect speed to view the passing countryside and within about four hours you arrive in the wonderful station at Samarkand, the ancient town that was a major centre on the Silk Route and which is such a relatively remote place that arriving here gives a real frisson of travel excitement. Even the name, Samarkand, I think, sounds like some ancient wizard, or a mystical land of dragons.

   

Adventures in Uzbekistan Part 3

I had expected the trip to Tashkent to involve:

1. Short early morning flight to 70kms from Tashkent

2. One hour taxi ride to Tashkent hotel (plus extra time at border a possibility)

What we had actually experienced was:

1. Massive queue to get to plane at 6.30am in Almaty airport

2. Short flight to Shymkent in Southern Kazakhstan

3. Three and a half hour mar

athon taxi ride in non-air conditioned old audi

4. Two and a half hour customs clearance, bureaucratic palava

5. Long walk along the donkey track into Uzbekistan (not actually that long, but worth including as it was quite extraordinary)

5. Two hour drive in nice new Toyota van to hotel in Tashkent

By the time we got to the Hotel Poytaht in Tashkent we were all, frankly, buggered. So to be met by a grizzled old guide wearing one of those war reporter-type camouflage flak jacket waistcoat things was quite distressing. He was keen to take us to a restaurant for lunch. 

"Listen, mate" I told him, in my patchy Russian, "I have been around the block a bit, and if you take us to some tourist, crappy, overpriced restaurant I am going to be very disappointed. Please take us to a good local joint for a normal meal,"

"Of course, of course, no problem, we go to eat by the river," he assured me. 

"This restaurant you recommend, what kind of food does it serve?" I asked

"Oh, Uzbek food and International food," he said. 

The alarm bells were ringing. The term "International food", in my experience of trying to find some authentic local cuisine, means that you are actually heading for the place least likely in a city to be serving the real McCoy. 

"You know, we really don't want to eat international food," I told him, "My parents, they have travelled a lot. They will not get sick if they eat in a local restaurant. I really hope that you are not taking us to a tourist trap," I said, hoping that my requests did not fall on deaf ears. 

They did. We drove up to a more-or-less empty beer garden with tired, old waitresses in beer-sponsored aprons serving rank, badly-cooked shashlik (meat kebabs) that had been stored in an ancient old fridge full of food and flies outside (I saw this because I was running around with the baby, but most bus loads of tourists would be unaware this small detail), some luke warm noodles in a weak soup and the ubiquitous central asian round bread (not freshly baked as you would expect from a really good establishment). 

Considering that none of us really wanted to be on a tour with anyone, preferring the thought of an afternoon relaxing by the pool, followed by a small foray into town to find some supper and a beer later, the ambience was lacking. Added to which, the guide had produced our bill for the tour which was 25% higher than I had agreed before travelling to Uzbekistan, so I had to spend most of the time on the phone to the organiser explaining that it is not normal to include a one-year-old child as a full-fare paying adult in a tour bill. 

"But you did not tell me she is baby," he argued.

"I think I did, and I also think I faxed you the photo page of her passport at least twice, so you might have noticed," I replied.  (My daughter's passport was issued when she was 10 days old as we had to make an emergency flight home to see a dying relative, so there really is no doubt that she is extremely small).

Anyway, we came to an agreement in the end, with the organiser pleading with me, 

"But I make no profit for this tour".

"Yeah, right," I thought. 

What I actually said was, "I am so sorry about that, but thank you so much for sorting this out." 

After the guide had taken us to see a memorial to a large earthquake, I broke it to him that we were not really up for a full city tour, and it might be better if we all got some rest now. Realising that this meant he got the rest of the day off, he immediately cheered up and we went a very direct route back to the hotel. 

On the way, I asked him what the main industry in Uzbekistan was. 

"Cotton," he said. 

"Really, I didn't know that," I said. 

"Yes, cotton is our biggest export. But now is problem," he explained, "Some countries, they do not want to buy our cotton, because they say we use child labour. For picking," he explained. 

"Oh dear, that is a problem," I said. "But do people use child labour to pick cotton in Uzbekistan," I asked.

"Of course we do," he said, "All our workers are in Russia. If we do not use the children, we cannot pick the crop." 

The minibus became quieter and we drove the streets of Tashkent back to our hotel in peace and tranquility, the baby asleep on my lap. 

Picture: My father listening politely to our guide 

 

Poppies

I can't believe I didn't get round to putting the poppy photos on my blog. 

Late April, at Ille River which is about one hours drive from town, a group of us went for a barbecue by the river and a gawp at the millions and millions of flowers.

When I flew back into town from London in May, the steppe was still smeared with red from the fields of poppies still in bloom. It really looked amazing, like some Mars dust had been sprinkled from above. 

 

Adventures in Uzbekistan part 2

To get into Uzbekistan is not straightforward, as you might expect from this fairly murky regime. To obtain a visa, you must get a letter of invitation to visit the country from someone inside the country, which is tricky if you have never been there before to get to know anyone to ask you back. So you need to use a tour agency to invite you, and they make a formal request at some border office inside Uzbekistan. This office issues them with a unique visa application number which is then sent to you and you go and find the Uzbek embassy near you and wait until they deign to provide you with your visa, relieving you of US$55 for your time wasted. I say deign, because the Uzbek visa office in Almaty takes a very slap dash approach to its opening hours. Officially open from 2pm to 4.30pm every day, they may not actually open until nearer 3pm. There is no queue system, and the range of random applicants for visas are admitted seemingly in the order of the size of the bribe they have paid to the doorman to get in. 

We had all obtained our visas, but Dimitriy, our tour contact person, had informed us that the border closest to Shymkent was "not working" and advised to go to another crossing point called Yallama. He did not advise us that this crossing was 300kms instead of 70kms away from the airport, and it was only after we had been travelling at great speed in the ancient audi taxi that I asked the driver how much further it was and he told me it would be about another 200kms. The thought of flying on Tuesday morning direct to Tashkent began to seem, retrospectively, like not a bad idea at all, but too late for that. Our early morning start was taking its toll, and although along the route we did see camels grazing (a first for me in Kazakhstan), and we may have passed many other interesting sights, but we would not be able to relate these since we were all lolling our heads in states of total unconsciousness. It was hard not to all fall asleep at the same time, and at one point, we had to discuss who thought they could manage to stay awake for the next 30 minutes, so that we were not all out of it at the same time. The three of us falling asleep at the same time in an unknown place with an unknown taxi driver, on our way to somewhere that none of us actually knew where it was (and it was not marked on our map) somehow did not seem like good travel practice! 

And then after a long, long time of driving as fast as he could along a straight road through miles of more-or-less nothingness, the taxi driver stopped in a tiny town, took our stuff out and drove off. 

The border town is an absolute dump. My parents and I have done dodgy borders before, the most notable being the Thailand/Cambodian entry/exit point of Poi Pet which is another Border Hole of the Ultimate Order. This was a backwater of a place, full of puddles, potholes, assorted livestock, a few loitering locals and the official crossing point to our destination. I began to pray that Sergei, our contact, was indeed waiting on the other side. I had told Dimitry that we were coming from Shymkent by taxi after landing at 8.30am and he had told me Sergei would be at the border at 11am. We did not get there until 1pm, so I thought that perhaps Sergie might have given up and buggered off by now. He was not answering his phone. I did not tell my parents this. 

A very slow and tedious passage through customs was made slightly more interesting only by the chance meeting of a load of England football fans on their way into Kazakhstan. Initially I thought perhaps they might be hooligans trying to get into Kazakhstan at a small remote border crossing (possibly without internet connectivity), avoiding Interpol and entering illegally. But it turned out that they were an apparently respectable lot, who were taking the chance to experience a Central Asian cultural tour before going to watch the world qualifying football match the following Saturday. They did tell us that their next destination was Bishkek, and we later heard that an England fan had been shot in the knee in Bishkek after refusing to stop singing football songs in a bar when being repeatedly asked to be quiet by the locals, the only bit of trouble that any of us heard off, and frankly, he had obviously asked for it, so perhaps they did have alter-egos after all, we will never know. 

After two hours we finally emerged into Uzbekistan. Leaving the border crossing, we had a 500m walk along a donkey track lined with huge transport lorries waiting to cross into Kazakhstan. The drivers all had the look of people who wait at borders often and for very long times indeed, and it was no surprise to pass a guard post at the end of the track and see the guards playing poker, presumably safe in the knowledge that none of the guys outside were going anywhere until they had had their documents stamped. 

What joy to finally see the sign "East Line Tour" and meet the jolly Sergei, who had faithfully been waiting for us for nearly 5 hours! 

Adventures in Uzbekistan part 1

We first moved abroad to Brazil 12 years ago (agh! how did that happen?). Our first foreign adventure, we were so young and keen in those days, you just could not stop us getting involved in local culture. But even now, not much has changed on the enthusiasm stakes - we still love finding new things, seeing new places. The children have worn me down and I can no longer be relied upon to provide up to date information about local bars, but husband makes sure his own personal research is well up to date in that area! When the first set of relatives came to visit, we had worked out an hour-by-hour itinerary for their trip to ensure that they did not miss a single element of what we considered to be the "ultimate and essential Sao Paulo/Rio de Janeiro and other parts of Brazil tour". I think that this had been partly prepared to help us get over our fear of having parents to stay for two weeks solid, after a pretty harmonious 18 months of living 8000 km apart. Whatever the reason, everyone saw and did a lot in their time in the South American paradise that is Brazil, and left with the certainty that they could not have done more. 

Our visitor itineraries took on a mythic status, and we politely accepted the ridicule from various members of our families about our penchant for spreadsheets and lack of attention to sleeping time allowances, but still we showed no mercy. And to be honest, we allow ourselves little slack when visiting somewhere new, the only exception being when we visited Beijing when I was eight-months pregnant, and I was allowed to rest in the afternoon after climbing the Great Wall of China (but only so that I did not go into premature labour and spoil the holiday!).

So it was no surprise for my recently-retired parents to find that less than 24 hours after their over night, economy class flight from Heathrow to Almaty, and with a day in the Kazakh national park and a shashlik lunch under their belts, we were heading back to the airport at 5.50am to catch a 7.30am flight to Shymkent in Southern Kazakhstan for the start of their mini-tour to Uzbekistan. And to their credit, despite the fact that they could actually hardly open their eyes, they took it in good stead. Adventurers to the fore!

The dreadful flight time is normal in this part of the world. Almaty must be almost the bottom of the list for preferred landing slots, and wherever you go, or land, one part of the journey will be at a hellish hour (the Moscow to Almaty flight is a businessman's favourite leaving at 1am and arriving at 4.30 am). We were flying to Shymkent, 70kms from the capital of Uzbekistan, Tashkent, because this early-morning Air Astana flight time was actually more convenient than waiting until Tuesday morning for the Uzbekistan Air direct flight to the city. 

Shymkent is about 1000 kms from Almaty, south towards the fertile plains that produce most of the fruits and veggies that we eat here all the time. It is a large industrial town, with an apparently lively night life which we were not going to sample, traveling as we were with two grandparents and a one-year-old baby. So we landed, found a taxi and set off for our border crossing in an ancient old audi car. Here are pictures of Shymkent Airport at 8.30 and a 'Spot the British waiting for their luggage competition' (Clue: they are not on the right or the left).

Juggling in the land of stan

So the Allia boozing disaster was finalized and that left me with no nanny. This, in itself, is not such a problem since I am not holding down a full time job, or anything like that. But when you have people to help out you can make plans in advance without considering that you might have to sack them out of the blue for being a vodka snaffler, and  we were expecting my parents to arrive on Saturday night from the UK, followed by an early morning flight with myself and the baby to Uzbekistan on Monday morning. 

I had planned to leave the two other children under the supervision of the nanny and the driver, who would pick them up from school, feed them, put them to bed and then wait for my unreliable husband to return from work (which could be any time from 7pm to 1am depending on his work load). 

So a series of frantic phone calls later, I had called in numerous favours from friends, and had a complicated plan for the week ahead with tea being provided in five different houses, driver primed to pick up kids, take them here and there, go and get stand in babysitter (Rosa, another gold-toothed Kazakh lady who has baby sat for us on weekends before) who would come home, help them bathe then husband would arrive home and she could go home. It was slightly risky, but if noone forgot that they had said they would feed them, then I figured it would probably work out OK. 

And actually, it did.