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.