I am very sorry to advise that there will be no Special Correspondent report this time. He says he is suffering from mental exhaustion from being made to look at too many old buildings. and physical exhaustion as well, from the tour leader’s obsession with walking as much as possible. I don’t think he is really that badly effected and suspect he just wants to get home.
We have now finished the tour and are in Tashkent where we fly out from tomorrow. Our last country has been Uzbekistan to which we had two visits. The first one started in Termiz, the place where I had to climb the hotel fence at 4am. From there we went to Buhkara and then after visiting the delightful Turkmenistan we came back to Uzbekistan and went to Nukus, the Aral Sea, Khiva, Samakand and now Tashkent.
Uzbekistan is mostly flat and is an irrigated desert. It grows a great deal of cotton, has about thirty million people including the obligatory president for life and is a police state, but no where as obviously as next door. There are plenty of road blocks and lots of uniforms and I don’t think a crusading reporter would be around for long, but on the surface it is a friendly and relaxed place. As previously reported we wondered what we had struck on our first day in Termiz, we were out on a local look drive but didn’t realise we needed our passports. At the first road block we tried using our NZ driving licenses, but that didn’t work so back to the hotel. Apparently all the attention there was because it is close to the Afghan border and the associated drugs. When we were getting ready to leave the next morning Colin was approached by our nearly non-English speaking driver and asked for a reasonable amount of money, which he handed over. I fired off an email to the tour organiser asking what was going on, but all was soon revealed when we had to have an oil change and and apparently the driver had run out of cash. We also had to advance the cost of a bribe to get through a road block quickly, but were repaid on arrival in Buhkara. Colin was obviously distracted by all of this because he later found he had left his wallet in the car which caused a short panic before being quickly solved.
Buhkara, Khiva and Samakand are the serious Silk Road attractions in Uzbekistan and therefore are interesting because of the history and the sheer beauty of some of the sights. To go with that are tour parties, mostly of old people, and lots of tourist retail activity. We are now experts on silk, cotton and camel wool scarfs and given the number Colin has bought he may be going to open a shop. We have taken all the necessary pictures and even made a special night visit to the Registan to see it all lit up. The biggest advantage of tourist places is that you can get a decent feed and sometimes a reasonable glass of wine.
Food is not a strong point in Central Asia. Generally it is plain cooking based on meat, potatoes, carrots and rice. The much vaunted plov turns out to be all of that together. About the only interesting flavours have come from fennel and the sometimes available chilly sauce. There must be something tough in the food because gold teeth, especially sort of edging of the front ones, is common. We recently had an overnight train trip and took our meal with us so we would have the right amount of nutrition and induce sleep. Bread, salami and vodka.
Colin was still recovering from the effects of a wobbly stomach when we got to Nukus so didn’t come on the overnight camping trip to the Aral Sea. All alone, apart from a driver and guide, I went to look at the biggest ecological stuff up in the world and it is impressive how much of the lake has gone. From the once main town on where the shore used to be we drove 200ks to the present shore. The driver told of how he used to swim at Moynak, the town where there used to be a fish cannery, and now it’s visited to look at the rusting boats sitting where they used to float. I had a Dead Sea swim because it is so salty and can report it is fun floating on one’s back with arms and legs up in the air. The lake is disappearing simply because Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan take all the water that should flow into it for irrigation. There are regular conferences about how to fix it but it won’t happen because Uzbekistan is fixated with growing cotton which is a major earner, and Turkmenistan probably could afford to stop irrigation but they would have a huge unemployment problem. So it will end up another desert and I suppose there is an argument that says if they would rather have an agricultural industry than a big lake, why shouldn’t they.
One of the fun things about visiting Uzbekistan is the currency. The black market rates mean things are cheap, just to pick a random example a 1.5 litre bottle of beer costs about $1.20. The downside is that the money comes in 1000 Som notes, each of which is worth about 20 cents and that means walking around with an inch thick wad of cash. Locals can count it at impressive speed and the thick pile diminishes very quickly. If you change US$100 you need a bag to carry it.
Central Asia has been a great trip with a lot of variety of scenery, people, political organisations and roads. Lately the roads have been reasonable but we have endured some of the worst I have seen. The weather has been kind although one of us has mentioned a few times that he doesn’t like being cold and also doesn’t like being hot. The accommodation has covered the lot from a shared tent with a useless zip, to yurts and to a five star marble palace with all graduations in between. Colin and I have managed seven weeks without any arguments or sulking and probably confused our various drivers and guides by our strange kiwi bloke humour. Luckily we have not been detained by uniformed personal but Colin has tried hard to find the boundaries for ageing tourists.
But wait……
Colin says, I’m not exhausted but am ready for home. Dennis has organised a great trip and we have had very few downs and many, many ups. It’s very special to have a travel companion where you can share the joys and also cope with the glitches if they arrive.
So we say farewell to Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and a small bit of Kazakhstan and hope to see you soon.
Dennis and Colin.
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