Medresas, Mosques and Cops
The first week in Uzbekistan I stayed in the famous Silk-Road-Cities of Bukhara and Samarkand with their many, many places of muslim worship. One wouldnt believe it, but there are quite a few tourists here, especcially french, that admire the grandeur of past days. But after a while the Medresas (islamic schools) and Mosques look a little bit alike and enough pictures are taken. So I was quite happy, that after the exhausting speed-run through Azerbaidshan and Turkmenistan, I had some time to hang out with fellow travellers and do some fun stuff like checking out the nightlife at Uzbek Diskotheks.
Uzbek and Swiss friends in the back of a Lada en route to the Bukhara Disko
In Uzbekistan it proved also to be quite difficult to get money. Because the biggest bill is not even worth one dollar, the aquivalent of say 50$ means a 1-2cm stack of banknotes. Since the loading capability of an ATM is limited though, they are most of the time out of money. In addition I have found ATMs only in Taschkent. Other than that I had to go to a special bank, where it was a one hour procedure to withdraw money with my bankcard.
Sometimes I resorted to the few traveller cheques I carry, but even that proved troublesome as in the afternoon some banks just didnt have any money left. So they would change maximum 50$ at one time. Which is reasonable, because it's just very unpratical to carry any more. I have seen people coming with plastic shopping bags full of money to pay for something worth a few hundred dollars.
The Registan, Samarkand
After 3 days of sightseeing and having found the right bank in Bukhara I left for Samarkand, even though I had not entirely recovered from my turkmen diarrhea yet. In Samarkand I went to a hostel recommended by other travellers, apparently a pretty chill meeting place with good people. I turned out to be just that, frequently we were sitting late in the night, exchanging the latest visa info, travel stories, life philosophies and whatever else. There were japanese, french, swiss, german, italian, dutch, belgium people travelling from all kinds of direction, with all kinds of transport, like hitching, quite a few cycling, motorcycling, by bus or by train.
Dinner in the Bahodir Guesthouse, Samarkand
There I met also Massimo, an Italian guy on a XT600, who had the same plan of selling the bike and travelling on with a bicycle in china. We didnt make plans together, but met in Taschkent again, slept in the illegal japanese guesthouse, and went together to the Tadjik embassy where we faced kind of a mafia, pressing more money out of us to get the visa. I refused to pay, but he did and went on to Tadjikistan doing the Pamir Highway. A high mountain road leading over mountain passes up to 4600m this would have been the ultimate test for my Rengtengteng but I decided to spend more time in Kirgistan instead. For this country the visa process was easy, took about 5 min.
But back to Samarkand. I found a few people together and we went for a daytrip in a minibus to the town of Shakrisabz. This is the birthplace of King Timur, the national icon of Uzbekistan. Since it was Sunday there were many wedding parties having their pictures taken in front of the Timur statue. It was quite interesting, although groom and bride always had quite a stale look on their face, not really showing a lot of excitement. But I think I'd look the same if I were married to a girl that before I had just met for an hour so.
The trip was quite an experience, since for the first time I actually travelled somewhere not by bike but in Daewoo microbus. How complicated! First of all you have to find the right "busstation", then haggle about the price, and finally trust your life into the drivers hand. But at least this one went slower when there was police on the street. Police meaning either real roadside stops or alternatively cows, donkeys or whatever else got into our way. It turned out to be a fun trip, not so much for the sights, but the people we met.
Dressed up girl in front of Timur statue in Shakrisabz
Men on their way to work, not appreciating the famous Registan, Samarkand
After a few more days in Samarkand I moved on to Tashkent to apply for visas for Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan and also to pick up my second passport that had been sent from Germany to a travel agency. The passport wasnt there yet, so I stayed for a few days in the cheapest accomodation possible, an inofficial homestay in concrete block appartments recommended by japanese travellers. The kids around there though that all foreigners speak japanese and we were constantly greeted with a nice konichiwa.
The funny thing in Uzbekistan, and traditionally all former soviet central asian countries, is that you have to register with the police where you stay. Usually the hotel will do this for you, but of course not a non-registered homestay. And since Tashkent, the "green city", is bursting of idle policemen that just look for an excuse to make you pay a "fine", having no registration is not something that adds to you comfort level. The requirement by the family we stayed with was thus not to go out after 9pm. We broke this rule violently one night when I went with Massimo to the best discothek in town. Unfortunately we were refused because my sandals werent good enough for the bouncer and so we resided to a cafe nearby. There we could watch the upscale prostitutes trying to find work with the rich looking guests. None of the girls ever sat down with us...
Uli from Berlin and Massimo from Genova
After waiting for a few days in Tashkent for my passport to arrive I got sick of the city, the lazy family of our homestay, the bad food, and the f...ing police everywhere. I decided to leave for a short roundtrip but it cost me a day to get my ass moving an pull out of the city. I went to the northeast of the country where the foothills of the great Tien-Shan mountain region start. It was considerably cooler there than in the hot city and a day hiking trip up the bolschoi Tschimgan (3309m) was good for training the body and relaxing the mind.
New looks for the Emmie in Tschimgan
Actually I wanted to camp, but a woman working in a roadside kiosk offered me her home and food for 5'000 Sum (~4,50$). It was interesting to see the house, the way they cook, live, work together and survive on a 200$/month budget for a family of 8. Especially one of the sons was interested to talk to me, which helped to improve my russian very, very slowly. But when I left there was a very irritating argument since my payment of 10'000 Sum, I stayed two nights, was not accepted. Instead I was suggested to leave my mobile phone as gift. Despite the poverty, the daughter was sent to university in Tashkent the next year and for that of course needed a nice phone with an MP3 player. It took me a while to talk my way out of it, since the next thing suggested was I leave the 50$ bill I had.
Overall, despite the Uzbek being generally nice people, I had a lot of experience where people tried to rip me off, or played dumb when I ask for directions or whatever.
To a non-positive feeling added the next roadside stop, where the police hassled me for an hour to pay a bribe. I resisted and eventually was allowed to drive on.
lotsa melons in Uzbekistan
Yummiee.. meat outside butcher stall
Back in Tashkent my passport still didnt arrive and some research showed, that I had obviously told the visa service in Germany to send it with normal mail instead of courier. I'm a bit mad they didnt reassure themselves if I really wanted this (it's madness to send anything important in the normal mail) but in the end I cant do anything about it. I was still hoping that the packet might arrive late and so I asked the Uzbek Travel agency to forward the packet to Bishkek once it arrives (not by mail of course).
Slowly I was done with Uzbekistan and Tashkent in particular, so after another night in the ugly but cheap japanese guesthouse I left to the Fergana valley on the way to Osh, Kyrgyzstan. This valley is the breadbasket of the entire country, a lot of farming can be seen. I stopped in Margilan to look at a traditional silk factory, fixed a blown tyre there and talked at length to a dutch software engineer who had bought and electronificed a landrover for his once in a lifetime trip. His homemade GPS-navigation kit had the big advantage that he actually had mapping information for this part of the world, which companies like Garmin cannot provide. The technology fascinated me enough to know that I still might want to go back to work in my profession on day.
Bagdad?
Bikes for work
Silk rug fabrication