Almost on my regular three-year schedule, here’s an update. It’s 2024 and the world has slowly been turning to sh*t for a while now, but, for the sake of continuity, let’s pretend we’re still in 2016 and all is well.
September 12th, 2016
Metropolitan Guard
Tashkent is well known for its underground railway. Metro stations are more nicely decorated that you would expect after seeing the infrastructure above ground level. It is officially forbidden to take any photos, so we just refer to Inside the Secret Tashkent Metro.
Every entrance of the metro has its own armed guard, equipped with a serious looking hat and a metal detector. Once you’ve passed his scrutiny, you go underground, where you meet… another guard. Usually he wants to see inside our bags and sometimes he ‘checks’ our passports. Next to guard number two is guard number three, whose job it is to verify the work of guard number two. With an austere nod, number three confirms that our presence forms no danger to the metro system.
Employee number four at, the ticket office of Tinchlik Station, exchanges our 2,400 S’om with two plastic tokens, for one ride each. The tokens come into play at the admission gates. In normal countries, these gates open the barrier automatically after the traveler inserts a valid ticket. Here it’s different. There are gates, but they have no barriers at all. They look like they’ve disintegrated together with the Soviet Union.
Metro Python
So what do we do? Simply walk through the open gates? Wrong! Number five, a lady on a stool next to the gates, prevents us from walking through before inserting the plastic token into a slit in the gate, which is, in the absence of any barriers, merely a collection box for used tokens. I don’t think a discussion about this will be very fruitful, so I keep quiet.
I insert a token and gesture to Petra that she can walk through the gate first. Wrong again! The lady suddenly jumps up and holds Petra firmly by the upper arm. Comrade number five has a convinced look on her face, spelling “We’re still a serious bureaucracy here, so no cheating, mister!” It becomes apparent that I should walk through the gate first, because I inserted the token into the gate! A bit baffled, I give my remaining token to Petra in a dramatic way, as if to say “I hope this all goes well, because if it doesn’t, I’m afraid we’ll never see each other again!”
No more triceps-pinching is required, and we both make it to the platform with incredulous looks on our faces. A little 3-year old boy comes walking to us from 20 meters away to give candy to Petra. Two minutes later, he returns to retrieve it with an anxious expression on his face. We think he realized that that was his last piece of candy. We laugh about this with his mother and superfluous guard number four.
Smoky and Stinky
It’s quiet in the city center. Not an Ashgabat-level of quiet, but there is less going on than we expect in a city of more than two million inhabitants. There is little traffic, but what they lack in presence, some cars make up in terms of smell. Only one Lada needs to pass by and there’s a strong smell of natural gas. Sometimes I think they are only propelled by releasing pressurized gas rather than combusting it first.
We spend most of the afternoon in Chaykof Coffee House, writing this blog and researching destinations for the near future on this trip. They serve tasty food here as well. This appears to be a richer area of Tashkent, as we can tell from the menu prices and the way the guests are dressed. Smoking is still allowed here, so we smell like a visit to a Dutch bar in 1999 when we leave.
At the guesthouse, the Tiffins have arrived meanwhile, but later than expected, because Samarkand was locked down yesterday. What? Apparently no one was allowed to leave or enter the city during a visit by the president of Kazakhstan. Maybe sealing off a complete city is interpreted as a sign of respect to the high visitor, but to all others it must have been quite a nuisance. The Tiffins invite us to join them for an event, the day after tomorrow, provided that we’ll manage to wash the smoky smell off by then.
In the evening, we take the metro to the center again, not only because we enjoy the bizarreness of the whole procedure, but also to have dinner at Il Perfetto. Can you tell that we’re still in Shurpa-and-Kebab-dodging mode?
Petra has been having regular digestive ‘irregularities’ for a while now. They are also regular in the sense that exactly half an hour after eating, nature has pressing arguments for being very close to a toilet. Let’s hope the metro is punctual because we have a gut feeling that accidentally decorating the medallion of Yuri Gagarin at the wall of Kosmonavtlar Station will get us into serious trouble.
September 13th, 2016
Screeching Halt
We’d like to stay another three nights in Jahongir, but we need to leave tomorrow. A large group has fully booked the guesthouse and they need our room. We’re leaving today already because moving and visiting the Indian embassy on the same day is probably a bit too much. We’ve learned that one can reasonably expect to complete one errand per day on these kinds of trips.
A nice breakfast with the Tiffins. They show us photos of Nepal and give us tips for trekking routes and guides there. They have traveled 99 countries meanwhile. That’s more than half of all countries! Their website is a joy to visit with many nice photos.
The ride to our new dwelling, Sunrise Caravan Stay, is eventful. We’re overtaken on the right while indicating right and then get cut off because the rightmost lane has changed magically into a parking, but drivers only notice at the last moment. There are more events like these, where drivers make emergency stops for red lights exposing their Lada’s drive train from the back while scraping the road with their front bumper. Now we know what these screeching sounds were that we heard from our guesthouse, every few minutes. It’s funny once you start noticing.
The Korean Connection
Although the Uzbek language has used Arabic, Cyrillic and Latin script through the centuries, we noticed something strange: quite a few shops’ names are in Korean script, and more than just the kimchi/dog meat specialty shop. What is going on? One lucky hit on Google teaches us that there are nearly 175,000 Koreans in Uzbekistan, descendants of Koreans from Far Eastern Russia that were deported as a result of a resolution by Stalin in 1937.
When we arrive at our new guesthouse, we also see Korean license plates on three parked motorcycles. Kim is working on his bike. He has ridden from Korea through Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan to Uzbekistan and plans to be in Iceland in November and in South-Africa in February. We are surprised and skeptical about this high pace. We don’t know which visa agency he is using, but this seems neither enjoyable nor possible. Overland travel definitely has a different pace for us. To each his own.
Our room has an extra bunk bed which we immediately fill with all of our luggage. As a bonus, we don’t only get a private room but also a private shower and toilet, which we didn’t expect. Most of the beds in this place are bunk beds in dorm rooms. Thumbs up for the free washing machine.
The internet connection is at least as slow as in the other guest house, but we manage to get the occasional WhatsApp message through (no photos, please). For more serious stuff, like the proof of funds that we need from our bank for our Indian visa application, we use our Uzbek SIM card.
September 14th, 2016
Warp Speed
At breakfast, we meet the other two overlanding Koreans, Doosu and Un. If you think the name for our tour (Go Long) is weird , you haven’t heard about Team Motorship Tripers [sic] yet. Not close enough to Starship Troopers to risk a call by an American lawyer and also different enough not to be mistaken for a sexually transmitted disease. Well done.
Team Motorship Tripers have spent the last five months on the road, following roughly the same path as Kim. They say they want to be in Spain or Morocco in two months. That sure beats Iceland in November.
Audience with the Ambassador
With all this talking we need to hurry now to make it to the Indian embassy, where we have an official appointment. A taxi is easily found everywhere and this one’s driver knows better than Google Maps. He takes us to the embassy in less than ten minutes and without a single screeching halt.
We pass the passport check with flying colors and once we’re in, it’s business as usual with application forms, pass photos, bank statements and copies of passports and visa. We’re told that they need to “check something” with the Indian embassy in the Netherlands or the Uzbek embassy in Moscow. That doesn’t make sense, because we’re not Indian, we don’t live in the Netherlands and we’re not Uzbek either. But the bottom line is that it will take at least two more days to get our visa.
Before we leave, we are requested to have an interview with the ambassador. We don’t think we can refuse, and, on the other hand, they may have Ferrero Rocher! She has a few questions about our trip, how it’s funded it and about which other destinations we plan to visit. Her trickiest question is whether we’ve got Pakistani visa. We have them, but in our first passports, which are still in Switzerland waiting to be taken to Kyrgyzstan by someone we’ve never met before!
We only tell the ambassador the first bit of that last sentence. The Indian visa application requested us to provide information about other passports we might own and we were smart enough to be honest about it. The situation would’ve been very difficult if we hadn’t. The ambassador wants to see the Pakistani visa. We can’t, but promise to send copies. Top tip: always scan/photograph your visa when they are issued. Ours could’ve been on their way to Kyrgyzstan and that would’ve substantially delayed our Indian visa application.
The conversation with our taxi driver back to the hotel consists of only the words ‘football’ and ‘Gollandiya’.
лебединое озеро балет
On a long overland motorcycle trip you’re bound to do something totally adventurous you’ve never done before. Tonight it’s visiting my first ballet performance! We know the Swan Lake so well that we have to look up the story line before we meet the Tiffins at the Alisher Navoiy Theater. The performance is entertaining and the music from the orchestra pit pretty good. We’ve got excellent places for $5,- in the second row. A good spot to take many photos.
The ending of the story is unconventional in that the swan, the sorcerer and the prince live in a love triangle happily ever after, I think? It’s either that or I’ve been breathing too much unburned propane in this city.
Dinner and a cordial goodbye with the Tiffins, who are leaving for Kazakhstan tomorrow.
September 15th, 2016
Crosstown Traffic
Tashkent is not a town that has the best interest of pedestrians in mind. There’s a street in town that has two pedestrian crossings, but it’s 800m (half a mile) long! Instead of creating a crossing every 100m or so, they did go through the effort of building three 800m long fences!
Thankfully, they’re low enough to step over, which we do to cross the dual 4-lane street. A policeman, apparently with the job of guarding the three fences, whistles and gestures at us. We shrug simultaneously, point to the direction we want to go and just move on. He’s definitely not going to cross the road to chase us.
I haven’t read the Uzbek ‘Handbook for the Programming of Traffic Lights’ but I do have a complaint. When the traffic lights for pedestrians suddenly turn red while you’re still crossing the road, you’re in for a surprise, because the waiting drivers get a green light immediately, without any dead time. So, one moment you’re legally crossing the road, and one second later, cars start driving around you. This way, they only need one timer and an inverter, which is cheap, if you don’t count the hospital bills.
September 16th, 2016
Starship Drippers
- Wipe snotty nose with fingers,
- blow nose in hands,
- open toilet door with hand,
- touch toilet paper holder,
- get toilet paper,
- cough without hands (as if it matters),
- wipe hands,
- open tap,
- wash hands without soap,
- close tap and
- open restroom door with hand…
…is the most effective way to spread your common cold among all visitors of the Sunrise Caravan Stay. We’ve got it too and sore throats on top.
Not much going on today, for that reason. Petra is on the verge of having to stay in bed, but, after enough cold supermarket food, we’re going into town for dinner anyway. Three guards and a ticket salesperson later, it’s time to choose a metro gate again. Surprisingly, this one still works and the two half-doors that slide towards each other squeeze Petra’s sides as she walks through. Ouch! Another application of a timer and an inverter, I figure. This must be the funniest thing that has happened to Comrade number five on her stool all day.
September 19th, 2016
Freedom at Last
The only eventful thing that happened in the last 3 days of us recovering from a cold, is our visit to the Indian embassy to pick up our visas and moving back to the Jahongir Guest House. We just don’t seem to be very compatible with Uzbek city life. We think our experience may have been very different if we’d stayed in the countryside. Alas, no embassies in the countryside…
Sure, we’ve met friendly people, but we’ve haven’t heard anybody laugh here. There is a post-Soviet vibe of people doing pointless jobs and nobody bothering to do things right, even if it seems not so much effort to do so. What sums it up nicely, is a dilapidated and overgrown playground. It has a slide that’s entirely made of rough concrete…
We get to fill up our Uzbek Beeline mobile subscription. The employee confirms that the drunk idiot who charged us way to much for about 93 bits of mobile data credit was indeed a drunk idiot.
September 21st, 2016
Isobel
At the last breakfast in our guesthouse we meet Isobel Shaw. She knows Pakistan intimately and is the author of the Pakistan Trekking Guide. We have an interesting conversation with her, making us even more eager to go there. She finished an updated copy of her 1993 trekking guide in 2013, but for some reason it’s not going to be published. Too bad.
We’re leaving Tashkent today. The perpetual packing struggle doesn’t allow us to leave early.
All fuel stations advertise 95 octane fuel, but they never actually have it. The best we can find is 91 octane, which is still much better than the 80-octane camel piss most Ladas can deal with.
Roadside Pantomime
When in Tashkent, do as the Uzbeks do. So no stopping for pedestrians that want to use pedestrian crossings. The pedestrians should have gotten used to it by now and I don’t want to get rear-ended by a driver who doesn’t understand why I’d brake. This time, on another 4-lane transit route through Tashkent, I’m being pulled over by a traffic sheriff.
Instead of talking to me, he mimes a person walking, with his fingers over the papers he carries. My response is “No, we’re not walking, we’re on motorcycles!” while miming opening the throttle on my bike. We repeat this a couple of times, after which he asks “Turrist?”, which I answer with “да”. That closes the case, and gestures that we should hurry off, which we gladly do.
Concrete Dodging
Once we clear Tashkent it’s easy going on good roads. However, there are several police checkpoints on the road to Andijon slowing us down. Most of them are not letting us through without scanning our passports or writing our names and license plate numbers in their Big Checkpoint Books. We cooperate.
There is a larger mountain pass between us and Fergana Valley, the first pass one since we’ve left Iran, about three weeks ago. The road takes us up to 2200m (7200ft). It’s beautiful here, but the drivers’ road manners take most of our attention, because their overtaking maneuvers are quite ad-hoc. They seem to interpret the big 1-meter high blocks separating the lanes merely as three-dimensional dotted lines in concrete. And dotted lines allow overtaking, don’t they?
They need to swerve quickly though, because the blocks are not far apart. They keep on driving on the other lane until another vehicle appears. Then, at the last moment, they swerve back into the right lane, hoping for an opening between the concrete blocks. We can see oncoming truck drivers wince; their gold teeth their gleaming in the low sunlight.
We’re happy to be on the road again and we’re making good progress. Therefore we decide to skip the city of Kokand and aim for Andijon, the largest city before the border with Kyrgyzstan. The sun will set before we’ll arrive there, but the road surface is good. Let’s hope it stays that way.
We pick up the pace, trying to get as far as possible before it gets too dark. Once it does, we slow down to 60km/h (40mph). Going any faster wouldn’t allow us to react to surface hazards on the meanwhile bumpy road. The many minibuses are driving at about the same speed, so we play a game of overtaking-leapfrog with them.
Goats and Chickens
The receptionist of the first hotel we try in Andijon says it’s completely booked. Because that’s very unlikely, Petra says that he can just tell us if he doesn’t want us here. He says that that’s not it: the hotel is full because of a large goat expert conference in town, apparently with many German attendants. And they’ve all chosen this hotel.
Why were we in such a rush to leave the capital city? We should’ve stopped in Kokand when it was still light and we had the time to pick a place to stay. Now we have to find a hotel in a hurry and our mobile data doesn’t work here. Perhaps they forgot to switch it back on after the major protests in 2005.
Eventually we find a hotel. The restaurant is open until 11pm, so that’s good. We hurry to get our luggage in and take a quick shower. When we come out, the restaurant is closed, well before 11pm! The waiter apologizes but can’t do much. A friend of the waiter, however, is very hospitable and helpful by taking us to a take-away restaurant in his car. Thank you! Chicken, bread, fruit and tea for dinner in our hotel room this time.
We’ll have another border crossing tomorrow. We prepare by counting our cash and making photos of all our collected paper slips with hotel confirmations. These are required by OVIR (the Department of Foreign Travel and Exit), so they can see where you’ve been. We make the copies for the eventuality that they should ‘magically disappear’ from our passports at the border.