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Published: June 23rd 2008
Tamerlane Father of Uzbekistan?
Since independence Tamerlane has been adopted as the Father of Uzbekistan with his statues replacing those of Lenin. A little surprising given his reputation and as he was born from Turkic-Mongol stock. He was long dead before the Uzbek tribes arrived in town.
Leaving Iran
We flew from Iran to Uzbekistan, (our first flight since leaving home) as getting a visa to travel over land through Turkmenistan takes a lot of time, needs a letter of invitation (expensive) and even then may be a bit hit and miss.
It was 1am by the time we reached the Emam Khomeni airport and on the departure board was a BMI flight to London; it felt odd that having travelled for over six weeks to get this far we could just pop on a plane and be back in Heathrow in 6 hrs.
We’d fully expected the airport facilities to be pretty much closed, (much as Stansted would be), but no, all through the night it was a really busy, bustling modern airport, stuffed full of shops and food outlets all of which were open. I think it was the Mocha coffee followed by a double expresso that got me through to the 7.00 am flight.
Luck was with us; sitting next to Terry on the plane was Utkir, an Uzbek tourist guide. He’d been refused a Turkmenistan visa and so he’d had to leave his group at the Iran/ Turkmenistan border
Emir Guy, the Mausoleum of the Timurs,
This was impressive. It’s also rather touching that a monster such as Tamerlane had wanted to be laid to rest at the feet of his mentor and teacher.
and fly to meet-up with them as they entered Uzbekistan! We were grateful for all his insights, including the airport customs ritual and best of all he convinced us to go to Khiva whilst in Uzbek.
Tashkent airport has won awards for being the second worst airport ever and nothing we experienced would refute that. We hadn’t slept for 24 hrs and faced an unbelievable scrum to get through passport control. However, we eventually passed safely through and Utkir had waited for us and even organised a Taxi to take us into town before saying goodbye.
Arrival in Central Asia
The taxi driver was a real live wire and somehow we managed to have a detailed conversation about cars, police, the “Ruskies” and who knows what else, even though he didn’t speak a word of English nor us Russian.
Central Tashkent roads were the chaotic mess of cars, buses, people and motorbikes that we’ve become used to, except all the cars seemed to be Ladas or Daewoos! The roads have clearly been re-developed by the Soviets and there are wide, wide boulevards everywhere. We’d read somewhere that they were the necessary width for
tanks to storm the town three abreast if needed.
Any quoted price we soon learnt was a “starting prices” and you have to negotiate for your life to pay a reasonable amount, especially when you don’t speak Uzbek or Russian. The police have a reputation for demanding bribes and backhanders and are deeply distrusted by the locals. They say that when the president is in town there are more police than trees along the main avenue - each trying to catch out innocent taxi drivers or so our taxi driver would have had us believe.
New country New currency; No easier
The Uzbek currency is the Som and there are just over 2,500 Som to the Pound; so again Terry’s pockets were stuffed full with great wads of paper money in denominations of about fifty pence.
The guide book had promised that ATMs were plentiful - but we had difficulty finding them. Uzbeks don’t trust the banks and so there is little use for ATMs. The lack of trust is well founded as following the collapse of the Soviet Union the banks in Uzbekistan, closed their doors and kept everybody’s savings - for
about four years. Meanwhile, inflation soared, pension pots were completely eroded and when they were finally able to get hold of their money it was practically worthless.
Somebody told us that her parents had given her enough money to buy her a car, which she had banked but by the time the banks re-opened it was barely enough to buy a round of drinks. Still today banks occasionally turn people away saying come back tomorrow when we may have money.
It’s hard to assess if Uzbeks feel that life is better or worse since independence. As in all the post soviet states, under the Soviet Union everyone had money but there was nothing in the shops; now the shops are full but no one has any money. Once we understood this it was easier to be more sympathetic to what at first had seemed to be an endemic rip off culture.
Train to Samarkand
We hadn’t been able to reserve accommodation in Tashkent, when in Iran, as our credit cards couldn’t be used from Iranian IP addresses and wouldn’t you know there was a huge Gas/Oil conference on. All reasonable/budget hotels were fully
booked. We ended up out in the suburbs, being charged far more than the room was worth.
So, despite not having slept for 36 hours, the next day saw us up at 5am catching a train to Samarkand.
What a treat the train was, just like something from a Hitchcock film. Our compartment had 6 chairs -think soft fluffy arm chairs - and a table laid with china teapot and cups. There were even garlands of (plastic) flowers on the walls. Sadly, there was also a piped DVD system through out the train, playing the most God awful music and comedy routines reminiscent of TV shows from the early 70’s.
We shared our carriage with four others, a Syrian business man and three Uzbeks salesmen taking him to Samarkand. Conversation started and almost inevitably turned to Bush/ Blair/ Palestine and the Middle East. We asked the Syrian what he thought of Blair being appointed as a Middle East Envoy, his response was a dramatic wailing and raising his arms making signs as if to slit his wrists. We understood well enough his description of Blair being covered in Iraqi blood.
After the five hour journey we’d
Bukhara - Bolo Khauz Mosque
Friday prayer, the most important prayer of the week
covered a lot of conversational ground (nuclear power in Iran, Bush, Iraq, Bush, America’s aggression, Bush, Oil) and also that Britain is held to be responsible for just about all the Middle East problems (we had after all made promises to establish an Israeli state after the first world war but weren’t France and America equally involved?)
Still the tone of the broken conversation was friendly and as we pulled into Samarkand they ensured that we had understood their criticism of western politics wasn’t personal and that the English would always be welcome to their country (with the exception of Tony and his friend George of course).
Ancient Samarkand
The first of three ancient towns we were visiting, Samarkand was a key trading post on the silk road but along with most of Central Asia was destroyed by the Mongols. The buildings, therefore, mostly date back to the early 1400s. It has an amazing central square (Registan) amongst other sites. Seeing these ancient and rather hurriedly restored buildings was a challenge as they are used as shops and covered in bric-a-brac. It was only later that we realised that it was a clever way
Bukhara Carpet making and a welcome cup of tea
Terry & Nazira are in background. She was a lovely person and confessed that she thought of England as a magical place and was really pleased to meet English people. She not only proved to be an excellent guide, happy to discuss both history and contemporary customs.
Her contact details are: Nazira tel; 712 7404 email nazirakaraeva@yahoo.com and we’d recommend her.
to ensure the fabric of the ancient monuments was properly looked after; it’s a condition of the rent!
All this and Terry was thrilled to find pints of draught lager for just 32p.
Samarkand is the home of Tamerlane (the lame Timur), who reputedly butchered 17 million people in forming his empire in the 1400’s.
Ulugh Beg, his grandson was also born in Samarkand. He was a man of science and amongst other achievements he built a huge telescope (before the invention of lenses) with which he accurately charted over 1,000 stars. He also calculated the length of a year to within a minute of the time used today. Sadly, he was beheaded by his son and his son’s Islamic advisor as they were concerned that science may somehow undermine Islam.
Uzbekistan, is predominately Muslim, as is most of Central Asia. Karimov, their president since independence, however, reacted to a fundamentalist uprising some years ago by closing the majority of Mosques and Medrassahs and banning the call to prayer. It co-incided with Bush’s call for a war on terror but is also a clear indication of another repressive regime.
Throughout Uzbekistan there are Mulberry trees
Bukhara - Khalon Complex Mosque
This complex had one of only two working Medrassahs, in Uzbekistan. Karimov had ordered all others to be closed. everywhere, with their sweet white fruit and away from the capital people dressed in a more traditional fashion. (See pics.) The women wear brightly coloured and rather graceful column dresses reaching down to the calf over matching narrow leg trousers. The men looked dapper in their square skull caps, black jackets and well polished boots.
It took us sometime to become accustomed the amount of gold teeth, especially in the quite young women. It seems that it used to be the height of Uzbek beauty to have gold teeth and women would have perfectly healthy teeth removed to be replaced with gold ones.
Beautiful Bukhara
We really loved Bukhara. It’s a smaller town and at its centre is a pond surrounded by bars and restaurants, all under the shade of ancient Mulberry trees.
Our guide book had been stolen in Samarkand, so we hired a guide to walk and talk us through the sites in Bukhara.
She explained that the alphabet had changed in the last two years from Cyrillic to Latin and this is their third alphabet in recent times ie Arabic to Cyrillic under the Russians and now Latin. Youngsters
Khiva - City Walls
Such an impressive site - the wall is complete around the whole of the old city (Think more village in size) however, increasingly can’t read the Cyrillic alphabet and the older generations haven’t come to grips with the Latin alphabet causing transitional problems. (But it makes it so much easier for us Westerners!)
Avicenna: Son of Bukhara - Doctor of Doctors
We were appreciative of Bryan’s helpful medical insights included in his comments on the Turkey-legs Blog. We now know that had he studied medicine in the 17th-century (we presume he didn’t?) he’d have depended on “The Qanun”, as a medical reference book. It was written 600 years earlier by Avicenna, who’d turned his attention to Medicine at the age of 17 years finding it "not difficult". His sharp mind and photographic memory had him running rings around his teachers and for various reasons he had to flee to Persia. He successfully cured the ruling emir of colic and as reward was made vizier or prime minister. (Wonder what Gordon would need to have done for the Queen to get into number 10 sooner?)
The Qanun, was just one of many books he published around the turn of the first Millennium and it distinguished mediastinitis from pleurisy, recognised the contagious nature of TB and the spread
Khiva - Minaret
Khiva was stuffed full of verry colourful and amazingly well preserved religious monuments. Restored since the Mongol destruction of disease by water and soil. It gives a scientific diagnosis of ankylostomiasis and attributes the condition to an intestinal worm. He also advised surgeons to treat cancer in its earliest stages, ensuring the removal of all the diseased tissue.
So it seems that little has changed, except that they didn’t have Choose & Book.
Khiva
Khiva is at least six hours through desert from Bukhara. There are no direct trains and we were warned that the buses are dire and liable to break down so we took a taxi all the way. “Overland by Limo” could be the future way to go!
The road was abysmal with deep pot holes and long stretches under reconstruction leaving only a dirt track. Just before getting to Khiva we had to cross a large river, not by bridge but by floating (well almost) pontoons. The sections of the pontoons were all at different heights (with a disparity of up to three feet on one side or other); our driver expertly zigzaged his way across never once giving ground to oncoming traffic.
Its an amazing place with an almost complete city wall and innumerable Mosques
Our last Mosque
Well at least until we get to India etc in pristine condition. Our much loved and long lost guide book truthfully described it as an open air museum. There were more tourists here, mostly French and German on organised Tours. The locals don’t understand why so few British visit. With the increase in numbers of tourists children were learning to ask for Biros or Bon Bons, (note in “French”!) Despite the obvious poverty in many places it was the first time we’d come across children begging.
Return to Tashkent
After a couple of days in Khiva and following on from Samarkand and Bukhara we’d had our fill of “Turquoise tiles” and rather than retrace our steps overland, flew back to Tashkent. (I’m starting to love airports- they always seem to have expresso.)
Second time around we enjoyed Taskent, possibly because we treated ourselves to the Poytaht Hotel, three stars, lovely food, swimming pool and bang in the middle of town.
Four days here just whizzed by and with only one day left on our Uzbek visa we headed off to Kyrgyzstan…
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Irene Warren
non-member comment
I have to say Christine......................
...............you look very elegant and respectful in the photos of this blog. What wonderful buildings. You are certainly having the trip of a lifetime. Makes me wonder who will have more trouble settling down to 'real life' you and Terry or my son after South America (he is having a ball by the way). Recon it will be a close run thing. Continue to enjoy and keep safe. Cheers Irene :o)