What's an Uzbekistan?

Central Asia is a big blank for most people, and was for me too until I came here. A few years ago I one day looked at a map and thought to myself rather literally, "What on earth is that?" And in that "that", no country emphasised this blank like Uzbekistan. The mere name connotes nothingness! Even just weeks before I left home my friend pointed at Uzbekistan's capital "Tashkent" on a map we were perusing, and started laughing ("Is that really a place?!").

But Uzbekistan is not like a St Kitts & Nevis, or an Equitorial Guinea - countries that do exist but which I'd simply never even heard of. I always knew Uzbekistan existed, but didn't know where or when or why or even how. I just knew it was somewhere remote and somewhere no one wanted to go to, and hence was perfect for threats made at my cousins when we fought as children ("STOP annoying me now, or one day I'll send you to Uzbekistan!"). The other destination often employed for that purpose was Timbuktuu.

So really what is Uzbekistan? After traversing its breadth for a month I can at least go some way to show you, and you'd be surprised at what amazing treasures you can find in the middle of a desert. Especially in a desert in a country no one knows anything about!

[The Foreigner Uzbekistan]

The Silk Road - Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva

Central Asia once brought together the best of opposite worlds on the Silk Road; as the word "central" denotes, it really was the middle between East and West. It conjured up a vibrant mix of foods and drinks, luxurious artefacts, skillful arts and music, different peoples, beautiful cultures and new and revolutionary ideas for thousands of years. But nowadays the large majority of the important oasis market towns have disappeared thanks to war (good one, Genghiz!) or disuse (good one European sea voyages!). Today only five Silk Road cities remain in any sort of prime condition... and Uzbekistan has three of them! (The others being Kashgar in China's Xinjiang Province and Herat in Afghanistan.)

So visiting Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva is like stepping back in time. Each one has its own character, and each one has its own story of luxury, wealth and power.

Today Samarkand is in the middle of a desert, but yesterday it was the centre of the Islamic world as the capital of Timur's ("the second Genghiz Khan") empire. The vastness of his empire encompassed half of the Middle East and the Subcontinent, and he brought together the best architects, artists and scholars to make Samarkand into one great city. The symbol of this is the Registan, once the centre square and market which houses three stunning medressas facing opposite each other, and really is one of the jewels of Islamic and Persian heritage. And it is huge! Nearby the Bibi Khanym Mosque, built by Timur's wife as a present for his conquest of India, used to be the biggest in the world! And nearby that is Shah-i-Zinda, an amazing turn of statueous mausoluems. It's like walking through a maze of blue and turqoise, with millions of glazed tiles and dozens of round domes filling every view and angle.

Then there is Bukhara. Bukhara with its amazing old town, full of domes and mosques and medressas, overseen by its medieval and impregnable Citadel. Bukhara's history as a light of Islam begins 1000 years ago, and since then it has contributed as much to Islamic academia, science, mathematics, medicine and art as its Iranian counterparts. Some of its medressas are still used, and are regarded as some of the finest. Its Kalon minaret is 1000 years old and about 40m high, and was so impressive that Genghiz Khan apparently bowed before it in awe, and spared it from destruction (after razing the rest of the city). Bukhara then slipped into decline in the shadow of Samarkand, but then came again into its own as the capital of the Bukhara Khanate, another capital of the Silk Road and centre of the Great Game. It was here where the enterprising and adventurous British spies Stoddart and Connolly were imprisoned by the Emir of Bukhara in a pit of bugs for three and two years respectively, and then beheaded; causing an international diplomatic row with England that would do well to compete with the Gaddafis, Chavezes, Mugabes and Ahmadinejads of today.

Khiva is the most perfectly intact of Uzbekistan's Silk Road cities, and paradoxically my least favourite. Khiva is so perfect that it has lost all of its life and vibrancy. There are no sounds, no smells, no action; just a labyrinth museum of a mud-and-brick old town with a cool wall encircling it. But with some imagination, it's still rather interesting!

And all this beauty and former majesty sitting there in an obscure desert! In Uzbekistan!

The Aral Sea - The Most Absurd Natural Disaster

When traversing through a vast desert, nothing can be more unexpected than to come across a ship! Especially when you consider that we are in an area of the planet which is as far from the ocean as you can possibly get. But alas, this is Uzbekistan; and in Uzbekistan even the most absurd is possible.

The Aral Sea used to be the fourth biggest lake in the world. And it used to have a thriving fishing industry that provided a way of life for tens of thousands of people. Moynaq used to be an important city of 60 000 with an array of vessels serving its harbour.

But then the Soviets came. The Soviets, ever hatching up a hair-brained idea in the name of communal progress and the good of the people, decided to drain the rivers feeding the Aral in order to irrigate the surrounding desert... so they can produce cotton. Cotton is a water-hungry plant, and is certainly not something you harvest in a desert (but who grows things in a desert anyway?). But the Commies knew didn't care about the side effects, this was a passable sacrifice of a worthless Soviet Republic in order to satisfy the people of Mother Russia.

40 years later, the Aral Sea has all but disappeared (it has split into 2, the south part almost having vanished, the north struggling for life). Now tens of thousands of people have had their way of life decimate into sand, and struggle for a living or leave their homes in droves. Now Moynaq is a dusty town of 8 000 with its only source of income being a small fleet of rusted ships decaying on the former shoreline as a tourist attraction, and after being a port is now nowhere near the water with the Aral Sea now 200km away. Not only that, but it suffers from severe dust storms, crippling icy winds and chemical pollution (the Soviets also used the area for testing).

To get to Moynaq is one remote journey, and arriving at the town you really feel like you're in the middle of nowhere (a feeling fairly common in Central Asia, but Moynaq takes the cake). To then just see this fleet of brown rusting ships, with the flat desert/former-sea-bed stretching into the horizon, is one of the most odd things I've seen.

It is widely regarded as the most severe man-made environmental disaster ever. And although it has nothing to do with the carbon emissions climate change debate today, it is a poignant reminder of the devastating consequences our meddlesomeness can have on our fragile environment, all in the name of progress; and how it can end up devastaing that progress in a sad and cruel irony.

Nukus - The Worst Location for an Internationally Renowned Art Museum

Nukus, the capital of Karakalpakstan in the very north of Uzbekistan, is lost in the red and black sands of the Kyzylkum desert, miles from the rest of civilisation.

But who honestly would have thought that here is a museum showcasing some of the world's best modern art! Because that's exactly what Nukus has, an unrivalled showcase of Russian avant-garde from the 20s and 30s and beyond. And the amazing thing is that all of this art, all 90 000 pieces of it, was hidden from the world for 40 years, because of suffocating Communist control.

Stalin back in the day forbade all art because art promotes liberalism, critical analysis, free thinking, and change. Dangerous things for good Communists who must only work hard without asking questions. So he started a purge destroying all art that didn't portray the glories of the Communist ideal, and imprisoned, executed or sent to labour camps those very artists.

It really is a miracle that these pieces, which document such an important part of Russian history and otherwise would have been lost forever, still exist. It's all thanks to one guy, Igor Savitsky, who risked his life hording these forbidden paintings from all over the Soviet Union, and stashing them in his secret desert hideaway of Nukus.

I'm not an art lover, but I appreciate good art when I see it. And the vibrancy of their colours, striking contrasts, clever meanings and skill provides for one staggering collection.

[The Uzbek Uzbekistan]

But although Uzbekistan has these unique marvels within its small borders, it's a country in an unfortunate situation. Their economy is impoverished, with the annual salary being about US$1500 a year. It is highly dependent on cotton - their blessing, their curse - which provides them with most of their income but simultaneously desertifies what little fertile land they have, thanks to the diverting of the rivers. I was lucky to stay with a family in a cotton-producing village (one of thousands) near the Turkmen border, and one of the more unfortunate things I saw there were the students and children who have been forced by the Government to harvest the fields, for the good of the country.

Because although Uzbekistan is a great tourist destination, it is also a police state and dictatorship.

There are police everywhere in Uzbekistan, especially in Tashkent where I saw a policeman every 20m. When in the country there are police checkpoints almost 50km. Police brutality is common in Uzbekistan, and I heard many first-hand accounts of police beatings, police harassment for no reason, active and threatening pursuit of bribes; and then I visited Andijon, the scene of the 2005 massacre where the police gunned down about 1000 un-armed civilians in the centre square, with no justification.

Uzbekistan's leader Karimov has been in power since independence. Paranoid and despotic, he uses Uzbekistan like his whimsical toy. Freedom of information, assembly, speech and opinion, religion and etc are fairly non-existent. If he doesn't like something or someone, it or who disappears. The BBC listed Uzbekistan as one of the 10 most repressive societies in which to live on the planet... not esteemed company.

But the interesting thing about Uzbekistan is that we don't see this side of the picture. During my month what I came to realise is that there are two distinct sides of Uzbekistan: the side for tourists, and the side for Uzbeks. Usually when we travel we travel to see both sides, but in Uzbekistan it is almost impossible, because the Govt has done a top job of concealing the dark side of their situation from the public.

When I tried leaving Uzbekistan I was arrested and detained because I had overstayed my visa by one day. In normal countries I'd face maybe a $200 fine and that's it, but Uzbekistan is not your normal country. It was a complicated situation, because my visa expired on Dec 10 but my Turkmen transit visa only started the next day on Dec 11, leaving me stranded in the middle. I was a prime witness to that infamous Uzbek beauracracy, as I spent 9 hours on that first day being escorted by the police to various offices at the Hojeili border, in Hojeili town, and then in the administrative centre of Nukus. Even then the paperwork wasn't finished until the next day at 4pm when the police came to escort me from my hotel, where I was sequestered after having to surrender my passport, to the border. Originally I was facing either an outrageous US$670 fine or deportation! What happened to proportionality?

But the most surprising thing is that the police treated me like a king! At the border they were very understanding of my "big problem", and called away trying to help me out. They brought me out of the freezing cold, and gave me tea and chocolate. Later in the day one of the officers went down the street to a cafe and got them to make me lunch, and brought it back for me - and paid for it himself! During those 2 days I posed for photos with seemingly every officer, for souvenirs on their mobile phones, and performed on my guitar for them on several occasions to raptous applause. Not only that, but not once did the police try elicit a bribe, either to make the progress smoother, or because I was in the wrong. Not once, for a country that is one of the 20 most corrupt countries on the planet! And what happened to police brutality? Instead I got overwhelming kindness. Even better, although I faced that fine and deportation, I got out scot free and taken to Turkmenistan, with my only punishment - more like a prize reward - being a stamp in my passport saying "Was turned out of the country for breach of regulation of the Republic of Uzbekistan". Also whenever the police checked me for ID (which happened about 15 times altogether), they were always very nice, smiling and courteous. Not once was I shaken down for a bribe, or harassed in any way - I can't even the same about more democratic and liberal Kyrgyzstan, where I lived for 6 months.

But that Uzbekistan is a repressive society is without question, because all the evidence I have - both from talking with the locals in both English and Uzbek, and from research - points to that fact. That fact is that it sucks to be an Uzbek living in Uzbekistan, but it's great being a foreigner travelling there. We only see that one side of the coin thanks to the multitude of restrictions on foreigners: pain-staking and expensive visas, LOIs, and foreigners must even register every night in an official Govt-approved hotel, to ensure that this separation between tourists and locals, and the worlds that they see, is upheld. And they need this balance, because they need tourists for money as they have little else, but then these tourists can be dangerous if they come to know too much about the local struggle.

And the people? Friendly, warm, curious and eccentric (I was also accosted and kissed by 2 old single women on separate occasions, invited to a Circumcision party, and saw two live goats shoved into a car boot).

So Uzbekistan in a nutshell: a crazy balance between ancient history, interesting people, tragic foreign influence, and a brutal police state.

And all this in the middle of a desert :)

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Part of trip: Asia Overland

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