Uzbek fashion show

We wish we’d managed to get more photos, but this gives an example of the way women in Uzbekistan dress. It is a sort of Bath robe / Dressing gown - Haut Couture.

The brighter the better, but there can’t one bit of skin showing and no two items are allowed to match in any way.

I can think of several friends who would love the freedom that this would allow them in a mix and match sort of way.

 

 

 

 

 

It was very difficult taking photos so here’s a couple of specials, that Isabelle helped me out with:

 

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Bukhara – a living museum

We spent the best part of 5 days in Bukhara, although the middle of our time there was interrupted by a crazy train trip back to Tashkent to get our Turkmenistan visas.
We stayed with a family who run a lovely and friendly little guest house called Nazruddin Navruz Hotel.


The city itself is different to Samarkand, it’s been inhabited and famous for much longer and thanks to some enlightened heritage planning it still has people living in the old city and it feels less like a museum than the undoubtedly beautiful Samarkand. On our train journey we shared a carriage with a 35 year old Uzbek who was part of the team working with UNESCO to allow development within the old city but still keep the feel and style the same. From what we could see they’ve done a remarkable job because it’s often hard to see where one finishes and the other starts. They encourage old building techniques and materials, which have stood up to earthquakes for hundreds of years.

The photos below were all taken early in the morning so the place is still waking up. The huge 47m high tower is one of the few buildings in the city that Jenghiz Khan didn’t flatten as he passed through, he was so amazed that it had stood so long that he left it standing. Most of the old town is centred around a square with a large pool in the centre and the buildings you can see are either Medressas, Mosques or Markets.



If you want to find out more about Bukhara you can read more in a Wikipedia Article 

Cycling Perfection – odometer delights

An odometer seems an odd name for a cycling computer and most people would surely guess that it measures smelliness or some other such nonsense, but each day we watch as the numbers change, the distance rolls by and the speed rises and falls marking our progress across the world.
We have different ways of using it, I have to put mine on maximum speed so it gives me no information about my (lack of) progress unless I choose to press the buttons. I can meditate along and forget the huge distance I need to ride to find food or shelter. With my mathematical brain I find myself calculating times of arrival at this speed or working out how fast I need to ride if I am to get somewhere before dark. I would rather not know.

Isabelle on the other hand has her odometer on the distance for the day, something which I find intensely annoying (although I do like to look every hour or so)
As we get further into our journey we find ourselves getting excited by daily distances of 100 km or more, or the major milestones of 1000 km, 2000 km, 3000 km etc.
This nerdy obsession has developed into an attempt to reach a kind of odometer paradise where all numbers on the screen are identical. I will explain……..
6 digit perfection
Method 1: Cycle at 6.6 km/hr when the distance for the day is on 66.66 km. This is relatively easy as the opportunity occurs most days although there is only a 10m window of opportunity. Attained TWICE!
Method 2: Travel at 9.9 km/hr when the total distance for our whole trip is 999.9 km. This was the first 6 digit odometer heaven that I reached.
6 digit perfection just left me and Isabelle hungry for even higher achievements……
7 digit perfection 
Method 1: 33.3 km/hr when the total distance is 333.3 km…..easy!
Method 2: 6.6 km/hr when the total distance is 6666.6 km…even easier!
8 digit perfection
Method 1: Cycle at 22.2 km/hr when the total distance is 2222.2 km. ACHIEVED!! I can hear your cheers. It wasn’t difficult!
Method 2: The holy grail of 8 digit heaven is the following: 111.11 km in one day travelling at 11.1 km/hr. We have had many opportunities to reach this target but it is almost impossible. We’ve had near misses, 111.11 km at 11.2 km/hr was my closest, but 10m is such a short window of opportunity to achieve this giddy target. We’ve practised cycling at 11.1 km/hr just so that when the distance is right we are ready to achieve……but we’ve always failed……….until yesterday!!
I am very proud to announce that as I approached Samarkand on March 27th 2009 I reached true odometer nirvana and on a slight climb (which I feel helped) was able to cycle at 11.1 km/hr at the exact moment that the total distance for the day reached 111.11 km. Passing cars would have wondered why the crazy cyclist was punching the air and whooping with excitement, but they had no idea of the number of failed attempts that we have both had. 111.11 km is a long way with a fully loaded bike and it doesn’t take much to break your spirit when you fail to reach your 8 digit goal. It was worth all the disappointment though when I finally succeeded. I can sleep easily now, instead of tossing and turning dreaming of the previously unattainable.
As I am sure all you high achieving readers have also found in life, when you reach the pinnacle of success, it can feel as though the future can only get worse.
What is there left to cycle for? Should we give up and fly home?
9 digit perfection
There will never be a better daily target but there is a way of having more digits:
We will have to wait a while before we have a chance of reaching this target….11,111.1 km while cycling at 11.1 km/hr.
I’m excited and salivating at the thought of it. A whole 100m to achieve it does however make it a little less exciting. I might even have a chance of taking a photo of it…..digitally preserved for ever! (The picture above is digitally enhanced just to help you feel a little of the pleasure that I felt – I hope it helps)

Samarkand – a wonder of Central Asia

After three hard days of cycling, 135km, 75km into the wind and rain, and 125km, we finally arrived in Samarkand. It’s one of Central Asia’s oldest cities and was a key place on the silk road, being at the junction of routes to China, India and Persia. It is definitely worth coming to and is one of those places that that feels sort of mythical, yet real, like Timbuktu or Kashgar, other important places on trading routes in Mali and China respectively.

The city of Samarkand is about 2500 years old and has had a rich and varied life, being ruled by just about everyone from Alexander the Great to Jenghiz Khan (who destroyed it) and finally to Timur, the great Central Asian warrior and patron of the arts who created the Samarkand that you can see in these photos. 


It’s been a little sovietised, with huge pointless empty pedestrianised areas around the buildings, and the life has been sterilised from the old parts of town, although with such important buildings to be preserved it's probably no surprise. In some of the photos from the turn of the last century it looks amazing with people and markets surrounding all the monuments.

Most of the beautiful buildings you can see are the oldest Medressas still standing anywhere in the world, important places of learning where scholars studied higher mathematics while Europe was still in the dark ages.
It does however feel like it might be a tourist hell hole during high season, with small shops occupying the rooms inside the Medressas, beggars hanging around outside and the inevitable policemen offering to take you to closed off areas ‘for a small donation’.

Despite all this it's well worth visiting and undoubtedly beautiful in design and proportions. The blue/green tile work is amazing, especially as some of it is unchanged since the 14th century. Some of the buildings have been over enthusiastically rebuilt but the Soviet’s have done a good job of preserving the monuments and the inside of some of them are incredibly ornate and lavish in their use of gold leaf.

Here’s a small slide show of some of the sites:

Cycling in Uzbekistan from Tashkent to Samarkand

The route across Uzbekistan from the present capital Tashkent to the old capital Samarkand is 333km long and relatively flat. It gives a good idea of how real people live, mostly relying on farming and maybe having a member or two of the family in another country or working in Tashkent. The people in the villages are super friendly, happy to have you camping behind their house and keen to talk to you at any opportunity.

Communication:             The biggest problem facing people who try to talk to us is their inability to understand that a British guy can be married to a Canadian and that we don’t live in Canada or the UK. They want to give us their brother’s phone number in Montreal….’We don’t have a phone or live in Canada’,  my sister works in HK….’We don’t any more’. We started just lying and saying we were both from Canada but then they want to ask me all about ice hockey (of which I know nothing and they know everything)

We have also discovered that unless we check the price before we buy anything it is normally at least 200% more than normal, even for buying a 50 cent ice-cream the price normally starts at about $2 until they negotiate the price down as we walk out of their shop and off down the street.

Most of the people in the countryside were absolutely lovely, refusing payment for tea and Samsa (bread or pastry stuffed with meat and vegetables) until we insisted. Strange how people with nothing are so generous, yet people with businesses just want to rip us off at every opportunity. Or maybe it’s not so strange.

At night we just camped by the road, not really making much effort to hide and sometimes people would come and see us just to say ‘Salaam’ and then walk off with their animals to leave us in peace, interested and friendly but not hassly, a welcome respite from the absolutely no peace of India.

Uzbekistan in late March is NOT WARM or DRY as we discovered on the second day, all our warm clothes having been sent home from Delhi meant that we just had to put our tent up and get into our sleeping bags to keep dry and warm, even though it was only 3.30pm…never mind, it can only get warmer as we head West.

There is a cycling guide for this part of the route in the Road Guides-Uzbekistan section with full route information including camping spots.

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Tashkent – What a nice place!

We didn’t really know what to expect from Tashkent and have been pleasantly surprised. It’s open, airy, spacious and there seem to be very few people around. I asked someone if they ever had traffic jams and they said ‘once or twice a year’. The streets are wide, everything sprawls over vast distances and most people move around underground on the Metro.












 


There are policemen at least every 100m on every main street, looking bored, stopping cars, extracting bribes, getting together in groups and having a cigarette. What they are there for I have no idea, on the Metro there are several wandering around each station, in different uniforms, making sure the population obey the rules. This is one of the few indications that Uzbekistan is a police state, along with the necessary foreigner registration in every hotel.


 We had heard reports that travellers get hassled by these policemen, but no-one ever stopped us in our time in Tashkent, and on the road we have been flagged down a few times but have just ignored them and carried on….
The city has lots of large buildings and loads of expensive hotels, the Intercontinental, Radissons etc with gold encrusted Russians and fat business men milling around their foyers.
 

Money is a real hassle, the largest note is worth 60 US cents so if you change money you are left with a wad of notes several cm thick. ATM’s (Bankomats) consequently never have any money in them as all it takes is a few customers to exhaust their supplies and no-one has thought to issue bigger notes or fill them up more quickly. Most people just use dollars so Uzbekistan is one of the weird countries where the dollar goes up in value all the time, as no-one wants their own currency ‘Som’.
 
One thing to note is that if you have a Mastercard/Maestro then you can withdraw dollars for 0% commission from the Bankomats, those of us with only Visa/Plus etc have no option but to get advances on their cards from Banks. The rate for Soms is 30% less than the black market and you also pay charges for the cash advance!!! so taking dollars from the cash advance is the best method, and then change them on the street for Soms, being careful not to do it near any policemen.
For all it’s oddness, and the obvious huge disparity of wealth between the few rich people and the majority of the population, the people of Tashkent are incredibly friendly and helpful and surprisingly many speak good English. We never had any problems finding anything and also discovered a row of useful bike shops where we were able to pick up some spare spokes and replace a cycle computer.
 
One of the more interesting places was the market in Chorsu, full of gorgeous food and friendly people.

We were able to sort out our onward visas quite quickly so after 3 days we headed off down the road towards Samarkand, excited to be finally able to start covering some distance again.

















 







For more info about visas for Turkmenistan and Iran go to the visa section of this site.

No route West from the subcontinent – we reach a dead end

China refuses entry to tourists through Tibet
Thanks to China’s refusal to let anyone into Tibet from Nepal this year, we had to find an alternative way to continue our journey West. Until May when the Khunjerab pass re-opens, the only land alternative to the Tibet route is a three week police escort through Southern Pakistan staying in police stations every night, which would have missed out on a country that we have always wanted to visit: Uzbekistan, with it’s wonders of Samarkand and Bukhara, so we made the decision to take the 2 hour flight over China / Pakistan from Delhi to Tashkent in Uzbekistan.

The delights of Delhi – learning to tune out
After 17 annoying days hanging around in Delhi, organising our Iranian visas, getting ourselves Uzbekistan visas, watching TV, eating western food…….. we eventually attained a higher state of  obliviousness, where the all pervasive odour of piss and cow shit vanished into the ether, the dust washed over and around us, the regurgitative sounds of spitting just blended into the constant honking of horns and the cries of ‘wan a rickshaw, sir?’.  

Towards the end we were able to completely ignore everyone and everything around us, never catching anyone’s eye, not reacting to even the idiots rushing up to us saying ‘Long time no see! How are you? did you enjoy the Taj?’, or ‘I like your slim body’, or ‘Do you like McDonalds'?’. We could walk the streets of Delhi as though it was a silent path in the mountains or a cycle ride across the Mongolian plains………. for us our little area of Delhi had become an oasis of calm……..nearly!!!!

Flying from Delhi – packing our bikes

Leaving was a joyous moment but packing the bikes is never fun. We decided on an original method, we boxed in the handlebars, gears and saddle and took the bike to the wrapping machines at the airport. The guys said it was impossible, we bluffed them that we’d done it before…..and 5 minutes later it was done.

 

Air Uzbekistan complained a bit and then couldn’t be bothered, and with our special patented method of reducing the check in weight (lifiting the bike with our feet when it’s on the scales) we were able to reduce the check in weight of both bikes from 34kg to 20kg.

Arriving in Tashkent was wonderful, clear, dust free air, 20 degrees with low humidity, wide empty open streets, and everyone was suddenly helpful and friendly.

We’re in a nice hotel, we’ve spent today cycling around the city discovering the embassies (all closed for ‘Nowruz’ – the New Year), bookshops and cafes. The city is lovely, full of parks, trees and space.

 

What a contrast!

 

More Information about Uzbek visas in Delhi + Routes west from India

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