So, I haven't written for a long long time. It's just because I'm lazy, but also because there isn't really much to say about the rest of our trip, especially compared to all that happened on the Pamir Highway.
Mike and I spent 3 days in Dushanbe, where there wasn't much to do. It was too hot to have done anything anyways, so we just sat around in some of the many leafy green parks and read books.
We took a shared taxi up to the northern Tajik city of Khojand. It was a tough mountain road to get over, but luckily for visitors to Tajikistan in the future, there is a tunnel being built as we speak by Chinese road crews. Our driver seemed like a good guy, almost too good- he offered to tow two cars up different stages of the mountain pass, so we wasted a lot of time starting and stopping as the rope connecting the car to our car snapped/came untied/who knows. In the end we didn't get the up the mountain, which isn't surprising considering the steepness and muddiness of the road.
We found a great hotel in Khojand- it was a modernish apartment bloc converted into a hotel, which meant we had a bedroom, an enclosed balcony, a living room, toilet, bathroom and a kitchen (all unfurnished but for 2 twin beds, a table, and a TV with no working channels) all for less than 10$ for the 2 of us. It was a needed break since we paid 15$ each in Dushanbe. We didn't do much in Khojand either- it was really really hot. We spent a few hours swimming in the Syr-Darya river, which was full of businessmen stripping down to their underwear and little children cooling off. If we floated all the way down the river, we'd have ended up in the Northern Aral Sea in Kazakhstan! In an internet cafe, we met up with 2 Tajik guys, one who went to school in Prague and spoke good English, one who spoke very very little English, and they wanted to meet up later on to talk. They took us to a park that evening, where there were tons of people riding on Soviet rides, using paddle boats in the river, and generally just having a good time enjoying the evening coolness. We went up in the ferris wheel to see Khojand from above, ate some ice cream, and then Mike and I took a taxi back to the hotel. There are a lot of Soviet things still left in the city- a giant hammer and sickle statue, and a bust of Marx and Lenin on the side of an apartment bloc. There were many streetside cafes, where we spent most of the days just playing cards and drinking cold drinks.
We took a shared taxi to Penjikent, close to the Uzbek border. We stayed in a Lonely Planet-recommended homestay, but the owner of the homestay Nematov had let the "fame" of Lonely Planet get to his head, and he was sort of an ass. Lonely Planet said that it was full board, but he said that food wasn't included, but wouldn't give us a price as to how much meals would be. He said "whatever you think it's worth," which is never a good way to do business in my book. Lonely Planet also said that he arranges good reliable transport, but it seemed like he arranged very overpriced transport. We met up with 2 English girls at the homestay and wanted to arrange a day trip into the Fan Mountains to see a string of very beautiful turquoise lakes. We found our own taxi for much much cheaper than the Nematov had offered. He took us to the first 2 lakes in a string of 7 (the first one was meant to be the most beautiful), and the taxi driver gave us a few hours to walk around. The lakes were full of the bluest water I've ever seen. We wanted to swim, but the water was horrible cold. We had a picnic and walked a bit around the mountains, and then went back to Penjikent.
In the evening, we said goodbye to the English girls, who were heading to Dushanbe, and set out to find and explore ancient Penjikent, the ruins of the old city. A nice man offered to drive us there when we were asking around for directions, and he took us around the old city a little, telling us the history, and even drove us back to the homestay- all for free! It was the first real hospitality we'd seen in a long time, and after the jerk Nematov and a really not nice guy we met in a cafe, we'd started to think that Penjikent was just full of bad eggs. Luckily, it wasn't so. We also met a nice kid who loved speaking English and, though only 18, already worked as a translator for a tourist agency. He had great aspirations of how to improve Penjikent and make it a more international place, which is always good to see in young people in Central Asia.
The next morning, we got a taxi to the Uzbek border. We had planned on another day in Penjikent, but we got such a bad vibe from Nematov that we just wanted to get away. It's only 30 minutes to the Uzbek border, and from there only 40 minutes to Samarkand, so it didn't take long. We didn't have any problems at the border, but I was really worried because I had the bullet I picked up along the Afghan border in my purse and worried that might set off the metal detector. The Uzbek guard saw my jewelry box in the metal detector and I had to get it out from the very bottom of my backpack to show a few silver chains to him. He said I should have declared them on my customs form, and that if he were a jerk he could confiscate them and get me in big big trouble, but luckily for me he was in a good mood and just sent on our way, suggesting we buy a donkey since our bags were so heavy.
We got to Samarkand and immediately got a taxi to Shakhrisabz, Tamerlane's hometown. We checked out the Ak-Saray Palace, built by Tamerlane and at one point was more beautiful than all the sights in Samarkand. Now it's gone except for a few pieces of it, but it was nice to imagine how big the palace once had been. There was also a giant statue of Tamerlane. He had built a crypt for himself also here, but when he died the pass between Samarkand and Shakhrisabz was closed, so his body was buried in Samarkand instead. We spent 3 lazy days resting in cafes and in our homestay. The homestay was the best place I've stayed in Central Asia. The grandfather was wonderfully nice and hospitable, and just all around a super guy. He gave us 2 free meals even though they should have been 6$ each, and always had bottles of water to give to us and even gave me his granddaughter's Uzbek fan when I said I was interested in getting one. Instead of a plastic/wooden fan that you open, it's a wooden stick with a piece of fabric on it. You spin the fabric around on the stick and it creates a great breeze. The homestay also had a functional shower with warmish water (!!! the first GOOD shower since April in Bishkek!!!!) and a nice tapchan (tea bed) too that was usually in the shade. One night after tea and watermelon we even fell asleep under the stars. If you ever want to go somewhere just to relax, Shakhrisabz is the place for you!
We then took a taxi back to Samarkand, where we spent the day walking around and re-seeing all the sights we saw in winter. I'm so glad we saw it in winter, because it was a huge construction site this time around. All the main roads around the center were torn up and all the store fronts were being "beautified," so all the shops were closed. It took ages just to find somewhere selling cold drinks. At midnight we got a train to Nukus, the capital of Karakalpakstan, the westernmost region of Uzbekistan.
The people of Karakalpakstan are not Uzbek but Karakalpak. They speak their own language, which is Turkic, but more similar to Kazakh than to Uzbek. My rudimentary Kyrgyz translates Karakalpakstan as "the land of the black hats," but I'm not sure if that's really what it's supposed to mean. A kalpak is the Kyrgyz national black and white felt hat, but it might have some other meaning too...
The train wagon where our beds were was full of children who had just finished up a summer camp in Tashkent and were headed home to Nukus. All the kids (aged about 8-16) were very interested to talk to us, and one boy who spoke Russian acted as the translator between Mike and me and about 30 Karakalpak kids. They were all orphans, which was so sad since they were all so nice and polite! The Russian speaking kid, Vladimir, looked a lot like Freddie Highmore (Charlie from the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie) and I would have adopted him in a second! He said he had a mother, so I don't know why he lived in an orphanage. All the boys on the train had a hobby of making animals with little folded pieces of silver paper, like gum wrappers, and they showed us some of the things they made. They were amazing! Hundreds and hundreds of little folded silver papers made a giant swan. They gave us a little swan and a snake they'd made, and even though they've fallen apart in my luggage since then, I really hope I can put them back together when I get to Istanbul because they are really pretty. After about 18 hours in the train driving through a very sandy desert for the entire day, we arrived in Nukus.
We found a hotel and spent a bit wandering around the city looking for food. Nukus is definitely nothing special- the only thing Lonely Planet lists is an art museum, which is meant to be the best in Central Asia. Since Mike and I don't like art, that wasn't anything for us. We found a Georgian restaurant and had some pretty good lagman.
The next day, we caught a bus going up to Moynaq, a fishing village that used to be on the shores of the Aral Sea, once one of the world's largest bodies of water. However, because of the Soviet desire to turn Central Asia's deserts into successful cotton producers, the Aral Sea was irrigated much too much, and the lake shrunk, creating one of the world's worst environmental disasters. Now, the sea split into two parts, and the fishing town of Moynaq is now hundreds of kilometers from the water's edge. We were going to see the former shoreline and rusting hulks of fishing boats that are now resting in the middle of the desert. It was terrible to see and hear about what life is now like in Moynaq. Our taxi driver talked about how the economy used to be back when there was water, and the welcome sign at the entrance of the town still has a fish on it. Now it's just a little desert village. We walked up a hill where we could look over where the water used to be. There were 6 fishing boats lined up, and 2 more a bit further away. They used to be located all around the city, but sometime recently they were all brought to this one place, to serve as a memorial (and maybe make it easier for tourists to find them). There were big posterboards showing arial pictures of the sea in the 1960s and the sea now, and articles explaining how the fishing and muskrat industry was great back then and now Moynaq has lost everything. It was definitely a depressing day. We caught an afternoon bus back to Nukus, and the next morning spent some hours getting to Khiva by bus and shared taxi.
I'll write about our time in Khiva, Bukhara, and Tashkent soon. Early tomorrow morning Mike and I are flying to Istanbul! We'll be there a week looking for a job and an apartment, exploring the city, and hopefully swimming a lot, and then we're going to Austria to meet up with my parents for 2 weeks. Yay!
No comments:
Post a Comment