Western Uzbekistan - Landscapes lost and saved

The three weeks I spent in Uzbekistan splits easily into two parts, the ten days or so I spent out in the west, and then the ten days in the east when I travelled with my mum, so I figured I'd post them separately to make it easier to read. I'll also try and put up a few more pictures, since doing so will apparently save a thousand words.

Before I start, a brief bit of background history (this blog is attempting to live up to the Reithian ideal of 'educate, inform and entertain'. Well, in the words of another great, Mr Meat Loaf, two out of three ain't bad). Effectively, the history of Uzbekistan is a microcosm of the history of all of Central Asia, a piece of land caught between and taken over by great empires, from the Persians in the 6th century B.C., through Alexander the Great, the Arabs, the Turks (from the North), Genghiz Khan, their own homegrown Timur, the Russians and finally the Soviets, with various independent small states/khanates appearing and disappearing in the vacuums left by the decline of each empire. The concept of Uzbekistan as it is now didn't really exist until the Soviets (apparently Stalin was key) drew the boundaries for each of the states, deliberately including various ethnic minorities in each one, splitting existing groups of people between two of the states, in order to ensure that there was nothing to unite the citizens of a particular state against the Soviet system. This ethnic gerrymandering has had profound effects on all the Stans since independence, with large numbers of groupings who feel they should be part of another Stan stuck in a different one.

Ok, educate bit over, on to the inform bit.

So crossed over from Turkmenistan, and straight up to Bukhara. Only spent a night here, since I was coming back with my mum, and then got a shared taxi a few hundred km across the desert to the western part - shared taxis are a common way to get around in Central Asia, whereby you turn up at the shared taxi lot, usually by the bus station, and get a car with three other people to your destination, often hundreds of kilometres away. It's a lot quicker, and far more frequent than the bus services, although it does mean you have to haggle with a taxi driver to try and get a reasonable price (particularly I guess as an obvious non-local) - I'm a cynic when it comes to taxi drivers the world over, I think they're all the same, I'm convinced they're all out to try and overcharge when they can. Obviously overcharging is all relative, the six hour, 500 km journey cost around 30U$ as I recall (about £20).

First stop then was Khiva, the capital of an independent khanate during the 18th and 19th century, notorious for its slave trade and the somewhat capricious nature of its rulers - lots of public executions, of foreigners as well as locals. The ancient city is very well preserved (or well renovated, it's difficult to tell at times what is actually ancient and what was renovated during Soviet times), with the city walls pretty much intact, and the various mosques, madrassas and palaces within in excellent condition. Spent a day just wandering around the city streets, popping into the various buildings, and admiring the tiling in particular, which is really impressive, both on the madrassa walls, and on the towers and minarets.

Next day was a trip out to the 'Fifty Forts' region, a region just north of Khiva containing the remnants of a variety of mud walled forts, some dating back over two thousand years, but most dating fromthe middle of the first millennium. I only had time to visit five of them on a taxi tour, including Toprak Qala, a temple/fort complex from the third/fourth centuries, where you could clearly see the layout of the various buildings, Qyzyl Qala, a fort from around the same period, and Guldursun Qala, an absolutely massive complex of which only the walls remains.


From Khiva I headed even further west, into the region of Karakalpakstan, which really is the back end of beyond, a fact that explains the existence of the Savitsky art museum in the capital, Nukus. Back in the early part of the twentieth century, Russian artists were being influenced by the styles being developed in Europe and painting pictures that were reflecting this, the Russian avant garde. However, when Stalin came into power, all artists were ordered to only paint in the Soviet Realist style, and so those artists who were unable to emigrate (unlike people like Chagall and Kandinsky) were forced to either give up the avant garde style altogether, or only do it privately while painting Soviet Realist for income. An artist and ethnographer, Igor Savitsky, who had ended up in Nukus studying the culture of the local Karalkapaks, realised that Nukus was so far away from Moscow that he could open up a museum without much in the way of official interference( he also had very good relations with the local government due to his ethnography work), and so collected the avant garde works that were being painted privately by his artist colleagues, and displayed them here. Incredibly, he got away with it for decades, and now the museum, in this small city in the middle of nowhere, has the second best collection of Russian avant garde art in the world. So I had a guided tour around the museum, which was pretty good, but I'm not really an art expert so I probably didn't appreciate it as much as I could have (the guide actually said to me after an hour or so 'You're not a very big art fan are you?') - the actual story of how it happened was of more interest to me.

The other tourist sight, if that's the right way to describe it, in Karakalpakstan, is the dying town of Moynaq, a couple of hundred kilometres north of Nukus. Getting there was an experience in itself - the bus I was expecting to get didn't turn up, but a local lady and her daughter gestured at me to follow them, and after wandering through the market for a while we eventually found a bus marked Moynaq. It was obviously the market bus, because it didn't leave for another couple of hours, by which point it was absolutely jammed to the rafters with people and produce, ranging from bags of rice and potatoes to alarm clocks and sugar cubes, with people perched precariously on top. It reminded me of bus journeys in Laos all those years ago, a real Asian experience.

Moynaq used to be a thriving fishing port on the shores of the Aral Sea, a massive inland sea/lake, fed by two huge rivers - however the Soviets decided to use the waters of these rivers to irrigate (very inefficiently) cotton fields, so the inflow dropped dramatically, and since then the sea has gradually shrunk to around ten per cent of its original size, with catastrophic consequences for the local environment. The weather has changed dramatically, pollution has risen, and the local populace's health is deteriorating badly. It's probably the world's greatest man-made environmental disaster, and it's pretty sobering and depressing to see. Particularly poignant is the sight of the remainder of Moynaq's fishing fleet lying rusting on the sands, hundreds of kilometres away from the nearest shore. You can see it for yourself on Google Earth apparently, if you fancy a look.



Ended up having to stay the night in Moynaq due to the bus problems (I was only planning on a day trip, so only had my day bag), went to bed around 7pm since there was nothing else to do, woke up next morning and there was snow on the ground! Up till then, since the rainy day in Georgia, the weather had been great, clear blue skies every day, and it had been fine the previous day (as you can see from the photos above), so it was a bit of a surprise. Given that I only had a thin shirt and a jumper (all my stuff was in Nukus), it was also incredibly cold, I was literally shivering while I was out taking some more photos. It was worth it though, the sight of the ships in the desert, covered in snow, was pretty surreal.



From Nukus it was a bus back to Urgench and a supposed overnight bus to Samarkand, except the driver decided it wasn't full enough and we weren't leaving until the next day. I wouldn't have understood any of this, but luckily there was a very nice English speaking local on the bus who explained to me what was going on, and offered to let me stay with her family overnight before getting the bus the next day. So that was a good experience, although occasionally a bit of a struggle as her English wasn't that good (although obviously a sight better than either my Uzbek or Russian), and we got on the bus the following day without any problems, arriving in Samarkand late that night.

Samarkand was only supposed to be a brief stop since I was coming back that way with my mum, but after getting online for the first time in a few days I found out that my mum's flight had been cancelled and that Iags and Steff were trying to get her another one, so there was no rush to get to Tashkent after all. Since I had to wait at least a day until I found out what was going on, I figured I'd do something that I knew I wouldn't have time to do with my mum, so I headed out to the town of Shakhrisabz a couple of hours, the birthplace of Timur, Uzbekistan's very own all-conquering empire builder. Timur's conquests took place in the 14th century, after the Mongol empire had begun to fade away, and stretched as far as Syria in the West, the Volga in the North and into India (his descendants in India became the Mughal Empire, famed for building the Taj Mahal). In the West his reputation is pretty bloody, but the Uzbeks are very proud of him, his statues are everywhere (he may have been a bloodthirsty tyrant, but at least he was their bloodthirsty tyrant). To be fair, other conquerors of the period killed as many if not more, but their reputations aren't quite as bad for some reason.

Shakhrisabhz itself contains a fair few buildings from Timur's time, in particular various family mausoleums, including the one meant for Timur himself (surprisingly understated, a very simple underground chamber), although he was eventually buried in Samarkand. The highlight though is the remnant of his summer palace - all that actually remains are the entrance gateposts, but they are huge, forty metres high, and it makes you think how impressive the palace must have at the time. Also, it's about the only monument in Uzbekistan that hasn't been heavily restored, which made a nice change - it's obviously amazing to see these buildings as they were meant to have been seen, but sometimes you do feel they've been over-restored, that patching them up without fixing them fully would be a better option.

Back then to Samarkand, a check of my email to find out that Steff had got Mum a flight, and that she was due to land the morning after next, so the following day it was a bus up to the capital, Tashkent, a check in to a reasonable hotel (even I wouldn't make my mum stay in a backpackers hostel), and to the airport at 4.30am to meet my mum's flight.

Turkmenistan

So, on the ferry from Baku, and a twelve hour crossing to Turkmenistan on a sea (or lake, depending on your point of view - I'm of the view that the Caspian is a lake, despite the fact that it's slightly saline, as it doesn't link up to the earth's main body of water) that was like a mill pond. Well, the crossing was twelve hours, we anchored off the coast about 2am, with the expectation in my head that we'd dock when it was light. Twenty four hours later and we were still there, and since I had no idea when we would actually dock, I was eking out my limited rations of one banana and one packet of biscuits (it's 11am, that means I'm allowed one third of a banana and two biscuits etc). Luckily we docked around 5am, a hassle free customs check and I was in Turkmenistan, with four days to cross it before my transit visa expired (the delay meant I'd lost a day from my set five days).

Into the port town of Turkmenbashi then, and a bus straight to the capital, Ashgabat (after a very nice lad I'd met on the ship changed some dollars for me to enable me to pay for the bus ticket). Before I say anything about Ashgabat, it's probably worth putting down some brief background on Turkmenistan and its recently departed megalomaniac leader - when the USSR collapsed and its states became independent, the incumbent Communist Party leaders invariably became the head of state and kept on ruling (this is true for pretty much all of the Central Asian republics. In Turkmenistan's case, this was a guy named Saparmurat Niyazov, and he ruled for fifteen years until his death in 2006. He renamed himself 'Turkmenbashi', meaning leader of the Turkmen, and over the next decade or so indulged in a personality cult, renaming months of the year after his dead brother and mother, building statues of himself everywhere, and spending the country's vast oil revenues on grandiose buildings and similar projects.

Anyway, a day in Ashgabat, and it's a weird place - this is where Turkmenbashi spent most of the oil money, building tens, if not hundreds of new buildings, all in white marble, none of which blend in with their surroundings and just look completely out of place. There's various governmental buildings like this in the central area, as well as a 4km strip of virtually identical buildings, all on a vast scale, stretching out of town. The rest of the town is single storey though, so the new buildings stick out a lot - it actually reminded me a little of the outskirts of Dubai, which had a similar feeling of brand new buildings, all isolated from each other. Maybe it's an inherent difficulty in building new cities in desert locations, it's all flat and dry with seemingly endless space to expand, so everything gets built too far apart, and there's little feeling of a cohesive whole.

Wandered around the city then for a day, did part of the 37km Walk of Health, another one of Turkmenbashi's ridiculous ideas - this time a massive concrete walkway leading out of the city and up to and around a nearby mountain, for no real reason, except to make civil servants walk it on one day every year. The piece de resistance in the city though is the statue of Turkmenbashi on top of the Arch of Neutrality - for a megalomaniac leader to build a golden statue of himself on top of the tallest structure in the capital isn't that unusual, but for him to then insist that the statue revolves constantly so that he's always facing the sun shows a level of megalomania that you almost have to respect.

From Ashgabat it was on towards Turkmenabat, the border town with Uzbekistan, with a stop to visit the ancient city of Merv on the way. Merv used to be a major city on the Silk Road, standing as it does on the route from Iran through to Central Asia. Indeed, during it's highest period, under the Seljuk Turks in the 11th century or so, it was considered one of the four chief cities of Islam, along with Cairo, Damascus and Baghad. By now there's very little remaining, mainly just the mud outer walls of the five cities that occupied the spot at different times, along with remnants of some of the mud brick buildings. It was easy to stand atop the walls though, and imagine it in its heyday with caravans and traders coming into the city walls with their various goods to sell.

After that it was just a night in Turkmenabat, where I stayed in a bit of a dosshouse, and got horribly drunk on vodka with a couple of Turkmen - I thought I'd got away with only half a bottle of vodka when one of the guys left, and the other guy who was sharing my room disappeared, so I quickly got into bed, only for my room mate to reappear with another half bottle. Since there was no way he was going to let me sleep I figured the quickest approach was to do numerous toasts until that bottle was also empty - needless to say the following day wasn't one of my better ones, border crossing days are usually a bit tedious to say the least, and particularly so when you're seriously hungover.

So that was Turkmenistan, it wasn't actually as strange as I expected. I had an image in my head of somewhere like North Korea (or at least what I imagine North Korea to be, run down, miserable, suffering population), but in fact it wasn't that different to other central Asian countries and cities, if you ignore the weird Turkmenbashi stuff.

Azerbaijan

So, Azerbaijan. Crossed over from Georgia, had packed my Lonely Planet into my rucksack as it warned that previous editions had been known to be confiscated on the border, but hadn't packed it deep enough, so when the customs man asked me to empty my rucksack, out it came. He immediately pounced on it, gave it to his superior, who looked at it, shrugged his shoulders, gave it back to me and let me through. So that was a bit of relief, losing the guidebook would be a major pain given my complete lack of linguistic skills for the region. A taxi into Balakan, the border town, then a bit of haggling to get a shared taxi on to Zaqatala, but it did mean waiting for others to turn up before it left. So I was standing there, minding my own business, flicking through the guidebook to decide whether or not to stay overnight in Zaqatala or head onwards, when a police van pulled up, unloaded its cargo of officers, one of whom asked for my passport, took my book off me, then promptly indicated that I should get into the back of the van. I figured doing as I was told was probably a wise move, so in I climbed, and got whisked off to the local police station. I was outside there for a good fifteen minutes, with various questions behind fired at me in Azeri (but reasonably friendly to be fair), all of which I responded to by smiling a lot and saying, tourist, Baku, British a lot. Eventually I got led upstairs to see the head honcho, who again showed great interest in my book, and this time they found someone who could speak a little English, so he asked me what I was doing, and where I'd been before, so I explained that I was just a tourist, been through Turkey, Georgia and Armenia (which they would have known from the stamps in the passport). Armenia was the one that particularly piqued them (and I assume the reason they pulled me in, since the guidebook has Armenia on the cover), and I got a bit more of a quizzing about that – all due to the fact that Armenia invaded/backed a separatist movement in the Azeri region of Nagorno Karabakh, which is now outside of Azeri control, and nominally independent (although effectively Armenia calls the shots), and so Azerbaijan and Armenia are still at war, even though there's been a semi ceasefire for years. Anyway, eventually they seemed satisfied with my innocent tourist routine and that the Lonely Planet wasn't a pro Armenian tract being smuggled into the country, apologised for detaining me, before dropping me back off at the cab rank and wishing me a pleasant stay in their country. Wasn't quite the welcome I was expecting, but it's a great comedy travelling story, and I never felt at any point like I was in any trouble, I knew my documents were all in order, the worst they could have done was confiscate the guidebook.

So after the police incident, on to Zaqatala, spent the afternoon and the night there, pleasant small town and a nearby rural hill village to wander round, then on the next day to Saki (having almost watched the bus and my rucksack drive away while I was having a morning cup of tea – note to self, must always check if the time has changed after a border crossing). A couple of days in and around there, the first night spent in the hill village of Kis, mainly to visit the reconstructed Albanian church which is now an Albanian museum (Albania being a Christian state in the area during the sixth century, nothing to do with the European Albania). The reconstruction was funded by the Norwegian government, and there was a statue of Thor Heyerdahl there (of Contiki/Easter Island fame, the guy who believed that Easter Islanders originated in South America, not Polynesia, and sailed a raft there to prove it was possible), since another of his more controversial theories is that Scandinavians originated from the Azerbaija region, due to the similarities between boat petroglyphs found there and in Scandinavia, as well as apparently the myth of Odin refers to him coming from the 'Azeri'. Stayed in a local homestay, with no one but the old grandmother and grandfather, zero communication possible but she understood that I wanted a bed, and gave me some food so had a very pleasant evening reading my book on their balcony.

Back down to Saki the following morning, and checked into the Caravansaray hotel, which was a very cool little place, a caravansary being an old inn built along trade routes like the Silk Road back in the day where merchants and traders used to stay, feed their camels/horses and occasionally conduct their business. This one has been repaired and renovated, so it's a two level building, facing and surrounding an inner courtyard with a series of small, arched, brick rooms. Nothing particularly luxurious, but a great place to stay the night and dream of what it was like centuries ago. Saki itself was an important town and was the seat of a khanate for a period (khanates being small semi-independent states), meaning that it contains an eighteenth century khan's palace.

The palace, although relatively small, two storeys, one room deep and three rooms long is probably the most beautiful building in the Caucasus. The front facade has beautiful arabesque stonework, patterned tiling and large wooden stained glass windows, each individual piece of glass held in place by carved pieces of wood. Once you get inside the effect of the stained glass is apparent, with the sunlight pouring in through the windows, lighting them up and casting coloured darts of light all over the interior. The interiors themselves are also incredible, every single wall and ceiling covered with murals, ranging from flowers in the female rooms, hunting scenes in the male ones, geometric patterns everywhere, and the piece de resistance, a room long mural depicting the khan's prowess on the field of battle, complete with armies ready for battle, unfurled flags and decapitated enemies. The good thing about it too was that it was actually a bit of a surprise, the guidebook talks about it but not in a particularly detailed way, so it was one of those times when you walk in somewhere and think 'wow, this is amazing'.

Onward then from Saki, heading south, a detour up to Lahij, a coppersmith's village up in the mountains, a pleasant afternoon hike there and an evening in a local homestay along with a fair few shots of vodka with the owner, who I think was using me as an excuse to drink (even us single men can recognise the tone of voice of a wife telling her husband that he really shouldn't be drinking, and his 'I have to, he's a guest' response, regardless of the language it's said in), before heading down to Baku the following day.

Overnight in Baku, then back up north into the mountains to the little village of Xinaliq, actually not that far as the crow flies from Lahij, but the other side of impassable mountains hence the need for the four hour detour to Baku and back up. To get to Xinaliq was a journey in itself, an overnight stay in the small town of Quba, then negotiations with a jeep driver to go up the mountain road to Xinaliq. I was expecting an arduous process of haggling to get a fair price (the guidebook suggested that would be the case), but the driver quoted me a fair price for the whole jeep, or I could wait until there were three others, and pay a fourth of the price. After two hours of waiting, only one more local had turned up, so we agreed to pay half each, and off we went. The journey up was spectacular though, and worth the fare on its own, winding up and down mountain valleys, through rocky canyons, snow capped peaks in the distance, a stop off at in a small village to drop off the local and his various bags of purchases, along with the obligatory cup of tea, before eventually ending up in Xinaliq, where the taxi driver dropped me off at a home he knew would put me up, and arranged to pick me up the following day. Xinaliq itself is a small village composed of stone built houses in a stunning setting, perched on a ridge surrounded by mountain ranges on all sides, so a good place for some hiking. Did a great hike in the afternoon, up a nearby ridge, which ended up with absolutely spectacular 360 degree views of the Caucasuses on all sides, from snow capped peaks in one direction, rocky cliff faces in another, and carpeted green fields with the obligatory sheep in another. It even had a small rocky outcrop at the top to climb up for a real king of the world moment. Definitely one of the trip highlights so far. Overnight there with the family, of which there seemed to be an almost infinite number of children, but who were very welcoming despite the language barrier, before heading back down to Baku the following day.

A couple of days in Baku then, which is a surprisingly pretty city, at least in the centre where the old town is still standing, along with various buildings from the turn of the 20^th century when Baku had its first oil boom. It's now in the throes of its second one, and you can see the money being poured into renovation and building work, so much so that the city at times feels like one big building site, with large numbers of buildings covered in scaffolding as well as most of the main squares being closed off. It will probably be lovely in a couple of years time, although you do wonder whether it's really the best use of the oil money, given that outside of the capital there's still significant poverty. I guess Baku is their face to the world and they want to show that off.

Met a bunch of cyclists in Baku as well, first other travellers I'd seen since Georgia, all doing various routes from Europe across Asia, and waiting for the ferry across to Kazakhstan (as opposed to the Turkmenistan one I had to get). Was seriously impressed though, it's enough of an effort doing it by effectively public transport, let alone cycle the whole thing. The Caspian Sea ferry thing was easier than I thought, the Turkmenistan one goes pretty regularly, although at no set time, you just have to go down to the port and ask if it's going that day - I got told that it was leaving imminently so had to run back to the hostel to collect my bag, run back (with no time to stop to buy much food), and of course then sat around for another four hours before it actually left. So that was Azerbaijan and the Caucasus, on then across the Caspian to Central Asia.