Warsaw to Bangkok

We arrived at the edge of the old town. In the midday heat it was deserted. I felt like crap and decided I needed food. This being Uzbekistan, that meant shashlyk, nan and tea. After lunch, the older Japanese woman and I set out to find accommodations. We ditched the younger Japanese because she was sick of them. Apparently Japanese backpackers are always fiending for ways to save money – sneaking into attractions, always staying at the absolute cheapest place, etc. Saving money is a form of prestige for them – experiencing the country way down on the list.

We quickly became lost in the maze of the old town. Narrow adobe lanes twist and contort themselves into a complex knot near the Labi Hauz, the pool that forms the center of Bukharan life. Most of the guesthouses are here. One kid was pretty desperate for us to stay with him, but after a while he became overbearing and a little bit petulant. His family had a small, dark, air-conditioned room for $6. I liked the price but couldn’t deal with having that kid around. He would probably have hassled me non-stop.

We ended up at a traditional courtyard B&B and worked hard to negotiate $15 each for two beautiful doubles. It was a bit pricey and require a commitment of four nights. I was sick as a dog by this point so I was fine with that. I spent most of the first two days there in bed, or lying on the couch watching the Olympics. I needed the luxury.

When I recovered, I spent some quality time exploring Bukhara. I was still in pretty rough shape. My throat was torn to pieces – I could barely talk. I soothed it with soft serve ice cream at ten cents a cone, about once every hour. The Labi Hauz area is where tourists hang out (around main pool populated with cats, dogs and a couple of swans), and a few well-to-do locals. All of the restaurants there are overpriced. The waiters literally make up the prices at the time of the bill. I bought the same thing two different times and was charged different prices. So I went out past the Ark, through a park and found a chaykana that was more to my taste. The locals here welcomed me with open arms, charged me fair prices, and I didn’t have to suffer the cruel indignity of hanging out in Bukhara and listening to Britney Spears and Fifty Cent (which they play non-stop at Labi Hauz).

The city itself is marvelous – a living monument to the golden age of Timurid culture. Mosques, medressas and minarets are everywhere. The old town is not huge, but is easy to get lost in. I was invited in for dinner at the local synagogue. There aren’t many Jews left in Bukhara (most have fled to Israel) but those that are there enjoy the solitude of the old town. The city drips with atmosphere. At low season, it is possible to go out in the early morning and have the entire place to yourself. Though my hazy brain makes it tough for me to make specific descriptions, I can assure you that if you only go to one place in Central Asia, Bukhara needs to be it.

I hopped on a local bus, which would make the run in six hours for a cost of two dollars. I hadn’t seen a really long bus ride since Krakow-Vilnius, so I was perfectly fine with this. An American soldier on leave, however, couldn’t hack it and left the bus to go hire a cab. The cabbies here are rather aggressive, and act as though it is perfectly normal for Westerners to hire a cab to themselves to make the run to Samarqand. This may or may not be true, but either way I view it as an unnecessary expense and quite frankly it’s not necessarily any more comfortable.

As I waited, the endless stream of Russian pop was broken up more than once. The first time was expected – Dragostea din Tei was just as popular in Uzbekistan at the time as it was in Europe. The second time was a shock to the system. I recognized the languages – Spanish with a little bit of French. It was Me Gustas Tu by Manu Chao, and the pure shock of hearing something halfway familiar in such unfamiliar surroundings etched it into my mind.

The ride was uneventful, but I was starting to feel sick when I arrived. The bus dropped me off on the edge of town, and I had to take a cab in. As in Tashkent, cabs are a bad deal. Just about anybody will stop to give you a lift. Risky? Not more than cabs, as the taxis aren’t so tightly regulated. Moreover, the impromptu taxis will charge you the real rate, whereas cabbies tend not to.

I ended up at the famous Registan. The heat was blazing and there were few people around. A gypsy beggar immediately attacked me, brandishing a dehydrated baby. This sick practice of using children for begging leverage is a sign of a people with no morals, no goodness in them at all.

I located a B&B in the old town. I’d managed to maintain a modicum of good health despite feeling the onset of sickness. The heat of Samarqand was heavy. I was fortunate enough to be staying at Bahodir’s, a friendly B&B in a traditional courtyard house. The rooms were lined around the courtyard, and there was ample shade. But I had to go to the toilet. It was my first-ever squatter, and in reflection it wasn’t one of the better ones. There was no ventilation in there. The only upshot to being sick was that I’d be able to get lots of practice, and soon enough I was squatting like a native.

The Registan
Once the sun started to go down, I headed out to see the Registan. Turns out this closes at around 6pm, which is ridiculous because that’s about the time the temperature gets decent here in the hot season. The guard offered me a trip up a minaret to watch the sunset. I had to laugh when, upon my arrival back home, I saw a BBC correspondent making like he was getting away with something by getting up the same minaret. At three bucks per person, the minaret sunset is the most lucrative part of the job for the guards, and they encourage every Western visitor to do it.

On the other hand, I wanted to see as much of it as I could. It doesn’t easily fit into a viewfinder, so I only got half-assed shots of it, but the tilework was as intricate as any in Central Asia, with the added bonus of massive scale. It has to be seen in person.

Modern Samarqand, however, seems to hold little appreciation for the Registan. It takes up a lot of space in the middle of town, and you hardly see anybody except tourists there. Life goes on in the rest of the city, which sprawls along wide Soviet avenues.

The next morning, an American and I headed off to see the market and a hall of tombs.

The Bazaar and Street of Tombs
We stopped at the bazaar, which is surprisingly untouristed. Of course, it was 6am but during the summer that’s the only time it is even remotely comfortable. The locals have adapted by cramming everything close together and fashioning makeshift tents from cloth. This keeps the sun out and in the winter having everybody so close together will keep them warm.

The goods are arrayed in rows with each foodstuff having its own row of vendors. This strikes me as a bit odd, since there isn’t really anything to differentiate one vendor from another. Well, at least for locals since they know the real price. For us, there was a difference as some vendors were clearly much more honest about the cost of things than others. I grabbed some roasted apricot pits for the road. This is a fine beer snack. There is a nut in the middle that tastes something like a pistachio. I tried a sample of kurut, a truly horrid invention – a rock hard ball of dried yoghurt. You have to choke it down your throat. With that caught in my esophagus I headed for the chaykana to try and wash it down. We had shashlyk at seven in the morning with nan and a few litres of tea – it took that much to work the kurut down my throat and get the taste out of my mouth. That was cool, though, as we attempted conversation in our makeshift Russian with an elderly man at our table. I don’t think we got very far but that wasn’t the point. Uzbeks are great people. I grabbed some dried apricots to go.

The street of tombs was the first time I’d been surrounded my ancient Central Asia catacombs – very cool. It was confined and without much room to find space away from other visitors. Apparently, the tomb of Tamerlane is here, and you can take a tour of it for an extra charge.

Most of the rest of my time in Samarqand was spent feeling like crap as sickness took hold more firmly. Still, I decided I was fit enough to press onwards. Three Japanese and I hired a car to get to Bukhara. A big financial hit on its own, hiring cars is a popular way to travel around Central Asia if you can get a group together. The ride took about half the time as the bus, as the driver took full advantage of the relatively empty highways to fly at the fastest possible speed. You’re in the middle of the desert, so between the heat and the lack of scenery other than “the cotton fields that should not be”, it’s probably a good thing that the ride went quickly.

There was some commotion organizing the ride, though. The old bait and switch routine was pulled. We negotiated with a guy who was standing next to a nice, new car. It wasn’t his car, at least not for the price we’d negotiated. His was a clapped-out Lada with bald tires and no seatbelts. I balked. The others didn’t seem to care, but knowing how they drive, I couldn’t do it. The man clearly didn’t care much for maintenance and that raised serious doubts about more important functions of the vehicle. We ended up paying a couple of bucks more to a different driver with a better car.

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