On the Silk Road: Uzbekistan Day 8 Tashkent-Dubai

Leaving Tashkent

Up at 4:30am and driven through the quiet pre-dawn streets of Tashkent. At the airport the entrance road was blocked by concrete barriers so we walked up the entrance. We had to show our tickets to get into the terminal building and once inside we had to put all our bags through an x-ray. The check in was painless once we'd found the right desk then we started running the gauntlet to exit Uzbekistan. First another x-ray then into the queue to explain where our money had gone, the correct answer was rewarded with a stamp in the passport then along a corridor and into another queue to wait for another stamp. I was standing behind some guys who must have been on the vodka most of the night as they were utterly tanked. One apologised to me for pushing in and the vodka fumes when he spoke nearly overwhelmed everyone within a 5 yard radius. Next another x-ray where everyone had to take off their shoes first and once that was negotiated we were directed to gate B3. There's a B1 and a B2 but no B3, so we just had to lurk around listening intently to all the announcements to hear if the word 'Dubai' was mentioned. After about 45 minutes we heard the magic word 'Dubai' and made a best guess where Gate B3 might be. It turned out the plane to Kiev was leaving from the same gate at the same time as the flight to Dubai so there was quite some confusion as passengers for both flights gathered at the door, which was one person wide, questioning each other. Eventually the passengers sorted themselves out and we boarded the A310 for Dubai. It seemed odd that after all the security checks and x-rays, while I was sitting on the plane on the runway I watched as two locals, one on a pushbike and the other on foot, used the runway as a road and stopped on one of the taxiways to have a chat. 

Take off was about 30 minutes late but we made up time and arrived back in Dubai almost on time.

Hayr Uzbekistan!

On the Silk Road: Uzbekistan Day 2: Tashkent – Samarkand

Just after midnight there was a earthquake which woke several members of our party. Not me though, I didn't feel a thing.

The main task of today was to travel by train from Tashkent to Samarkand. A bus took us to the station where we loaded ourselves into 12 seats in a 2nd class carriage. The train left exactly on time and shortly afterwards the overhead video kicked into life and showed a series of Uzbek pop video clips and a full concert of various singers performing a mix of modern and traditional songs accompanied by dancers in national costume If you're a dancer you may know of Laurel Grey and The Silk Road Company in the US who perform the Central Asian dance styles. The conductor came round taking everyone's orders for tea (pronounced choi here). The most important question in Uzbekistan is “Green or Black”.

Amir Timur mausoleum, Samarkand

In the front of the carriage was a group of young guys who didn't seem to stop eating throughout the entire 3.5 hour trip, all the while sharing bottles of “Coke” out of plastic bags. The contents of these bottles caused them to become louder and more boisterous as time went on. When we arrived at Samarkand we were greeted by many local women selling large circular loaves of unleavened bread called non. We bought a couple and learned that non weighs a ton! We headed to the Orient Star Hotel our base for the next 3 nights in Samarkand. The Orient Star's main claim to fame is that all the hotel room doors open outwards into the narrow hallway. I think the best idea is to knock before you exit your room to give people in the hallway time to get out of the way.

We headed out to have lunch in a local restaurant and I met plov for the first time. If vodka is the national drink of Uzbekistan, then plov is the national dish. It's like a pilau consisting of rice with vegetables, usually carrots, with chunks of meat on top. Its eaten for lunch mainly and restaurants only make enough to sell and once its gone – that's it until tomorrow. It's common practice if someone is looking for a late lunch to phone a several restaurants to find out which one has some plov left over. Uzbeki's claim there are 100 different ways to cook plov and that the best plov is cooked by men outdoors. Our guide Bahador remarked that an Uzbek man would not be considered a good husband unless he can cook an acceptable plov, which is interesting considering how macho Uzbek society seems to be. After lunch we went on to the the mausoleum of Amir Temir, better known in the west as Tamerlane, “The Terror of the World”. Tamerlane lies beneath a glorious dome, his grave marked by a black-green slab of marble, surrounded by the graves of various of his teachers and several of his sons. The tombstones are markers for the actual graves which lie in exactly the same layout in the crypt underneath.

From there we moved on to the Registan Complex, possibly the most famous of Samarkand's treasures, . The Registan is made up of 3 huge madrassah (schools) and like all of the sites we've been to, there's a entrance charge per person (usually about 4,500 sum) plus a charge for each camera (about 1,500 sum). Construction of the first madrassa began in 1417 by Tamerlane's grandson Uleg Beg. Its a large building with a ribbed turquoise dome in a shape reminiscent of a lemon squeezer. The exterior is covered in ceramic tiles in blue, turquoise and green.

The Registan, Samarkand

The second building, constructed in 1619 was the Shir Dor Madrassa which is almost a mirror image of the Uleg Beg madrassa. The Shir Dor is notable for the depiction in mosaic tiles of lions and suns with human faces above its main entry.

The final madrassa is Tillya Kari with magnificent mosaics covering every wall in floral and geometric patterns. Construction of the Tillya Kari started in 1646. One of the hujara (student rooms) contains a small carpet workshop and Cathy and I watched a couple of nimble fingered ladies sitting crosslegged at an upright loam weaving on a silk carpet.

I've been surprised by the popularity of gold tooth fillings here. These went out of favour in NZ in my father's generation but it seems that in Uzbekistan everyone, even young people, have mouthfuls of gold.. The fillings possibly are like jewellery or an investment, the gold can be extracted and sold if times are tough. Some Uzbek smiles are quite literally 'pure gold' and reminiscent of Odd Job, the toothsome villain in one of the James Bond movies.

On the Silk Road: Uzbekistan Day 1 Dubai to Tashkent

The flight from Dubai to Tashkent on Uzbekistan Airways was smooth and uneventful. There's no in-flight entertainment on UA so make sure you take a book. As there was an unexplained delay in leaving Dubai, the plane arrived at Tashkent 45 minutes late. We were bused across the tarmac after waiting as a forgetful and panic stricken bride-to-be retrieved her wedding dress that had been left on the plane. Once inside the terminal we joined the queue at immigration. As I already had my visa to enter Uzbekistan it was just a matter of waiting my turn but unfortunately it wasn't so smooth for our friends from NZ, Cathy and Stan. They'd been unable to get a visa from NZ before leaving the country and because of Eid it was decided not to try to collect it in Dubai. So the travel agent said that they could pick up their visas at Tashkent airport on arrival, the process would take no more than half an hour....but that only works if everything goes to plan. The first delay was when the airport immigration guys realised that as they had no visas in their passport, they had to call the consular guy to come out to physically insert the visas. The visa itself takes up a full page in a passport, and is then validated with a little blue stamp. For some reason, the consular man didn't like the visa he'd put into Stan's passport and tried to remove it after he'd stamped it with the little blue stamp. To solve the problem he then tried to stick the visa back in the passport. He then stamped it on all 4 corners and handed it back to Stan who walked no more than 5 steps to the other side of the aisle and handed his passport to the airport immigration guys. The airport guys immediately refused Stan's visa because the consular guy had put the 4 little blue stamps in the wrong places and they didn't match up. Consular guy had already left the building and had to be contacted on his mobile and asked to come back. Once he returned, he and the immigration guys had a long discussion which ended with backslapping and hand shaking, Stan's visa was ok'd and we were free to go...total time 1.5 hours. We stayed the night at the Markizay Hotel which was a Sheraton before being nationalised. The bed was comfortable, the door locked, wow, everything worked, what more can you ask for? As we were very late, we went across the road to the Dedeman Hotel and had dinner, very expensive but they had a very good live jazz band. I tried Uzbek manti which is a steamed dumpling containing meat and onions, rather like a dim sim. Its quite a surreal experience to be sitting in a bar in far flung Tashkent, watching Ladas hurl themselves through the traffic lights outside while listening to a band playing the jazz standard “Take 5”.


Back at the hotel we changed some money, US$ into Uzbekistan sum. As the exchange rate is 1800 sum=US$1.00 changing $200 into sum equals many thick wads of notes. I understand now why most Uzbek women carry large handbags and the men all seem to carry sports bags - they're not actually bags, they're Uzbek-sized wallets.