We left Tajikistan almost as easily as we entered, a quick cursory look at our passports and we were waved on. When we'd entered Tajikistan, it had been even easier: we hadn't even been required to step out of our UAZ minibus and into the immigration hall since our driver's cucumber and tomato gifts to the officials had eased our way in (see our previous blog for those details).
On entering Uzbekistan, however, we were immediately aware that we were entering a police state. Long queues of frustrated people were caused by the unpacking of every single bag of everyone entering the country. Each item of clothing was unhurriedly shaken out (including dirty underwear!), every zip of our backpacks opened, toiletry bags unpacked, every tube of facewash, shampoo, lip-ice, sunblock, etc opened and peered at. Our camera, phones and kindles were turned on and painstakingly searched for offensive images (we still don't know what is considered offensive). It felt very intrusive. The border guards seemed to get a special thrill from looking through our pictures - possibly providing them with a more entertaining day than their usual 9 to 5. We were to find that this was pretty much par for the course in Uzbekistan, by far the most in-your-face authoritarian country we've been to.
Having survived the thorough shakedown at the border, we travelled by train to the swelteringly hot town of Termiz on the banks of the Amu Darya (Oxus) river along the Afghan border. This train journey was made extra special by the fact that it had only the tiniest of windows to allow in the faintest of breezes, and no air-conditioning... in a country that sees 50+ degree temperatures every year! With temperatures topping 40 degrees in the afternoons, we'd head straight for the soft-serve ice-cream stands. In Uzbekistan all you have to do to get a cheap, delicious soft-serve ice-cream is to step outside and walk 200m in any direction and - even if you do this blindfolded - you'll walk straight into a soft-serve ice-cream vendor selling the cones for the equivalent of R1.50 ($0.10). We had at least two delicious cones a day! On arriving in Termiz we found that the Tajik preference for the uni-brow existed in Uzbekistan too. A thick, black uni brow is considered the pinnacle of beauty. And if you're unlucky enough to have been born with two separate eyebrows, it's easy enough to just pencil in a nice thick, black unitary one.
We spent a couple of days in Termiz working out how this country works, the prices of things, the kind of food available, and figuring out the crazy currency issues. Uzbekistan has an official currency exchange rate to the US Dollar that is almost half that of the black market. The US Dollar to Uzbekistan som (UZS) official rate is 1USD = 2750 UZS and the black market rate is 1USD = 4500 UZS. What most tourists (the price-sensitive ones) do is bring in lots of USD and try to change them on the black market. You can draw USD from most ATMs in Central Asia, so we had loaded up on USD in Tajikistan (more than enough for our full stay in Uzbekistan) and then had to figure out how the black market thing worked. So Dave put up the collar of his leather jacket, donned his dark glasses and, cigarette hanging out of his mouth, went off in search of the black market... no not really but you can see a pic of Dodgy Dave counting his cash: in the picture his pile is worth about R1000...
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| Counting money |
Finding a black market money changer turned out to be an easier and a less shady exercise than one might imagine. All you have to do is pop down to the local bazaar and, amongst the stout Uzbek ladies selling fruit and whatnot, you'll find numerous money changers with bricks of money in their hands, ready to do a deal. The bricks of cash are due to a past high inflationary period in which the prices of basic consumables reached into the 1000s of som and after which the central bank has not bothered to lop off any of the trailing zeros on the currency (1000UZS = R3). Coupled with the fact that the 1000 som note is the most commonly available one, you find yourself counting out dozens of notes at every transaction. Think of paying your three night hotel bill, that comes to UZS270,000 in 1000 bills (roughly the equivalent of paying a R800 bill in R3 notes). First you have to count the money in front of the hotel manager and then she has to count it all again in front of you. It certainly does not make for quick check-outs!
At the bazaars we would change USD100 at a time so that we did not have to do it every day. USD100 is the equivalent of UZS450,000 - so you have to stand around, doing an illegal transaction in broad daylight, counting bricks of cash. Also the moneychangers can have a dodgy trick or two up their sleeves so you have to be hyper-aware through it all. Everyone has to go through this all the time and everyone carries around piles of money openly in their hands, in plastic shopping bags, etc. We found it all a little disconcerting initially but then got quite used to it. The Reserve Bank governor of Uzbekistan is certainly not winning any awards at the annual meeting of Central Bankers in Jackson Hole...
In Termiz we visited a museum which detailed the town's thousands of years of history dating back countless civilisations. Termiz is also the birthplace of the Imam Abu Isa Muhammad Tirmidhi (824 - 892 CE) credited with one of the six canonical hadith compilations (sayings of the Prophet) in Sunni Islam, including: "To strive for knowledge is the duty of every Muslim." More recently, it was across Termiz's "Friendship Bridge" that the Soviets launched their invasion of neighbouring Afghanistan in 1979.
Moving on from Termiz, having paid our 'Learning the New Country School Fees', we were ready to explore the rest of the ancient-monument-tourist-showstopper that is Uzbekistan. We briefly visited Tashkent, the capital, which has some nice parks and impressive buildings in the central area but we didn't like it as much as we had Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan. It was great though to be in a city with a well run underground subway. The subway in Tashkent is beautiful with lovely mosaics, high ceilings with chandeliers and intricately designed pillars. We don't have any pics though because when we tried to take some, one of the many gendarmes that roam the stations blew his whistle in alarm and charged at Dave, ordering him to delete all photos in front of him. The streets in Tashkent are disconcertingly wide which makes for a spacious city but also a lot of dashing around to avoid cars - it is not the most pedestrian-friendly city. One unusual feature of Tashkent, and in fact the whole country, is that pretty much every car is a taxi. If you need to get somewhere, you just hail the nearest car and then find out whether that person is heading in the same direction - if so, they will take you along for a fee. Our language skills weren't good enough to manage these negotiations so we just used the comprehensive city bus and subway system.
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| Great patriotic war memorial, Tashkent, Uzbekistan |
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| Tashkent, Uzbekistan |
Uzbekistan just crawls with policemen in dark green uniforms with hats that look like a cross between a top hat and peak cap. Every bag is searched when entering the subway (often twice at two sequential checkpoints) and you can be asked to show your passport in which your visa is scrutinised followed by possibly all the other entries in your passport. If you're taking several trips on the subway, this becomes very tiresome. Taking overland long distance trains is even more tiresome where bag checks, metal detectors and passport inspections can be done at four or five sequential points. It is hard to hold your tongue and not burst out exclaiming: "What on earth do you want to check that the other four checkpoints haven't checked already?!". Taking a bus or taxi in no way helps you to escape this policing. There are several road checkpoints in which the vehicle is stopped, every person's passport is inspected and if you're a foreigner, you are invariably required to get out of the bus or taxi and 'register' at the office. This entails the policeman writing down your passport details and looking you over suspiciously for being from South Africa while not being a 'negro'.
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Melons along the road to Samarkand
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The other tiresome rule that all foreigners have to follow is to obtain a 'registration slip' from every hotel you stay at for every night's stay, verifying where you spent each day. These are supposed to be handed in for inspection as you leave the country at the border crossing's immigration office. This makes any camping or staying in homestays impossible as that would require daily registration at a police station, which we were told is not a recommended recreational holiday pastime.
The Uzbeks themselves seem to take all this policing in their stride and were we told by locals that it makes the country 'safe'. Since there is little general crime throughout Central Asia it seems this is more a reference to potential terrorist activity. We certainly value our religiously tolerant society back home and would not willingly live in an authoritarian police state, but one does wonder what a population may be prepared to give up if potential terrorist activity is a constant threat. There is an Uzbek terrorist group, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which has recently preformed terror attacks in the country and which has now aligned with ISIS. Similarly, having a neighbour's view of the chaos and suffering caused by the Taliban in Afghanistan has just added to the state's desire to keep a strong hand on public life. However, the other reason postulated by critics for the need for a tightly controlled society is the rampant corruption of the kleptocratic ruling family of Uzbekistan. President Karimov is not kind to his opponents, the boiling alive of his opponents is known to be in his torture repertoire...
After passing through Tashkent, our next stop was the Fergana Valley, renowned as the silk and cotton mecca of Central Asia. Cotton production on a massive commercial scale was brought to Central Asia by the Soviets as the Cold War intensified and the USSR was reluctant to be dependent on the US or British colonies for its cotton supply. The drying up of the Aral Sea, arguably the world's biggest man-made natural disaster, is due to the introduction of thirsty cotton crops which suck up most of the water from the Amu-Darya (Oxus) and Syr-Darya rivers before they can reach the Aral Sea. There seem to be no plans by the Uzbek government to properly address this disaster. It is common to see hosepipes running all day to water gardens and the irrigation of crops happens in the middle of 40 degree days by merely flooding entire fields with water. There has been no attempt to use water-efficient, drip irrigation or merely irrigating at night. Taps are often seen running just because no-one can be bothered to close them. Surprisingly, we were told by locals that water is one of the natural resources that Uzbekistan has plenty of. The dry Aral Sea indicates otherwise.
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| Picnic with Fotima and friends in Ferghana valley |
Cotton production now absorbs 28% of Uzbekistan's labour force, contributes some 30% of its GDP and is its biggest export. A generation ago, it was compulsory for all adults and sometimes children to spend two months of the year picking cotton. Even professionals, doctors, lawyers, etc were compelled to do their two months of labour in the cotton fields. We got conflicting reports on to what extent this forced labour is still enforced now. Some people claim that all workers are now paid, while others said that while the work was (lowly) paid, you had no option to refuse it. While we were there, the government ordered all wedding venues to cancel all bookings for the two months of harvesting so that the the population would not be distracted from harvesting! Read story here.
The use of child labour has apparently reduced significantly but companies like WalMart, Tesco, Ikea, etc still refuse to buy products containing Uzbek cotton claiming it is a product of slave labour.
The Uzbek economy is the second wealthiest amongst the four Central Asian economies we've visited. Measured by what each person in the country can buy with the annual income generated by the economy (annual GDP {PPP} per capita): Tajikistan is the poorest with $2700, Kyrgyzstan $3360, Uzbekistan $5600, and Kazakhstan, with its massive oil and gas reserves generating $24000 per person (South Africa is at $13000). Tajikistan is the poorest country in the region but has had the highest economic growth rates in recent years, bringing it close in wealth to that of Kyrgyzstan. It was particularly interesting for us as South Africans to see the relatively high standard of living in terms of access to health-care, standard of education, access to basic services and employment levels of even the least well off countries. Even the remote regions of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan were better off than much of South Africa despite South Africa's per capita GDP being higher than all three countries. South Africa's much higher level of inequality is one obvious cause of this phenomenon.
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| Orchard in the desert, Ferghana valley |
In the Ferghana Valley we visited the bustling silk and cotton bazaars and got to see silk and cotton weaving workshops for cloth and carpets, still made by hand, in the loud colours and busy patterns typical of the region. The Uzbeks are distinguished culturally from the other Central Asian countries in that they have been a settled people living in cities and farming for millennia. Settled peoples allow for the production of agricultural surpluses which in turn enable the creation of city states, hence the amazing bazaars and astounding buildings we were still to see. A highlight of the Ferghana Valley was our meeting Fotima, a friendly young woman with an exuberant personality, in a shared taxi on the way to one of the many bazaars. Fotima chatted away to us throughout the two hour taxi ride and then invited us to her family home for dinner the following evening. The next day, as promised a private taxi arrived, promptly to whisk us away. When we walked into Fotima's home, we were surprised to see the courtyard set up for a party banquet. What Fotima had not told us was that she'd invited us to her farewell celebration - she was to begin her three year college degree in Pharmacology in Tashkent the following week. The evening was a treat meeting all her friends and family, including her grandmother who had the bright blue eyes attributed by historians to the conquests of the Alexander the Great. We were fed course upon course of traditional Uzbek food and danced to local tunes, of which the most popular currently is a catchy pop song about beautiful girls and angels: Watch the music video here.
These tunes were played by a seven piece band who had all the instruments for a major show: drums, keyboard, guitar etc although it was immediately obvious that not one was actually playing an instrument! They all mimed to the CD track that was played in the background (which was most often the one about beautiful girls and angels)...it was rather entertaining to watch the guitarist or keyboard player dash from lazily puffing on a cigarette when he realised his instrument was "playing" loud and clear without him, or the drummer listlessly patting his drum with little regard to the actual beat being played in the background. It was lots of fun anyway and we were exhorted to make one of the many speeches. This we happily did and we were then required to do the post-speech dance. This involves the speech-makers dancing to a song chosen by the MC and then being showered with 1000 som notes by the crowd - the money all goes to the band. Hilariously, the song they chose for us was "Gangnam Style" which luckily Dave does a fair impression of.
We also got to visit Fotima's family orchard outside the town. The orchard lay along a glacial-melt stream running through barren desert and was filled with sweet peaches and apricots ready for harvest.
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| Fotima harvesting peaches, Ferghana valley |
Leaving the Fergana Valley, via a quick stop in Tashkent, we headed towards our ancient city tour of the fabulous trio of Samarkand, Khiva and Bukhara. These ancient cities, located on silk routes between Europe and China, have evidence of human activity for ten's of millennia and evidence of populated cities from thousands of years BCE. Their buildings recall the Golden Age, coined by historians as the period of Central Asia's Age of Enlightenment circa, 750 to 1150 CE. The medressas, bazaars and mosques we were to explore were the sites of the creative musings, debates and writings of scientists, polymaths, philosophers, poets, musicians, astronomers and geographers who included the intellectual giants Ibn Sina, Al-Biruni and Ibn Al-Khorezmi. Ibn Sina was born in a village near Bukhara and Al-Biruni and Ibn Al-Khorezmi were from the Khorezm region, where the city of Khiva is located. These thinkers each had an indelible impact on the progress of science, philosophy and mathematics in both the eastern and western worlds. Ibn Sina is known, amongst many other achievements, for his "Cannon of Medicine" which formed the basis of modern medicine in the west. Ibn Al-Khorezmi ("Algorismi" as in algorithm) is the father of the mathematical field of Algebra. Correspondence between Al-Biruni and Ibn Sina reflect debates at the time that anticipated the key points of Darwinism by eight centuries and astronomical calculations that proved the centricity of the sun in our solar system, claims for which Europe was still burning heretics 600 years later.
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| Samarkand |
Ahmad Ibn Muhammed Al-farghani from the Fergana Valley was a contemporary of Ibn Sina and Al-biruni during the Central Asian Golden Age (9th century). He was a mathematician and astronomer who contributed planetary calculations comparable to that of the celebrated Greek intellectuals of their day. The mariner Christopher Columbus famously utilised Al-farghani's calculations of the circumference of the earth, 500 years after he had computed them. Columbus mistakenly assumed the calculations were in Roman miles instead of Arabic miles thereby reducing the calculations by 25% and, as we know, he then proceeded to get well and truly lost!
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| Samarkand |
Our arrival in Samarkand was a little difficult. We arrived there at 8pm after a long but uneventful shared taxi ride to find that the entire city had been blockaded by the green-suited gendarmes. Our taxi driver tried several routes into the city to get us to our guest house but there was just no way in. In the midst of our usual language confusion we realised that everyone in the city was on foot and we would have to carry our bags and walk the 8kms to our hotel in the dark! Because we couldn't ask anyone what was going on we accepted our fate, pulled on our walking shoes, bought an ice-cream to ease the frustration and speculated all through the two hour walk about what on earth was going on. It turned out that the President was visiting the city's famous annual music festival and with no warning (for security reasons) the city had suddenly been blockaded to facilitate his evening out.
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| Samarkand |
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| Samarkand |
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| Samarkand |
Anyway, we made it in good health to our guest house and set about planning the upcoming days that would be packed with some power sightseeing in the 35+ degree heat. The ancient buildings in Samarkand have been well preserved and restored. In some areas, one is surrounded 360 degrees by blue-tiled mosques, mausoleums, medressas and city squares that are dazzlingly beautiful and very old. The names drip with eastern exoticism: Bibi-Khanym Mosque and Mausoleum (14th century), Shah-i-Zinda (7th century), Gur-E-Amir Mausoleum (1404), Rukhobad Mausoleum (1380), Afrosiab (7th century), Tomb of the Old Testament Prophet Daniel (5th Century BCE), Hazrat-Hizr Mosque (8th century), Ishratkhana Mausoleum (15th century) and the showstopper: the majestic Registan which is the site of the world's oldest preserved medressas - anything older was destroyed by Genghis Khan. The Registan is made up of the Ulugbek Medressa (1420), Ulugbek Observatory (1420), Sher Dor Medressa (1636) and Tilla-Kari Medressa (1660).
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| The Registan, Samarkand |
While wandering near the Registan we were clandestinely offered tickets to that night's show of the same music festival that the President had visited. After completing what felt like a rather furtive transaction, the seller was accosted by the ubiquitous police while we hurried off to avoid drama. The festival is an annual world folk music extravaganza in the spectacular setting of the Registan. Ahead of the show we heard the musicians doing their sound-checks and ...wait a minute...that's Xhosa they're singing in! Sure enough, there was a South African show on the bill and we excitedly anticipated the slot. After the show the South African band wandered amongst the audience and we pounced on them and began rapping away in Xhosa :) Turned out they were from Port Elizabeth (near our home village) and the rest of the Uzbek audience were delighted to take videos and pics of these people all clicking their tongues at one another!
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| Samarkand music festival at the Reigstan |
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| Samarkand music festival at the Reigstan |
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| Samarkand music festival |
After Samarkand, it was off to the ancient walled city of Khiva in the far west of the country near Turkmenistan. Khiva is literally a museum city in which its medressas, mosques and mausoleums are still situated within ancient city mud walls. Here the old buildings were noted for their unusual tapered wooden columns as well as the magnificent, unfinished Kalto Minor Minaret. We also celebrated Rejane's birthday in a restaurant in the exotic heart of this ancient city with tall minarets looming above us in the evening light.
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| Khiva sunset |
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| Wooden columns, Khiva |
In addition to the tiresome currency management issues, all Uzbek restaurants also have an irritating habit of overcharging on every bill - without fail. Most people probably don't check their bills very carefully but when you're backpacking for a year and your home currency is devaluing rapidly, every cent counts. After overcoming the hassle of decoding the menu or, if no menu is available, you'd have to use whatever broken language, charades techniques (clucking like a chicken comes in handy) to find out what was on offer. That done you have to ask the price of each item and, once you've finished your meal, the bill would still - without fail - arrive a few thousand som more than expected. You'd then have to go through the rigmarole of getting out the calculator and going through every item as you are never furnished with a written itemised bill. The error could be the result of any one or more of the following: incorrect addition of the prices you'd agreed on, the items would suddenly have gone up in price during the hour you were eating, the tuneless crooner or DJ that serenaded you during your meal could mean a surprise music cover charge, there could be a previously undisclosed 10%-20% service charge or a 'VAT' rate could be charged that varied anywhere between 5% and 20%. After going through your bill query, the manager would hardly be embarrassed at his poor addition (that is somehow never in your favour) or the sudden change of the price of the meal. Instead he would just shrug and smile as if it's all in a day's work...as if he wouldn't be doing his job if he didn't try. All done in good humour and taken as the normal way things are done.
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| Kalto Minor minaret, Khiva |
The final ancient city we visited was Bukhara. This is the most tourist-orientated Uzbek city and has a list of sights no less impressive than the other cities and by the end of it all, we were well and truly 'beautiful-old-building-with-intricate- blue-tiling' saturated.
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| Bukhara |
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| Intricate tiling Bukhara |
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| Jewish gravestones Bukhara |
And then, after a month in this interesting country, we caught a steaming bus without windows or aircon back to Tashkent for the last time before heading north to our final Central Asian country: Kazakhstan... And of course, when we reached the border, no one was in the slightest bit interested in all those hotel registration slips we had so painstakingly collected and the police and officials were extra friendly and helpful!
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| Bukhara |
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| intricate tiling Bukhara |
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| Bukhara |
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| Sunset over Bukhara |
