Uzbekistan Part V - Fergana Valley

Tuesday, September 20, 2011 Eva 0 Comments

Feeling much more energetic and on the mend after commencing a course of antibiotics, we were ready to hit the road again in the opposite direction, this time east of Tashkent to Fergana Valley, the last leg of our Uzbek roadtrip.
Stopping off to buy a melon
Our journey would take us up and over mountains, through the Kamchik mountain pass and to Fergana Valley’s silk production town of Margilon and to Rishton, renowned for its ceramics. Whilst not big on the 4 M’s (mosques, minarets, madrassas and mausoleums) this region is big on Markets.
Through the Kamchik Pass to Fergana Valley
Roadside produce













All the while as we drove through the Fergana Valley and up and over mountains, Marat’s car stereo provided just the right thematic background to the scenery.  I wanted to hear what the country’s music sounded like.  At first Marat put on American country music, which he is fond of.  No, no, I said.  Your country’s music!   So, we listened to contemporary and traditional tunes, some sung in Russian, others in Uzbek and still others in Tajik.

Roadside stalls along the way and on the return once again proved to be interesting stops, especially to us foreigners.  A major military checkpoint meant handing our passports to our driver who then passed them over for processing.  This side of the regional border, whilst more conservative, has seen political unrest and people are screened entering and leaving, although it’s pretty safe for tourists.  
Max and Marat in cotton fields

Cotton blossom below (or should that be a cotton bud?)

Fergana Valley is very much a rural-based economy. In the irrigated fields are fruit trees, tobacco fields, wheat, corn and massive cotton plantations.  Cotton is one of Uzbekistan’s main industries, a water-thirsty plant that is irrigated by canals that channel water from the tributaries of the Amu-Darya and Syr-Darya rivers (the Oxus and Jaxartes rivers as they were known in ancient Greek). 

Margilon looks like a Russian town in the grid-like layout of its streets.  There are wide boulevards lined with shady trees, there are parks and gardens, and the town has a green lushness to it. 
Here we were shown around several bazaars, bustling places all of them with gold-toothed smiling vendors, many asking to have their photo taken and wanting to know where we were from. Some offered us samples of crystallised sugar, fruit or a handful of peanuts.  We passed by stalls of fruits and vegetables, breads, sacks of nuts and spices, crisp sweet pastries lightly sprinkled with caraway seeds stacked high in little piles, past the sour smell of the dairy section where homemade yoghurt filled plastic Coke bottles and mounds of soft farm cheese that looked like cottage cheese lay in tubs or spread out on plastic sheets. 

A weekend bazaar on the outskirts of town had us haggling over a $5 ‘brand label’ cotton T-shirt amongst the rows and rows of clothing stalls.  This outdoor market was also THE place to come and buy spare auto parts, kitchen sinks, plumbing fixtures, tools, shoes, ceramics and furniture.  It looked like a monster Swapmeet.
Beautifully-patterned flatbreads

A visit to a small silk factory was a fascinating insight into silk production.  This factory is renowned for its quality silks, one of the main reasons for visiting Fergana.  I wanted to see where a part of ancient China’s secret knowledge of silk had spread along the Silk Route. An intriguing story about how the mystery of silk making reached the West goes that a couple of monks heading back to the Byzantine emperor hid silkworm eggs in their hollowed staffs (or should that be staves?). 

Silk weaver at loom



The silk at this factory is produced by two methods – the traditional way by hand as has been done for centuries and by old mechanical looms.  Nowhere in the factory did we see electricity used in its production bar the fluorescent lighting in the workrooms.  Making up a group of only the two of us, we were led around to where the silkworm cocoons are boiled and the white silk spun on old wooden spinning wheels.  We watched a dyer hand-dyeing the skeins of silk in natural dyes extracted from fruits, vegetables and natural pigments.  His hands were stained that morning from indigo that has travelled across the border from Afghanistan, a big producer of this dye.  There were rooms of young male designers kneeling on the floor sketching designs directly onto the silk before the dyeing process, and a large factory space of wooden looms where men and women wove the coloured silk into brilliantly patterned fabrics.  The weavers each held a bottle of milky fluid which they’d occasionally sip from and then skilfully spray this liquid from their mouths in perfect arcs over the fabric as it was being woven.  Of course, the best part was walking into the shop of fabrics, clothing, scarves and pashminas in rainbow colours too gorgeous to resist.

Driving past a local bakery made for an impromptu stop to watch a local baker at work.  Marat was aware of our curiosity and interest in the local breads and this turned out to be a spontaneous opportunity to see first-hand.   Within the space of two tiny rooms, the baker and his 2 assistants were churning out 1500 loaves of flatbread a day. One would weigh each batch of dough, the other to shape it into a flat round and stamp its centre, and the baker glazed and sprinkled each with caraway and sesame seeds before flattening each bread in rows onto the hot interior walls of a domed oven for baking. Since the Soviets left, Marat explained, the people are reverting to their traditional ways and foods.  The big Soviet bread factories are not as popular anymore. Seems like Uzbeks are discovering and exploring their national identity.
Rishton was a ceramics stop to view the works of the internationally-recognised master ceramist Ristam Usmanov.  Although not at home that day, his wife welcomed us through the massive wood carved doors of their property, through his private collection of antique ceramics, and out to his studio and workshops.   Only the purest of clay that is derived from a small region nearby and the purest of water is used in his creations – no other ingredients apart from the natural pigments and dyes in his artwork.
Leaving the Fergana Valley and heading back to Tashkent via the city of Kokand, before jetting off for Europe, had us reflecting on our 2 week stay in this beguiling country.  From lush valleys to stark deserts, craggy mountains, mudbaked villages and modern towns, it’s a land of contrasts. From a palette of browns and earthen colours to the vibrant rainbow colours found on silks, ceramics, embroideries, the tapchans of teahouses and worn by its women.
Contrary to what our guidebook and blogsites stated about its capital, Tashkent, about police shaking down tourists for money especially in metro stations, we didn’t encounter any trouble. It’s been refreshing to find a people so open, who like to meet foreigners. We’ve learnt a few Uzbek words in return “bir, ikki, uch , sirrrr” (1, 2, 3, Uzbek cheese!”).
Our journey has been a discovery of hospitable peoples along the way, of a land adorned with captivating architecture and beautiful tiles, of a country with an enthralling history and a fresh identity being rediscovered.  Appearances are a blend of Asian, Mongolian and Western features.  A confluence of cultures, their country’s history and legacy displays on its people’s faces.
As Marat drove us into Tashkent for the last time, tears sprung to my eyes as I realised that we were nearing the end of a dream visiting this beautiful and exotic land.  What an incredible feeling and adventure it’s been to have had the chance to imprint our footsteps on a small part of the huge network of roadways once travelled by traders and camel caravans on their torturous journey along the Silk Route.
Roadside breadsellers - all wanting their produce to be photographed

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Uzbekistan Part IV - On The Road To Khiva

Wednesday, September 14, 2011 Eva 0 Comments

After three days in Bukhara, it was time to hit the desert road to Khiva.  Marat, our driver, has begun the solo and long drive back to Tashkent so that he can pick us up from the airport in two days’ time.  We will fly the long distance from Khiva in the far west back to Tashkent in the east.

Standing in the hotel’s little alfresco foyer early in the morning laden with our backpacks, our new driver explains in his few words of English that the journey from Bukhara to Khiva will take about 8 hours.  Pardon, what?  Our guidebook had stated that the 450+ km journey was approximately 4 ½ hours. A quick phone call by the new driver to our Tashkent travel agent to explain it to us in English.

Yes, the road is very bad.  It used to take around 4 or 5 hours but now it takes longer.  Great news NOT to the both of us.  We had developed traveller’s diarrhoea, but luckily with no pain or other symptoms except frequent bathroom stops.  Gawd, I hope that shitting camel at the yurt camp wasn’t contagious. Now we had to make the mammoth drive holding in our butts for as long as was humanly possible.

The landscape for the majority of this drive was mostly aridness as far as the eye could see.  Other than the odd donkey or lizard along the one-highway route, it was a stark barren landscape.  We were being driven by car on what felt was one of the worst roads in the world as a result of roadworks.  A new road was being constructed with the aid of German and Korean companies and their heavy machinery, but was another two or three years away from being completed.
The better part of the road

Driving on roadbase



At times, the wind whipped the sand across obscuring the road.  Further along, what remained of the existing road was badly rutted and extremely corroded. In one section, we bounced along on rough roadbase with enormous potholes for more than 100 km. Cars and heavy-haulage trucks weaved, zigzagged and manoeuvred all over the road to miss the holes and therefore each other. Eight hours of driving with only one cigarette stop by the driver and another at a remote military outpost in the middle of nowhere was a marathon effort.  There didn’t appear to be any towns or food stops enroute until we got closer to Khiva and then green irrigated fields and muddles of mudbrick villages and small towns began to appear.
Luckily for us, our bowels kept quiet as there were no bushes to hide behind. The moment any food or water passed our lips would get the trots going so four sips of water and a few mouthfuls of crackers sustained us for the entire journey.
The only diners at the only open restaurant in the old town
Khiva at dusk
Khiva at dusk was glowing with the last of the sunshine striking the blue and terracotta-banded minaret of the Islom-Hoja Madrassa and the stout turquoise walls of the Kalta Minor tower, deepening the colours of the town’s earthen walls. This is a walled-in fortress city, the Ichon-Kala as it’s known. However, in the fading light as we wandered through almost empty streets it seemed as though this place was frozen in time.
By daylight, the strong summer sun bleaches the colour out Khiva’s walls.  Old men, some in traditional black and white embroidered caps, sit chatting in small groups in the shade of the town’s west gate whilst through the town’s four gated entrances the colours of tiled towers and domes peer over scorched roofs.
Men chewing the fat by the West Gate

There were very few tourists about. We met and chatted with staff from the Japanese embassy in Tashkent whilst strolling through the Harem of the khan rulers’ 12th to 17th century residence and fortress.  News and condolences were exchanged regarding the devasting tsunami earlier in the year.
Views over Khiva from the Ark's fortress walls
Climbing to the highest point in the citadel’s fortress were amazing views over the ancient monuments, across the ramparts and outside the walls to the more modern town’s green-lined streets and rooflines.  The old minaret towers standing grandly over the city were beautiful pieces of artwork, each so different in shape and decoration. Inside the cool darkness of the Juma Mosque we found a forest of wooden-carved timeworn pillars – uncommon for a mosque. There were more madrassas and mausoleums, many turned into museums, but by this stage in our journey we had reached saturation point.  There are only so many madrassas, mausoleums and mosques that a tourist can handle.

Outside the walls of the Ichon Qala
 
Streetscape by midday

Khiva is small enough to see and discover in a day.  After our one night/ one day stay, it was a short one hour pleasant flight to Tashkent with Uzbekistan Airlines.  Max and I broke out into laughter, however, on arrival at the airport. We were offloaded directly onto the airstrip and then ushered to collect our baggage from a small, ancient baggage conveyor belt sitting there outside the airport’s terminal.  Marat was there to collect us and take us to our hotel before continuing our roadtrip the following day.  Sinking into soft pillows and airconditioned comfort that night, we hoped that the worst of the searing desert heat was behind us.

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Uzbekistan Part III - The Treasure Chest of Bukhara

Thursday, September 08, 2011 Eva 0 Comments

Eating traditional 'laghman' on tapchan at Lyabi Hauz
Big, beautiful Bukhara is one of those unforgettable places, overwhelming in magnificent sights and majestic buildings, in its desert setting. It’s all about the four M’s – mosques, minarets, mausoleums and madrassas.
Our little traditional hotel (not flash but functional), whose rooms all faced inwards to a garden courtyard, was in the historical centre.  This small section of town was in past times the old Jewish quarter, and only steps away from the Lyabi Hauz, Bukhara’s central square, positioned around a historic pool shaded in places by mulberry trees hundreds of years old and overlooked by age-old madrassas at both ends.
The size of this van gives an idea of the scale of Bukhara's monuments
Out here in this ancient desert town, temperatures were stiflingly hot by midday, and by afternoon the streets and mudbrick alleyways became deserted as cool respite was sought indoors.  Only a handful of brazen (or idiotic?) tourists were brave enough to venture the baked streets at this time - us included.  We tried it once on our arrival and daren’t repeat it. Siestas became the order of the day after that.

By night, as temperatures dropped to a tolerable warmth the town centre came alive as people socialized and strolled around its illuminated sights, now escaping the heat in their homes.  Icecreams were relished, babies in prams pushed, cigarettes smoked, and tea drunk at the local chaikanas (teahouses).  People sat around the pools and small canals that survived the Soviet era. Bukhara’s many medieval pools, used for drinking and washing, became plague-ridden over the centuries and a large number were closed and replaced by water channels when the Soviets moved in. 
Folkloric show in one of Bukhara's madrassas
We hired a young guide in his mid-twenties to take us around Bukhara’s many historical treasures. It was like discovering a jewel box of delights as we absorbed the history and stories of these monuments. There was the Ismail Samani mausoleum (my favourite piece of architecture with its delicate detailed brickwork), the imposing Ark (fortress of past rulers) with its towering crennelated mudbrick walls, the understated Spring of Job, the beautiful Kalon Minaret of exquisite pale patterned bands, the huge Abdul Aziz Madrassa, the Bolo-Hauz Mosque with its unusual tall slender carved wooden pillars and many other monuments. All these and more were within easy walking distance of each other.  
The fortified walls of the Ark
Rustam, our guide, was very informative with detail.  We listened as he explained how learning English, or another foreign language, (French would be ideal as they are the largest contingent of tourists to Uzbekistan), is the best available option for them so that the young generation may make a living from tourism. His wife had also learnt English and worked with tourists as a guide. For US$20 you can hire a private guide that will fill you in on more knowledge, facts, history and local myths than you could possibly remember. It seems as though tourism equals dollars, more than one could earn in a regular job. 
Max is dwarfed by Bukhara's streetscape
Bukhara is also about bazaars and handicrafts. The bazaars of old, now restored, once specialised in particular crafts – there was the jewellery bazaar, the hat bazaar, and so on.  There was even a moneychangers’ bazaar for merchants from faraway lands who passed through on their trading route. Nowadays, craftsmen show their skills and wares to tourists. Smiths and engravers work with all kinds of metal (iron, silver, brass and copper, mainly), there are gorgeous carpets and rugs, silks and fabrics in bright bold colours, wood carvings, lacquered boxes with painted oriental scenes and ceramics of brilliant blues and greens.  A huge range of souvenirs is sold under the cool domed archways and arcades.  A long-standing hammam (Turkish massage and bath house) still operates from one of these bazaars with men-only days and women-only days displayed in the doorway. Foot massage and foot reflexology is practised here as a therapy.
The beautiful, striped Kalon Minaret
It was in Bukhara that we were introduced to Uzbekistan’s national dish, plov.  This is a rice, or pilaf, dish cooked with mutton, fried onions, carrots, raisins, barberries (tarty in flavour like cranberries), pine nuts, seasonings and lots of mutton fat over a large pot on a fire. It is traditionally cooked only by Uzbek men and friendly rivalry exists as to who can make the best. Marat, our driver, took us to a terrific local plov restaurant at an off-the-tourist-trail location that specialised in this dish. Outside at the open air kitchen an enormous cauldron over an open fire had been just about emptied of plov by many diners sitting inside the restaurant’s cavernous but cool interior. The place was a huge unadorned white space of plain tables and chairs, but everyone was there for the lunchtime plov not the décor. It was delicious and accompanied by icy-cold berry juice and, as always with every Uzbek meal, a pot of tea in blue and white china decorated with the cotton plant motif.
Chor Minor madrassa
Our sojourn in Bukhara was impressive – an architectural feast for the eyes with a fascinating history. Although there are all the modern conveniences of internet, mobile phones and satellite TV, in a place like Bukhara it is easy to imagine life in centuries past – colourful, noisy and crowded bazaars, laden camels and donkeys plodding through baked mud alleys, and grand towers and blue domes rising above throngs of sellers with carpets, silks and trinkets. Onward bound now for the holy city of Khiva.

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Uzbekistan Part II - From Nuptials to Nurata

Thursday, September 01, 2011 Eva 0 Comments

It was one of those moments on a mountainous road when two cars travelling in opposite directions veered out of their lanes to miss pot holes and ended up facing each other at high speed.  One of those cars was ours. Thankfully our driver pulled away in time.  Inside our vehicle, silence followed while heart rates calmed down.  I desperately needed a shot of vodka, I jokingly thought to myself – to one who doesn’t particularly enjoy spirits, let alone the burning taste of Russian firewater.  Soon after, Marat pulled the car over to a group of sellers manning their mountainside stalls. This break helped steady our nerves. Vistas of the surrounding mountains and countryside stretched out.  There were nuts of all kinds for sale here, hard white balls of dried cheeses, bunches of wild herbs and dried fruits on display in sacks, cardboard boxes and baskets all sitting under a hot sun.

Tangy balls of dried cheese
We were on our way to Shahrisabsz, the birthplace of Amir Timur (one of Uzbekistan’s greatest rulers) and a daytrip’s ride out of Samarkand. The town’s central point is a park with a giant bronze statue of Timur in the centre and the crumbled late 1300’s mudbrick remains of his palace, the Ak-Saray, behind him. Judging from the scale of the ruins, this palace would have been astonishing in size and splendour in its lifetime. The faded remains of beautiful tilework still clung to some its walls.




It was Sunday and this was the spot for weddings.  As we wandered around and climbed to the top of the Ak-Saray’s tower the sound of music bleated across the square announcing the arrival of bridal couples. Down below we counted more than a dozen bridal parties drifting around the park, many accompanied by musicians blowing on flutes and enormously long-stemmed trumpets whilst drums banged. Each party gathered around Timur’s statue for their Kodak moment, sometimes up to 4 bridal groups spanning the same space for the same group photo. The humidity was high but this didn’t hold back the brides from wearing long veils, voluminous, layered white gowns that resembled puffed-up meringues and thickly applied makeup that stayed on despite the melting heat. Small crowds of tourists, including ourselves, joined in photographing the spectacle.
Crepe paper, sandpaper or toilet paper?  It was all 3.
Seriously, I could file my nails with this stuff!
Shahrisabsz’s other attractions included a couple of historical mosques, one at which Max and I met two young South Korean archaeologists who’d been excavating ancient Buddhist artefacts around Termiz, a town in Uzbekistan’s south near the Afghanistan border. One had studied English at a Melbourne university – what a small world we live in. We listened with fascination as they described working in outside temperatures of over 50 degrees in Termiz (it’s late June!) but they’d finished for the time being, until next year. There were apparently loads of Buddhist relics yet to be unearthed and catalogued in that part of the region.

A lunch stop enroute back to Samarkand was a highlight as the driver pulled up at a restaurant off the main road in a small village down in a green valley. Families were dining outdoors on tapchans under the shade of a thick canopy of forest trees.  These are like wooden platforms decorated with colourful fabrics where you sit cross-legged or recline on and they have a small central table for the food. Shashliks (metal skewers of meat, like kebabs) were cooking on the grill, the delicious smell of chargrilled lamb, or most likely mutton, taunting our hungry stomachs. A traditional meal of hot noodle soup of meat and vegetables was followed by salad, then the shashliks served with raw onion (not acrid at all), and finally thick juicy slabs of watermelon. Green tea and black tea as well as the patterned flatbread, nan bread, are customary with meals. So much food, and yet Marat told us this is what is traditionally eaten every day. Hot soup on a hot summer’s day – that takes some getting used to.  It was all very delicious, hearty food. 

Leaving the Samarkand area we travelled along flat verdant farmlands of cotton, wheat, tobacco and fruit trees, past many small villages, often of mudbrick, and through territorial checkpoints, stalls of piled up watermelons and women in their multicoloured dressses selling nan bread. Donkey carts shared the roads with bicycles, cars and trucks, while goats, sheep and cows grazed in the fields.  Heading north away from Samarkand, the landscape changed suddenly.  Green fields became parched aridness dotted with flat dry grasses, and always the presence of mountain ranges in the distance. 

Max making the trek up Great Alexander's fortress
Nurata is where our vehicle was headed, to see what was left of a fortress built by Alexander the Great.  With an intense sun beating down on us, we were two of only a tiny handful of visitors to make the dry, dusty uphill climb to the fortress ruins.  There wasn’t much left apart from rammed earth mounds and remains of mud brick walls.  Its location in the region, however, was impressive from above as it was at a strategically high point in the landscape.  Flat land stretched for miles around. A pity there was no historical information available, and it was in a badly deteriorated state.  Down below at its base lies an important mosque around a natural spring where fish thrive. It’s quite amazing really, to see water running through channels when outside the small town it's such barren desert land. 

Back on the road our destination was to a yurt campsite, 60 km away from Nurata following sealed road and then bush tracks, sparse of much sign of life, and where we’d organised to go camel riding and spend the night.  The desert camp was in a shallow patch between low sand dunes. These traditional nomadic yurts, similar to Mongolian gers, are round camel hair lined tents.  In the daytime summer heat however, it was too unbearable to stay in its dark interior.  Sitting inside for several minutes my internal thermostat was ready to blow a gasket – it must surely be around a dangerously high claustrophobic 50+ degrees in here. 

The three of us were the only guests at the camp, apart from a couple of staff. The last of the tour buses had left for the season the day before. The female cook ran a kitchen out of a converted railway carriage powered by truck batteries, preparing us an amazing array of cold salad dishes. Bathroom facilities were rudimentary – a hand basin mounted on a metal frame with water hose from a water tank attached (great campsite views in the morning), a pit toilet (lovely under the stars), and an outdoor shower cubicle with cold water (refreshing). What more could we want.
Our room for the night
As dusk fell and the temperature began dropping it was time to mount the ships of the desert for a ride around the dunes.  My beast of burden didn’t look so healthy, in fact it looked downright scrawny with its flaccid humps drooping sideways on its back and pooping diarrhoea for most of the journey.  Max’s camel looked a little healthier.  The ride was disappointingly short.  After trekking for hours through the edge of the Sahara by camel in Morocco to reach our Bedouin campsite, I was expecting a similar experience.  Back at the ranch, Max whiled away the time playing backgammon with Marat while I read and wrote. 
Inventive bathroom facilities
Trying to look cool on top of 2 limp humps
and a loose bowel!

The evening’s entertainment arrived after dinner – a Kazakh man playing a traditional 3-stringed guitar and singing old Uzbek ballads around a campfire.  The tunes all sounded the same, we joked, until he learnt we were from Australia and then began inventing verses about kangaroos in his songs. However, the best entertainment was the surprise appearance of little nocturnal prickly-backed animals that waddled out from under the railway carriage kitchen hunting for food scraps.  They looked really cute, similar to hedgehogs, but with big pointed ears and pointy faces and obviously used to human contact as I was able to get very close to them. We weren’t able to find out their name – if anyone does, please let me know.

Remains of caravanserai on the Silk Route highway
Back on the main road the next day were the ruins of an 11th century caravanserai, an inn for merchants and their camel caravans.  Or, as Uzbeks will tell you, “business class hotels”. The sheer scale of it was mindboggling.

In fact, anywhere on the these roads we are never far away from remnants of the silk trading route – an ancient covered well to water the animals, an old mosque – and so on.  We now head for the next jewel in the crown of the three ancient cities - Bukhara.




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