The following is a brief description of a 12 day trip through Uzbekistan. Section 1 is a description of the trip. Section 2 is a few practical notes, in the form of corrections and additions to the Cadogan book 'Central Asia: The Practical Handbook' by Giles Whittel. This is the only practical guide to Central Asia and essential for independent travellers.
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On October 24 1994 my wife and I flew in to Tashkent from Peshawar, Pakistan. We had pre-paid for a hotel room on our first and last night, at the Hotel Uzbekistan. In addition, we had paid US$40 for 'visa support', and supposedly a visa was waiting for us at the airport. In fact, no-one had heard of us at the airport, and the 'visa support' money seemed a complete waste - however the pre-paid hotel seemed essential - the immigration officials checked the hotel 'voucher' carefully. For US$50 each we were given visas for Tashkent, and with a bit of argument I was able to have the other cities that we intended visiting added - the fact that we did not have pre-paid hotels in those cities was a problem that took a bit of discussion to overcome. Then there was customs, where we had to complete a set of forms listing our money, cameras, etc. - these forms were stamped and retained by the customs officials at the airport (though when we were leaving 2 weeks later, the same officials demanded the forms back!)
[It did appear that people who claimed to be in transit, i.e. to Almaty, were given visas on the spot without any pre-arrangement. I don't know how long their visas were for, although if you did this, you would have to find some way of getting other towns in Uzbekistan added to your visa before being able to get there easily.]
Several hours later, we left the airport and paid $5 for a taxi to the hotel (later we found that there is a bus that goes directly from the airport to the downtown, stopping by the Metro and Hotel Uzbekistan - bus number 25. But when you exit the airport and are surrounded by a crowd of taxi drivers, it is impossible to unearth this information!) The Hotel Uzbekistan, which cost us US$150 per night for a double, was about the same quality as a run-down cheap motel off some out-of-the-way highway in the U.S., but not as friendly, or as clean, or as service oriented! It is a good introduction to the remains of the Soviet tourist infrastructure. I try to think of our two nights hotel as a bonus, thrown in for free with our US$200 per person visa fee.
One thing that one can do at the Hotel Uzbekistan, without too much difficulty, is purchase domestic air tickets with credit cards, and the next morning we bought tickets to Urgench (for Khiva). We also changed US$200 into the local currency, the 'som', which proved to be a mistake, as hotels all insisted upon being paid in US$ cash, and prices for meals & transportation in Uzbekistan were so low that we had great difficulty spending all of our som. [Recommendation: change only a token amount of money at the official rate. It is relatively easy to change more money at the black market rate, which at the time was about 30% higher].
We saw a little of Tashkent the next morning, it reminded me of Eastern European cities in the '70's, with relatively few cars, wide streets, crowded trams, and a generally decrepit look compared to the West. It is not dirty, but a little run down looking. The museums were all either closed, or in different locations than indicated in the Cadogan book. There were no restaurants visible, and at first sight, Tashkent was rather unattractive.
In the afternoon we took bus 25 (like the subway, the bus cost 1 som, or about 5 cents at the official rate) to the airport. Foreigners go to a special building, still marked 'Intourist', where you get special treatment: for example, your passport gets the privilege of being inspected a large number of times by a large number of people, all of whom write down the details in their books. What happens to all these books? Where do they go when they are full? And why are there so many different books? There is no why!
Another unfortunate privilege is that you get taken to the plane separately from the masses, after they have all boarded, so that foreigners get the worst seats. Uzbekistan Airways was not so bad - later we read that their maintenance crew is being trained by Lufthansa, although they don't bother with stuff like ensuring that people have their seat belts fastened and so on. The worst thing about the flight was a group of slimy looking Uzbek businessmen, presumably black-marketeers, fat and over-flowing with gold jewelry; some of them refused to let us sit near them!
We landed in Urgench, and had our passports checked by a policeman as we got off the airplane. It did appear to be essential that one's visa listed all the towns that one wanted to go to - I don't know what would have happened if we did not have one of our destinations listen, but our passports were certainly checked frequently.
The sun was setting, so we negotiated for a taxi to the train station and then to Khiva, 200 som for a 30 km ride. I wanted to find out what time the trains left for Bokhara, and went in to the trains station to ask, only to find that getting such information is extremely difficult. There was only one service window open, and (as in all the bus stations & train stations) the window was simply an opening about 3 inches by 6 inches, about 4 feet off the ground, though which one shouted one's request, fed through the money, and received one's ticket. And this little window was surrounded by a dozen frantic locals, all pushing and shoving and trying desperately to get their mouths close enough to this little slot to shout in their ticket order. My naive idea had been to go up to the information window, present my paper with 'What time are the trains to Bokhara please?' written in Russian, and give them a pen to write down the reply, but it was clear that I would never be able to even approach that window without my piece of paper (and all my clothing) being torn to shreds. So we went on to Khiva.
It turned out to be fortuitous that we had taken the taxi, for the driver knew of the new 'private' guest house in Khiva, the Hotel Orkanchi, which was not mentioned in the Cadogan Guide. [There is one other place to stay in Khiva, the hotel in the Madrasa, it looked great but we talked to someone who stayed there and reported the following disadvantages: there had been no running water for a long time, it was US$15 per person without meals, and there were no restaurants that sold food anywhere to be found. The only restaurants in the area had food only for the restaurant staff! The guest house was quite nice, and we spent 4 nights there. One slept on the floor, and the outhouses were inconvenient to get to at night, but the food was good. It cost US$10 per person including meals].
The next couple of days were spent wandering about Khiva. Since Uzbek independence, people have been moving back into the old town, and Khiva is no longer the deserted 'museum city' of a few years ago. There are almost no commercial establishments, and few people about, so it is very quiet, yet clearly all the old houses are now inhabited again. I found it pleasant, except for the aggressive begging children, who were more persistent here than almost anywhere else in the world. At one point I had stones thrown at me by kids to whom I had refused to give pens or chewing gum; this really turned me off Khiva. We had met some travellers in China who told us to make sure that we had pens to give to the children in Uzbekistan, as 'they love them', and now we saw what happened once these kids started to expect such gifts. Khiva was beautiful, but the stone throwing incident turned my visit sour.
On the third day we rented a taxi with another traveller to go to the ruins at Kunya Urgench, a few hours drive away, and in Turkmenistan. We did not have visas for Turkmenistan, which caused a bit of a problem! Very briefly, we had agreed to pay a big premium to the taxi driver to cover the bribes for the border guards and Turkmen police, then the Uzbek policemen who came to the guest house regularly to check visitor's visas heard that we were intending on entering Turkmenistan, and called our taxi driver and told him not to take us. We suspect that he was upset at not being informed & getting his share of the bribes! Our taxi driver told us to get ready to depart an hour early, so we could slip through the border before the local policeman found out that we were still going, and phoned the border - and as it turned out, the border guards were still asleep when we crossed. Our car was stopped at least 4 times by Turkmen police during our day trip, each of whom were paid off by the driver. The Cadogan guide gives the impression that land crossings without visas are easy, but in general throughout our trip we found that this was not the case, that whether travelling by air, bus, or car, one's passport and visa was checked frequently. Anyway, we saw Kunya Urgench, where one of the sites (the dome of the 14th century mausoleum of Turabeg Khanym) was spectacular, but the rest of the sites were overshadowed by the drama of our journey!
The next day we used the same taxi and went to the 3rd century ruins of Tokrap-kala, on the north side of the Oxus, the site was supposed to be an hour from Khiva but the river level was too low to use the intended bridge; it ended up being a 3 hour drive and thus we had to miss some of the other, further, sites that were supposed to be part of this day trip. Toprap-kala was an interesting site if (and only if) you are a fan of old ruined cities - if you do wish to visit it, photocopy some information from a book on archaeology in the USSR or Central Asia that discusses the site, as without a plan or any description you will not be able to appreciate the site.
We returned to Urgench, and caught the 3:00pm bus to Bokhara, which left at 3:05pm. [In general the buses in Uzbekistan leave on time, and are quite comfortable if you have a reserved seat, though 'standing room' gets very crowded: it is a 'one seat, one person' system. They also travel very slowly, averaging about 50 kph.] We arrived in Bokhara at 9:30 p.m. and started an evening of extreme frustration trying to find a hotel with hot water - we went first to a private guest house called Sasha's that had been recommended to us - we telephoned and asked them to explain to a taxi driver how to take us to their guest house, which they did - but when we arrived they told us that they were full! Nor were they very friendly. I have the feeling that Sasha's is an excellent place if you are connected with an embassy, or recommended to them, but they do not seem backpacker-friendly! We went on to examine two of the three real hotels in Bokhara, typical ex-Soviet hotels: huge, decrepit, dirty, run-down, and expensive (US$30 double) for what one got. And of course, no hot water. Finally we went to the Intourist hotel where US$60 gets hot water! [Note: this is the hotel that the Cadogan Guide states has an AT&T credit card phone, from which one can easily make international calls - there are now 2 such phones, neither of them works. When you ask the hotel staff whether they work or not, they stare at you as though you asked an absurd question!]
The next morning we remembered that we had also heard of another guest house in Bokhara, Mubenjon, and we moved over there. It was an excellent place, with a friendly owner (Mubenjon) who speaks about 5 words of English but is very fluent with sign and body language and quite easy to communicate with! I highly recommend this guest house. US$10 per person plus US$2.50 per person for meals. |
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