Transoxania (Uzbekistan)

[JenGrace]

Wow I've loved reading this and looking at your pictures! I especially like the photos of the locals. Keep 'em coming!

[Justiceiro]

Nukus

How to get around in the sticks

U-Stan has an excellent train corrider from Bukhara, through Samarkand, up to Tashkent. They even have two high speed trains; the Registan and the Sharq. But outside that, you are pretty much on your own.



There are two ways to get out of or into the Khorezm or Karakalpakstan Region. You can take the overnight Train on Fridays or Sundays, you can take a bus, or you can take a Mashrutka. Lonely Planet insists on calling these Mashrutnoye- but that word is never used. Basically its a van stuffed full of people. Sort of like a Turkish Dolmus. Using a seat belt is considered insulting to the driver, so most vehicle simply lack them. People also drive like maniacs. You'll just have to get used to it.

We went back to the Urgench Bazaar to catch a Mashrutka to Nukus, about two hours away.

Here's how it works- you go the the Mashrutka lot (it's unmistakable- look for about 100 vans in the same place). Yell "Nukus" or "Tashkent" or "Bukhara." Either you are in the wrong place, whereupon they will direct you to the Mashrutka stand that handles that destination (there are usually a few stand per city). If you are in the right place, a crowd of people will descend on you attempting to fill their Mashrutka. It's a buyers market, but the prices are pretty standardized. Never pay more than $15 for the longest ride (Urgench to Bukhara). a 2 hour should run you $5; a 5 hour about $8.


Urgench Mashrutka Stand

You can also take buses, but these are less frequent and usually not as comfortable.

We got a ford Van with about 12 people for the two hour ride to Nukus. During the trip we passed miles of Uzbekistans famous cotton fields. Back in the 1950s the leadership of the USSR decided to make the Kara Kyzyl and Kara Kum deserts giant cotton fields, to "make the deserts bloom." They diverted the Amu Darya from its course to the Aral Sea into thousands of canals.

This project was designed to turn this:



Into This:


Cotton is King

This had the unintended, but entirely forseeable result of causing the Aral sea to shrink, as cotton needs an enormous amount of water to graw, making the desert a less than ideal lcoation for it. The cotton monoculture began to throttle the UZbek economy as long ago as the late 1970s.


the Aral Sea in 1964


The Aral Sea in 2003

The Sea has lost 80% of its volume, and 60% of its its Area, as well as splitting into the North Aral and South Aral sea. Within 15 years, the South Aral will be gone, forever. A saline rain falls across the region, leaving salt in its wake, as well as pesticide residues.

This has destroyed the ecology of the region, and devestaded its people and cities. It has the highest levels of TB and birth defects in the former CIS. Additionally, the former island where the soviets conducted biowarfare experiments in the 1960s is now connected to the mainland, allwoing free passage of animals and microbes.


Nukus looks like a ghost town that hasn't quite been abandoned. The city now survives on subsidies from Tashkent.


abandoned apartment block


Nukus City Park


public school


City Park Ferris Wheel

We got a room at the better of the two hotels in town the "Hotel Nukus." It was awful the worst in the country we thought at the time (we were wrong). for $20 bucks we got 4 russian TV stations, hard as rock beds, a usable but unpleasant bathroom, and breakfast. Or so we were told. When we woke up the next morning we discovered that the cafe was being rebuilt. The same guy that told us that was the guy that told us that breakfast was at 8 AM the night previously. Soviet attitude lives. Still, at least we had heat.

Avante-Garde Art in the Desert

One very cool thing that Nukus has, that in fact makes it worth the whole trip, is the Igor Savitsky museum. During the 20s, the Soviet Union had some outstandign avante-garde art happening. Some of the best paintings of the 20th century were made in this time and place. But then Stalin had to come along in the 1930's and ruin everything, as he always did; declaring "Socialist Realism" as the only legitimate art, and sending the Avante-Gardistas to the gulag, or executing them.


the Savitsky Museum

Igor Savitsky was an ethnographer studying the Karakalpak people out in the middle of nowhere, who loved Avante-Garde art. Over the Stalin years he collected 85,000 pieces, and essentially got away with it because Nukus is too far away for Moscow to notice.

I walked through this building, stopping at every third painting to ooh and ahh, it was fantastic (and I usually hate art museums). Check out their website here. The Director of the museum. Marina Bobonazarova, speaks excellent English, and may be able to help you with transport and home stays. We met with her to arrange a Taxi to Muynaq. The phone of the travel agent she usually calls was disconnected for non-payment; and she told us that Muynaq has only three ships left. The rest were sold for scrap. "No Money for preservation." She lamented. The best place to see ships is in Aralsk in Kazakhstan.

If you are in Nukus, stop by or give her a call. (998-61)222-25-56 is the number.

We inquired as to where we could get breakfast and she told us that, after the Soviet Union collapsed , there were no more food shops, so we would have to go to the Bazaar.

We ended up eating at the Cafe Aral, near the Mashrutka Stand. It's two blocks south, in a powder blue building.

So we waved goodbye, and found another Taxi back to Urgench. On the way back we saw sheep, and a 3,000 year old structure the Zoroastrians used to use to expose their dead to the elements. Awesome.



Tomorrow, Bukhara!

[DoctorIt]

Wow.

Thinking about the Aral region always makes me sad.

[Justiceiro]

Originally Posted by DoctorIt

Wow.

Thinking about the Aral region always makes me sad.

Never underestimate the human capacity for folly.

every time I consider possible ecological problems in the US, I think that surely someone will do something before its too late. Yet here, salt literally crusts the ground, and they are still growing cotton.

Blind, willful, absolute folly.

Still, they are so poor, what's the alternative? Disrupt the economy even more than the break-up of the Union did?

[coldclimb]

Wow, what an awesome thread! Love the pictures and the detailed descriptions and explanations! Great stuff!

[photocat]

Why O why have I never been there? Beautiful and darn interesting...
More pleeeze

[Awais Yaqub]

wow a lot to see there
great photos thanks for explaining them !

[ChrisJ]

Great stuff, really enjoying this thread.

I particularly like the overhead shots of the Aral Sea. Nice trip to the space station?

Seriously, great stuff here. It's a part of the world I may never get to visit...

[Justiceiro]

Originally Posted by ChrisJ

I particularly like the overhead shots of the Aral Sea. Nice trip to the space station?

Authorization for the space station was the easy part. The tough bit was building the time machine so I could get a picture before I was born, in the 60s!

[Justiceiro]

Bukhara

The first task was to get from Khiva to Bukhara. This has to be done from Urgench. If you have time, you can spend a great deal of a day driving out to some desert sites like abandoned fortresses and 2,000 year old ghost towns, but 14 days isn't enough (someone please find me a job with European amounts of vacation!). We had originally considered spending the night at a Yurt encampment in the Kyzyl Kum desert (a real name, not a Snoop Dogg creation)- this can usually be arranged from Bukhara or Khiva, along with transport to the site via camel, but in the winter the Nomads had apparently packed up and moved to a warmer location.


One last glance at Misha the Camel


I think we were about one month off of the best time to visit. Summer in the Kara and Kyzyl Kum can reach 50 degrees celsius, so its best to come in Spring or early Fall.

We'd done a plane, we'd done a Taxi, so we decided to try our hand at a bus.

People in Uzbekistan are pathologically honest and friendly- but this does not apply, to categories of people that seem to be villains everywhere; Frontier Guards, Taxi Drivers (except in NYC), and so on. When you arrive in Urgench, Taxi drivers will offer to take you to Bukhara for $50, and tell you that there are no buses. This is not the case. A bus ticket costs around $7, and there are multiple buses. A taxi ride to Bukhara shouldn't cost more than $16 anyway.

The bus, however, is long and less than entirely comfortable. They also have no bathrooms, so ladies be forewarned.

the route travels south, along the Amu Darya for a while, near the border of Turmenistan.


the bridge on the Amu Darya- be very careful shootin bridges, the cops get nervous.

The bus was full of some interesting individuals, but I don't have any shots, unfortunately. At this point, I was still getting the feel of when it is appropriate to shoot someone or not, and I very much want to avoid beng an asinine tourist (I'm sure you have all experienced the same issues).

There was a woman who looked just like Teresa Salgueiro from Madredeus (man, those Portuguese left monuments everywhere, if you know what I mean.) There was also a dude that was a dead ringer for Crispin Glover. In fact, he may have been Crispin Glover, I wouldn't put it past him.

Before starting a journey, a traditional Muslim practice is to ask for God's blessing and safe protection. This is done by placing your hands together, palms up (as if you were attempting to catch a pool of water from a faucet), then running them over your face, as if splashing imaginary water on yourself. I saw this done before train journeys, meals, and among friends before departing. Right before we left, the man in the seat opposite me was teaching his baby son to do this, and guiding his hands through the appropriate motions. I wish I had snapped it, then again, I am glad I did not. The most remarkeable images are the ones that aren't captured.


About 4 hours into the journey, the men of the bus staged a sort of "pee mutiny", and when the bus stopped for a document check, they all (30 or so of them) fled the vehicle and relieved themselves in a field. I joined them. My wife did not (I don't know how those ladies managed!).



I'm getting a little bit talky, eh? How about some photos?




After 9 hours, we arrived in the dead of night at Bukhara, found the hotel that we had planned to stay in all locked up (we never made reservations anywhere) and went down the street to the Grand Nodirbek Hotel. $20 a night (breakfast included)- a real steal. This was one of the best places we stayed in All Uzbekistan. Friendly and helpful staff, cheap rates, and well placed about 20 feet from the Lyub-i-Hauz, the center of Bukhara.

The outside, like all buildings in Bukhara, is rather non-descript. But inside your rooms open up onto a lovely and peaceful courtyard.


Grand Nodirbek Hotel Courtyard

We were the only foriegners staying there.


Half-Awake Portuguese Lady


The desk attendants speak English of varying degrees, the most able being the young Student Fahreddin. Fahreddin is witty, intelligent, studies English at the unviersity, and is looking for a nice girl.


Hey Ladies!

Fahreddin will take care of all your needs. IF you need to get a guide, find out information about some aspect of the town, find the old synagogue, or talk about how much he loves Santa Claus (odd, for a muslim) talk to Fahreddin.



There are a great deal of pools and canals all throughout Bukhara. This led the russians to describe it, not as the "Venice of the East" (how many venice's are there, after all?) but as "mightily afflicted by pestilence, and plague." The 700 or so pools, once used for drinking, washing, sewage, and disposal of offal and deceased family pets, were mainly filled in by the Soviets, but the ones tha remain have been cleaned up and are now pleasant and fresh, and home only to Ducks. Each Mahalla (residential district, also community association) had its own Hauz which all the houses faced onto. The Lyub-i-hauz is surrounded by Medressahs and Mosques, as well as Chaikhanas, tea houses where one sits outdoors on a giant "bed-like" structure.


The Lyub-i-Hauz at dawn


the Nodirbek Khanaka (monestary) on the west side of the pond

On the opposite side of the pool from the Khanaka is a Madrassah, also built by Nodirbek (or Nadir Beg), the vizier of the Emir of Bukhara at the time (1622). It was originally intended to be a Caravanserai, or sort of Hostel for travelling merchants, wich would have generated a nice bit of income for the vizier. But one day the Sultan paid a suprise visit as the building was near completion, and remarked "Nadir Beg, what a wonderful demonstration of charity and piety, I am so glad that you hv build a Madrassah for the edification of the people of Bukhara." Chagrined, but unable to gainsay the Emir's word, the vizier was forced to operate it as a religious school, at a substantial cost to himself.

A small amount of revenge was obtained by him, when he made the fresco for the front of the Madrassah, it contained a very turkic (indeed, almost pagan), but not very islamic, depiction of a Sun God like figure.



today the madrassah hosts a number of craft shops.


Old men playing backgammon. Hey, nice hat!

For those of you who would like to have your picture taken astride a camel, but were put off in Khiva by Misha's unfortunate condition, you can climb atop one of the cheesy statues of camels that adorn the Hauz.


The auther fulfills his life long ambition to ride a camel while wearing a sheepskin hat.

the hatmakers bazaar, wherein the author purchased the aforementioned hat

Bazaars of Bukhara

One note about Bazaars, all over Uzbekistan. The main reason we had chosen U-stan as a destination was because of its placement on the Silk Road, and the former fame of the market in Samarkand. Honestly, Samrkand is a sort of magical word, for me at least, and I had always wanted to see it.

But the bazaars of yesterday no longer exist. This is not to say that they do not have bazaars, they do. And they are, to the first time experiencer of a bazaar, quite impressive- a cacophany of sights, sounds, smells, etc.


Fruit at the farmers Bazaar in Bukhara

Farmers still bring in all manner of produce from the countryside, and neighboring countries.




Cotton for sale



Melons trucked in from the Fergana valley


Textiles are a riot of color


Herbal Tea


A guy teaching a cat to walk on its hind legs

The Bazaar in Bukhara wasn't too bad (the Bazaar in Samarkand actually sucked). But the Bazaars of Uzbekistan do not hold a candle to the Souqs of Marrakesh, or the covered bazaar of Istanbul. If you are expecting these, you will be dissapointed.

But there are plenty of other reasons to visit. The bazaar is a "real" bazaar in that it is where the locals shop, and there are very few tourists about. There are almsot no visitors at all, and scams are refreshingly rare, and the people genuinely friendly. It's not Turkey- then again, it's not Turkey, so there you are.

More later on this evening!