Bananas Don't Travel Well

Welcome to UzbekistanThe border station at Hojeli, Uzbekistan had the ambiance of an abandoned gas station. There were several small concrete buildings with no glass in the windows, and a tall signpost that at one time would have been lit in bright neon welcoming visitors to Uzbekistan. It was lunch time, so we had to wait for someone other than the two guard boys to process our passports. The first boy, in boxer-shorts and a tank top was having a hell of a time playing computer mahjong. The second was very serious: in full combat fatigues, complete with AK-74 and body armour, he wouldn't smile and followed us as we noodled around and waited. It was hard to take him too seriously because there was a tatty cocker spaniel constantly at his heel. After about 20 minutes another guard came back from lunch. He wrote our visa and passport details in triplicate into ledgers destined to never be read and sent us on our way. This was it. We were in Uzbekistan, home of the great silk road cities: Khiva, Bukhara and Samarkand.

The taxi ride from the border to the city of Nukus was overpriced. This made the driver very happy, he was still smiling 30km later when we got out of the taxi in front of the Savisky Karakalpakstan Museum of Art in the city center. The city of Nukus is known for two things: a high rate of birth defects due to the toxic dust storms that blow in off the waste that was the Aral Sea, and the Savisky Karakalpakstan Museum of Art. We were here for the museum. The museum's collection of paintings and sculpture were brought here by Savisky and hidden from the Bolsheviks because they didn't conform to Soviet Realism and the artists with their art were banned by Moscow. It's a great story, but I found the paintings dull with the exception of a small gallery full constructivist drawings by Liubov Popova and Antonina Sofronova. My attitude would probably been more accepting had things at the bank had gone better.

The bank was a massive Soviet edifice that sits off to the side of an equally massive street. Standing in its exchange room the teller, surrounded by computers, money and money-counting equipment, refused to exchange our dollars. "We're closed" she said. It was 3:30 in the afternoon. "Why, what time do you close?" I asked, "5:30" she responded. She then ignored us. We asked a couple more times if she would change our money, but she was well practiced at ignoring people, so we gave up and went back to the museum. The curator was quite nice and she let us buy all the Uzbek Som out of the till; this amounted to about $35. The whole currency thing wasn't as big a deal as we thought it would be because in Uzbekistan the US dollar is preferred to the Uzbek Som and one can use them anywhere. The curator was also kind enough to direct us to a guest house that took dollars around the corner from the museum.

After checking in we went for a walk to see the city and find some dinner. The city reminded me of North York, Ontario. Wide empty streets lined with large poplars, behind which squat low-rise apartment buildings lurk. As we headed down to the bazaar we met Bahron, a medical student. Bahron spoke decent English and clearly wanted to practice, so despite him seeming a little strange we chatted. Bahron told us that we were in the land of the Karakalpak, which means 'Black Hat People', but no-one exactly knows what this "black hat" is anymore. At the time I thought this was amusing. But as we traveled through Uzbekistan the extent of the cultural cleansing by the Soviet machine became more apparent: many of the traditions that made the peoples in this region diverse have been lost. Conversation moved the obligatory question: "Do you have any children?" When we answered "no", the budding doctor quickly put his finger right on the reason why. "Do you know the problem impotence?" he asked me. I said that I did. "Viagra, viagra will cure this problem". "Thanks for the advice," I responded, but he kept insisting: "Do you know this problem... do you understand what I'm saying... do you have this problem... Viagra can help you." It was different to be seen as the cause of not having any children, but it was getting a little ridiculous, so I asked: "Do you have this problem?" He answered: "I don't know." Then his mother graciously phoned, and he had to go home.

Khiva

Khiva by nightThe drive to Khiva was in a shared taxi. To us, a new form of transportation. The taxi waits at the bus station and won't leave for its destination until it has four passengers. As we waited for our taxi to fill up a Russian man chatted at us, unconcerned that we spoke no Russian or even responded. Our ride was a Daewoo sedan, it had the build quality of an origami box, and I was surprised that it made it four hours through the Kyzylkum desert without breaking down. This same desert defeated two invading Russian armies much the same way that Russia defeated Napoleon and Hitler, and our Daewoo made it through.

Legend has it that Khiva was founded by Noah's son Shem. The city we came to see was mostly built in the 16th century. After the fall of the Timurid empire the city of Khiva broke away and became the capital of the Khanate of Khorezm. The city did brisk trade in slaves, who were brought to market by marauding Turkmen and Khazak horsemen. This trade greatly enriched the Emirs who ruled with absolute power. In 1863 the Hungarian traveler Arminius Vambery saw eight old men having their eyes gouged out in the square of the Kurkhana Ark under the gaze of the Emir of the day. Today the old city of Khiva is a "living museum". Emptied in the 1970s by the Soviets and completely restored for tourists the city has only 1400 inhabitants living within its walls. These mostly live in the southern part of the city by the graveyard and garbage dump.

As we walked through the north gate we were greeted by children begging for bon-bons and pens. After we declined the little buggers they quickly lost interest in us and went on playing their games. We have found that where tourists are bussed in, the children beg. And in Khiva there are bus loads of tourists. Hundreds of them in platoons defined by the bus they rode in on, huddling in the shade of the monuments as their tours guides drag them through the heat.

crowsThe monuments of Khiva are beautiful and grand, but here more than anywhere we went in Uzbekistan they are only monuments. The medrassas and mosques are no longer used to study and pray, but are now convenient housing for souvenir sellers. The perfectly proportioned courtyard of the Tosh-Khovli Palace with its with majolica tiled walls has souvenir stands in each of its eight alcoves. The slave pits inside Khiva's eastern gate now sell overpriced bottles of water and Snickers bars.

Not to say that it was all bad. We found a nice family-run guest house and, without feeling trapped, we stayed for five days. At dusk, birds from all over the oasis would flock toward the trees north of town. First thousands of crows would lazily fly by in a single flock. Then thousands upon thousands of smaller birds would come in in smaller flocks. The noise was tremendous and would last until the last rays of the sun were gone. Then the bats would come out and fly around the Kalta Minor Minaret.

Bukhara

Another six-hour shared-taxi ride through the Kyzylkum Desert in a Daewoo. With the windows open, it was at least 40 degrees C in the car, and the driver kept falling asleep. With no other traffic on the road, this didn't really bother me; I was too hot to care. Every 100 km or so there would be a police checkpoint; the driver would either pay a little money or, more often, seemed to have an agreement with the cops in place and we would pass through. Uzbekistan is rated the most corrupt country in Central Asia.

God is in the detailsWhat put Bukhara on the map was the execution of Colonel Charles Stoddart and Captain Arthur Conolly: two Great Game players who got caught. Stoddart arrived in Bukhara in 1839 on a mission to reassure Emir Nasrullah Khan that British interests in the region extended no further than the invasion of Afghanistan. Stoddart was promptly thrown by the Emir into the bug-pit (a deep, dark bottle dungeon filled with bugs) for arriving without gifts or a personal letter from Queen Victoria. There he stayed. In 1841 Conolly arrived in Bukhara to try to secure the release of Stoddart. The Emir, suspecting a plot, had Conolly thrown into the bug-pit with him. As these two officers of the crown rotted away, the invading British army retreated from Afghanistan in 1842. This convinced the Emir that Britain was a third-rate power. On June 24, 1842, without fear of reprisal, the Emir ordered the two officers into the city square, where they were forced to dig their own graves, and were then beheaded.

The Emirs of Bukhara only reigned for another 60 years before the Red Army under General Frunze stormed the walls and brutally took the city. Frunze was later quoted as saying, "The harder you hit them, the longer they stay down," to justify the civilian massacre during the attack.

spooky mausoleumOnce known as the City of Plagues, Bukhara is also Central Asia's holiest city, and it hasn't quite had its soul sucked out of it the way Khiva has. The impressive buildings are luxuriously covered with majolica tiles. The Nadir Diverbegi Khanaka has blasphemous images of birds and of God on its golden facade. A great deal of restoration work is going on, though many of the medrassas are still in ruins, with their courtyards filled with garbage and rubble. Like in Khiva, all the restored monuments are filled with souvenir stalls, although some of the mosques and medrassas have areas set aside for worship and study. Once we got away from the large sites and into the back streets and the mud homes of Bukhara we did come across old unrestored medrassas and mosques, filled with playing children and sleeping dogs. These scenes sparked the feeling of being somewhere distant and old. Our favorite was a spooky old mausoleum surrounded by graves stacked one atop another and a stork's nest on its minaret.

Though the city is filled with busloads of tourists, the old city is still lived in and big enough to absorb them. We spent a few days in Bukhara, and could have easily spent a few more, but time was pressing and we had to move on to Tashkent to arrange our visas for the onward journey.