Ballbags On The Road (Edition II) – Part VII: The Deserts

Check out Part VI here

22 August 2019 – we’re travelling to Samarkand, baby! Luckily, we managed to go from 300 € to around 50 € for a car ride. Well, almost the entire ride.

The hotel receptionist thought that we were rich boys and that our butts had only ever touched the golden toilet seat but I’m glad that he later on realised that wasn’t the case, which is why he told us to check out on the nearest bus stations for taxi drivers.

We were lucky enough to see our driver actually show up to take us all the way to Uzbekistan. As the tradition goes – we had a good and fun chat with the driver as we were cruising on his fine Mercedes towards the border. We stopped for a quick break to catch some food and neared the border some hours later.

To no one’s surprise – the border was packed with cars. It seemed like we’d be queuing there for a very long time. We were told that we may have stayed in the queue for up to 5 hours!

The driver almost immediately proposed that we go on our own past the border and catch a bus to take us to Samarkand once we were on the other end. He did say, however, that if we had decided to stay with him and wait, he’d still honour our initial agreement to take us to the town. He did, however, seem quite keen on getting the hell out of there and doing better things without us. It did make sense for both of us to part our ways, so we proceeded to cross the border without the fine, black Mercedes and his trusted owner.

Considering that Tajikistan bordered Afghanistan, it only explained why the queues at the border were so long.

Before we had gone to the border to take part in the “find 10 differences between the passport photo and this man” game, our driver gave us a solid and found a bus on the other side of the border that would take us deeper into the fine country of Uzbekistan.

The police and border guard did have a good laugh at my passport photo from 2012. Wouldn’t blame him at all as I totally looked like an emo kid back then. After receiving a friendly dose of irrelevant fashion criticism, Mike and I headed to get onto the bus. We only had to pay around 4 dollars or so to get to Samarkand. Probably the magic words uttered by our Mercedes driver to the bus driver warranted us a 50% off! Lucky us. I frankly wouldn’t know how much it would have cost us otherwise.

As we were travelling to Samarkand on a marshrutka-like bus, we weren’t particularly amused by the sights. The country, in comparison to Tajikistan, looked flat and sort of barren – almost like a desert.

Once we’d arrived in Samarkand, we checked in at an Airbnb, left our belongings and walked around the town. I must say that I really liked the architecture!

Next day, we needed some cash money, as we were planning to travel to Bukhara, one of the ancient cities, which used to be famous for its Silk Road trade route between the East and the West, and then to Khiva. We also needed the cash anyway, as the country wasn’t particularly card-friendly.

If I were you, I’d bring a suitcase to carry money around because this sandwich is equivalent to around 50 €.

For some reason, it didn’t give us larger banknotes.

I’d also recommend carrying around a Visa card as it appeared to be most popular when it came to paying with and withdrawing money from.

On 24 August, we got some food and got onto the train and travelled to Urgench, and the next day we travelled to Khiva. What a lovely town it was! Frankly, I didn’t take a whole lot of photos during our time there but I do have this one:

We also paid around 10 bucks to get a “tourist pass”, which allowed us to visit all the museums in the town. Personally, not a huge fan of museums but there wasn’t much else to do in the town.

Three days later, we arrived in Tashkent. And you know what time it was!

Time for the OG plov! Mike and I were over the moon. We travelled about 5 km from our hostel to a ginormous cafeteria that served, mainly, plov. It wasn’t that expensive though – I believe it was around 3 € per person. 

How was it?

I guess I was expecting way too much from this. It felt to me like I was going to be served a food of gods only to be reminded that I was but a peasant. Something to do with spices and lack of salt, by the way…

After a somewhat disappointing meal, we headed back to our place to catch a break and then head on out for a city tour in the evening.

A few days before we were meant to take off back to Almaty, Kazakhstan, we dropped by the train station to sort ourselves some tickets. Fortunately, the queue wasn’t bad and we were blessed to have been spoken to by the lady, standing next to the cashier booth. She told us that we would be OK buying economy class tickets for a long night ride, as we were unsure whether we should pay extra for a second class. She added that the seats could be easily reclined and that we’d get plenty of rest on our long journey to Almaty. Having given her our sincere appreciation for the advice, we went ahead and got the tickets, looking forward to our ride. Spoiler alert:

That was the longest and one of the most uncomfortable train rides I had had the displeasure to experience in quite a while.

The seats couldn’t be reclined for shit so Mike and I ended up sleeping on a table. To our sheer luck, we were also seated close to the train’s doors so we were woken up every few hours at night, when the train stopped and let the cold air in at night.

So, what did we learn from this? Don’t take economy class tickets for long train rides. And maybe don’t always take the advice from elderly ladies. Who knows – maybe seats were reclinable in the Uzbek trains 20 years ago! They were certainly not in 2019.

Even though we did ask to get upgraded, the upgrade was nearly the price of the economy class ticket we had bought. If memory serves me right, it would have been much cheaper to get the 2nd class ticket at the train station. We swallowed our pride in the end, and decided not to go for an upgrade.

The next day, on 30 August, tired, battered and our stomachs full of instant ramen we ate the day before, we arrived in Almaty. Finally.

So, what did I think of Uzbekistan? Well, we visited a few cities: Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva and Tashkent and many years after the trip, I could only still recall visiting Khiva. Rest of the places didn’t particularly stick in my head as I didn’t find anything special or interesting in them. Khiva, on the other hand, was this well-preserved, ancient gem that was full of history. I really liked it.

The food, however, was a bit of disappointment. It didn’t feel like anything new to me and having tried various dishes over the course of a week or so, I still couldn’t tell which one I liked the most (if at all). Here’s a perfect .gif that would sum up my thoughts on that trip.

I wouldn’t mind going to Uzbekistan again, maybe accompanied by a local or friend, in hopes of changing my mind on the country. Otherwise, it would remain as an image of many deserts with a few gems scattered around the country, in my mind.

Oh, and here are a few cool phrases that a local taught me in Uzbek:

Nich pul – how much?

Nыmchack kmat – why so expensive?

Hope they come in useful to you on the trip. And see you in Kazakhstan!

To continue to Part VIII click here.