Traveller's Tales: Uzbekistan

By Anne Rothwell

 

We stood in a line along the hilltop, cameras poised, waiting for the sun to set  -  like a row of jagged teeth in a giant’s mouth.  This was the best time of day, not only for photography, but for relief from the wearing heat of the day.  A large dragonfly flew by  -  an unexpected sight in this dry area.

Mission accomplished, we slithered down the sandy slope to our yurts below  -  home for tonight.  Entering through the carved wooden doors, looking incongruous set into the camel hair walls, the four of us flopped onto our mattresses and gazed round in the dim light at the wooden skeleton of the structure.

After a meal in the dining yurt, we went outside to find a large campfire surrounded by a circle of chairs.  In one, a local musician began to sing and play his stringed instrument.  This was an experience I’d never forget, but even so, exhausted, I went into the yurt, crawled into my sleeping bag and listened from there.

During the night, I had to get up twice and make my way to the toilets some distance away.  Grabbing  my torch and checking my shoes for scorpions or other unwelcome creatures, I made my way across, being careful not to step on the large shiny black beetles which were everywhere.  On the way back, looking up, what a glorious sight!  My little patch of earth seemed to be completely enveloped by the soft black night and a myriad of brilliant stars and constellations  -  not twinkling, but shining proudly forth.  No light, no sound, just nature in all her pristine glory.

he next morning, after a good Uzbek breakfast of bread, cheese, meat, boiled eggs, fruit and green tea, we set off with camels to walk to Aidarkul Lake 7 or 8 kilometers away.  Our group of 14 only had half that number of camels, so we walked halfway and rode halfway.  These were the 2-humped Bactrian camels, so very comfortable to sit on between the humps.  We loped along in the heat, my camel stopping at every thorny bush to snatch a mouthful, which he then crunched noisily, like me with a bag of crisps.

Then the lake came into view, a beautiful deep blue, mirroring the cloudless sky.  The water was clear and clean, not as warm as I’d expected as it wasn’t very deep, but cool and refreshing.  When we came out, invigorated, our ever resourceful guide, Dilshod, had a picnic lunch ready for us on a large table by the shore.  This was not a sandwich, crisps, kitkat kind of picnic, but a banquet of (safe) salads, rice, meat, vegetables, bread, nuts, raisins and more, accompanied by bottled water, sodas, beer or green tea.

The bus had arrived down a rough track to pick us up  -  so this is where the picnic had come from.  We walked to the bus, desert marmots scuttering out of our way, and set off for Samarkand and more lovely people and fabulous turquoise mosaic-faced buildings of the fabled Silk Road.

 

First published in VISA 117 (October 2014)

 

Heart of Central Asia

by David Whiting


Dawn. We are arriving at our hotel, the Ak-Keme (meaning 'white boat') in Bishkek, capital of Kyrgyzstan. There are wonderful views from our room towards the snow-capped Tien Shan Mountains. We leave our hotel at 10 am and drive through the city towards the east. In Soviet times the city was named Frunze after a Russian Civil War hero. On independence the capital was renamed Bishkek, which means a wooden plunger in a butter churn. Soviet buildings predominate in the city, which was founded by the Russians after they took the old fort in 1862. There are broad boulevards on a grid system, lined with beautiful trees.

Bishkek

The people are very poor. Housing is shabby with tin roofs. Stalls along the roads are stocked with water, drinks, fruit etc. Local buses are minibuses which pick up on demand; this does not stop many people who try to stop us for a lift. There are ten of us on this tour and we are using an old German or Swiss 40-seater coach which has travelled about 750,000km. Petrol costs less than $1/50p per litre. A factory salary is about $300 per month in the capital. There are very few road signs; it is a mystery how drivers find their way around.

Our route passes huge fields of wheat and vegetables. There are many flocks of sheep and goats and herds of cattle, often crossing the road, even in the towns. We turn south for our first visit, to Burana Tower, originally a 49m high minaret built in the 11th century as a landmark for silk traders. It was damaged in a 15th century earthquake and was restored by the Russians in the 1970s; it is now 24m tall. Nearby are the remains of several mausoleums and a small museum of local finds and carved 6th-10th century stones which marked the Silk Route.

Lunch is in a nearby village, in the home of the local head teacher. They seem to live in relative luxury, eating cross-legged on thick carpets round a low table. We have a huge meal of many local dishes. The first course is a choice of salads, followed by soup, then a main meat dish, then fruit and finally black (or green) tea. Most meals were to follow this example. Then we are introduced to a typical Kyrgyz toilet: outside, in the garden, a wood-and-tin hut over a stinking hole in the ground, surrounded by flies and no paper.

After lunch we travel east along a broad plain with snow-capped mountains on either side. The plain becomes narrower and narrower until the road climbs into the hills. The scenery is spectacular, changing but always magnificent with various shapes and colours. For some time the land is basically desert. We often see 'cowboys' - nomads on horses, so we could be forgiven for thinking we are in the Wild West.


A little further on, we reach Lake Issyk-Kul, which is huge, 170km by 70km. In the hills overlooking the lake we visit petroglyphs, rock carvings, in a 42 acre field of millions of boulders brought down by Ice Age glaciers. The carvings are of deer, ibex, wolves, hunters etc, and some date back 2800 years. An ancient civilisation lived in this region and came here to pray. They were hunters and carved the images. They moved some boulders to make sacrificial sites.

There are numerous Soviet resorts on the banks of the lake. We drive around the lake to our 'hotel' at Cholpon-Ata, the Soviet-built Sanatorium Aurora. It stands in an enormous park on the shore of the lake and even has its own beach. It is not a proper hotel. The staff do not speak English, it is not clean and the bedroom is smaller than the bathroom, where there is a leak. There is a power cut at 7pm just before dinner. Dinner consists of two very small courses (three the following evening) and all courses are served at the same time! It is dark at 8.30pm and we have to go to bed. A little later our guide comes to the room to tell us the sheets on the bed are shorter than the mattress and room service wants to make the beds. As it is pitch dark and not a suitable time we send them away. Power seems to be restored some time after midnight.

We wake to the sounds of many birds singing in the trees outside our room. Before breakfast we walk to the beach. The water is cool, although the lake's name means 'warm lake' as it never freezes. Breakfast is not buffet style; three courses are all served together, scrambled egg, mashed potatoes with fish, and semolina. We leave the hotel for our excursion, but the guide forgot our packed lunch so we are back in ten minutes.


We drive east along the lake. There are mountains just to the left of us and beyond them the Kazakhstan border. In this area horses and carts, or simply horses, are a more common form of transport. The road bends south to Karakol, a town of 17000 inhabitants. We stop for money-changing. In a park beside the coach is the statue of Tarai Bii, a 6th century Kyrgyz warrior. We continue through the town, then our bus is almost the only vehicle on the road as we approach the spectacular rock formations of the Djety-Ôgüz Canyon. At the entrance is a huge split heart-shaped rock. One legend says that a man was married to a beautiful woman; another man fell in love with her and abducted her; both men fought and died so the rock is her broken heart.

After a picnic lunch and a brief return to Karakol, we go back to Lake Issyk-Kul for a one-hour boat ride on the lake. We travel to see a ten-year-old complex beside the shore at Tashkul-Ata, called Ruch Ordo. It includes a museum, a Russian church, a Jewish synagogue, a mosque and a theatre.

Next day, we leave the lake heading west back to Bishkek in time for lunch, then pass through the city heading south for one hour to the Ala-Archa Canyon, created a national park in 1976. The road ends and we climb a path through the canyon. The park contains several 'sacred trees' when in olden times people tied ribbons to the trees and prayed for good fortune. Nowadays ribbons are torn handkerchiefs and strips of plastic. It's no wonder there is little fortune in the country!


After an hour walking in the canyon, at an altitude of about 2200m, we return to our Bishkek hotel, the Ak-Keme, to freshen up, before the late afternoon city tour. There are no pre-Soviet buildings in Bishkek. We head first for the TsUM department store before it closes: it is almost the only place we can find postcards, although our hotel sells them at an exorbitant price, nearly £1/$2 each. The store is close to Victory Square with a monument commemorating the 40th anniversary of the end of World War II over an eternal flame. We walk through a square with the statue of a revolutionary figure, to a statue of another woman, Kurmandjkat Djamka; she was born in the 1820s and died in 1910. She was married to a man she didn't like and divorced him after three years, then she married a rich man who ruled the province. When he died she ruled the province herself. We walk through a pleasant park behind the statue. It is full of young people, some playing table tennis in the open air, and there are many smaller statues.


We emerge from the park opposite the American University in Central Asia. Beside it is the Parliament Building, also called ‘the White House’. Opposite is the statue of Lenin, behind which is the National Historical Museum. We pass in front of the museum into the central square of Bishkek, Ala-Too Square, formerly called Lenin Square. The Lenin statue (which used to be here) has been replaced with a freedom monument. On the other side of the square are, on the left, the Ministry of Agriculture and, on the right, a Soviet textile factory, which has partly collapsed inside. An independence monument is guarded by two soldiers.


On arrival in Tashkent, we first go to our centrally located hotel, the Tashkent Palace. Before leaving we change some money into Uzbek sums. $1 is worth about 1300 sums, £1 about 2500. No problem there, except that the largest value banknote is 1000 sums, so changing $50 or $100 leaves one with a wad of notes too fat for a wallet! Prices have rocketed this year. In 2007 prices for visitors were quoted in US dollars. This year, the numbers have remained the same but instead of dollars the new values are in Euros so costs are nearly double.


Our city sightseeing starts with a visit to a 10th century mausoleum built for a preacher who converted the country to Islam; it was rebuilt in the 16th century. The complex includes the Barakhon madrassah (Islamic college), built 1532-34, now a monument. There is also a small museum, containing Koran stands, usually made of a single piece of walnut. They take about 15 days to make and ingeniously fold out into three to eight positions. There is the world's oldest Koran, written 645-655, a huge book with massive writing on gazelle skin. A new mosque in the complex was built in six months in 2007; there are two 53m minarets.


We pass another madrassah built 1569-71 by the local khan whose palace stood opposite. During Soviet times it was a storehouse for drinks. Then we stop at the principal square, opposite the Turkestan Concert Hall. There is a large park beside a Russian-built canal. We walk as far as the Square of Memory, 1998-99, added to the memorial to the victims of World War II. Adjacent to this the Russians built a huge square in 1866 in front of their fortress and the governor's palace; in the 1930s Stalin ordered a cathedral to be destroyed; the place was called Lenin Square, now it is Independence Square. The Independence Monument includes a globe. Opposite is the grandly-named Arch of Good Intentions and Hopes, with Greek-style columns. A nearby gold-coloured building is the Ministry of Medicine. Behind the Arch is a house where the grandfather of Tsar Nicholas II lived; it is near our hotel.


We drive through Urgench in the province of Khorezm, where the best rice in Uzbekistan is grown. We are heading for Khiva, already a city in the 6th century BC and capital of Khorezm province in the 16th century. The city of Khiva within the 16th century walls, made of clay and sun-baked bricks (restored in the 1970s), is a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1990 and has a population of 6000, with a further 40000 outside the walls. Our hotel, the Malika-Xorazm, is just outside the north gate.

We enter the grand Ota Darvoza ('Father' or west gate), restored in the 1970s, once the khan's entrance. Just inside is the Amin Khan Madrassah, built 1851-55. It has a massive entrance portal. Next to it the khan ordered the construction of a 70m tall minaret, but he died unexpectedly and the tower was left unfinished; it is called the Kalta Minor Minaret or Short Tower. The colour blue predominates on mosques, mausoleums and madrassahs as in Islam it is the colour of the sky, which is paradise, and of water, which is sacred.

We continue to the central spacious area known as the Registan (meaning 'sandy place' as sand was considered cool and clean). Off the square is a little former prison called Zindon, with old manacles, weapons and pictures of old executions. A favourite form of execution was to throw a man from a minaret; a woman would also be thrown from a minaret but first she would be put into a sack full of hungry cats!


Behind the Zindon is the Kuhna Ark, a 17th century fortress. This complex includes a 19th century Summer Mosque. The majolica tiles were affixed to the walls by nails. They are all different to prevent copying. They all have Arabic numbers to show the order; this method came from Andalucia. We see the throne room, where the khan dispensed justice, and the former mint; silk money was produced here in 1917-24.


On the eight-hour drive to Bukhara, in the middle of the desert we are stunned to encounter a group of people in traditional costumes dancing and playing musical instruments, accompanied by television cameras. Apparently they are waiting to meet and greet some sporting celebrities, but they have attracted a considerable crowd of travellers.


The land gradually becomes fertile and there are more signs of habitation. Approaching Bukhara we can see the huge Kalon Minaret, built in 1127. Bukhara was inhabited by the 6th century BC. It was conquered by the Arabs in the 8th century and became the capital of the first Islamic territory in central Asia. It is the third largest city in Uzbekistan with a population of 240,000. The city has changed little in the last 200 years.


As we start a waking tour of Bukhara, a lady is waving a pot of burning roots amongst us, supposedly to 'protect us from the evil eye', a Zoroastrian tradition. Actually everywhere we are going on this tour is safe, much safer than at home. Even women can go out after dark on their own and not be afraid. We pass the Bolo-Hauz Mosque, the emirs' official place of worship, built in 1718, then cross the road to the Ark Fortress, dating from the 5th century. 80% of it was damaged by a Russian bomb in 1920. Before then, there was a huge bazaar outside the entrance. The massive walls now house numerous museums, one of which contains a 7th century Koran, as well as a 17th century Friday Mosque and the Coronation Hall of the emir. Restoration is in progress.


We continue to the great court, a series of buildings around a square. They include the Kalon Minaret, over 46m tall, built in 1127. It has never needed any major restoration. Its adjacent mosque, rebuilt in the 16th century, was capable of holding 10000 worshippers, the entire population of the city. The nature of the arches gave it perfect acoustics. The numerous architectural designs are exquisite. Opposite is the Mir-I-Arab Madrassah, 1535, which now has 260 students, the only madrassah permitted to operate during Soviet times. We can go no further than the entrance.


In the evening we go out for dinner to the Nadir Divanbegi Madrassah, built as a caravanserai; it became a madrassah in 1622. It is decorated with birds and animals, not normally permitted by Islam. Inside is a massive restaurant, surrounded by more little shops. We have dinner here accompanied by a fashion show and folk dancing with local dancers and musicians. It is a chance to see modern and traditional fashions; traditional dresses are colourful and elegant but heavy, long dresses worn over trousers, even by young girls. Only in the capital, Tashkent, are traditional clothes not seen.


We spend most of the next day exploring Samarkand with our guide. A highlight is the Registan (sandy place), probably the most beautiful and the most perfect place we have seen, best seen around midday. This was the mediaeval commercial centre. On the west side is Ulugbek's madrassah, built in 1417-20, decorated with stars as he was very interested in astronomy. All subjects were studied here, not just religion. Now it contains... shops of course! There is also a small wedding room, which gives a glimpse of wedding costumes. On the north side is the Tilla Kori (gold-covered) madrassah, built 1646-60. Inside it is beautifully decorated in blue and gold. It contains a museum of the history and restoration of the city, with many photographs and a video. The buildings were in a severe state of ruin until restoration in the 1930s. Restoration was possible thanks to the meticulous records kept by the administrators of Tamerlane, the great 14th century ruler. On the east side is the Sher Dor (lion) madrassah, built 1619-36. The façade is decorated with lions, which look more like tigers as they are striped. Behind the façade restoration is incomplete and it is rather shabby.


Just outside the city we visit Ulugbek's Observatory, built 1424-29. It consisted of three storeys, was over 30m high and contained numerous astronomical instruments. It was destroyed about 400 years ago. The ruins were only discovered in 1908. Bibi Khanym (Tamerlane's wife) hired the best teachers for her grandson, Ulug Bek. He became ruler at the age of 16, he ruled for 40 years and there were no wars during his reign. He built this observatory on the highest hill in the area.


The remains include a 40m tunnel with a curved rail aligned so that the movement of the moon and stars could be observed. Beside it a museum was built in 1964. On the first floor is a map of the heavens from Ulug Bek's observations and other museum exhibits. In the 18th century it was said that the observations from Samarkand were the most accurate and reliable. They taught Chinese scientists all they knew about astronomy.


First published in VISA 81-82 (Oct-Dec 2008)

Essence of Oasis

by Helen Matthews

I wasn't expecting the duck pond. During the nerve-wracking drive across the Kyzyl Kum desert from Khiva in a car with the petrol gauge stuck on empty, my guide, Otabek, had told me about the disastrous Soviet attempts to improve irrigation. The canals that drew water from the Amu Darya were too shallow so the water evaporated, and meanwhile the Aral Sea was drying up. To arrive at journey's end in Bukhara and find a large rectangular pool of water surrounded by restaurants strung with fairy lights was surreal. The last straw was the ducks' floating house, or rather palace - a splendidly kitsch wooden structure with a blue minaret at each corner in tribute to the local architecture.

The ducks were large and white. I would have called them Aylesbury ducks, but they were clearly a long way from home. They worked in two gangs of three, visiting the restaurant tables and demanding pay-offs in bread. In return, the local cats were firmly kept in their place. The ducks were less successful in seeing off the other hazard of the place - giant wasps with a fondness for shashlik. These appeared from nowhere as soon as the giant kebabs arrived, and disappeared when the last morsel had been consumed. Rice, green tea and even cola were of no interest. Despite the wasps, the ducks did a pretty good job. Perhaps the stuffed mallard nailed to a mulberry tree in the corner was there to serve as an awful warning.

The following morning I discovered that I had not been hallucinating and that the pond was in fact Lyab-i-Hauz, a sort of Bukharan Piccadilly Circus, where everyone you know will eventually pass by. It was a ten minute walk from my hotel, a converted merchant's house in the Jewish Quarter, and it would have been easy to linger, sipping green tea and people-watching, for hours, but I had not come all the way from England to drink tea by a duck pond. I turned left and headed for the Ismail Samani park, a pleasant green space named after the tenth-century Ismail Samani Mausoleum. The intricate brickwork of this strange cube-shaped structure now provides ample nesting sites for the local pigeons.

Nearby is the Chasma-Ayub, on the site of a spring supposedly found by the prophet Job striking his staff on the ground in the approved Old Testament manner. The twelfth-century building is surmounted by a strange structure of later date, not really a dome, but more reminiscent of an inverted ice-cream cone. Inside I found a small exhibition about the Bukharan water supply, including gruesome details of the parasitic worms that used to infest it. I declined the opportunity of tasting the spring water and strolled on towards my goal.

On the way, I passed the Bolo-Hauz Mosque with its elegant painted porch supported by twenty columns reflected in a large pool, and a disused water tower with a delicately skeletal iron frame. At last I reached the 'Ark', the palace of the former Emirs of Bukhara. It was here that the players of the 'Great Game', British officers Connolly and Stoddart, had come to do their diplomatic best, and in the Registan square outside where they had been beheaded when their diplomatic best had been found wanting. This was what I had come to see. But I found it lacking in atmosphere. Although the main courtyards and some buildings survive, much of it is now in ruins, something that became apparent as I walked past the walls to the Zindon, or jail, to peer down the 'black hole' where Stoddart was imprisoned. But there were no ghosts here, only souvenir-sellers.

Having done my duty to Stoddart and Connolly, I wandered through the bazaar to the Kalon Mosque. With its roof of 288 miniature domes, this is one of the showpieces of the city. But again, the atmosphere was slightly lacking. The building was heavily, but cheaply, restored in the 1990s, and the modern restorations can be easily identified by the flaking paintwork and cracking glaze on the tiles.

I strolled further among the mosques and medressas of old Bukhara until they merged into a blue-glazed blur and eventually found myself back at Lyab-i-Hauz. Sipping tea and watching the ducks prepare for another evening shift, I finally realised that I had been looking in the wrong place for the essence of Bukhara. The clues had been there in the pools, the spring and the water tower. This was an oasis town, its lifeblood provided by its precious water. Its true heart was not the city within a city where petty Emirs amused themselves playing envoys off against each other, but by the cool waters of the pool. I poured another cup of tea and prepared to share my bread with the ducks.¦

First published in VISA 81 (Oct 2008)

The Tashkent Patriot

by Neil Matthews

We had arrived in Tashkent on an early morning flight from Bishkek, but were only staying for a few hours until a connecting flight. Zamira was our guide for the day. She was in her late 40s or older, about five feet tall, built for comfort rather than speed, with short, wiry and unfeasibly black hair, a judicious sprinkling of jewellery, a red top and a white skirt. She fired off English as if from a machine gun. Thousands of miles away in a parallel existence, she might have been serving Betty's hotpots in the Rovers Return.

The day did not start well. We needed to change some money, but the local hotels' exchange offices were closed for breakfast, and then apparently unprepared to change as large a sum as $50. Sleepy-eyed and a little annoyed by now, we followed in Zamira's wake as she took us to a madrassah containing a seventh century copy of the Koran. The sense of history was somewhat dulled by the smell of paint (the building had recently been reconstructed). Next was the bazaar, where our smiling young driver coped with the double parking by carefully pushing the other cars out of his way. Zamira bought two huge flatbreads and munched on one of them as she marched along in front of us, scarcely noticing as we stopped to buy much-needed drinks.

Finally, her exasperation with this strange foreign couple began to show. Leaving the flatbread on the car dashboard (where the heat would surely turn it to toast), she asked: "What would you like to see?" The trouble was, we didn't really know. We hadn't given much thought to this part of the trip, being more excited by the possibilities to come - Khiva, Bokhara and Samarkand.

As we struggled to come up with a suggestion, Zamira said: "What about our underground?" What an excellent idea, we agreed hastily, especially as the outside temperature was close to 40° C. We enjoyed some respite from the heat as we admired the socialist realism art and the chandeliers in Cosmonaut station, reminiscent of the Moscow metro: how ironic to go underground in order to reach the stars. A couple of rides for a couple of stops and we emerged near Amir Timur Square, named after the rediscovered Uzbek national hero Timur the Lame or Tamerlane. The hero's statue dominated the centre of a very pleasant green park. Before him, Zamira explained, there had been a statue of Marx; before Marx, Lenin; before Lenin, some now-forgotten Russian general.

Timur

"And who do you think will replace Timur?" I asked.

It was as if I had tripped a switch. Zamira the tour guide disappeared. Another Zamira appeared. Even behind her dark glasses, her eyes were obviously flashing.

"There is a campaign...a crazy idea...to bring back the Caliphate...to create an Islamic superstate. It will not work, the Uzbeks are too different from the Kazakhs and the Kazakhs are too different from the Tajiks. But still there is this idea. And if that happens, then maybe Muhammed appears in this square instead of Timur. And I am afraid of that.

"Yes, I am a Muslim and I am an Uzbek, but still I am afraid of that."

And with that, Zamira the Uzbek patriot was off and running. Yes, the President had helped the Americans in the war on terror - but he had also been the first ally in the region to ask them to leave. Such courage! To stand up to the Americans! But it was clear that Timur was her real hero. If the builders of the new Uzbekistan had been there to see Zamira, they would surely have been delighted.

The ice broken, we wandered off to a restaurant with a rushing water cascade, for a long lunch of chicken shashlik. As we refilled her cup with green tea and her glass with Coke, Zamira held forth on education (not as good as it once was, she said, and she was an MA graduate), politics and some other strange visitors to Uzbekistan.

"Once we had a playwright and a producer from England. The playwright had red hair and was supposed to be famous. He spoke the most perfect English, but they did not want to see the normal things. They wanted to know where [President] Zarimov's daughter lived. I told them I did not know - I do not move in such circles! They went to the Ferghana valley for two hours on their own and told nobody what they were looking for. They even made a visit to the British Embassy. I remember them buying special new shirts for the visit - but they were turned away, haha! I never found out what they were doing."

A discussion about literature followed - Zamira liked Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen... and Sidney Sheldon, "because he writes about love". We rounded off the day with the Amir Timur museum, which included several models of the majestic architecture we were due to see later that week. Zamira saw us onto the plane that evening, worrying about us - "the heat in Khiva will kill you, do not wear that jacket please".

But by then we were smiling. A day which had started too early for us had turned out all right - thanks to a small bundle of Uzbek patriotism called Zamira.

First published in VISA issue 77 (Feb 2008)