Travels with Kathryn

Today, we loaded into a slightly less luxiorious minibus than we are used to (with less than half of our bags fitting in the boot). However, it was only a short drive to the border (I didn’t realise we were so close). The first job was to change some money into Uzbekisani som (as opposed to Kygzystani som), which is going to be fun as $100 = (roughly) 1.2 million som. I am trying to come up with a straightforward calculation into the UK, but we think it is about 1,000som is 50p. Maybe. Maths was never my strong suit.

Crossing the border was relatively straightforward, just a bit of waiting to enter Uzbekistan. However, I give both Kzygyrstan and Uzbekistan credit for neatly stamping entry and exits straight and on the same page.

We then drove the 1 hour to Andijon for our train to Tashkent, however, as we had a couple of hours to kill, we decided to enjoy the (lmited) sites of Andijon.

Quite an unusual experience at the Devonboy mosque (pictured below) as I got the distinct impression that they did not want us to visit. I have not experienced this lack of hospitality at all on my trip so far, so I am not sure whether the issue was that we were infidels or simply that we were foreigners.

We also attempted to visit the Babur Literary museum, which occupies the site of Zahiruddin Babur’s royal appartmens. Babur is a descendant of Timerlane (who you will be reading lots about in the Uzbekistan posts) and something of a Central Asian hero for taking Samarkand at the age of 14, however, he eventually lost both Samarkand and the whole of the Fergana valley and sought exile in india where did pretty well for himself and ultimately founding the Mughal Empire i.e. maybe leaving Uzbekistan was the making of him. However, the museum is currently closed, but we did persuade the guard to let us have a quick look in the courtyard:

We also visited the State Museum of Andijon, another rather interesting experience as the museum was dealing with a power cut, but we were led around by an enthusiastic lady with her phone torch. When we tried to tip her at the end, she practically leapt away from the notes – my faith in Central Asian hospitality has been restored!

Off we went to the train station and much of this post was written in the air-conditioned luxury of our first class train carriage. As it is rather hot (30degrees+) this made me very happy. I love trains, trains are great.

We left Andijon at 3.55pm local time (bang on time) and I settled back to enjoy the scenery of Uzbekistan, which is nice enough although a little dusty and certainly it does not have the space and big sky feeling of Kyrgyzstan. What I did see was lots of farm land, including fields of cotton. During Soviet times, Uzbekistan was turned into a key producer of cotton, and today, it is the 5th largest cotton producer in the world. This is hugely problematic as Uzbekistan is very hot and does not have enough water at the best of times, without taking into account the need to flood cotton fields. Also, until very recently, all school-age children, teachers, and other government workers were required to spend their 3 month summer holiday picking cotton. Not my (or probably anyone else’s) idea of a fun time… The ending of this is one of the key policy of the new president Shavkat Mirziyoyev (following the death of Karimov in 2016) who has also started to work to improve relationships with neighbouring countrie including the opening of the borders which has made this trip possible! Uzbekistan is still a tightly controlled state (more on this below), but these are some (very small) positive steps and I am interested to compare my experiences here with the more democratic (but arguably more corrupt) Krygzstan

On route, we did have a rather interesting experience when it was starting to get dark: the train entered a tunnel and stopped. An army man walked down the corridor, and then the attendant came through – pulled all the blinds down and locked the carriage at each end. The train then started moving, and about 10 minutes later, the blinds came up, and the doors unlocked. We assumed there was something we were not allowed to see…

We arrived in Tashkent bang on time at 9.45pm. I am a little tired (as we lost an hour crossing the border, so it is actually 10.45pm), but I was at the hotel and in bed by 11pm. Tomorrow, we will actually explore Tashkent, so more to follow.