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“Tel Aviv or Tashkent?” the man standing in front of the two buses on the tarmac of Tashkent’s international airport inquired of us. Our bus was heading to the terminal, the other to a transit holding pen.
“Tashkent” I replied.
“Tel Aviv?” he asked again.
“Tash…kent” I said, less sure of myself this time.
“Tel Aviv…?”
A few minutes later my friend and I were sitting on the bus with the three other people not proceeding on to Israel, when the man and possibly his superior boarded.
“Tel Aviv?” the more important looking gentleman barked at us.
“Tashkent” I said back and smiled. This would be a fitting introduction to the bewilderment that was to follow in the coming weeks as we scrambled overland from Uzbekistan to Vietnam.
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The supposedly difficult passage through immigration and customs at Tashkent’s international airport turned out to be no more than a few too many encounters with disinterested officials. Forms were filled in, cash was declared and we were on our way. Having been thoroughly ripped off by our jovial taxi driver, we found ourselves at the surreal, unfinished series of rooms, ramps and mirrors that was the Ali Tour B&B. An empty swimming pool housed a couple of very miserable looking rabbits. An old painting of Lenin greeted us in our room. Ali himself was an alcoholic of the most determined kind, any correspondence resulting in an eager invitation to a vodka session, even at 8am.
For a city of around 3 million people, Tashkent felt somewhat empty. Its beautiful tree-lined, wide boulevards, parks and squares seemed strangely devoid of people. A notable exception (and most probably the cause of the vacuity) was the legions of police in their teal blue uniforms and caps who occupied almost every corner of the city. President Karimov’s iron fist seemed to be firmly in control, on the surface at least.
One place which was certain to produce an encounter with the ‘militsia’ was any of the impressive, mosaic-designed metro stations. As a tourist, your passport is demanded and pored over while the officer tries to think of a pedestrian equivalent to smashing your tail light. This has been cracked down on in recent years however, and the bundles of Uzbek Cym (of which 80 cents is the highest denomination) tend to remain in your backpack.
After a week of soaking in the sights of the historic Uzbek cities, it was time to finally head east. The Kyrgyz visa stickers which had taken this much time to attach to our passports were in place and we were set to tackle another shared taxi quest. Finding the car park in Tashkent that would start our journey to Kyrgyzstan took only a few hours. Calculator functions on cell phones were presented from all angles and an agreed price was eventually found. Once rolling through the pretty Uzbek countryside with its cotton fields and tractors, it became obvious how sketchy these road trips could be. We passed a few accidents; one involving a caved in Lada and a very dead looking donkey. Later the driver swerved to avoid a distraught cow tied to a tree in the middle of the road on a 10 foot rope.
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An hour had passed and I started noticing the young man in the front seat feeding something by his feet. I had no idea what it could be until I saw the yellow, ping pong ball-sized eyes of an owl staring back at me. Once out of its bag its mass became evident. My amazement soon switched to discomfort and fear when it started stretching its wings and flexing its massive talons; the car zigzagged as the owner wrestled to get the owl back into its plastic home.
We made it to the end of Uzbekistan at about 8pm and were taken through the 2kms of no-mans-land in a decrepit Lada by an angry looking fellow. Throughout the trip so far we had been registered with the police by our various hotels, so that every night was accounted for. We were told to keep everything including tickets and receipts for things we bought so that our every move had a record. If not, it was said, there could be serious consequences when leaving. In reality, at night time in the cold, none of this was needed. We filled in a couple of extra forms to show we hadn’t earned money, our bags went through an X-ray which was probably just an elaborate conveyor belt, and we were through. Whenever I successfully cross borders like this, I somehow feel I have won a prize or gotten lucky.
A lone taxi waited ominously on the dark Kyrgyzstan side. We had no local currency, not a great idea of where we were going, and things did not go smoothly. The way in which Kyrgyz people deal with communication problems with foreigners is very practical. However, the friend that our driver was screaming at through his cell phone, it eventuated, only had very few words to aid the situation. Driving around town, I was about to finally throw away our guide book once and for all, when a beautifully run-down guest house presented itself.
The following two weeks were spent admiring the Kyrgyz countryside’s outlandish beauty and eccentricities. With lakes, acid-wash jeans, eagle hunters, donkeys and fatty soups behind us, we were ready to head over the Pamir Mountains and into China. The man who was to help us find transport to the Irkeshtam border was named Abdul Aziz. Sporting a leather jacket and some of the pointiest shoes we had seen, Abdul was a man of action.
The long distance bus station was dead and so we once again found ourselves in a dark, shadowy car park – on the fringes of a heated negotiation. We needed to go that night and a deal was struck. To further complicate matters, we realized we didn’t have enough local currency and at this time of night changing would be difficult. But mister Aziz would not surrender to the situation and the next thing I knew I was treading carefully up a pitch black staircase. Having felt our way down a darkened corridor, we came to a room with an old couple sitting round a candle. The dim light made out the shadows of an array of animal heads covering the walls. The discourse was loud and arms waved but a transaction took place. Back in the car park with a fresh stack of bills, we were able to start our ascent over the range.
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Our driver Said had been driving since early that morning and was it turned out, in no shape to continue into the night. His five Kazakh techno tunes blaring at full bore did more to jumble my sanity than keep him awake. With various items of clothing wrapped around my ears, it was left to my friend to yell encouraging words in Said’s ear every kilometre to prevent a mishap on a hairpin bend.
The end of the road for Said was a truck stop in the mountains. From here we could apparently hitch the last 100 or so km to the border. Still jaded from the music and journey, we were met by a hundred skeptical eyes when we walked in – that record screeching to a halt situation. Once things had returned to normal and we had drunk our 10th cup of tea, I was summoned by a couple of felt hat-toting men huddled over a table. Calculator in hand, I haggled unconvincingly and soon we were climbing into an ancient Russian truck.
Charging down the snow covered road, the driver’s heart-stopping swerves were actually artful pothole sidesteps. A few kilometres later we stopped at another shed/café. Upon learning that the man in charge was actually going to lay off the vodka, we decided that the only thing to do was to hit it hard with his friend. It’s best not to be too rational when your life hangs in someone else’s hands.
As if waking from a heavily anesthetized operation, I came to just after dawn to the sound of heavy, proficient snoring. Outside was a surreal sea of old trucks surrounded by orange cliffs, crinkled with shadows in the early morning light. This was the border and about as wild-west a place I had ever been.
We saw off Kyrgyzstan with a truck driver’s breakfast of vodka and some strange, chalk-like substance in a trailer somewhere in the maze of parked loads. Stumbling the final few kilometres was the order as the road was bumper to bumper. I don’t remember how many people looked at our passports but have vague recollections of disdainful officials in trench coats shouting at us.
The Chinese customs and immigration building looked like it had been dropped on its spot by a time machine; a shiny beacon of modernity and power at the end of a dusty, rocky road. The young eager-to-please border guards were efficient with smiles, albeit slightly disturbed by our state.
Forty five minutes later we were helping a couple of Uighur newly-weds move house in our shared taxi. An endless stream of plastic bags, rolled-up carpets and old suitcases came out of a rundown block of flats. An old woman looked on disapprovingly, sporadically yelling at us to be careful.
The first thing we noticed about the Muslim quarters of Kashgar was how bustling the streets were. The commerce and industry encouraged by the Chinese was all too evident of the different influences these people had received, either side of the Pamir Mountains. A huge 35 metre statue of Mao peered over the range to remind people that here, things were done on Beijing time.
Having descended the endless plateau that is Kyrgyzstan, we were now able to leave the communal car journeys behind us and begin boarding trains. The first of which was a pleasant little 24 hour trip north to the regional capital of Urumqi. Eating pumpkin seeds and sipping beer in the dining car, we watched as the vast nothingness was occasionally interrupted by a small industrial settlement. Rigid guards stood at attention, staring straight ahead as the train came and left each tiny station.
Buying tickets (or anything you can’t point at) is difficult in China if you don’t speak Mandarin. The women at the arcane office saw us return several times with more and more detailed written descriptions of what we wanted to do in Chinese. Each time a wave of the hand would burst our bubble. Eventually someone at a different office showed us dates and a place (which we hoped was Kunming) on a computer screen. The feeling of accomplishment was one not felt since successfully asking where the toilet was in Russian a week earlier.
From here it was reasonably smooth sailing. We somehow found ourselves in the luxury of a soft-sleeper carriage, which meant a slightly wider (and possibly softer) bed and a door that closed. Also included was a great radio function that played delightfully screechy comedy shows that our compartment mates loved so much. Being in first class meant the dining car was just a step away, which is where we spent much of the next couple of days. The desert landscape morphed from sections of black rock to various shades of brown, with outcrops jutting up here and there.
The landscape gradually shifted and the dry river beds turned into muddy, flowing waterways flanked by green vegetation. Settlements went from dotting to dominating the panorama as the more fertile land approached. Soon it was easy to see how nearly a fifth of the world’s population lives in this land. Having navigated through the cities of Chengdu and Kunming, we made it to the opposite frontier of China.
Things were more familiar now. Walking across the bridge back into Vietnam, we could hear the faint honking of motorbike horns which epitomized the country for us and meant we were home. A few hours, beers and fried noodles later, we were clanking down the final 300 kilometres of railway track that would conclude our trip. Rolling into Hanoi at dawn, the rising sun illuminated the smoggy sky and the streets were already buzzing with their typical mayhem.
Copyright © 2009 Cameron Sumpter
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