#3 - A rough landing in Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan, September 2012

Last summer I decided to travel alone across Uzbekistan for 10 days, in a bid to educate myself on a part of the world that I knew very little about. This entry covers my arrival into Uzbekistan.

You may remember that at the time, a poorly researched American film called "The Innocence of Muslims" sparked widespread (in some places violent) protests across much of the Muslim world. On the day that I was due to travel, the protests showed little sign of abating, however the Foreign Office suggested that they'd yet to hit Uzbekistan (a country where 90% of the population are Muslim). As a precaution, I registered my movements with the Foreign Office, then headed to the airport.

I flew to Uzbekistan via Moscow. My flight was filled with mostly Uzbek families, who all seemed to be returning from Russia with new flat-screen TVs and PCs, all as "hand baggage". I watched in bewilderment as a man made numerous futile attempts to cram a 32" flat-screen television into the overhead compartment.

Uzbekistan Airways: Good luck

My arrival into Tashkent (the capital of Uzbekistan) was a decidedly miserable experience. Landing at 3am, it took me over two hours to get out of the airport. By the time I made it outside, I was desperate to get to bed. Blearly-eyed, I staggered out into the morning sun to face the throngs of eager drivers, all looking for their first fare of the day.

After some half-hearted negotiation, I was shown to a car. The driver spoke only a few select phrases in English, so he spoke to me mostly in Russian, hoping that I'd understand. I did not. As he fired the engine up, music suddenly blasted through the stereo at a volume that would make astronauts stationed on the ISS jump. "Why do I recognise this song?" I thought to myself, before the unmistakable lyrics of Euro-pop abomination Aqua slapped me unceremoniously across the face: "I'm a Barbie girl, in a Barbie wo-o-orld. Life in plastic, it's fantastic!". Great.

Any hope of my driver turning down the music evaporated as the third Aqua track came on. Occasionally we slowed down as he tried to solicit business from passing pedestrians. This was a little alarming at the time, but I eventually discovered that you can't really hire a taxi in Uzbekistan, you merely hire a seat in one. 

As we arrived at my hotel, the driver pulled up across the road from the entrance gate. "You want to change money?", he looked at me expectantly, "I give you black market rate!". Now... I vaguely remembered reading something about this in a travel guide. It had either said "never change money with taxi drivers" or "take advantage of changing money with taxi drivers". I was fairly sure that it was the former, so I gave the man $200 (US dollar) and in exchange he gave me a pile of money about four inches thick (not an exaggeration). I was too tired to count through hundreds of notes, so I merely flipped through them to check that they were all indeed notes.

Just some of the money that I was given by my taxi driver

After a short nap, I decided to venture into Tashkent. This was it, I was finally in Uzbekistan!

The first thing I noticed about Tashkent was how foreign it felt. This might seem like an odd statement to make, however there are two good reasons for this: 

1. Thanks to a brutal massacre instigated by the Uzbek government in 2005, there are now next to no foreign brands in the country, with the exception of a few Russian and Korean ones. Consequently there are no recognisable hotel chains, fast food companies or fashion outlets in the country.
2. The Uzbek language is incomprehensible unless you know Russian. Most things seemed to be written in modified Cyrillic, so for example, the city of 'Khiva' is written 'Хива'.

Tashkent is a nostalgic throwback to Soviet times. Drab concrete buildings line the uniform grids of streets. At night the roads are illuminated predominantly by starlight. Fading propaganda slogans adorn every façade, while the ubiquitous police patrol the streets below. 

I spent half a day trying to buy a train ticket to get out of Tashkent. Initially I couldn't find the railway station, as it was cunningly disguised as a government building. I then couldn't find the ticket office. Nobody I spoke to could speak English and none of the signs contained information that I could understand. I eventually found the ticket hall hidden around the corner, quite a distance from the station. Unable to read any of the signs at the counters, I joined three incorrect queues before I found one that led to a counter willing to sell me a ticket.

Exhausted, but victorious, I left the station in search of dinner. Little did I know that the following day I would find myself wearing a burka and getting invited to a wedding....

To be continued