#4 - My first pomegranate

Uzbekistan, 2012

I was leaving the ancient city of Bukhara, one of the most picturesque places in Uzbekistan and a perfect example of how to develop a modern city around historic buildings while preserving its character. Even the soviets were considerate in their era, keeping their communist grids away from the historic centre. Nothing looks out of place in Bukhara and many of the buildings have stood unmodified for almost a millennium. If you ever get the chance to go there, it's well worth your time.

I decided to try doing a car share from Bukhara to my next stop, Khiva. My host gave me a lift to a service station on the outskirts of town. Here I found several dozen men hanging around in the car park, leaning on their cars and attempting to solicit passengers to fill their cars. Armed with a piece of paper with 'Хива' written on it and the amount I was prepared to pay, I wandered around until somebody made an approving grunt.

I sat in the car while my driver went about finding more passengers. However after about 15 minutes things started getting a bit heated outside and one of the other men started getting aggressive with my driver. They were shouting in Uzbek and I couldn't tell if they were just fooling around or not. A moment later the man threw my driver against the side of the vehicle, still shouting at him. He then shifted his attention to me, speaking loudly in Russian (most people assumed I was Russian). He made hand gestures to suggest that my driver had been drinking and beckoned me to get out of the car.

Slightly startled, I considered making a bolt for it, but ultimately decided to stay put. I figured that I was probably overpaying for the journey and my driver had just got into a "friendly" scuffle with another driver who was jealous. At least that's what I told myself.

Eventually my driver managed to locate another three passengers to squeeze into the car with us and I found myself wedged between two portly gentlemen in the back. We weren't on the road for long though before we turned off the main road and onto a narrow dirt track. I had no idea what was going on, but the other guys seemed unperturbed, so I decided not to worry about it. It turned out that we were making a short stop at the driver's house to pick up some additional cargo. He also brought out a bag of pomegranates that he said (I think) he'd grown himself and handed one to each of us.

Back on the road again, we quickly left civilisation behind and headed out on our 470km journey across the Kyzyl Kum desert. Early on in the journey my fellow passengers began a game of guessing where I was from, but didn't speak English so were reliant on my equally non-existent Russian. After a long succession of 'nyet's we eventually got there, as one of them guessed Angliyskiy and I nodded 'da'.

Despite the language barrier, one thing I did pick up on was that we were low on fuel and needed to find a petrol station. This wasn't helped by the pot-hole riddled road, putting us on a serpentine path on an uneven surface, quickly burning off fuel. The landscape was vast and barren. We saw few other cars on the road and passed nothing. When eventually we did reach a petrol station, it turned out to have no fuel.

We trundled on, but after another hour went by it was clear that we were now running on fumes. The others had gone deathly silent and I sat squashed in the middle, clinging onto my pomegranate. If we broke down here it would probably be quite serious and I suspect it'd be a long wait to find alternative transport.

Thankfully we eventually were able to refuel though, and after a very long journey (it was probably around 8 hours in total) I made it to Khiva, exhausted and relieved. Once I found a hotel, I celebrated by cracking open my pomegranate and pondering why I didn't just take the train.