Konye Urgench: tastefully restored Khorezmid ruins across the Turkmen border from Nukus

Five Graves to Cairo? How about eight rides to Konye Urgench.

The day I exited from Uzbekistan to Turkmenistan was one of the very few hard deadlines I had on my trip, as my 5-day Turkmen visa began on the the last day of my Uzbek visa. And because Turkmen transit visas specify the entry and exit border points that must be used, I knew I would have to be at the Khojeli/Konye Urgench border that day.

Now, Khojeli is the border between Nukus and Konye Urgench, and given the relative size of Khiva, Nukus, and Konye Urgench, you wouldn't think it would be that difficult to arrange transportation between them. You, however, would be wrong.

The first thing to do was get from Khiva to Urgench: Khiva is south of the main routes between Bukhara and Nukus, and so most transport not heading across the border to Dashogus instead goes through Urgench. The American guy who was also staying at the Lali Opa was headed into the Uzbek desert and then on to Kazakhstan, so we joined together in taking a taxi to Urgench instead of taking the slow trolley bus. Strangely, however, once we were dropped in Urgench there didn't seem to be any cars heading west, and after searching around the bazaar for a while the American—who spoke pretty decent Russian after a few months in Central Asia—discovered that we would have to go to Beruni to find a ride. In Beruni he helped me find a marshrutka to Nukus, and then we went our separate ways as he tried to hitchike on the main road.

After waiting only about a half hour for the marshrutka to fill, we were on our way to Nukus. Of course, it turned out that we only went to the outskirts of Nukus, and needed to transfer to share taxis to get all the way into town. So I piled into a car with some helpful Uzbek babushkas and we were off to the central market. Once there I had to negotiate a bewildering car lot, where cars seemed to be organized according to destination, but really weren't. After futilely asking drivers for a few minutes, a fellow passenger helped me out and found out where cars to Khojeli left from. After the usual wait (pretty short, as the market was busy), it was off to nearby Khojeli. At Khojeli we terminated at the share-taxi and marshrutka lot, where once again it was surprisingly difficult to find out who was going to the border. They had a weird system where, instead of people getting into cars destined for a specific place and waiting for them to fill, people who wanted to go somewhere would kind of just stand around, then magically a car/marshrutka in that destination would be decided and everybody would pile on. But in the meantime you just stand around, which leads to a feeling of tremendous uncertainty (both in terms of whether a vehicle would arrive, and whether you would be able to get a spot in it). After a while a marshrutka for the border showed up and we all piled aboard.

By this time it was well after noon, which isn't a good thing when you only have five days in a country (I can understand why cyclists often camp at the border so as to cross first thing in the morning).

At the border there were maybe 75 people lined up on either side of the road, in front of a barrier across the road. The customs station was about 50 meters beyond that. I already had visions of a repeat of the endless waiting I encountered at Dotsyk, especially since there was no indication on what side we should line up. A border guard was hanging around the barrier, and I got his attention by standing between the back of the lines, making a shrugging gesture, and gesturing to ask which line I should join. He pointed to the left, and shortly after joining that line he came and beckoned me to the customs house—this was actually another of the hoped effects of getting his attention: skipping the queue by playing the foreigner card (which isn't unreasonable since we pay way more than locals do for visas).

Getting out of Uzbekistan wasn't as difficult as getting in, as they didn't really check my hotel registration slips (though they took them), didn't check how much money I was taking out (if you leave with more money than you declared on entry, they may seize it—my dollar withdrawals in Samarkand basically only covered how much I spent in country), didn't check my pictures, and didn't check my computer.

There is a fairly short no-man's-land between the border outposts: less than 500 meters, according to Google Earth. I set out to walk it, but the border guards stopped me and told me that you needed to take the shuttle bus between the outposts. No foot traffic was allowed, so I reluctantly got on the bus with the locals, whereupon I had a problem paying: I had already used all of my Uzbek sum (except for a small 500 som note for souvenir purposes), I had no Turkmen Manats, and the only small demoninations I had in dollars were the $12 I knew I would need as an entrance tax for Turkmen immigration. The fee for this short little shuttle was something like $1, on the other hand, a substantial portion of which no doubt went to the border guards who forced everyone to take the van.

Thankfully the driver agreed to accept my Canadian $5—the only other small bill I had—but this caused some confusion as they discussed what the conversion rate should be. I think they must have confused the Canadian exchange rate with the Euro (or confused the colourful Canadian bill with a Euro note) because I ended up getting a weird rate, such that the value of change I got back (in a mix of useless som and manats) was actually greater than the value of the dollars I gave them—even if considered as US dollars, and not Canadian. Their confusion later caused some confusion on my part as to what the proper exchange manat exchange rate was, as based on the change I received it should have been about 4 to the US dollar, but in reality it was 2.85 to the US dollar (the exchange rate was fixed at 2.85:1 for a long time, though it changed to 3.5:1 in January 2015, likely to reflect the devaluation of the ruble).

As we rumbled across no-man's land, looking out at the barren land, I had the strangest impression that it was winter—even though it was close to 20°C. I cam by this feeling honestly, however, as the marginal soil was white with salt stains, and bits of white fluff (cotton? pollen?) were floating in the air–in combination with the brown and leafless trees it all gave the impression of light snow. Very bizarre, but very convincing. This salty soil seemed characteristic of much of Turkmenistan; it's a good thing they have oil and gas, otherwise they would be in trouble.

Turkmen customs and immigration was different than I was expecting. Their systems were fully computerized and all entries were logged, which was actually a bit disappointing to me since it meant it probably wouldn't be possible to bribe my way out of a different border, and to cross to Herat. You have to pay a weird $12 entrance fee at the border to get into the country, which is a bit weird since you've already paid for a visa. I think they usually have change, but I figured they might not since they probably don't get many foreign visitors through this border point (or any), and I had $12 exactly. Paying the entrance fee and getting stamped into the country was sandwiched by getting my bag x-rayed and then inspected. One of the military guys assigned to the border post was a young guy who was eager to meet a foreigner and talk with me a little bit, and he was really friendly. I'm guessing that conscription is alive and well in Turkmenistan and that he had other things he would rather be doing. His colleague took his job more seriously, and was preparing to do a deep dive into my bag when the younger one waved him off and asked him why he was going to go to all the bother. The older one kind of rolled his eyes, but stopped searching.

After being stamped through and leaving the border point, we got onto one of the waiting shuttles to drive into town.

Hotels in Turkmenistan aren't particularly cheap for what they offer (partially because they are the only one of the CIS 'stans to continue to have foreigner pricing at official hotels, though it's usually phrased as a discount for Turkmen citizens), so when one of the other passengers in the marshrutka, upon hearing me name a hotel as a destination, insisted that I save my money and stay at his house (he had all been together since Uzbek customs, so he knew I had no manat), I accepted his kind offer. He lived on the northeast outskirts of town, a bit of a walk from the main road, but it was interesting to see a local neighbourhood. It, like pretty much all of Dashogus, was a relatively poor looking town, with older traditional Soviet-Central Asian architecture that wouldn't have looked out of place in rural Kyrgyzstan or Tajikistan. But at least he was at home with his family, unlike so many working-age men elsewhere in Central Asia.

At his home I met his wife and children, and after a simple dinner he popped in one of his favourite DVDs—a Shakira concert (globalization indeed!)—and we watched her hips not lie. Cheap pirated DVDs are ubiquitous throughout Central Asia, with fare running from Hollywood blockbusters to traditional music from around the region. Water for washing was from the usual jug and basin, much as in rural Sary Mogol, and the toilet was an outhouse on the other side of a small field behind his house. Although I always carry my own paper (wet wipes are great), as everyone does, there was a pile of rough, cheap paper that turned out to be pages from a mathematics book nailed to the wall. This kind of impoverishment would stand out in stark contrast to the excesses of Ashgabat, and when my host commented that Konye Urgench is an Uzbek town where almost everyone is ethnically Uzbek, I wondered if this was another layer in marginalization (like Uzbeks in Kyrgyzstan or Pamiris in Tajikistan); the only minority ethnicities who seem to have it okay are Tajiks in Uzbekistan (Bukhara and Samarkand being ethnically Tajik), though the Uzbeks retaliate by making relations with Tajikistan as difficult as possible.

The next morning, as I prepared to take my leave, I asked my host to point me in the direction of the nearest bank to change money. To my surprise, he insisted on accompanying me, even though I said it wasn't necessary. He said he would go with me and help me change money.

On the way into town we passed a bank, but we didn't stop there to change money (which made me a bit suspicious) but headed to the market. In the market he found a guy to change money, but the money-changer really wanted the transaction to be surreptitious, as though changing money (on what I assumed was the black market) was really serious. This seemed weird, as black market transactions in Uzbekistan and Burma are all done in the open, but he insisted on keeping everything out of sight. I'm still not sure what the big deal is, as by all accounts there is no black market in Turkmenistan and currency is freely exchangeable in both directions (i.e., they will change your manat to dollars when you leave at the same rate), and this market changer gave me the exact same 2.85:1 official exchange rate. Bizarre.

Anyway, after this, I thanked my host again, and expected us to part here. Probably I should have given him some money even though he had insisted I save my money by staying with him. But he said that he would accompany me and help me find a taxi to Ashgabat, where he could get me a ride for $30. Uh oh. According to Lonely Planet, a taxi should only cost 30 manat, which meant that he was clearly going to try and take a cut of this $30 for the $11 ride. This kind of put his "hospitality" in a whole new light. I told him that I would be OK finding one on my own and wanted to visit the monuments first, but he said he would accompany me.

Things got worse when we arrived at the archaeological zone, as although he accompanied me as I bought my admission and photography tickets, he really only wanted me to look at the first building and then peek at the minaret across the road before coming with him to get a taxi. He really didn't want me to take pictures, saying as it would cause problems for him. Now, maybe this would be a legitimate concern in this paranoid country, but since I had just bought a photography permit it didn't make much sense—my host tried to say that you could take one or two photos, but not many, and was eager for us to leave. I returned to the ticket booth, and asked the attendant there (who spoke very good English), and he said that I could take as many photographs of whatever I wanted. I obviously wasn't going to leave after only spending five minutes there, and my host decided he really didn't want to wait around for me, so although I thanked him for his hospitality I think it's safe to say we were both frustrated and disappointed with each other when we parted: he didn't get the payout he was hoping for, and I felt as though he was taking advantage of me under the guise of hospitality.

Anyway, I left my bag with the helpful and knowledgeable ticket attendant (I left it outside his little shack, but he kindly moved it inside with him—something that made me a bit nervous when I returned and didn't see it sitting where I left it) and headed across the road to explore the other monuments.

The Southern Monuments

Konye Urgench was the heart of the Khorezm empire which ruled the Amu-Darya delta area from the 10th century to the Mogol invasion in the early 13th century. The city was later abandoned when the Amu Darya, which formerly ran through the city, changed course and took up its current position through Nukus. The abaondonment of the city helped preserve the monuments, which are now a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The first building you come across on the road south of town is the Turabeg Khanum building, and it's one of the most interesting and impressive in Turkmenistan—though it would be a lot more impressive if it weren't right next to the highway with a big parking lot in front of it. The design of the building includes multiple references to the calendar, with the dome tiles having 365 sections representing the days, the lower level under the dome being a 12-sided dodecahedron to represent the months, four windows to represent the weeks in a month, and a tier of 24 arches between the ground level dodecahedron and the dome to represent the hours in the day. This building is usually described as a mausoleum, though apparently there are many who are less certain, given the lack of grave markers and other discrepancies.

If you remember from Samarkand that Bibi Khanum was Tamerlane's wife, you wont be surprised to hear that Turabeg Khanum was aslo a female: this time she was the wife of Gutlug Timur (who restored the Gutlug Timur minaret) and he daughter of Uzbek Khan (who was the khan when the Golden Horde converted to Islam).

Bradt beats LP hands down for accurate, helpful information (but the most recent edition is from 2006 and is currently out of print).

In Uzbekistan this would be the basis for a restoration, not the result of one. Here, the exterior wall follows the 12-sided interior dodecahedron.

There are four of these big windows just below the dome. There are 24 of these arches, representing the hours in a day, and below them are the 12 arches in a dodecahedron. A better picture of the entire dome and the two tiers of arches can be seen here.

The tiles apparently divide the dome into 365 different sections.

View from Turabeg Khanum.

Khiva

From Bukhara to Khiva in 24 annoying hours

Getting from Bukhara to Khiva took one full day, and was not a fun process: far better to take the night train from Samarkand (or Tashkent). Even if you're dumb, like me, and visit Tashkent, Samarkand, and finally Bukhara in geographical sequence, it would still be better to backtrack from Bukhara to Samarkand just to take the night train.

The reason I say this is because the road from Bukhara to Urgench is really bad, and in order to take it you'll need to get a ride in a shared taxi. As with other places, getting a shared taxi often isn't fun, and often involves hours of waiting around. For me, the taxi process involved showing up at the bazaar in the morning, negotiating with a driver until we reached a reasonable price, then waiting in the car while he solicited more passenger. Then, after an hour of waiting, he returns to the car with three passengers who want to go somewhere else, so tries to kick me out of the car, while I argue with him for a while and tell him to find me another driver going to Khiva or Urgench for the agreed price. He finally does, after first threatening to run me or my bag over. Then it's another hour waiting for the other car to fill up, followed by a half hour of driving around Bukhara in search of something. I had assumed we were looking for cargo, but after slowly driving past a few fuel stations where no fuel was being pumped but whose long lines of cars—some parked until the station started pumping again, others with driver asleep inside or nearby—at the entrance would make the 1973 oil crisis look minor in comparison,  I understood we needed to get some gas. This was followed by us starting our drive outside of town, then the car sputtering to a stop. After a few phone calls, another car shows up and hooks up a rope to tow us. We are then towed not into the city, but into the country, where we were taken to a fuel station that was open for service. There we popped the trunk and filled up the LP tank that so many cars in the region run on.

Finally fueled up and ready for the road, we set off on the bumpy hell-hole of a road (one would think a road through the desert would be fairly easy to maintain, but the potholes and eroded tarmac said otherwise) to Urgench. At about the halfway point we made a stop, and one of the ladies in the back who was traveling with her daughter (they were sharing a seat) asked to change places with me; I was in the coveted front seat, which the first passenger inevitably secures. I was kind of surprised, because everyone knows the front seat is the best and I've never seen it conceded, nor anyone ask for it if someone else was in it, but I relented and got to be squeezed in the back.

Between the time spent waiting, the time spent getting fuel, and the poor road, it was well after dark when we pulled into Urgench, and were deposited just north of the train station (a brand new and gleaming facility, though they don't get many trains out there). A bus pulled in at about the same time, and there were some taxis milling around. Not many were going to Khiva, which is about 35km away, but one woman who was going there teamed up with a driver to try and scam me. Well, really she's the one who tried to scam me, saying that we could split the cost of the car to Khiva, and that if we each paid 25,000 sum we could leave immediately. This was half as much as I had paid from Bukhara (which is over ten times further, on worse roads), and although she insisted she would have to pay the driver just as much (which he confirmed), it was clear that I would be paying for more than the car would cost and she would take a cut of the money after pretending to pay the driver. Oh, Uzbekistan, how predictable you're getting.

I refused, and ended up being taken to a nearby restaurant and guesthouse by a local. I was a little surprised they would let me stay (since they obviously weren't set up to take foreigners and didn't issue registration slips), but it was only $5 a night for pretty basic accommodation with a slightly grotty shared bathroom.

The next morning I set out to try and find the trolley bus that runs between Urgench and Khiva, which was actually fairly difficult since LP is predictably vague on the details of where to catch it. I ended up walking to the outskirts of town, and starting down the road to Khiva, thankfully ignoring one stretch of overhead lines near the center, as they didn't actually serve this trolley bus.  As I walked along the trolley line towards the stop I was able to get a closer look at cotton crops in the field: they were dry scraggly little plants in parched soil, quite unlike the steamy and humid conditions I associate with the American South, which is the place I most associate with cotton.

Khiva

Khiva, like all Khorezm sites in this arid region, owes its existence to the Amu Darya (aka Oxus) river and the fertile delta it formed as it emptied into the nearby Aral Sea. The Amu Darya river is the product of the confluence of the Pyanj river (which we saw in the Wakhan valley, and which forms much of the border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan) and the Vakhsh river (which is what the Kyzyl suu river that we first saw in Sary Mogol turns into in lower Tajikistan): it's amazing how these rivers we saw over a thousand kilometers away continue to shape and inform the cultures we see weeks later. The Amu Darya is also what led the Soviets to decide that intensive cultivation of cotton was a good idea, a decision which has disastrous consequences for the Aral Sea, whose eastern shoreline has receded by over a hundred kilometers and which now contains only 10% of the water it held only 50 or so years ago. I mean, cotton in a desert: who could have seen this coming?

Once on the slow little trolly bus from Urgench, the ride to Khiva took about an hour, during which time we trundled through these bizarre fields of cotton and other crops before being deposited next to the northern gate of the Ichon Qala, or walled city. This drop-off location allows for a pretty inspiring introduction to the city, as it's just inside the northern gate that you can climb the walls and walk along the ramparts, getting nice views of the old town.

Just inside the northern gate.

Looking south over the rooftops of the walled city towards the main monuments. The taller minaret of the Islam Khoja madressa is on the left, while on the right is the shorter minaret for the Juma (Friday) Mosque.

View south from the western ramparts.

The iconic, unfinished, Kalta Minor minaret over the walls of Khiva's Kuhna Ark.

A view from the northwest ramparts. The watchtower of the Ark is the tower on the right, and its walls are the limit of how far you can walk on the ramparts. On the left is the Kalta Minor, and next to it is the iwan of the Muhammed Amin Khan madressa.

From the northeastern ramparts.

It's interesting to look out over old-city rooftops, though I'm surprised they aren't used more extensively as living or sleeping spaces.

A not-so-warm welcome to Uzbekistan, and a day in Margilan

The Gates of Hell

Because of my late night of internetting, I got a pretty late start on the 31st. I went to the supermarket to spend the last of my som, got some fried snacks from my favourite vendor next to the mosque, then hopped a marshrutka to the Uzbek border (which is just on the northwestern edge of Osh). It was a little after 1:00 when I arrived, and although there were lines at the Kyrgyz exit post, it only took a few minutes to pass through.

But after I passed into no-man's-land between the two border posts that I realized the insanity into which I had passed. This wasn't the big multi-kilometer gap that often exist between border points (and which frequently function as opportunities for mandatory but extortionate taxi shuttles): as an urban border point, the border-control outposts were close to each other. But because Uzbek border officers are ridiculously slow and engage in detailed searches and questions, people are stamped out of Kyrgyzstan much faster than they're stamped into Uzbekistan. So it was that there were hundreds and hundreds of people crammed into a space the size of a high-school gymanasium, which was completely uncovered and exposed to the mid-day sun. In the height of summer it must be excruciating, and extremely dangerous. The Uzbek exit from this no-man's-land compound was a gate, with a sturdy chute leading up the gate: think of a cattle pen and you won't be far wrong.

When I initially arrived, there were these touts perched on the railings of the chute that led to the actual gate to the Uzbek customs/passport area, frantically shouting with the people trying to cross into Uzbekistan. I had no idea what that was all about, but it wasn't official in any sense of the word, and certainly didn't reduce the crush of people trying to push their way to the front of the line. Also, women and men were segregated, with men on the right and women on the left.

Anyway, shortly after I arrived in this pen, a Kyrgyz border guard showed up and started pushing everyone around, and dragging people out of line and then pushing them to the back of the "line." This wasn't gentle pushing, but hard shoves that made a few people fall down, including some women. One elderly woman objected to this, and got slapped in the face after she pushed back. But after pushing people around for a while, and forming a quasi-line, he would leave for a few minutes and a knot of people would reappear near the chute... with the net effect that those who stayed in the line ended up further and further back, while those who pushed forward were able to consolidate their forward position when the soldier came out and re-formed the line.

Anyway, after going through this for about three hours—during which time one smartly-dressed family was given VIP treatment and escorted through the border by a guard—I was further from the gate than when I started. So when the policeman left for an extended period, I joined the throng of people pushing their way to the very front, and the touts re-appeared. It seems that these touts (who didn't seem to actually be taking any money, so perhaps "tout" is the wrong word) act as unofficial gatekeepers, and assign people numbers. This kind of makes sense, but works very poorly in practice since everyone pushes to the front despite having a number. Now, since I had no number, the touts were saying I could not exit, even though I had been there for over 4 hours. So this is one of the few occasions I decided to take advantage of the tourist's privilege of being something of a jerk, and I started to get really loud and shout at this guy who was trying to pull me away. This is really out of character for me, since I tend to speak quietly. Actually, I was just acting like them, as I had the group of 3-4 touts shouting at me, and I figure it's fine to shout back. This resulted in one of the touts, whose face I was in, getting rather startled and grabbing me by the neck as though the was going to choke me. This didn't go down very well with the crowd, who could clearly tell I was a foreigner by the way I was shouting in English, and they made the guy get away and let me join the next group to enter the chute. While in the chute an elderly lady behind me lost consciousness as we were being crushed against the fence by all the pushing from behind, with the heat no doubt making things more difficult. They had to pour a couple of bottles of water over her before she regained consciousness. I'm surprised no one dies at border crossings like this (heck, maybe they do), and it was somewhat ironic that there was a big billboard on one of the walls indicating that the OSCE had provided assistance to this border point.

Once inside the Uzbek border office, everything is serene and things move very slowly despite there being multiple border officers and only a few people admitted at a time. You have to fill out a detailed form asking for how much money you have (if you exit with more money than you bring in, you will have a problem), any valuables you have with you, and other questions. Then you have your bags inspected and X-rayed. I figure they process about 25 people per hour at that speed.

Megi passed through this border a few days later and indicated that foreigners/tourists are usually let through immediately and not made to wait with the locals, but that wasn't my experience. And even though I can possible pass for a local in appearance (but not in dress), I'm pretty sure the border guard knew I was a tourist since he seemed reluctant to push me nearly as hard as he was pushing the locals, and I told him in English that I had nowhere to move. At any rate it was an interesting insight into local life, and the trials and tribulations they endure. Needless to say, however, it wasn't a great introduction to Uzbekistan.

I didn't have much time in Uzbekistan—my visa expired on November 15th, since the embassy in Dushanbe decided to ignore the dates on my application and LoI and start the clock on the date of issue—but I decided that since I was in the Ferghana Valley I should see something there. Given that Margilan has a large bazaar that is only open on Thursdays and Sundays, and that it also has a silk workshop, I decided to spend my first full day—a Thursday—in Margilan.

On Uzbek taxis and black-market exchange rates

A short distance from the border is a big parking lot where people gather to meet those crossing over, as well as taxis for shared transportation to other cities. Most of these taxis were for Andijon or other larger cities, and it was difficult to find people going to Margilan. I was a little worried since it was after 5:00 and getting dark by that point, but I found a car heading to Margilan and we began to bargain over the price. Now, taxi drivers everywhere try to rip people off, but in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan the initial quote tends not to be outrageous: at most you'll be quoted twice the normal price, and usually the asking price is maybe 50% more expensive than you should pay. So that was my baseline for comparison, and although Lonely Planet indicates how much transportation should cost, their prices seem absurdly low in comparison to the distance covered (it's 120km to Margilan) and the price you would pay in Kyrgyzstan or Tajikistan (subsidized fuel prices are responsible for this). I was originally quoted six times the proper price, and ended up paying double the price that locals in my car paid when they arrived in Margilan.

Of course, to pay for my taxi ride, I first needed to obtain some Uzbek som. Getting som in an efficient way is more difficult than you might imagine, for a couple of reasons: Uzbekistan has a black-market currency exchange rate that gives you about a 30% better rate than the official rate, meaning it is always better for travelers to exchange their dollars on the black market; and there are almost no ATMs (it seems like there are less than 20 in the entire country, while in Kyrgyzstan and Dushanbe it was very easy to get dollars from ATMs) that accept international cards and dispense dollars.

When I explained to the driver that I needed to get some som, as I only had dollars, he made a quick phone call and arranged for us to meet a money changer in a town near the border. We pulled up to a random place and out came a woman to change money. As I wasn't sure if I would be getting a good rate (it's difficult to get up-to-date information on the current black-market exchange rate), I only changed $100. Of course, since the exchange rate was approximately 2,800 som to the dollar, and the biggest note is 1,000 som, I ended up getting a big bundle of money. I started to count it (Burma has similarly ridiculous currency, and  I learned that sometimes the changers try trick you by using different denominations, especially when changing a lot of money), but after doing a spot check I figured everything was in order. The rate I received was 2,670 som per dollar, which was actually a decent rate.

I wasn't able to see much in the darkness, but my initial impression of Uzbekistan was that it was much more highly populated and developed than Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, which is perhaps unsurprising since I was in the Ferghana valley, which is flat and fertile in a way that most of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are not.

Margilan

When we arrived in Margilan, I was dropped off near the cheap hotel mentioned in LP, but when I rang the bell at the locked lobby, the operator told me that they were no longer allowed to accept foreigners and that the only place in town was the Hotel Atlas, and he asked a couple of nearby kids to show me the way there. I already had a good idea of where it was, but I let the kids lead me to the main street on which the hotel was located. On the brief walk we were joined by some of their friends, and they asked me to take their picture. After this, however, they asked me for money (for their guide services or their picture, I'm not sure), which I declined.

My guides, shortly before I refused to give them any money.

I started walking down the main road leading to the Atlas, stopping at a supermarket (which felt more like a specialty shop, with waist-high shelves, lots of things behind counters, and lots of staff hanging around) and checking out some of the stores I saw. Things in Uzbekistan felt surprisingly different.

Apparently leeches are used in Uzbek medicine. Note the weird mixture of Latin and Cyrillic scripts in this sign. Uzbekistan officially switched from Cyrillic to Latin for Uzbek, but Russian is written in Cyrillic, so I'm not sure what the change really accomplishes except adding another script.

These kind of smart-looking boutiques aren't much seen in in Kyrgyzstan or outside of some parts of Dushanbe, and are part of what immediately makes Uzbekistan feel more prosperous.

The Lonely Planet suggested that the Atlas should have reasonable rates, but one look at the building and it seemed highly unlikely. It was an impressive building with an elegant lobby, and when I inquired they said their cheapest room was $55. I'm not much one for negotiating hotel rates, but I was in a jam but they wouldn't budge. There's no way I'm going to spend $55 on a hotel room, though, so I left to try and find some place to spend the night. I ended up finding a traditional chaikhana that was open 24 hours, and I spent the night there drinking tea. I don't think it would be possible to do this anymore (in Uzbekistan you have to stay at registered hotels at least every few days, and they've started to require that you stay in a registered hotel every day when you're in the more-religious Ferghana Valley), but it was an experience.

That's not to say it was a pleasant experience, however, as it was full of weird little moments that you simply wouldn't see in Kyrgyzstan on Tajikistan. I fired up my netbook to watch a movie, and I was interrupted by a guy who just walked up to me, sat down next to me (sitting partially on my camera bag), removed one of my earbuds and stuck it in his ear, then started pressing buttons on my computer in order to try and play the movie (I had paused it). There were no salaams or the customary questions, he just launched into this. His first attempt to communicate with me was to gesture that he wanted to buy my netbook. A very weird encounter. A little later a man walked up to me and said a prayer, then asked for money. Definitely not the greatest welcome to the country.

I left as it started to get light out the next morning, exploring the town. It was pretty dead, and even the mosque was empty (a bit surprising given the traditional dawn call to prayer).

Almost all cars in Uzbekistan are Daewoo or, if newer, Chevrolet. This is the result of domestic car factories formerly owned by Daewoo but now controlled by Chevrolet, plus onerous duties on cars imported to Uzbekistan. The little Chevy Spark is very popular.

Inventive fast food joint. The inverted arches resembles the Cyrillic character for "sh," suggesting they sell shaurma/shawarma.

The entrance to a mosque and madressa in central Margilan.

The new building is flanked by old wooden parapets on the madressa.

View from madressa stairs.

View from the top.

Yodgorlik Silk Factory

As it began to get later and the town came alive, I tried to find one of the main attractions in Margilan: the Yodgorlik Silk Factory. Good luck trying to find this place on your own if you only have the Lonely Planet to go by, as many locals either don't know where it is or can't give directions decent enough to find it. I added it to Google Maps so it should be there now (but if it's inaccurate, you also know who to blame), but I had a heck of a time trying to find it when I was there, even after asking locals.

Much of what you see at the Yodgorlik is the same as at the Atlas workshop in Hotan, except that here you get a guide who speaks English, and a bit better explanation. The people at Yodgorlik also seem to be actually practicing the traditional silk-making techniques, whereas at Atlas it seemed largely for show.

As my guide was starting the tour, one of the workers approached him to talk. Now, the worker was female and my guide was male, and since Lonely Planet describes Uzbekistan's Ferhana Valley like it is the most conservative place in all of Central Asia I expected the conversation to be distant and formal. That said, I was surprised when they started by shaking hands and then talking in a very friendly way—you simply wouldn't see unrelated Uzbek men and women shaking hands in Osh, let alone in somewhere even more conservative like the Fann Mountains.

The cocoons are softened in hot water, then strands from a bunch of them are gathered together

They're then threaded through a grommet.

Then spread out again under the upside-down bowl, then bought together again at the top of the canvas, then fed to the spinning wheel.

Cocoons and the silk worm inside.

Tying bundles of silk in preparation for dying. The tied sections resist the dye, and you have to re-tie the bundles with each successive colour.

Some of the spices and plants used to naturally dye the silk.

The same sort of looms that we saw in Hotan.

Except there are more people weaving here, and the room is appropriately scruffy and cramped as befits a real, working factory.

They also have (very noisy) automated looms at Yodgorlik.

In their shop they sell not only silk products but carpets and ceramics.

These kinds of ceramics are very common at all tourist sites in Uzbekistan, and are actually quite attractive. In nearby Rishtan there's a famous workshop.

Kumtepa Bazaar

Kumptepa is a huge semi-weekly bazaar on the outskirts of Margilan, operating on Thursdays and Sundays. For some reason Lonely Planet seems quite enamored of this bazaar, but we obviously have very different tastes given that they also like Osh's bazaar a lot, too. But although Kumtepa is big, is pretty darn soulless, with an industrial feel and little charm. Sure, there are large sections selling silks and fabrics, but you see this at a lot of bazaars, and much of the bazaar deals with hardware, parts, and other random things.

It is pretty easy to get there, though, as regular marshrutkas run there from the east-west road running past the central green market, which is just north of the Yodgorlik workshop.

Sewing machines, bric-a-brac, home appliances, and all sorts of stuff are sold at Kumptepa.

Woman sell nuts and fabrics, but most of the sellers are men.

The green market

Back in town, the green market was actually a lot more interesting to me. As in Dushanbe and Almaty, they artfully stack their produce in little pyramids, which is so much more appealing than random piles of fruits and vegetables.

There are often sections devoted to pickled vegetables, including a surprising number of Korean salads.

Women sell the salads, while men sell the produce. This style of covered market is typical of Uzbekistan.

Margilan to Tashkent

With the help of a local I was pointed in the direction of the gathering point for share taxis to Tashkent, and once there I stuck to my guns and negotiated down to the price listed in Lonely Planet. This actually involved the driver pretending he wouldn't agree and me standing around for a while until another driver agreed (not much risk with this strategy, as you're going to be waiting for the car to fill up, anyway). The upshot was that I paid 27,000 for the 315km ride from Margilan to Tahskent—the exact same as I paid for the 120km ride from the border to Margilan.

Hay stacked by the side of the road.

A motorbike and cargo-carrying side car.

The Ferghana Valley is separated from the rest of Azbekistan by a small chokehold of the Tian Shan mountains, pinched from the north by Kyrgyzstan and the south by Tajikistan. The Kamchick Pass rises to 2,267 meters, while the Ferghana Valley is between 400 and 450m, while western Uzbekistan is even lower. There's a police checkpoint in the pass, where documents are checked (Uzbekistan seems fearful of Islamic funadmentalism, and the Ferghana Valley is the most devout region of Uzbekistan).

Billboards on the mountain ridges hint at Uzbekistan's economic development.

These weird frames that look like they might be for placement of solar panels—or for preventing avalanches in the winter, line some of the slopes.

It was dark by the time we arrived in Tashkent, which has a population of over two million. On the outskirts of Tashkent there was another weird inspection station, but I think this one had more to do with tolls or car inspection than anything else, as we got out of the car while it drove to some inspection station, then rejoined it when it reappeared about 100 meters down the road. This happened to pretty much all the cars on this road, so there was a bustling business in selling snacks and refreshments. It was all a bit bizarre, and although we were still quite a ways from he city,  signs of urbanization were evident soon thereafter, as Tashkent is a sprawling city.

We were dropped off somewhat near the train station, and I followed a tram line back to the station, and after checking out the train schedules I took the subway to Chorsu, where I tracked down the Gulnara Guesthouse in the old town (the main street on the border of old town is full of upscale bars and KTV joints, so stepping off them into the old-town alleys is interesting).

Tashkent is pretty expensive, and at the Gulnara it was 42,000 som—$15—for a bed in the dorm room, breakfast included. That being said, the guesthouse was actually pretty nice, with real furniture like a real house, and not the spartan decoration and cheap furniture that you tend to see in guesthouses, hostels, and cheap hotels. What's more, it had an actual bath in one of the bathrooms, so I was able to indulge in a short bath for the first time since Jeti-Oguz. As a bonus the Gulnara issues registration slips for stays of even one night (you need to stay in a registered hotel at least once every three nights, where they give you registration slips that you may have to show to the police or border officials, but some hotels won't register you or give you slips unless you stay a certain number of nights).

Budget

October 31, from Osh to Margilan: 270 Kyrgyz som + 31,300 Uzbek som

• Fried goods: 30 som
• Chocolate, snickers, bread, cookies, tissues, coke, etc: 240 som
• Taxi from Dostyk to Margilan: 27,000 som
• Internet: 2,500 som
• Drinks: 1,800 som

November 1, from Margilan to Tashkent: 81,700 som

• Grechka, tea & sugar at overnight chaikhana: 6,400 som
• Taxi to Kumptepa: 1,800 som
• Taxi to Tashkent: 27,000 som
• Room at Gulnara: 42,000 som
• Bread, 2 drinks, carrots: 3,200 som
• Internet: 1,600 som
• Subway: 700 som

Rejected at the Kyzyl Art border, sleeping with border guards, and rerouting through Karamyk on the way to Dushanbe

Border woes and border bliss

Although I was supposed to be picked up early in the morning, the driver rang the hotel to let them know we wouldn't be leaving until closer to noon. As the day dragged on, the time was pushed back, and we didn't actually end up leaving until the middle of the afternoon. This was a disappointment (but about par for the course when trying to travel cheaply in Central Asia), as it meant that it would be dark by the time we arrived at the Tajik border. I figured that I would probably try to get out at Karakol and spend the night there, and then continue on to Murghab the next day, so as to be able to enjoy some of the high Pamir scenery.

And so it was that we arrived in Sary Tash at dusk, where we filled up on cheap Kyrgyz gas before leaving town and heading south towards the Kyzyl-Art border. Although the Trans Alay mountains on the southern side of the Alay valley look close, they are actually some 40km from the northern side of the valley—and the road to the border, unlike the east-west highway that runs through the Alay Valley, is rough and crumbling.

The Kyrgyz border station, Bar Dobo, is in the valley floor, at the start of a sub-valley that cuts its way up the Trans Alays. Getting stamped out of Kyrgyzstan was simplicity itself, as the driver simply grabbed out passports and ran into a nearby building where the border guards were located. By this time it was dark and cold at this altitude, so we were all happy to stay inside the right-hand-drive Pajero.

After being stamped out we started driving up towards the border, switchbacking up the mountain towards the end, before summitting at the the 4,280 meter high Kyzyl-Art border.

A Tajik border guard approached and took our passports from our driver. This is when the problems began: although I had a visa and the required GBAO permit, they were claiming that this border could only be used by tourists leaving Tajikistan, and couldn't be used to enter Tajikistan. Although this should have been true during the period when GBAO was off-limits to tourists, it made no sense now that the territory had reopened for tourists.

Of course, something could be arranged, but only if I paid them $100. This was pretty outrageous, and a price I wasn't willing to pay. My driver really wanted me to pay, as he would have to drive me back if I was rejected, and when I said that I only had $20 on me (this was really the only small currency I had on me), the border guards rejected this amount, and I was denied entry.

The driver thus had to bring me back down the mountain. There was a small building about halfway between the border posts, and although there was supposed to be someone there who would let people stay there, the building was uninhabited and locked up tight when we arrived. We had to go all the way back down to the Kyrgyz border post, and after a brief discussion they let me stay with the customs guards in one of the buildings.

I was kind of surprised by the border post buildings. Although they were in the middle of nowhere, they were much nicer than most houses you see in places like Sary Tash or Sary Moghul, no doubt because they were Soviet-built government buildings. Instead of having stoves for heating, all the buildings had hot-water radiators and were really quite warm. The rooms I was allowed to see were empty, with typical tapchan-style mattresses and bedding being laid out at night. Despite being Soviet built, and originally having a decent shower block in the basement (the showers apparently no longer functioning, however), the toilets remained long-drop outhouses.

One of the younger off-duty guards spoke pretty good English and wanted to know if he could play a video on my netbook. It turns out he wanted to watch a video that had been taken by a visiting TV station that was covering border security patrols (Tajikistan being a smuggling point for Afghan drugs, and this border being one of the borders through which drugs transit). But really he wanted to have a bit of a laugh about his boss, who was narrating one of their night patrols, but who was also so out of shape he had to stop and pant every minute or so as they walked outside.

Racism: one of the top American cultural exports

The next morning, we were joined at breakfast by an older officer who was quite the character. He spoke basically no English, but was an effective mime, and made fun of his partner when he heard him approaching, mimicking a trudging giant. He then said he had a wide nose, and looked African. Uh oh... do we have a Soviet-Kyrgyz racist here? I still don't know what to think, but he was just getting started and it was about to get much more complex. It turns out that—according to him—his partner actually did have some African ancestry, though it's difficult to see.

What's easier to see is that there is a generational and geographic difference in how people view race, and that American media doesn't always translate well or communicate positively; although this older Kyrgyz guy didn't know English, he did know the N-word. I don't think he knew how it is understood in Western—let alone North American—culture, but his younger colleague did and was clearly uncomfortable translating what he was saying. But basically, he started out by saying his partner was "half-nigger" (I'm going to use the language he used, because I think it's the only way to properly communicate the impact of what he said on my ears, and convey the complexity of the situation). Which was shocking for me to hear, and uncomfortable for his translating colleague to hear, but I honestly think he was oblivious to the baggage associated with the word. I say this because he then told me about how much he loved "niggers," saying he loved their lips and asses. He then went on to talk about the type of people he loved, including Halle Berry, Jennifer Lopez, and (somewhat surprisingly) Katherine Zeta Jones, asking me if I had any pictures of them on my computer. He then showed me pictures of himself he had taken with a couple of black American girls at the border, commenting on how beautiful they are.

It was an interesting experience, and as I said I'm still not sure what to make of it. There's certainly something to be said about the corrosive effect of American media in popularizing and even legitimating certain racist phrases and stereotypes, and while there's also some sort of sterotyping going on with the border guard (who also likely harbours anti-Uzbek sentiment, for example), I'm not sure if I should think of his stereotyping as qualitatively worse than North American stereotypes about Russian women, or "Asian" women, or anything along those lines. I mean, this is a guy whose only exposure to black people comes from movies/media and the very odd tourist: to the extent he harbors views about blacks that we would consider racist, to what extent is he or Kyrgyz society to blame, and to what extent is the West?

Anyway, after our interesting breakfast we went outside where they were inspecting a couple of old Soviet-era trucks coming back to Kyrgyzstan. They were largely empty, as I think they were used mainly to carry barrels of cheap Kyrgyz fuel into Tajikistan, but it took about an hour to inspect them. They put me on one of the trucks and we bounced our way down to the junction near Sary Tash, where I got out to hitch a ride west to the border.

The border guards I stayed with. The guy in the middle is the one who loved Halle Berry, while the one on the left is his partner. The truck on the right is the one they put me on to head back down to Sary Tash.

Looking north towards Tajikistan, with my Halle Berry-loving friend.

Kashgar to Osh in two not-so-easy days

There are basically two ways to get from Kashgar to Kyrgyzstan: the Torugart pass and the Irkeshtam pass. The Torugart pass is arguably more scenic and takes you past the Tash Rabat caravenserai on the way to Naryn, but it's a very difficult route to take because China requires a special permit and guide to take you on this route, which effectively means you have to arrange for private transportation with a tour agency. The Irkeshtam pass is much more heavily traveled, and is served by a once- or twice-weekly international bus running between Kashgar and Osh, with tickets running close to $100.

In 2012, it was also possible to hitch-hike over the border. In order to do so, you would take a share taxi or minibus to Ucha/Wuqia/Ulugqat from Kashgar's international bus terminal, then go to the Chinese customs point in Ucha, where you would be stamped out of China (despite being about 135 km  from the actual border) and put onto a truck by Chinese customs officials. You would then take the slow and bumpy ride to the border, which can take up to 6 hours because of the roadwork that limited your speeds to as low as 20 km/h. After that, cross into Kyrgyzstan and then either take a share taxi from the border to Osh or Sary Tash, or jump back on the truck and make it to Osh the next day.

I decided to try this, as it was better than waiting for the bus (which is reported to be quite bad) and braving the multi-hour waits to buy tickets at the international bus station. If you're trying to do something similar today, Caravanistan and Far West China have all the details: the short story is that you absolutely need to take a taxi between Ucha and the border.

Road to Ucha/Ulugqat

When you arrive at the international bus station, there will be huge lines (I estimated it would take 6 hours to get to the front of the line, as I waited in one before realizing I didn't have to), but you don't need to wait in them in order to go to Ucha. Instead, head out of the doors and into the courtyard behind the station: although someone will check you for a ticket, just tell them you're going to Ucha/Wuqia/Ulugqat, and they'll let you through. At the back left, there should be a stand with the Chinese characters for Ucha. I paid 60 yuan for the ride to Ucha in a share taxi, which is apparently a huge overpay, but then again there were only three of us.

Not far outside Kashgar.

Views like this make me regret taking so many night buses and trains.

Note the stone buildings and pens on the left.

Hohhot & Inner Mongolia

Erenhot to Hohhot to Hostel: an exercise in frustration

Once I made my way from the random location where the jeep from the border dropped me off in Erenhot, I made my way to the railway station to get a ticket on the train to Hohhot. Unfortunately, it turned out that the train to Hohhot wasn't running that day, so I would have to make alternate plans. I went outside, and there was a bus parked out front, but it turned out that it was only running to Beijing. One of the Mongolian kids getting on the bus was interested in me, since I was a foreigner, and his mom spoke a little English. She talked to the driver, and when they heard I wanted to go to Hohhot, they told me to wait and that there would be a bus. They gave me a ride to the bus station and told me where I could get a ticket to Hohhot. Since Lonely Planet had no useful information on Erenhot, I would have been in a real jam without their help—a GPS with offline maps would also have been a lifesaver on so many occassions.

Anyway, the bus to Hohhot was interesting. All the passengers were Chinese, and they displayed typical Chinese manners: eating sunflower seeds and spitting the shells on the ground, which is also where they put their garbage; smoking even though it's a non-smoking bus; and generally being noisy and annoying. A couple of times we passed really touristy ger camps—complete with concrete gers or lots of modern buildings or restaurants surrounded by a few traditional gers (which the Chinese call Mongolian steamed buns)—and whenever we passed them the Chinese would whip out their cameras and furiously take pictures of them... on a trip in Inner Mongolia from the Mongolian border to Hohhot. I think this tells you something about just how Mongolian Inner Mongolia is—even if they do technically still use the traditional Mongolian script there.

I arrived in Hohhot an hour or so before sunset, and immediately went next door to the train station to try and buy an overnight ticket to Pingyao for departure the next evening. I was lucky enough to get a hard sleeper berth, in what was one of my easier ticket-buying experiences. This station also had turnstiles at the exit lanes to prevent queue jumping, which was a nice touch.

The next objective was to find the hostel recommended in Lonely Planet, the Anda Guesthouse. It turns out that they not only had the Anda placed incorrectly on the map, but Michael Kohn had completely botched the written directions on how to get there, with incorrect streets, incorrect bus stops, and instructions to go one direction when you were supposed to go the opposite direction. It took almost 90 minutes to find the hostel from the time I was two blacks away. When I finally arrived and checked in, other travelers told me similar stories of futility.

There was a 60-something Australian lady staying in my room that night, and we swapped storied and recommendations as she was coming from Central Asia and headed towards Mongolia—the opposite path as me. I think I got the better end of the deal, as she wrote down some recommendations in my Lonely Planet on the best places to stay and get information, whereas I only told her how to get to UB by local train.

The 2012 Olympics were on at that point, and the girls working at the hostel were eagerly watching. Chinese Olympic coverage seems to be like American: very patriotic and covering mainly the events that they do well. So they were naturally showing women's weightlifting, and I got to hear commentary from the Chinese girls about how mannish the lifters from other countries looked. Not that the Chinese lifters looked particularly feminine, but whatever.

One day in Hohhot

Inner Mongolia, like Tibet and Xinjiang, is an Aurtonomous Region. This is meant to reflect their distinct cultures and suggest additional autonomy, but in practice I think it's all window dressing. Inner Mongolia should be an example to both Tibet and Xinjiang as to just how successful Beijing can be in replacing minority communities and population with Han immigrants, though: Hohhot is almost 90% Han, with only about 9% being Mongol and 2% being Hui Mulsim; Inner Mongolia as a whole is 79% Han and only 17% Mongol.

In Hohhot you'll see Mongolian script on a lot of buildings, and the typically blocky style of quotidean Chinese architecture is enlivened with ger-like decorations on the tops of many buildings, but the feeling on the streets is decidedly Han, with the most exotic and noticeable accents coming from the Hui minority, and not the Mongols. I wonder if part of this isn't because China is a food-centric culture, and Hui food is better than Mongolian food. Of course, the fact that Hui are just Muslim Han while Mongols are not Han may have something to do with it, too.

There's a world of difference between Mongolian parks and this park in Hohhot. For one, Hohhot hardly looks anything like Ulaanbaatar (both are classified as cold semi-arid climates), as there are artificial ponds, green grasses, and lush trees. But the bigger difference is in terms of how people use the parks: in China they're real places of communal socialization and heavily used as such (here by the ubiquitous ballroom dancers).

Rollerblading class.

Mongol newlyweds in front of ornamental pond.