In Uzbekistan, it’s possible to walk simultaneously through the past and the present.
‘How many of the ’Stans have you done?” was the question as we sat over dinner and a bottle of vodka in a yurt camp below the crumbling ruins of the Ayaz-Qala fort 
somewhere in the deserts of northwest Uzbekistan. Only one: Uzbekistan.
Our dinner companions were a young new entrant teacher from Australia, travelling the ’Stans by himself; an ageing American tour guide; and a young American couple, who were journalists from Beijing. She was researching a book on Silk Road food. Ah, the Silk Road, that fabled name, conjuring camels and caravanserais, exotic fabrics and spices, deserts and mountains, and the hardy endurance of adventurous traders.
Our hostess, Madam (she didn’t offer a name), ran the yurt camp as a tourist venture. She was an engaging, energetic woman with only a few words of English, so communication was achieved through a mixture of Russian, Uzbek, German, French and English until a mutually recognisable word was found.
Travelling in Uzbekistan, it was rare to encounter independent travellers: the yurt camp was the only time. Tour groups are the rule, predominantly European, mostly German – Uzbekistan has been a “playground” for the East Germans since Soviet times – but also French, Dutch and the occasional English one.
It’s an unlikely mixture of the ancient and modern: cellphones and internet cafes are ubiquitous, as is hospitality, but there are no ATMs except in airports and upmarket hotels, and credit card use is ill advised except in upmarket hotels. Donkey carts plod the highway fringes, tourists are still a curiosity that engages children’s interest, and service can be casual to non-existent. Tufts of grass grow through the Tashkent airport tarmac.
We flew from Seoul to Tashkent, Uzbekistan’s capital, winging our way over the roof of the world, the spectacular mountain ranges of Central Asia, landing to the strains of The Blue Danube Waltz. We didn’t have visas and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was a heart-sinkingly empty booth the size of a news-stand. We moved on to passport control, but were sent back. Five minutes extended to an anxious 20, then eventually a harried man arrived. He produced a couple of visas, stuck them into our passports, stamped them, pocketed the US$120 we gave him, and it was done.
Back at passport control, we joined a crowd – there’s no orderly English queue here. Unfamiliar with the subtle art of shoving, we languished. Suddenly, the young man beside me smiled and waved us forward. Practising my Russian, I thanked him – “Spasibo” – and a murmur of appreciation rippled through. Welcome to Uzbekistan.
October, and it was surprisingly hot. In central Tashkent, fountains played around Independence Square (in a country cotton has starved of water). Certainly it wasn’t the ugly Soviet-style city we’d been led to expect. The architecture was grand, monumental even, but that is true across Uzbekistan. It is, after all, the land of Amir Timur (the Tamburlaine of Christopher Marlowe’s play): he who claimed descent from the great Genghis Khan and set out to restore the Mongol Empire. In post-Soviet times, Amir Timur has replaced Lenin as the favoured son and national hero.
Beyond Tashkent is another world: Samarkand, a name freighted with enchantment and myth, and a Silk Road city for 2500 years. It’s Amir Timur’s city. Can enchantment and myth survive an encounter with the quotidian? Well, yes. The Registan, the marvellous trio of madrassas, decorated with stunning blue/green mosaic and tile work – the first built in the 15th century by Ulugh Beg, astronomer, mathematician, sultan and grandson of Timur; the others in the 17th century – has been described as “the noblest public square in the world”. We gazed upon this marvel and agreed. Samarkand is also the place where the sand under your feet, and the piles of mud and straw lying in the streets – to repair the mudbrick buildings of this oasis town – will convince you it’s possible to walk simultaneously through the past and the present.
Bukhara and Khiva, the other two Uzbek Silk Road cities, have more of a museum feel, especially Khiva. In both, the central areas are designed for tourists – chaikhanas (tea houses), gift shops, bazaars loaded with local crafts – but Bukhara is the more interesting.
To sit in a restaurant around the Lyab-i-Hauz, a 17th-century pool, under an ancient mulberry tree and sip beer or green tea is an experience to be savoured. Bukhara is a historical centre of miniature painting. In the bazaars and on the streets young men painstakingly reproduce masterpieces, the finest of which will set you back several hundred American dollars. However, beyond the “tourist precincts” you encounter the real world of poor Uzbeks, struggling to make a living, selling whatever they have on the street; almost half the population lives on less than US$1.25 a day.
It’s a cash economy: everyone wants American dollars or euros. Men hang around on the streets outside hotels and bazaars offering to change your US$100 bills into som for which you need a satchel to hold the 200 or so 1000 som bills you will be given. We were advised against the black market, but in Bukhara the woman selling museum entry tickets offered us a much better rate than the official bank: a booth a few metres away across the passage. Under the careless eyes of an armed policeman, we boldly did the dirty deed.
The yurt camp was about 100km from Khiva. We paid our friendly rogue of a driver the princely sum of US$30 to take us there and to stay the night. His car was old, with no
seat belts in the back, and his English almost non-existent. But he was a better driver than some we had.
The options for getting around are limited: trains or taxis. An almost total absence of road signs and rental cars, coupled with serious petrol shortages, make self-driving difficult. Moreover, beyond Bukhara, Uzbek roads probably haven’t been repaired since the Soviets left: Uzbekistan became a republic in December 1991. Golden desert sand encroaches on ragged tarmac, leaving the highway barely a lane wide in places. Even where the road is wide enough the trucks, buses and cars still zigzag seeking safe passage around massive potholes and corroded surfaces, seemingly ignoring oncoming traffic until the last nerve-wracking moment.
Arriving at the yurt camp in the afternoon, we went in search of Ayaz Kul Lake. Enticing tourist pictures had shown sparkling blue water with swimmers splashing about. It turned out to be a salt-encrusted, stagnant marsh – an environmental disaster. We were told it filled up when the rains came, but considering the state it was in this was hard to believe. In this largely desert country, years of intensive cotton growing have catastrophically depleted the Aral Sea and the Oxus River, and the surrounding landscape is poisoned by salt, fertilisers and pesticides.
Still, as we sat drinking tea on a tapchan (tea bed) while Madam cooked bread in a tandoor oven, watching the sun go down over the desert, the silence interrupted only by the occasional grunt of a camel, any nagging concerns dissipated in the sweetness of the desert air.