Where are Ron and Ellen?
Central Asia, 17 September - 18 November 2009
Ron and Ellen and Amir Timur (Tamerlane), Tashkent, Uzbekistan, September 2009
Uzbekistan's Silk Road cities: Bukhara, Khiva, Samarkand, October 2009
To see photos of Bukhara, click on the thumbnail at the left.
To see photos of Khiva, click on the thumbnail at the left.
To see photos of Samarkand, click on the thumbnail at the left.
Silk Road cities
To see photos from Uleg Bek's observatory in Samarkand, click on the thumbnail at the left.
12 October 2009
Tashkent, UzbekistanDear Family and Friends,
We are now back in Tashkent after visiting three fascinating Silk Road cities, Bukhara, Khiva, and Samarkand. The seasons are changing, and our two days in Samarkand were chilly and the nights were cold. Today is warmer again, but not hot as it was when we were first here a week ago.
Transportation has been "interesting." We left Tashkent on Sunday 4 October, taking a marshrutka (mini-bus with 12-15 seats that leaves for its destination when filled) for the 5 hour trip to to Samarkand then a shared taxi (4 people plus driver in a compact car, 3.5 hours) on to Bukhara. One leg of the trip would have to be a long one, so we decided to get that out of the way first. After our time in Bukhara we took a shared taxi across the Kyzylkum desert (5 hours) to Khiva, and the same back again to Bukhara, a shared taxi to Samarkand, and a shared taxi back to Tashkent. The roads are variable, with some random sections being quite good but easily half of the sections being mainly pot-holes and washboard (and drifting sand in some parts of the desert). The taxis all go at breakneck speed. Going across the desert on the way to Khiva Ron could see the speedometer and said our speed varied between 100 and 145 km/hr (60-90 mph), with the slower speed reserved for the roughest sections of road; coming back the speedometer wasn't working, but since we made the trip in about the same time, we assume the same speeds. On the desert road there is very little traffic, and you can look ahead and see there nothing coming for several kilometers. Drivers use all portions of the road based on what looks like the (relatively) smoothest part, which may or may not be what we more conservative folks think of as the "correct" side to drive on. Of all the vehicles we were in, including Bob's car, only one had a working gas gauge.
All three of the cities have beautiful buildings dating from 14th-19th centuries, immense towers, palaces, mausoleums, medressas (schools), mosques, and minarets. They are built of brick covered with a sort of stucco made of mud and straw (it would be adobe in Peru), and all the building have gorgeous and complex tilework decorating them inside and out. Both Khiva and Bukhara have walled citadels that were also palaces. Although we saw only one camel, Katya, the camel in Khiva with whom tourists can pose for photos, it is easy to imagine entire caravans of camel wending their way between the buildings. Many of what are now large open plazas between buildings would have been wall to wall bazaars in the Silk Road trading days. Words simply can't do it justice, and you will have to look at the photos.
Despite having the same types of buildings, the three cities are quite different. Khiva is a small and compact site, with the old buildings inside a city wall. Although some people live within the wall (and our bed and breakfast was inside it), it is primarily a historical site preserved in its entirety, reminding us a bit of Williamsburg, Virginia. The modern city of ~50,000 is outside of the historical area. So while the buildings are gorgeous, the main life within the city walls is tourists and vendors selling to them, a bit of a disconnect from reality. Bukhara is a larger city, 255,000, and while the old buildings are in one general area, they are much more intermixed with the ordinary life of the city. You certainly see large numbers of tourists and vendors/services for them, but you have a sense of regular day-to-day life going on there as well. Samarkand is the largest modern city, ~405,000, and the historic sites are much more spread out in an area perhaps 6-8 kms in diameter, with regular living quarters, businesses, and so on in between. So there you see tourists at the various historic sites but not as many in between. For those on our distribution list with an interest in astronomy, we did visit Ulugbek's observatory in Samarkand (originally built in the 1420s) and took lots of photos, including ones of the curved track of his 30m astrolab, unearthed by archaeologists in 1908. Ulugbek was Amir Timur's (Tamerlane's) grandson, whose reputation as an astronomer far outlived his reputation as a ruler. And in Samarkand there was one of the most beautiful walking streets we've seen anywhere. There were two very large sidewalks flanking the actual walking street, which was about 1 lane wide. It ran for about a mile between one of the major historical sites and the central Samarkand market. There were trees and grass on either side between the paving and the buildings that lined the street (shops, schools, a clinic), some pedestrian entrances to the narrow winding streets of one of the old parts of the city, but no vehicular crossings at all.
Everywhere we went tourists were primarily in tour groups, some large (25 or so), some small (just 2-4 people with a guide), but we saw and met very few independent travellers like us, with the exception of the people at our bed and breakfast in Samarkand, most of whom seemed to be independent travelers. We talked to several people who had joined tours because they were unable to get visas to travel independently (no problem for us, again thanks to Bob), but also talked to some people who said they had no problem getting visas. So it all seems very inconsistent.
In the shared taxi from Samarkand back to Tashkent we met a remarkable young Uzbek man. He is a vet and also had studied animal husbandry at Penn State University in the US, and is a consultant to dairy farms in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Russia. He works with farmers having 200-plus dairy cows (there are no mega-farms here), and helps them with all aspects of the operation: milking equipment, computer programs, feeding, calving cycles, artificial insemination and breeding, selling the milk, economics, etc. Farmers are using primarily Holstein cows (although he said his favorite cows are Jerseys), which give far more milk than local breeds, but have to be fed hay etc 365 days a year because 1) there is a blood parasite which they would get from grazing that local cattle are immune to, and 2) there is not enough pasturage in this dry climate to feed the cows. He talked passionately about educating both himself and the young students in the field in the newest modern methods of animal husbandry ("I want to keep learning and learning!"), and said that the professors in the universities are very conservative (i.e. educated in old Soviet methods and unable or unwilling to deviate). He is so passionate about educating new students in the field that he himself buys books from Europe and the US, pays to have them translated, and then gives them to the universities. He is currently working with the government to set up two demonstration farms in Uzbekistan where farmers can come and see the modern methods being practiced, and hopes eventually to have demonstration farms in each of the country's provinces. He is also hoping to go next fall to Babcock University in Wisconsin for a master's degree program. But he will then come back here; he talked at length about how important it is for people like him to work to make things better in Uzbekistan, how much things have improved in the 18 years of independence, and how wrong he thinks it is for people to start businesses here and make money and then take it out of the country and leave the country to live elsewhere. He was bursting with ideas, and was a unique combination of visionary and pragmatist. His wife is also a vet (she works with chickens), and he has a daughter. His brother has a dairy farm, and he joked that his brother's cows were the best cared for in the country. With all the things he has done and is currently involved in, we were stunned when we discovered he is only 28. So it was a fascinating 3.5 hour taxi ride!
Oh, yes, on the Saturday night before we left Tashkent we went with Bob and some other folks to the opera where we saw a very good production of Rigoletto in a beautiful theater, $2.50 per ticket for excellent seats.
We both hate shopping and we've put off doing that until now, so that is one of our tasks in the next few days here in Tashkent. Ron is working on some of the logistics and options for his travel to Tajikistan after Ellen goes home. And there are still a few more sights we want to see here. Current plan is to head next for Shymkent, Kazakhstan, probably on Thursday, spend a few days there, and then take the overnight train back to Almaty, leaving Shymkent on Sunday and arriving Monday morning in Almaty.
Love to all,
Ellen and Ron
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Last updated: 30 October 2009
