7 August, 2012 06:39

8280km, Samarkand, Uzbekistan

I know I am very far behind with my stories, it’s not easy to find the time to write. We are either visiting something, driving or chatting with people, not easy 🙂

In my last post I mentioned the ferry between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. Its dirtiness, the heat, the long waiting time to head out of Baku and the 12 hours to enter Turkmenistan. I feel I was a ghost throughout the whole trip, I couldn’t understand if it was time to sleep or to be awake, to eat or to read. Those 2 days without sleeping really put me off, and the condition of the ferry did the rest. Versina had to sleep in something that looked like a cave, under the train deck. It has been locked there for 2 days, together with all the other cars of course, but poor her, she might have been scared :))) We weren’t in much better condition. The bed wasn’t so uncomfortable, but we didn’t dare entering the toilets, the smell coming out of them was unbearable. Most of us managed not to use the toilet for 2 days… Some guys who got an upgraded room for a further 20 dollars (we had already paid 496 dollars for the ferry…) just saw the shower system breaking off when they tried to open the water. Probably this ferry has been used around the Caspian Sea for the past 100 years!!! The toilet itself was the most disgusting this we have ever seen, and they even blamed us for having filled it…they just tried to squeeze as much money from us as possible, that’s it. The Caspian Sea itself is nothing fantastic. I mean, all you see is either the garbage the crew throws into the water, or immense oil cities and flames burning in the distance. Oh yes, there’s plenty of oil round here. God knows where all the money they make with selling the oil goes…uhm, I might have an idea after seeing the grandiosity of the capitals of those 2 countries and the condition of their roads and other cities…

We just about survived the crossing, hoping for a quick border check…nooooo why not staying 12 hours in the sun, hoping for something to happen, visiting 13 different offices to cumulate 13 different receipts to justify your entrance into the country? ah, did I mention there were no toilets there either?? The best of all was going to a small empty office to get a small handwritten paper with the car registration number and my name on it, an then going to another office to exchange it for another undefined paper which was then used to issue a receipt, before finally getting a bleu paper that would allow you to exit the port area…loved them. Of all the 13 people I met, only the guy issueing visas had a computer, everybody else was religiously handwriting over and over again the same information on huge notebooks. I guess at least a couple of the dollars I paid to enter Turkmenistan went for buying pens and notebooks!

Note to future ralliers: go through Iran, I cannot me any worst, nor difficult nor expensive…and at least you see a beautiful (by what I have been told) country!

When we left the border at 21.30 we decided not to follow the rest of the people: we needed proper sleep, not camping on the side of the road. We found the hotel the put us back into one piece, that made us gain trust in Turkmenistan again, without its shower and comfy bed we would have hated anything Turkmeni, big mistake, the people is so friendly and welcoming and also the landscape is less boring than the Uzbeki one!

First surprise was the nice smiley welcome of the receptionist followed by the lovely airconditioned room, the bath and a super cheap dinner in the hotel restaurant. And as the cherry on the top of the cake…we even had free wireless connection, you got to love it!

We spent 3 full days in Turkmenistan and really what impressed us were the smiles of the people, their happiness in seeing us and being able to talk to us, to take pictures with us. It all started with the lady of the gas station. She told every passer by that we were German and Italian, and upon our question where to buy water, she pointed us to a guy who refilled out water tank. Next on the list is the guy with the white car who drove some time behind us, then overtook us waving, then slowed down showing a white marker pen. He wanted to ask us if he could write something onto Versina. Of course he could, we were even more delighted than him. He gave us his phone number and promised to wash our car in case we would call him, and he also said his profession is giving massages…we didn’t try him, but who knows, ih ih. I shall not forget the young photographer who started chatting with me in a basic english, asking what we were doing, taking pictures of us, showing us a wedding video he made, serving us cold water, treating us like princesses, and waving us goodbye by giving us his own lunch made by his mother that morning. And at the same time the passing by lady with litthe Mischa in her arms. Her english was pretty good and she as well was impressed by us and the car, she was delighted to meet foreigners, and she wanted a picture with Versina, us and Mischa. To thanks us for the picture, she gave us Mischa’s rattle…a little boy in Mongolia will be so happy to receive it. To end the list of nice people we met I have to talk about Gule, the Uzbeki lady running, together with the whole family, a small restaurant somewhere between Turkmenbashi and Ashgabat. We stopped there as it was the only seemingly open place in the whole 600km we drove. All attention was on us, and after serving us food, Gule sat down with us to make conversation. We actually managed to learn a lot from her, using hand gestures and those 5 russian words we know. She is Uzbek but she moved to Turkmenistan as it’s a richer country (and we can certainly confirm it). The town she lives in sees 60 turkish living and working there, probably the majority of her clients (but we did not understand what they actually do…), she is 46 years old and she is just the most smily and friendly person we have met so far. She had a grandson, about 1.5 years old, so sweet. We gave the first globe to this baby. He loved it. Was shy at first, but then was holing it tight, was playing football with it, and his dad showed him the world and where Turkmenistan was, exactly what we had hoped. Thank you all guys for having bought them.

Turkmenistan is a desertic land. It has some mountains in the south, sharing them with Iran, but for the rest it’s desert, sand, more desert and then a couple of main cities, woth Ashgabat being the center of everything. We can say many words about this city. Clean would be the first one I can think of. Large avenues, big bright and shiny cars (all throughout the country, they just have big Toyotas, all of them), communist blocks and marble palaces. We struggled to find a room, firstly because most hotels were fully booked, secondly because the opnes with available rooms were almost impossible to reach by car: one way roads, no street signs, streets bringing you around in circles, at a certain point I wanted to give up and sleep in the car. On our wandering through the city we even stopped to a marvellous Sofitel Hotel, only 230 dollars a night, the receptionist suggested she would call other hotels for us and she proposed one for 180 dollars…I wander wheter she actually noticed our baggy and sweaty clothes, our hair not having seen an hairdresser for long time and our small Versina outisde… Nevermind, we got a room in a nice hotel which also had a swimming pool which we of course used the next morning: isn’t this a holiday after all? For dinner instead we headed to a small place nearby: we were surprised by the waitress speaking basic english but mostly by her proposing a shashlik (meat screwer) with pork…isn’t Turkmenistan very islamic and conservative? Well, apart from pork, we have seen many women dressed just like us and absolutely no head scarves, apart those used to cover from the bloody hot sun (we reached 43 degrees at 3pm in the desert…luckily Versina had air-co!).

The next day we had to reach the middle of the desert to see the "Gates of hell", a crater created by the implosion of a gas pumping-out tower: the smart soviets instead of closing the crater they set it on fire and has been on now for 40 years…good place for tourists at least, and for free! Oh yes, they do have plenty of museums in Ashgabat, but they are all not very worth the 10-15 dollars they ask for the entrance. Not only this, they have theme parks and cable cars which are state of the art but are open randomly. And then they have the brightest and cleanes road in the whole world: few km long street that pass in front of the grandiose president palace, all the ministry buildings, big firms head quarters and whatever else they thought of building. A joy of white marble, fountains, lamp posts, new stadium, big "eye" building and whetever crazy architects could think of to satisfy the ego of Turkmenbashi (the big ruler of that country for many years: better calling him a dictator I’d suggest. There are his statues at every corner, I am not joking!) and the one of his successor, bit "nicer" guy but still not who we would call a democrat..And in the same area we cannot forget the police at every corner, checking out all your moves. And not only…stopping you if the car is not shiny clean…damn, we should have accepted the offer of the guy we had met the day before. A policeman saw our dirty car, informed the one at the next junction and this one stopped us, pointing out the dirt…shit shit shit, we are gonna get a big fine for it (but where is it written we have to clean out car to get into that area????). Luckily we had learnt what scares police off…speaking in english and showing them a map of the city: you are sure you’ll be released and with all the money within seconds! It certainly worked in the city, but not in the desert where there is just one road heading north. There we missed an old almost fading away stop sign, we got stopped and had to pay 20 dollars, nice bribe for the policeman who has to sit along this empty and sunny road. Less nice for us, but nothing we could do, better not mess up with policemen!

The Gates of Hells were very impressive, we didn’t see them in the night which should be even more spectacular. Well, we had some random guys helping us out of a sandy road (ups…I again over estimated my ability in driving in sand!!!) and then offering to take us to the crater, how could we refuse. For the night we camped around there, with at least another 5 rally cars and the 2 bikers: the "idiots abroad" team are very nice englishmen, nice companion for the next few evenings. They are the kind of people we expected to meet on this rally: sharing, caring, joking, chatting, helping eachother, thanking for a small favour (we offered them a good pasta!!), waving us goodbye when it was time to part away, and promising to meet in Slovenia, Nick has a house there, this worls is so small, ih ih.

We were honestly a bit disappointed of some of the other teams, we expected more support, while it seems that everyone searches help only when he needs it but is not ready to give it if someone else asks for it. For some people every gesture was a burden, being annoyed by questions… Sometimes I felt like some people is taking this rally as a competition of whatever sort: being there first, spending as little money as possible, being the first to get through the border and leaving the rest behind even if in trouble, not sharing information… Should be an attitude to be studied by psychologists (I guess Sandy should write a paper on this!!). I hardly ever experienced this in all my travels. Backpackers tend to help eachother, to share information, to support, to bond in difficult situations. Here we just saw people taking the lead and not giving freedom of thought to others…Whatever, we managed to find good and interesting people, and when we are alone we still enjoy lots what we are doing. Luckily me and Sandy have a similar way of taking travel or at least this travel. Let’s try to visit, not to stress, to take one thing at a time and be happy. And if happiness is spending 71 dollars for a nigh in a nice hotel, why we shouldn’t do it??

Right, back to Turkmenistan and our last day there, we wanted to cross early to Uzbekistan and reach Khiva at a decent time. If it wasn’t for the most crappy road ever seen so far, we would have been very fast that day. But we hit this almost unpaved road, I would probably describe it as a very old paved road with now holes after holes, chipping stones and not much paved surface anymore. We thought this would be the worst road every…ah ah, we hadn’t seen the Uzbeki ones yet!

Exiting Turkmenistan has been a pleasure: not because we didn’t like the country, but because the guards were so friendly and smily and helpful…we were out in 45 minutes, waved goodbye after taking a picture together…I mean, they took a picture of us!!! Uzbekistan welcome us a bit coldly: very serious guards and a detailed search of the car. They were looking for medicins (it seems smuggling antibaiotics is a big deal here!), luckily Sandy could not find hers so we got through within 1 hour without much annoyance.

We are now relaxing and sipping tea on the terrace of our B&B in Samarkand, time to head off to see the sites in the evening light (but above all at the low temperature of 30 degrees instead of the 37 of this morning!). Uzbekistan chapter to follow…this oen is long enough!