Uzbekistan Day 3

– Checked out of my Samarkand B&B and headed for the bus “terminal” (it’s just a huge parking lot full of taxi drivers waiting to mob anyone getting off the buses that pass by once an hour) at the highway on the northern edge of the city to catch a bus to Bukhara. There are two bus terminals quite far from eachother, one for the westbound traffic (to Bukhara), and one for eastbound buses (going mainly to Tashkent). Every bus has their destination written in Cyrilic alphabet on a sign in the front windshield. Got there around 9:30 AM, with no bus in sight, and the first thing that pulls up at 10:00 had a sign saying Тoшкент (Tashkent), which was quite odd, but nevertheless the wrong direction for my travel, so I ignored it. – – Several taxi drivers came up and offered a shared-taxi ride to Bukhara for about double the price of the bus, and I refused enough times until one of them basically said what I believe to be “well then take that bus over there to Bukhara”….wait, wasn’t that bus going to Tashkent?

Taking the bus to Bukhara

– Turns out the bus had changed their sign while parked to Бухоро (Bukhara), which I couldn’t tell from where I was standing. I get on board the bus and find it rather empty, which is a bad indication that we will be waiting for quite a while before departing (when the bus driver is satisfied with the number of passengers to justify even making the trip).

– 10:30 comes and goes….10:45 passes, more and more Bukhara passengers sporadically turn up to get on the bus….at 11:00, still parked in the very same spot, some of the locals started yelling at the bus driver to get going. We finally get going at 11:15, and drive about 8-900 meters to the nearest workshop, where one of the bus drivers has to pick up a can of oil. We still had about 275 kilometers to cover, so this sight was a fabulous start, but it turned out to be mostly a precaution.

– Having learned that Uzbek busses do not stop for lunch, I picked up two round loaves of bread. That’s literally all that’s for sale at these bus terminals. I had bread, a chocolate chip Clif Bar and water for lunch. I don’t feel like complaining, at least I had lunch.

change of plans

– The bus drivers sounded very assuring that we were indeed going to Bukhara, but that was only until we reached the city of Gijduvon, about 60 kilometers northeast of Bukhara, and stopped to unload a few passengers, which is routine. 

– Suddenly they decided “nah, we’re not going to Bukhara” after all, and there was suddenly a mad scramble for seats on the already over-crowded publicly run minibus going Gijduvon-Bukhara that just happened to have parked behind us. There was maybe room for my suitcase OR me, but not both. A random stranger wanted to “help” me, and just ran over with my suitcase and was probably going to just toss it in between the passengers already seated on this minibus, had I not yelled at him to stop. I settled for a shared-taxi with three other passengers going to Bukhara.

Originally posted on my private Facebook account on October 23, 2017