Uzbekistan Day 4

Day 4 in Uzbekistan, last-minute schedule changes

– To cross the Kyzulkum desert betwen Bukhara and Khiva, the preferred method of transport is a shared taxi. It’s a simple system really. Each car has four passenger seats, one in the front and three in the backseat, and you purchase a seat and travel cross-country with three random locals. You could always buy out the taxi to make it a private ride, but then you’d have to pay for all four seats.

Shared taxi, UZBEK-style

– Most of the shared taxis are driven by private individuals without a taxi license, so it’s relatively hush-hush. When I used a local city cab to get from my Bukhara hotel to the bazaar where these shared taxis hang out at, the driver of that taxi told me to not get out because there were police officers nearby. These are the “gangsters” that the taxi drivers at Tashkent Airport warned me against. The driver, at least for my trip today, was a super nice guy who was laughing a lot, spoke a few words of English, and offered to take me all the way to a hotel with an available room (I had no booking due to the last-minute change) for no extra cost. I’ll let you decide whether or not that makes him a gangster.

– I get in the car and there are already two people in this “taxi”, also heading to Khiva. All we need is one more passenger to get going. I got there at around 1:30PM and figured I’d pay the empty seat by 3PM if no one else showed up. We got our fourth passenger shortly after 2PM, and after about 10 minutes of figuring out how to squeeze 5 people AND their luggage into a Chevrolet Lacetti, we got going.

– It was not long before our driver gave me a reason to label him gangster after all. Shortly after departing Bukhara, he makes a couple of phone calls, and on a pretty remote road in the countryside, a car drives up behind us and honks the horn, to indicate he is a “friend”. They pull over to the side, and we stop behind and all of us passengers wait in the car as our driver gets out, walks over to his friend, picks up a black plastic bag full of cash without giving anything in return (it was surely several millions of Uzbek Som, the local currency, but due to inflation, that could be just a couple of hundred dollars). The driver just stashed this plastic bag full of money underneath his seat and we continue, without any of the passengers saying anything.

– It was a trip of roughly 500km/300mi, so we had to stop twice for gas on the way, which was a nice opportunity to get out and stretch your legs, use the restroom, buy some bread, chat with the locals without any understanding of a common language, and fend off wild, possibly rabid dogs. Just the usual entertainment options at your average Uzbek reststop in the middle of the desert. Our driver couldn’t stop laughing when I took photos at the reststops (didn’t get any pics of the dogs though, but let’s just say these weren’t cute puppies).

– There’s not much traffic on the desert highways, which is nice because the road conditions are usually so terrible that the driver is more preoccupied with avoiding bumps, trash and holes in the road. Technically you should drive on the right hand side in Uzbekistan, but drivers zig-zag in order to avoid any “obstacles”, sometimes you’re on the left, sometimes on the right, sometimes in the middle of the road…you get the picture. If you need a drink and don’t like spilling it all over, it’s usually a good idea to scan the road ahead to anticipate whether the driver will make a hard turn to the left to get around any bumps. All of it is easier with no oncoming traffic. Another driver at one point tried to overtake us, and a long line of cars and trucks in front us, but he then realized there was a car coming the opposite way. Instead of getting back on the right side of the road, he simply pulled over in the left shoulder and continued overtaking, so that the opposite car could pass between. Have I mentioned that they don’t wear seatbelts here? I got yelled at the first time I tried to put on the seatbelt.

– After the sunset and shortly before the city of Urgench, our driver makes a couple of phone calls, someone pulls up on a remote road, honks the horn, and our driver gets out to hand over the large plastic bag full of cash, getting nothing in return. It should be noted that although Uzbekistan certainly has several banks and local credit cards, ATMs etc., it’s predominantly a cash economy, so I’m not trying to blackmail the driver here. It could be that transferring money for the Uzbek people, means simply asking a friend going cross-country to bring a large plastic bag of cash with them. I’ll never know, and I certainly didn’t ask. The other locals in the car seemed to have no problem with what was going on.

– After about 7-8 hours we reached Khiva, where I will be spending the night before heading to the Turkmenistan border tomorrow for a group tour with Young Pioneer Tours, the same tour company I used to get into North Korea. We will be touring the capital Ashgabat, which holds the Guiness World Record for highest density of white marble buildings, get out into the countryside, camp in the literal middle of desert near the “Door to Hell” (google it, it’s a real place and you won’t be disappointed) and we will be attending celebrations of Turkmenistan’s Independence Day. My internet access will be quite limited over the next week, so there will certainly be no more daily updates for now, but if I can get a sporadic WiFi connection, I might post something about what we have seen.
For today’s photos, here’s a picture of me and one of my seat mates and various scenes from the car ride today.