Eldorado in Bukhara and Disneyland in Khiva

Posted by roamingreto on 22 Apr 2008 in Uzbekistan | 2 comments

Unfortunately it is time to say good-bye to Uzbekistan. My tourist visa dictates that I’ll have to be out of the country within the next five days. I haven’t been blogging during the last week for two reasons: Internet speed and lack of time because of the overwhelming number of historical sites in Bukhara and its suburbs.

Slow Internet connection speeds simply do not allow any “Ajax”-based applications to run. Blogger, Gmail and Facebook are unusable. Where websites have mobile alternatives (like Facebook at http://m.facebook.com), their trimmed down mobile interface loads OK at 56KBit. But shame on Gmail: Their mobile interface cannot be used from a web browser (at least I could not find anything). Gmail has an alternative “Ajax”-free login (called HTML Login), but that proposed alternative only shows up, when Gmail times out after about five minutes.

Needless to say that I had better things to do and I therefore used Facebook a bit more to update my whereabouts.

The first day in Bukhara, I bumped into a local student – Rustam – who was selling postcards. He offered me to show the city and sites for a small nominal fee. He is eager to learn English and I was eager to view a maximum of things in a minimum amount of time. After three days in Bukhara, I stayed another extra night, because Rustam had introduced me to his friends and family and I was completely immersed in the Uzbek daily life and culture.

During that time I repaired two computers – actually without Internet connection. People here go to the Internet cafe, download data on their USB sticks at analogue speed and then take the data home. Needless to say that exchanging data among friends is very common – and hence a lot of computers are virus infected. My USB-stick (with the PortableApps also got infected and I need to re-download the entire suite of photo-editing programs, ftp programs, etc. as soon as a fast Internet connection (probably in Alma-Ata) shows up.

The best Plov (a local Uzbek rice speciality) was definitely cooked by Rustam’s mother, where I was invited for dinner. After dinner, we went to a local club where I was the only tourist: The “Eldorado”. They actually had very good dance tracks and we smoked water-pipes, danced and ate in a “loungy” setting there. On the day of departure, again I was sad having to move on to the town of Khiva. Bukhara is by far the best city I have seen in Uzbekistan.

Roads at night are pitch black here – there is little to no illumination, even on boulevards. That would not really pose a problem, but the round potholes (somebody seems to do a business with the iron pothole covers) just are open for anyone to fall in. There are a lot of other obstacles as well, so I learned very quickly the word “Ashta Roschna” (which seems to mean “Watch out”) this week. Also, I picked up a couple of easy Uzbek words. The reaction by greeting someone here stating “Asalam aleikum” or saying thank you (“Rahmat”) is stunning. People’s eyes light up and it is almost as if these words might give you a ten percent discount on souvenirs.

On the road to Khiva (in a shared taxi, which Rustam and his friend Sharkzhod organised), I didn’t speak much to the driver. On one hand I knew that he completely ripped me off with the fare, and on the other side, I wasn’t in the mood.

Khiva – to make a long story short – is the Disneyland for Mausoleums, Medressas and the like. Everything here is well preserved, absolutely clean and shiny. There is even entertainment for the kids, while parents visit a museum. I met here two Spanish guys and a girl, as well Daniel – an Australian who is loosely following along the same track and whom I met back in Samarkand. All of us actually hated the overdone preservation. But we made most out of it and visited the “unofficial” Khiva, where we shot plenty of pictures of people and how they live here.

One thing which is striking, is the number of French people visiting Uzbekistan. Everywhere, you can hear French – even the kids begging for free stuff, approach the tourists by stating “bonbon” or “stylo”. Actually, begging kids are an indicator for how much the place is spoiled. And Khiva is very spoiled. There were less beggars in Bukhara and Samarkand – none in Tashkent.

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