Monthly Archives: July 2021

Uzbekistan

Our Day in Tashkent

We woke up early and had breakfast, then we were on our way out. Our first stop was the Oqsaroy Palace, the previous home of the tyrant Uzbek leader Islam Karimov. Apparently, they are eventually turning his old palace into a science museum, but when we looked in the windows all we saw were big empty rooms.

After wandering around for a while on the huge grounds we eventually found our way to the exhibition hall where they have two large rooms dedicated to the life of Karimov. One has some very interesting art and the other is full of photographs.

The staff was very friendly. They rushed around to find someone to translate for us. When we were about halfway through with our tour a nice woman who spoke fluent English came in. She told us all about the place and was eager to tell us what an amazing man Karimov was and all about the evils of Stalin. They took lots of pictures of us, they were very excited to have us sign their guest book. She explained to me how Karimov’s widow comes in frequently and reads the comment book and how much it means to her. They even gave us a really well made propaganda book about his life. We’ll keep it.

They were so kind and welcoming to us it reminding me of how people are falling for George Bush’s bullshit these days and thinking he’s just a sweet old man. They’ve all somehow forgotten he’s a war criminal. Awww…. but look at those cute little paintings he does. Isn’t he a cutie pie???

Next we went to get local SIM cards since we’re going to be here three weeks. It was completely painless and only cost us $7 for the month. After signing up we got a text saying we had to register our phones at the post office? So, we went to the post office. We walked in and after asking a few people if they spoke English we found someone that spoke enough he could explain what we needed to do and then guess what! We met someone from the US! It was our second time in two days! He’s been living six months in the US and six months in Uzbekistan since the 1990’s! Then!!!! Someone else walked up that lived in New York for ten years, and then!! She started LOL’ing because an old friend of hers she hadn’t seen in a long time walked up and got in line behind us, the two of them had met in New Jersey!! What a small world! We were all standing in line to register our new phone numbers in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The first guy gave us his number and said if we have any need at all to give him a call. That’s always good.

Then we went to the State Museum of Temurids History. They had some interesting stuff. A lot of their stuff we found the most interesting was about Samarkand but we’re going to be in Samarkand next week so I honestly didn’t look too close. It was a beautiful museum.

After that we went to get our car insurance. We were told we really, really have to get insurance while we’re here. We had been chatting with a guy from an insurance company all day via Telegram and we entered the address to the company to Yandex, the local Uber type company, and off we went. When we arrived the guy that opened the door looked confused and had no idea who we were. It turned out we were at the wrong place.

Same parent company, different type of insurance. This guy sold travel insurance while we were looking for the car insurance guy. This guy didn’t speak any English so we did all our communicating through Google Translate. Do you wanna know what he did? He put us in his own car and drove us to the other insurance office!!! Oh my god, the Uzbeks are nice! We got our car insurance.

We had originally planned to hit one more museum before calling it a day but we decided to stop there. We came back to our hotel, ate dinner, and now I’m sitting in bed typing this. The husband and kid are already fast asleep.

There are more things we want to do here but we’ve decided to press on. There are a couple reasons:

#1 We’re making a loop of the country meaning we’ll be back in Tashkent in 16 days

#2 Tashkent is only a 45 minute flight from Almaty. We can always come back. I seriously doubt we will ever again see any other part of Uzbekistan again for as long as we live, but if we really want to we could easily hop on a plane and come to Tashkent for a weekend.

Uzbekistan

Driving to Uzbekistan

We left Almaty on Monday morning and about 350 kilometers into our trip our car broke down. We were pretty angry because we had taken the car for a full tune up just last week. We had told the mechanic we were going on a two-month road trip all around Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan and to make sure our car was fully prepared.  

When I called to say our car had broken down do you want to know what the mechanic said? “Your car has an electrical problem, that’s probably what’s going on.” WTF??? What part of we’re going on a massive two-month road trip through two countries where we don’t speak the languages and we really need to make sure our car is ready did you not understand???????? 

We pulled over on the side of the road, popped our hood up, and stood there for a bit. It only took about two minutes. One of the first cars that drove by us turned around and came back to help us. They didn’t speak any English, we don’t speak any Kazakh, and our Russian is poor, but a broken-down car is universal.  

The guys tried a few things but nothing worked. They communicated that they’d call someone else to help us. We pulled our camping chairs out of the back of our car and kicked back under the shade of a tree. We were in the middle of nowhere and a dog walked up! I love dogs! I was excited! It was happy to see us, wagged its tail, hung out by us, but wouldn’t let us touch it. While I was trying to pet the dog a police car pulled up.  

We went up to talk to the police. They were friendly. They tried to start our car but couldn’t. After they had only been there a few minutes a tow truck pulled up. The first people had come through for us! They really had called a tow truck for us! The tow truck driver spoke with the police for a bit and then he loaded us up. Before we were off, another police car pulled up! I’m pretty sure this police car just wanted to see the Americans broken down on the side of the road in a small town in the middle of Kazakhstan. 

It turned out it was a national holiday in Kazakhstan. We didn’t know that. There was no mechanic anywhere around willing to work on our car. The tow truck driver agreed to drive us to the next small town. We really were in the middle of nowhere. He had been just driving us down the road and randomly stopping at gas stations with garages and even at people’s homes and asking if anyone would work on our car.  

We stayed in a town called Taraz at a shitty hotel that didn’t even have hot water for showers. The ceiling of the bathroom looked like it was going to cave in on us and the knob on the door to our room was so fragile we were afraid to touch it, we opened and closed the door via the lock. But! The receptionist was amazing! We’d stay there again just for him! We had had such a stressful day. It had been awful. This guy was really patient with us and our lack of any way to communicate with him in a language he understood and he ordered delivery food for us.  

The next morning, he was in the process of trying to find a mechanic to come to the hotel and fix our car for us when a fellow guest just happened to say hello to us in English. What?????? Someone that spoke English???? Here??? What were the chances??? This guy was from Kyrgyzstan but has been living in the US since the 1990’s! He’s a long-haul truck driver and just happens to be traveling through Kazakhstan right now. He’s traveling with a good friend who’s a mechanic!!!!!! They fixed our car for us!!! 

So, we were on our way! We drove about three hours and got pulled over by the police. Now, had this been me of 15 years ago I would have been terrified. Heck, had this been me of 7 years ago I would have been terrified, but me today? Naw. You want to know what we did? Or what my husband did? He laughed at them. Literally. Here’s how it went down: 

The kid and I sat in the car; the cops told the husband to come back to the car with him. They tried to get him to pay a $300 USD bribe. He LOL’d at them. He told me one of them laughed when he laughed at the cop. So my husband laughed directly in a cop’s face and then the other cop laughed at that. So, they went back and forth and back and forth the cop trying to get a bribe out of him and my husband kept insisting just give me the ticket. That’s not what they want. They don’t want to give you the ticket. They want you to pay a bribe. In the end, we paid a bribe. $10 USD. Yes, you read that right. $10. The cops originally tried to get $300 out of us.  

We’ve lived in China and Benin. These Kazakh cops aren’t going to get shit outta us.  

Eventually we made it to the Uzbek border. I had read horror stories online about the Zhibek Zholy border crossing and since we have our own wheels, we drove the extra kilometers to the Kaplanbek border where I had read it was much easier to get across. But when we got there were no other cars, only semi-trucks. A guy came out and told us there were no cars allowed at this border crossing. I had the distinct feeling he was lying to us, but we had had such a stressful time getting here so far, we just didn’t have it in us to find out if he was lying or not. We turned the car around and headed toward the dreaded Zhibek Zholy.  

Wow! It was annoying. It was almost empty. There were maybe three other cars there and it still took us four hours to get through customs. I cannot even imagine going through there on a busy day and I do not recommend it. We would never do it again. If we ever visit this country again, we’ll fly in and rent a car. We have no idea what took so long. It seemed as if it was all for show. Every time we thought we were finished they’d call us over to another window and ask us more questions. It was borderline absurd. We were there an hour and a half after already having had our passports stamped! Really! I’ve read stories online of fights breaking out at that border due to the stress and oh my god! I can understand why. There was literally no one in line when we were there, no one, and if I had been there just one more hour, I would have been ready to start screaming. That place must be complete insanity on a busy day. Truly, if you’ve just randomly stumbled upon my blog because you’re thinking of doing this trip…. oh my god…. do not enter through this border. My husband and I are well seasoned travelers. Uzbekistan is our 39th country to visit together. We arrange all our own travels, and we have the utmost amount of patience, but wow! This I can really see how this place could drive someone to violence. We did it in the middle of the pandemic when there was almost no one around and it took us four damn hours to get through. Only do it if you’re a masochist.