Crossing the Caspian, Uzbekistan to Kyrgystan.

The crossing across the Caspian left at 21:00PM the day after we arrived in Baku, so all worked out well as regards timings and getting ferry tickets etc. We departed in the evening at 21:00pm and arrived into Actau at 02:00am, 26 hours later. The crossing was made on a cargo ship but we were lucky enough to all have cabins, so what little sleep we had after a vodka fuelled night and 03:00am impromptu visit to the engine room, was at least in a proper bed! Clearing through customs was laborious and most of the night was spent sleeping on the floor whilst we waited for the truck to be processed. This was our introduction to Kazakstan and things never really got much better on the 4 days it took us to transit through to the Uzbekistan boarder. To sum up: it is flat, barren, muddy, home of the worst hotel I have ever had the misfortune to stay in and the least attractive towns, Borat can quite frankly keep it!

The boarder crossing into Uzbekistan was thankfully a lot more straight forward and we were soon through and into the Republic of Karakalpakistan, which is kind of like the Wales of Uzbekistan. The region, once prosperous in cotton production and fishing, is now rendered one of the countries most depressed areas due to the destruction of the Aral Sea in the 1980’s. Our first stop was to the old fishing port of Moynaq. Once one of the two major fishing ports, it now stands 150km from the sea with the poignant reminder of beached ships lying rusting on the former sea bed.

Our second stop in this area was in the capital NuKus and to the Savitsky Art Museum, which houses a huge collection of former Soviet Union art. Not conforming to the Soviet Realism of the time, much of the art was banned from Moscow but found protection here by renegade artist and ethnographer Igor Svatisky. It was excellent and I even bought the t-shirt!

It was then onto Uzbekistan proper and the ancient silk road cities of Khiva, Bukhara and Samarkand which truly surpassed all expectations. Khiva is unlike that of any other central Asian city in that it is preserved almost in its entirety as a ‘living city museum’ with densely packed mosques, minarets, alley ways, all within ancient city walls. Our hotel was smack bag in the middle of everything and a wonderful couple of days were spent exploring the city and taking countless photos!

Bukhara was next and since we have a local guide travelling with us we were able to follow a guided tour of this ancient city. Different from Khiva in that it looks far more lived in and gritty, though the medressas were just as impressive. We once again had a fantastic hotel right in the middle of everything and enjoyed another truck birthday in style with pre-dinner fizz in our hotel courtyard before heading out for a roof top meal to celebrate Jen’s 60th.

If the other two cities had been impressive then Samarkand is ‘The Daddy’ of all Silk Road architecture. It is bigger, more colourful and even more majestic. The main sights of the Registan, Bibi-khanym mosque and the awesome Shah-I-Zinda were truly stunning, hopefully captured by some of these photos!

The last few days involved travelling via Tashkent through the Fergana Valley. Due to travel restrictions the truck had to detour into Tajikistan to then re-enter Uzbekistan to meet us later. We were then left to travel in a convoy of taxis and to endure the most scary 6 hours of my life at the mercy of a guy with a mouth full of gold teeth! Maximum speed I believe was 140 kmph on an unpaved hairpin bend, not cool!

So having survived I am now in Kyrgystan and it’s all about the scenery, it’s all about nature! Beautiful mountain ranges, high altitude lakes and pastures with nomadic communities living in yurts scattering the landscape. Sounds idyllic but it is bloody cold at 3000m!!!