Nutty, in a beautiful sort of way
Alison Horwood talks to a Kiwi mum and daughter on an odyssey to rarely-travelled Asian Uzbekistan.
When Vivienne Lowe and her daughter Anna told people they were planning a journey to Uzbekistan, they received two standard responses: the first, ‘‘Why on earth do you want to go there?’’ and the second, ‘‘Great, but where is it?’’
For the record, Uzbekistan sits on the continent of Asia, bordered on all sides by the desert and mountain ranges of five landlocked countries: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan.
As a destination, Uzbekistan is barely on the tourist map – it’s one of the least-visited countries in the world – but for Viv and Anna, it ticked a lot of boxes; aweinspiring architecture, a rich history that mixed Old Silk Road, ancient Islam and Soviet legacy – and perhaps most importantly, uniqueness.
‘‘I’ve done quite a bit of travelling but Uzbekistan was by far the most amazing country I’ve been to,’’ says Viv. ‘‘I would describe it as beautifully nutty.’’
Uzbekistan is as far as you can go from the familiar.
From its ancient walled cities, glittering gold mosques, and locals with their gold-capped teeth – even the name Uzbekistan itself sounds like the stuff of fables.
‘‘We had no idea what to expect because as a country it doesn’t live in the imagination of our minds, like the Taj Mahal or the London Bridge does,’’ says Anna. ‘‘We just turned up and it exceeded our expectations and beyond – there were just so many incredible sights.
‘‘I don’t think there was a day that passed without our jaws dropping in awe – or us laughing out loud,’’ says Viv. ‘‘Like the day we saw a farmer and his wife walking their sheep and cow across a four-lane highway and then lifting them one by one over the concrete barrier between lanes.’’
Coincidentally, Viv and Anna’s fascination with Uzbekistan piqued independently. Viv added a new cookbook to her collection, Samarkand: Recipes & Stories from Central Asia & The Caucasus, and after testing a few of the recipes became interested in the stories behind them. About the same time, Anna was in Xi’an in China and began thinking about how the Old Silk Road shaped history with its exchange of goods and ideas.
‘‘I said, ‘why don’t we go to Uzbekistan?’ and Anna said, ‘yes’!’’ says Viv.
It was their first journey together, and Uzbekistan was a brave choice. ‘‘It could have gone one of two different ways, but it worked out and Anna and I just got on so well together.’’
‘‘It helped that we both had similar interests in architecture and history,’’ adds Anna. ‘‘Plus, we agreed in advance that it was perfectly OK to have the odd hour of quiet time with a book – not that we ended up having the time to do that in the end.’’
Odyssey
The Wellington pair’s Central Asian odyssey began in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. More than 25 years after the fall of the USSR, the Soviet-era still lingers – and while many statues of Lenin have been replaced by the nomadic conqueror Tamerlane and celebrated philosopher IbnSina, there are still Russian kettles and medals for sale in the markets.
‘‘My first thoughts were chaos, but not in a car-horn and crowded kind of way like India, but more of a barren chaos where we did a double-take on everything,’’ says Anna.
And typically for Uzbekistan, nothing was orthodox from day one – and that includes entering the country.
Instead of getting off the plane with a visa, all visitors instead enter Uzbekistan with a ‘‘letter of intent’’, and then simply hold their breath at the airport as the paperwork is completed.
‘‘We’d heard stories about people being arbitrarily refused,
so were slightly nervous but fatalistic,’’ says Anna. ‘‘I’m thankful it worked out because we didn’t have a plan B.’’
From Tashkent, they travelled to Samarkand, an important post along the 6400-kilometre network of the Old Silk Road. Although the Old Silk Road connected China with the Middle East and Rome, the section of Old Silk Road through Uzbekistan is thought of as its soul.
For close to 3000 years, conquerors, slaves, mystics, scholars, merchants and monks travelled its well-worn paths – and even Marco Polo and Genghis Khan left their footprints.
For architecture buffs such as Vivienne and Anna, Samarkand had all the heavy-hitters – the beloved Shah-i-Zinda, or avenue of mausoleums which contain some of the richest tile work in the Muslim world, Gur-e Amir, the mausoleum of the 14thcentury Mongol conqueror Timur, and Registan Square, a vast square in the colours of the desert sand, turquoise and gold.
Other tourists were few and far between and Viv and Anna found themselves staring in wonder at the extraordinary and beautiful faces of the locals – a mix of Turkish, Russian, Islamic and Chinese heritage.
‘‘We were like the pigeons among the doves,’’ laughs Viv. ‘‘Fair-skinned and fair-headed, for once we were exotic.’’
They found the locals were friendly and the pair says they felt safe and welcome everywhere they went.
‘‘The hospitality was amazing, we were fed four courses in every sitting, and had meat with every meal, including breakfast.’’ Dinner would typically involve salad, soup, a meat dish like kebabs, and then baklava. And although it is served all over central Asia, plov is something of a national obsession in Uzbekistan.
At its most basic it is rice with onions and carrots, plus either mutton, chicken, lamb or beef cooked slowly in layers – but the most skilled chefs – called oshpaz – can serve plov for up to 1000 people in a giant cauldron for weddings and festivals and is eaten off a fork directly from a communal platter.
‘‘Double-dipping, but absolutely fresh and delicious,’’ says Anna. ‘‘We loved all the food, and the only thing we drew the line at was horse-meat sausage.’’
Trade route
From Samarkand, the pair travelled with a driver to Bukhara, passing through the desert along the ancient trade route, the Old Silk Road.
‘‘It took four hours and let’s just say that no-one slept,’’ says Viv. ‘‘Driving in Uzbekistan is not for the faint-hearted!’’
The roads are dominated almost entirely by Ladas and Chevrolets, although large trucks jostle with farmers herding sheep and goats. Instead of lights, traffic controllers seemingly with a death wish stand at the intersection of four-lane highways as huge trucks rattle past.
Bukhara is a major medieval centre for Islamic theology and culture and still contains hundreds of well-preserved mosques, madrassas, bazaars and caravanserais, dating largely from the 9th to the 17th centuries.
As well as taking in the sights such as The Ark, the former royal city and fortress, and the Summer Palace of the last emir, and other museums and mosques, Viv and Anna shopped in the bazaar, which boasted everything from copper and metal wear, ceramics, jewellery and rugs to the famous telpak, or Turkmen hat, made of young sheep skin and resembling an afro.
From Bukhara, the pair travelled across the border to the ancient settlements around Merv, in neighbouring Turkmenistan, considered to be the most mysterious and unexplored of Central Asia’s ‘‘stans’’.
Turkmenistan became famous for the truly bizarre dictatorship of Saparmurat Niyazov, who ruled until his death in 2006 and covered the virtually unknown desert republic with grandiose monuments and golden statues of himself.
From there, they flew to Ashgabat, a strange and secretive city where taking photos is illegal and the internet and media are censored. Turkmenistan’s capital city of Ashgabat is an eerily quiet and nearly empty city rising spookily from the desert and made almost entirely of white marble.
‘‘It is the cleanest place I have ever seen – there wasn’t a scrap of paper, let alone a leaf,’’ says Anna.
Ashgabat was entered into the Guinness Book of World records in 2013 for having the highest concentration of white marble buildings in the world – in a city of 22 square kilometres there are
543 – made up of 4.5 million cubic metres of imported white marble.
An earthquake wiped out the city in 1948 – killing more than
100,000 people – and it was then rebuilt in standard Soviet style, but when the Soviet Union collapsed the president ordered the rebuild.
And in stark contrast to the marble metropolis, the next stop was Khiva back across the border in Uzbekistan, an ancient walled city that, according to legend, was founded by the son of Noah, Shem.
Like stepping back in time, visitors can pass through the city gates and wander through the monotone mud-walled inner city, which still houses 3000 residents and now has a Unesco World Heritage protection.
A highlight for many visitors is the Kalta Minor Minaret, a turquoise-tiled tower begun in 1851 by Muhammad Amin Khan who apparently wanted to build a minaret so high he could see all the way to Bukhara. Unfortunately, Khan dropped dead in 1855 leaving the beautifully tiled structure unfinished.
Wandering the ancient city of Khiva on the final leg of the trip was for Viv and Anna yet another surprise destination when they thought they’d seen it all by then. Ask them what the highlight was – and they don’t know where to start.
Visiting Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan was like entering a time warp, a glorious mishmash of golden-domed palaces, marble boulevards, and ancient city walls. ‘‘In that part of the world everything is so uncliche´ d. In your own mind you are not even sure what you are seeing,’’ says Anna. ‘‘It is amazing, totally amazing.’’
Alison Horwood is a journalist and TV producer who also works as communications adviser for the House Of Travel group.
Viv and Anna travelled to Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan with Adventure Travel. To book your next adventure, phone (04) 494 7180 or email info@adventuretravel.co.nz