Uzbekistan

The Uzbeks are definitely on a very different wavelength to those in Turkmenistan. As such, it was a bit of a culture shock as we head into Bukhara for a few days after the stresses of Turkmenistan. Hotels were once again normal prices, there were no weird photos of the Turkmen President and we could have our first proper shower in four days. Bukhara is a seriously cool city. Once we got past the rather grey soviet city suburbs, the madrassas of the silk road revealed themselves. Whilst I'm certain that the Lonely Planet Guide did some serious editing on the cover of their 'Central Asia guide' (which is set in Bukhara), it is none the less a very photogenic city and well worth a visit if you're looking for a destination that is a little more off the beaten track. Perhaps the best find of our stay was the local Uzbek beer. It must be said that it tastes a little funny but when you consider that its 12% AVB its easy to see why. After 3 days of soaking up all the air-conditioning we could, it was off to Samarkand. Harry B had been back in the UK for a funeral so it was there that we were going to reconvene the trio. What we thought would be a relatively easy 6 hour drive threw up some issues. Firstly, the roads were awful. Secondly, petrol is apparently a very rare commodity in Uzbekistan. We must have driven past a 100 closed petrol stations and it was only as we arrived into Samarkand that we found a working pump. With the ginger back in the team, we roared around the sites of Samarkand and then sort to find some petrol for the journey to the Tajikistan border. Apparently the only petrol in the city itself was to be found on the black market and so we had to settle for some stuff that smelt like petrol but had a slightly yellow tinge that BP pumps in the UK definitely don't produce. The following day we set off for the border and the six hour drive was regularly broken up by police checkpoints. It has to be said that I struggled to see the point of such checks. All the information was written down in a notepad and even then they didn't really know what they were looking for. The British passports seemed to confuse the hell out of them to the extent that Charlie's surname was recorded as 'British Citizen' at one stop. Eventually we reached the border. The Uzbek side was relatively straightforward - we had the routine car search but the customs official was apparently more interested in the car itself than what was in it. This carried on to the extent that he wanted to see what this 'Subaru' (not a household name in Uzbekistan) could do and so drove it around the customs area with his mate in the passenger seat. The Tajik side started well; we got our passports stamped and them were pointed to the 'car guy'. Then he dropped the bombshell. 'You are not allowed to bring right hand drive cars into Tajikistan.' This obviously created a bit of an issue considering that our car is very much right hand drive. After a not inconsiderable amount of pleading he decided to ring his boss who then luckily let us off the hook. Phew. Its off to the Pamir's tomorrow. KBO.