I finally manage to get my visa issues resolved, and take the uzbek flight to Tashkent. Its a 2.5 hour flight , landing at 7 am in the morning. Going through the customs was easy but one couldn’t help noticing the plethora of police officers who had this commi air around them, vestige of the erstwhile Russian era. I come out of the airport and going by the book (lonely planet) that u have to move out of Tashkent as soon as possible, I start looking for a bus which will take me to the bus stand. Taxi cabbies surround me asking for 10000 soms, (300 Rs) but I refuse to give up without a good bargain. There is a information center but she doesn’t have a clue of buses going out of the airport. So I start bargaining by trying to evoke some 3^rd world solidarity, “I am an Indian, hindostani , no money” , and walk away, and true to my gameplan they come running back. I guess I was a hard bargainer, and one guy finally gets disgusted and asks , “how much do u earn in India , anyway ?” , That was my cue and I agree for 3000 soms. The driver gets friendly and even though he had no knowledge of English, asks me where I am from ? I say India, and starts rattling “Oh, Raj Kapoor, Shammi Kapoor, Sashi Kapoor”, I nod in appreciation of his knowledge of India & we had broken the ice. Nice relief after all that bargaining.

Samarkand

I take a bus straight to samarkand, and I am the only brown guy in the bus. People take a second look at me and now I can empathize with our caucasian friends. I reach samarkand in the afternoon, and go straight to the bahodir B&B , one of the best B&B ‘s I have stayed in, nice big green courtyard in the center with sethis lined up around it. I get a good double bed room with attached toilet for just $10. A very courteous young man , Farmo, invites me for tea with honey. I sit down on the sethis and he give me a bunch of travelogues written by tourists over a period of 10 years, and it was really fun going through it. Noticed that there have been quite a few Japanese and the meticulous detail in which they write is just amazing !!

This place is a stones throw from Registan, which is an amazing collection of 3 madrasas built by Ulug beg, and others from the 15^th century. The amazing part was the light & sound show, the madrasas look wonderful at night with the lights on and a nice fresh breeze blowing through. It was a heavenly experience. I was transported 600 years back imagining students playing music in the full moon. The funny thing there was u had to pay 5000 soms for the show and u could sit on chairs right on the steps, but if u sit 20 feet back on the fountain, u get a much better view and u don’t have to pay anything !

Had dinner with the Japanese group and the Swedish students. The Japanese guy, fuku, was a businessman who would work for 6 months in the fishing industry and would spend the other 6 months traveling in asia, really envied him. The Swedish students were spending their summer in CIS, and were getting paid 700 euros for just studying , envied them even more !!!

I spent the next day roaming the rest of samakand with romm, an Israeli student who was here on an official visit to attend a seminar on the trafficking of women from the CIS countries to the middle east. He was also very kind in translating the Hebrew lonely planet information for me for all the sites that we visitied. Biwi Kharum mosque had an interesting story, she was the Chinese wife of Timur Lane, and while he was away , she built a mosque for him as a surprise. After the mosque was complete. The architect wanted a kiss , which produced a kid but resulted in his being beheaded. Her grave stands right opposite the mosque which she had built. We then went to shah-e-zinda which also had very nice tiles adorning it. Then we passed through the graveyard of anyone who is someone. Some of them had the picture of one of the spouse engraved in marble on one half of the epitaph while the other half waited anxiously for the demise of the other spouse. Found it intriguing that whenever the other spouse would come to pay homage , she would be reminded starkly of her imminent death. We then have lunch, he was a veg too, the only one I met on this trip. Apparently he had dodged the mandatory army service pleading insanity !! I then bid him adieu and rest till the evening to finish off with Timur Memorial and then go back to the registan for another free sound and light show.

Bhukhara : Centre of enlightenment in the east

The next day I catch a train to bhukhara. Farmo was very courteous and it was sad bidding him goodbye. My japanse friends are also with me and we reach bhukhara sometime in the afternoon, I don’t have a watch and was not carrying my cell phone which would tell me the time, but my biological clock kept me in good stead. We go to the lyab-i-hauz (pond) and start looking for B&B’s. The Japanese are on a budget and are looking for cheap deals, and $10 is too much for them. We go to rustam’s B&B and they drive a hard bargain. Rustam punches 30 ($30 for 4 nights) on his calculator, Fuku, with a look of dissent punches in 20, rustam shakes his head vehemently, type in 26 but with no breakfast, fuku types in 24 but with breakfast , rustam says no way, fuku then types in 25 with breakfast, rustam who had gotten a little flustered by now, says OK !! The deal is made and hands are shaken, I still don’t know how much I am paying since I am not staying for 4 days, but as I am from hindostan and rustam has shaken hands with Raj Kapoor when he was here, I get the same deal too !! He then mutters to his wife something in Uzbek but I catch the word “shaitan” and smile, he understood that I understood and points to the japanse and I am spared.

I freshen up, go for a stroll, the lyab-i-hauz is a really nice place with tables lined up around it and there is music playing in the evening. I check out the diwan-beghi mosque and come back for dinner where rustam is waiting with a Russian friend of his from andijan, A couple from England and a couple from france. The British guy was really hilarious although I wasn’t sure if the uzbek and the Russian were catching all his jokes. The French couple were both doing Phd’s in physics, in brain MRI. The conversation was good and with the Russian Vodka flowing like “Amu Darya” everyone was in their elements with crisscross conversations in uzbek and English. After polishing off one bottle the English guys goes and gets another one, by the end of it we are all a very happy lot. The Russian suggests that we go to a discotheque, the English are all for it and the hindustoni obliges. We set the dance floor on fire, bumping into people till we have the whole floor to ourselves. The English lady is an avid dancer and I get to show off whatever little salsa I know with her. We leave the stage amidst claps, albeit only from the Russian and English. At the bar, one lady compliments me, as the saying goes “aandho mein kana raja” J I rant something and she says “ I think you are drunk” , i nod and concur with her, maybe thats the reason i was able to dance with gay abandon !

I cover the rest of the city, The Iranian tomb of Ismail Samanid is amazing, with a really nice arrangement of the bricks. The Arq has been there since the 5^th BC, It built on an elevated ground and has passed hands through different dynasties. During the bolshevik revolution the Russians occupied it after a one sided battle with the Emir, and you can see the effect of the bombs which were fired on the citadel. I then go to see the kaliyan minaret and the still active madrasa. The minaret is one of the highlights of Bhukhara and is again a very artistic assortment of just normal bricks. On the steps of the mosque I meet another guy, a Uzbek who was in the Russian army, and laments the fact that the Russians are all gone. He was a translator in the army and was very good friends with the Russians it seemed. He was very well read and articulate and we had discussions about world politics and India for almost 2 hours. He asks me if I am married and gives me an advice to marry twice, “To the beautiful one, although they are very expensive and the not so beautiful one who would take care of you”. He offers me cherries from his garden and they were delicious. We parted ways and he gave me the pen as a souvenir and said he will come and stay with me in India.

On my way back I went through the streets of bhukhara and was amazed at the cleanliness of the streets, no open drains and not even a piece of litter. In one of the streets there are a bunch of women sitting and chatting and as I walk past, one of them comes up to me and asks , hindostani ? I say yes, dreading another “oh.. salman khan , sharukh khan, aamir khan” ? but she asks again “urdu” ? I say yes, and she starts off in hindi, and I am so happy to hear a familiar language !! Apparently she and her husband have 2 shops here and they get silverware from Delhi, and have been in the business for 9 years. I guess she was also very happy , and takes me inside her house, gives me chai and dry fruits and introduces me to her whole family and everyone is very excited. I take some pics and promise to keep in touch.

I spend the rest of the evening on the hauz, in meditation.

On my way to Khiva, the cab driver again asks me “India ?” and this time it’s a refreshingly new name, “Mithun Chakraborthy” !! I get on the small mini van and we then go through the desert. The guy was playing “Muradbeg” and I fell in love with that song. It was a sufi song and everyone was in the groove. I guess they kind of knew that I liked the song and asked me to join them, sitting in “padmasan” and the body flowing to the music. The adage “music crosses all borders” was put to test and it passed in flying colors.

Khiva:

The old city dates back to the 10^th century and everything is within two concentric walls. The city is a dense concentration of over 50 monuments. There is the tall and beautiful Islam-Khoja minaret, kalta minor and the Djuma mosque. I sat next to the entrance of the arc just watching people, children prancing in gay abandon, tourists shopping and the locals busy with their work.

I have been living on cucumbers, dry fruits, fruits and naan for most of the time, and although the fruits there, apricots and cherries are out of this world, I want to try something new and go to a restaurant to see if they have anything vegetarian. The lady finally understands after lot of gesticulation that I am a veg and prepares a very nice soup. I had that soup for all my meals in Khiva, god bless her !

Tashkent:

I want to take a train to Tashkent but unfortunately it’s broken, so I have to cover the 18 hour trip for khiva to Tashkent in a bus. The buses are decent but the only problem is that the windows don’t open and people smoke like chimneys inside. The people in the buses are very friendly and inquisitive. This time I heard a ‘Rabindranath Tagore ?’, instead of a Raj Kapoor, that was a first !! Wow, A non-movie guy, I am impressed. The guy next to me sang his own rendition of “mera joota hai japani” in Uzbek and circulated my passport all over the bus !! We stopped for dinner and he bought me naan and vodka.

The desert sky was out of the world, (pun not intended) with the constellations so clear and crisp and full of stars. I started starhopping and wished I have my telescope here.

We reach Tashkent the next day, I try to get a taxi to the metro, he accepts and keeps my bag in the trunk, locks it and goes away to look for more passengers. I am fuming at him after he comes back after half an hour with three more guys !! such is life J

The metro in Tashkent is really amazing, trains are very regular and the stations are decorated in different styles. The cops are a pain in the neck though, they keep coming up to you to check your papers and if you don’t have your passport and registration with you , you are done for and will have to lighten you wallet a bit.

The city is really beautiful, with wide roads and lots of greenery. I go to a B&B , which is operated by Mirzo Morad, who is incidently a historian and has been part of lots of excavations. He shows me the photos of the excavations. He then sings “Dost Dost na raha” in perfect hindi and I am really impressed. His son and daughters go to the Lal Bahadur Shastri school which is just walkable distance from his house and are able to write hindi, she shows he “tumhara naam kya hai” and “mein lal bahadur shastri ke pathshala mein jaati hun” in hindi and I give her 10/10, especially since I have forgotten how to write shastri in hindi. I check out the local “chorsu” market and the recently made Khast Imam mosque which holds one of the most ancient versions of the Koran.

At home, mirza is busy arranging for a group of 15 cyclists coming from Estonia. I start chatting with one, and they have flown from Estonia to Tashkent , then take their bikes and do the Tashkent-samarkand-bukhara trip and then Tashkent-Andijan trip. That way they get good exercise and get to see the place too. They choose a new place every year and go for such trips. The good thing is that they know Russian which helps them manage more easily. Mirza regales us with some Uzbeki music which we are having dinner.

The next day I go to the Indian Embassy to thank Mr. Mitra who had arranged for my visa, and when I ask the guard if he is in, a lady replies back in hindi “nahi, vo abhi tak nahi aayen hain” and when I ask her where did she learn such fluent hindi and she replies “aap logon to salam kar kar ke seekh gayi” J She has been studying drama at the National School of Drama and psychology at Delhi University. We had a nice chat and she invited me for her brother’s marriage , which unfortunately was too late for me. I also met this French family with two kids who had driven all the way from france to Uzbekistan in a caravan !! They were now seeking a Indian visa to spend 1 month in Leh after which they would drive back all the way.

I then go to check out the Alisher Navoi Opera and Ballet Theatre, and buy tickets for the “romeo and juliet’ ballet. As I am waiting for the show I bump into a guy, and this time I ask if he is a “hindostani” , and it turns out that he is from delhi too and his dad was also in the army. He gives me his card and asks me to call him later.

The opera house was huge with a big fountain right in front of it and with a restaurant next to it. I sat there, admiring the architecture. The ballet was even more amazing, maybe because it was my first time. Dancing on your tows must have required some doing. But nonetheless it was very graceful. The three Korean ladies next to me ask me after the 3^rd interval whether the show is over, because the 2 hours are almost up, and I tell them that I guess romeo has to die before the show is over J

As I go through the card, a revelation hits me that I know this guy from the 80’s , after which we had lost touch. Our families were very close and we had hanged out quite a lot during those days. I immediately call him up and check into his apt. He has rented an apt and has a maid (Mina) who cooks Indian food too !! He is on a business visit and has kept a Uzbeki translator Ilhom. I strike a conversation with him and he is a student of foreign affairs and was working part time for Avi ( my friend) for the time he would be in Tashkent. Avi and me catch up on old times and he suggests that I go to a club with Mina and her friend. I take the offer and go shake some legs at the club. Somewhere around midnight they stop the show and bring in a troups which starts dancing on , guess what, bollywood music. I want to join in but then restrain myself as it is only for the troupe.

The next day I bid adieu to avi , meena and ilhom, and catch my flight back to India.

It has been a very fulfilling journey, meeting all the wonderful people, experiencing the similarity in our culture and forming everlasting bonds !! I have had time to go through all the myriad thoughts, do some self introspection and open new doors to my thought process. I have missed India a few times but somehow the solitude in this journey has given me more strength.

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