Uzbekistan Pt 2

Tashkent is the capital of Uzbekistan and was our last city before moving onto Tajikistan.

It had a very different feel and look from the rest of Uzbekistan.  

Uzbekistan Pt 1 - Stan 2

Uzbekistan is amazing.  I had no expectations but it has exceeded them anyway!  

Compared to Turkmenistan, it is delightful.  The people are so friendly, all saying hello and asking where we come from.  In the markets they are offering us all sorts of treats to try.  I know they want to make a sale, but they don't seem too put out if we just try.  They seem to be proud of what they have.

Uzbekistan, like Turkmenistan was invaded by the Russians in the late 1800's and became part of the USSR in the 1920's, gaining independence in 1991. They have a complex history before that, with invasion by Genghis Khan of Mongolia, Alexander the Great and then the Arabs from the Saudi Peninsula who  brought Islam in the 8th Century. 

The architecture in Uzbekistan is quite unique. The palaces, mosques, mausoleums and Madrasahs are decorated with colourful mosaics, religious symbols and geometrical patterns. Most of them have a huge rectangular facade, highly decorated with alcoves with 'stalactites' - shapes that are designed to amplify the sound.  I loved it all the first time I saw the facades, but learned after the 3rd city in Uzbekistan, that they are everywhere.  

The mosques all have domes in shades of blue and turquoise, some that were a bit different.  The insides of the buildings are also highly decorated, with shapes made for amplification of sound, so for example in the mosque the Immam can be heard by all the worshippers.

The Madrasah's, university's for students to study the Koran and other subjects, are similar, in that they have multiple small  rooms around a courtyard.  We visited a number of different Madrasah's.

Most of the buildings fell into disrepair after the Russian's invaded, and were not used for their originally intended purpose.  Many have now been renovated.  Madrasah's have been turned into hotels and restaurants, any many of the rooms contain shops.  There are some buildings still in use today, such as  some working mosques.  Worshippers do go to some of the mausoleums too.

At the time of writing, I have been to Khiva, Buhkara and Samarkand and visited many a mosque, mausoleum and madrasah.  They are different sizes, have different sized domes and decorations.  In Samarkand some of the domes are ribbed and in Khiva we saw the biggest minaret that is found nowhere else.  They are the same but different and I have enjoyed all of them for the differences.  I haven't stopped taking photos because they are all so beautiful.

Interested to see what Tashkent, the capital is like.  

Other interesting things about Uzbekistan, the food is quite Russian and there is lots of meat!  The choices are fairly limited.  The fresh vegetables are delicious and I have loved the tomatoes, so tasty, and they do have a lot of salads on the menu.

We were shown the clothes of the women that lived here pre Soviet times,  and found out that they had to cover their faces with something called a paranja.  The overcoat they wore showed if they were married, single or widowed by how the sleeves were presented, and there were tassels to show how many children and grandchildren they had.  They wore the paranja until the 20's when the Soviet's abolished it.  Some of the first group of women that took off their head coverings and burned them in public, were murdered by their husbands when they returned home.  Islam had a very strong hold in Central Asia. 

Turkmenistan Pt 2 - Darvasa Crater and journey to Uzbekistan

The standard tourist route in Turkmenistant is from Ashgabat to the Darvasa Crater and then on to the border with Uzbekistan.

The information about the journey on the Intrepid site says it is will be rough and  bumpy. There were not wrong but didn't really express quite how rough and bumpy it would be! There is a dual carriage highway, well there used to be, it is now one side with no bitumen at all and the other is completely broken up.  The 500 km journey from Ashgabat to the border is used by many trucks, bringing freight in and out of Turkmenistan.  It takes the trucks 2 days to do the trip, they can't do it any quicker.  The driving is around as many potholes as possible, and if not, go slowly through them!  

We did the journey in 4 SUV's and there were a number of times we went completely off road into the surrounding desert in order to avoid both parts of the dual carriageway! There is nothing along the 'highway' - a few cafes with no windows as it is very hotel, very cold or very windy and a few tents where people can sleep to break up the journey.  We saw camels, goats and a lot of desert.

We left Ashgabat in the afternoon and arrived at the first of the 3 craters we saw at around 5.30pm.  It was a very slow journey.  What added to the excitement, if you can call it that, was that we arrived in very high winds and a sandstorm!  The sandstorm didn't let up until well into the night.  Stinking hot, middle of the desert and sand blowing into your face and hair and body - what an experience!

The gas crater itself is a 70m wide crater in the Karakum desert which is permanently aflame, known as the 'gates of hell' and that is what it felt like, particularly with the sandstorm. 

Soviet oil prospectors started drilling in 1971 and the ground collapsed so they stopped drilling and lit the gas to  burn off the excess. It has been burning ever since, but is getting less and less over time.  It did feel very very hot and you wouldn't want to fall in, you would be burned alive.  

We stayed in a yurt camp nearby, fully expecting to see the beautiful night sky, but no, just a sandy beige sky with a glow from the gas crater. 

We did drive the 1 minute back to the crater when it got dark and it was more impressive at night. 

The wind didn't stop blowing and the sand didn't stop coming in the tent until not long before dawn, when we were up to start our epic drive to the border.

The road got even worse after the crater. We left at 5.30am and arrived at the border around 4pm, so over 10 hours.

What was astounding was that the President spent all that money on the white city of Ashgabat, which was like one huge show home and left the road to rot away.  The Soviets built the road and then in 1991 when USSR collapsed, Turkmenistan did work on the road for a short while. Since then however it has been left to wear away into one of the worse roads I have been on.  As bad as the roads in Nepal, but different because in Nepal they made no effort to bitumen some of the roads and they are dirt.  Here in Turkmenistan they were good roads that have been left to deteriorate until there are huge bumps and pits which are really difficult to navigate.

Another weird border crossing as well.  We had our passports checked by 7 people, one after the other when leaving Turkmenistan.  We got our exit stamp and immediately had to show it to the security check, then immediately to a policeman outside a hut, and then he went inside the hut a foot away and checked it again!  No wonder they have low unemployment in Turkmenistan.

The contrast with Uzbekistan was huge, greeted by a friendly guy who had a chat and a laugh over the new Australian passports with holograms and welcomed us with a smile to his country.  With relief we crossed into Uzbekistan and borded a lovely modern bus on a proper road, glad our day was nearly at an end.

Turkmenistan Part 1 - Ashgabat

Ashgabat, Turkmenistan 12 & 13 May Pt 1: Turkmenistan has an isolationist policy and is hard to get into, they have only opened up to tourists in the last 3 years. Only 10,000 tourists visited last year, so our Intrepid group of 11 is a relatively rare sight in Turkmenistan. 

Getting in was a story in itself.  You have to have a letter of introduction to get a visa on arrival, and have to do a PCR Covid test.  Well.... the day Christina and I arrived, we weren't sure which queue to get in first, so went to the visa queue.  The PCR testing was going on in another direction. We gave in our LOI and then queued up to pay for the visa.  USD$130!  That included the PCR test and the visa.  Then we walked out  We had paid something like $35 for a PCR test that they nev er did.  Maxine Harrower who arrived the day before, paid USD$99 and had no PCR test, but the person who arrived before her just had their noise nominally swiped, not even properly and didn't even wait for a result!  The guide told us that if you test positive (which is unlikely as they don't even do the test properly) you just pay an extra $5! It seems the cost to come in varies day by day!

We had been told that we could not go out of the hotel without our guide, but that wasn't correct, as we could walk around, but just not go into any tourist type buildings or sites.  It was too hot to walk around too much though!

Ashgabat is the capital city of Turkmenistan.  It is a relatively new city, founded in 1881 and made the capital of the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic.  In 1948 there was a 9 earthquake which destroyed most of the city.  It was rebuilt societ style and after 1991, when it obtained independence after the fall of the USSR it was refashioned by the then autocratic president.

It is known as the 'White City' as most of the buildings are covered in local white marble, there are only white cars and buses, and it is manicured and immaculately cleaned.  The architecture is amazing, with buildings in fabulous shapes, such as a dental clinic in a molar tooth shaped building, the deparmtent of medicine and pharmacy in the pharmaceutical symbol.

At night it comes alive, with the most amazing lights on the buildings. 

It actually doesn't feel real, as if the buildings are just facades and no-one lives there as we saw very few people out on the streets. 

The cost of living is very low for the Turkmenistan's, petrol about 15c a litre, and food and restaurants were cheap. 

We stayed in a very posh looking hotel, which housed the Asian olympic athletes from the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games held in 2017. Posh on the outside, but a lot of things didn't work or weren't up to Western standards.  (It was fine to stay in though).

Tibet and Bhutan - A comparison

When I booked my 2 Intrepid trips to Bhutan and Tibet, I really didn’t know much about the 2 countries, just that they would be interesting, were on my bucket list, and that Potala Palace was the place to go in Tibet and Tiger’s Nest in Bhutan. 

Potala Palace

Tiger's Nest

I followed the weather and best time to go to them both, and found Intrepid tours that allowed me to go  to  both in April 2025.  Tibet first, on the train from Beijing to Lhasa and then overland to Kathmandu via Tibetan Everest Base Camp.  It was then easy to fly from Kathmandu to Bhutan and back, before the next leg of my journey.

If I knew then what I know now, I would have gone to Bhutan first.  

Bhutan was interesting, scenic, different from anywhere else I have been, but not nearly as much so as Tibet.  Had I gone there first, I know I would have loved it, the people are friendly, the culture and architecture different and interesting, there  are snow covered mountains and lovely green scenery.  

Tibet however was amazing.  It was more. More scenic, more cultural, more different, higher, colder, better food, fewer western tourists, the people more interested in us, the cities all different with their own character, more religious, bigger, better.  Just everything.  I loved it.  

They are both Buddhist countries (well Tibet not being a country but currently an autonomous region of China) and different from the other Buddhist countries, like Nepal, Thailand, Laos. They share the same foundation of Buddhism but follow different sects, with Bhutanese Buddhism emerging from Tibetan Buddhism. Therefore they are very similar, and that can be seen in things such as the decorations, offerings, chanting and prayer wheels.  

Tibet however is more devout and the religiosity of the people is far more on show,  and that is what is more fascinating to see. I took far more people photos in Tibet than Bhutan because they looked more interesting and there were more of them around to see.

Spiritual practices and pilgrimages are part of the daily life of Tibe,t however the Bhutanese place a lot of reverence on their royal family and the highest religious  leader, the Je Kenpho. Pictures of them abound everywhere and are in all the monasteries and temples.  Obviously with Tibet being part of China there is no royal family and the highest spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, had to flee. 

The countryside is very different.  Tibet is on a high plateau which can be bleak and colourless, but has high Himalayan Peaks to the South and West.  Bhutan is a lower altitude, is green and verdant and has more rural scenery.  

The food in Bhutan is very simple and very spicy, and the  food offered to tourists very samey with buffets for lunch and dinner and often the exact same dishes served.  I did not like it.  The food is better in Tibet, not wonderful, often yak served in a hundred different ways, but there was other food available....Momo’s, Chinese food, noodles, and not so spicy. 

One other difference was the presence of western tourists in Bhutan. Bhutan controls the tourism more, and there is a set route that most tourists follow. So we bumped into the Dave people over and over again. Even stayed at the same hotel as Had ventures and a woman only Australian group in Punakha. It didn't feel different or special, like we did in Tibet. It felt over touristy and a bit claustrophobic seeing all the same people over and over again.  In Tibet I felt like a rockstar..... And we hardly saw any other western tourists, apart from the real touristic places like Potala Palace. 

I am not saying don't go to Bhutan, and I don't regret my visit, I just think that if you plan to go to both, you will appreciate Bhutan more if it is the first place you visit.  If you only want to pick one, Tibet is the one to pick without any shadow of a doubt. 

Crossing from Tibet to Nepal - what an epic day

Well what an epic day that was, and not in a good way. 

The road between China and Nepal was washed away a couple of years ago by a bad flood.  It is being repaired, but is only open for certain parts of the day for traffic to pass.  

We left our hotel at 10am, and arrived at the waiting point about half an hour later.  Our guide must have used some influence, or money, as we were second in the queue.  

We waited there with the trucks and other tourist buses for an hour or more.  It was fun watching other cars try and push in and be sent back by the very officious looking Tibetan Police Woman.  

When the road opened, we proceeded to the large chinese immigration building and arrived at 1pm.  

There is a 2 and a quarter hour (no idea why the extra quarter) time difference between China and Nepal, and the Chinese immigration officials don't start until 2pm, even though the road opens up over an hour before that. 

We were sent away to get lunch by our guide while waiting, then told to come back quickly to get in the queue for immigration.  I had to get my lunch as take out, try eating noodles with chopsticks while fending off pushing in Chinese!

Finally at 2pm the border opened and after shoving and pushing some more the group were able to stay together to go through.  4 of us, including me, were in front of the immigration officer for quite some time and then our passports taken away for approval higher up. 

While waiting I worried about my one social media post while in Tibet and wondered if I would get my passport back or be stuck in China!  Apparently a big red notice flashed up for the four of us, but we've no idea why.  The immigration officer even looked at every page in my passport, and I have amassed a lot of stamps by now!

Finally we got through and out  to the bridge across No Man's land. Walked across in the rain.  

There couldn't be a bigger contrast between China and Nepal than their border buildings and processes!  

We were herded into  a tin shed (yes that's right!) and body searched, again trying to fend off all the people trying to push in.  Came out of the other side of the shed and an officious Nepali police officer then proceeded to open and rifle through all our suitcases.  I have never in all my years of travel seen such a thorough search.  The poor first person had every bag in her suitcase pawed through.  Another person had bought a Tibetan game with a bowl, coins, dice and drum thing, each in a separate bag, each one was examined and he was asked all about them, like were the coins us dollars.  It was ridiculous. 

Finally some more police officers were sent over to help the one guy who was taking forever. They were definitely not as thorough as the first person who as our guide said, was an a**hole!

Then on to immigration, a small office at the bottom of a dirty building.  One small window for arrivals and one for departures.  There was a guy sitting in departures doing nothing and chatting to the arrivals guy with his feet up on a chair, despite there being a huge line of arrivals, everyone taking ages and no departure s.  I don't even think there could be any more 'departures' as the road would have been closed again!

So the arrivals guy has this old broken looking camera he keeps having to move to take pictures for the Nepali visa.  It took us another hour and a half or more for all of us to get though from the point we crossed into Nepal.

Our  ordeal was far from over.  The roads in Nepal are atrocious and particularly the one away from the border, due to the flooding and ongoing repairs.  The 11 of us on the tour were put into 3 different four wheel drives.  We were at the back, going very slowly along narrow potholed dirt road, with lots of hairpin bends and steep drop offs.  I thought the driver was bad because he was close to the edge at times and took the corners wide and close  to the mountainside.  A while later, he went slowly with a grinding noise and nearly went into the mountainside.  It appears there was a mechanical fault because when we got out and looked, the 2 front wheels were facing in different directions!

Thank goodness the 2 cars in front had arrived at what was supposed to be the lunch spot, but it was now 5pm (7.15pn for us with the time difference)n so it turned into dinner. 

One car was sent back for us and our luggage and we joined them an hour or so later and had dinner!  A car came from a town ahead to replace the broken car and we all squeezed into 2 cars for the rest of the long long, windy road to Kathmandu in the dark.  Arrived at 10.30pm their time, 12.45am our time, after having left over 14 hours earlier.  Like I said!  Epic.