Recovery day from illness, plus train travel to Samarkand.<\/p>\n
No photos.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been quite weak and the smallest task can take all effort I have; climbing a single flight of stairs, having polite conversation with a hotel clerk an the like.<\/p>\n
The train we took (economy class) from Tashkent was OK. It rolled along, listing to and fro at moderate speed and it had some AC going for which I was profoundly grateful. I was initially concerned the rocking motion of the coach would provide for a seasick feeling, but in the end it was soothing, actually. Our seats were pointed the \u2018wrong way\u2019 and so we travelled backwards. Never really been a fan of that.<\/p>\n
The scenery was bleak all along the way. It was mostly flat to the horizon with scrub and sand, rocks and then cultivated fields (what could they possibly be growing in 45C heat?), outposts of 5 houses, then a small village with tin and concrete buildings. Everything coated everywhere in a thick coat of dun-coloured dust. There was clearly a strong wind outiside, with trees almost blown 45 degrees constantly. I worred along the way for the oven heat that would meet us on arrival – the atmosphere snatching breath from life. I kept thinking of early travelers traversing the region by horse or camel or foot. Mad dogs and Englishmen indeed.<\/p>\n
We are in a lovely little family-run hotel in Samarkand, arranged by our fixer – Hotel Mohina. Beds are like rocks, but otherwise all else is gracious and well thought out. We went out for dinner last night and I managed to get down a kind of chicken salad in mayo with raisins, nuts, cucumber, corn and a few other unknown ingredients. It was at a quite lovely restaurant, frequented by more tourists that we\u2019d seen all together in the entirety of our visit so far – Platan Restaurant. Highly recommended. Harold had a lamb dish that he was amazed by and could not believe the quality of the potatoes. A tall .5l of local beer helped I\u2019m sure.<\/p>\n
Overall, we are both impressed with Uzbekistan. Until 2017 it was ruled by typical \u2018strong man\u2019 who rejected modernity and had consigned his nation to obscurity thereby, with brutal punishments and backward thinking. In that year, however, a more enlightened man came to power and he has been busy, clearly, in reversed the incumbent\u2019s trend. There is construction everywhere, cell phones everywhere. The rail system was modernized (with even a high speed train put in by the Spaniards on one route). Womens\u2019 dress ranges from severe (a burqa or two here and there) to short-sleeved tops and unbound hair around the shoulders. We\u2019ve been told the president is positioning his nation among the other \u2018stans in this area as a hub for tourism. They *do* have some amazing cities that call up all sorts of romantic Silk Road imaginings: Samarcand, Bukhara, Fergana, Khiva, Kokand\u2026 these and others are all within this one nation. Can you even call up a single city name in Kazakhstan to the north, for example? Or know the capital of Tadjikistan to the south east? Anyway, it has seemed a very wise move to hoist this nation up out of poverty and obscurity. I suspect that much we are seeing today will be unrecognizable in ten years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Recovery day from illness, plus train travel to Samarkand. No photos. I\u2019ve been quite weak and the smallest task can take all effort I have; climbing a single flight of stairs, having polite conversation with a hotel clerk an the like. The train we took (economy class) from Tashkent was OK. It rolled along, listing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,22,82],"tags":[83,80,78],"class_list":["post-5630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-samarkand","category-travel","category-uzbekistan","tag-samarkand","tag-travel","tag-uzbekistan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hellum.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hellum.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hellum.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hellum.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hellum.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5630"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.hellum.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5632,"href":"https:\/\/www.hellum.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5630\/revisions\/5632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hellum.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hellum.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hellum.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}