Bricks Off The Old Block

Life In The Fast Train

Samarkand train station

I didn't realise that the train ticket I'd purchased from Samarkand to Bukhara was for a high speed train.

I mean, when I bought the ticket the guy said there were no tickets for the slow train, which I'd asked for, but when he said my tickets were for the fast train I didn't realise he meant the very fast train.

So I was shocked when it rolled up to the platform.

These Afrosiyob trains are Spanish made, and wouldn't be out of place anywhere in Europe. They travel at speeds of up to 250 kph, so I got to Bukhara within a couple of hours.

The scenery zipped past - irrigated fields, greenhouses, and desert.

I arrived and looked at my map, and realised it was 15km to town. A cab was the only option.

I found a little hostel in the old town, and rested during the blisteringly hot afternoon.

Later in the day I dived into yet another Wonderland wander. There's been a few of those in the past few days.

Bukhara has been an important hub of civilisation for millennia. By 850 it was already the capital of the Samanid Empire, which rejuvenated Persian culture far from the then centre of the Islamic world, Baghdad. During this period the city became a major intellectual centre of the Islamic world, and was known for its many libraries.

Slave Drivers

Bukhara was a major trading hub on the Silk Road for everything from carpets, spices and precious jewels to fabrics and elaborate artworks. But not only that. Bukhara, and another Uzbek city, Khiva, are infamously known as the slave capitals of the ancient world, a trade centred on Europe and Asia.

But not in the direction you may think.

They bought Eastern European slaves (often Slavs) from Russian and Crimean traders, and on-sold them to buyers in the Middle East. They also bought and sold non-Muslim Turkish slaves for use in the military in India and the Middle East. This lucrative trade continued right through until the Russians forced the Emir of Bukhara to shut it down in 1873.

Ah, those were the enlightened days, when they shut down the slave trade.

Today an estimated 50 million people around the world are still living as slaves, an increase of 10 million since 2016. Estimates from 2018 include 11m slaves in India, 6m in China, about 2.5m each in North Korea and Pakistan, 2m each in Russia and Indonesia, 1.5m each in Nigeria and Turkey, and 1m each in Bangladesh and, wait for it, the United States.

Of the estimated 50m slaves, around 12.5% are sexual slaves, forced into commercial sexual exploitation. About 2m of these are children.

55% of slaves are carrying out forced labour against their will, mainly as manual labourers in the farming, mining and service industries. And 12% of these forced labourers are children.

Around 44% of slaves are the victims of forced marriages against their will, a common (and sometimes even legal) practice in many countries to this day.

What the fuck sort of world are we living in?

In the US 80% of slaves are women and children. They're given the promise of work opportunities in the US, or false marriage proposals, or even sold by their poor parents, and end up in situations where they're forced to work as labourers or sexual slaves for many years, until the so-called "costs" the traffickers claim they incurred for their transit and day-to-day living costs are paid off.

This trafficking model is well used around the world.

There's no need for me to go on about the trauma the victims go through. On top of the deep and often permanent psychological and even physical scars, once they return home, if they ever do, many are ostracised from their own communities, particularly if they were forced to be sexual slaves. Some of them come back with their own children, who are also ostracised.

Slave industries require people to run them, to collect their human product, transport them, imprison them, and ensure their operations run smoothly. This requires the use of frequent physical violence, psychological manipulation, threats and deception. Slaves are often smuggled over borders, and their passports confiscated, making it very difficult for the victims to receive any support in their new country, especially when the language is different.

Traffickers can either be working alone, or, more commonly, they work for all sorts of organisations, including family operations, small businesses, or huge criminal networks.

The reason the slave trade exists is because of economic inequalities, because wealth isn't distributed anywhere near equally around the planet. This is the fundamental issue humanity needs to sort out, because it results in horrific working conditions, famine, war, enormous suffering, and the massive destruction of our environment, because local people have little or no say in how major development decisions are made, even though those decisions have such a huge effect on their lives.

Fuck I'd like to be King Of The World.

Yeah, and I know that's a huge tangent at this moment.

Let's solve that little global problem tomorrow, 'cos right now I'm in Bukhara.

And in the meantime you're welcome to donate to any of a whole pile of NGOs that are working to stop modern slavery.

The Beauty Of Age

Bukhara's historic centre is an absolute treasure trove of World Heritage-listed mosques and medressas, and is unbelievable to wander around. There's beauty wherever you look.

And it's not just all the grand historic buildings. The very relaxed back streets are full of cute, quirky and traditional communal scenes.

My street, with a drain running right through the middle of it.

Monstrous construction site a couple of blocks away. How's that for concrete ornamentation.

So many great doors.

Just around the corner and up the road from my hostel is Chor Minor Mosque. Beautiful huh. I love the storks on the minaret.

It's in a beautiful quiet little square, and every day when I wander past, there's always kids, boys and girls, having a little football tournament around the corner.

Heavy medalled jackets

Many houses are either pressed earth, mudbrick, or brick rendered with earth or concrete. Sometimes water does damage.

There's old bricks everywhere, and everyone seems to know how to use them. Wherever you look in the old town someone's bricking up something, or rendering, or doing some sort of building upgrade. I guess most of them don't have cars to wash so they've gotta do something.

Lyabi-Khause is sort of a bit of a central hub in the old city, with a beautiful mulberry tree-shaded ancient pond surrounded by magnificent medressas and mosques and other stunning buildings.

It's a little touristy around the square, but not in too bad a way, its been made really nice, and there's no big tourism developments whatsoever in the old town.

Magnificent psychedelic artwork

Parents put their kids up on this statue of a famous Uzbek comic

I sat and revelled in happiness.

Suddenly water started spurting loudly from little jets into the ponds, it surprised the heaven out of me, I nearly water-jetted myself.

In Wonderland.

Beauty left right & centre. And up down & round'n'round.

An archaeological dig, which I really dug.

Even modern government buildings have taste.

Ancient bazaar.

The magnificent Kalon minaret

It's hard to describe beauty. Just being there, in the evening light, on a balmy night, seemed to make everyone there as happy as Hari.

Portable tandoor oven. A common sight around here.

One of my fave drinks. It's called Buratino, which is the Russian word for Pinocchio. Well, not really. Buratino was the main character in a story Nikolayavich Tolstoy (not Leo) wrote, based on the Pinocchio story by Carlo Collodi, and is still a hugely popular character in Russia.

His nose didn't grow when he lied though. It was big because the wooden toy maker stuffed it up when he made him.

Here's a pic of the cute little fella. Just in case you wanted to know what he looks like.

The drink, btw, is the same one that's commonly available on the streets, an apple/caramel fizzy drink.

The Ark Of Bukhara

This interestingly-named site is a massive fortress built and occupied in the 5th Century, which was basically a small town built for the royal court, and which generations of nobles occupied for many many centuries.

It was eventually taken by the Russians in the 1920s, and these days houses beautiful historic items, and is also the site of another major archaeological dig.

There's loads of diggers around here.

I strolled to the Ark one hot morning, and approached it from behind. It's amazing to see the structure from the outside, at ground level.

In case you're wondering why poles are sticking out of it, it was for superstitious reasons rather than for practical ones. The poles made the building appear unfinished, so the bad spirits would stay away, as they're only interested in occupying finished ones.

Bad spirits must be really dumb.

Random tiles on the pavement.

Parts of the walls are undergoing renovation

There was a kids martial arts demo going on

Lonely hot camel. It was another scorcher of a day.

There's some magnificent ancient mosques and buildings within the ramparts.

Hand made plates, a young guy was carving them with a hammer and a tiny chisel.

A look over the low rise of the old city

Ancient mosque within the archaeological site inside the fortress.

Royal courtyard.

After a few months of travel in Central Asia I've seen quite a few petroglyphs, basically Stone Age rocks that have been carved or chipped to depict a scene, or various creatures, real or mythological. They're about 10-12,000 years old.

Some of the petroglyph art depictions used by the ancients in Uzbekistan

These rectangular rocks are belt buckles, believe it or not

Rusty spear tips

Actual chess pieces

One of the Emirs

Ok, quiz time .....

Q: What are the following objects?

A: The big thing is an actual whip. I wouldn't wanna be on the end of it.

The middle metal thing is the padlock for one of the fortress gates.

The bottom pieces are ceramic joining pipes, they joined longer ceramic pipe pieces.

Q: What are these?

A: Pens, inkwells and wooden pen cases

Old puppets and musical instruments. The drums are tiny.

Metallica

Bukharan army officer dudes

Their machine guns. It's true.

The rank-and-file army. They must have been smelly, and were always lined up.

Probably slightly less dangerous for the firer than for the fired at. But only slightly.

One of the emirs and his son in the early 1900s.

Water containers

Unwhirling Dervish

I was split as to whether or not to show you this pic. It's basically the robe of a Bukharan official, but is at least three times wider than me. They were big dudes.

Indian-based ritual hand

Hosting Russian colonial leaders

Traditional samovar, used to heat and boil water.

Women's apparel, apparently.

Iranian miniature painting

An Indian thermos from the 1900s.

Handwashing bowl. Traditionally, hosts will wash the hands of a guest by pouring water from a jug over their hands, and catch the water in this bowl. Uzbeks still do this today, my hands have been washed by my hosts before food.

Candy box

Russian samovar from the 1800s.

Beautiful woven ikat fabrics.

A mirror that you can close, for when you get sick of looking at yourself.

Stunning jewellery box

Snuff box made from a pumpkin. Snuff was a powdered tobacco, often flavoured, that would be either inhaled or rubbed onto the teeth and gums, to make sure they go yellow and you get gum disease. Even back in those days baccy sellers were trying to hide the disgusting flavour of their product. Just like the Big Tobacco vape producers today.

His rule was far and particularly wide.

Amazing old pics of Bukhara, when the whole place was basically a bazaar.

Parts of the old city damaged by erosion, ransacking, or earthquakes.

Old currency notes.

Small mosque on the edge of the fortress

Small magic lamps occupied by genie apprentices. They must roast in there in this weather, there was a waft of barbecue as I strolled past.

Later I wandered over to the main bazaar in town. It was another cracker.

Cakes galore.

Moxиto is a popular drink here. They don't use the Cuban spelling of course, mojito. Here the drink is flavoured in all sorts of ways, and is the non-alcoholic, virgin variety. In Uzbek the X is pronounced like a hard German 'ch,' and the Cyrillic 'И' symbol is pronounced like a 'y' or 'I.'

I've tried all the flavours, they're bloody refreshing, and are generally full of fresh fruit.

Flavoured teas

Spices

Bikkies

Cream cheese

The Bukhara Tower, a really out-of-place tourist elevator lookout that no one seems to go to.

Magnificent old mosque. The brickwork is really sublime.

There was a weird empty amusement park a little way out from the middle of town.

Happy camel, enjoying green grass.

There's a couple of these around, not many.

The view from my hallway

Veggie food! Pumpkin dumplings and eggplant salad. Unbelievable!

There was a major running event in the old city one night, with 1600 competitors from all over the place (mainly locals). My Russian friend Nastya had told me about it in Samarkand the day before. I was gonna enter for the 10km run, but registrations were already closed.

What a shame, I would've not won anything.

The fortress at night.

These machines are super popular in Central Asia. You punch the bag as hard as you can, and the machine tells you if you're a real man or not. I didn't try it, as I know the answer already.

Nothin' To Do, Nowhere To Be

I spent a bit of time just hangin' out in Bukhara, wandering around, writing, and chatting. But eventually it was time to return to Samarkand, as I sorta have a plan.

Ancient mulberry trees at the main square.

Interesting way of raising electricity poles.

I went to a beautiful photo gallery, where some amazing works by local photographers are exhibited. I can't show you any of them, but this is a general pic of the gallery. My friend Dave in England, whom I met in Pushkar, told me to go there. Thanks mate, it was so interesting, but Bezhod wasn't there.

Local culture here, especially in the countryside, is quite traditional in some places, and local artisanship and traditional craft practices have been consistently used and perfected over many centuries.

Many beautiful hand-crafted things are for sale in the bazaars or on the streets here, the best of them being, in my view, the clothing, jewellery, ceramics and metalwork.

If I had a home and a wardrobe, I'd love to have some of these things.

Eventually I made it to Buxoro train station (ie. Bukhara - 'o's and 'a's seem to be interchangeable around here), and this time my train was way less fancy, and much slower. And it was hot in there too, there weren't even fans, let alone aircon.

There's a slow train comin'

The sunset was beautiful.

I had a lovely and long chat to a couple of young uni students who are living and studying in Tashkent. Their English was pretty good, and we chatted about their lives as young women in Uzbekistan. Even though they're studying, they're sort of expected to marry and have kids quite soon after they finish their courses, before their careers can really take off.

Sad but true.

I arrived back in Samarkand late at night. I met the very lovely Carlos from Spain at the station, and we shared a cab into the old city, as his hotel was near mine.

Carlos is "doing" Uzbekistan in 8 days. Yep, eight. I got the feeling he was feeling a little rushed, as he was walking about twice as fast as me, couldn't seem to concentrate on one thing at a time, and, horrifyingly, actually fell a long way down into a deep concrete drain whilst being completely distracted by looking at a map on his phone.

It must've really hurt, it looked bad.

But in his mad rush Carlos didn't even give himself time to feel pain, let alone take stock, and he just said goodbye, and raced off limping across the road to his guest house.

Back in my hotel there was another party going on, and the drinks were flowing freely. I met Gary, a wonderful English guy, who's been on the road for a few months, and has travelled overland from the UK, firstly on his motorbike to Turkey, and by public transport since then.

Gary also sings and plays guitar, and we jammed. It was fun. So much fun, in fact, that in my wild guitar enthusiasm I broke a string, and so I'll need to find some spares for Farmon.

Some Relief

It's cooler in Samarkand than when I was here a few days ago, and it's significantly cooler than Bukhara.

I wandered about the city a little more, as usual.

Maybe I should sell my bike and buy this.

Nice dress huh.

Islamic artists learnt to pixelate script long before the computer age.

Pumpkin and onion somsa. Cheburek is another meat-filled pastry.

I just love walking around this town

Tinsmith zone

Cemetery hill

Q: How many birds?

A: Eighteen. Or possibly 17. Or possibly my eyes are bad and you tell me.

Gary had the great idea to go and visit an ancient observatory, where a famous Uzbek ruler, Merzo Ulug Begh, studied the cosmic world in the 1400s.

He put an astronomical effort into building an incredible observatory, and then used its clever design to log the exact locations of thousands of planets, stars, moons, and various other cosmic traffic.

He was quite large

This is what the observatory actually looked like. Well, they think it did.

And this is a cross section, which was the part the astronomers used when they were pissed off about something.

So only a tiny amount of light would be let into the observatory through the hole, giving the scientists a relatively light-free clear vision of a tiny part of the sky. The coordinate positions of whatever was in the sky there was then measured on a huge 90-degree circular calibrated measuring device inside.

The inside of part of the observatory as it is today. The two smooth central lines were marked in degrees, so the astronomers could quite accurately measure the sky position of all the cosmic paraphernalia and bits and bobs.

The whole observatory was buried for many years, and this is the only part of it that has been excavated. I guess the whole top part fell into ruin and collapsed at some point.

Uleg wasn't just a ruler and an astronomer and all round good guy, he was also successful on the battlefield.

He must've ridden horses a lot, and his legs eventually became really bent, hence his name.

Young astronomer trying to find Uranus with his ruler, accompanied by cute Gothics tourist paraphernalia.

Uleg in his finery

Just like all ancient astronomers, the ones here had extremely vivid imaginations, as they could see animals in the sky where none existed, and then they went on to name them as star constellations, so everyone else could pretend they could also see the animals that weren't there.

Or maybe they weren't imagining it, but could really see them, because some ancient tricksters had sneaked a little something into their hookahs.

This is Pegasus. Apparently.

Astronomers are really crap at making dot-to-dots.

The medressas have amazing and pretty trippy artwork on them.

I was disappointed about the music festival, as I'd been hoping to get a ticket. But it was impossible, because the ticketing system seemed to be totally corrupted. One night Gary, Dana from Wisconsin and I tried to get in through a contact in the Tourist Police that Dana had met, but unfortunately it wasn't happening.

Another day I enquired again at the main tourist office about tickets. The guy there said I needed to go to a private travel agency and book one of their tours, and then they might be able to get me a ticket.

Sounds totally dodgy to me. It's such a bummer, because hundreds of local Uzbeks were standing outside the barriers every night trying to catch a glimpse of the action, but none were allowed inside, because they weren't important enough.

Needless to say, the music festival had been put on at a huge expense, it was very flash, all paid for by taxpayer dollars from the people who weren't allowed to watch it.

Political systems like this one, with no opposition and no dissent whatsoever, lend themselves to frequent abuses of power.

It took me until my last night in Samarkand to find a place to eat with a plethora of vegetarian options. Damn! Well, no, I can't complain, I had loads of good food here in Samarkand, but this place was the best by at least 10 menu items. Thanks Gary.

Gary putting on the face he uses when asked to pretend he's happy.

Fried eggplant rolls, stuffed with soft cheese, walnuts and some type of mayo. Delicious!

But, you know, I've pretty much been living on potatoes and bread, and cow bits and raw onions (when offered by locals), before I got to civilisation again.

And then I had to silently suffer as my innards gurgled away for days on end.

Let alone the inevitable big bangs.

Uzbek Is Done

My Allah! I can't believe I'm leaving! I just got here!

Alas, yes, the time has already come to say goodbye to Uzbekistan.

But I'll be back.

This has been my route so far. I headed east to west, and then backtracked to Samarkand.

I have to come back in fact, as my darling Black Bewdy is waiting patiently for me in Tashkent, the capital of this country.

But for now I've got another country in my sights.

Tajikistan!

The border is only 40kms from here, but the country is a world away.

Or so I hear.

Apart from the capital Dushanbe, Tajikistan is the least developed, the poorest, and the least urbanised country in the whole of Central Asia. It also has the worst roads and the smallest amount of tourist infrastructure in the whole region. Well, smallest amount of any infrastructure really.

It's also graced with the most hospitable people ever, and an infinite array of beautiful natural scenery, with some of the highest mountains in the world,  outside of the Himalaya.

Yes, the next time you hear from me you probably won't be hearing from me, as I'll be way way away from any internet access.

Yeah, it's time to get offline and get rough❤️

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