Our remaining days in Uzbekistan were spent in Tashkent catching up on errands. First on our list, we had run out of diesel… again and the petrol stations were still out of it. But this didn’t matter. Any innocent passer-by was a black market diesel merchant in disguise. But that day, we decided to do a proper job and selected two dubious looking characters from the shadows. The pair looked like a KGB/SAS duo. The first, for his gold teeth, dark features and thick Russian accent. The latter for his handlebar moustache and stocky physique, which made him look like he could crack chestnuts in between his butt-cheeks. It turns out that the SAS lookalike, in his late fifties, was a former wrestler and he was proud of the Uzbek’s collective strength, which he highlighted by flexing his cannonball like biceps in our direction. The KGB one just stood around grinning inanely, but we imagined that he was a loose cannon and under his black leather jacket lay a magnum 44 with notches carved into the handle – a tally of all his assassination hits. Their gnarled looks gave them the appearance that they had weathered many a storm. Just as they got into their black baddie car with tinted windows, they casually mentioned that it was Ramadam and they hadn’t eaten or drunk for 12 hours. This heightened our caution as we imagined that their temperaments might be like sprung mouse traps and that if anything went wrong, they could snap and all hell could let lose.
In reality, unlike our sketchy diesel hunts in Bukhara and Samarkand, the whole process went down pretty smoothly and the two men who had let our imaginations fly were actually kind strangers, who despite their plans to drive hundreds of kilometres that day, had generously given up their time to help us first. They drove us to a truck stop – the scene of the crime for our black market diesel exchange - and oversaw the whole negotiation. We were happy with the price the truck stop guys offered and even though we had no idea what ingredients were in the brown sludge they were filling Miranda up with, we were simply beggars who couldn’t be choosers. The truck stop was actually an entertaining location to make a deal anyway. The resident truck drivers were characters and due to the heat were all walking around with their shirts off and big bellies protruding. Every so often, whilst they filled up our tank, we would hear the slap of man flesh upon man flesh, as two truck drivers would give each other a hardy man hug after a long stint on the road alone. Who needed to go see tourist sights, the truck stop is where it was all happening.
Other memories of Tashkent included chatting with some of the amazing Mongol Rally teams, about their charitable quest to drive (and donate) their 2WD cars from their homes to Mongolia in 5 weeks; eating buffet breakfast to a pumping stereo with Shania-twain era music blasting our ear drums; and a trip to a Hilton-esque five star hotel, where we splashed out on 5 pound cups of tea, in the hope of finding a free wi-fi connection. This subsequently blew our daily budget, so that we had to resort to cooking pasta in the hotel’s Mercedes Benz populated carpark like a couple of pikies.
When you think about Kazakhstan the first thing that comes to mind if you are our age is the moustached Borat in a backward rural village in the countryside impersonating Kazakhstan life. Well Borat’s impression of Kazakhstan couldn’t be further from the truth. Kazakhstan is one of the top 20 oil producers in the world, which has helped to create an economy that grows by 8 to 9% a year, which has lead to a growing middle class that earn salaries equivalent to those in Europe.
We had to backtrack 60km south of Tashkent to reach the open Uzbek/Kazakh border. It had been a difficult decision to go this way as it was our intention initially to travel west from Tashkent, through the Fergana valley and cross directly into Kyrgyzstan via the Osh border. Consequently, we would have had to only cross two mountain crossings on the shorter drive to the Chinese border. This route would have considerably reduced the amount of kilometres and would have been far less arduous for Miranda. However, we had heard rumours that the Osh border could and did close at anytime without warning due to the problems that had erupted there earlier on in the year.
Thousands of Uzbeks had fled from the area of Osh due to the Kyrgyz/Uzbek fighting and they had apparently massed together in large refugee camps in the west of Uzbekistan. This decision meant that we would have to travel north through Kazakhstan (luckily we had acquired a Kazakh visa in London before we left) to reach the Kyrgyzstan border at Taraz. It also meant that we would have to now travel via the north of Kyrgyzstan and cross five high mountain passes before reaching the Chinese border west of Sary Tash. If the Osh border had been closed we would have had to back track hundreds of kilometres through the Fergana Valley, Tashkent and Kazakhstan to reach the open border at Taraz - a risk too great to take.
When we arrived at the Kazakhstan border the fist thing that struck us was the people who didn’t actually look like hairy eastern Europeans i.e. Borat lookalikes, but much more like what you would expect Mongolian people to look like. It turns out that the Kazakh people didn’t emerge as a distinct group until the 15th century. Essentially they were descendents of the Mongol people or those who survived Jenghiz Khan’s onslaught, which is why they look the way they do.
Within minutes of crossing one of the most relaxed border crossings to date, we were driving over huge steppes of grass with herds of horses frolicking on either side. We were also introduced to the Kazakh people informally– essentially a car would pull up alongside Miranda on the overtaking lane of the dual carriageway, at which point the passengers would roll down their windows and shout the usual formalities “WHERE ARE YOU GOING? WHERE ARE YOU FROM” over the top of the howling wind. One time the driver even joined in with the banter and questioning and was smiling and nodding at us the entire time, all without looking where he was going. In actual fact, off the road we discovered that the Kazakh people were quite an unassuming, quiet but proud bunch of people.
We soon arrived in Shymkent and as usual the ferocious heat drove us out of the car and straight into the air conditioned relief of the nearest budget hotel – the Hotel Dostyk. We stayed there two nights during which time a certain culprit devoured the buffet breakfast display and was struck with a nasty bout of the runs for the second time running (no pun intended). We then drove to Taraz, where we spent another two nights in a motel, which was securely guarded by an ex Olympian kickboxer and left, not knowing whether we would be able to cross the border into Kyrgyzstan or not.
Our time in Kazahstan was fleeting and practical and our quick stay didn’t do justice to the country. We used our time there to read up on Kyrgyzstan travel warnings, to wash the car, fill the jerry can, pump up the tyres, load up on another 16 boxes of cereal, backup video footage and resolve Miranda’s latest mechanical woes – she was temperamentally starting, but this problem was soon resolved by starting her in neutral rather than park. We barely saw much of the south eastern corner of Kazakhstan, but what we did see was enough to have lured us into returning one day again.
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