2018, Central Asia

Today we cross the Kyrgyz border to Uzbekistan. To avoid any possible delay, we leave early. Probably too early.

At the border, on a dusty street ruined by the passage of heavy trucks, nearly a hundred of Kyrgyzs are waiting to be admitted to Uzbekistan. As soon as they see us, they make us go in front of the queue, passing in front of locals, no matter the age. In fact we are surprised by the number of elderly people in queue at the border. 15 minutes later, we are already in Uzbekistan: our bagages haven’t been checked once and we’re welcomed by officials with a “Welcome to Uzbekistan”.

In an effort to make Uzbekistan more and more visited by foreign tourists, border controls have been greatly simplified during the last years; in addition, since our departure, Visa requests can be made online and for a fraction of the price we paid when we did ours.

At the border, a small and quite old bus drives directly to the closest train station in Andizhan, where we’re supposed to take our train to Tachkent. The vehicle is overcrowded; still, Uzbeks insist for leaving their seats to us, which we cannot accept. For some reason, tourists are extremely welcomed here: people offer their help spontaneously, or allow us to jump the queues at office desks. With some exceptions, of course, which is totally understandable. We almost feel guilty having so much privileges!

The ride costs us 2500 Soums per person, or around 30 cents: the inflation in Uzbekistan is at the maximum nowadays, which should not come as a surprise, as the country is basically self-sufficient and is a major exporter to a wide range of goods, from cars to home appliances, from fruits to oil.

We cannot but notice a pronounced modernization undergoing in the last years: train stations are brand new - some of them even look achieved earlier this very year. Cars circulating are simple but very recent too: most of them locally-produced Chevrolets.

Police is heavily dispatched in public places, and train stations are as controlled as airports are in Europe. But controls don’t go in the way of tourists as they do in Xinjiang. Officials are definitely better trained and friendly, some of them even able to interact with basic notions of English.

The Cyrillic alphabet, omnipresent in Kyrgyzstan, is here progressively being replaced by Latin’s, which favors the intelligibility of simple words and city names.

The laicity, imposed by the government, a well-disguised dictatorship according to unofficial sources, leaves local Muslims able to wear religious symbols (such as headscarves, unlike Xinjiang), along with much more uncovering outfits, often chosen by the richer Russian ethnic minorities living in the main cities.

The trip in the train, a second class which can indeed compete with, if not surpass, European trains in comfort, takes around 5 hours. Landscapes in the sunset have a unique beauty: red rocky hills often reveal green inhabited oasis spurring from the valleys or small rivers whose waters serve as refreshment for sheeps and goats.

In Tashkent, our hotel’s tenant speak a perfect English and reserves our taxi for the next morning.

It’s already late evening: we have just a couple hours to have a walk in the modern, but uninteresting, capital of Uzbekistan, eat a very good (and fairly expensive) ice cream, and do some food shopping at a very European-looking supermarket open til late.

We haven’t felt as much as in the Western World as here in Tashkent. But there’s no time to think about it: tomorrow’s time to leave to Bukhara.