Well, I can't say Uzbekistan has really lived up to expectations, but perhaps that's the cumulative effects of a four week tour talking... together with rather rose-tinted expectations in the first place.
Although modern Tashkent was a welcome change, and the overnight train to Urgench a very pleasant way to cross the Kyzyl Kum desert, the main historical sights - Khiva, Bukhara and Samarkand - were each disappointing in their own ways.
Khiva can only be a ghost of its former self - the whole of the old town has been conserved and restored into a shadow of a city, resembling EuroDisney on a quiet Tuesday. No one really lives there anymore, and we wandered around the sanitised streets avoiding end of season souvenir sellers rather than the genuine detritus of daily life. Hard to believe it was once the capital of the Khanate of Khiva.
Moving onto Bukhara at least offered a slightly more living experience of an ancient Silk Road city, but here too many of the main sights - the domed bazaars, the magnificent Medressas and the potentially lovely Lyab-i Hauz (this is a good map of Bukhara) - were given over to souvenir stalls and tourist troughs. Oh, and there really really isn't anything worth the 2000 sum photo fee at the Ark citadel.
Samarkand should probably have been the highlight - I've wanted to see the Registan for years. It might be the heart of old Samarkand, but I found it sadly soulless - the central area was taken up by a temporary wooden stage and the mosques and medressas that make up the 'ensemble' entirely given over to souvenir shops. I much preferred Russian Samarkand, probably because I had no rose-hued expectations. As for the other main sights - the Bibi Khanum mosque, the Gur-e Amir and the Shah-i-Zinda - these have been almost entirely rebuilt, such that not so much as a whiff of romance or history remains. I like my sites served up in a rather more realistic state, and if that means ruins rather than restoration, so be it. I don't mind maintenance, but not restoration requiring (or resulting in) a complete rebuild with modern materials.
Mind you, I still managed to take a lot of photos; the architecture is amazing and the geometrist in me loves the tile work.
The other feature of this part of the tour was a night at the yurt camp near Yangikasgan, and a (15 minute) camel ride. This too was all a bit too touristy (and male) for my taste - although - again - my reaction says more about my unrealistic expectations as it does about the experience itself.
So no, having now been I don't feel the need to return. But I might pick up my patchworking again.
Day one of the final part of our Central Asia Overland trip.
We've a free morning in Tashkent while Amanda (our Explore leader) goes to collect the new arrivals from the airport, and we start sight seeing this afternoon. It will be weird having new people in the group, plus we'll be 20, which is a big (too big) group.
Tashkent feels very big and modern, a definite contrast to Kyrgyzstan, although some of the mainly Chinese places we stayed in in Xinjiang were similar, if not so big and not so western in terms of products. Tashkent is the first place we've had BBC/CNN news on the TV (plus dodgy Russian pop videos!!) and there are adverts for iPhones, Levis, Rimmel (Kate Moss again) on billboards and TV, and the person before us in our room here left behind Friday's FT. Mind you, having access to international news is a mixed blessing in these times of financial meltdown .... I'll have to work out the impact of the collapse of the icelandic banks, and where that leaves my Icesave-ings...
Next stop after this internet cafe is Il Perfecto, for (what promises to be) a proper cup of coffee....
We arrived in Taskent at 7pm last night having left Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan) at 4am - a long day of sitting on the world's highest coach seats, suffering the smelliest squat toilets of the entire trip, and spending hours negotiating the border formalities for a trio of 'Stans.
Our one day in Kazakhstan started with a long wait to get through our exit/entry stamps at the Kyrgyz/Kazakh border (c6am) and ended with an even longer time at the Kazakh/Uzbek border c4pm.
That said, there were some key differences at the Kazakh/Uzbek border - we were the entertainment of the month for the Kazakh guys, who were fun rather than fierce as the leafed through dirty laundry and laughed at the half drunk bottles of vodka and whisky we were carrying, whereas on the Uzbek side of things the guards definitely had a more intimidating style of questioning, mainly focussed on how much cash we were carrying.
Still, the main "interrogator" was an English speaking chap and, after inspecting everything in my "handbag" (for wont of a better word) and checking and signing off my entry declarations in duplicate, he had a good look through the photos on my camera, which featured the long and bumpy roads and rainbows of our 12 hour journey through Kazakhstan, together with photos of Bishkek and the beautiful Ala Archa gorge walk. Definitely no pictures of any border crossings or military locations!
Tonight's the end of the Crossroads of Asia portion of our trip, so we had our farewell dinner with those not continuing on to Uzbekistan, and our last night in little old Kyrgyzstan.
Kyrgyzstan has turned out to be a lot colder than Xinjiang, but not so cold as to require thermals or my fleece top - quite a few items of clothing will be coming back unworn. That said, daytime Kyryzstan was just right - nice fresh sunny days rather than the dusty/drier desert heat of Xinjiang.
Overall, I have been a bit disappointed with the Kyrgyz leg of the tour - not with Kyrgyzstan itself (far from it) but because key elements of the itinerary had to change due to it being late in the season and getting cold. We didn't get to see Tash Rabat at all, which was high on my list of sights. Back in the summer Explore had notified us that we wouldn't be staying there but I was still hopeful that the route might take us past the caravanserai. As it turned out, this was never going to be, given that it lies 26km off the "main road" (ie track) that connects Kashgar with Naryn, where we were staying instead, and it was a long day's drive plus Chinese/Kyrgyz border crossing (one coach - us - heading west vs an awful lot of trucks heading east).
In fact both our yurt nights turned into guest house stays due to the (tourist) yurt camps having been dismantled. The second was a lovely guesthouse on the southern shore of lake Issy-kul, but I'm not sure it was worth the half day's drive it took each way.... The lake is lovely, with snow capped peaks on the north shore, but the scenery doesn't change that much and we arrived at our guest house at dusk and left straight after breakfast, so no time to really walk or paddle; yes, the lake water was warm enough - we'd dipped our toes in at one of the photo stops en route.....
Our two days in Bishkek coincided with a summit of member states of the former USSR, which included (we eventually discovered) a visit by Medeyev - which meant all the main roads on city centre sights were closed to the general public for almost all the time we were there. We managed to explore the Kyrgyz capital despite that, and probably saw more of Bishkek's side roads than we would have otherwise.
The main highlight has been this morning's (Explore optional extra) walk in Ala Archa gorge - but almost didn't as, technically, the gorge was "closed" for the day because the big wigs were due to visit in the afternoon. Luckily our charming local guide, Maria, worked her magic and we were allowed on on the understanding that we'd be gone by 2pm, and by the time we arrived back in Bishkek most of the roads/sights were accessible.
Next stop: Uzbekistan (via Kazakhstan!)
Xinjiang was definitely saving the best 'til last, although lunch at Ali's family's home was a definite pre-Kashgar highlight.
The main treats encountered in this part of the world were:
- the livestock market - strangely (or not) reminiscent of Hereford's Wednesday market. The more famous "Sunday Market" was really not much more than a very busy bazaar - and we saw lots of those during the trip.
- the stunning Abakh Hoja tomb was definitely the highlight, although we only had three quarters of an hour at the site which also includes two beautiful mosques - not to be confused with the Id Kah mosque in the city centre square, which had been remodelled along Chinese lines into a vast open space with even the santised shopping streets kept at a distance.
- a day trip along the Chinese part of the Karakorum Highway (KKH) to Lake Karakul. The mountain scenery was a breath of fresh air after the deserts of Xinjiang, but not a patch on the Hunza valley....
.... plus we were in Kashgar when the earthquake hit Kyrgyzstan and the hotel room definitely wobbled! Twice.
I'd definitely return to Kashgar. Visiting at the end of Ramadan, I don't we got to see the Old Town at its best - most of the shops were shut. Even so, these smaller scale streets were nice enough to wander through and - as we discovered on our last evening - livelier after dark and away from the main drag.