The 5000 Project

We took a mashutka (public transport van) to the border of kygyzstan and uzbekistan in osh. There was a currency exchange booth just before the kyrgyz border, exchanging just $50 gives us a giant wad of notes, wrapped in lacky bands for every $20 bundle; there are two reasons for this, firstly the largest denomination note in uzbek is 1000 som, 2750 som is equivalent to $1 USD. This on it’s own will provide a large number of notes that makes me look like a total gangster when acquiring the dosh. The second reason for the vast quantity of notes is that the kyrgyz side of the border only has 500 som notes as the max denomination, the relatively small USD transferred required me to dedicate a portion of my bag just for the newly attained uzbek notes.

The border itself was quite interesting to cross, we were queuing up 30min after the border was meant to have opened, about 20 people were in line and noone seemed to be going through, we made ourselves visible to the border guards – they immediately took us through the queue and into the kyrgz side of passport processing. We waited about 10min for the passports to be thoroughly checked, then crossed through a radiation checking room, to ensure we weren’t making sand castles in the middle of nowhere in an ex-soviet country which may or may not have been used for nuclear missile tests. 2min walk from no-mans land and we were on the uzbek side of nowhere, greeted with a very in depth arrival form…. which was all in russian cyrilic. Thankfully my czech buddy could translate it for me, the form itself was very thorough, we had to declare everything in our bags and also all the money we had on us, so that when we leave the country it all matches up – very strange rules. Once entering the country, the rules state that on the third night and every subsequent night there after, a registration slip is to be attained by the hotel in which accommodation is supplied from – there seems to also be a $5 tax which is paid to the government whenever a foreigner stays in a hotel, which means that we could never find accommodation cheaper than $5. Failure to account for every night with registration slips when exiting the country will result in a $1000 fine. They perform this check at every metro station in bishkek, apparently, although only our passports were checked each time – we heard that they check registration mainly if you have big backpacks on.

Sooo… we arrived in uzbek! the only transport to the capital, tashkent, was by shared taxi – $20 fee for the 5hr journey, which turned out to be the most expensive transport by far in all of uzbek, which generally has the cheapest transport i have experienced for my entire trip thus far. On the way we noticed that many cars were converted to gas, as in literal gas not petrol, this is because of the massive gas resources in the country, even so, the gas stations were always full with huge queues – they have a rule where all the passengers need to leave the car when it goes to fill up – i assumed in the early days of this gas transition there may have been some nasty accidents. One fatality is better than five.

The drive up was entirely in fog, quite spooky – another mountain range was spotted occasionally through the thick fog, on par to what we saw in kyrgyzstan. Other than the mountain, the landscape is rather bleak, flat plains of dry shubbery, fields full of cotton. Cotton is pretty much what the soviets decided to label uzbekistan, the country assigned solely to cotton production – a dry landscape with a thirsty crop, not the smartest of decisions, quite a lot of uzbekistan doesn’t make much sense.

Sooooo…. tashkent! we arrive at the couchhosts, a russian mother and daughter in an apartment within a large apartment block, carbon copy with the rest of then, same ol ex-soviet styles as kyrgyzstan. Due to the vast amount of natural gas in the country, the gas stove is on all the time, with simply a brick on the top of the element to heat most of the house. The house was quite primitive, everything was extremely old, the bath was used as a laundry and the ancient fridge was kept shut with a rope and stool – it had a unique charm to it though, I quite liked the many alternatives to modern tools and appliances. Tashkent in general was even more miserable than kyrgyzstan, many frowny faces on the streets, one in every 10 being a stern faced policeman; some of which were armed.

We headed to the turkmenistan embassy the next day, we knew that the only visa for turkmenistan is a 5 day transit visa and it takes a total of 20 days to process this simple request within only a 30day visa of uzbekistan, as turkmenistan is known as the north korea of central asia; it is very difficult to enter in general, we heard from passing travellers that they were denied a visa and were told to fly over in order to get to iran. Well, we rocked up and it was closed, as it apparently is every friday according to the security guard – he mentioned that there is a large waiting list that you have to put your name down for very early, then wait until 11am for the consulate to open, then wait your turn before entering the building; we already knew this, however he quietly mentioned that he could put us at the top of the list… if we are willing to pay a fee – I declined and suggested that we rock up early and just wait it out, my companion thought it might be handy just to let the guard know our names, which he wrote on a bit of paper. When monday came round, we arrived at 9am to find our names very close to the top of the list of about 30 other names, without saying a word to the guard, we were called up and walked into the grand consulate building. To our surprise the people inside were very helpful and friendly, they agreed to process our visas and thankfully we didnt need to relinquish our passports for the initial 20day processing, and it would only cost $35. Quite pleased, we filled in the paperwork and headed out, ready to start our 20day tour of the country – the guard spotted my companion on the way out and politely asked for some money for his services, my companion pretended to not know what he was talking about; the guard replied that he will not help us in the future. I was unsure if this was a good decision to make, not knowing how much influence the guard has with the consulate administration.

Our couchhost is a highschool teacher and she invited us to show our travel photos to her students – we accepted and made quite an impression on the youngsters, one of the students invited us to a breakdancing competition (very popular in uzbekistan). When attending the competition the following night, i was stunned at the level of skill that the young kids had; there was one boy aged about 7 who was simply amazing, I’ll be sure to upload it to youtube as soon as I find a worthy net connection.

The city itself is very new, just a few years back the entire city was destroyed by a massive earthquake, leveling the old buildings to rubble. One thing that I liked about the city, especially the metro, is the complete lack of advertising (bar the odd highway banner) it was very refreshing, the constant mild niggling headache that I always experienced walking through big cities polluted with product brain sensing visuals was no longer there.

Tashkent was done, we registered from an undisclosed source to cover our somewhat illegal couchsurfing and booked a sleeper train to the other end of uzbekistan; with the plan of working our way back to tashkent from the aral sea.

We got out at organch after a 24hr sleeper train journey and tried to find some kind of transport to the ancient city of Khiva.

Ok, I assumed nothing else interesting would happen in bishkek, so I went ahead and blog posted – well this has taught me a valuable lesson, I should always leave posts late and write only after I have left the location in question.

An american guy in the guesthouse of bishkek managed to get in contact with a group of enthusiastic russian snowboarders who offered to give us a lift to a ski field 1hrs drive south of bishkek. On the way we hired some shoes and a board ($10), strapped the boards to the roof and headed out to the vast white in the middle of frikkin nowhere. A sense of nostalgia hit me, memories of heading to the surfing beaches on the southwest coast of my hometown in western australia, when I was quite young we went on many trips to various beaches to feed my father’s surfing addiction – with the boards strapped to the roof. Snowboarding for the first time was of course quite different, being polar opposite temperatures, however the addrenaline rush is similar if not more intense.

We arrived at the slope and paid $10 for the ex-soviet primitive char-lift, which consists of a pole with a tiny seat that tucks between the legs, you are required to do a fast penguin walk with the metal in the crotch, then occasionally moon-jump trying to keep up with the speed of the chain rotation. This was just as hard as snowboarding, but far less dangerous.

At the top of the slope, I put on the shoes and clipped them into the board, the russians flew past me as I was getting prepared, the slope was quite steep – they zoomed past with great speed. One of them shared with me some knowledge before he went down, he said “to slow, go into snow, left right”, I made sure to heed his words. I pushed myself out and damn, It was fast, really fast; I enjoyed it and was even able to dodge trees, shrubs and other obsticles, up until the point in which I built up too much speed and thought that if I keep it up then there may be a chance of serious injury. I took the advice of the russian and cut deep into the snow to my left, instantly the board flipped and I rolled 4 times ending with my face planted into the flour-like powder snow. Battered and bruised, I took a small rest but noticed that my face was starting to freeze after i tried to shake off the snow (at first I used my snow covered gloves to wipe my face, not a smart idea). I jumped out of the snow and immediately the board gained speed after catching free, I tried to gain control but ended going down a patch to the slope of the low to the ground chair-lift – for the next 5min I dodged seats at head-height moving from the lift as I tried to get back up, various russian kyrgys shouted abuse as they penguin-jogged up the lift with snowboards in one arm, total pros – I assumed the were calling me a noob. To make it to the releative ‘safety’ of the steep slope I gave up and unclipped my shoes to walk away from the chairlift. I repeated the fast decent and rapid stop and roll about 5 times per run. Due to this, I only managed to do 3 runs for the day, my body ached all over; I felt that the result was good and that some of the rolls could have ended up a lot worse – especially one where I got stuck in a tree.

On the drive down the mountain, one of the russian snowboarders in our posse decided that it would be a good idea for him to use the car to build up speed while he is on the snowboard, then snowboard down the unprepared mountain face. At first we could see him next to us, occasionally he zoomed down the road before turning down to the unclaimed slope. We drove down the mountain for the next 20min before we realised that we hadn’t seen the crazy russian for quite sometime, we decided to turn around and asked drivers if they had seem him as they drove down – no positive answers. Arriving back at the top we looked over the mountain face, no sign of him; we called out, no response. It was getting dark. The american and I suggested that we should possibly call the police as we were driving back down to the mountain base, the others mentioned that the police would do nothing to help; they seemed oddly calm about the situation compared to us. On the road back to bishkek, at the very ground base of the mountain, we spotted a shadowy figure through the fog – with the rectangular shape of a snowboard next to it. It was the guy. He had been waiting there for 30min. I am still amazed at how quickly he managed to fly down the mountain without a scratch. Crazy mthrfkn russian.

The remaining days in bishkek were reasonably uneventful, although the drive back to osh to cross over to uzbekistan was quite the contrary. After bartering the price of a shared taxi (the only form of transport to osh) to $22 each, we hopped in and drove forth – through yet again a large and beautiful mountain range – making sure that this time the car journey was during the day and not all through the night like what we endured from osh to bishkek almost a month prior. We gained quite a good speed on the long straights, It was quite comfortable enough and before long I fell asleep… only to be woke up an hour later while in the middle of a 360 degree spin over slippery ice, we slammed into the padding of car height built-up snow on the sides of the road twice before spinning all the way around to face the correct direction. I woke up terrorfied, not knowing how long the scenario had been in action and also not 100% sure if it was real life or a crazy realistic dream. The car stopped and we were all silent, the driver got out casually and fitted chains to his tyres, the box for the chains were sealed signifying that this was the first time he has put them on – he seemed to take a long time fitting them on too, although to be honest I have no idea how long it is meant to take. The driver was
significantly more cautious for the remainder for the journey, we had two lengthy delays; the first was a bogged and turned truck, blocking the road horizontally, we waited 30min for a plow to make enough room for one way traffic. The last delay was a police blockage, a scheduled avalanche explosion in order to clear possible hazardous areas, waiting a good hour after hearing the loud explosions to make sure the snowfall did not flow down to the road.

We arrived in osh and prepared ourselves for the border crossing to uzbekistan the next day.