Bus to Samarkand

2009 07 31 – Day 35 - Tashkent to Samarkand


The bus station is just a big tarmac space with numerous buses strewn across it.
Fortunately for me, I've already paid (probably far too much) for this bus journey through Sundowners, so the hotel driver guides me through the chaos to a bus shortly to depart for Samarkand. He pays someone who seems to be connected to the bus, we stow my main bag and then they direct me to a front seat, uprooting some poor local passenger in the process. I protest that it's ok, I can sit further back, but my protests are only met with stronger assertions that I should sit in this front seat. I accept my nominal VIP status and sit where instructed.
Across the isle from me a man stashes his bricks of money in non-descript plastic bags.
Now I can catch my breath and look around a little and observe the organised chaos outside, it quickly becomes clear that these buses are run like big shared private taxis. There are a few young lads working for this bus, harrying anyone who gets close-ish to the bus to buy a ticket and climb on board. One woman was almost dragged to the bus before she managed to free herself and her shopping bags and go around the bus as she'd originally intended!


When the bus is half or two-thirds full, the driver starts the engine and rides the clutch, revving the engine – making it clear to all those within eyesight, earshot and those stood 2cm in front of the windscreen that were about to go, so get on now or get out of the way or you'll be left behind or run over!


I'm joined in my VIP front row by this chunky fellow who wedges me in securely enough that I'm not so concerned about the lack of seatbelt. An exchange of sounds reveals that we don't speak each others language, but it does result in a mutual showing of passports... English characters in his reveal that he's from Internal Affairs. After I decline his kind, and presumably illegal (?), offering of hash, he takes a big wad in his mouth and spends much of the journey chewing on it and leaning over me to spit, with varying degrees of accuracy, out of the windowless door.


Uzbek roads are good enough to allow our battered bus to be the fastest thing on the road. Not because everything goes really slow, but because our driver is fearless and seems confident that other road traffic, including the donkey carts, would be well advised to stay out of our way! He does his best to dish out such useful advice to those we're about to pass with energetic and liberal use of his horn.
I don't know if I should be unsettled by the resin-filled head-sized hole in the windscreen in front of me. The multiple screen-wide cracks radiating from the wound don't fill me with confidence that the thing will hold together the entire four hour journey.
During the course of the journey we pass through at least eight road blocks. These are not because of some extraordinary security situation, but just part of the everyday monitoring of the movement of people from one region to another. Traffic is filtered through a speed-bumped single lane 50 metre stretch next to a guard building. While negotiating this bottleneck, guards have the opportunity to ask vehicle drivers to pull over to have their vehilce inspected. At each stop, one of the young lads managing money and passengers jumps out with a piece of paper that he gets stamped before we can go on our way. The whole process if very quick and we almost don't stop. Thankfully our bus was never chosen to be inspected.


Uzbekistan seems to have a fair bit more green than Kazakhstan.




A short stop enables passengers to buy apples from this orchard, while the bus crew fill the vehicle's water tank from the irrigation ditch. Some of the poor bedraggled creatures who emerge from the bowels of the bus make me realise how fortunate I am with my well airated VIP seat by the window-less door.



Half way through the journey, some locals, standing in the isle in anticipation of their stop, try to strike up conversation... the problem is their limited English and my lack of Russian. They do however persuade me to take a phone from one of them and talk to some guy they know who can speak English... It was a very strange conversation - he didn't know who I was, I didn't know who he was or where he was, we couldn't see each other, we'd never met and the reception wasn't great so half the time we couldn't even hear each other! Just before his stop, a teenager invited me to see his village... I have to say I was curious, but we hadn't even spoken to each other before that and the Uzbek authorities require you to register in each place you stay... in hotels that's a straight forward process, but for private residences, I'm not so sure... and I was expected at my hotel in Samarkand. So I thanked him and declined his kind offer.