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NE EXPIRED VISA, two corpses, three

countries, four fugitives, eleven cities,

seventeen days, $200 in bribes. I’ve just exited Uzbekistan illegally and I’mstranded in Jamalia, a village on the

Kazakh-Uzbek border. It’s 9pm and no one will

take me to civilisation for less than $100. The fa-cilitator who aided me across the border, dodgy

by appearance and occupation, has left me in awindowless concrete café, his promise of a room

for the night unfullled. I ask the boy servingme eggs and sausage where my ‘friend’ and his

promises have gone. He motions to a pile of matsand blankets in the corner of the room.

“Sleep there.”

 There is nothing to protect me from the night’sdeep freeze but concrete walls, and nothing what-

soever to protect me from the stream of localyouths who have been visiting the café in a steady

stream, sizing me up. A fortnight of bowel loos-ening events should have had me well prepared,

but the prospect of this night really has me on thebrink of soiling myself. Fortunately my luck takesa turn for the better and I see the night out in the

blessed warm house of the owner of another café,a large motherly woman who knows a needy boy

when she sees one. This is Central Asia’s schizo-phrenia: aggressive mercantilism, obliging hospi-

tality. A taxi tour from Bishkek around Uzbekistantaught me this much.

To Tashkent

Rewind fteen days. On the mountain pass before

  Tashkent we witnessed some extreme hitching.With their cars marooned in the snow, stranded

drivers and passengers were taking their only op-portunity of escape by sitting or lying on the bon-

O

EVAN HARRIS

nets of more powerful cars, clinging to the wind-

screen wipers with their blue hands.

Attempting these mountain passes in the depthsof winter is asking for trouble, a point graphically il-lustrated when we pulled up besides the aftermathof a car crash. Our taxi driver, therst passer-by to of-

fer any assistance, took the lead. Of the eight blood-ied victims, our driver loaded two unconscious eld-

erly ladies into our car, one laid out in the boot andthe other wedged into the back seat alongside my

travelling companions and I. Things didn’t improve much upon arrival at the

town hospital near Uzgen. Several doctors, smok-ing cigarettes by the entrance, were inexplicablyunkeen to o er any help until eventually one of 

the more enterprising nurses wheeled out a trol-ley. After cursorily pronouncing them both dead,

the nurse carted both bodies away leaving behinda bloody trail in the snow. Our morbid cargo thus

dispatched, we travelled on towards the Uzbek border in silence.

Tashkent to Nukus

After a couple of days’ recuperation I left my com-

panions and the reassuringly European Tashkentbehind, boarding the train to Nukus with nothing

but a book and a carriage of curious Uzbeks forcompany.

  Twenty-four hours on this rusting snake re-ally challenged my love of trains. Oppressive heat

sweated me to my hard bed while outside the win-dow rolled endless snowy desert. A trip to the unlittoilet found me literally taking a shot in the dark.

 The light didn’t work and all I could do was hopeI wasn’t pissing on my shoes. Exiting, the outside

hall shed light on my marksmanship; I was stand-ing in my own puddle. When my fellow passengers

Uzbekistan may be a police state slowlysuccumbing to desertication, but there is

still much to see. Evan Harris recounts aneventful tour of the region he made lastwinter that culminated in an expired visa

landing him in a spot of bother with theUzbek authorities.

Top A rusting boat stands on a snowy sand

bank near Moynaq. Many boats left high and

dry by the retreating Aral sea are slowly dis-

integrating into the desert. (All photos Evan

Harris)

Top Right Bolo-hauz Mosque, an architecturalhighlight of Bukhara, has an enormous car ved

wooden portico into which the Imam sings his

call to prayer.

Kul a quick guide

 U z b e k i s t a n !

 E s c a p e f r o m

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tired of toilet target practice, crosswords and pur-

chasing Chinese tat from the babushki who board-

ed the train at every stop (why oh why don’t theysell useful things like water?) they gave me a grillingworthy of the KGB and ngered my passport andvisas. One interrogator invited me to his home, an-

other o ered me a lift in his car, but the authentic-ity of their o ers had to remain untested as I was

headed for the yellowing wallpaper, dripping water,and drunk businessmen of ‘Hotel Nukus’.

 The receptionist gave me my key and a faceful of coy smiles and I walked the moody dark corridors

of The Shining to my room. Only, it’s not my room,is it? The bathroom light is on, and the room smellsof perfume, and there’s a handbag on the bed. I

wonder if the rooms are dorms rather than singles,but reason they’d never have a mixed dorm.

I return to the reception desk.

“Is there supposed to be someone else in theroom?”

“No, there isn’t”

“You’ve made a mistake, someone is already inthat room”

“Really?”

“Yes…”“Are you sure?” All coy smiles again.

“Yes, there’s a woman’s handbag on the bed.”She shrugs her shoulders nonchalantly and

gives me a di erent key. As I twist the key of mynew room it dawns on me that it may not have

been a mistake. I lock the door behind me.

Moynaq

Nukus has little to o er aside its renown collectionof Soviet art in the city gallery. Its other purpose is

as a base for reaching Moynaq, the former Aral Seashing port.

A dirty drip of paint on an otherwise blank 

desert canvas, Moynaq is fading. Ecological ca-

tastrophe has dragged the lick of the Aral Seawaves far from this once thriving fishing port;Moynaq feels a zombie town this winter. The re-sult of the USSR’s attempt to mobilise resources

to increase productivity, the Aral Sea has beenreduced from a giant blue puddle on satellite

images, to a tiny teardrop in the desert. The re-sult has destroyed a productive fishing industry,

created health endemics, and destabilised thelocal climate.

My god it was cold. Stepping o the bus, a ve-hicle held together with ga a tape and string, Iunderstood why the women exiting behind me

were as wide as I am tall; the cold is penetrating;it grips your bones, it turns your face to raw meat

and makes you wish you were back on the busattened against the window by an enormouswoman, surrounded by leather skinned mengripping old cigarettes with their golden teeth.

Five-hundred meters away from Moynaq’sonly road I see the spectre of a ship against thewhite sky. Atop a crunchy white dune I spy more

rusting husks. The metal ribs of one can be seenthrough the hull, the insides empty, picked for

parts and left looking like a rotting whale.Walking back, a teenage boy eyes me sus-

piciously and asks for a cigarette. Craving satis-ed he gestures to his mouth and asks for food, I

apologise and hurry back to the bus. The one caféis closed, and the streets are busy with shuinggures. People seem to be eyeing me with a mix-

ture of suspicion and amazement. Tottering high-heeled teens giggle at me, packs of men laugh

and taunt. Halfway along the street I hear an un-godly wail from one of the houses off the road.

  The sound of agony echoes around the town

and no one flinches. The only bus has left, but a

man is waiting for another passenger to take toKungrad. I join his car, relieved to be leaving thissad eerie town.

Khiva and Bukhara

 The cold recedes little in Khiva, the reconstruct-

ed desert city and slave trade hub of yore. Theweather is no obstacle for Uzbek marriages. The

only life in these reconstructed streets is thegroups of marriage parties dancing their way

to Khiva’s holy shrines. The men seemed wellprotected in their leather suits, but the bridesblushed blue under their heavy makeup, naked

to the cold in their modern white dresses.“It’s a popular ti me of year to get married,” the

guesthouse owner tells me over tea, jam and

chess thrashings, “it brings good luck.”Here, in my guesthouse, hides the elusive

Central Asian hospitality. A warm house, fresh

tea, bread and jam any time I need a break fromthe cold (every hour), a nd free washing when myhost realised I was running low on cash. Once, he

explained, he welcomed a European cyclist whohad been robbed of all but his clothes. Having

fed him for several days, the luckless travellersaid goodbye, paying only with a moral IOU. A

month later a German tour group leader knockedon his door and presented the c yclist’s money. A

modern parable right here in the desert.Bordering Turkmenistan, Khiva had a rough

reputation in its heyday. It’s fitting then that I

left in the company of scoundrels. Two broth-ers and a father hemmed me into a taxi, all their

worthy possessions with them, including a TV inthe boot and a bag on my lap.

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Above Would you marry this man’s daughter?

Vodka and pottery in Samarkand old town.

Visibly hammered they appeared in a celebratory

mood, the sons’ wretched faces contorting into tooth-

less smiles as we cruised the desert. They checkedthat I didn’t speak Tajik early on, so they could yell ateach other without my comprehension.

 They seemed unsure of where they were going, but

my ears picked out the names of Andijon and Termizregularly. At one military checkpoint one of the sons

handed over his passport instead of bribing the grunt,and once out of view of the hut the family descended

into a stght, handsome wiry father asserting him-self as alpha male. After they’d taken great interest in

my passport and visa their heads dropped and beganto snore in unison, cartoon drunks all three. Ignoringthe smell of dirty hair from the head slumped on my

shoulder I fantasised about their story. What were theyrunning from? Who would they bother next? Our ad-

ventures parted ways in Bukhara, and I felt glad that

mine was only a cameo in their tale.Bukhara’s sweeping squares and crumbling nar-

row lanes o er a charming place to lose a few days.

Inside empty madrassas and mosques I was free tosneak up stairs that felt o  limits and stand amongthe doves atop the roofs of buildings. Two pecu-

liar architectural wonders stand out in this city. Therst, Bolo-hauz Mosque, opposite the citadel, has an

enormous carved wooden portico which sets it apartfrom golden-stoned entrances of other mosques. The

Imam sings his call to prayer into the portico, using itsacoustics as an enormous amplifying dish. Nearby,

the Soviet constructed water tower deserves a climb.Its lattice-work skeleton cuts a unique silhouette,and the roof allows a romantic view of the domes

and minarets of the city. Whether for the views or thesafety from conservative elders granted by challeng-

ing stairs, many towers I climbed were occupied byteenage couples enjoying their rst lust.

Samarkand

As the most famous city in Central Asia, Samarkand

threatens anticlimax. Though the dimensions of theRegistan and the nearby mosques do not disappoint,the city’s highlight was to be found in the companyof three old men. Between my guesthouse and the

Registan I stumbled upon a courtyard of rickety craft-studios. As the rst day of the New Year, it appeared

deserted and I took advantage of the sunlight stream-ing through dusty windows illuminating fabric mas-

terpieces and took photos. One pottery studio wasoccupied by three men, and the master potter beck-

oned me inside and insisted I lunch with them. Soonthe small dark room was lled with the buzz of richturkey stew and a bottle of vodka was fetched from a

kiosk. The room was strewn with half nished potterylike clay scabs hanging to some old beast, like the half 

baked commentary on money, politics and women

that circulated the room that afternoon. Once the bot-tle of vodka wasnished and the o ers of their daugh-ters became too insistent I left them to their pink el-

ephants and spent the afternoon rolling around themagnicent architecture in a drunken haze.

 The rest was but fairytale madness. Getting on the

wrong bus, cancelled trains, embassy incompetency,being sent to the wrong border, pushing a Lada up a

snowy hill, closed border, hotel refusing to let me stay,expired visa, staying at my taxi driver’s wife-beating

brother’s house, money transfers, more embassy in-competence, and nally threats of prison or a $1000ne. Two hundred dollars in bribes later I’m treadingfrozen grass past an armed Uzbek guard 500m to theleft of the ocial border passage. The guard nods his

head at my escort, a man whose daily job is facilitat-ing people across the border. Halfway to the Kazakh

border we pass a man on a donkey cart laden withgoods. I bet he didn’t have to pay $200.