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  • BeyondOverton Travel
    • Silk Road (1): If Turkey is in crisis, it’s not obvious visiting it
    • Silk Road (2): Could beautiful nature and ancient history create a false sense of entitlement?
    • Silk Road (3): Fast Car
    • Silk Road (4):We took a bus ride to Iran
    • Silk Road (5): Border bothers
    • Silk Road (6): Chevrolet Land
    • Silk Road (7): Free-roaming camels and wild horses
    • Silk Road (8): China West to East
    • Silk Road (9): I have not told half of what I saw
  • BLOG
  • g88kboy Travel
    • On the Silk Road
    • Bulgaria : The Chicken crossed the Road
    • Turkey : The Country, not the Bird
    • Georgia on my Mind
    • Armenian Ayran
    • Iran – The Curious Land
    • An American in Azerbaijan
    • Uzbekistan: Golden Teeth and Neon Signs
    • Kazakhstan: Thirty Sweating Seniors
    • China Part One – Pandas Are Extinct
    • China Part Two: My TED Talk (Deep Analysis)
    • Phillipines – They Relax, I (pretend to😉) Study
    • Singapore: flashing trees and a torrent of tears
    • Malaysia: That ain’t no croc, it’s a log
    • Brunei: The Instinctive Fight for Superior Domination
    • Phillipines: Hello Friend Again
  • Outside the window
    • Bulgaria
    • Turkey
    • Georgia
    • Armenia
    • Iran
    • Azerbaijan
    • Uzbekistan
    • Kazakhstan

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Monthly Archives: November 2018

Kazakhstan: Thirty Sweating Seniors

13 Tuesday Nov 2018

Posted by g88kboy in g88kboy, Travel

≈ 1 Comment

Don’t come to Kazakhstan in the winter if you don’t like the cold!

We got there late October and it was already snowing 😖. Still, visiting Kazakhstan during freezing weather gave us an excuse to relax in the famous Arasan Russian bath – which is an experience I really reccomend to do (unless you have something against bathing naked with sweating seniors!).

Indeed, I really enjoyed the Arasan spa in Almaty (highlights include an old man doing a somersault over the handrail into the swimming pool). I attempted the Turkish, Finnish and Russian saunas, the latter being the hottest. I would suggest going to the Turkish if you like sunbathing (if you also don’t mind the smell of burnt fish, that’s what I smelled). It is difficult to stay in the Russian sauna for more than a couple minutes, but it’s worth the try. Tip: after entering, pour the bucket of ice-cold water on top of you head, it does help.

Enough about the spa. Let’s go back outside.

The mini-blizzard didn’t stop us from sightseeing. We went up the Kok-tobe mountain, a popular weekenders destination, with a cable car (it reminded me of the times when we would go skiing). It was even colder up there, but I enjoyed walking around, especially because it was a fun park (starting up again the chant – “It’s not fair! Take us to the fair!”). Unfortunately most attractions were closed due to the snow. At the end, considering how expensive the lift tickets were, we decided to walk down the mountain, which turned out to be a nice and pleasant walk despite the chilly air.

In fact, Kazakhstan was stunning under the blanket of snow, a condition the country is well used to. Nested in the mountains just a 15 minutes drive from Almaty, there is indeed a well known ski resort and Medeu, an enormous Olympic Stadium ice rink. We could not not go to visit that. It was unfortunately closed, but I was still in awe of the grand space of the entire rink clothed in glistening snow.

Talking of landmark sights, we also visited Panfilov Park, which is home to the Ascension Cathedral, a Russian Orthodox church. Impressively, it is the second tallest wooden church in the world, still standing: the towers looming in the pelting snow. It is now being refurbished, so unfortunately we couldn’t visit this one attraction either, but it was worth coming to the park and seeing the colorful church from the outside. Nearby, a large memorial dedicated to the Kazakh soldiers defending Moscow during WW2 is perched over an eternal fire crackling and raging through the weather.

My early impressions of Kazakhstan, however, weren’t great and only changed once in Almaty.

As I mentioned in my previous post, (https://beyondoverton.com/2018/10/26/uzbekistan-golden-teeth-and-neon-signs-2/) we first entered Kazakhstan through the Caspian Sea before driving into Uzbekistan. We had befriended a Kazakh on the ferry who offered us a ride to Beyneu on his bus. Later on, he asked my dad to lend him money for the petrol, promising he would return it (spoiler alert : he lied). In the end, he claimed the money was his fee for giving us a bus ride to Beyneu. I was frustrated – this person had lied and cheated us and we couldn’t do anything about it.

Another ‘school of life’ situation (as my mum likes to call them), happened while waiting for our train. We had set out for a restaurant close to the station and finally found one. All was well until half an hour later. A man had too much to drink and started stumbling around the restaurant, smashing windows and fighting with his friend. Well, that was interesting, to say the least.

Those experiences were not repeated the second time we entered Kazakhstan. Already at our arrival at Almaty’s train station, we were met by a friend of a friend, who owned a truck transportation business shipping things from China into Central Asia. He kindly offered to organise our Chinese border crossing – which we were extremely grateful for (otherwise, we would have had to take (again!) an overnight train).

In addition, later on, another friend of a friend showed us around Almaty’s surroundings (he brought us to the ice-skating rink) and introduced us to horse milk and camel milk. I found them both a bit too sour for my taste.

Overall, I really liked Almaty (full of amazing cafes and restaurants – with WiFi!). It’s third on my list of favourite cities, after Baku and Batumi.

Trees of a specific fruit are grown all around the city which is why Almaty means ‘father of…’ See if you can guess which fruit it is.

That’s right. Oranges.

Oh my bad. I meant apples.

Silk Road (7): Free-roaming camels and wild horses

09 Friday Nov 2018

Posted by beyondoverton in EM, Travel

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Kazakhstan, Travel

A note for clarity:

I set up this blog as a diary for my thoughts on the financial markets about a year ago. As we embarked on our Silk Road journey, my son wanted to share his travel experiences and I allowed him to use beyondoverton.com.

So now, you may have noticed that there are two entries per each country we have visited: my perspective (beyondoverton) and his (g88kboy). Additionally, because of the lack of reliable internet connections in most countries and our (Georgia and I, not necessarily the kids) desire to experience the real life as much as possible, our country posts come with delay. For example, I am about to post on Kazakhstan but we have been in China for almost a month already.

Connectivity being the issue has also meant that some posts have appeared in strange writing style – I don’t know why – could be because we upload from our mobile phones. It is for this reason that there are very few photos, in general. We have thousands, but uploading photos takes forever.

I have been also posting general footnotes on the journey, from time to time, with the latest being on China. That may increase the confusion as the timeline now, with this Kazakhstan post, seems to have been ‘broken’. A proper post on China will come soon!)

——————————————————————————–

We entered Kazakhstan twice. The first time when we crossed the Caspian Sea from Azerbaijan, and the second time, after Uzbekistan. The fact that we do not need visa to enter helped substantially in organizing our trip that way (all the visas we had to get so far for the other countries have been single entry only).

The two entries were also totally different experiences. During the first, we literally got taken for a ride by a local, whom we met on the boat from Baku. During the second, we met some of the nicest people (thanks to a good friend of mine: Nurik, if you are reading – a whole lot of gratitude) who not only showed us Almaty from a local point of view but also helped us cross the border into China!

We did neither know how to get from the port of entry on the Caspian Sea to the nearest town, Atyrau, nor really how to go to the border of Uzbekistan from there (about 6h drive). We thought we were in luck when one of the drivers on the boat from Azerbaijan, Mohammed, offered to take us to Beyneu, one hour away from the border. He had been to Georgia where he had bought a bus and was driving it back to his home in Aktau.

By the time we managed to get through passport control, and after waiting for a few hours for Mohammed to pass through customs with his bus, it had already become 10pm. I had checked that there was a train from Beyneu to Nukus, Uzbekistan at 4 am, so I thought, “Perfect timing”.

The bus driver had already agreed to take an American solo traveller, Michael, and a few of the locals along. At the last barrier before exiting the border area, the officers, for some reason, did not let us through. Mohammed turned around and asked me if he could borrow $30 (he said he had no cash) equivalent in Tenge, the local currency, because he had forgotten to pay for some document. It was lucky that I had exchanged that much money as, normally, exchange rates at borders are the worst.

It turned out, that he did not have the license to drive this bus (I have no idea how he had driven it so far!). I don’t know what the money I gave him was for, or how they let us through but now we needed to find someone else to drive the bus once in Atyrau, which meant that we could not go to Beyneu immediately.

We picked up more locals on the way, one of whom was kind enough to direct us as there did not seem to be a proper road for probably something like 10-15 km.

A small diversion here. This was a brand new port, which had opened literally two weeks ago. The facilities were excellent. Nothing compared to what they were in Azerbaijan and more like any modern European port of entry.

We stopped at a petrol station and the driver asked each of the locals to contribute some money for him to fill up the tank. That’s when I started to get suspicious; but still, he was a devout Muslim – he wouldn’t be a cheat and a liar, would he?

We were in Atyrau by midnight. We stopped at a parking lot just outside of town where all the locals disembarked and we waited for two people, one of whom was the new driver, the other, a friend of Mohammed. There was a new problem: they needed to arrange insurance, and, of course, that could not be done in the middle of the night. So, we needed to find a place to sleep…and somewhere to exchange money to pay for it.

Mohammed’s friend managed to arrange a flat for $40 for the night for all of us (including Michael) and I got in his car with him to find some Tenge and pick up the keys. (Everyone else stayed in that parking lot to wait for us).

When I look at this whole experience in hindsight, it seems surreal. I had no idea who these people were, we had just arrived in a foreign country in the middle of the night, I had left my family on a deserted parking lot and embarked on a trip across town with a stranger looking for a flat to sleep in and a place where to exchange money!

This guy was huge, a former Kazakhstan bench weight lifting champion…and he turned out to be super nice. If I had any fears, they quickly disappeared once I got talking to him in the car (by the way, unlike the other former Soviet Republics we passed through, Kazakh people not only speak perfect Russian but are also happy to).

He obviously knew his way around town. We stopped first in a secluded alley, where the ‘exchange bureau’ was an iron door with a small opening in the middle where you handed your dollars and hoped you would get some Tenge back. Then we drove to a really dilapidated block of old Soviet-style flats where a lady handed us the keys (she insisted on keeping my passport for ‘deposit’ but eventually settled for 2,000 Tenge – about $5).

The bizarre did not finish there. We picked up the family and Michael from the parking lot and drove to a brand new, very modern, but half-built ‘skyscraper’ on the Caspian Sea waterfront, where, I think, no flats were inhabited. The fact that there was a guard at the door who looked at us worryingly and warned he would call the police confirmed my suspicion (he did not).

The following morning, we got on the bus again and we left for the border town. I began to wonder whether I would ever get our money back. It was not so much for the actual money but a question of trust. Moreover, we had run out of Tenge and I was still relying on the money we were owed.

At our first stop we needed to buy water and I asked Mohammed when he was planning to give us the money back. He laughed back at me and said something like, “You were not thinking you were getting a ride for free, were you!?” Of course we were! The bus was going empty in our direction anyhow, and he had never mentioned money. His reply was, “Sorry, I must have forgotten to tell you, I expect you to pay for taking you to Beyneu”.

The situation became hilarious when, half way, we stopped at another petrol station and he asked to ‘borrow’ more money under another pledge that he would give it back. We were shocked after our previous exchange. Did he really think that we would trust him again?

Eventually, we got dropped off at the Beyneu train station but with a sour taste in our mouth.

Incidentally, while this drama was going on in the bus, the scenery outside was a vast steppe (most of it, hundreds of meters below sea level) where camels and wild horses were roaming free.  The other thing I noticed was, once past the Caspian Sea, people start to look much more Asian. In any of the countries so far on our trip, I could have possibly passed as a local. No such chance here.

We arrived in Almaty on the train from Tashkent. Almaty was really special: the unusually cold (below freezing, snowing) weather was contrasted with the amazing warmth of the people we met there. Nurik, my friend from University, who is also originally from Almaty but lives in London, put us in touch with his friends, Max and Daniar.

Max waited for us at the Almatyi train station, helped us to exchange money and get a SIM card and eventually took us to our rented flat. He was pretty much ‘on call’ all the time we were there with suggestions what to do and where to eat. And of course he organized our trip to the Chinese border.

Daniar took us for lunch where we tried some Kazakh delicatessen, among which camel and horse milk. Afterwards, he showed us Medeu, the most popular ski resort in Central Asia, just half an hour drive from Central Almaty.

Otherwise, the weather was totally ‘uncooperative’: miserably cold. We had planned our trip with the idea to avoid the coming winter in Central Asia/China, both as it is less pleasant to travel from place to place, backpackers’ style, when it is cold, and for practical reasons (fewer things to carry).

Georgia and my son had already bought winter jackets in Uzbekistan, and now literally the first thing we did in Almaty was buy hats and gloves in a mall. Then we went to the ‘Green Bazaar’ and bought these special waterproof ‘socks’ which go on top of the normal socks (we brought only one pair of shoes with us on this journey, the special Vivo Bare Foot, which had served us extraordinarily well so far, but were no match for the slush and snow in Almaty). And then we bought camel-hair and bamboo socks to keep warm. Finally, we still wore pretty much every single piece of clothing we had brought with us – this is how big the shock to the system was the cold we encountered in Almaty!

The upside of the bad weather was that we spent some time in Almaty wonderful cafes (I was very happy that I was finally able to drink some proper coffee!), restaurants (we had amazing Korean – it turns out that Almaty has a large Korean diaspora stretching all the way to the 1930s – the first mass transfer of an entire nationality!) and, of course, Bania Arasan (the Arasan Baths). This latter was heaven for Georgia and my son; I and my daughter, on the other hand, were just fine.

Arasan Baths were finished only in 1982 and are a typical example of Soviet modernist architecture. Rumor is that they were built to compete with the oriental baths in Tashkent (we did not see the latter because they were demolished a few years ago). Inside, the baths are not only really exquisite – a blend of oriental and modernist style architecture and materials; but they are also quite practical – everything was designed with a specific task in mind. Men and women bathe separately but, apparently, the two sides are exactly symmetrical. The choices are Russian Bania, Finnish sauna and Turkish steam room with the temperature in each decreasing in that order (if you are a first timer, like me, you would not
be able to stay more than a minute in the Russian Bania – it is that hot!).

We had chosen the rental flat right next to both the Arasan Baths and the Panfilovets’ Park the other must-see attraction in Almaty. The park is named and dedicated to the 28 soldiers of an Almaty infantry unit who died fighting the Nazis outside Moscow. We had to visit it despite the extreme cold. It was definitely worth it as the memorial is really magnificent.

On our last day we left Almaty very early in the morning for our drive to the Chinese border. Max came to pick us up from the flat (he gave us a few of the city’s famous apples for the road!) and then one of his drivers took us to the border.

The scenery was very much as I remembered it on our first encounter
with Kazakhstan in the east: steppes with wild horses (did not see camels;
don’t know if it was because it was so cold).

The difference was that this time the land was covered with snow, and with the majestic Tien-Shan mountains in the distance, it looked like a scene from one of those Russian ‘skazkis’ (stories) I had read as a child.

The border! Again! It all started well. We got dropped off where the car could go no further, picked up by one of Max’s people and taken, like VIPs, to the Kazakh border control. The appearance of a family on a deserted border crossing so far had caused some commotion and excitement. Here, though, it caused also some suspicion.

That was probably caused by my son mentioning he was from Italy while handing his British passport to the border officer, and my Eastern European name (and looks). Not only, it took the border officers an usually long time to process our documents (especially the kids’), but also, after passing through, we were separately, and casually, asked few questions (to the kids, what is the name of their mother; to Georgia, what is her name and to confirm her husband was from Ukraine!?!). We couldn’t
figure out if it was pure curious chit-chat from a group of bored officers or
digging deeper into our identities, but we thought it amusing.

The actual problem was what happened after we finally cleared the Kazakh border control. We started walking towards the Chinese side, when we were stopped by a screaming loudspeaker and asked to return back: apparently, you are not allowed to simply walk in no man’s land to the Chinese border – you have to be ‘transported’ there.

The issue was that the only transportation is a public bus, that not only arrives from time to time (no one knows when) but you need Tenge to pay for it (the same rate as if you had picked it up from the departure point), and we had not kept any.

We found ourselves in a bind. What do we do? Do we take our chances and wait for the bus? What if it is full? Would the driver take dollars instead of Tenge? Do we go back in Kazakhstan and attempt to board that bus at its starting point?

We decided to wait. Eventually, the Kazakh border officers warmed up and we started talking (I think they were bored – no one passed through the three hours we waited for that bus!). One of them promised he would talk to the driver and make sure he would take us on board, and for free! It was indeed a relief when the bus eventually arrived with enough spaces for us to board and cross into China. However, not before waiting for an hour, in the bus, while the Chinese border was closed for lunch break!

Silk Road Footnote

05 Monday Nov 2018

Posted by beyondoverton in EM, Travel

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

China, Travel

(Bull on the Bund, Shanghai)
We’ve been in China for less than a month as part of our Silk Road journey by land, a time, highly inadequate to make any strong conclusions. Yet, within that time, we’ve crossed the full country west to east, taken only public transport, stayed and dined in ‘everyday’ hotels and restaurants (a lot of street food as well!). All this gave us a chance to engage with locals on a completely different level than by only visiting the financial sector in Shanghai or government officials in Beijing (and staying in 5-star hotels – the way I used to do it as a professional investor). All this is obviously anecdotal ‘evidence’ but what struck me is:

1) the service sector is absolutely booming

2) prices are generally on the same level as in Europe/US

3) the locals can afford them

I consider myself a practical economist (UPenn/Wharton but having acquired 90% of my ‘economics’ from the markets and from tons of reading), so I am not making any claims, but it is actually possible, despite misgivings in the West, that China may indeed be growing at the official rate they have been reporting.

We, ourselves, in the West, are grappling with the accounting of an increasingly digitized service economy. Well, the size of Chinese e-commerce is multiple times that of the US, which means a lot more data. Moreover, because of the structure of society (centralization) they have managed to gather and analyze that data, and perhaps, make better conclusion than we could possibly make.

So, it is possible that we are indeed looking at Chinese growth too pessimistically, which does not negate the fact that all this may indeed be built upon a credit bubble. That would be hardly a surprise given that US growth has been built on a huge private credit bubble since the days of financialization in the early 1980s. Indeed, the locals we spoke to, think there are currently three big bubbles in the world: US stocks, Japanese bonds and Chinese real estate.

My point is that China could be shifting to a consumer-based society much faster than we anticipated and thus is also becoming much less dependent on exports and foreign growth – China does not need to rely on the rest of the world that much anymore. That was more than obvious on our travels in the country: foreign tourists, at best, are tolerated – the local Chinese tourist industry is very well developed and is flourishing. This is a big change from 10 years ago, for example, during which living standards have more than doubled.

It is amazing, in fact, the magnitude of Chinese middle class growth. When combined with the digitalization of society, totally embraced by the government, and the Great Leap Forward may finally happen.

(*Overtake England in 15 years”, 1958, Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Centre)

The fact that some of these trends are developing much slower in the West due to a lot of private legacy interests, which stand in the way, and governments which imagine they are running out of money, increases the risk that this latest trade ‘war’ would prove to be a spectacular own goal.

Silk Road (6): Chevrolet Land

03 Saturday Nov 2018

Posted by beyondoverton in EM, Travel, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

I know probably you would not believe me, having also said that every second car in Georgia is a Toyota Prius, but in Uzbekistan, pretty much every new car is a Chevrolet. Ok, I looked it up: thanks to a joint venture between GM and the government, apparently 95% of the new cars in Uzbekistan are Chevrolets.

Because of Uzbekistan’s vast resources of gas (and no oil), majority of those cars are adjusted for methane and propane, which are half the
price of oil. It was strange the first time we took a long-distance taxi and it
had to refill: the driver stopped about 200m away from the gas station and
asked us to get out of the car for safety.

I was really looking forward to visiting Uzbekistan. The country was a major destination along the Silk Road and I had heard so much about the magic of Samarkand already in my school days in Bulgaria. I was also very curious to see a country which was literally locked up for so many years after the breakdown of the Soviet Union: Uzbekistan’s borders were pretty much shut down until 2005 – during and until the end of Islam Karimov’s reign, the first president after gaining independence.

In fact, developing deep and meaningful international relations are still in their early stages. For example, the tourist visa regime was only recently simplified, and only a couple of months before our visit, Uzbekistan finally introduced e-visas. But also, because the country was closed off for the majority of the world for so long, it actually learned to produce a lot of goods locally. Ironically, the joint venture with GM was both an example
of this (locally produced cars) and an exception (foreign joint venture).

One could say that we entered Uzbekistan through the “back door”, from Beyneu, Kazakhstan. In fact, Uzbekistan is one of only two double land-locked countries in the world – these are countries which border land-locked countries themselves – yet another curious feature which made me
eager to visit it..

“Back door” is also in reference to the way tourists travel when they visit the country: they normally fly into Tashkent, go to Samarkand, and then Bukhara. Some of the more adventurous may go to Khiva as well. And
then back. We did it the other way around: Khiva-Bukhara-Samarkand-Tashkent.

We encountered a peculiarity about Uzbek culture already in the
border town there: vodka. When it comes to liquor, restaurants seem to offer a large variety of vodka, and pretty much nothing else (and people do drink their vodka – and it shows!). I seldom saw beer, and when I ordered it, it was not particularly good.

What is surprising, though, is the lack of wine. Uzbekistan has different varieties of amazingly sweet grapes but, as far as I know, not much of a choice when it comes to wine. We did try a bottle of wine in Nukus,
the only one on the menu; it was OK, but it turned out it was sweet (what a
surprise!).

But while we may have gone ‘against the tourist traffic’, so to say, we definitely went with the local traffic. The train left Beyneu,
the last stop before the Uzbek border at 4am. We had ‘camped out’ at the train station for the night which was full of people; in fact, at some point one could barely even stand there. There were traders selling all kinds of stuff outside along the railway line. It was incredibly busy!

The kids by now were used to such an experience and promptly fell asleep on the chairs, their heads resting on their knapsacks. As our trip has progressed, it is actually interesting to see how they finally started to grasp the concept of different kinds of comfort. For example, before
this trip, they were used to staying in 4 and 5 star hotels where their concern would normally be if the facilities include a swimming pool. Now they worry not only about the availability of Wi-Fi but sometimes, as in the case of Beyneu, also of a bed!

Around 2 am, a kind officer in the train station, with whom I struck a conversation about football, informed us that we could actually board the train. What was our surprise when we found out that we did not have any assigned seats, it was ‘first come, first serve’ kind of service, and people had already taken any seats where one could lie down! Eventually we managed to find two bench-seats for the kids.

As usual by now when crossing land borders, majority of travellers were ‘traders’: we were asked several times whether we could take some of their stuff in our bags. Overall, however, people were very nice and we
were simply treated as a curiosity. The border crossing was fast and
straightforward. The customs officer did ask us though whether we were bringing any history books!

We arrived in Nukus after 17 hours, travelling through mostly desert-like terrain. There, at the train station, trying to figure out a way to get to a hotel (we had no booking) I encountered another peculiar feature of Uzbekistan culture: they don’t seem to like to negotiate. Having travelled through all the other countries, but especially Turkey and Iran, where negotiating was part of the process, I found this strange. The taxi drivers in Nukus, for example, had very strict rules, one could say, the equivalent of taxis in the West with meter machines: 5,000 Soum (that’s the local currency) for the first 3km and 500 for each after. They would simply
zero out their odometers on every ride.

Even in the bazaars, Uzbek people did not seem to engage in negotiations. They were a bit more flexible there, but they would almost get offended if it went for too long and eventually refuse to sell you the product at any price if “pushed”. I don’t know if this is a specific Uzbek
characteristic or it is a vestige of the Soviet system but I had to respect that this is the way it is.

Our first planned stop was Khiva, a 3h drive from Nukus. The day we drove to Khiva, the temperature dropped from almost 30C, from the day before, to half that. We did not expect such a big change in weather that
soon, and definitely did not welcome it!

Khiva’s old town is surrounded by a wall, inside which old residential houses stand next to centuries old mosques and madrases. Both Uzbekistan’s history and culture are interlinked with those of Iran (and, later, Turkey), so the structure of the mosques is somewhat similar. Yet, unlike Iran, Uzbekistan is famous for its madrases, Muslim religious schools. Samarkand’s Registan, for example is composed of three madrases (but there is one small mosque in one of them).  

Despite this, Uzbekistan did not strike me as a particularly religious country. We barely saw women wearing hijabs (actually they were predominant only in Tashkent’s old town). We even had pork in a restaurant in Nukus (the proprietor was Korean) and in a cafe in Tashkent.

As we advanced more eastwards, the arid land gave way to some green vegetation, orchards and grapes. Along the roads, there were people
selling fruits and vegetables at almost any time of the day and (probably)
night. What was amazing to see was the melons: apparently Uzbekistan has the biggest varieties of melons of any country in the world (and the ones we tried were exceptionally sweet – it is a shame they do not juice them like in Iran).

Uzbekistan has plenty of cotton fields. As we were in the country right at the time of harvesting it, we could see people picking up the cotton and piling up the bags in massive containers along the road. We were told that students had to help with the harvest as well (i.e. no school for a month!). I remembered with fondness that we had to do the same in Bulgaria when I was a student there in the 1980s.

Unfortunately, the weather refused to ‘cooperate’ and it got progressively colder. So much, that we had to buy my son a winter jacket in the local market in Bukhara (he had lost his warm jacket somewhere along the
Silk Road before!). We were also forced to wear pretty much all our layers just to keep warm. Yet, that did not seem to help Georgia who fell ill and had to stay one full day in bed! The next day, while feeling better and able to walk around the streets, she also bought something to keep her warmer: a traditional long Uzbek coat. She looked different in it, and enjoyed the curious (from some, the older ones, obviously approving, from the others, the younger generation, amusing) gazes of the locals as we passed them by.

Another reason I wanted to visit Samarkand was Timur the Great, the legendary local leader I had read about as a kid. He created an empire which spanned a vast area, going deep into Persia and all the way to Delhi. However his reign was a one-off, i.e. there were no successors who could maintain his expansions. Timur was peculiar in a sense that he was illiterate himself, but he believed in the power of knowledge and appreciated the beauty of art. Legend has it that when he first ransacked Samarkand ,he killed the majority of the population but he spared the lives of architects, teachers and generally, people of knowledge. Then, under his guidance, Samarkand was rebuilt with the focus exclusively on madrases and other places of knowledge (Ulug Beg, the famous astronomer lived approximately at the same time).

Our last stop in Uzbekistan was its capital, Tashkent. I did not expect much of Tashkent, especially after visiting all these other places before that. Still, I was looking forward to being there because a friend of mine from both university and Morgan Stanley, whom I had not seen for decades, lives there. Unfortunately, he surprisingly had to go to New York the same week we turned up there. It was a shame, not only because I was looking forward to reconnect with him but also because speaking to a local, who I knew previously,would have enriched massively our view of Uzbekistan. As it was, Uzbekistan, after Iran, was a bit of an anticlimax.

However, we managed to get the best of our visit nevertheless. In fact, I enjoyed Tashkent, if not for anything else, for the blast from my ‘Soviet’ past that it provided, more than any other ex-Soviet capital I had ever been to.

So, a lot of things reminded me of how it used to be in Bulgaria in the 1980s: the monuments, the old block of apartments, the local market (where people would still offer to record music for you!), the circus. Even the main department store in the town where I went to high school was called ‘Tashkent’. We took the metro a lot (by the way, there was no metro in Bulgaria back in the ’80s). Some of the metro stations had very interesting decorations, the way I remember the Moscow metro when I visited it in the late 1980s.

The one thing we struggled with in Tashkent was knowing which restaurant was worth going to. In fact, that is one of the things we missed the most on our travels – after eating ‘street food’ most of the time, we were craving some variety…some
vegetables. Luckily, our next stop, Almati, would offer plenty of it.

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