Uzbekistan
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Around April 18, we will arrive in Uzbekistan. There, we do not yet have detailed plans where to go. One interesting thing are especially new electric locomotives that are currently being delivered from China to the Uzbek Railways. We are going to watch out for them...
Sunday,
April 18, 2004
Monday, April 19, 2004
Tuesday,
April 20, 2004
At the Uzbek border post, all formalities begin
again from the start, that has already become routine for us. Luckily, the custom
forms look the same, just in different languages, so we can easily copy all data.
The luggage is x-rayed, there is no trouble. So now we have come to Uzbekistan
and are now standing at a border point nearly in the wilderness - we have not
arranged transport further on, but Barbara has ordered a taxi to the next major
city, Buchara. We happily accept the offer to follow with her.
Uzbekistan is
really no rich country, but compared to Turkmenistan, most appears fairly well-preserved
here. At least buildings in use are maintained to some extend, even though there
is a number of abandoned homes and industrial buildings here as well. Nevertheless,
it feels much fresher overall than in Turkmenistan.
It is nearly unfamiliar
to us not to see the same face any longer at every corner. In Turkey, it was Kemal
Atatürk, in Iran Imam Khomeyni, in Turkmenistan Saparmurad "Turkmenbaschi"
Nayazov, and now? We have seen maybe one or two pictures of president Karimov
at the border, that's it.
In Buchara, the taxi driver helps us to buy tickets
to Samarqand the same evening, it's the same train Barbara is going to take as
well, but she continues directly to Tashkent. Then we look around the town that
is one of the oldest along the ancient Silk Road. Here, there are a couple of
tourists, Uzbekistan has opened up for foreign visitors, and towns like Buchara
and Samarqand have a lot to see from the time as they were important market places
along the ancient Silk Road.
In the late afternoon, we get to the station where
we can watch the shunting activities conveniently from the waiting room. Unfortunately,
one is not allowed to get to the platforms as long as no train is ready for boarding.
The line is not electrified here, we see mostly triple unit Diesel engines and
big shunting locos, among others a six-axled single cab loco coupled to a Diesel
engine without cab as "booster".
Then we may finally travel by train
again after all taxi journeys. The train has the same type of sleeper cars as
the Turkmen night train, but what a difference! The coaches are between well and
at least reasonably maintained. Shortly before midnight, we arrive at Marokand,
a junction station a bit before Samarqand. Here, the part of the line electrified
with 25 kV/50 Hz begins, and we change to electrical traction.
The train continues hauled with an electrical
loco until Samarqand, where we arrive around half past twelve in the night. Now
we can see that there are prisoners' cars here as well, our train has two. We
look for the hotel "Lokomotif", apparently some sort of facility for
railroaders when they have to sleep over away from home on duty. We read that
they accept other guests as well if there are free rooms. We go around the station
until we finally notice that we have to go inside the fence on the railway area.
There are no free rooms (or they do not let us in for another reason), and we
take a taxi to the city centre, where we find a small and simple, but very fine
and fresh hotel. The bazaar of the town is just around the corner.
In the next
morning at breakfast, we realize that the hotel is not really fully completed
yet, some things are a bit improvised. We learn that we are actually the third
and fourth guest since the hotel opened! It is situated very attractively in between
some of Samarqands world-known sights. Here, we see more tourists than in Buchara,
again, we meet a couple of French as before in Tehran, Esfahan and Buchara. There
are mainy souvenir shops, skilled vendors have learned several foreign languages,
there are entrance fees for the buildings - the country's opening for tourism
seems to pay off here.
Later, we return to the railway station where we want
to find out the status of the new electric locomotive that has been delivered
from China recently. We go to the depot and ask us through as long as Till's Russian
permits. The loco is based on Tashkent and is tested from there. For photo permits,
we are told to ask in an office in Tashkent as well, they seem not to see a possibility
to grant a permit locally. However, we do not experience any trouble when taking
photos from the platforms, no-one cares.
We have quite some time left until
the train leaves after midnight; it is the same train as the one we came with,
only one day later. We remain in the station and its surrounding.
More and
more people come into the waiting hall in the evening, and after a while, we realize
why there are so many young people around 18 years: They are new recruits on their
way to military service in Tashkent with the night train. Their instructor and
some more military people are already with them here, and the recruits have their
first opportunity to train walking in step, out onto the platform and back to
the waiting hall, this repeats many times during the evening. We talk to one of
them and learn among others that they have to serve 18 months.
We travel overnight to Tashkent where we arrive
around 7 am. The recruits are welcomed by a military orchestra.
As there are
no trains to Kazakhstan the next day, we decide to limit our stay in Tashkent
to one day only and to buy tickets to Kazakhstan for the same evening. It takes
a while to find the international ticket counter, which is in a different building.
We find out that there are only luxury berths left at a price of approximately
190 US-$ for two, and that the counter accepts neither credit cards nor US-$.
The biggest banknote in Uzbekistan is worth 1000 Uzbek Sum, around 1 $, and those
are new and there exist not so many yet. 500 Sum notes are still dominating for
big amounts of cash. That will be a nice bundle of notes, thinks Till and leaves
to change money.
The ATM in a nearby Western Union office refuses to accept
Till's Visa card, so it is necessary to change cash US-$. Finally, Till gets a
bundle of 1000 notes of 100 Sum each and the rest in 500 Sum-notes. The bundle
is officially pre-counted with a seal and a stamp, so it fortunately does not
need to be re-counted. The whole package is 14 cm thick; for the ticket vendor,
there is absolutely nothing strange about this. We hear later that tourist group
guides use to carry around the money for the whole group in big sacks. Credit
cards are to some extent accepted at upper-class places but are not yet so common
that one dares to rely only on them.
From the train, we have not seen a depot
in the morning, so we take a trolleybus along the railway in the other direction.
We come to a small commuter train station, and as a freight train has to stop
at the platform, we hear from the engineer where the electric locomotive depot
is situated. We actually have passed by it in the morning, but it is much further
south of the city than we expected. We are lucky, a commuter train that comes
a bit later goes there. The train has a very simple interior, it's wooden benches
without any cushions., and a very noisy gear. We travel to a station with the
remarkable name "Uzbekistan". Thus in Uzbekistan, you can take a commuter
train from Tashkent to Uzbekistan... It's a station that mainly serves the depot.
The guard at the entrance gate sits directly besides the platform. We explain
what we are looking for and ask to talk to the chief. We are allowed to enter
and led to the office. On our way, we see that the Chinese-built loco is there!
Except a number of other electric locos, we also see a couple of service vehicles.
We get permission to look at the Chinese loco and to take photos. It seems as
if the Uzbek railroaders feel honoured that we have made such a long journey to
look at their railway...
There is a group of Chinese engineers from Zhouzhou
Electric Locomotive Research Institute (ZELRI) in the depot to take care of the
commissioning. Till has actually had a group from ZELRI at work in Sweden for
training, but it was not the same people as those here. ZELRI cooperates both
with Siemens and with Bombardier. This loco has electrical equipment from Siemens.
The Chinese who speaks best English is just making a nap, but he is waked up for
us. He is happy to show us the locomotive and to explain us its technique. We
are going to publish a longer separate article about the loco soon on this web
page.
After the visit, we have some time over that we pass at the depot's office
together with two employees. Then we take a commuter train back to the main station
to catch the train to Moscow. We are going to take it to Qyzylorda in Kazakhstan.
The train is well-maintained, the train's name "Uzbekistan" is painted
on the coaches and in our expensive luxury compartments, there are fine bed sheets
and a nice tea can of porcelain.
Soon after departure, we reach the border.
Finally again a border crossing by train! The passport check is quick and painless,
but the customs officer makes an unexpectedly thorough baggage search - we have
to unpack everything. He scrolls through all pages of all books and searches for
hidden pockets in our luggage. Obviously, Uzbekistan is on its watch against antiquity
smuggle. He is, however, polite and correct and does not find anything suspicious,
so there is no real hassle for us.
