Trains

While Khiva has its own railway station trains only run to and from places on even days of the week. Still trying to work that one out. If you want to catch a train any old day of the week then you need to get to Urgench railway station, so 30 odd miles away, and that is where we catch our first train to Bukhara. We then have a wait of 3 1/2 hours for our connection to Tashkent. The total distance is just under 1000 km, but at least we get a night's sleep on the way. Cheaper than a hostel. Fun, fun.

Those of you who who remember the style of carriage used in the 60's, 70's and part of the 80's may recall these had a corridor along one edge, and compartments with sliding doors inside of which are seats, luggage racks, and a window with curtains. Bingo, we are in one of those. The main difference is that above the luggage racks are a couple of TV monitors, one pointing back and the other forward. Nobody in the carriage is remotely interested in them. Some train official switched them on, one by one throughout our carriage, probably the whole train. 

One of the monitors in our compartment is defective, just showing some test screen. We have had a number of random people come in, fiddle for 5 mins, get no result, then wander off. Most bizarre.

Seats are reasonably comfortable, although very dusty, as are the windows, so the view is somewhat obscured. There are carriages with sleeper beds, but not worth it for a few hours, well about 6. This train goes on to Samarkand and if we were going there it would have been worth the sleeping berths.

As we look out of the dusty windows we see evidence of large scale pipe laying. Uzbekistan and surrounding regions have massive supplies of natural gas. The plan is to lay a pipeline all the way to China. Certainly the Uzbeks have a growing problem with their traditional exports of cotton and water melons. Large tracts of land are becoming polluted due to excessive use of fertilisers and pesticides, which in turn is leaching into the ground water. This causes the dry dusty desert to become increasingly saline, and with temperatures increasing a lot of land is now marginal and this is expanding each year.

There also seems to be a move away from using traditional building materials of bricks, wood and a mud and straw mix to using concrete and more concrete and yet more concrete. Lots of marble, marble stairs, marble paths, marble facing on concrete buildings, marble fountains (no actual water in most).

Caught our connection. A sleeper to Tashkent. It takes about 8 hours. Get given a package of clean sheets and pillow case. We have opposite upper bunks. Manage to get a few hours sleep.

A bit stiff so decide to walk to our guest house. About 3 miles, a good stretch of the old legs.
Stopped for a coffee and got chatting to a guy at the next table who was with his 16 year old son. Turns out he is a dipolmat from Saudi Arabia working at their embassy. Of course Yvonne was totally ignored 'is this your wife, does she take sugar?' etc... Mind you every male here seems to be a mesogenous.
In restaurants, on transport, in shops, just about any public space, it's the same. Middle East, Far East, Central Asia, South East Asia, most places it is a patriarchal world.
Education is making a difference but it's difficult to reconcile the 21st century to attitudes better suited to the 16 and 17th century. The hatred of men and boys is called misandry. Rant over.

Finally arrive at our guest house called 'Avar's guests', another male. His wife does all the work while he takes the money. Rant really over now.

A couple of photos. Yvonne just woken up; our carriage.