All Around the World with the Most Travelled Indian
By NITIN GAIROLA
We knew the Central Asia adventure in the ‘Stans’ was approaching its end when our train slowly came to a halt at Bukhara station. We had planned just a day in Bukhara and another in Tashkent before we took our flight out of Tashkent and back to India. This is since most of our time in this trip was kept for the mountains, deserts, forests and grasslands of Central Asia. But both these ancient (and yet modern) Silk Route cities didn’t disappoint, in fact far from it. Bukhara did something I had hoped all such ancient Uzbek cities would do, which is not to have too much of a ‘paint job’ done and not to ‘refurbish’ the ruins so well so as to take away the old world charm. However Bukhara did do the cringe worthy lighting up of the monuments at night in all the deep reds, dark blues and nearly florescent greens. Why could they not just leave the monuments be at night, is something I will never understand. At least they could have used a more dignified pale golden light as they had done in Khiva (the other ancient city on the Silk Route). In any case, this seems to be a new reality in city travel with unavoidable illuminated ‘I love so & so place’ selfie boards and such garishly floodlit historic monuments.
But we did manage to find our quiet alleys, ‘hole in the wall’ cafes, ignored ruins and even an Indian Bollywood themed restaurant called ‘Salom Namaste’ (the last bit was on Richa’s insistence I must tell since food is the least of my priorities when I am travelling). I can pretty much get by on anything as long as it gives me calories to be on the move. Richa is quite the same but only upto a point and being a preferred vegetarian does limit her options in such places. So she eats whenever the vegetarian opportunity presents itself.
After Bukhara we had another overnight train to Tashkent and we were kind of dreading a similar incident as what took place in the overnight Samarkand-Khiva train, the one with a suspicious ‘doctor’ with the injection inside our coupe (narrated in a previous feature). However this ride was smooth as our two co-passengers in the coupe of four seemed good and we got some much needed R.E.M (Rapid Eye Movement) aka ‘deep sleep’. The beds in Uzbek trains are really soft and the best part is that you can keep your bags in a closed storage area underneath the berth (which works sort of like a box bed). So you don’t have to worry about someone running off which your backpacks at night. I so wish we had this storage in our trains and our berths were this soft and comfortable. The train rides here can work like a hotel room and you can save some pretty pennies (like actually pennies and not a fortune) without adding to any discomfort.
Tashkent, we felt would be our low point since it is more modern than ancient. You do have the old town with beautiful architecture but rest of the city is quite new and has a Russian edge to it. Earlier in the trip we were in Tashkent for half a day so had some orientation but the second day here was something quite unexpected and fun. We took the time to meet people and did the touristy stuff too, like actually visiting the zoo (quite good as they had a lot of open spaces for wildlife). After the zoo we visited a beautiful white marble mosque (called Minor Mosque) and that then lead us to the old town and finally their Chorsu Bazaar. The Bazaar was quite a hit to the senses despite having seen a lot of unusual places in our lives – Think colourful dry fruits, disproportionally sized vegetables & fruits and smelly big chunks of meat (and their feet) either hanging from hooks or placed on the table. This last bit (with camel feet, goat heads and all) reminded me a lot of Morocco from our 2014 visit.
We also decided to eat their famous ‘somsas’, which are more like baked patties & puffs rather than our classic deep fired ‘samosas’ (the two words are related, naturally). And while our samosas are generally filled with potatos, theirs come in all variants, with most of them filled with meats. If you are a vegetarian then be very careful. Richa ordered a vegetable somsa and it turned out that it had vegetables, along with a fist full of meat. The concept of ‘vegetarian’ was alien to some people there. However I got to eat her somsa too, so I didn’t complain.
And how can one leave Tashkent without seeing its wonderfully decorated metro stations? So we bought two single ride tickets and just went up and down the metro line and stopped at each station to take photographs and then hopped into the next metro. This way we saw no less than six stations and each one seemed more beautiful than the other. Some of the most stunning ones are on their Ozbekiston line (orange or blue line) such as the Beruniy station, Gafur Gulom, Toshkent and Alisher Navoi. But my favorite was Kosmonavtlar station, dedicated to cosmology and the Soviet’s space dominance (along with USA) in the 1960s and 70s. Yuri Gagarin and other world famous cosmonauts of the old USSR were well remembered in murals on metal (seems fitting for those who lived their greatest stories inside metal capsules and not inside four walls).
So all in all, it was quite a heady day in Tashkent or Toshkent as the locals call it. But one of the most magical moments came when we accidently came by an orthodox Russian church towards the evening. It was quite beautiful as such grand churches are but what made it truly special was that the priests were just beginning their daily traditional ‘closing ceremony’. They all had long grey beards like Dumbledore of Harry Potter, were dressed in bright yellow robes and were slowing walking with their ‘hand crosses’ and blessing those in attendance. It was a pity we were not allowed to take photographs but still it was an experience to cherish. The priests gave us a smile, wondering what these two lost tourists were doing in a holy place when they could be at some less holier one.
But we felt that this serene and unexpected experience was the right way to end the otherwise action packed adventure. True to form, we raised a toast to the trip at 40,000 feet on Uzbekistan Airways flight home. I hardly slept during this red eye (night flight) and while there was no TV screen on the plane and it was pitch black outside, I was lost in my thoughts and recollecting what all happened through the ‘Stans’ and how nice it was to be on the way home.
It was like one of those epic trips that has one memorable highlight after another and seems to be going on for a very long time (I will avoid the ‘going on forever’ cliché). But as the wise folk say, ‘all good things must come to an end’. However I hold onto another line out of a Bon Jovi (1980s rock stars) song called ‘Welcome to wherever you are’. The lyric goes like ‘every new beginning is some beginning’s end’ and I am already looking forward to my next world travel adventure and it is about to start in April, with the tickets in my pocket as I write. But in between these international far away destinations, we extensively travel inside our own India as well and have found that it holds many adventures too, should you want them. So before I take you through the wild ride of our next world trip, from next week onwards I will show you how amazing our country really is for proper adventures. It’s time for a new beginning just as this one ends.
Nitin Gairola is from Dehradun and has travelled the natural world more than almost any Indian ever. He has set world travel records certified by India Book of Records, has written for Lonely Planet, and holds National Geographic conservation certifications. He is also a senior corporate executive in an MNC and in his early days, used to be a published poet as well. More than anything else, he loves his Himalayan home.
