I’ve been in Uzbekistan for nearly a month now and have been greedily soaking up everything that is unknown to me, from the minor details (the light switches here are wired 'upside-down'; the toilet paper is crinkly like crêpe) to the wider picture.
I asked one of my guesthouse hosts about Uzbek-Russo relations. Officially, I learn, Uzbekistan sends aid to Ukraine and recognises its autonomy. Unofficially, the Uzbek President, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, invites Russian ministers and ambassadors for ceremonies, at which - my host’s face twisted in disgust - they shake hands and give each other medals. Many people, not just the older generation, are nostalgic for the Soviet era. Russian television is piped into people’s homes, and, according to my host, the propaganda therein is comparable to 1930s German brainwashing. “People just watch it without any critical thinking!” they cried in despair. Later, someone I met sent me a Happy New Year message with a picture of Putin wearing a Christmas hat, holding a glass of champagne, and doing his best to smile undespotically.
Russian is integral to education here, with the best schools still being Russian; a leftover from the Soviet era. Most people, therefore, speak Russian and Uzbek, and some Tajik as well and other Central Asian ethnic languages. English is not widely spoken but it is becoming more popular with the young folk, some of whom take private language courses.
The children and youngsters are delightful and charming, and greet me nicely in the street. I am aways offered a seat on public transport, and the older kids politely practise their English with me. My exoticism is an unwitting object of fascination and sometimes comedy; I unintentionally made a whole shopful of young lads dissolve into uncontrollable giggles simply by ordering a coffee with milk.
 |
| A plov master and his kazan |
I have been aiming to eat a plate of plov everywhere I stop, to determine the regional varieties. Plov, or osh, the national dish of Uzbekistan, is a lunchtime meal of oily fried rice - like pilau - and cooked outside in an enormous wok (kazan) over a woodfire. Traditionally, street plov is prepared by men, as it is believed only they can be a true plov master. (I am unsure who does the mise en place). They start cooking in the mornings and by 11am the streets and bazaars are filled with a delicious scented smoke. By midday the chayxanas and oshxanas (tea and plovhouses) are filled with hungry people awaiting their fill.
 |
| Samarkand plov |
 |
| Bukhara plov |
 |
| Kokand plov |
My first plov, in Samarkand, was topped with soft carrots and yellow peppers, the meat on the side, and served with grated raw turnip and lightly pickled cabbage to offset the grease. As always, a pot of green tea was required. In Bukhara the plov had more raisins, engorged and juicy from hours of cooking, and a vast quantity of tender lamb atop. In Kokand, where it is called osh, it was so greasy that I was forced to leave the remaining few spoonfuls in my bowl, the grains awash with lamb fat. But it was fragrant with cumin, and I found throughout tasty crusts of rice which had hardened on the side of the kazan; the crispy bottom-bits known as socarrat in a Spanish paella and tadigh in Persian cuisine. Andijan, the furthest east I reached - almost as far as east as Mumbai - is famous for its plov, and rightly so: this was a gloriously comforting rice dish with sweet carrots, chickpeas, and served with a quail’s egg atop.
 |
| Flat Khiva bread; teabag for scale |
 |
| The lighter, slightly sweeter, Fergana Valley bread |
 |
| My companion and his lunch |
The round bread too has regional differences, and is flatter in the west and lighter in the east. In Tashkent and Samarkand it is rather solid, with tiny air bubbles. In Khiva, the furthest west I travelled, the loaves were enormously wide and flat like a naan. My neighbour on the train to Samarkand brought for his lunch a vast chunk of delicious roast beef sandwiched between two Khivan breads which he insisted I share with him, kindly literallising the word ‘companion’ (one who breaks bread with another). Bread here is quite understandably regarded with reverence, and must not be disrespected by being placed upside down. The loaves are stamped into patterns which indicate their origin and baker, and sometimes studded with raisins and topped with nigella and sesame seeds.
 |
| The red Kyzylkum desert and the ancient (400 BC) Ayaz Qala fortress |
Another staple is shashlik; beef, lamb, or chicken brochettes barbecued over a charcoal fire. Travelling through the dull red Kyzylkum desert to the ancient Khorezm fortresses, my driver pointed to a field of fluffy sheep and said laughingly, “Shashlik!” Some jokes are international.
Everyone is eager to know where I am from; there aren’t many tourists, and certainly none others from Angliya. Often I am mistaken for a Russian; that is, until I start attempting unpronounceably long words. To my dismay, I discovered that in the Fergana Valley, where the current tourist population is one hungry Italian vegetarian and me, people speak mainly Russian, even when counting, and my well-honed Uzbek numerics sometimes receive a long-winded and unintelligible response. But everyone means well, and I am called sestra (sister), or devotchka (girl), and I have been shown big and small kindnesses throughout this hospitable country. I was bequeathed a lemon, and later, a nice apple, and several people have gone out of their way to find me a marshrutka (a small public minibus) or a taxi. I made a friend called Himaydin who guided me through the suburbs of Tashkent to the long-distance taxi stand, fending off competing drivers, finding me a vehicle at a good price, and even gaily slapping the bonnet of an approaching car, shouting, ‘Uno momento!’ as we marched onwards together.
 |
| With my droog, Himaydin |
Only once did I fear I had made an enemy: this was in Khiva as I boarded the sleeper train back to Samarkand. A conductor asked me which class I was travelling in - platzkartny (3rd), I confirmed - I would be terribly squashed, he indicated, and offered me his private cabin. “How much?” I said, wondering where this was going, and hoping it was going to be a straight-forward money scam rather than a come-on. “Ikki ming so’m”, he confirmed, holding up two fingers. I stared at him. This was 2,000 so’m, or about 20 USD cents - the same amount it costs to use a public toilet. “Ikki ming so’m”, I said, very slowly and clearly. “Da!” he nodded. His fellow conductor beside him grinned. Curious to see another part of the train and the resolution of this strange interlude, I asked to see the cabin. It was, indeed, a private cabin, with a window, a door, and two bunks. It would be all mine, private, for 2,000 so’m, he insisted. I decided to call his bluff, and handed him a 2,000 so’m note, saying, “Ok. Ikki ming so’m”. This started a barrage of “No”s and negative gestures, and my dodgy conductor whipped out his phone and typed into his calculator 200,000; the typing of the zeros seeming endless. “That’s ikki yuz ming”, I said. It was more than I’d paid for my ticket. His colleague bent over laughing, and I headed towards my bunk in platzkartny, shaking my head. I was worried he might be annoyed, but on the platform at Bukhara we had a nice Russangliya chat about football, and each time he passed through my carriage he offered me a (presumably overpriced) hotdog and a cheeky smile. By the time we neared Samarkand I had become his sestra, much to the amusement of my neighbours.
There is a 5,000 so’m note - about 50 USD cents - which is doing the karmic rounds. A rude taxi driver in Samarkand diddled me out of it by charging me 35,000 so’m instead of the agreed 30,000 after he stopped at a silk factory I had already visited and had not asked to see again. This was an impeachable offence by both driver’s and client’s morals; one simply does not change the amount upon arrival, no matter where in the world or how much the bill. I argued the correct fare heatedly in my well-oiled Uzbek, but lost when another driver in the crowd who had gathered to watch gave me a 5,000 note to shut me up and to gain my custom for the long drive to Tashkent. I handed it back to him as it wasn’t his balance to settle, but by that time my moral indignation had been interrupted. However, the balance was unexpectedly returned to me in Fergana on New Year’s Eve by another driver, who insisted he take 5,000 less than the agreed amount; a lucky holiday ritual, perhaps. I then bequeathed it to a friendly marshrutka driver in Rishtan who drove me off his usual route to the bus station and didn’t ask for payment. It nearly came back to me again in the form of a cupful of honey in the bazaar in Andijan, which the seller wanted to present to me as a gift, but the honey was so deliciously floral that I handed him a 5,000 note as a thank you. So when it returns to me again tomorrow I will consider us all even.
 |
| Hotdog |
_______
If you enjoyed this post, you can follow me to receive new posts by email. Thank you for reading!
Or see more posts here: Get in the tuktuk, no time to explain
More on Uzbekistan:Photos of the beautiful Tashkent Metro
Or see more posts here: Get in the tuktuk, no time to explain
Comments
Post a Comment