Uzbekistan - Khiva

We checked into the Hotel Arqonchi which is within the old city walls. The admission fee for the old city was 11,000 Sums, which we had to pay despite already staying within. Our guide took us through the old city.

Khiva was of course on the old Silk Route of the past. All the old buildings of historic importance have been kept and preserved. Some of the buildings have the most amazing achitecture and a lot of them have carved wooden columns.

There were three palaces within these walls and one of them has 3 courtyards and 160 room.

The prominent turquoise-tiled Kalta Minor Minaret has a base of 25m but was never completed and hence only a short stub. Had it been completed it would have been the tallest minaret in the world in the 1850's. The Juma mosque has over two hundred wooden columns supporting the roof (see picture). One of the columns came fully carved from India - the challenge was to find which one.

Attached are only a small number of photo taken during the guided tour. The tiles on the floor, walls and ceilings were exquisite. Some of the buildings, the tiles were individually marked so the tradesmen in those days knew where to fit them with respect to the vast building.

One could only imagine what this city was like during the Silk Route days. More to come .... next stops Bukhara and then Samarkand and then Tashkent, and then.. and.....

Uzbekistan - Qongirat Moynad

(pictures are in reversed order...)
We arrived a Qongirat Uzbekistan to pick up our local guide and we stayed a night in the road-side rest houses where local truck drivers stop to have rest. After picking up some supplies the next morning from the town, we headed to Moynad.

Pictures taken at Qongirat market. Town was full of Russian cars to yester years.

Moynad was not on our original schedule to visit. The visit was possible because we by-passed Turkmenistan. There is a very sad story associated with Moynad and one had to see it to believe the story.

Moynad was once a fishing town with a very large fish cannery which employed several thousands of employees. The Aral Sea has now retreated some 150km away and left fishing boats high and dry (see pictures). The Soviet authority some years ago decided to drain the sea to irrigate cotton fields. Once the irrigation project started, no present day government is going to reverse the process. The disaster is man made and there is always two sides to a story.

There is only a small river/stream a couple of kms out from the township where we camped for the night. By the sound of it, it wouldn't be long before this river dries up too. Hopefully, for the environment and for humanity, this does not happen.

Kazakstan - Aktau Beneu Camel track

This is probably not a fair assessment of what Kazakstan is really like as we were only just driving through from Aktau to Beneu and onto the camel track to Uzbekistan.

There was not much in Aktau apart from the ferry terminal and the town centre which was once a thriving holiday destination for the Russians during the Soviet era. Aktau does have a beach on the Caspian Sea coast with an unusual jetty (see picture). Its purpose was not obviouse to me.

On arrival at Aktau, it was early hours in the morning and the Authority was not in full motion. Anyway, after a couple of hours of processing we were through and officially in Kazakstan. But, we still had to wait for them to process Calypso. So, to catch up with some sleep, we slept anywhere/anyway we could.

An attached picture shows I was trying a cool drink by the side of the road. The mini-tanker says "KBAC". I still don't know what it was, but it's cool refreshment on a hot day.

The main highway between Aktau and Beneu was nothing but a slossy dirt road where many trucks were seen bogged.

Beneu is a railway town. Like the highway we just arrived from, most of the roads in the town were not sealed (see picture) making "a night out in town" very difficult.

The next day we took the camel track (most maps don't show this "road" to Uzbekistan). I guess it was originally travelled by caravans and camels, it is called the camel track. Just to add justification to the label, we did see wild camels along the road.

Calypso developed a problem. We had picked up some dirty fuel in Aktau and the fuel system was clogged and Tim had had a frustrating time trying to drain the fuel tank and replace filters in the middle of nowhere - something thing we don't need on such a trip.

Basically, Kazakstan did not give us a very positive impression for a place to visit. As said, it's probably is not a unfair assessment of a very large country where we had only travelled a very small corner of it.

Azerbaijan - Baku and Caspian Sea

(pictures are in reversed order....)
Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan is a very expensive city. Internet in the hotel was US$15 per day and there were 22 of us. A handful of us were desparate to be on line.

The city is modern - too modern for me, anyway. The shops are mainly designer-labelled; similar to mid-town Manhattan.

There is an old city (Icheri Sheher) within the modern city. The old castle wall has been fully restored (see picture). There are several karavansarais in within and most have been restored to be restaurants/hotels (see picture - the one with a dining table in the alcove). The other picture shows an old karavansaria being excavated. There is also a round watch tower in the old city - in perfect condition.

Unfortunate for Tim and Cheryl though. It was a tough time for them; very stressful really. All because there was no set time for ferry sailing to Kazakstan (remember we had to make a detour to Kaz becuase Turmenistan closed its border due to Swine Flu?). Tim was camping at the ferry teminal trying to keep his ears to the ground -literary - to hear the rail wagons being loaded onto the roll-on-roll-off ferry. Ferry company seemed to be cagey about when the ferry might sail and when it would arrive at Aktau (Kazakstan).

We eventually boarded late afternoon and the ferry set sail 8:30pm for the expected 19hr sailing across the Caspian Sea. Picture of sun-setting over the Caspian Sea. There were not that many passengers on board and none of the service areas were opened, except the kitchen where they only served tea and beer. Only one toilet to be shared by all and no lights in it for most of the time.

We got to Kazakstan waters in good time but we "parked" it in the bay until dark (I guess it is cheaper for the ferry owner to dock in early hours than daylight hours). We got kicked out of our cabins shortly after midnight and waited again. All the old Soviet countries we visited still have a long way to learn about customer service.

Azerbaijan - Sheki, En-route to Baku

(pictures are in reverse order)
We did not stay in Azerbaijan for all that long but long enough to have an appreciation of the country. First stop was at Sheki - on old town from the Silk Route days. We stayed in a refurbished Karavansarai - see picture. It was one of the better kept karavansarai. Also, visited the old palace up on top of the hill.

After Sheki, we travelled on the main trunk road eastward en-route to Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. Surprisingly, for an oil rich country, the road was unsealed and very dusty. See picture attached.

Next stop, a bush camp in the middle of a mud volcano field - a bit like NZ's Rotorua except the mud is not boiling like Rotorua's.

The next day, we continued to drive toward Baku, passing several oil fields. Nodding Donkeys were everywhere and it would appear that there was not much planning put into the oil-fields. Cables and nodding donkeys were all over the place - rather haphazardly.

Next post - Baku, the expensive oil capital city.

Georgia - Tbilsi, Telavi

(Hello from Laos, our first day. Sorry about the delay in up dating the blog. Getting onto the blog site has been a big problem. Blogging in China is illegal - you simply can't get access.)

We stayed in a hotel across from the river from the old part of town. Tbilisi, like most cities in the West (incidentally, Georgia aligns itself with Europe, although strictly in within Europe), has some beautiful statues and sculptures dotted within the city.

We took a walk up the Narikala Route in the hills behind the city and visited the old St Nicholas church. Didn't sent Santa a request though. The old castle has a very steep wall - straigth down to the old town below. Free wi-fi in Cuppochino cafes and pubs along the old town.

City bath (reconstructed from the old site) is to one side of the old town. See picture attached.

Bad news came, Turkmenistan has closed its borders due to swine flu. We ended up staying another night in Tbilisi to plan an alternative route - through Kazakstan.

Visited Telavi, in Kakheti province, where they have been making wine for 6000 years. they called Georgia the Mother of Wine-makers. Naturally, we visited one of the small family vineyard and tasted their wines. The group purchased some 150 litres of various wines ranging from 4 GL to 8 GL per litre (very inexpensive). The family still use the old "bucket" and underground vets technology.

LH in front of an 800-yr old Plane tree in Telavi.