Here is how to get from Turkmenistan to Uzbekistan. Little tip here: don't bring your luggage to Turkmenistan. Just bring enough for the few nights you might be there. Pack light. You will be dragging or carrying your stuff with you during the border crossing, the path is uneven, and the waits long. The less you have, the easier it is to carry and to inspect.
First, you have to get to the Oxus river crossing. When you reach the pontoon bridge ("No pictures!"), and if you happen to be in a bus, get out of the bus and walk across. Cars and trucks and buses can go over, but buses can't have anyone on them because there was an accident with a bus once.
My particular pontoon bridge crossing experience was quite nice - as long as I paid attention to where I was walking. The bridge is rusted metal, with uneven steps and gaping holes with ragged edges. The constant staccato of cars driving over the metal seams in the bridge (thump, thump, pause, thump, thump) is oddly soothing. The occupants of the cars wave and smile as they pass by.
The brown mud soup that is the Oxus flows under me, faster in the middle than it was in the beginning. Two men have their boat tied up to the center of the bridge, they wave and say, "American?" as I pass. I wave and nod. I pace myself so I have the bridge to myself for a moment, nobody in front of me and nobody behind. I'm on the famous Oxus river, making my way from Turkmenistan to Uzbekistan. Who would have guessed that this was where I would be at this point in my life? I know one person who might have hoped for it, might even have predicted it. "Just go, Jilly." How incredibly grateful I am at this moment for that advice.
Then it is back on the bus for the drive to the first checkpoint. We pass hundreds and hundreds of semi trucks waiting on the side of the road for their shot at a border crossing. They come with enough food to last for days, and will camp out and cook and stay with their trucks until it is their turn. The line seems unending, but eventually we come to a small green gate, a break in the barbed wire and fence. The three guards look to be in their early twenties, and bored out of their minds. Now we are like the trucks, parked and waiting for our turn. Our delightful Turkmenistan guide, who we have all come to adore, tells us to have a "white trip." This is a reference to the Zoroastrian tradition of white symbolizing happiness. We are all hoping for a successful border crossing.
A mini van roars up to the checkpoint and deposits some people coming into Turkmenistan. The guards make sure that they check all the passports, then they check the ones for the people boarding the mini van. We have to wait our turn as this is the only way to get to the next check point.
We arrive at customs, where we go through a bag screening, one at a time. Bags are opened and searched, there are questions about drugs again. No, I still don't have any. Our passports are stamped for our exit from Turkmenistan. We are almost to the half way point.
We wait again for the same mini van to make his way to this side of the customs office, and again, wait our turn. He packs us in and we zoom off to the no man's land that is the space between the two borders. We are told to wait outside a little shack, and warned we may have to walk the rest of the way. It is just getting hot outside. We are told to go wait at the next shack, where miraculously, we will be able to catch a little mini taxi van that on a good day seats four comfortably. We pack it to six people with luggage. We are nearing Uzbekistan, it have to get through this final "no man's land" first.
We pull up to another white building, and go through a long hallway. There is a man waiting to peer at us through a very small, very low window. I bend over and hand my passport through.
"Jillian?"
"Yes." I smile. Please let me back in.
He points a little laser machine at me and presses it on my forehead. There are signs in the hallway pointing to the dangers of mingling with bats, and coughing on people. Luckily, I have done neither and pass the temperature taking test. But there might be one more test...
"Profession?"
"I work in a bookstore."
"Hmmmmm." Pause. Then he smiled, "Married?"
"Nope, not married." I wonder if this a deal breaker or a deal maker. He grins at me and points to his wedding ring, then waves me through to the next checkpoint.
I drag my bag to the next little white building, and get my entrance stamp. There are no questions here, but a lady in uniform comes around the corner. "How many?" she asks me. "Fifteen," I reply. She looks mildly alarmed - it is almost lunch time, after all. She tells me that on our departure forms, we must fill out all the money details, plus all the electronics we are carrying. I nod, and get in line to go first through the scanner. But first, she must inspect every last piece of luggage that some Uzbek women are carrying. Everything comes out - shawls, blankets, packages of cookies. There is a lot of discussion taking place. Then, finally it is my turn.
She scans my luggage and takes me to the glass room. She corrects my form, adding my middle name and correctly my penmanship on all my "6s". Then she asks for the drugs.
"Nope, just aspirin."
"Hmmmmm. What is your itinerary?"
For some reason, I blank out. I grab my iPad and run through the whole trip with her.
She asks again about sleeping pills. "No, I sleep just fine." I say. "Ah, that is very good," she smiles as she stamps me through. Now I'm in! Through the little glass room to the other side. Relief. A (very young) border guard comes into the room and smiles at me.
"Hello,"
"Hello."
"Where are you from?"
"America."
"Ah, how old are you?"
"Well, how old are you?"
"I am twenty-four."
"Well, I'm a bit older than that."
Now his friend, with a row of gold teeth, appears as well, and they put their heads together and chat. His friend grins at me.
"My friend, he likes you."
"That's nice."
"Do you have husband?"
"No, no husband."
"You have friend boy?"
"Yes," I say. No sense giving him any long relationship history here. I'm not interested
and this seems the best little lie I could tell to get out of this situation.
"Oh," that does it, they say "Bye-bye" and head off.
Later it is determined that if there are border guards to be dealt with, maybe I should be the first in line. Although I'm a little leery of this plan.
On our way to Bukhara, we stopped at the Chor Bakr necropolis. Four ("Chor") direct descendants of the Prophet Mohammed are buried about seven kilometers outside Bukhara. In 970, Imam Sayid Abu Bakr and his three brothers Fazl Ahmed and Hamed were buried here. A Sufic dervish sect grew around them and their grave. The mosque and madrasah that make up the site were commissioned between 1559 and 1563.
We made our way into town, then through a maze of streets to the relatively recent, Char Minar ("Four minarets" in Tajik). It was built as a gatehouse to a madrasah in 1807. The four "minarets" aren't actually minarets, though, and the legend says that the builder actually commissioned the squat towers to represent his four daughters, similar to one another, but each different the other ones.
Buhkara was invaded by the Arabs and Islam became the ruling religion in the city from about the seventh century onwards. Of course, it was applied over existing beliefs like Zoroastrianism. Then came the Persian Samanid period, and the the Turkmens...and so on until the arrival of the Mongols.
"If you had not committed great sins," said Genghis Kahn, "God would not have sent a punishment like me." The Mongols razed the city and killed nearly everyone in the city. The rest they took as slaves, or to be used as human shields and bridges in the upcoming sacking of Samarkand. They would march the slaves in front of their invading army, letting them take the brunt of the defense, then march on top of their dead bodies.
Bukhara became a big player in the Great Game between the British and the Russians...with the Russians eventually taking Bukhara in 1920.
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