Sentyab - Off roading in a Camry

Heading home from school

Apr 7-9

While planning our itinerary we had to decide between a trip to (what’s left of) the Aral Sea or a village homestay and hiking in the mountains of central Uzbekistan. The Aral Sea problem dates back to the development of intensive agriculture under the Soviets in the 1980s when widespread irrigation of cotton in the desert stopped the flow of water regenerating the sea. Where there was once a prosperous fishing town, now only rusted hulls remain, hundreds of kilometers from the current sea shore. Or so I read, because we chose hiking.

It was possible to book an arranged tour but it didn’t seem too hard to do it ourselves. I booked two nights at a guest house and train tickets for the first leg, and early one morning we hopped on a train to Navoi en route to Sentyab, a small rural village. We now know that shared taxis are probably cheaper than the train (which left at 5:00 am, uhg), although the taxis are a bit slower. It also would have been easier to leave out of Samarkand, but it wasn’t too bad out of Bukhara. Booking everything and arranging our transportation ended up costing about $220, saving us about $80 over the cost of the cheapest arranged tours we could find.

From Navoi we caught a shared taxi to Nurata for only 20K som each, fairly cheap. Nurata is known for the ruins of a fortress built by Alexander the Great but otherwise there didn’t seem to be much there. At one point in the drive Tim noticed we seemed to pass a concrete barrier with a no entry sign, which explained why the taxi ended up doing some serious off road maneuvers in his Chevy sedan over/around/through the ditches and dirt piles of a construction site. It did seem to save us about an hour so it made up for the fear for our lives. When we weren’t off roading the driver was burning up the straights. I was sitting middle in the back and there were no seat belts, so not liking my odds if something went wrong. Tim wisely chose to close his eyes and pretend to sleep.

All the land we could see near Sentyab was mountain or pasture, and the village itself was spread along a river valley in the foothills. The river was churning whitewater this time of year, and the weather was a drizzly 60 degrees. Our room at the guest house was a bit damp, but they served us hot tea and we took a nap to recover from our early morning. We were served traditional food (the village was all Tajik but the food was similar to Uzbek food), then we shared a shot of vodka with the homestay owner and his brother and cousin who happened to be visiting. We headed to bed while they stayed up later cooking pork kebabs and presumably drinking.

The next day dawned beautiful and sunny and we set out on a hike that was a long 17 miles up a rocky valley to gently rolling pasture in the mountains. We headed out with our host around 9:00 am, eventually being joined by his brother and uncle and a donkey carrying our picnic. The men took turns riding the donkey whenever the terrain allowed. They offered us too, but we were pretty awkward up there and it wasn’t the most comfortable.

We stopped at noon for lunch, eating a simple but filling mix of boiled eggs and potatoes, salted cucumber and tomatoes, bread and apples. Of course there was a half liter of vodka. We had a sip and then they finished off the bottle. We reached our destination which was an alpine lake, but it wasn’t really much to write home about. The journey was fantastic, though.

About a mile into the return hikea our guide handed us the donkey’s reins and a stick and said something to the effect of “machine trail, I go check on something”. We walked by ourselves for a mile, confused, as our guide headed off on a tangent out of sight behind a ridge. We didn’t know if he wanted us to walk home or wait for him, or if he was checking on his clandestine drug fields. We paused to wait, catching a view of his red jacket some distance off before he disappeared again. We eventually decided to keep hiking toward home, but the guys caught up with us after a bit and took charge of the donkey again (thank god, they really are stubborn). Back at the ranch we finally managed to ask what the guide had split off for, and he brought out a large bowl of mushrooms. Apparently the donkey eats or steps on mushrooms and makes them hard to collect, explaining why we were given the reins and sent on alone. With about 7 shared words of language between us, it’s not surprising we missed out on that nuance up on the trail.

Our taxi showed up after breakfast and we thanked our hosts before beginning the long journey back to Bukhara.

Rahima's guesthouse