The end of the road

For his last supper Jesus made dinner reservations for 13. We had 14 in our group and it was a far more convivial get together with probably more vodka at this one. We all survived the trip with relatively limited ruffled feathers and stayed pretty good friends throughout. Peter, the professional photographer, did a slide show of some of his best photos and the man is a wizard with the camera and photoshop. Really amazing shots. He has a fine eye for someone who is totally oblivious to everything else around him, but more about that at another time.
Seven of the group left this morning. The boys leave tomorrow night for a three day train trip to Moscow – sounds like a super trip Lise, Saci, and John are staying two extra nights and Carol and I have four extra nights.
As I mentioned earlier, we had planned on taking the bus back to Samarkand. Intellectually and spiritually I really wanted time to just explore leisurely, sit around and soak up the atmosphere, and get my haircut. I thought it would be cool to have Samarkand on my list of haircut places. But the flesh just wasn’t willing. Carol and I talked about it and the thought of getting back on a bus which would mean lugging the suitcases into and out of taxis and buses, then retracing our steps over the bumpy road then getting to a hotel would basically take a full day’s travel just to have a free day and then doing the whole thing over again to get back to Tashkent. So we just said: “It would be cool, but it ain’t gonna happen. We’ll spend our four days here and certainly find things to do with our time.
For one thing, there were all these hulking bodies lounging around the lobby of our hotel and we found out that the Asian Wrestling Championships are being held here. That might be cool to see just as a cultural thing.
We were able to stay in our hotel for two extra nights but we’re not sure about the last two. It’ll all work out. If we have to move we move, but the girls at the desk are working hard for us. Dilshot told me that one was a Korean. I greeted her in Korean and she just looked back with a blank stare. It seems that there is a substantial community here. She was born here and knows nothing of Korea. I showed her pictures of Jeff and An Jin’s wedding and it was just foreign to her. I teased her about being so uninformed about her heritage and when she gets married to an Uzbeki it will be even more lost. She asked me if I had any more sons.
We waved good-bye to the bus as it pulled off and came back inside. For the first time in 28 days our time is our own. True to the slow withdrawal of the group the remaining seven of us agreed to have dinner tonight together. Ha, it’s hard to say good-bye.
We left the hotel and simply walked. We retraced our steps from our stop here a week ago. Last time there was one swan in the pond, now there were two with a couple of cygnets hovering between proud mom and dad. Of course, we went through the requisite photo sessions.
We passed a couple of young lovers sitting on a park bench and he smiled at us and so I greeted him with the Uzbeki greeting. He responded and got up to shake hands which was a very common gesture. He is a student as is his girlfriend. Photos were taken and he wanted us to send him a copy, to which we agreed. His girlfriend was so diminutive. She was very shy, but we couldn’t get over how tiny she was – certainly shorter than 5’ and small boned. Not skinny or emaciated, just really small.
Next was a very sophisticated woman walking with her mother. She said hello and asked where we were from. She works for the Chamber of Commerce and is of the ethnic background, Karakalpak, which we’d never heard of before. Carol knew about Karakal sheep but she didn’t know the origins of the breed. The woman’s face didn’t seem to match any genetic profiles which we had built up in our travel data base. She was very well spoken. I think anyone who speaks seven languages certainly qualifies as that. Her mom has 12 grandchildren and we chatted for a while before agreeing to send her a copy of the photos. We thumbed through our books upon returning to the hotel and found that Karakalpakstan is an area up by the Aral Sea and naturally has been devastated by that disaster. The name Karakalpak means “Black hat people.” . The mother probably in her mid 50’s has such a soft, kind face and raised six children. The daughter translated for mom and she smiled through her gold teeth and seemed such a sweet lady. This world is just soooooooo fascinating. It’s a never-ending source of amazement and wonder. All the different peoples of the world all with the same hopes, desires, and dreams. How could we not want to see it all. A group of school girls giggled and tee-heed their way across the fountains where one can walk through the water since they have built a walk about four inches below the water line. Shoes come off, pants get hiked up and the kids love to walk across. They engaged us and giggled and tee-heed their way through conversation. They were just irrepressible. One of them had been a student in Tennessee. Her parents are still there but the girl came back. Carol and I could only imagine the reasons why. They might be very above board, but we couldn’t help wondering.
A middle aged group of men and women passed us and the man greeted us and wanted to talk. A big burly man wanted us to know that he was Kazak, not Uzbek. Carol remembled that when we were in Mongolia that whenever we saw a really big man, our guide Anya always said: “He’s a Kazak.” After conversation we started to wander off when we were called back by the Kazak. There was a photographer who would take photos of people in front of the monument and then print them off. The Kazak wanted a photo of the group and paid for an extra copy for us. We tried to say that we had our own camera and didn’t need a copy, but he really wanted to do so, and naturally we complied. We also took one with our own camera.
We wandered our way back to the hotel just to rest and recharge. We all met for dinner and went to a lovely restaurant which turned out to have a folk show later in the evening. We didn’t stay, but may go back since we have the time to do what we please. It was a restaurant in the Russian style and looked like it might be a room taken directly from the Winter Palace. The food was excellent and when they brought us the bill, our tab was 35,000 Som. So here we are with a wad of bills counting out 35 1,000 som notes. It looked so ridiculous, this massive pile of bills which in the end only amounted to about 15 dollars. They do an Uzbek folk show later in the evening, and we might go back and check it out. We’re not exactly spinning our wheels, but we do have lots to time to do what we want since we decided not to go back to Samarkand.
Thursday morning we took the underground out to an area we had visited by bus to a shop we particularly liked. The boys, Saci and Lise were there yesterday, and when we talked to the lady she was so happy that we came back to her shop. It was rather funny because the boys, Saci and Lise had gone the day before and we talked with her about how they too had waited to come back to Tashkent and find her shop again. While we were there a German woman came in and she also had returned to Tashkent and found this same shop. The shopkeeper was naturally thrilled that all the chickens were coming home to roost. As she said, there are more than 250 boutiques in Bukhara alone, and for everybody to wait and come back made her very happy not to mention a little bit better off financially.
And then there were none. The boys left today, John, Lise and Saci are all at another hotel and leave tomorrow and so it’s just my bride and myself for the last two plus days. Things could be a lot worse.
May 20th. Woke up this morning with a “Happy Anniversary” greeting from the sweet lady beside me. 33 years ago today, or tonight, if you take into consideration the 12 hour time difference between Tashkent and PDT. Where would I be if she hadn’t entered my life? My mother shudders at the thought.