Surviving the roads of Uzbekistan

On the second morning of my two-day layover in Uzbekistan, I rented a car and drove to the mountains. The process was easy: the rental company did not even want to see my international driver’s licence. They did, however, make sure to impress upon me the importance of a twice-stamped document that I was to show the police in case I was pulled over. It seems that stamped documents are an obsessive precaution in this country: when I checked out of my hotel early in the morning on the following day, I was handed another one to show at the airport in case anyone asked for it. No one ever did.

My very first turn into the road set the tone for the day. Apparently, I did not make this turn quickly enough for the driver travelling in the opposite direction, and he regaled me with a very lengthy honk. It would not be the last time. Throughout the day, I was reprimanded on several more occasions, most often for my irresolution in the face of drivers who were clearly determined not to yield to me when I had the right of way. The most menacing were the ancient men in their equally ancient shoebox-shaped cars. Everywhere I went, they were the ones weaving in between cars, driving over the speed limit, and wrongly but confidently asserting their right of way – ostensibly because their battered cars could take the damage, or because they reasoned they had little time left on God’s green earth.

The state of the roads was mostly good. In Tashkent itself, they were wide and well-paved, though in the countryside there were a few places that had two lanes only theoretically: the lanes on the side were often so full of potholes or standing cars that most people tried to avoid them. On highways, the outer lanes served as venues for selling pears, flowers and buckets of strawberries. There were also women twirling their handkerchiefs around advertisements for somsas – the Central Asian version of samosas.

I had two locations on my itinerary. The first was the Chatkal Reserve, a remote place that can only be reached by poorly advertised trails. It is known for its beautiful mountains and wildlife, which includes Himalayan brown bears and marmots. I got there by driving to Sanginek, where I left the car off the side of the road and continued on foot towards the pins I had saved on Google Maps. What I did not realise while drawing up my plans was just how much of an altitude difference was involved in reaching those pins. I must have walked up the wrong ridge at some point, and by the time I realised this mistake, I was far too high to climb down and start over again. Still, I saw the snowcapped mountains and the goats grazing on the hillsides far below them, and when I thought I could reasonably believe myself to have entered the reserve, I turned back around and climbed down again.

My second destination was Charvak Reservoir. I was relieved to remember that this part of the excursion did not involve any hiking but just a few stops along lookout points. Still, the drive took considerably longer than I had expected it to – I kept stopping along the side of the road to soak in the beauty of the steep red cliffs covered in thick green forests, all spread out under the gleaming white peaks of the Chatkal Range and above the turquoise surface of the reservoir. While the road first passed the dam and then stayed high above the water, I undertook one drive down onto the Yusufhona peninsula to stroll along the beach.