Always remember Black Markets are illegal.
A lot has happened since we crossed over from Turkmenistan three days ago. The border crossing was surprisingly smooth and completely charge free which made for a nice change. The early start and quick crossing still didn't help us that much though when it came to getting to our destination on the first night. As with every country the first thing to do was to source some local currency. This has been getting harder and harder to do in every one and Uzbekistan has been no different although a lot more entertaining.
Uzbekistan Som the local currency has an official value of about 3900 to 1 dollar, and this is the rate you would get at any bank or exchange office. Interestingly though we had heard that it is possible to exchange dollars on a 'black market' at 6300 Som for each dollar. At almost double the rate it was obvious what a bunch of students would be doing, so we headed to the Bazaar in the first town we came to and went looking for anyone to exchange dollars with. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Firstly, just because we had read about this it seemed to not have fully hit us that as a black market it is inherently illegal. And secondly, having put it to the test, I can confirm that 8 English lads wandering around an Uzbek Bazaar asking anyone and everyone if they exchange dollars stand out significantly.
As it was I was the first person to strike lucky, finding a bloke who would happily exchange my dollars. As we weren't sure what rate we would even get I only changed 10 dollars to start with, and in return for this I received the most ridiculous wad of cash I'd ever seen. If you can remember what I said about the exchange rates you can probably work out that 10 dollars is 63000 Som. Now in Iran we were dealing with values much greater than this, but this was made bearable by huge value notes. In Uzbekistan though the most popular note by far is the 1000 Som note. So for my 10 dollars I got 63 1000 Som notes, wrapped in an elastic band and in no way shape or form ever going to fit in my wallet.
'It's not even enough to buy a tank of petrol'
Jumping on the success everyone started getting dollars out to swap, each receiving huge piles of notes in return. It seemed all was going swimmingly, but as completely unobservant Brits we had failed to spot the Police office on the second floor balcony overlooking the whole Bazaar. The Police hadn't failed to spot us though and came down quickly demanding passports from whoever had them. It was pretty obvious what they were annoyed about but we still pretended to have no idea what they were on about and eventually they got fed up, gave us our passports back and sent us away. A close call and in future we sent one or two people to change money for everyone - leading to ever larger stacks of Som to the point where a briefcase would have almost been suitable.
Having got at least a bit of cash each the next job was petrol. Another thing which we had read had to be bought on the black market. Petrol stations simply don't exist for the large part in Uzbekistan so petrol has to be bought from a random blokes garage. Same as getting currency the technique is just to ask locals until someone points you in the right direction. A very strange system but we managed to find someone fairly quickly and filled up all our Jerry cans to avoid having to faff about similarly too often.
After all this if was getting on already and we had a fair way to drive still to our planned stop at the Aral Sea. Strangely though in no way did this mean there would actually be any water. Due to huge overuse of the seawater for crop irrigation over time the Aral Sea has actually largely dried up, leaving what used to be large fishing towns such as the one we visited sat in the middle of what is more like a desert. The old fishing boats remain too, abandoned and left to rust sat on what used to be the seabed. Envisaging camping by rusted out old ships we were as ever a bit late and in the dark drove straight past the ships. We found a good spot in the dunes regardless though and saw the ships early in the morning.
'As second best campsites go it was pretty decent'
'Huxley trying to work out why they don't work so well on sand'
After seeing these we hit the road again headed as Far East across Uzbekistan as we could get. Halfway through the day we suffered an annoying if not serious issue with the car as we got our first puncture. One of the Rally tyres which had only been fitted in Turkmenistan had gone, leaving us now with only one spare. In reality, I always thought that they wouldn't be the most practical option and some standard tyres might have been better; but they looked cool whilst they lasted and were cheap. After driving all day we decided to stop at a set of ancient forts just off the route; Ayuz Kala. Alf had heard about the Perseid meteor shower and having been planning the best time lapse ever of it with his GoPro hadn't let any of us forget about it for at least a week before. The forts were the perfect place to stay up and watch this with no lights for miles and miles around, and personally I decided to leave the photography to Hockey with his far more expensive camera. (I'm working on getting a photo off him from this to add here!)
Yesterday we ploughed on across the country, through more desert and ridiculous temperatures, eventually arriving at Bukhara.
'Those clever police men didn't fancy sitting in the desert heat either...'
Bukhara is a small city is on the original Silk Road and has a beautiful little centre which is popular with the more adventurous tourists heading out to this remote part of the world. After a few beers last night and a few gifts purchased this morning we are off towards the Tajikistan border today excited at the prospect of the Pamir Mountains to come.
'Kalyan Mosque in Bukhara'
