Breaking up in Zagreb, Croatia

We were now ticking off the European countries as we headed west. Our plan was to try to visit as many friends as possible along the way. We were travel weary and were beyond spending hours visiting churches and museums. Instead we wanted a chat with someone familiar and a good cup of tea. Impressions of cities were made in milliseconds; tram stop right outside train station, like Zagreb, no map in train station, hate Bratislava.

Our train journey from Belgrade, through northern Croatia to the capital Zagreb was straight forward enough. A local woman, Andrea, sat in our train compartment and we chatted about life in Croatia, being a goth and a mother. In this part of the country there was fighting during the Balkans war and Andrea talked of escaping to the safety of Zagreb during these times.

Zagreb was the most European capital so far on our trip and is expected to join the EU in July 2013 and adopt the Euro - that is if still exists of course. It's clean cobbled streets lined with Christmas market stalls; the smell of gulwien wafting through the cold night air as a jazz band played in the park, greeted us off the train from Belgrade. We had come because James had a Croatian friend, Sveta, who he had met 10 years ago whilst he was a student in Moscow and she lived there as her father was a diplomat. That evening we had beers in her flat, a short tram ride away, and caught up.

Exploring the old part of city the following day was easy to do on foot. It was neat and tidy and pretty and I wondered why it wasn't a bigger city-break destination. We stumbled across the quirky Museum of Broken Relationships off a cobbled street and went to take a look. We had the little museum to ourselves as we perused the donated artefacts of ended relationships. Each item represented a relationship and the stories which accompanied them told of funny, sad and happy times in people's lives.

Sveta and James with Sveta's dog

A night out with Sveta and some of her friends in a local bar and then we were on the (rail) road again.

Istanbul to Belgrade - The train west

Bulgaria was our first EU country. We had caught the Istanbul to Belgrade night train, an 20 hour journey, but had come to a shuddering halt the next morning somewhere between Plodiv and Sophia. Strikes. The train guard couldn't tell us when the train would get moving again but it sounded like it might be a while. He suggested getting the bus to Sophia. But it was Sunday and no buses were running. 

There were only a few people on the train. James and I had a six bed compartment to ourselves, next door were three Italian students and then Helen and Jamie, who we first met in Armenia and then bumped into in Istanbul, but even more incredibly had travelled the same route as us from Chengdu in China, and had also got the same train and were next door but one. Helen and Jamie decided to take a taxi to Sophia and James and I headed to check out what the town had to offer.

Our carriage awaits!

After a few enquires and an explore we discovered that the town had two coffee shops (only coffee and beer sold), a supermarket, station waiting room (no toilet) and an cash machine. On the up side the supermarket was playing Christmas songs which we found quite exciting. We went for a coffee and then bought food and beers in the supermarket. Back on the train we ate baguettes and then sat with the Italians drinking beer all day.

That evening the train shunted and groaned before getting going. Within the hour it stopped again this time in Sophia. Looking out the window we saw two familiar characters walking along the platform - Jamie and Helen. They joined us for a beer. 

Although a 12 hour delay might have irritated most people we were quite happy with the situation. The train was due to arrive in Belgrade at 8 pm but with the delay we would now be arriving at 8 am. This meant a second night on the train, a second FREE night. We had a compartment to ourselves and, with the help of another beer, slept soundly through until the morning.

Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva - mosques, madrassas and minarets

For lust of knowing what should not be known

We take the Golden Road to Samarkand

Eloy Flecker, 1913

The three ancient cities of Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva with their tiled blue domes and Great Game history were the initial inspiration for travelling to Central Asia. So it was with great excitement that we got the train to Samarkand. Rounding the corner in a taxi we finally saw the Registan, a huge blue domed monument of Islamıc architecture. We stayed in a homely backpackers hangout close by, with a vine the size of a tree in the courtyard and pots of tea and water melon brought out every time we sat down. It was there that we bumped into Mio, who we had first met in Khorog, Tajikistan, over a month previously.

We were now fırmly in the domain of group tours and large groups of grey haıred tourists, who were clearly spending the kids inheritance, and who were being ushered from one sight to the next around us. We took a more lesurily pace walking around the Registan, the Shahr-i-Zander Monuments, a narrow avenue of gleaming blue tiled mausoleums, the Bibi Khanym Mosque, the Islamic world's biggest mosque when it was built at the end of the 12th Century and the Mausoleum of Timur. Soviet archaeologists opened up the mausoleum in June 1941, despite dire warnings for anyone who did so. The following day Hitler attacked the Soviet Union.

One evening we were taking a walk down past the Registan and heard music blaring out of a restaurant. We thought we would go and have a look at what was going on - big mistake. It looked like a wedding and some drunk Uzbek men rolled out of the door and grabbed us, insisting that we joined the party. We were shown to a table where several other wide eyed tourists were being held hostage. It turns out that the party was a celebration of a circumcision. There must have been around 200 people at the event but now only the drunkest remained. We eventually managed to make our excuses and leave.

Next stop was Bukhara. We caught the train, appreciatıng every minute of a more familiar form of transport rather than the rigmarole of shared taxis. In Bukhara we bumped into Australians Ned and Morgan as well as Iranians Rita and Mo, who we had last seen in Dushanbe, Tajıkistan. This meant lots of drinks and a good catch up.

We did also manage to fıt some sightseeıng in, the huge Klyan minaret and surroundıng madrassa and mosque as well as the fortress known as the Ark. Bukhara is at the centre of many a Great Game escapade and James and I made a special visit to the jail into which the fated British Army Officers, Stoddart and Connolly, were incarcerated in the 'bug pit', which to our delight was still there. My favourite sight was the little visited Modari Khan madrassa. Clearly not on the tour group circuit, we had the run of this deserted building, climbing up the crumbling stairs onto the roof from where we could see across the city. Our hostel was opposite one of two sinogoges in the cıty and we had a look around, intrigued at the Jewish community in this ancient Islamic city. Although beautiful in every sense the old city lack something. After the bustling markets and cities of the rest of Central Asia it was disappointing that the only people in the old city were tourists and souvenir sellers. The old town felt like a sanitised museum.

On our last evening we went wine tasting in a tastefully decorated whitewashed cellar. That was where the tastefulness ended as Uzbek wine is not about to fınd its way into any Michelin stared restaurants. It is incredibly sweet and resembling something closer to sherry. However, with the Australians, a couple of other Brits, two Americans and our very kind Uzbek hosts we had a hoot and the drinking continued back at our hostel.

The following evening we caught the night train to Khiva. James had eventually managed to buy tickets after much confusion and had helped another tourist get hers too. Teressa was a air hostess from Spain and one of the most fascinating people I've met. She had had the most incredible life, including studyıng for a PhD at Oxford. After changing trains in the middle of the night we ended up on a stifflingly hot carriage chugging through the Kyzylkum desert. Bizarrely it was occupied entirely by women, children and James - as if a town somewhere had been evacuated. It was too hot to sleep and was told off when I attempted to open the window. It seems that  windows are for throwing rubbish out of - not for ventilation.

In Khiva we wondered around the sights but we were now at saturation point when it came to mosques, madrassas and minarets. Khiva was even quieter than Bukhara when it came to local life. We did climb the minaret by the East Gate for giddy views over the city and walked along the city walks one evening.

We left Khiva to take a tour around the many unrestored forts in the area, planning on stayıng ın a cheap hotel on the way to our next destination. However, were forced to return when we couldn't fınd an affordable hotel that would take foreigners. The next day we had to retrace our steps to get to Nukus.

The Registan, Samarkand

Mosque in Bukhara

James hangs out with some Uzbek tourists in Bukhara

The unfinished minaret at Khiva

Tashkent; capital of Uzbekistan

The police immediately clocked a flicker of hesitation as we tried to make our first trip on the Tashkent underground. We were pulled over, our passports checked and bag searched. Despite the complete absence of any of the registration slips that you are bizarrely required to present for every single night of your stay in Uzbekistan we were allowed to continue our journey with a stern warning - we had 24hrs to get some. We didn't have the documents because we were staying with friends and after a couple of days of investigations we discovered that our visa didn't allow this and there was nothing the authorities could, or would, do about it. James had worked with Alison, who with her husband Phil, had recently moved to Tashkent for work. We had invited ourselves round and they had very kindly offered to put us up. Phil happened to be the Deputy US Ambassador for Uzbekistan and, needless to say, they had a pretty nice pad. It was the most luxurious accommodation we had had on our trip, so there was absolutely no way we were going to give up it up for a pesky bit of paperwork. In the end we had to resort to paying for a hotel room to get our registration slips; returning the key after a couple of days.

If it hadn't been for Phil and Alison's generosity Tashkent would not have scored highly as a destination on our trip so far. It felt as if the soul of the city had been removed by the town planners. Huge buildings and boulevards seemed deserted and lacked any sort of character. We eventually found some sort of life at the Chorsu market, where we went to change dollars on the black market. In Uzbekistan there is a vast difference between the official rate and the black market rate for currency. There are 2500 Uzbek Som to a single US dollar on the black market rate whilst only 1750 at the official rate. In addition to this inconvenience the largest note is 1000 Uzbek som. People have to carry about wads of cash, most men carry manbags for this purpose and money countering machines are extremely useful.

Although the police continued to be annoying, we soon worked out a few strategies to minimise this. Firstly, I would always carry the bag and money - they rarely searched women and secondly, we tried to look like we knew where we were going. Of course, as soon as we got the registration slips we were never asked to show them again but we probably looked less guilty. And in all fairness to the police they never asked us for a bribe.

Our days in Tashkent were filled with administrative tasks. After sorting out the registration issue we managed to post over 23 Kilos of mountaineering kit back to the UK and had a full day at the Turkmen embassy picking up our Turkmen visas. All of this was made much more difficult by the Uzbeks lack of understanding of the concept of queueing. In one queue James pointed out to a young woman that there was a queue and she rudely replied, 'what queue?' and continued to push in front of us. Luckily there were two of us so I went for the left arm block whilst James got to the front of the queue from the right. However, we did also meet some lovely Uzbeks during the many hours of queueing that week getting invitations to lunch and were often pointed in the right direction when we were lost.

Our final success of the week was obtaining our Turkmen visas. After an anxious day we got the elusive visa. This was the last visa we required to get us back overland to the UK and deserved a celebration. We eventually found a cafe with some outdoor seating and celebrated with Clement and Emilie, two French overland cyclists, with a couple of beers.

Loads of money - I'm rich beyond my wildest Uzbek dreams!!

The highest train journey

So apart from sharing the highest mountain in the world, Tibet also claims the highest train line in the world. At points the train reaches 5072m - higher than Mt Blanc. It crosses the vastness of the Tibetan plateau to the northern Tibetan border with China and is yet another demonstration of Chinese engineering prowess. The line was completed in 2005 linking Lhasa with the well developed Chinese network. The engineers had to use a range of technologies to overcome ground movement caused by the seasonal shifts in the permafrost. This included building some of the line on concrete stilts. Other unique technologies on the train include oxygen ports in each compartments to attempt to stave off altitude sickness for the unacclimatised!

The train from Lhasa was our ticket to China and a key section of our overland journey back to the UK. But first we had to overcome the airport style security checks to get into the departure lounge. On this check the only victim was an almost empty gas canister, luckily they didn’t notice the four full ones buried deep in one of our bags. Two other people from Team Budget were also on the same train, Nao, the Japanese representative and Anton, the Russian representative. Anton was travelling with his bicycle and aiming to cycle back home. James and I were sharing our hard sleeper (not as bad as it sounds, in fact quite comfortable) compartment with  Nao, who looked like a cartoon character and kept getting mistaken for a Chinese person, and also 3 actual Chinese. One of the Chinese guys on the top bunk sneezed, showering us from above. By day 2 man flu had been passed from one man to another and James was feeling dreadful, but not as dreadful as Anton who was hard seating it to Chengdu (this is as bad as it sounds).

Our train trundled across the Tibetan plateau, through snow storms and past 1000 strong herds of yaks which stretched as far as the eye could see until they were mere black specks. When spending 2 days on a train any sense of time is distorted, gauged only by the trundling sound of the meals on wheels trolley at allotted meal times. This was when tasty hot Chinese meals could be bought for a few yuan. After 44 hrs and having travelled 3360 km we arrived in Chengdu and a bed which wasn’t mobile.

Getting high!

Cabin mates James, me (with eyes closed as usual), Nao and Anton