This train is not quite the first class affair the Red Arrow had been. All night we bounced and rattled as we headed southeast toward the steppes of Kazakstan. I managed to sleep on and off, but each time we pulled into a station, the train jolted and crashed so violently that I feared we had collided with another train. If this had been an airplane flight, the Fasten Seatbelt sign would have been on continuously.

Shortly after dawn I heard my compartment mate stir, and rather than make her uncomfortable, I got up and went to the bathroom in order to give her time to get out of bed in private. The bathroom, which had merely reeked when we left last night, was already ghastly; the floor covered with dirty water and used toilet paper, and the stench was almost unbearable. I shuddered to think what it would be like by the time we pulled into Tashkent. As soon as I was done, I got out of there.

But I hovered in the corridor for a while, just to give the woman enough time to make herself presentable to this American stranger who had invaded her space. And when I reentered the compartment, she had arisen and made her bed neatly. I decided to break the ice and introduce myself. She smiled primly, though I could see half a row of gold teeth where what was left of her incisors used to be, and said her name was Svetlana Ivanova. She obviously spoke not a word of English, and my Russian wasn’t good enough to be of much use in idle chit chat, so we had about shot our wad at the end of that short conversation. Only about 52 more hours of this to go, I figured.

Svetlana broke out a bag of food, and by gesturing with her glass jar, asked if I wanted some tea. I did, and gave her my insulated cup to take down to the samovar at the end of the car for some hot water. We shared a little of our food in silence, grinning stupidly at each other from time to time. She seemed to be a nice lady, and once the shock of having to share the compartment with me wore off, I think she fairly took to me. Or at least I think she didn’t fear that I was going to molest her during the night.

The scenery outside was much like that I had seen on the way into Moscow, though by this time we were 200 miles away. The track was lined with birch and conifers, occasionally interrupted by small meadows and tiny villages with muddy streets and ornate wooden houses. Now and then a small factory of some sort flashed by, but mostly this appeared to be forest and agricultural land.

The closeness of the trees made looking out the window fairly uninteresting after a short while, so I read the paper and Newsweek I had squirreled away for just such a time as this, and settled in for the long haul.

By late afternoon the trees were thinning, and we began crossing more open farm country; rolling hills that reminded me of western Pennsylvania or Indiana. Every few hours or so, the train would stop at some isolated station, where locals would be waiting to sell bread, hard-boiled eggs, and soft drinks. Svetlana would leave the compartment at each stop, and though more often than not, she came back empty handed, at one stop she purchased what appeared to be two large smoked carp, which she managed to stuff somehow into one of her bags.

In spite of my fears about the smell of the compartment, it appears to be fairly well ventilated, and even with my feet and some smoked carp, I didn’t notice any unpleasant odors. At least not yet.

I slumbered off and on through the afternoon, the constant rocking of the railway carriage lulling me to sleep, until we came to a crashing halt at each station. But it seemed unlikely that this trip was going to provide much in the way of excitement.

Suddenly, the sound of breaking glass interrupted the boredom. Someone standing trackside had heaved a large stone through one of the windows further up the carriage, and the corridor filled with all the first class passengers eager to see what the commotion was. The floor was strewn with large shards of glass, and it was apparent to me that these windows were not made of safety glass. I made a note to be careful when traversing the corridor not to brace myself and put an arm though them.

The provodnik quickly cleaned up the mess, and by using a pane from one of the other double windows, managed to repair the broken one. The way he went about fixing it made me believe that this was not an uncommon occurrence. And I remembered noticing a broken pane on one the other cars when the train pulled into Kazansky station the night before. Perhaps some urchin has a daily appointment with the Ozbekiston.

Just before sundown we crossed the mighty Volga River. Here, some 600 miles from its mouth at the Caspian Sea, it is already about a mile across. Its similarity with the Mississippi in the States is more than just in its national lore; they share a great likeness in appearance as well. Barges were chugging up and down underneath the bridge, and the banks were lined with high bluffs. But like the Mississippi, its strength has been sapped by dams and locks, and the pollution levels make the fish that still manage to survive in it inedible, and its waters unusable for swimming. It wasn’t always so, of course, and the river still commands great meaning for the Russian people. In the course of my research, I had read that passengers used to doff their hats when crossing it, but no one I saw was wearing one, so there’s no way to tell if it’s still a custom.

Svetlana and I shared a little more of our food at suppertime, and before it got completely dark, we turned in for the night. Too much excitement for one day.

The Steppes

This morning I awoke in Asia. Sometime during the night we crossed over the Ural River, and for the first time in my life I found myself on Asian soil. We’ll, I’m getting ahead of myself here, since I hadn’t technically touched any soil in almost two days, but I was traveling over it, at any rate.

Outside, the landscape had altered noticeably. The only trees visible were windbreaks planted by people farming the vast rolling grain fields that stretched to the horizon in every direction. We had left Europe behind us.

Early in the morning, we crossed the border into Kazakstan, and any questions I had about customs procedures were answered when two Kazak border police entered our compartment for an inspection. When they saw me, they ordered Svetlana outside and closed the door. Uh oh. I had heard horror stories about Kazak border guards on the border with China shaking down tourists. But I wasn’t sure if this happened at any other crossing, and hoped I wasn’t about to find out.

One of the two was a young Asiatic-looking guy in civilian clothes who sat down opposite me, the other, an older, uniformed and more Russian-looking bruiser stood by the door—in case I made any funny moves, I guessed. The young guy asked for my papers, and began trying to ask me a series of questions in Russian, none of which I understood. Fortunately, he knew a few words of English, and by using them and pointing at words in my Russian/English dictionary, we managed to get down to business.

He wanted to see my passport first, which he scanned with an eagle eye. When he saw that I was born in Washington, his interest was piqued. “Gorod (City) Washington?” he asked, no doubt thinking I was in some way connected with the government. “Nyet, Oblast (State) Washington” I assured him. Then he checked my address and asked if I lived there in California. Yes. “Who is Vilma Silva” he wanted to know, seeing her name listed as the emergency contact in my passport. “My Zhena (wife)” I told him, and showed him her picture, which I fortunately had handy. This seemed to relax him a little and he said something to the bruiser by the door, who left.

He then showed me his ID, said he was with the Militsia and told me his name was Munak. But he still wanted to inspect all my bags. I had listed all the items I needed to declare on my Russian customs declaration; cameras, computer, and cash, and he demanded to see them all. He particularly wanted to see what I had recorded on my video camera, so I rewound it a bit and pushed the play button. I knew that there were restrictions about recording in train stations, bridges and any other place that might possibly have military significance, and so I had avoided taking any pictures out of the window for this reason. The only exception was a bit of tape I had shot as we crossed the Volga. So I rewound all the way to the stuff I shot in St. Peters-burg, hoping he wouldn’t watch the whole tape. But Munak was far too savvy for me. He hit the fast forward button and quickly got to the bridge shot. I was caught. “Russia?” he asked. “Da, Volga” I said. That must have saved me, because he evidently didn’t care about any Russian military secrets I might be carrying, only Kazak. I made a mental note not to shoot any more video from the train, in case the Uzbeks aren’t as disinterested.

Next he told me to open my bags, and he inspected every little item I carried. He wasn’t going to miss a thing. But, eventually satisfied I wasn’t carrying any contraband, he wanted to know the purpose of my trip. “Tourism” I said. “Alone?” he wanted to know. Yes. He wanted to know if I had family here. No. Business? No. He asked again why I was here. Tourism, I said again, and mimed looking around. I brought out my map and showed him the places I planned to visit. “No group?” he asked. No, alone, I replied. This answer didn’t seem to satisfy him. The idea of an American traveling alone through Kazakstan seemed to make as much sense to him as someone traveling halfway around the world to get a tattoo of Elvis on his right buttock.

But he wasn’t going to get any other answer out of me, so he wrote down as many particulars about my journey as I could give him, including my Russian, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Chinese and Pakistani visa numbers, and the telephone numbers and addresses of my home-stay families and travel agents. I guessed that he wanted to have a lengthy paper trail in case his superiors cared to any know more about this crazy American riding across their country on the train.

When he seemed satisfied, he motioned that I could put everything away and stood to leave. As he opened the door, he turned and said, “Your wife, very beautiful.” and smiled. I smiled back, “Spasiba (Thank you).

Phew!

Svetlana reappeared and motioned that the police seemed to be giving others in the compartment as thorough a going over as I got. I mimed that they had really torn into my bags, and she said, “Uzbek yeshoa (also).” Oh boy, I can hardly wait.

As the day went on, the trees disappeared altogether, and whatever elevation the land outside had heretofore displayed went with them. It was flat as an ironing board, and dry grass and shrubs had replaced the grain fields. Svetlana motioned out the window to me, and I saw a pair of dromedaries loping by. When I expressed delight at the sight to her, she mimed that it would be a common occurrence from now on. And sure enough, soon they were visible on a regular basis.

When we pulled into stations, the people hawking goods had brown, Mongol faces for the most part, with only a smattering of European features evident. We were definitely in Asia now, I thought to myself.

By late afternoon we were skirting the northern edge of the Aral Sea. Or what is left of it, since the Soviets did their best to destroy the sea by diverting the two rivers that feed it, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, in order to create a massive cotton monoculture area in the desert.

What was once the fourth largest inland body of water in the world is now a dying lake, half the size it was in 1970. Two thirds of the former bird species have disappeared, and the fishing industry, which used to employ most of the surrounding population, is gone. The former Soviet Union, in an idiotic attempt to preserve the local industry, tried for a while to ship in fish from the Baltic Sea for processing here, but eventually the absurdity of that situation became evident even to the geniuses in the Kremlin. Now, rusting hulks of fishing ships lie stranded 40 miles inland, and the local population, in addition to suffering from almost total unemployment, is wracked by diseases brought on by the toxic winds which blow off of the dry lake bed.

Some statistics: Since 1980, kidney and liver diseases have increased by 30 percent, chronic bronchitis has increased by 30 percent and arthritic diseases have increased by 60 percent. There has been a 30 percent increase in typhoid fever and a seven-percent increase in hepatitis. Of women in the 13–19 age group, 20 percent have kidney disease and 23 percent have thyroid disease. There have been high levels of lead, zinc and strontium found in their blood. The infant mortality rate is greater than five percent since most of the babies are born in weakened conditions. Maternal mortality is also extremely high and nearly all of the women hemorrhage during delivery while 80 percent of all women suffer from anemia.

It’s about the worst environmental disaster the world has seen (so far), and not much of anything is being done about it. Recently the five South Central Asian Republics agreed to allocate one percent of their budgets to help save the Aral Sea and improve the health of the local population. But with their meager gross national products, one percent is pretty much a matter of much too little, way too late. Unless aid is procured from abroad, the region seems destined to become an uninhabitable hellhole.

But before we all start feeling smug, anybody remember the Owens Valley?

Anyway, I didn’t get a chance to see the Aral, even though the train stopped in Aralsk, one of its former seaports. Not having ever been here before, I couldn’t see the difference in the local climate, but I’m told that the summers are now hotter and drier, and the winters longer and colder. Soon, they say, the growing season will be too short for cotton. Maybe then they’ll let the two rivers flow unimpeded back into the sea, and maybe the damage can be reversed. I’m not holding my breath, though.

On second thought, maybe I should hold it until we get a good distance away.

Tashkent

So the air conditioning picked the perfect time to quit. Just as the temperatures began climbing as we headed farther south, the ventilation system in the train compartment seemed to malfunction, or at least become ineffective. We opened the door to the corridor, so that the breeze from any windows that were operable could push the hot air around. At ten in the morning, the temperature was 95 degrees.

The closer we got to Tashkent, the more stops the train seemed to make, each time deadening the air and increasing the apparent temperature. Some stops happened for no apparent reason, in the middle of nowhere. It seemed like we would never arrive.

Finally we reached the suburbs of this large city, and there arose a great commotion in the corridor. Before I could see what was happening, two big Uzbeks burst into my compartment and proceeded to manhandle a huge white bag, about the size of half of a twin-size mattress, down from the storage area above the corridor. I had wondered what that monstrosity was doing up there, and whom it belonged to, and as they and others dragged it, along with several other huge bundles, out into the corridor, it seemed that I had been unwittingly taking part in some sort of contraband smuggling operation.

The train stopped again suddenly, with a jolt, just inside the suburbs, and the men in the corridor began shredding the large bundles and handing smaller white packages contained therein to other men waiting on flatbed trucks outside. I couldn’t tell what was in the smaller bundles; it looked like diapers to me—not drugs or anything of the sort. But all hell had broken loose. Everyone was bellowing at everyone else, and bundles were being tossed out windows and doors as fast as they could be tossed.

There was a large amount of stuff, and it was taking them a long time to throw it out of the train. Suddenly the train lurched forward again, and the pace of tossing, which had been hurried, became frantic. The men in the trucks outside started them up, and tried to drive alongside the train, but soon ran out of room. The bundle-throwers just kept tossing them out, hoping, I assume, that someone from the trucks would retrieve them. In any case, it seemed important to remove all the bundles before we reached the main railway station in Tashkent.

Which we did about ten minutes later. I gathered my bags, said good-bye to Svetlana, who was grabbing all her bundles, and stepped outside into the heat. The representative from MIR, Michael Gerasimov, was waiting for me on the crowded platform, and together we joined the throng making its way for the exit. The station exit was a channel of railings, which narrowed gradually to the point where only one person could walk through, and there the Uzbek police stationed themselves and pointed at you if they wanted to look through your papers and bags. But before you got to this point, you took part in a rugby scrum with hundreds of others, all carrying what looked like the lifetime accumulation of possessions. All this in incredible heat, and no one there had had a shower for at least sixty hours. It was a remarkable experience. I hope I only have it once.

At any rate, the Uzbek police apparently didn’t think me suspect, and Michael and I made it outside intact. There, Victor, my home-stay host, was waiting with his Audi sedan to take me to his apartment. Also in the car waiting was a mini-skirted bleached blond who Victor made nice to all the way through town. I wondered if this was Irina, his wife, but I was never introduced, and we dropped her off before we made the apartment.

I checked the little thermometer/keychain dangling from my shoulder bag. It read 108 degrees.

On the way to the apartment, Michael asked me about my trip so far, and, essentially, what on earth I was doing traveling by myself through Uzbekistan. It seemed a bit odd to get that question from my own travel agent, but I tried my best to justify my irrational behavior. Then he asked me if I needed to change dollars. Ah, I thought, I’m finally in the third world.

Though I had plenty of dollars, I really only wanted to change the $75 or so in rubles that I had remaining from my stay in Russia. This wasn’t as enticing for Michael, but he suggested I give them to him, and he’d change them for me overnight. I decided to trust him.

Then we stopped off at a Soviet-style apartment building so that Victor could rush inside for a few minutes. “He’s going to see a friend” Michael informed me. “Five minutes only.” It seemed that these two had other interests than the travel agent/home-stay business. I didn’t care. As long as I got a shower at the end of all this…

Which I did, and what a welcome relief it was. Good water pressure and all.

After drying and dressing, I met with Michael and Victor again, in Victor’s living room. While we devoured a huge, sweet and juicy melon of (to me anyway) unknown type, Michael handed me my vouchers and the airline ticket for the flight back to Tashkent from Khiva, when the Uzbek part of this trip is over. Then I had some time until the city tour at three, so I asked Michael to inquire from Victor if I could try to log on to the net. Victor had no objection, but Michael warned me that the Uzbek phone system was “impossible,” and that he held little hope for me to get on-line. But I had to try, at least.

So I spent over an hour in frustration. Nothing I tried seemed to have any positive effect. I couldn’t even get a partial connect to the point where I could begin negotiating my way from the SprintNet network to CompuServe’s, which I had done in St. Petersburg and Moscow. I finally gave up, hoping to try again in the evening, when the phone lines might be less noisy.

Then Victor indicated it was time to leave, and we drove over to the modern Hotel Uzbekistan to meet Dimitry, my city tour guide. Dimitry was a linebacker-sized young Russian, who proceeded to earnestly show me the historical sites of the city, of which there aren’t that many, since the city was almost completely leveled by a massive earthquake in 1966. What was rebuilt is an überSoviet city with massive gray concrete buildings, all apparently designed by the Worker’s Dull Gray Building and Monument Committee.

The only two exceptions to this line of gray, were a 16th century mosque of uninspiring design, and a former Russian ambassador’s house, both of which somehow survived the quake. The ornate ambassador’s house had been converted to the Uzbek Applied Arts Museum, but since there was some sort of film being shot there, we only managed to see two of the exhibits. Though Dimitry made sure to steer me into the gift shop as well.

By this time the heat was really getting to me, and I told Dimitry that though I was fascinated by all this fine modern Uzbek architecture, if I didn’t get a cold drink in me soon, I was going to become a liability. So we began the hunt for a cold drink, which turned out to be quite a challenge in Tashkent. There are little cafes on almost every street, but in this city where the summer temperatures regularly reach 115 degrees, the idea of a cold Coca-Cola hasn’t made inroads. You can get all the warm Cokes you want, though…

Finally, we tracked one down, and after guzzling it, and buying a two-liter bottle of water as well, we continued on the gray box tour. I wish I had the concrete concession back in Soviet times. I could have made a bundle.

Mercifully, Dimitry’s tour was over by five, and we drove home, stopping for another visit to one of Victor’s “friends,” and to buy some bottled water for the trip to Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva; Victor being of the opinion that the prices for bottled water were outrageous in those cities. I figured, if anyone would know a good deal, it had to be Victor.

Back at the apartment, I met Victor’s wife, Irina, and any hope that she spoke some little English was dashed. Though there was supposed to be at least one English speaking person at each home-stay, that has only been true at one of the three. Still, it’s only been a problem when I try to explain what crazy plans I have for their phone systems.

After a dinner of meat and potatoes (with a few tomatoes and cucumbers) I decided to try the net again, with the same dismal result as the afternoon’s attempt. I needed to let Vilma know that I had arrived in Tashkent, so I tried to explain to Irina that I wanted to call the AT&T operator in Moscow and from there make a calling card call to the States. I’m not sure she understood what I was planning, but she agreed to let me do it.

So I managed to get to listen to the sound of Vilma’s voice, filtered through the most amazing cacophony of clicks and buzzes I think I’ve ever experienced on a phone system. In any case, we talked, and it was good. Not for the first time on this trip, I wished she were a lot closer.

When I hung up, I checked the temperature again. It read 89 degrees at 8:30 at night. I was hot and tired, and laid down on the bed, throwing off the covers. It seemed impossible to sleep in this heat.