The Great Transition - Part One
Bus #11, Taxi #5, Train #21, Distance traveled from Shanghai 16,700 km
Khiva is the last place in Central Asia I’d scheduled to stop at - it’s now time to make my way further west, to Europe. It isn’t exactly straightforward - the only train from here goes back to Bukhara, rather than go further west - they built a special spur line to bring passengers into Khiva. The nearest station on the line going west is 20 km away, at Urgench, but I’m actually booked to depart from Nukus, at least 3 hours away. There’s a claim to a 9 a.m. bus from Urgench to Nukus, but that would mean getting up earlier than I want.
So, I leave with a plan, without being sure exactly how far I’ll get. There are marshrutkas from Khiva to Urgench, but they only go when they have enough passengers, and the couple of times I walk past them, they have no takers. So, I take the scheduled trolley bus - it’s slow, but leaves every 30 minutes. Because it’s taking me onwards on my journey, I’m counting it as bus 11 - I have not counted the taxis or buses that take me to or from a railway station.
I have the spot where I believe the taxis leave Urgench from marked on my google map - the bus does get to within about 2.5 km of it, but then makes a turn and goes haring off in a different direction. When it’s 3.5 km away, I make the call that it’s not getting any closer and walk, without seeing anything of interest, barely a place to get a drink. At least my information is correct, I get to where the shared taxis go from to Nukus, but then have a decent wait until more passengers turn up. I can’t understand what the driver is saying, but he’s definitely whinging - first about some paperwork his colleagues insist he takes, then about a another passenger and her wee kid who’s gone missing, that we have to go look for. His last whinge is about me - I show him on the map where I’m staying in Nukus, right at the south end of the city. He ignores it and takes me to the centre, and is not happy about having to backtrack.
There’s something in Nukus that’s a fairly big deal - I feel that I first came across it in a novel, but cannot think which one it might have been. Maybe it was a travel book? While there are a couple of accounts as to how this big deal came about, and I can’t ascertain the truth of the matter, this is the version I like. Stalin set up a pretty repressive regime, where art had to be officially sanctioned - avant-garde or abstract art would not be approved, nor would anti-Soviet art. Igor Savitsky went about collecting as much of this forbidden art as he could, wanting to save it, accumulating something like 80,000 works. He initially displayed this art in his home in Nukus. Then in 1966, he was able to get a lot hung in the local museum. The idea was that Nukus is such an obscure town in the desert that officialdom wouldn’t even knw what was going on. Then Nukus itself suffered an environmental disaster (thanks to the Russians diverting all the local water to growing cotton in the desert, leading to the foundations of the buildings in Nukus being under water!).
Anyway, the collection survived and first Perestroika and then Uzbekistan’s independence meant that they could be open about this collection - it is the second biggest collection of avant-garde Russian art in the world and now housed in 3 big buildings, built between 2003 and 2017 - the Louvre of the Steppe. Sadly, all but one floor of one building is closed - ostensibly for renovation, but there are also problems with the powers that be which may be causing restricted access.
Weirdly, I am told off for using a camera to take photos, but they have no problem with me using my phone to do the same thing. I’m not sure that much of the really subversive art is in the bit of the collection I get to see. Accounts I have read mention how every inch of the walls is used to hang art, as well as pieces stacked against furniture. All I see is very orderly.
This piece, called Motherhood, is my favourite.
There’s something quite odd about the faces of the people in the above paintings.
As for Nukus itself, it seems to have recovered from its earlier decline - the water table has gone back down to a more acceptable level, and the main streets are lined with modern, attractive buildings: I get the feeling that I could be in a modern Russian city.
I struggle a bit to find something to eat for dinner - none of the places on google maps are around, because of the development work being done to the city. Thankfully, I find a great restaurant not on the map where I can have a couple of beers as I dine. Beside the Savitsky Museum, there’s Cake Bumer - a huge range of cakes as well as a big café with an interesting ceiling design.
Along the street there’s a bookshop and café which turns out to only have books, but then I discover that Cinnamon café is in the same building as the Bumer one, with just a glass wall to separate them. The waitress who served me earlier can see me: I feel like I am cheating! I try the dish simply called “noodle wok” - it’s OK, maybe a little too much lettuce?
I don’t know what this building is - I try going up a couple of paths to get close to it: both times a policeman pops out of the bushes to stop me.
Finally, it’s time to catch my train - I’m on it for 20 hours. I’m a little concerned, as there’s no sign of my destination on the destination board or train at the time I am due to leave, although there is a train to Volgograd in Russia a bit later. Maybe there will be carriages attached to it that will be detached and taken to Mangystau? The mystery is solved when I step onto the platform - there’s a Nukus-Mangystau train sitting and waiting.
Sadly, I fail to obtain any food (I expected to be able to get some at the station) so survive on four cups of tea and a pack of crisps I pick up on the way. I have been on several trains in Uzbekistan - they haven’t had any food vendors (although they’ve had people selling toys and clothing). This train has one food vendor selling something I don’t think is totally appropriate for a long journey with no cooling system in the train - smoked fish. The woman in the bunk beside mine buys one - little flies hang about annoying me for the whole trip!
As far as I can tell, no one speaks English, so its a fairly solitary trip for me. There’s a wee group of Chinese travelers who have fun trying to learn some Russian words from the providstka and teach him how to pronounce their names. One thing I will say about these providstkas - they are remarkably good humoured and kind, which are two good features to have in their job.
I make the border crossing from Uzbekistan to Kazakhstan one last time at Beynau - two hours are allocated for each side, but neither takes anything like that long. The Uzbekistan border people don’t even inspect bags, except for mine - I have to open my backpack, he shines a torch on the contents for 3 seconds and that’s it, I’ve been searched. The Kazakhstan people are a bit more thorough, bringing in a couple of dogs (the old woman near me stashes a bag of something on the shelf above the top seat - making people laugh).
The train arrives bang on time at 15:15 in Mangystau, then it is a 20 km trip to Aktau. I just miss the bus that’s standing at the stop. Of course a taxi driver materialises and when I say I’ll be catching the bus, he insists there are no buses: these guys couldn’t tell the truth if their life depended on it. Thankfully my source is correct: the bus runs every 10 minutes into the city, and even has a conductor who will accept cash or card.
Cheers!
I thoroughly enjoyed this account, Baz. The paintings were quite good. The mother in the mother and son painting looked like a real babushka (refer Kate Bush song and sexy video).
That slice ofcake looked great.
Dried fish in your train compartment? Nice!
Rex