March 16: Dushanbe (Tajikistan) to Samarkand (Uzbekistan)
I left Tajikistan, my home-away-from-home for the past 8 months, early this morning. As always before a big trip, I was up all night packing, re-packing, and running through mental check-lists and worst-case scenarios to ensure that I had not forgotten anything. I said a difficult goodbye to Farid and took a taxi for the hour drive to the Tursunzade/Denau border. Not knowing when or where I'd find an exchange bureau, I swapped some American dollars for Uzbek Sooms from some 'entrepreneurs' on the Tajik side border at the rate of 1 USD for 1600 UZS. The border crossing went surprisingly smoothly, with only 3 checkpoints on each side and a couple of hours total waiting time. The dozens of Tajiks and Uzbeks in line at each checkpoint turned en masse to stare at me as if I had three heads; I suppose such curiousity was not unfounded, as I looked horribly out of place among their multi-coloured kurtas and headscarves with my big red rucksack and no accompanying man! The stares inevitably turned to smiles, however, as the sight of a lone foreign woman often does in Tajikistan, and they immediately ushered me to the front of each line. I didn't want to perpetuate the whole 'foreigner gets treated first' mentality, but they insisted relentlessly and, true to Central Asian form, would have been much more upset had I refused. I wondered wistfully if I would ever see such remarkable hospitality again.
As I walked across the border and stepped foot onto Uzbek soil for the first time, my welcoming party emerged as a gaggle of male taxi drivers, none of whom wasted any time maneouvering for my business. I quickly negotiated a ride in a shared taxi to Samarkand for the expected 25 000 Sooms and spent the next 6 hours enjoying the new scenery of late winter mountains unfold before me while squished in the back seat with an elderly couple and their bright-eyed 3-year old granddaughter. I wanted desperately to point out that the stash of chips and Coca-Cola they were giving her free reign over had no small part in her noticeably underweight frame.
Farid's friend, who I will be traveling with for the next 12 days, somehow tracked me down knowing only the taxi driver's licence plate number (I've learned not to ask how these things work and just trust that they will happen). He and his brother picked me up in Samarkand and we had a nice meal of laghman and shashlyk before settling in for the night. We have a full day of sight-seeing lined up for tomorrow!
