Tearing up the Silk Road by Tom Coote

Author:Tom Coote
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Garnet Publishing (UK) Ltd
Published: 2014-07-31T00:00:00+00:00

SAMARKAND

Ancient Crossroads • Blood in the Sand • Heads Held High Restoration • Propagation of the Wicked • Memento Mori Trapped Spirits • Winning Hearts and Minds • Knowledge and Power Murder in Samarkand • Interests as Perceived

Samarkand is set on the crossroads of China, India and Persia, and is one of Central Asia’s oldest cities dating back to around the fifth century BC. After being conquered by Alexander the Great in 329 BC and destroyed by Genghis Khan in 1220, it then went on to become the majestic capital for Timur after he settled there in 1370. Having grown to become the second largest city in the world it would later go into decline again but was somewhat revived when the Russians linked it up to their Trans-Caspian railway network. It even became the capital of the Uzbek SSR in 1924 but was soon replaced by Tashkent.

After another fried breakfast in the courtyard of my Bukharan B&B, I caught a battered Trabant-like taxi to the bus station on the outskirts of the town, where I was quickly rushed on to the bus to Samarkand. I was the only person sitting on it. When I asked when it was leaving they said when it’s full. This bus standing next to it was almost full. When I asked where that one was going they reluctantly admitted that that one was going to Samarkand as well. It was the rival bus company. I made them get my backpack out from underneath and switched buses. Five minutes later we were on our way.

I ended up on the back seat with some friendly but rather grubby-looking old men. They had very few teeth left between them and amused themselves by passing around a plastic bottle full of green slime that they would take turns gobbing into. They offered me some chewing tobacco, which I declined as politely as possible, and then they started going through my carry-on bag to see if they could find anything interesting. I showed them my passports and let them listen to my Discman. One of them wanted to keep my CDs as a ‘present’ but I took them back and gave him some biscuits instead. I doubt if he was much of a metal fan anyway.

After two or three hours of driving through nothing very much at all, we stopped at an Uzbek version of a service station. It was almost as grim as the roadside stops in China. I went in and out of the toilets as quickly as possible but decided not to risk the food in the café. Instead I bought a hygienically wrapped Snickers bar from a stall at the side and loitered in the car park. It didn’t take long before some of my fellow passengers came over to practise their English on me. I ended up chatting to one of the younger ones with a moustache who had recently gotten married. She spoke good English as she was studying to be a translator. I had to keep reminding myself not to stare at her upper lip while she was talking.

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