From Khiva to Tashkent
From Khiva, we were destined to rumble 15 hours back east to the Uzbekistan capital of Tashkent by overnight train. This time, because it was a lengthy trip, we opted to upgrade about 10% to the 4-bed private berth cabin rather than the more open 6-berth, which was still only $27.50/ticket. A real value for this length of trip with your own semi-private compartment!! Should you choose to take this same journey…which we definitely recommend…make sure to book far in advance. We booked two months ahead and it was already about 80% full.
Before we climbed aboard, we had lunch in Khiva near the station at what Google categorized as a “steakhouse” at Sofra Restaurant. At this classy joint while waited for our train, we classily had to haul in our backpacks to order a pumpkin soup and a cheeseburger for less than $5 total. Wow…when you leave the tourist area in Khiva, it’s an even bigger bargain! We were also able to stock up on some snacks and dinner for our overnight ride at the supermarket across the street.
Climbing aboard our home for the next 15 hours, I grabbed the top bunk while Greg grabbed the bottom. The upgrade is worth it not only for being around less people/noise, but also for the actual door which closes off light and distractions at night. Also, I was able to sit up completely on top, unlikely in the cheaper sleepers. Like the train from Bukhara to Khiva, we were equipped with a case for a very fluffy pillow, two sheets and a towel.
Our Italian cabin mates, Beatrice and Mateo, were 30-something doctors who seemed a lot like us…introverted enough to stuff their noses contentedly in their books/phones, but also to have a nice chat about travel, politics and life for a few hours. All in all, it was a perfect match! 🙂
Watching the sun plunge into the Uzbek desert. Greg relaxing in his new tshirt. Can we please travel like this all the time?!
Of course, taking the train has its downsides…arriving in the dark at 5:30 am and having to wait endlessly in various cafes and restaurants until 2 pm to check in to our Airbnb. We started at the train station with some quite overpriced coffees for $2.50/each. However it gave us ample time to observe the station signage including the “pumping” room. I think that has a different connotation in the west. 🤣
The sun rising at 7 was a welcome sight.
After a day of waiting it out in cafes while fighting to get stable internet and keep our eyes open, we arrived to our $28/night Airbnb utterly exhausted. We were so excited to finally have our own space…lots of it, with a full kitchen, dining area, “Chanel” sponsored sleeping area, and living area. The essence of the apartment was basically a sterile Valentine’s Day card. Of course I was so fatigued I made a classic Airbnb host error when taking the photos…not open the shades. But you get the idea. 🤣
Exploring Tashkent’s Metro Stations
Bopping around on the metro is one of the best, and usually affordable, ways to traverse a widespread city and because of this, we’ve frequented a lot of metro stations around the world. Some of the most captivating have been in Paris, Budapest, Prague, and Tokyo. But the most striking so far, we’ll have to award to Uzbekistan’s capital of 3 million people, Tashkent, which features practically a hidden art museum underground.
Many stations are designed with a theme, using architectural, mosaics, historical motifs or Uzbek cultural elements. The system overall was inspired by Moscow…a destination we haven’t been to…yet, and may not go for quite some time.
It opened in 1977 as the first metro in Central Asia and now has four straightforward lines. It’s accessible with only the tap of a digital card attached to your phone required, for a tremendous value of $.14 per ride. You could have hours of exploration for this amount by staying down in the tunnels and transferring around…which is exactly what we did! Below are some of our favorites we checked out…
Pakhtakor Station is blinged out in mosaics, and dedicated to cotton farmers…
…while Alisher Navoi is named after the 15th Century Uzbek poet and thinker which blends Uzbek cultural heritage with Soviet metro design. Here we soaked in the decorative domes, which feel very reminiscent of Islamic art.
Gafur Galom Station, named after the Uzbek poet, features exquisite ceramic arts on the walls and towering jade-green granite columns.
Mustaqilik Maydoni Station literally means “Independence Square,” which reflects post-Soviet Uzbek identity.
The Kosmonavtlar Station is a “cosmic/space” theme station, which undoubtedly has a bit of a Star Trek vibe. Naturally, its royal blue walls, spacey pillars, and portraits of cosmonauts pay tribute to the early Soviet space program.
Chorsu Station was simple, but still unique
Bodomzor Station is one of the newer stations opened in 2001. It has a spirited, somewhat mid-century modern vibe with a stark white ceiling, cerulean geometric patterns, golden toilet plunger mood lighting, and quirky seating which resembles a pool cue chalker.
As a transfer point between the green/red lines, Yunus Rajabiy has an elegant and medieval flavor.
A map of the entire system. Like it many cities, there is frustratingly no direct link to the airport. I think they drop it on the center of the metro map loop just to tease people (and make the cab drivers gleeful.) Also, you’ll notice all Latin letters are being used on the signage. Uzbekistan is making a shift away from Cyrillic, so it was interesting to see the mix.
Chorsu Bazaar
Looking like an oversized Easter egg, the historic Chorsu Bazaar has most likely been the site of a trading place for more than 800 years. The current iconic dome, classified as “Soviet modernism” was built in the 1970s is fused with Central Asian/Islamic design elements. Certainly beats what came out of the States in the ‘70s!
The colorful market is a pulsing heart of bustling life in Uzbekistan’s capital…far from just a tourist market. Here you can find everything…from meat, to dairy, to produce to clothing, jewelry and household goods.
It’s widespread and fantastic to roam and the sensory overload provided the best market we visited during our time in Central Asia.
The Bureaucratic Nightmare of Uzbekistan
As alluded to in previous posts, despite being a heavily touristed country, we encountered a bureaucratic mess when leaving Uzbekistan thanks to the archaic Soviet “E-mehmon” hotel registration system….a system which is seemingly designed to track the movement of every tourist that comes through, and is also ripe for corruption.
According to deep research we did on Chat GPT, Uzbekistan is unique. Not in the fact they require hotel registrations, but in the fact that the tourist tax is incorporated into the registration at the hotel and paid only IN CASH.
Also, the fact that their system does not allow tourists to track their OWN registrations, which places all the ownership on the hotels, when tourists are equally as liable.
This means if you have a dishonest and/or negligent hotel owner, as we did at Ravshan Guesthouse in Bukhara, you can run into significant problems, which is essentially what happened to us.
We have included the full story in the photos below, but here is the bottom line:
If you visit Uzbekistan, make sure you have the OFFICIAL “E-Mehmon” registration paperwork when leaving every hotel or guesthouse. It’s fine if this is in the form of a screenshot. Do NOT accept an unofficial receipt. Once you obtain this piece of paper, double check that your dates, and all your personal information, is correct.
That’s it. It should be that simple. Hopefully, our pain will be your gain….
This is what the E-Mehmon registration form looks like. Double check all the information, but especially the dates you stayed, your passport number and your birthday.
This is what an E-Mehmon registration does NOT look like. So here’s what happened…
- We made the registration at Ravshan Guesthouse on Booking/com
- When we arrived, we felt a bit duped by the manager almost immediately because he asked us to cancel our booking due to “the high commission the platform takes.” This red flag caused us to analyze ALL our bookings in Uzbekistan and we began to realize the dubious accounting practices attached to the “tourist tax.” Some were significantly higher than other places. This one was $40, for a five night stay, making it $4/person/day. Other places charged anywhere from $.92-$2.50.
- All this was suspicious so we said we would not cancel our hotel booking.
- When we left, we were provided with this handwritten receipt. The dates were correct, so we didn’t think much of it.
Things went smoothly in Khiva.
However, when we arrived to Tashkent on October 14, our Airbnb landlord tried to register us and received this error message….for Greg only, saying he couldn’t be located in the border database. After confirming Greg’s passport number/birthday were correct, our host told us to try and fix the issue by contacting our previous hotel in Khiva to extend his dates. We tried, and they said they could not change the dates. We also confirmed everything was done in Khiva correctly, which meant the source of the problem laid with the prior hotel…Ravshan Guesthouse in Bukhara.
Greg first contacted Ravshan on October 17. The hotel admitted to the wrong stay dates, but refused to fix the error, or provide real proof of registration. He was also full of excuses about a system outage, the fact he didn’t have a printer, and many other things. It was quite obvious he was bullshitting us in some way.
In the meantime, our host in Tashkent made repeated attempts to register Greg, but still couldn’t.
Greg continued to contact Ravshan, but he refused to correct the errors. However, he did eventually provide a letter for us to take to the Tashkent migration office explaining the wrong dates, which according to Chat GPT, was the next step we should take. Because, if we didn’t get this sorted, we risked being fined of up to 4 million Uzbek som or $330 when we left the country. We also read multiple accounts of other travelers who confirmed such risks.
Greg went to the migration office, which took over two hours to meet with someone and explain the situation in Russian, via Google Translate, because not a soul spoke English…AT THE MIGRATION OFFICE! He also had to explain to them what Airbnb was, and why we were staying in an apartment for 11 days in Tashkent. After all this, he was informed he was at the WRONG migration office, and he needed to go to another one. But not til Monday because of course, it was Saturday afternoon. They also suggested he could go to any hostel who could register him.
Thus, he spent another hour visiting the best rated hostel we could find in the city, where again no one spoke English. In the end, they wouldn’t help him because they didn’t want to be liable, which is actually understandable.
So, on Monday, we both went to the OTHER migration office, confident they could help us sort out this mess. When we arrived, surprise! No one spoke English, again. Fortunately, an English-speaking Uzbek landlord angel, named Nigora, overheard our situation and jumped in to help. She explained everything to the officer, and we could see after awhile, she was getting nowhere. With an exasperated sigh, she eventually told us, “unfortunately, you’ll need to go to Bukhara to sort this out. You need to visit the tourist police in that city….with the host.”
Triggered, my entire body immediately went anxiety-ridden knowing that Bukhara was a 10-hour round trip train ride away, not to mention the expenses of another hotel and the train, and the fact this guy was a clearly dishonest to begin with.
Once seeing it, she hugged me like a Mama Bear and proclaimed…”you know what? Give me his number….I’m calling this guy!” We could tell the conversation got very heated and he was giving her a mountain of excuses. The bottom line is, he didn’t want to get fined for his “mistake.” Whether or not it was a mistake, we cannot prove. But it’s likely he was just pocketing the extra money. All this for a few extra bucks. Wow!
Anyhow, after the conversation, she told us that he couldn’t change the information and the only way to sort it out was going to Bukhara…or we could go to the US Embassy.
So, we got in another 30-minute taxi ride to head to the embassy.
On the way to the embassy, Nigora called us and said she’d just called Ravshan AGAIN, threatening him that if he didn’t fix this, we were going to the US Embassy to have him shut down. Haha.
Shortly after, Ravshan FINALLY sent us the screenshots of the real E-Mehmon forms, which confirmed he had only registered US for October 7-9. Yes…he had missed October 4, 5 and 6th for BOTH of us AND Greg’s birthday was also incorrect.
He also said he was at the police station “having it fixed.” Whether or not he was actually at the station, we still don’t know, but at least we finally had proof of the problem, but this didn’t solve the problem of 11 days of missing registrations in Tashkent.
At this point, we tried to go in the US Embassy, and even after pleading (IN ENGLISH :)), we were shooed away by the guard, and given a card for the 24-hour email and phone numbers. We sent a lengthy email to the embassy and guess what? Months later, we still haven’t heard from them. No surprise because this took place during our lovely government shutdown. Awesome.
Anyhow, on October 21, our Airbnb host was finally able to register Greg using the INCORRECT birthday, a tactic Greg thought of trying in the middle of the night. However, the host couldn’t backdate it meaning Greg still had a one-week gap.
So, prior to leaving, we prepared and printed 14 documents to have at the border should we get stopped to explain our gaps. And naturally, we didn’t get stopped. But, it definitely COULD have happened….
Sadly, it definitely left a sour taste in our mouths for the whole country.
