7NNT25: Day 8 – The road to Khiva

Soundtrack: “Wide Open Road”, The Triffids

Somewhere on the road to Khiva, with no other people in sight, the only signs of civilisation being the power poles and the road itself, my phone showing no signal, I glanced at the dashboard and the realisation kicked in: the damn fuel light is on. I don’t know when it came on, but I figure that if this car is like most, that means it has at most somewhere around 50km worth of fuel. I start doing the maths, if we’re doing just over 110km/h, that gives us maybe 30 minutes. I’m not panicking yet, afterall the driver seems quite calm about it, he hopefully knows where we are and what the car can do. I’m sweating but not sweating, as he’s turned off the aircon meaning better fuel efficiency. After 15 minutes the landscape hasn’t changed, we’re still in the middle of the central asian desert, and there isn’t even a camel in sight.

At 20 minutes I’m mentally taking stock of what provisions I have stocked: maybe 300 mL of water, a gold chocolate kitkat, and a pack of airline nut mix from the first flight. A little water, and a lot of salt and sugar. At least the road is fairly well used, we’ve passed a number of cars along the way, surely they’ll stop for us. At 25 minutes I’m scanning the horizon, I think I can see signs up ahead of habitation, and as we get closer there’s definitely a building but no sign of a fuel station. At 30 minutes I’m wondering if I should tell L, but she’s deep in the last parts of an Adrian Tsykovsky audiobook and it’s not like there’s a brace position required for running out of fuel, is there? At 35 minutes may brain is in overdrive: I don’t think this car is a hybrid; why doesn’t the driver seem concerned? And why did he just turn the A/C back on? Does he not notice the big orange sign on the dashboard?

At 40 minutes we pull into a rest stop, with toilets, mini mart, restaurant and fuel, we are indeed saved. Maybe we do have Allah or Krsna or Jesus or Buddha riding shotgun.

Leaving the stop after lunch, a break and a stretch, I look over at the dashboard, and lo the needle is still pointing at E, the light is still on, the driver is still unconcerned. A new realisation begins to set in.

And 3 hours later, after we’ve left the main highway, and sit at 60km/h with the A/C on, the road bumpy enough that my phone has recorded an extra 2000 steps, that needle still at E, and the driver still as cool as a cucumber that’s been sliced and put in that salad/soup, I’m thinking that the fuel gauge is stuffed. Umm I guess that’s yay?

Lunch was probably the closest thing we’ve found to a halal snack pack, a dish called “country meat” that consisted of thin fried beef strips, served with crinkle cut fries. It was very good indeed, and while we had our favourite soup/salad with it, some hummus and garlic sauce would not have gone astray.

Other thoughts from the road.

Look at any index that ranks how democratic nations are, and Uzbekistan doesn’t score well. In 2023 it ranked 149, which is below China and Viet Nam. (Even when they do the 2025 rankings, it’ll probably not score great, even though I’m not aware of any cases of them trying to deport their own citizens.) So, authoritarian state or not, they do post signs in advance of speed camera radars, unlike Western Australia, a place where, despite the media being owned by fear-mongering oligarchs, solidly embraces democracy, yet speed cameras are hidden and people are punished for letting other motorists know about them. It makes me wonder.

We had possible a unique bridge experience, where we drove over a single lane bridge that also has train tracks running through it. We all had to stop for a short train going through.

We passed a statue of a cow, and there were two real cows next to it. Man, I wish I knew what they were thinking. Probably, why doesn’t this cow ever moooooooove? (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

We stopped at some traffic lights in the middle of nowhere. There are at least a couple of sets like that on the highway. Possibly there was a side road, but certainly no one was coming from that direction.

Along the way, weird old little caravans dotted the landscape periodically. Usually painted light blue, and lacking any motor, who knows how they got there, and when.

We did see two camels from the road, but I didn’t get my camera sorted in time. They were dromedaries. Didn’t see any bactrian unfortunately.

We drove quite close to Turkmenistan today, for a while we could see it just the other side of the river. Even in Khiva we’re only 15km or so away.

Other thoughts for the road ahead:

The pope died today. That’s possibly going to make things a little more interesting in the Philippines (though they’re also having a parliamentary election just after I’m there, so how much more interesting can things get?)

Health experts in Thailand are predicting COVID-19 cases to increase following last week’s Songkran festival. I’ll be there on Friday, thankfully I’m vaccinated and packing masks.

We arrived in Khiva ok, a little tired and sore from the bumpy drive and sitting down for long periods. It’s a good 6 hours by car, maybe a little more given roadworks and breaks. After settling into the hotel (we have a little blue tiled dome right outside our window) we took a stroll around the nearby parts of the city. In front of the hotel is a tall flagpole with a very, very, very large Uzbekistan flag. We didn’t want to explore too far or really look at anything closely, as we’re doing a city tour tomorrow and that will likely take us through all the sights etc. Looking for local restaurants I noticed one that was apparently a hot dog place that had excellent fries, so we thought we’d give it a go, at least for a snack. Stepping inside, Botir Hotdog is anything but a hot dog place, it’s a full restaurant that is quite popular with locals. I don’t think they get a lot of tourists, but with the help of google translate we managed to order a “dollar salad” and some shashlik. They also do large platters of meat and things, which looked tempting but we doubted our ability to convey that we only wanted enough food for two people. Large platters, large flags, maybe things are bigger in Khiva.

Should be a solid morning tomorrow, our last formal tour activities which will include climbing a minaret. Please keep my calves and quads in your thoughts. After that we’ve got a final free day in Khiva, before heading back to Tashkent.