We sleep late the next morning, and miss breakfast in the cafeteria. I knock on the sliding gate to the inner compound and, after he identifies me, a guard lets me in. Inside I mime taking a leak, and the guard leads me to a toilet.
Mike is still sleeping in the truck as I leave the bank compound and go for a walk through beautiful spacious squares. I like this city. Grass in the parks is cut longer than I'm used to, the hedges look a bit ragged and there are some weeds, but that just makes it look more natural.
A few blocks from the bank I find the Hotel Tashkent. I still want breakfast but not in a luxury hotel. In a small cafe on a side-street I buy breakfast of a fried egg, coffee that already has milk and sugar in it, and a blintz for 18 Cymma, or about 35 cents American.
By the time I get back to the bank Uzbeki customs officers have come to cut the seals off Mike's trailer and inspect the load. It's been held in place for the trip by plastic air bags, which they puncture and pull out. They pull out some of the crates and check them off.
One of the bags in Mick's truck has been punctured, and part of his load has fallen on the floor of the truck. When he sees what happened Mick grabs a camera from his cab and starts to take pictures. The customs officers try to stop him but Mick insists. He is responsible for that load, and he needs pictures of any damage. Nobody thinks the bank is going to enter an unfair claim, but truckers everywhere have learned that any damage to cargo can sometimes become more serious before the insurance adjuster sees it.
After the load has been inspected we follow an army jeep back to the computer center, where the bank has assembled a crew of white-collar laborers to unload the trucks and bring the computer inside by hand. They really are white collar, and they work slow. I wonder if there's a money shortage, or if they don't trust common laborers to handle computer components?
While they work I walk to the melon market and buy a watermelon to bring back to the guardhouse. Someone else has already opened one, but no-one is surprised to see another.
In the lunch room of the computer center I meet Chori Mirzaev, a money trader with the bank. He studied at universities in Washington and Nevada and he speaks good English.
He was married three months ago but just before the wedding he was invited by the Chase Manhattan bank to visit their office in London. The offer was too good to pass up and, instead of taking his wife on honeymoon, Chori went alone to England.
His wife now lives with his parents in a small village about 12 hours away by bus and he visits her on weekends. He has his own house in Tashkent but his brothers are sharing it with him now, and he can't bring his wife there until his brothers move out.
Chori invites us to his house for dinner and we accept. We expected to take a taxi to get there but Chori says his brothers and neighbors would love to see the truck, so we drop the trailer and bobtail to his house. He's on a side-street, and most of the residents of the street come out to watch us drive in.
The street is narrow and there isn't much clearance for a big truck. We break a few low branches off trees on the way in and we also break one low-hanging telephone wire. Chori's neighbor is upset about that. He is waiting for a long distance phone call from Russia, he says, and now it won't come through.
Chori pacifies his neighbor. Later he tells us the man is just trying to sound important. Chori gained prestige by bringing a big western truck home, and the neighbor is talking about a call from Russia to boost his own image.
Like most other houses in the area Chori's home presents a blank stucco wall, broken only by one grilled window and a set of double doors to the street. The doors are big enough to pass a small car and they lead into a cobblestone passage that is comparable to a driveway. The first 20 feet is roofed, to cover the car Chori does not have and, like any garage, this one has stuff piled along the walls. A window opens into the passage, but now it's closed with wooden shutters.
The passage is about 30 feet long and it opens into a cobblestone courtyard, partly covered by an overhead trellis. The vines on the trellis yield grapes in season, Chori tells us, and the trees yield cherries, persimmons and almonds. In the far corner of the yard is a wash-house with cold water shower, squatter-type toilet and laundry room with sinks.
The house is only one story high but there are stairs to the roof, and a railing around it. Later, from the other side of the yard, I see that there is a two-room penthouse on the roof.
For now we enter a back door and walk down a hall to the main room. A big wooden cabinet with a TV set and book-shelves fills one side. On the other there's a couch, a low table and a couple of low chairs. Chori introduces us to his older brother, who is in business for himself as a fruit and produce trader and his younger brother, who is still going to school, but I can't pronounce or remember either name. Chori owns the house, and he says it cost about $20,000.
The older brother has two wives at home but "of course" he also has a girl friend in Tashkent. Obviously, Chori is letting the family down by not having a girlfriend in addition to his wife. The younger brother has only a girl friend, for now.
Dinner is Plov, raisins, nuts and fruit with vodka, green tea and French cherry brandy. Traditionally the best Plov is prepared by a man and Chori's older brother made this Plov of rice, raisins, peas, quince and spices. We eat and talk until about midnight, then go home. This time Chori rides on the roof of the truck to lift wires out of the way as we drive back to the main road.
Mike and Mick have been eating in the Intourist Hotel Uzbekistan and I join them there the next day. On the way I pass a statue of Timurlane, or Timur the Lame, in the square in front of the hotel. For some reason the inscription, including his motto, "strength in justice", is in English.
I also see several statues of poets, and one of an animal that looks like a moose with droopy antlers.
While I wait for the others I order coffee in the lobby. For $1 the attendant puts a spoonful of powdered coffee and some hot water in little wasp-waisted copper carafe, then swirls it around in a tray of sand that sits on a heater, to cook the coffee. The result is very strong, with lots of gritty sediment in the bottom.
The restaurant is almost a parody of a good restaurant in a western hotel. It looks good but the service is lousy. If offers a full menu but most of the dishes are not available and the food they have is not well prepared. This place is all show and no substance. Dinner for three with two beers each costs $30.
Later I try a local middle-class restaurant that I have noticed several times. It's mostly underground, with windows that rise to about waist height beside the sidewalk. It's not in the basement of a building -- it's just an underground restaurant, and there's nothing on top of the concrete roof.
I go down stairs to a tiled floor, and pass through glass doors to a big bright room full of tables and chairs. They're made of steel, but they don't look out of place in a restaurant. One end is a bar, and there's a serving counter along one wall.
Behind the counter cooks are deep frying half and quarter chickens, and serving them with sauce and bread. They don't batter the chickens, but the skin looks crisp and good. I've seen street vendors selling cold cooked chicken that looks like this. I wait while a couple of other people are served.
Just before the person ahead of me leaves the counter I step forward, point at his plate, and nod my head. With a bit of hand waving and head nodding and the word "da" -- which means yes in Russian but I don't know what it means in Uzbeki -- I convey the message that I want the same thing.
The cook weighs my half chicken before he puts it on my plate, to show me I'm getting full measure. For 65 Cymma or about $1.50 I get 300 grams of chicken plus a hot sauce on the side and a slice of very good white bread.
I choose an empty table and sit down but my salt shaker is empty. I take one from another table, but that one is empty too. A young couple at a nearby table notice my problem, and the man gets up and brings me his salt shaker.
I thank him in English and German, and sit down. A minute later he gets up again, and walks to the bar. While I eat he places a glass beside me, smiles, and returns to his table. It's cognac, a present for a visitor.
There were a couple of other restaurants I would have tried if I had time, but the best meals of all were the shish kebabs I bought in a city park for about 25 cents. As in Russia, Uzbeki shish kebabs come with ketchup and coarse white bread.
Mike ate most of his meals in high-priced Intourist restaurants and he got intestinal worms in Tashkent but I didn't, and I didn't.
Mike noticed the worms at a roadside stop in Kazakhstan and he was not pleased, but not upset. In England, he said, he would buy pills to get rid of them. Like the sailors of old and the camel-pullers of the silk road he is used to the idea that if you eat enough meals in strange places, you may get some unpleasant surprises.
We are unloaded now but we are waiting for Dave, who is still en-route from England, and we don't have much to do until he gets here. Mick and Mike rest and explore the bars of the Hotel Uzbekistan, while I walk around the city.
I like this place. In many ways it's more civilized than other cities. One time I see a cop flag a car down for making an illegal turn.
When the man gets out of the car he shakes hands with the cop, and they speak for a few minutes. Asking each other how many sons they have, I bet.
Then they get down to business -- the license, the argument and the ticket, just like anywhere else.
Next day when I get back to the bank there's a third truck there. Dave Payne has a basin of water balanced on the fuel tank of his truck, and is washing his face. He looks to be about 50 years old, with a trim figure, gray hair and a moustache.
Born in Lancashire and trained as a mechanic he's been driving truck since he was 20 years old. He drove for an American oil company in Libya in the late '70's, then got his own truck and worked five years moving houses for an oil company based in Sharjah, near the south end of the Persian Gulf.
He married there and brought his wife back to England in 1986, and started driving for Ralph Davies two years later. Now divorced, he spends most of his time on the road. He has a house in Manchester, about a hundred miles from Davies' office at Cheltenham, and his two children live near there, but at this point he has not seen his house or his family for five months.
He's a joker, and he enjoys putting waiters and others on, but he tips well afterward. Dave has been here once before, about a month ago, and this trip he found his own way here from the border. That's an accomplishment, because there's a lot of construction around here and things look different.
Dave says he had a problem in Moscow when he had to change fuel filters in cold weather. To get at the engine in an FH16 you use a built-in hydraulic jack to tip the cab, but the oil in this jack was meant for use in England and it jelled in the cold of a Moscow winter.
He tells us about the robbery at the gas station near Orenburg, and says ruefully that robbers tried the same stunt on him in Belarus, three weeks ago. That time he saw that there were three of them, and instead of getting out of the truck he just started it and drove away. This time he only saw one man, until it was too late.
But he still made good time on this trip. He cleared the borders faster than we did and he got here in 10 days, including the time he lost when he was robbed. He got through the Uzbek border very fast, because there were only three trucks there.
Dave is hungry and we head in to the cafeteria at the bank, where dinner for three will cost us 65 Cymma or about $1.50. As we eat Dave trades stories with Mick and Mike about the various hassles they have had since they last met.
After lunch, Dave goes to the computer center to unload and I go for a walk. We meet again for supper at the Hotel Uzbekistan and the three drivers go to a bar after, but I'm tired and a go back to the truck for an early night. Next day I hear about their time in the bar. Apparently they were drunk when they left, and a couple of cops helped them back to the truck.
In the old days Tashkent was famous because the main street of the town was paved, with cobblestones, so the caravans that passed through would not kick up dust. The old road is still called "Caravan Road", and the locals know that it once made the city wealthy. Most of the caravan traffic petered out nearly five hundred years ago, but the new caravans are rolling now and the people of Tashkent are glad to see them.
Next morning one of the guards brings us a fax from the office. We can have loads out of Alma Ata, in Kazakhstan, but Ralph figures the loads are not entirely legal and he says the drivers can take them or leave them as they like. The loads go to Moscow, and they have another load from Warsaw back to England.
Mike, Mick and Dave decide to leave the Alma Ata load. Black market loads are routine in Russia, but with a black load they have to travel back roads, to avoid police posts, and in Kazakhstan and Russia the main roads are bad enough. A black load would also mean armed guards, and they already have one passenger.
We're heading for Warsaw, and next morning we get an early start. Dave leads and we get to the border about 8:30 to join a line of six or eight trucks. We stop beside a kiosk that offers the usual assortment of liquor and cigarettes and I have some Cymma to get rid of so I buy a dozen cans of English Skol super-strength beer. They cost 50 Cymma each, and Mike says they would be more expensive in England.
Then we luck out because the drivers of a couple of Iranian trucks at the head of the line fall asleep. Quietly, we drive around them and clear the border before 10am.
But our luck is not as good as we think because the Kazak customs guards say they have no forms for transit permits. They say we can pick them up at the first police post, about 50 km inside the border.
We pull in to a parking area across the street from a store. It's closed, but about a dozen people wait at a bus stop there.
I don't envy them because it's cold out, and our truck is shaking in the wind.
The senior officer at the police post is at lunch and we have to wait about a half hour for him to come back. This is normal, and it's no surprise that he has to drive Mike, Mick and Dave into the city of Chimkent to get the permits. They are gone for several hours and, while I wait at the trucks, Jaan and some of his buddies show up. They met in Alma Ata and or course they formed a convoy for the return trip. They have permit problems too, and they have to wait 'til the top cop comes back. Jaan says there is lots of snow in Alma Ata now.
It's about 5:30 by the time my three buddies come back, with a tale of woe. It seems the police in Chimkent tried to fine them $500 each for driving without a permit, and charge an extra $260 each for the permits. The boys argued, and they finally settle for $500 per truck for the fine and the permits, but they got no receipt for the money.
No receipt is the tipoff. The permits were actually worth $260 each so the local police have $240 per truck, or a total of $720, to share with the customs officers on the border. Considering that their wages are around $50 a month they've done pretty well for one afternoon's work -- and they are probably going to get more from Jaan and his friends.
It's a windy day, and there's tumbleweed blowing across the road. We nearly squash a Lada after he runs over one, gets it stuck under him, then swerves to try to get rid of it.
At one corner there's a bus parked on the roadside, full to the roof with cabbages. A couple of people are cleaning and selling them. Later we see a car absolutely crammed with cabbages, and a roadside market selling them.
Dave came down by a shorter route that follows a nearly straight line from Samara past the Aral Sea to Chimkent and Mike and Mick agree to try it on the way back. Because of the delay at the police post we drive only about 100 km further today, to a tiny "truck stop" past the village of Tamalin, where Dave stopped on the way down.
We pull off on a mud flat beside the road, in front of a couple of tiny corrugated-steel shacks separated by a breezeway. The one on the left is the kitchen and the owner's home, the one on the right is the dining room. Lighted by a single electric bulb, it's just big enough for one table with a half-dozen chairs around it.
A young girl dressed in a long dark wool dress takes our order, and brings us the shish kebab and tea that are the only choice on the menu. A man in a once-white shirt comes for the money. He wants Kazak Tenge, but we don't have any. The others pay 5,000 Russian rubles each, I pay a single American $1 bill. My meal is cheaper because $1 is worth only about 4,500 rubles, but the American bill is more welcome.
During the night some other trucks and cars join us in the parking lot but they don't wake us. Next morning there's a heavy frost on the ground. A fuel tanker is parked right beside us, selling fuel. Mike checks his own fuel gauge carefully, but is satisfied that the tanker didn't siphon any fuel from us.
Heading north on Kazakhstan highway M32 we pass a field where three dromedaries -- Arabian camels -- graze. Later we will see some herds of dromedaries and that surprises me because the native camels here are two-humped Bactrians, but I guess I should not be surprised.
On the latter day version of the silk road we are driving a Swedish truck, and a hundred years from now Swedish trucks may be as common around here as Russian trucks. Trade routes have a way of mixing things up.
We also pass a baronial mansion of beautifully carved burnished wood, under construction. Someone is obviously making a pile, and is willing to flaunt it. For all the poverty around us we also see signs of wealth -- German BMW and Mercedes Benz cars, and American Jeep station wagons, so it's obvious that some people are doing well.
The state farms are huge. If one man could get control of one and run it efficiently, he could live like a feudal lord.
As we pass through villages we can see over the mud brick walls that surround private compounds. Some of the houses look nice -- I like one that has a big wall of glass windows, facing south. To the right, we can still see snow capped mountains.
Mike's Russian Atlas shows that we are following the Syrdar ya river, and we will pass about 50 km north of the Aral Sea about 700 km ahead.
In a town called Tytictah we pass what looks like a modern truck stop, not open yet, and a mosque under construction. Near a town with a name that looks like Xahakoptah we see an old mud fort off to the side of the police post. I assume it's abandoned and I would love to explore it, but we can't take the time.
We had fog in the morning but it's sunny now, at 9.22am, and the sign says it's 1948 km to Samara (Camapa), 359 km to Aralsk. We are now back in satellite range, and in touch with head office.
One town has the word "welcome" in English on a sign on the way in, and "bon voyage" in French on the way out. Both signs also have some words in Russian.
The temperature is just below freezing and there is ice in puddles and snow on the desert. I have seen paved road this bad before, but never so much of it
I tell Mike that an American truck would have an advantage on this road, because it runs a lighter load on the front axle. Mike doesn't believe me, but we talk about the difference between American and European trucks. Both work well and both have advantages in their place -- but this is more like American trucking than European.
Like most European truckers Mike thinks American trucks look good, but he doesn't think they're well designed. Like almost all European trucks his Volvo was designed as a unit, by the people who made it. Volvo made almost all the components, and they made them to work together. When you buy a European truck it's almost like buying a car -- you get the engine, transmission, suspension and other parts the company specifies for that model.
Some American trucks are built that way too, but most American truck-makers offer so many options that for practical purposes most trucks can be considered custom-made.
When you buy a Volvo FH16 you get a Volvo engine, transmission, suspension, axles and other parts. When you buy a Kenworth or other American truck you get your choice of Caterpillar, Cummins or Detroit Diesel engine, Rockwell, Eaton or Allison transmission, Rockwell or Spicer clutch, Rockwell or Eaton axles, and any one of about a dozen different suspensions including air, walking-beam, springs and rubber blocks.
Like many other European truckers Mike doesn't see how all these different components could work well together, but the answer is that they are all built to be part of the same system. When Caterpillar designs an engine they know that it may be used in a Kenworth, Peterbilt, Ford, Freightliner or some other make of truck -- including an American-built Volvo -- and they know which clutches and which transmissions it may have to work with. At the same time the truck, clutch and transmission makers know that their products have to work with Caterpillar engines.
With American trucks it would be quite possible to order a Ford, a Freightliner, a Peterbilt and a Volvo truck that are virtually identical in the working parts, or to order two or three trucks of the same make that have no major mechanical components in common.
American truck buyers like the "mix-and-match" system because they can choose the components they like and the truck makers still have to compete for their business. If the fleet garage has experience and specialized tools to work with one make of engine they want to keep using that engine until someone else comes up with something much better -- but at the same time the business office wants to call for bids from three or four different companies when they buy new trucks.
No problem. The maintenance manager tells purchasing which engine, transmission and other components he wants, and the purchasing department writes them into the "specs". When the company calls for bids three or four or five truck dealers will compete on price to provide virtually identical trucks.
Mix and match also works well on the road, because it means most American truckers are never far from service. If Mike's Volvo breaks down in Russia he will have a big problem because there are no Volvo dealers but -- because truck dealers have to be able to provide service for any component of the trucks they sell -- an American driver can take almost any American truck to almost any American dealer for factory-approved service.
A few years ago I was riding in an American-built Volvo in Missouri, when the air compressor packed up. The closest truck dealer sold Freightliner but, like Volvo, Freightliner uses Bendix compressors and the Freightliner dealer was fully trained, experienced and authorized to install a new Bendix compressor on a Caterpillar engine.
The one point where American trucks don't make the grade is in brakes, and that's a historical problem rather than engineering. Almost all American trucks use the type of brakes called "S-cam" and they are, frankly, not good enough.
They will do the job if they are installed properly and if they are adjusted perfectly, but they have to be watched and adjusted constantly and they are never very good. That's why every year, when police forces across Canada and the U.S.A. hold a "blitz" of truck inspections, they find that about a third of all the trucks on the road have unsafe brakes.
Most European trucks use disc brakes, or different types of drum brake called a "wedge brake" or a "Z-cam" all of which work better than an S-cam. When both the major American brake-makers offered disc brakes the maintenance manager of one Canadian brewery was delighted, because they solved a problem that had worried him for a while.
The beer store in the village of Schreiber, in Northern Ontario, is at the bottom of a steep hill. Because the brewery's trucks could not slow down enough on the hill to make a safe turn into the beer store they had to go through the village, turn around, and come back to make the delivery. The trucks just could not slow safely on that hill.
Disc brakes on both tractor and trailer solved the problem -- the rig could slow or stop easily on any hill. The American brake makers also began to make wedge brakes, but both types ran into a problem.
When the brakes of a tractor are very much better than the brakes of a trailer they do most of the work, and they wear out or break down quickly. If you use a tractor with wedge brakes to pull a trailer with S-cam brakes, the tractor brakes will need a lot of maintenance.
That was no problem in Europe because most European truckers have small fleets, and they often "marry" one tractor to one trailer. When better brakes became available, they made the change one truck and trailer combination at a time.
But the big American fleets are very big -- J.B. Hunt and Schneider National have about 8,000 tractors and about 25,000 trailers each -- and to work efficiently they have to be able to pull any trailer with any tractor. If they want to change to better brakes they have to do it all at once -- which means about 150,000 brake conversions.
And that would just fix their own trailers. Many American shippers own their own trailers, or lease them, and they are not about to spend more on their own brakes just to save the trucker money on his. Most lease trailers have S-cam brakes and, because of that, most truckers would rather have S-cam brakes on their tractors.
Both Rockwell and Eaton have offered both disc and wedge brakes but most American truckers who tried and went back to S-cam. Some garbage trucks are still sold with wedge or disc brakes, but almost all tractor trailers use S-cam.
The brakes on Ralph Davies Volvos are better than on any standard American tractor trailer but for this road many American trucks would have better balance. The Volvo is balanced to load the front axle to the legal limit, which makes it very efficient on European roads because it can carry a full load. The hitch is that with a light load the front axle still carries a lot of weight and, even though we are empty, our front axle takes a terrible beating on this road.
Most American trucks, with the cab set behind the engine, put less weight on the front axle. That's not efficient on a good road because it reduces the legal carrying capacity of the truck, but here it would be an advantage.
The kind of tractor that English drivers call a "Chinese six" would also do well here. Where a normal three-axle European or North American truck has one steering axle in front and two drive axles at the back, a "Chinese six" has two steering axles in front and one drive at the back. English drivers call it a "Chinese six" because they think it looks strange, but the only place I have seen this type of truck in common use is in Japan.
Tandem steer is cheaper and lighter than tandem drive, and Japanese regulations allow it same gross weight, so tandem-steer trucks carry more payload. With no tandem drives to scrub on turns the tandem-steer trucks are easier on tires, Japanese drivers say they ride and steadier than single-steer and government officials says they're safer, because if you blow one steering tire you still have three left.
And on a road like this they would have a real advantage, because the shock of bumps and potholes would be spread over two axles rather than one. The single drive axle would carry more load than a tandem, of course, but drive axles are stronger than steer axles, and rear axles get an easier ride over bumps than front axles.
We see some jet plane trails now, and that's a big change from the old days. In the days of the Silk Road most transportation was set up to carry goods, which were shipped back and forth across half the world, but most people didn't travel very far. A prince might have his own ship or a caravan and a soldier might march with the army, but there was no transportation and little travel for the average person.
Now we have better transportation for people than for goods. Buses, trains and airlines cater to tourists and business travelers, and most countries subsidize air transport. I'm not sure that I approve of the change because I travel more than most, but I think travel must have been more interesting in the days of the Silk Road. I have to admit though, that I would rather think of the old days than live in them.
Some pre-historic graves around here are really fascinating. About 2,500 years ago the Greek historian Herodotus wrote about a tribe of women warriors -- the Amazons -- that he said lived in this area. For a long time historians doubted him but archaeologists digging up the "kuyrgans" in which the Sarmation people who lived around here buried their dead, found the bodies of women warriors.
They know they were women because the bones are different, and they know they were warriors because they are buried with weapons and they show the kind of bone-scars and breaks that are found on warriors' skeletons. One woman still had part of a bronze arrowhead in her shoulder bone when she died.
The bodies of men found in the same group of graves had mirrors and ornaments buried with them, and some men were buried with babies in their arms.
The Sarmations looked like Mongols, spoke a Turkic language and fought from horseback. If we can believe Heroditus -- and now it looks like we can -- they even attacked Athens.
We're below sea level now and there's a flat lake to our left. Vendors by the road offer dried fish, some of them about two feet long, for sale.
We've done 900 km today and past the village of Aral we pull in at a place Dave calls Babas. We park outside a wooden building, leave our shoes in an outer room and walk inside. This is bigger than the place we stopped at last night, and there are three tables. Some locals are eating and drinking as we arrive.
The host is a small man wearing a leather jacket, fur hat and shaggy slippers. He greets us, then waves one of his daughters in to take our order. Always a joker Dave talks gibberish to her, but he waves his hands as he talks and she understands the gibberish as well as she would have understood English. She brings us a bowl of meat soup -- possibly lamb, from the size of the bones -- and a couple of loaves of very good coarse bread, plus tea and vodka.
The girl asks for 110 Tenge and we pay nine German marks each. Dave buys a bottle of vodka for 17,000 rubles, or a bit less than $4.
Outside the night is very dark, and the stars are bright right down to the horizon. We stand and look at them for several minutes before we go to bed in the trucks.
In the old days the camel pullers would have set a watch when they camped for the night. At one time, in this part of the world, the watch might have been on guard against Amazon raiders.