I was told my the manager at the hotel in Tashkent that you need to book train tickets early, at least a week in advance as places get bought up quickly. The new fast trains in particular are difficult to find seats if left too late. Therefore dutifully I signed up the Uzbekistan Railway website, several times in fact, as the registration email either never came through or kept going to spam, and bought my ticket in advance to Margilan. And re-evaluating my travel plans, I also went ahead and booked the ticket from Kokand to Samarkand.

Now first thing to keep in mind is I can’t read Uzbek or Russian. The ticket does have English too, but when booking a reserved seat, I wasn’t expecting a bed. A small hard plastic bunk bed with a camping mattress. In reflection, when booking the ticket and seeing the icon of the “seat”, I was confused why they’d chose icons that more resembled beds more than seats.

It was a fairly uncomfortable train ride of 6.5 hours. Not just because of the bed I had to lay in, but there was the bed above me, and another bunk just next to me, with a table between us. So when the occupants of the other beds decided to wake up for breakfast, they sat on the bed next to me while I lay there. Three people scoffing down food, sitting facing me, not 30cms away. It’s so very, very awkward.

The town of Margilan is nothing special, the only attraction here is the markets in the nearby town of Kumtepa. The capitol of the region, Fergana, is where all the accommodation lives, and where visitors use as a base to visit the towns of the Fergana Valley. Jumping into a taxi we raced off to Fergana, and to a hotel I booked called Sukura Inn.

The first sign the hotel was a little different was upon entering they had a shoe stand, clearly everyone was taking their shoes off before entering. The second hint was the wifi name was Cherry. The final hint was when the owner gave me the key to the room, offering it to me on both open palms. My lizard brain took a few beats to piece together the clues – I see it now, this is Japanese inspired. Sukura meaning cherry blossom tree, hence the name of the wifi.

Our friend the owner was a bit of Japanese fan. He’d spent 5 years living there, and had made efforts to theme his hotel as such. There was even the beginnings of the famous “Great Wave” painting on the wall. I even glimpsed the fire extinguishers had Japanese writing on them… did he import Japanese fire extinguishers?

I caught a Yandex out to the Kumtepa Bazaar, which is in full swing on Sunday when I happened to be there. The main and really only reason to come here are for the silks. This area is famous for it’s of silk factories, and the Kumtepa Bazaar is where to buy them.

The market itself is just the same as any other, but it’s abundance of silk is what makes it eye opening. The sheer about of colours and different cuts is quite impressive. The only let down was I found it impossible to take photos. Sure, I could have been that guy and block the narrow passageway to get some shots, but I really don’t fancy blocking the hundreds of women from their silk shopping. I couldn’t even find an out of the way spot, every dirt floor inch was in use by merchant stalls or human traffic.

Back in Fergana I headed to the Brown Sugar Cafe, a spot that appeared in all the guides. It’s a very funky garden beer cafe, with antiques inside. I met the owner, Elliot, who introduced himself and stayed around to chat. The guy liked to chat, and to be fair, so do I. Elliot had lived in England for a year, and was a bit of an entrepreneur. His side hustle was importing General Motors parts in from China, up until the pandemic hit and crippled that income. To show off his wealth, he was not only decked out in Adidas, but black Adidas with gold trim. And his sun glasses? Tinted black, with gold frame. This is how you know someone is made.

The next stop was the city of Kokand. I had planned on using Yandex, but the Sukura owner told me not to use it. What I didn’t know was the drivers don’t see the destination when accepting the booking, so when they’d find out it was a 2 hour trip to Kokand and no guaranteed ride back, they’d just refuse. So shared taxi was the better, and cheaper, option.

The Sukura owner went way above duty, and offered to go and bring back a shared taxi. The pickup area wasn’t that far way, but he was insistent that he’d arrange for one to come to the hotel, and I could have a coffee while I waited. Okay, no problem, can’t argue with that.

It’s been a while since I used shared taxi’s, and joy of being crammed into a car with 4 strangers while the driver took to the road like a drunk child playing a video game. Time is money after all, and the quicker he drops us all off, the quicker he gets his next fare. After ducking and weaving between cars, barely missing, hitting the breaks when realising he couldn’t squeeze through two opponents, and even slowing down to not rear end someone, we somehow made it one piece to Kokand.

The hotel I was staying at created a lot of confusion in the taxi, even with the address no one seemed to know of it. I got dropped off near where I had pinned it on the map, and an extremely kind older man got out with me and tried to figure out where I was going. He even called a friend who spoke English to see if she could work out where my mysterious hotel was.

It wasn’t until he saw on the map the Russian name did he clue into which hotel it was. In fact it’s a very well known hotel in Kokand, literally called Hotel Kokand. However it had just recently been taken over and renamed to Reikartz, which is a chain of hotels being bought up in Uzbekistan.

Arriving at the hotel, the place was half closed as they were renovating. The old man stood by making sure we were at the correct place, and the one thing on my mind was visiting the adjoining cafe for a cold beer. Sadly the cafe was also gutted for the renovation, and the relaxed evening with a beer and writing up the Tashkent blog entry faded along with the evening sun.

No matter, that just meant an early night before the next day that was for actual tourist activity – visiting the Khan’s Palace.

In 1863 Khudayar Khan built this palace, with 113 rooms set around 7 courtyards. The west wing is all but demolished, leaving only 19 rooms intact, as well as the mosaic covered entrance. It’s a gorgeous looking building, including a mock throne where tourists waited patiently for their turn for a photo opportunity.

The street leading to the Khan’s Palace and the surrounding park, it aptly named Tourist Street. I couldn’t help but get a chuckle out of that. Then entire length of the street is filled with electronics shops, mostly mobile phones and Apple resellers. I guess that’s what tourists are after these days before visiting a 150 year old palace.

On the way, an old guy walked by and asked “Tourist”? I replied “Da, Australia”. He looked very happy and shook my hand. We nodded at each other, then we went on our separate way. I can understand this, there really haven’t been any foreign tourists so far, especially here in Fergana Valley. Plenty of Uzbek and Russians (mostly fleeing the war conscription), but westerners are absent so far. I’m definitely getting a lot of curious looks. Or perhaps they’re just staring at the long haired weirdo walking around with a real camera around his neck.

The park once again us filled with paddle wagons and electric bikes and cars. Kids are everywhere playing. It’s so nice to see kids just being kids, and no helicopter parenting. A western parent would have several heart attacks if they saw the lunacy of kids zooming around on e-bikes, barely missing each other, and in one case, the kid and his passenger stood on the bike channelling Evel Knievel, barrelling down the path without a care in the world.

My next stop would be Samarkand, which involves back tracking via Tashkent to get there by train. I realised now the train I had book was on one of these bunks, and worse, it was a top bunk. To get to the top, you needed to spider monkey up the side and drag yourself up. I was not keen for that, and considering the trip was 9.5 hours, I began trying to find a different route.

I briefly considered giving the hotel concierge a challenge to find a taxi driver willing to inflict the 6 hours by road journey on himself. Before I went for that desperate option, I checked different domestic airports for flights, but to no avail. Then I turned to searching the Uzbek rail website to see what was actually available. The Fates have a soft spot for me, and lo, I could book a lower bunk to Tashkent, and then book the new fast train to Samarkand. Both trains only had a couple of spots left, so quickly I slammed my credit card details into the website and booked my new route, leaving the old ticket to tumble into the Gmail trash bin (and wasting $14).

After a delicious breakfast – the breakfasts so far have been great – and a chat with an English tourist, who was greatly perplexed that no one spoke English and warned me that museums were mostly useless as the information plaques are all in Uzbek and Russian only, I forgo a taxi to the train station, saddled up the backpack, and walked the 2kms there.

Finally I felt like a backpacker and traveller again.