My commute to Urganch

Trip Start Jan 16, 2005
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Trip End Apr 2007


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Flag of Uzbekistan  ,
Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Last week I opened a bank account at the Urganch branch of the National Bank of Uzbekistan. It was pretty easy to do relatively speaking. When I asked if I could place money in the bank, I was told no. In my former western definition/conception of a bank, I thought it as a place where money can be both deposited and withdrawn. Not here in Uzbekistan. Both my counterpart and the bank personnel asked why I wanted to put my money in the account, as if I were asking permission to go up to the roof and drop my sum all over Urganch. I answered because we are at a bank, now I have an account, I have money, so what is the problem?

So another cultural adjustment to make here in Uzbekistan: People according to my sources apparently do not put their money in the bank.

It was quite busy when we were there though, so I am not what services people requesting and/or receiving. I suppose on the surface, people just walk around busily and arrange papers- it took 7 people to open my account- 9 in total if you count the 2 more people in the other room I had to take my new stamped paper and my 1000 sum note [$1] to....


For me to come to Urganch, to check email, snail mail, and teach my English Club, it takes about 1/2 hour in a small Daewood 4 door, a model with the name Tico. It costs 500 sum (50 cents), holds 4 (3 uncomfortably squished in the back) and will drop you off wherever you need to go. If you opt for the cheaper transport, you may choose a 400 sum (40 cents) Damas that is also a Daewood, but more of a mini-van size. It fits 7 people and will also take you anywhere you want to go. The downside of the Damas is that it will not leave Koshkipur (goes back from Urganch later in the day as well) until it is filled, so you may have to wait 20 minutes or more. I have only had patience to wait 20 minutes in Urgench before I got out and walked across to the Tico station at the bazaar for a ride home. For now I am okay with splurging another 10 cents, a luxury many people cannot afford. Those are forced to take an hour or more stuffed 1950s or 1960s soviet-style bus...I have not yet tried this third option.

The ride is very scenic. After about 5-10 minutes, you leave the small business center of Kushkipur and enter the kishloks (village/rural areas). Khorezm is very flat so for miles and miles all you can see are open fields and a few scattered one-story, earth-tone clay buildings. Some maybe houses, I am not sure. Trees line the road and also divide the fields that were once forced collective farms. Now these are cooperatives, still owned by the government. These fields are irrigated by long canals, water diverted by the Suy Darya River, causing the Aral Sea to shrink (one of the worst environmental disasters of the century).

Sometimes you may see an older man lying in the grass while his sheep graze. Cows and goats are common as well. The Ticos and Damases speed past donkey carts and big trucks carrying day labors to work in the fields.

Sometimes a cell phone will ring. This is a particularly surreal moment and not just because we are in the middle of nowhere. Unlike on the NYC commuter trains, there is no one asking this person to be quite or move cars because there is no need. The phone is switched off and more times than not, left unanswered. I do not quite get it, maybe the person knows that there probably isn't any service and the entire conversation would be "Can you hear me now," like those annoying cell phone commercials that this part of the world is thankfully without.

I realize that my fellow commuters think this commute is tedious and invariable, much like a commuter from NYC to white plains might think. But for me it is just the opposite, and I wouldn't want it any other way. Not even for air conditioning....
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