PLOV 10, 11 - Change of Plans
PLOV
Alive, improbably, after facing the combined insanity of a sudden winter snowfall and Uzbek driving culture. PLOV, Bernard, you know the drill.
Truly, friends. I try not to look down upon others. I come from Montréal, where we're insane and proud of it. But reader: this morning the roads were white with new snow and the little taxi-van we'd hired to go to the train station was bald-tyred. The driver got us there with the speed and recklessness of a guy bringing his wife to the delivery room. Dodging cars left and right. Undercutting, overtaking, burning red lights with a placidity and laissez-faire that I could only be amazed at.
We gunned it down a slippery hill and all he did was feather the brakes while I thought, huh, I wonder if my backpack would be enough of a buffer between me and that window when it shatters. Swam up the shoal of cars behind the plows clearing the road, got ahead of the plow, got stopped by the cops but then somehow ducked back into the flow to keep speeding ahead, unheeding. Truly a kind of magic in this man's hands and feet. We got to the train station with an hour to spare, my throat dry from the rosaries I was hastily trying to remember and mumble, and dude just got out of the taxi, took the cab, shook the hand of every grizzled old driver in the joint, and left.
That was this morning, because we missed our night train.
The plan was to head to the Aral Sea. Finish the summary on Monday, explore Samarkand a bit, get the night train to Nukus, find a communal taxi to Moynaq, train back down to Bukhara for the day, get on the train to Tashkent with hours to spare before the flight back to Canada. But alas.
Why did we miss it? It could have been the fact that we tried to leave downtown on Monday at rush hour. Could have been the time we spent lingering at the windows of the teahouse, watching the kids who had just gotten out of school try to beat the ice out of the pine boughs while our lemon tea steeped. Could have been my insistence, driven by the memory of the subpar train croissants, that I eat a bowl of dumplings in broth before I went. Slow walking. The wrong choice of direction to get a carshare. Misaligned celestial bodies. God wanting to teach all of us a lesson about plans. No matter the reason that made the circumstance, there was no disputing the fact that at departure time we were standing, distraught, in a dead-end street by the highway next to a hotel that looked like the Addams Family house with more LEDs, looking at the clock tick closer to our train departure time with an ever-increasing sense of dread.
And now, having repaired back to our old hotel, begged for our rooms, eaten a kilo of sweet and sour chicken (me), slept, and gone through the above taxi ride, we are in Bukhara for a few days.
All of which is to say: apologies for missing yesterday. It was a bit of a day.
But also yesterday:
Pajowsta, pajowsta, señorita! I've met this man five minutes and already feel like he's been my grandpa my whole life. He is all smiles. Gentle, precise walk. He opens up the door to his courtyard, steps though, shoves his hand back out in a gesture of come on, it's cold outside.
The courtyard is wall-to-wall... well, everything. Old Soviet knives. Robes of every colour and confection. Cash deposit bags from the 50s. Copper serving plates, green with age. Emma, the señorita who's been here before, disappears into what looks like a shed and comes out with a box of Russian postcards. Soviet-style fish. Old newspaper cartoons. A print of a man on a horse, holding an urn out of which a frog is poking its head.
Off-season here means everything is closed until you ask for it. Emma had been here before, the guy knew her, told her to just knock and he'd come. Open just for us. Kindness of his heart. And, likely, knowledge that if he had to make the effort to open the door, we could probably spare some som.
I walk off with a stack of the postcards. My travel companions get a jacket, ten yards of material. The man waves us off, gets Emma to promise to come back speaking better Uzbek. True grandpa.
Snow has fallen all around Samarkand, water freezing into icicles all around the overhanging roofs. The trees are glazed with sometimes an inch thick. All around town there are men with rakes and brooms beating it off the pine trees and the bushes, little old ladies following them with homemade brooms to get the ice off the roads and into the gutters.
School has finished by the time we make our way back to the main roads. I see boys walking home, gently thumping Lada hoods to break off big pieces of frosted-pane ice. A little girl with a pink backpack holding a grandpa's hand, chattering uninterrupted as he smiles off. Mothers counting children as they pass by, barking out an absent one's name. Everyone pouring through the small door in the gate that divides the small pedestrian streets from the proper boulevards; everyone coming into the walled city, the place where kids come home, duck into candy shops to buy a chocolate bar.
Out on the boulevard, the cold is heavy and humid and cuts through our down jackets. Our breath comes in plumes. I'm the only one with gloves. We beeline past Registan Square, make for a little pedestrian street with a robin's nest of egg-blue mausoleum roofs in the distance and strip-mall glass-front stores. One of them is a tea house. We get a huge pot of hazy, life-affirming lemon tea, some crepes, a bowlful of dumplings in broth. Smile as the feeling comes back to our toes.
And then we miss our train.
B
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