Despite having got up early to catch the bus to Bukhara, we were remarkable late in leaving Khiva. We took a shared taxi to Urgench again and from there went to enquire as to what buses were running. The answer seemed to be, very few. And those that were leaving weren’t doing so until they were full, probably several hours away. Furthermore, the price that the bus drivers wanted to charge was ridiculously high and it was therefore cheaper to take a shared taxi with four people in it than a bus with 40. The bus would never fill up and would be much slower than the taxi. I tried to explain that this didn’t make sense logically or commercially, why would anyone take the bus? But alas to no avail. I wonder that if I managed to get a business permit here, whether I could start up my own bus company and undercut the lot of them! How a local could afford $7 for a bus ride I don’t know.

So the bus, which we wanted to take as it is usually more interesting, lost out. This of course left the victory in the hands of the numerous touting taxi drivers. We played one off against the other amusingly and found a ride for $6. The only problem was that we needed one more passenger before the driver would leave and he seemed uninterested in finding us one. Fortunately a lone Japanese girl turned up just as I took it upon myself to ask every passing local if they wanted to share the taxi to Bukhara.

And so we were off, squeezed into a tiny Daewoo Tico that seems to be the number one selling car here in Uzbekistan. The Japanses girl slept almost all of the way and we didn’t have a chance to catch her name! No matter what happened, she slept, and quite a lot happened by the time we arrived.

It was a fairly normal journey for most of the way and it was looking like we would make it in good time. We traveled through pretty barren desert scrub and it was getting warm inside the car. Our driver was zipping along at a reasonably fast speed on pretty good road though his insistence on using just one leg and one arm to drive with was worrying. The other arm and leg were resting on the seat in a very relaxed fashion. We hardly passed a single house on the way to Bukhara and wherever you looked, you could see nothing but desert and the odd goat or horse grazing. There were also the odd electricity pylons and lived-in yurts that also punctuated this monotonous scenery.

200km from Bukhara we came to a slow halt, our driver got out, relieved himself and then returned to us to report that our engine had a small problem . We tried to get it to start, but to no avail. He acted as though this was totally normal however. But it soon became evident that the car simply wasn’t going to start. Looking around, we saw no-one for miles and hardly any traffic passed us. Fortunately our driver said he had a friend who he could and he gave him a call.

Fortunately the one series of buildings that one does see along the road are garages and there are plenty of them. I guess breakdowns are quite common in this region. Yet sure enough half an hour later a convoy of Daewoo minibuses turned up. They were on their way to Andijan, but kindly stopped to tow us to the nearest garage. Our driver assured us that it was just a small problem and that we would be on our way in no time. I doubted him, now that I have become used to the Central Asian mentality. But no, he insisted and showed me that it was justa spark plug problem. The great thing I suppose about a country with just one or two makles of cars is that spare parts are easy to come by. Or so one would think! In fact none of the garages we tried actually had the required spare part. Finally after 60km of being towed, we found a garage who looked like they might be able to solve the problem. They tinkered away but without success – the car simply wouldn’t start. By now our friends had to make their way to Andijan and it was still miles away so they left.

Every mechanic and non-mechanic on the site had their go at tinkering with the engine. I got bored and ventured off into the surrounding countryside to discover a small but rather ramshackle village nearby. It was probably the largest cluster of houses that we’d seen and one might have been able to call it a village but for the desperately poor construction of the houses. They were made from anything available – mostly wood, but with bits of bed, plastic sheeting and old concrete girders. Inside these “houses” the animals lived in close proximity to the residents and as I walked past the odd dog began to bark ferociously. It was a stark reminder of just how desperately poor some parts of this country really are.

I wandered back to the car which was no nearer to being fixed, and an hour later another so called friend dropped by to tow us the last hundred or so kilometres to Bukhara. Our dirver had used his ingenuity to construct a worryingly short tow-rope from his seatbelt in order to facilitate this. Once we had arrived, the usual taxi touts surrounded us offering us a ride and pretty much consumed the poor Japanese girl, who disappeared without a trace.

Through Rashid, we’d organised to stay in a friend of his’s house called Madena who kindly came all the way to the bus station to pick us up and take her to her lovely house right in the centre of town. Although the house itself was nothing special in terms of architecture, it was a wonderful window into Uzbek family life with rooms set around a paved courtyard with seating. Her whole family seemed to live there and we were warmly recieved, especially by her aunt, a large bubbly woman, who cooked up a delicious home meal before we headed to bed.