Roberts' fieldtrips in Uzbekistan.

 After two one-day fieldtrips it was time for a long one. Scheduled to start Monday late afternoon for Samarkand it was only on Wednesday morning 5 o’ clock thast we could set out as my passport was bound up in registration procedures. It was raining heavily which did not deter our driver to bounce from one pothole to the other and by the time dawn was breaking we were getting close to Samarkand where the rain turned into snow.

(N.B. on this map, Tashkent is in the Northeast, in the yellow ' neck'  towards the Fergana valley, which is coloured brown because of the mountainous area.  Taking the road South-west, an inch down, Bucha is on the rim of the lightbrown area, then Samarkand is the next town, on the river (it takes a 4 hours drive to get there). Buchara is straight to the west form Samarkand, another ' inch' on the map. From there Robert went South, almost tot the border with Afghanistan. The beautiful walled city of Khiva is much further west, in the desert.)

We attended a meeting in Pastdargom, south of S., where the list of on-farm objects to be prepared by our project was discussed with the local representatives of the project, water users associations (WUA) and other stakeholders. I feel my attendance as purely ceremonial as I do not understand the Uzbek language and cannot read Russian either but in this bureaucratic, top-down community my presence is an absolute must. So I pay attention and listen carefully, without understanding much. After a field visit to some of the objects we proceed to Bukhara, through a flat and boring landscape. The only trees we see stand along the irrigation canals, which don’t make for a lively change either.

In Navoi we have lunch, the national dish Plov, a kind of Pilav. After enquiring with the waiter what would be a normal quantity we order one kilo, which turns out to be a huge mountain of delicious food but far too much for the four of us. We arrive in Bukhara at around 5 p.m. and I am too tired to walk around to get a first impression of the town. When we go out for dinner it is dark and there is nothing to be seen. The next morning to Alat, towards the Turkmenistan border. Underway lots of “snow” which at 17 degrees turns out to be salt.

Before starting a crop farmers have to leach their land to wash the salt out of the root zone, after which they apply manure and start cropping, applying excessive amounts of water to keep the salinity levels under control.

The sediment from the canals,

although good soil of low salinity, is not spread out on the fields and rises to two meter high on the embankment.

In the meeting it turns out that the WUA is not too interested in using the available money as they have to pay back 50% of the investment cost. Bottom up remains a tricky approach for Government and World Bank officials. It will lead to interesting discussions during the next WB mission. We lunch with the stakeholders on Samsa, the local Samosa and toast with one bottle of wodka. On to Karshi in Kashkadarya province. We pass the natural gas facility in the desert where the smell of rotten eggs cannot be ignored. Sulfur is one of the by-products of purification of the gas.

Close to Karshi we cross a large irrigation canal 350 m3/s. The water is being lifted from the Syr-Darya by 6 pump stations, before flowing back heavily polluted with fertilizers, chemicals and salts to deposits in the desert, where it evaporates.

Without irrigation this country would not exist and it is not amazing that the Aral Sea has been so severely reduced. The temperature is around 23 degrees and it feels like a mild summer day. The next morning it rains and we go on fieldvisit. A muddy business. The landscape remains flat as a pancake and reminds me of the polder in NL also because of all the canals and drains that cross our way. Lunch is a two bottle of wodka affair as it is my birthday and that must be celebrated of course. Returning to the north gives us a good view on the foothills of the Himalaya; the fruittrees are apricots.

On the way back, while stretching my legs on a petrol station I am attacked by a bitch, which is of the opinion that I am too close to her pup (20 m). My trousers are ruined and I have 4 fang marks on my legs ( and a tetanus shot!) . The dog is vaccinated against rabies recently as the owner is able to proof with its health certificate and my tetanus is valid for another three years, so sterilization with alcohol and some bandages do the trick. Back in Tashkent my colleague/interpreter calls on a medical friend to have a professional look at my leg and after some additional alcohol on the scratches it is time for a beer and pumpkin soup. All’s well that ends well.