The picture above is a coal train moving through the valley. Most of the pictures that follow have some aspect of coal in them and I’m pretty sure that all this coal contributes to the terrible air quality that reminds me of LA back in the 50s when we were burning trash out in our back yards and our cars were belching smoke. Maybe bad air is something we have to look forward to again.
This took most of the day – a drive to the train station, a long-ish train ride, and another hour from the train to my hotel. Also it was the first time I had a window seat on the train. I had three train rides and what are the odds, all the seats were facing backwards and when I did get a window it was blocked by a pillar. But for this ride I was able to change seats to a single, on a full window, facing forward. So here comes a slew of pictures out the train window traveling through to Fergana Valley.
But first let’s look at a map of the Fergana Valley. Notice how it’s a thumb of Uzbekistan that pokes into three other countries. The other map shows the topography and also the cities I’ve visited.
You can tell where the river runs by the trees.
Driving from the train station to Namangan, I could make this picture more clear but really this is the way everything looked, blurred by the air. I’m not going to mention about the air any more because what would be the point.
Everyone loves the mountains surrounding the Fergana Valley, you can see them in the topographical map at the beginning, and I failed to understand fully that I wouldn’t be going to the mountains, which was obvious of course, if I’d just looked at my itinerary on a topographical map!
All batter-fried chicken in any type of restaurant is call KFC. And xot-dog too are omnipresent.
I put this here to remind me of all the apartment construction. This is one small example of buildings I could see everywhere I traveled. What are all these new people going to do I wonder. Some new housing complexes are 4-5 time bigger than this. I never did get it straight.
I spent one night in Imran Palace in Namangan and there was no where to walk from there. I was getting picked up early for a tour that would end in Kokand so I didn’t bother about going out. I got some dinner delivered (the front desk guy forgot to order the tomato salad so he made some up from their breakfast ingredients which was very sweet).