20 Hours on a train

20 hours on a train, Tashkent to Urgench, October 12-13, 2009
Ok, maybe I am exaggerating, not really the longest journey but by far the longest one we will have on this trip and I think it was actually only 19 hours. We boarded a train last night in Tashkent with the purpose of going all the way to Urgench which is 1100 kilometers from Tashkent. In older times, the railroad ran through a corner of Kazakhstan but no more so it takes a bit longer.
I am the lucky one in that this trip includes hiring porters to do our luggage. Usually my trips of this sort mean hauling my own luggage over the cobblestones, the railroad tracks and up and down innumerable flights of stairs. So it is quite a treat to just stand and watch my luggage be loaded onto the cart and off loaded at the train. For some reason, the porters are not allowed to board the train so we all had to take our own luggage on board. I had a backpack; I also had a large collapsible bag full of my food and water for the train ride, my purse, and my walking stick. I got stuck immediately in the passage way into the train car and had to back up several times and reposition myself to get through the narrow passage and NOT run into the large heated samovar at the end of the carriage for hot tea and coffee.
Into my compartment #1 and my suitcase will not fit under the seat where there is a bin. Luckily it was only half a bin so my suitcase went into the space next to the bin. Everyone got on and got settled. I have to share a train compartment with one of the men on the trip because we are uneven in number. So no getting into jammies tonight.
The train left on time, 6:50 p.m., and pulled out with a whistle and a “pedal to the metal”. We were flying down the track. Our guide had warned us though that if we were standing up at any time; hold onto something because the train would make violent and sudden stops. That was true, so true that I almost rolled out of my bunk on several occasions.
I had a dinner I had brought with me, my kimchee, almonds, meringue, and bread. My roomie shared his honey with me for the bread and I shared my food with him but he didn’t want any kimchee. Imagine that.
He fell asleep at 8:22 which meant that I needed to turn off my phone so as not to bother him. I made up my bed in too short sheets and put a pillowcase on the very dusty pillow for my bed and went to bed around 9:30.
What a night. There were many stops, including some not scheduled. I didn’t sleep well as the train engineer turned on the heaters in all the compartments as soon as the sun went down. It was not necessary as when you shut the door, it became unbearable warm. But opening the window made it chilly so I spent a good portion of the night opening and closing the window. And I almost lurched out of bed several times on the stops.
Morning comes and by now, we are all tired of being on the train but we have to go until around 2 p.m. because the train is running late. Breakfast is provided to us but it is a very cold toasted cheese sandwich, a banana and apple, and a piece of bread. Lovely – Not. The bread is tasty when you first buy it and it is still warm and then becomes worse and worse and harder and harder and chewier and chewier the longer it sits.
But our train ride is winding down. We only have a few more hours to go. I stuff my pillows in the corner of my sleeping platform and lean back against them and actually drift off to sleep again. My roommate did the same. On arriving in Urgench, our tour leader runs off to find a porter (lovely deal, this porter business) and we climb on a bus for our trip to Khiva, our next stop for sightseeing.