Qarshi Travel Guide

Traveling to Qarshi or any other city, you can choose to ride the dangerous roads of this former Soviet country or you can fly in Uzbek Airline's Yak 40 fleet.

This is a rundown Russian jet with three engines on the back that can seat 35 to 40 people. You carry your own bags from the terminal and load them up the rear stairs into the racks at the back of the passenger compartment. The seats are padded plywood and the seat belts look like they came out of an old Studebaker.

The interior walls are hand painted sheet steel in battleship grey. After seeing the bald tires and the oil dripping from the engines and smelling the jet fuel leaks, you are primed for a real flying adventure. Luckily, the pilot seems to really know his job and the plane flies beautifully.

The Uzbek women wear a combination of clothes that would shock a European or American woman. One woman that I saw had purple pants, green socks and a red and pink flowered jacket. Add to that, a mouth full of gold teethand you have a real fashion victim!

Here is a fashion victim waiting for a ride into town from the refinery site in the desert.

If you are going to Qarshi, either you are in the military or you are going to work at the plastic refinery near the natural gas fields. This is located about 40 miles Southwest of the city.

It was built by an Italian company, so the food was quite good in the camp outside the factory.

This is the usual way big projects like this are built. There is a work site, a food and admin camp and/or a sleeping camp. Busses are used to move everyone from rooms to food to work three times per day.

The photo is deceiving. The water is a small reservoir and the camp is in the middle of a desert. The buildings were poorly made, so they are starting to fall apart after 5 years