Maps
Uzbekistan
September 12, 2007
By Dan Murdoch


DID I mention that we don’t have any maps?
We don’t have any maps.
It’s true.
We bought maps for all of the 20 countries we are crossing. But OJ left them on the shelf of his apartment in DC. So, for two months and 10,000km, we have been asking directions.
“Samarkand,” we shout out of the window at terrified pedestrians.
We pull over in Uzbek towns and ask for directions to the Tajik capital of Dushanbe, which is a little like pulling over in Surbiton and asking a passer-by if he knows the way to Aberdeen.
Initially they gaff off in their local tongue, but when they realise our incomprehension they join us in pointing and gesticulating. In Europe people tend to point in short sharp motions, angular juts and thrusts. Here in Central Asia the movements are more curved, a right hand turn becomes one half of a breaststroke.
We’re often lost. Especially in cities. We break traffic laws left right and centre, performing U-turns, illegal lefts and stopping in terribly unsafe places.

We do have some maps: the little diagrams in our guidebooks. But they are clearly not designed for road ravel, bearing few road names, a strange sense of distance, and marking junctions haphazardly.
I don’t know how many hours our lack of maps has cost us, probably in the dozens. But, it in a strange way, it has been liberating- blundering from one place to the next relying on our own initiative and the courtesy of strangers.
“Excuse me. Can you point me in the direction of Cambodia?”

ends
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