Uzbekistan- Oasis Of Alien Beauty

Wayfaring strangers can meet at this comforting oasis of alien beauty near the ancient silk road in Uzbekistan

- Sophie Ibbotson

They say that the camel is the symbol of love, but eyeballing my decidedly stinky steed, a creature easily 2.5m tall at full stretch, and very hairy with it, I just wasn’t feeling the attraction. Camels in Uzbekistan aren’t given names by their owners, which seemed a bit unfair, and so I called him The Donald in honour of the US’s similarly bouffant-haired (and definitely un-lovely) president.

Once properly acquainted—which involved me climbing onto The Donald’s back as he lay lazily in the sand, and then screeching like a banshee as he lurched into a standing position—we were off. If there is a single image which epitomises the romance of the Silk Road, it is surely the sight of a two-humped Bactrian camel stepping gracefully across the desert sands.

The shadows were long, the light was fading, and the September air was still warm. For a few minutes, it was absolutely idyllic. Then The Donald caught sight or smell of a lady camel and set off like a thing possessed. I gripped the saddle and the fur on the back of his neck, clinging on for dear life. A camel in canter is neither graceful to behold nor comfortable to ride, and I feared that my end was nigh.

Thankfully (for me and for the lady camel in question), The Donald was diverted at the very last moment by a particularly tasty bush. Food, it seems, came ahead of lustful urges. And who could blame him? Food can be hard to come by in the desert, but there’s no shortage of other camels.

In central Uzbekistan, the Eurasian steppe gives way to the sands of the Kyzylkum Desert. It’s generally flat, gritty, with occasional scrubby plants. But the Nuratau-Kyzylkum Biosphere Reserve where I met The Donald is an accidental oasis around a lake. I say “accidental” because until 1969 there was no lake here at all.