TRAVELING ON THE ORIENT SILK ROAD EXPRESS TRAIN

After leaving Bukhara, we boarded the Orient Silk Road Express one more time and headed towards Turkmenistan for the last leg of our trip (at least the organized tour part):

I had grown a bit fond of our Silk Road Express train. Yes, it's true. 

I had become more or less accustomed to its clankety-clank noise, cramped quarters, and interrupted sleep. I looked forward to the welcoming entertainment as we disembarked in each train station. I'd grown fond of the twice-a-day clean up of our room and the relatively decent meals. Then there was the view out of our window--mile after mile. I truly do miss that. It was always changing, and even when it didn't, it changed with the time of day:

I had some romantic notions of train travel that were dispelled on this trip, for sure.  It IS like a cruise in that you go to bed in one place and wake up in another, all your traveling done while you are (hopefully) asleep. It is NOT like a cruise cabin, however--not even close. The entire train compartment is smaller than the king-size bed in a ship's stateroom. Still, it is a well-designed, multi-purpose space, complete with a table, a window, two beds, two mirrors, and two "closets" (or cubbies). Who really needs more than that? (Well, I do, but I can go without for a short time.)

The rooms are on one side of the hallway and picture windows are on the other side. Which side of the train the rooms are on alternates by car. You have to admit, this is an elegant-looking, albeit narrow, hallway (even if we did take to hanging our towels on the handrail):

I remember the first time I rode on a train. It was for an Easter trip to Denver to visit a friend of my mom's. Mom thought we should experience all forms of transportation as part of our education. I was about eight years old, and I can still recall the terror of moving through that no man's land between cars where I could see down to the tracks and where I felt like that at any moment I might drop through and be shredded into a million pieces by the train wheels. (I had a vivid imagination.) At the very least, I was worried that my pesky older brother would not let me through the second door and I would be trapped there until the train stopped. (A distinct possibility.)

I still felt a little bit of that on this train. We had to cross two of these car-link areas to get to the dining car, and I didn't stay any longer than I had to in between cars:

I thought we might hang out in the dining car with other passengers, but we really only went there to eat, and the rest of the time we were in our cramped cabins. You'd think we would want to escape the claustrophobia of our rooms. I guess it is because we mostly traveled at night and didn't have much day travel on the train. During the few times we traveled during the day, our door was open when we felt friendly (which was most of the time) and closed when we wanted to take a nap (which was occasionally). I did a fair amount of cabin-hopping to chat with other women, standing in a doorway or sitting knee-to-knee on the beds.

As far as the food goes, it wasn't spectacular, but it wasn't awful either. Then again, considering that they prepare it in a teeny-tiny kitchen, I'd say it was amazing:

The shower (one per sleeper car) wasn't bad at all. With nine double cabins and one single cabin in our car, you'd think finding a time to shower might be a problem, but we had a sign-up board, and it all worked very smoothly: 

This is the most important fixture on the train. There were two of these in our car:

When we got home (or perhaps on the plane home), I watched the 2017 version of the movie Murder on the Orient Express.  Our train wasn't an exact copy of the train in the movie, but there were a lot of similarities to our dining room and to our hallways:

Take a look at this mileage chart, and you'll see why a train is really the only way to visit The Stans, particularly if you want to visit all five, as we did. The total distance we traveled by train was actually 3,127 miles (they didn't add in the 603 miles from Khujand to Khiva):

Going by car might have its advantages, but it would add a LOT more miles and use up valuable time.

Not ALL of my romantic notions about train travel were wiped away. There is something hypnotic about the aural rhythm of a train, something stimulating about its international staff, something challenging about the cramped quarters, something magical about waking up in a different place than where I fell asleep, something adventurous about going where there are not paved roads and very few people.

But no matter how I look at it, getting woken up at border crossings at 2:00 AM to have my picture taken is NEVER fun.