Tashkent airport was by no means as chaotic and badly organised as we had expected. In fact we got through passports and customs clearance extremely quickly and were very soon approached by young lady who offered us a taxi for five dollars, which we accepted, having expected to have to haggle a price of around 20 dollars. Just as we were leaving the airport she asked us whether we would also need some money changing, and when we answered yes, she said something to the taxi driver who, as we were leaving the airport car park, suddenly came to a stop, the window was opened and a bag full of money was thrust in. I gave him my 200 dollars, and he gave me the bag.

Along relatively badly maintained roads we made our way to the railway station, arriving there are good three hours before our train was due to leave. Tashkent Station, like most stations apparently in Uzbekistan, was very modern and clean, with very little to do apart from wait. The train itself was beginning to show its age, the seats were no longer in the best of condition. The most striking feature though was the existence of video screens at every set of seats, with the result that for the entire journey to Samarkand we could hear screeching Uzbeck folk-pop music, or even worse Russian half-baked comedy shows blasting out with everybody else's video screens. The journey itself was smooth though, and we were more or less on time in Samarkand.

We took a taxi to our hotel, which proved to be in a back street near the Registan. Our first priority was to occupy the rooms and rest in the courtyard with its teahouse tables. We then made our way eventually to the Registan, where we were disappointed to find that there had just been some sort of show to celebrate 20 years of independence and the stands and plastic seating were still more or less still in place. It was obviously going to take some time to remove them. In other words the Registan was not the wonderful square surrounded by Islamic architecture that we were expecting, but rather the background to the previous day's display. The area around the Registan has also been cleared so that there were no houses or buildings nearby, apart from a park.

The road down towards the Bibi Khanum mosque had also been tidied up, the shops and stores look pretty modern. However, the monuments themselves were magnificent, to say the least, turquoise domes, masses of tiling and the kind Alabaster decoration typical of Timurid architecture. Over the next few days we visited the monuments of Samarkand, the Registan, Tamerlane's mausoleum, the observatory of Ulug Begh, a number of other mausoleums and in particular the collection of mausoleums at Shar-i-Zindah, which was possibly the most outstanding site in the city. In most places, we were not pestered very much by the authorities or people selling things, although around the Registan and the police would regularly come up to offer us the possibility of climbing one of the minarets for a fee of 4000 Sum. And there are souvenir and carpet stalls set up in practically all the mosques and medressas. What was disappointing was the bazaar near Bibi Khanum, a sanitised modern affair, a bit of atmosphere but nothing like the bazaars of the Near East.

We took a day trip out to Shakhrisabz by taxi, (a feature of these is the fact that although they do have seat belts in the back, there is no way to fix them in the seat, although front seat passengers do have a seatbelt; another feature is that most of them run off liquid gas and not petrol, the country apparently being rich in natural gas). Shakhrisabz is recommended as being a non-Russified town and is also the site of Tamerlane's Palace. The palace itself has largely been destroyed, and only a few imposing ruins remain. The town's streets, market, mosques and medressas are interesting, and it was also amusing to watch a group of Dutch tourists struggling with the level of service in a restaurant. The journey to and from Shakhrisabz was also interesting, involving driving over a mountain pass. The traffic on the road would certainly not have met Western European standards.

It proved relatively easy to book tickets on the train to Bukhara. In the hope of escaping the noise of the video screens we decided to travel second-class. Unfortunately this did not help much, since in this case there was one video screen of the entire open carriage, and the guy I was sitting next to it was thoroughly enjoying the appalling Russian comedy being shown. I was suffering a little from having from what was probably bad beer the night before, and could have done with the rest. Otherwise the train ride was smooth again and we arrive more or less on time.

The station is actually about 15 km out of town, so we took a taxi to our hotel. The hotel was a sort of private home with a couple of rooms in a house arranged around a courtyard. It wasn't quite as high a standard as in Samarkand, but at least it wasn't an anonymous international hotel. Bokhara itself is a bit museumlike, the town centre consisting largely of well restored, possibly over restored monuments of one kind or another, mosques, medressas, and bazaars. None of this is really used by anyone nowadays, with the exception of souvenir sellers and the like located in the bazaars and in fact in most other monuments. There is no doubt that the buildings are truly wonderful, again turquoise domes and magnificent tile work and impressive medressas and mosque courtyards. What is missing is a sense that it is still being used, that it still has a function apart from simply attracting tourists. It was also disappointing to find that the area of cafes allegedly located around the central pond had been taken over by one cafe owner, and had more or less become an eating place for passing tourists, although a few locals still seems to go and take their tea.

We got to know the town very well, staying there for days, which was frankly too much. Apart from visiting the main monuments, we also ventured into the back streets to find a carpet workshop and, on another occasion, a couple of Jewish synagogues. These were very small affairs, one run by a guy who was quite keen on attracting tourists, at the other, which only found with the help of a lady at a nearby post office, we had to drag the man in charge out of his home, possibly out of bed, to open the door and let us in. It was clear he was expecting a donation.

It was in Bukhara that Stoddart and Connelly were executed by the Khan in 1842, having spent several years at the bottom of a vermin infested pit, an indication of how little regard the local Khan had for the British Empire and in particular Queen Victoria. There is also a bazaar in Bukhara, again modernised and sanitised, although the life there is still worth seeing. Outside the old town centre, Bukhara is very much a Russian-type town, with modern buildings dating from the 60s and 70s, as well as broad boulevards and a fair amount of traffic.

In terms of entertainment, there is very little, the only thing we managed to do being a sort of a fashion show with traditional music accompanied by a dinner in the courtyard of one of the medressas on the main square.

As a day out, we went by taxi to the Bakhautdin Naqshband Mausoleum, a memorial to the founder of one of the ancient Sufi orders of Central Asia. This is a delightful spot, not too busy and frequented not by tourists but rather by locals on a sort of pilgrimage, and they seem to be rather surprised that Westerners were there.

The last monument we visited was in the side streets slightly away from the other sights, namely Char Minar, which is a delightful gatehouse to a lost medressah. The ground floor is of course a souvenir store, but you can pay the owner a few Sum to go up to the roof.

To get to Xiva, we had to take a taxi. The journey is about 400 km, and we were advised it would take about eight hours. Our hotel owner found us a taxi and we very quickly found ourselves on the fast road eastwards. Why it should take eight hours was a little bit beyond us, the first 150 to 200 km having been done at a speed of 100 km an hour. And then suddenly we saw what the problem was, the road suddenly turned from tarmac to a potholed desert track, and it was impossible to travel faster than 30 km an hour for the next four hours. It was also quite a busy road, with heavy trucks and coaches and cars coming at us in the opposite direction, all of whom were feeling their way around the potholes in the road and creating clouds of dust. Once we left the desert track we hit the local roads around Xiva, at which point the driver suddenly increased speed considerably and we found ourselves going through towns at around 100 km an hour again. We also discovered how the "road toll" system worked. Every time we passed a police control box, the driver shifted a 1000 Sum note into his hand, stopped outside the box, shook hands with the officer on duty, thereby transferring the 1000 Sum from the driver's hand to the policeman's hand. This happened on several occasions, including one when we were stopped for speeding through a town. We were quite relieved when he started telephoning, because on the phone taxi drivers in Uzbekistan tend to slow down to about 70 km an hour.

Finally arriving at Xiva, we saw the skyline of the towers and mosques and thought this was going to be a really wonderful place to stay. We entered the walled city by taxi and were taken to our hotel. This is a friendly place operated by a family that also operated a restaurant in town, where we ate – very well – that evening. We soon discovered that Xiva was another museum town, full of wonderful buildings whose purpose is simply to attract tourists. Again we had planned to stay far too long there, Xiva being a place you could probably see in about two full days. We had booked for five, and also decided not to make any trips out into the countryside and the desert because of the difficult journey to get to Xiva that we did not wish to repeat. However we found a very pleasant teahouse that also served meals that we went to regularly, got to know the town very well and made the most of the global ticket that allowed us to enter the monuments over a period of three or four days -- they didn't really check whether the ticket was still valid.

I had originally thought that Xiva was in the middle of the desert, but in fact it's quite a large oasis, and the town centre is surrounded by greenery and quite a considerable urban area. There was very little occasion to leave the old town centre, although we did a couple of times to visit the market, where you could buy all sorts of things, meat, old sewing machines, spices and the usual stuff. It was also on the market that we were able to change money, again exchanging USD200 for a bag full of Sum.

I think we got fairly bored staying in Xiva so long, and were glad to leave by taxi along the straight, wide and fairly empty road to Urgench, where the train to Tashkent would be waiting. It is surprising how long this train was, 21 carriages drawn by one obviously powerful engine. As we waited on the platform, there being no point in boarding too soon, we saw the last two or three carriages opened up for passengers without reservations travelling in "hard class". A couple of hundred passengers, mainly men carrying agricultural produce presumably to sell in Tashkent, clambered into these carriages. There could hardly have been any room in there whatsoever, but presumably the fare was next to nothing, which was why they used these carriages. We travelled first class, which meant two-person compartments with beds and tea, plus a video screen that could actually be switched off if you didn't want to hear it. You could still hear the noise from the compartment next door, but this was by no means as disturbing as on the previous two trains. The journey across the desert through the night went very smoothly, but a couple of stations before Tashkent, the train came to a standstill and we were told there had been a power failure along the line ahead. We waited three hours before we could move on. We had thought of changing to a taxi, but decided to hold out until the afternoon, by which time the train did get moving and we did make it to Tashkent, feeling rather tired and glad simply to jump into the taxi and go to the hotel.

We made a quick foray out of the hotel to get a bite to eat and then went back to sleep, having decided that we ought to get up at two o'clock in order to get to the airport in time to catch plane at six. This meant going to bed at five, taking sleeping tablets, at least in my case. I awoke at two, well refreshed and we got a taxi to the airport. We found ourselves hanging around for no good reason for a couple of hours. The departure from Tashkent was just as smooth and well organised as our arrival, and we could easily have made it if we had got to the airport at about half-past four instead of two o'clock. You should not always believe the horror stories that the travel sites tell about airports in Central Asia. The flight home was smooth and although we hung around in Munich for ages, it is ultimately a pleasant return to Austria.

David, Ben and Lena in Uzbekistan

UZB: Arrival at the airport - no chaos at all, through customs in 40 minutes, taxi just a couple of minutes later, and no difficulty about prices. Money changing - having agreed to change money, we saw a huge bundle of notes thrust through the window of the taxi, and gave the driver 200 dollars for a certain quantity of sums (never actually checked how much, 2500 to the dollar was the general black market rate), and with 1000 being the largest note, money literally piled up - could count money easier by the centimetre!

Got to station far too early for our train (see photo if I can manage to upload it!), so waited for ages to the Sharq was ready. We travelled business class, whcih meant a video monitor playing Uzbeki folk music at every pair of seats in an open carriage - not exactly quiet!

Made Samarkand on time

 

(OK, no more train station photos!). Taxi to hotel

Actually a bed and breakfast, a common form of private hotel in UZB and much closer to the people than the ubiquitous 4 and 5 star places.

The Registan was a bit of a disappointment, largely because there had just been some celebrations to mark 20 years of independence and the stage was still occupying the entire square. However, the Tamurid era buildings were still very impressive:

Samarkand is the ancient capital of Tamurlaine (Timur the Great), who, along with his successors, was responsible for creating a sytle of architecture, in particular the use of tiles, especially blue and especially for the domes, that was not really changed for 500 years.

Another feature that is also found in Iran is these handing carvings, often made of alabaster,

Persian influence is also apparent in the ribbing on this dome:

Samarkand is well endowed with these buildings, but they are rather sterile since they are no longer used for anything apart from as shops and as museums. In addition, a lot of clearing work has been done and walls built around the sites so that they are completely separated from the lives of ordinary Uzbekis.  Even the bazaars have been modernised and sanitised (though I don't know when)

But it's still a fascinating place to visit, largely because it is part of a bigger city, half Russian, half Uzbek, with its own university and a life away from the tourist sites (although we didn't really explore that side of the place). 

Considerable use is made of tiles (majolica), particularly in turquoise (Turkish blue - the peoples of cengtral Asia are largely Turkic in origin, the area having been known as Turkistan before Stalin divided it, rather arbitrarily, into republics.

Spent the first few hours, though, getting used to the heat and the time (though only 3 hours difference to home)

The first of many breaks consisting of tea, melons (ah the melons, the white ones were the best!) and grapes.

One of the most interesting and beautiful sites in Samarkand is Shahr-i-Zindah, an avenue of tombs around the grave of one of the Prophet's cousins that still is used as a place of pilgrimage.

 A little out of town is Ulug Begh's observatory. Ulug Begh was the grandson f Timur, and was more interested in astronomy than suling the country. He was famous around the world as an astronomer, and is mentioned in a number of western publications from that time. All that remains of his observatory is his huge astrolab:

He was assassinated for his efforts, going ot show that while a little learning is a dangerous thing, a lot of learning can be positively life-threatening.

We took one day out from Samarkand to take a taxi for a 70 km ride over the mountains to Timur's birthplace, Shakhrisabz. The journey alone was worth the effort:

The town itself is of little interest (Timur's palace is but a ruin) except that it is a good example of a true Uzbek town rather than one that has been transformed by the Russian occupation.

So, having got used to the sum, the people (generally friendly and helpful), the heat, the food and the rather unpleasant tasting bottled water, we set off for Bukhara.

 Buhkara (Boxara and other alternatives) is further along the silk road, and consist largely of an old historic town surrounded by a newer part. There's no real need to go out of the old town, although tehre isn't a bazar there. The old town is made up of lots of monuments (so many, one forgets what's what), centred around a sort of pond, now decorative but originally used for water supply (and the disposal of practially everything, including dead dogs - Boxara was regularly visited by epidemics of cholera and the like) until the Russians cleaned it all up in the 19th century

The buildings themselves are made up largely of mosques, medrassas and bazars, the latter only surviving in small parts. None of this is really used by anyone nowadays, with the exception of souvenir sellers and the like located in the bazaars and in fact in most other monuments. There is no doubt that the buildings are truly wonderful, again turquoise domes and magnificent tile work and impressive medressas and mosque courtyards. What is missing is a sense that it is still being used, that it still has a function apart from simply attracting tourists. It was also disappointing to find that the area of cafes allegedly located around the central pond had been taken over by one cafe owner, and had more or less become an eating place for passing tourists, although a few locals still seems to go and take their tea.