Haggling over the price to Bukhara before getting into a white Daewoo Nexia, the locally built and wildly proliferated car that can be seen everywhere in Uzbekistan. Swooshing through cotton fields in 130 km/h, still a week before the start of the picking season, quiet before the harvest influx. Soft afternoon colours, mountains in the distance. Turkmenistan in the West. Uzbek pop blasting from the stereo. Nexias in the left lane; buses, Ladas, Moskwitches and Volgas in the right lane at a slower pace. Tractors, donkeys and bikes even further out on the right.Photos one should have captured while speeding past
Cafes in villages along the road. Men drinking tea in the shadow, enjoying an afternoon rest on the tapchan. A donkey pulling a carriage with piles of blue plastic chairs, possibly for the last-minute weddings the last weekend before Ramadan starts. Gas stations in an industrial desert landscape reminding me of films from the US countryside. Posters of the President meeting the Farmer.
Bukhara
BukharaGot up at 06:00 and went out in the Silk Road city which fostered --among others-- Ibn Sina, or Avicenna (980-1037) was he was alled in the West. His Canon of Medicine was used as a text-book in European universities as late as 1650. Jumped over canals and strolled around pools surrounded by trees allegedly planted in the 1400s. Cupolas and blue tiles, covered bazaars and madrasas and mosques.
Climbed the 150 or so steps up the Khalon Minaret, so beautiful that even Jenghiz Khan decided to spare it when he raided the city in 1220. Watched the sunset from up there. Down in front of the madrasa, kids were flying kites and playing football.
A cool and quiet teahouse where one could sit and read for hours, metres of atlas silk, national day celebrations with Tajik songs where two men were battling hip hop style, my search for a kurpacha (an Uzbek mattress). It would have cost too much in overweight charges, I'm afraid.
The Yamomotos
The Ark, where the Emirs sat in their silky robes and clung onto (a degree of) power till the Bolsheviks arrived. Where the unlucky Brits Colonel Stoddard and Captain Conolly were beheaded in 1842, after having spent two years in the bug pit. That was the price for bringing no gifts, no letter from Queen Victoria (just the pitiful governor of India, by no means the Emir's equal), and for riding, rather than walking, up to the Ark. Photo of the Emir: Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944)
Climbed the 150 or so steps up the Khalon Minaret, so beautiful that even Jenghiz Khan decided to spare it when he raided the city in 1220. Watched the sunset from up there. Down in front of the madrasa, kids were flying kites and playing football.A cool and quiet teahouse where one could sit and read for hours, metres of atlas silk, national day celebrations with Tajik songs where two men were battling hip hop style, my search for a kurpacha (an Uzbek mattress). It would have cost too much in overweight charges, I'm afraid.
The Yamomotos
On our way back home to Samarkand: Six checkpoints along the way. Our driver had a superb trick to get us past without the hassle of visa checks - right before every checkpoint, he placed a sign saying "Mr and Mrs Yamamoto" on the dashboard, as if he was on his way to pick up a Very Important Japanese Couple. We certainly did not look like the Yamamotos, but it worked. Great driver.
Ben Affleck and the Bukharan barber shop
Putting up an Independence Day poster on the Ark, where the Emir used to live and Stoddard and Conolly spent their last years in the bug pit.
Ben Affleck and the Bukharan barber shop
Putting up an Independence Day poster on the Ark, where the Emir used to live and Stoddard and Conolly spent their last years in the bug pit.
