7NNT25: Day 6 – Samarkand to Bukhara

Soundtrack:

Having hit peak Timur, it was time today to leave Samarkand and head further down the Silk Road to the old capital of Uzbekistan, Bukhara. I keep remembering and then forgetting that these are kind of the footsteps of Marco Polo, who came through here 800 or so years ago. Would have been cool if he’d been like the Vikings, and left some graffiti behind, but can’t have everything. I can safely say that he never took the fast train and watched the countryside scroll at 159 km/h. Though the fast train didn’t have the same level of service today, there were no free pastries or tea, boarding was made a little more complex by a lack of organisation and a conductor that couldn’t decide if we needed to show passports as well as tickets or not. I will say that while I might be prone to “going bamboo” in Viet Nam, I’ve never reached the levels of degeneration shown by some English tourists trying to board the train: they didn’t even queue correctly in an orderly fashion. End times indeed.

Overall, today certainly had a thread of service levels dropping, from the driver who was late to take us to the train station in Samarkand (leading to L and the tour contact having a 15 minute text chain of “the driver is there” and “umm no he isn’t”), the driver did arrive eventually, zoomed through traffic, and then berated the idiot taxi driver that decided to stop right in front of us in the station carpark to let off their passengers: there was much beeping and words exchanged. Then there was the later challenge in seeing the folk music and dance performance at the end of the day, I’ll get to that later.

Bukhara is a historical capital of the region, having held that role throughout most of history except during Timurid times, and then after the Soviets made the map. For the rest of the time, Bukhara was the place, full of scholars, merchants, and colourful characters. Of course those pesky mongols made a mess of the place in the 13th century, I can safely say there aren’t a lot of Uzbek members of the Genghis Khan fan club. Then later on the soviets made a mess of the place, as unlike other cities, sufficient numbers of Bukharans fought back during the civil war, and that didn’t go down too well. The end result was Bukhara losing its capital-hood, and many of it’s old buildings were used for storage, movie theatres, that kind of thing.

One thing the soviets didn’t do was put the main train station close to the actual city, instead it’s about a 20 minute drive, 20 minutes due to the exceptional amounts of building and roadworks going on. Once that work is finished, it’ll probably halve the time, but right now it’s about 20 minutes of muddy not always sealed road, sometimes 3 lanes, at other times just the one. Welcome to Bukhara.

Checked in to our hotel, unpacked a little and then waited for today’s guide. The itinerary was for a walking tour of the old city, and new guide K turned up to show us around. First stop was the Char Minar, a smallish 4 minaret madrasah built by a rich merchant in the 19th century: the legend is that each minaret represents one of his daughters, which is why each is decorated differently. One minaret also features a pair of metal storks, as Uzbeks love their storks but unfortunately agricultural development in the soviet era pretty much eliminated their habitat and drove them from the area.

There are many fabulous buildings in the old city, mostly built from the 15th century onwards. While there are madrasahs, mosques, and minarets aplenty, Bukhara also has several surviving caravanserai and market domes, as well as the Lab-I Hauz. The Lab-I Hauz is a large pond, and was one of over a hundred that the old city used for its water supply for many years, until folks worked out that these were the source of much disease and parasites, so most were filled in. Our fast talking guide K told us how, when the local Amir wanted to build the pond, he purchased all of the land except for one estate, which was held by a Jewish widow (not Michael Caton). After much trying, the Amir went ahead and started building, making sure the water channels would be right on the border of the widow’s property and start eroding its foundations. Eventually the widow caved, but only after getting the Amir to agree to build a synagogue in the Jewish quarter, as up until then Jews would co-worship in the mosques. The Amir agreed, Bukhara got a synagogue that is still in use today, and also a pond that now has a big fountain and a group of white swans. Throughout much of its history Bukhara has a had a sizeable Jewish population, however this has dwindled in the last 50 years or so. This has meant that there are several stories in the cities folklore about Jewish people, some positive, some negative, but there doesn’t seem to be any malice behind them (unlike the feelings for the mongols).

K took us through stories for each of the historic sites, from the large madrasah that was supposed to be a 5 star caravanserai, however when the Imam at the opening ceremony mistakenly declared the building a madrasah, the locals had no choice but to change the purpose of the building. There was also the madrasah built across the road from one built by Ulugbeg, so the new madrasah had to have an extra metre of foundations so that it would end up taller (men and the size of their erections). We saw a wonderful 12th century mosque that, through being half buried under sand, missed getting levelled by the mongols. There’s also a minaret, more than 40 metres tall, that was apparently saved from Ghengis Khan by luck: his headwear fell off as he looked up at the tower, and as he had to bend down to retrieve his hat, decided that as the tower made him bow, he would spare it. When the tower was being built, the architect laid the foundations and then disappeared for 3 years. Upon his return, he explained to his pissed off bosses that the foundations were now settled and ready to be built on, and had he hung around, he would have been forced to build before the foundations were ready. The minaret has survived close to 1000 years, so it sounds like he knew what he was doing (the minaret was also later used for executions by throwing people off it, during the reign of one particularly nasty Amir).

Again, it was really good to have a female guide (or at least a non-cis-male guide) as her interpretations of history are more nuanced, more of a balance between folklore and written fact, as if there’s history as written on one side and then the tales that the women pass down on the other, and K weaves her descriptions between the two. Though maybe it was just the impression our first guide left, he seemed very straight with the history, and with language differences perhaps came across as more thinking that women being having to wear full body cover was a good thing. Hearing about the same practice from the women, it seems that the Bolsheviks couldn’t abolish this fast enough.

After we had our fill of history, and there’s a lot here and I’m rushing this post, we said goodbye to K and headed to the folk art performance at the big madrasah that should have been a caravansarai. Again, somewhere things didn’t line up between what we’d been told by the tour company (and K also checked for us) and what the venue operators thought, so there was some kerfuffle over if we’d paid, then they said we could sit at a wet table (it’s been sporadically raining today) at the back, before obviously someone talked to someone and we found ourselves sharing one of the front tables (with some nice folks who were able to walk right in, buy ticket and be sat there but it wasn’t their fault). The show itself was marvellous, traditional music and singing provided the backdrop to some amazing traditional dance (again wait for L to do her analysis, but to me it seemed a good fusion, some similar moves to middle eastern but perhaps with more hand and finger expression like south east asian). Between dances there was also a fashion show, displaying traditional patterns, prints and fabrics in a mix of traditional and modern styles. Definitely worth seeing, just not sure if booking ahead means much.

Noodle Number 1: Lagman/laghman

By now we were starving (no lunch) so we headed to the second restaurant we found, full knowing it was totally geared for tourists. I chose this moment to have my first Uzbek noodles, lagman, home-made wheat noodles, fried and served with beef and vegetables. The noodles are quite heavy, solid, and a little chewy, you definitely know when you’re eating these. They are generally either served in soup or fried, and I went with fried. As far as substantial wheat noodles go, these are decent. Given that we were at a tourist restaurant, I’m going to guess that if I do manage to try these at a small, family run cooked by grandma (whatever grandma is in Uzbek) I’m in for something solid that will stick to my ribs and sustain me during an Uzbek winter. This isn’t a light noodle stir fry.

With the needles I had Uzbekistan’s national beer, Sarbast, an unfiltered 4.7% pale ale? — I’m guessing it’s an ale as i haven’t been able to find otherwise, it certainly has a full mouthfeel and while crisp, has a good balance of malt and hops. A decent brew, even it if is a partnership with Carlsberg.

Then it was back to the hotel where we downloaded the finale of Drag Race Season 17 in order to avoid getting spoilered. I don’t know if we were the only people in Bukhara watching this, I’d like to hope not. With all of the amazing colours, textures and patterns in Uzbek fashion, not to mention the bling that locals love to wear, it would be great if some day this region produces a fierce drag scene.