The Capmakers' BazaarThe Bazaars in Bukhara, as mentioned before, don't really compare to those in Turkey. But they do have some nice covered archways, and the prices are quite reasonable.
You can get silverwork...
carpets (I even saw one with the face of Lenin woven into it, but my wife refused to let me buy it)...
Shopping for textiles
In addition to goods, there are also services available.
Shoes repair
Musical instruments...
Hats and suzani (a sort of tablecloth)
Another textile hall
Saddle near the Lyub-i-Hauz
I put off buying anything for a few reasons. The first is that I still had a ways to go, and lugging a carpet can be heavy work. The second is that I wanted to wait until the great bazaar that I expected at Samarqand.
The Shakristan
The Religious center of Bukhara is the Kalan Complex, which includes a Mosque, impressive minaret, and Madrassah. Every town has such an urban core, and it is known as the Shakristan. The Shakristan is a neigborhood that usually contains the principal market, minaret, and mosques.
Bukhara's "main bazaar"- not touristy, but they sell everything one might need
The Madrassah at the Kalan complex is still active, so women can't enter while men are studying there. In fact, it is pretty much the most important MAdrassah in Central Asia. Students go there from all over the stans. As I have a policy of not going anywhere where my wife is not also allowed in, instead we settled for the defunct Ulug Beg Madrassah nearby.
The entrance is a "museum" that's actually something of a hopped up gift shop, but there isn't much of a hard sell. Once you navigate that, you can enter the courtyard with the hujra cells. Students used to live and study there.
Ulug Beg Madrassah courtyard, Bukhara
Ulug Beg the Astronomer Khan of Transoxania, who was one of the timurids, also built an impressive Madrassah in Samarqand (the capitol at the time). This structure was built in 1417. It is less well kept than some others, but everything is original, including the tile. Given the evidence of cranes and scaffolding lying in wait, this will likely soon change.
A view from inside one of the Hujra cells
Between the Ulug Beg Madrassah and the Kalan Complex
The Mosque and Madrassah at the Kalan Complex are relatively recent to Bukhara, built in 1514. The site has hosted a mosque since at least the 10th century, but they kept suffering repeated calamaties.
Kalan Mosque entrance and Kalan Minaret
courtyard of the kalan mosque
ablutory fountain (I think)
the Mosque and Minaret in better light
Kalan Minaret
The Kalan Minaret is one of the oldest surviving structures of the city, built by the Karakhanids in 1127. It rises to 150 ft (46 meters) tall.
The greatest tragedy to befall the city was the arrival of Genghiz Khan and his mongol hordes in 1220. I read a recent laudatory biography of him that was quite interesting, but apart from the pax mongolica that he imposed, there was a lot of awfulness associated with him. The mongols were very dangerous people.
They would ride into a town, and if any resistance was offered, (and there almost always was, as every prince was slain regardless) they would engage in an orgy of rape, pillage, and destruction, slaughtering the inhabitants to a man (those that is, that they did not enslave to use as arrow fodder and human shields for the next seige), and tear down all the buildings, leaving only piles of bodies and bricks. Then they would ride off over the horizon.
This, however, was only a ruse. After a little time had passed, and the survivors they hadn't managed to find emerged from the wreckage, they would ride back and kill them too. Very thorough folks.
The Kalan Minaret was the only building in the city that was spared. Apparently for Ghengis, accustomed only to the flatness of the steppe, this building opened the possibility of vertical dimensions he had never conceived of before. He thought it the most fascinating construction he had ever seen, and ordered it not to be destroyed. He did, however, throw the Emir and the Friday Mosque's Koran from the top of it, and order the city's sack.
After the Mongols departure, this was the only structure visible for miles.
A few views of the Kalan Minaret
The Ark
Every city of any size in Transoxania has, or had, an Ark- the local word for a citadel or fortress.
the South, or main gate, of the Ark
The Ark in Bukhara is the most notorious in Central Asia. The was the seat of "The Butcher of Bukhara"-Nasrullah the Mad.
As Ármin Vámbéry wrote about him in 1873:
"One must be able to form to oneself an idea of the society of the Bukhara of the day, crippled by boundless hipocrosy, crass ignorance, and unscrupulous tyranny, and sunk in the swamp of immorality in order to imagine the mixture of cunning and stupidiy, of pride, of vain-glory and profligacy, of blind fanaticism and loathsome vices which make up the character of Nasrullah Khan"
He was principally known for cruelty; for cleaving his closest advisor in half with an axe, for abducting, ravishing (boys and girls, he was broadminded), and killing the Khan of Kokand's entire family and, on his deathbed, ordering and observing the execution of his wife and daughters to insure their continued chastity after he shuffled off this mortal coil. They were simply the last of a long line of folks that he had executed, including the unfortunate Conolly and Stoddart.
Stoddart was sent to Bukhara to fend of Russian influence in one of the early rounds of the great Game (a term, ironically, invented by Conolly, who became one of its victims). He made a number of critical errors while approaching (quite literally) the Emir .
1st- he accosted him upon his return from Friday Mosque, a particularly bad time to speak to infidels, particularly when they address a walking Emir and do not dismount from horseback, which Stoddart did not.
2nd- he bore a letter, not from the Queen, but from the viceroy of India- indicating that Nasrullah was beneath the royal dignity.
3rd- He later barged into a royal audiance without invitation and took his leave of Nasrullah by turning his back and walking away.
Consequently, he was thrown into the bug pit. A 21 foot deep hole in the jail, where he was later joined by the unfortunate Arthur Conolly, who had been attempting to rescue him. After spending three years in captivity, they were hauled to the surface, brought in front of the Ark, and beheaded in a public festivity.
the square where Stoddart and Conolly met their grisly fate
If one is brave enough, there is a rickety abandoned watertower that had an old tea house at the top of it across from the Ark. You can get great shots of the citadel if you ascend it. Best to do it one at a time, however, as the stairs can sway a bit.
the elevator, unfortunately, has been out of service for some time
you can still take the stairs
The ark Gate
The Emir and his wives would watch ceremonies (such as the quite common public execution) from the paranja section of the Ark's South Gate. It is now a curio shop that sells, in addition to kitsch, a few ancient Fed knockoffs of Leica cameras.
The best sea in the house
From inside, the women could see out, but no one could see them. Latticework for this purpose is not uncommon in central asia.
The Ark's defensive walls
One of the last chapters of the Ark's history took place in the 1920's, when it was the seat of the Czarist educated puppet ruler, Alim Khan, grandson of the notorious Nasrullah. He wasn't too keen on the idea of the inclusion of Bukhara into the greater Union of Soviets, so the Bolsheviks responded by bombing 80% the Ark into rubble by introducing air warfare to Central Asia for the first time. The destroyed section of the Ark is still rubble.
80% of the Ark looks like this
Two cute little girls near the Ark, not relevant to the story, just cute
Just south of the Ark is the very nice Bolo Hauz mosque, with a fetid pool, as well as a lovely Chaikana where, after surviving the rickety tower, one can calm one's nerves with a cup of green tea.
A dressed up couple heading for the Chaikana
Samanid Mausoleum
Another structure to survive the Mongol assualt of 1220 is the Samanid Mausoleum, which dates from the 10th century (it was partially buried, which spared it from mognol notice). Before it was "dug out" by the soviets, it windows were in a sort of well, and people would whisper questions to an imam hidden inside, who would then hand out written answers on the other side.
Samanid Mausoleum and pool
There is a lovely park near the mausoleum, where one can occasionally see grazing sheep.
Also, about 15 minutes walk to the west, one will find the "Chasma Ayub" (spring of Job) where, according to legend, the prophet struck the earth with a rock and brought forth fresh water.
Ladies outside the Chasma Ayub
The next morning we made arrangements with a local guide to take us to a number of sites outside of Bukhara.
I woke up a few hours before we were to meet Ilker (he's an English speaking guide who hangs around the ark) and Fahreddin, from the Hotel, asked me if I would like to go get some bread with him (it was quite early in the morning). I agreed to do so, and we walked out into the pre-dawn darkness of Bukhara's winding streets.
After about 10 minutes we arrived at a small bakery, led which announced itself not with a sign, but with a mouth watering aroma of freshly baking non.
ISO 3200 on a kit lens, take that, Nikonians!
They basically mold out the non into a disc and slap it up into the inside of a beehive shaped oven, where it sticks until it is done. Then you collect your fresh hot bread!
Chor Bakr
Ilker is available for $20 per half day, which inludes car and gas, as well as tour guiding in very good english.
the first place that he took us was Chor Bakr, a 16th century mausoleum complex built for an important Bukharan sufi family, the Jubayris.
Chor Bakr Courtyard
the Chor Bakr is currently being restored
Minaret reflection
The sky was incredibly blue that day. Great light for photographs.
Chor Bakr dome
Nakshibandi Mausoleum
Entrance to the Nakshbandi Complex
Baha-ud-Din Naqshband Bukhari (1318-1389), founder of one of Sufism's most influential and largest orders. This is probably the most important religious structures in present day Uzbekistan, as Sufism is very influential there and this is the home "turf" of the Imam of Bukhara, who is technically second to the imam of Tashkent (in the eyes of the government), but Tashkent is an upstart, whereas Bukhara is an ancient city long renowned for religious learning. The imam of Bukhara can be seen on the grounds fequently.
the imam of Bukhara (in the white turban)
Nakshbandi Minaret
This is an important place of pilgremage for muslims all over the world, particularly Sufis. Imbedded in the mausoleum of Nakshbandi is a piece of the black stone of the Ka'baa of Mecca.
The Black Stone
The Nakshbandi call this place, "the second Mecca", but I think that may be a bit of hype. I'm not sure.
praying at the tomb of the Sufi Master
fountain next to mausoleum. According to our guide, the Emir of Bukhara had this filled with sweetoned lemon drink (basically lemonade) which worhsippers exiting the mosque could drink.
Detail of roof on "Iwan" (outdoor section of mosque for summer praying)
The Palace of Alim Khan
A few miles down the road from the Nakshbandi complex is the palace of the unlucky Alim Khan, last Emir of Bukahra. By the time he took over Bukhara was run under a protectorate system, and was about as independent as the princely states of India under the British Raj. Nevertheless, until chased off by the Soviets, whereupon he fled south to Afghanistan literally dropping off, one by one, his favorite dancing boys in order to slow his pursuers (he did, after all, retain some of Nasrullah's tastes.) But, Czarist pawn or not, the man knew how to live well. So we visited his palace.
entrance to the Summer Palace, Alil Khan's "Versailles"
Ilker, our guide
Courtyard and Iwan
Maintenance being done on the dining room
museum worker
parlour
game room
detail of gold painted wall panelling
Uzbek cradle on display in the folk art museum that is currently housed in the palace
detail of door latch
colored glass window
Exterior pool of Alim Khan's Palace
Alim Khan's harem had 40 women in it so one can imagine (particularly when one takes into consideration the ever present dancing boys) that he did not chafe much under the czars thumb. His harem often bathed unclothed in the Khan's pool, and when he had taken his fancy to one of them, he would toss her an apple. Alim Khan fled Bukhara in 1920 after the establishment of the Bukharan People's Republic, and died in Kabul in 1944.
I've got to go cook prepare dinner (I've been smoking a pork since 6AM) so we'll finish off with Bukhara and get on to Samarqand tomorrow!
You could have stopped 2 posts ago and still had one of the best journey posts to date! Your background knowledge of this trip is unbelievable, you could totally publish a travel guide to the area.
Did you know most of this history beforehand, or are you just a sponge when traveling?
You could have stopped 2 posts ago and still had one of the best journey posts to date! Your background knowledge of this trip is unbelievable, you could totally publish a travel guide to the area.
Did you know most of this history beforehand, or are you just a sponge when traveling?
Honestly, for the dates I have to go back to source material. I can't remember of the top of my head wether a madrassah was built in 1412 or 1411.
During the trip I carry a notebook, and write about 2-3 pages in every night. This is critical for recording a trip, because there are things you will forget if you wait more than 24 hours.
I make little photobooks of all my trips now, with info along with the pictures. I find it makes the trip a more enjoyable experience down the road. For example, If I read my notes and pictures from my 2004 Prague-Istnabul trip, I remember stuff I never would If I just had the pictures.
Before the trip I read as much material about the place as I can lay my hands on- standard history as well as guides.
For Central Asia, the best two history books are Peter Hopkirk's Setting the East Ablaze, which covers the bolshevik period, and his The Great Game. They are both still in print. There is also the serious book from the 1930s by Rene Grousset called Empire of the Steppes: A History of Central Asia, but its almost unreadable. It's basically 600 pages of lists of people with strange ethnic names.
Reading stuff beforehand not only makes it easier to write about afterward, but its a great help in determining where to go.
As far as bringing books with me, we travelled with two: Lonley Planet and the Oddysey guide to Uzbekistan. Both of these books are seriosuly flawed, but they sort of address each others problems, and they are pretty much all there is.
I don't understand why travel guides are almost universally useless. That must be the most fun job in the world, so I can't imagien why they are so poorly done, in the main.
a last look at the detail on the dome at Chor Bakr
Chor Minor
"Chor Minor" means "four minarets," and its obvious why this building is so named. It's actually quite recent- built by a wealthy Turkmen in 1807 to serve as part of a Madrassah complex (the Madrassah has since dissapeared).
What is interesting about it is its unique design. The Mosques and Madrassahs of Transoxania are often accused (with some justice) of being on a grand scale, but very much repetitive. The monumental architectural tradition of Central Asia was quite conservative, particularly during the 19th century when this structure was built.
The Chor Minor is actually the most radical architectural design of that period in Uzbekistan, and it is quite beautiful. The madrassah was destroyed by an earthquake in 1860, and the gatehouse suffered extensive damage (one of the four towers collapsed). The Soviets did some good restoration work in 1968, but the gracelessly stamped the date of the reconstruction on one of the domes (look at the center dome for the numbers "1968.") In historical preservation, as in all other things, the Soviet presence was both beneficial and destructive.
As this was one of my favorite buildings in Bukhara, I'll throw in an egregious amount of photos:
While walking back to our hotel from the Chor Minor (located to the South of the Lyub-i-Hauz) we heard the odd and atonal blaring of strange trumpets in a nearby alley. We emerged onto a street choked with a traditional wedding procession.
Drummers and trumpeters were escorting the groom to the house of the bride to be. In a strange holdover from Zorastrian days, the pair then circle a fire three times (this is not a typical muslim custom) before they are joined together.
As the trumpeters advance through the neighborhood, the following crownd gets biger and bigger. This sort of reminds me of the procession in the Portuguese village were I was married (minus the trumpets), the whole neighborhood turns out to gawk at the spectacle.
The horns didn't seem to have any sort of controls on them, so I am not sure how they carried a "tune," but they mostly did.
So that is pretty much it for our sojourn in Bukhara. That afternoon we arranged tickets on the "Sharq" fast train between Bukhara and Samarqand (about $8 per person, 4 1/2 hours).
The train left at 6 AM, and as we were sitting in the train station it began to snow. The desert can be quite cold during the winter months. The train left well before sunrise, so we witnessed that during our traversal of the desert.
The Snow had not followed us to Samarqand, yet.
Samarqand
the first thing we did after stashin our bags at the hotel was to head down to what many consider Samarqand's second greatest sight- the Shah-i-Zindah (Tomb of the Living King).
Shah-i-Zindah with snow covered mountains
It is believed that Qusam ibn Abbas, a cousin of the prophet who brought Islam to the area, is buried here. Thus the desire for both the powerful and the commoners of today to be buried near here, that they might stand with him when resurrected upon the day of judgement.
Timur, who ruled a vast portion of the muslim world from Samarqand, is not buried here. But much of his family is.
At the entrance they will ding you for another $5-8 per couple, extra if you want to take photos. This whole thing was really irritating. It's not so much the fact that you have to pay, and I would hesitate to say that the state has commercialized the place (hard to do when you get so few tourists) but it certainly isn't for lack of trying.
the main "lane" in the tomb complex
However, a tip from a Anglo-New Zealand couple; if you enter the graveyard at the top of the hill, you can come into the mausoleum complex from the back and thus avoid paying. As you will have to shell out for every other damn thing, you might want to try this. Also, the graves on the top of the hill are quite interesting.
I've got to clone out that branch!
The couple were great folks and, I was pleasently surprised to discover, smugmuggers. (we are everywhere, resistance is futile) This is their website.
The tomb complex is covered in magnificent blue tile, and each of the interiors are somewhat different, although some are in better repair than others. Bring your tripod (I, foolishly, didn't).
An amazing travelouge!! Thanks so much for giving all those fantastic photos and such an indepth commentary. Superb!
Nicola
Nicola
Iconic Creative http://iconiccreative.smugmug.com "To be creative means the ability to remain thirsty and to want more, never be content...you keep on seeing, discovering and understanding the joy of creativity"
Raghu Rai
Samarqand was the first place that we encountered foreigners in any numbers (previously, we had seen two French guys in Khiva). We stayed at the Bahodir B&B. It's listed in the lonely planet, and is about 150 meters from the Registan, north, in the direction of the Bazaar.
The Bahodir is quite nice. It costs $20 per night for a double, breakfast included, with dinner an extra $1. The food is basic, but very good. Most of the foreigners staying in Samarqand seem to stay here. there were two Japanese, a New Zealander who is cycling from Japan to England, a mixed NZ-UK couple (nicky and alex, also smugmuggers), a crazed Albanian guy, and a German guy named Daniel.
The headgear of Central Asia, Albanian, Uzbek, and Tajik, modeled by, and Albanian, an American, and a German. (The Albanian headgear may be made up)
Bahodir is a quite helpful guy, who will secure you taxis to the airport at a good rate, can talk a bit of English, and will call folks on the phone for you. The rooms also have private bathrooms. Recommended.
The Bazaar
The moment, I believed, had arrived at last. I was going to see the Bazaar at Samarqand, the nexus of the Silk Road, a sight to shame both the Egyptian Bazaar in Istanbul and the Djem el Fnaa in Marrakech.
Sadly, I was dissapointed. The Bazaar in Samarqand is quite exciting, for those who have never seen a bazaar before. There is a lot of stuff for sale, from fruit, to little hats, to chinese made gadgets, but its a far cry from the reports of Clavijo, ambassador to Tamurlane from the Holy See, who in the 15ht century extolled its virtues. The soviets, I am afraid, killed all that and the bazaar has become a totally practical place.
Non seller at the Samarqand bazaar
"fashion pose" at the bazaar
We actually found a much better bazaar at a place called Urgut, about 40 minutes from Samarqand. The best day to go is Sunday. You can get their from the Mashrutka stand near the registan (you can get anywhere from the Mashrutka stand near the Registan, actually). TheUrgut bazaar reminds me a bit more of a classic asian bazaar.
The weather had turned cold and crappy, but it dod a decent job of shadow elimination in the photos. Unfortunately, the sky ws not impressive that day.
The Urgut Bazaar
Big Green Ovens for baking Non, mmmmm.....
Urgut is a good place to get textiles
I absolutely had to get a rug in Samarqand, to complement my collection (which consists of a rug from turkey, and a rug from Morrocco.) I ended up buying a "really old" (yeah, right) handwoven wool carpetlet that measured about 2 feet by 1 1/2 feet long. The opening price was $40, which is scandalous, as I had secured a silk rug twice that size for about $25 in Morrocco, but I eventually got them down to $15. It was still a jacked price, but how can one argue beyond a certain point?
The shop where I bought my ruglet
We had lunch in the bazaar as well. More of the stuffed meat pies called "Somsa" (that name always makes me think of Franz Kafka).
The Bazaar was a fascinating place to people watch, or rather, shoot people. This was were the 70-300 IS lens I had bought for this purpose really shone. See my sweet review for more info on it. (modesty is my finest quality, no?)
Tajik Aksakal ("White Beard", a term for respected elder)
no idea what these are
man with Tilpak
ubiquitous gold teeth
buying Non by the stack
Coming up Next; The Registan, Funereal Processions, Traffic Law Violations, and Ancient Marakanda, or "How to Turn a Museum into a Brothel!"
Behind the Shah-i-Zindah is a ridge, and about 250m north is a small, modern, mosque. It looks like this:
In front of this is a road that passes over the ridge. If you walk about 1 kilmeter down this road, you will come to the site of ancient Marakanda, called Afrosiab by the locals after the legendary founder of the city, king Afrosiab.
The author has no idea what this sign means
This road takes you to the site of the city Alexander encountered in the 4th century BC. There is a museum here, of exceedingly poor quality. The proprieters will follow you through the museum turning on the lights as you enter a section, and shutting them off as you leave that section. They will also mercilessly attempt to sell you postcards and other trinkets, and charge you an outrageous amount of money should you choose to snap a picture of the exceedingly uninteresting displays. Of course, they won't mention this until after you have taken a shot. The will also let you onto the excavation site itself upon payment of a fee- I refused for two reasons; one, amatuers such as myself shouldn't tramp on sites, 2; their exceedingly vulture like attitude irritated me. You might want to skip this one.
On returning back along the road we had taken to the we saw a number of interesting sights. For some unexplicable reason, the road is blocked in the middle by concrete barrier. This serves to provoke Uzbek drivers into strange contortions to get around the block, it doesn't actually deter traffic.
How to navigate an Uzbek Roadblock
Discretion is apparently not the better part of valor
Near the Museum we saw a funereal procession nearing the graveyard.
We decided to walk back through the bazaar and see the Bibi Khanum Mosque.
on the road to the Bibi Khanum
The Bibi Khanum Mosque was built in 1404 by Tamerlane, in celebration of his victory in Hindustan (wherein he carried out one of the more spectacular sacks of Delhi), and named after his chinese wife. It was definitely an architectural overreach, as it immediately began to fall apart.
The Arch leading into the Bibi Khanum is enormous.
Inside is an enormous stone Koran stand. Crawling under its supporting arches is reputed to impart fertility.
The authors wife attempts to insure great numbers of boychildren
Outside the Bib Khanum, on the way back to our hotel, we encountered a number of interesting scenes.
A late afternoon nap
Closer to the hotel, we saw another funereal procession. The casket of the deceased is shrouded within some sheets, and transported atop a palanquin.
A crowd mills around the casket as the deceased friends and family attempt to carry it forward seven steps.
The Gur Emir
Tamerlane. His empire, with its capital at Samarqand, encompassed Transoxania, parts of Russia, Anatolia, and mesopotamia, as well as huge chunks of Hindustan (Pakistan and India).
Timur's Realm
The list of cities he sacked reads like the itinerary of a grand asian tour; Merv, Delhi, Baghdad, Damascus, Aleppo. Upon the sack of baghdad, he ordered each of his soldiers to bring back at least two severed heads.
the author ponders the fate of empires
Yet even a world historical figure such as Timur must, as every mortal man, eventually die, and Timur eventually succumbed to the fate that all men share after catching pnuemonia during a campaign in Kazakhstan in 1405.
His mortal remains were ensonced in a suitable tomb, the Gur Emir.
Timur, being the new Uzbek hero, has the best and most extensively renovated tomb in Uzbekistan. It is covered inside with gold.
Timur's actual grave marker, strangely, is quite simple. a black stone, relativel unadorned.
this is just the marker. Timur's actual crpyt is below the Gur Emir. To deface a grave, in muslim tradition, is extremely bad mojo- Nadir Shah, ruler of Persia, discovered this when he removed the marker stone in 1740 and immediately suffered illness and deaths within his family. He returned the stone and his troubles ceased.
On the crpyt itself is carved the inscription "he who desecrates this tomb shall face an enemy greater than me." in 1941 Soviet archeologist Michael Gerasimov was the first person ever to open the crpyt, in order to examine the body. The next day Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. Interesting.
The Registan
Timur's greatest architectural monument, and indeed the reason I came to Uzbekistan, is the Registan. This was what I wanted to photograph. Unfortunately, other than some dawn shots, I don't have much in the way of good images. The weather immediately began to suck upon our arrival.
The Registan
Holiday Snap!
pano stitch
Last Look at Samarqand
Before we left Samarqand, there were a few more things we wanted to see. The first was the observatory of Timur's son Ulugh Beg. when it was built, this was the largest quadrant in the world, but was torn down by religious fanatics after Ulugh Beg's downfall.
the site of the observatory
All that remains is part of the Fakhri Sextant, which had a radius of 118 feet.
If one continues down the road about a mile, just past a bridge, one will reach the tomb of the prophet Daniel.
Muslim imams said, in the past, that daniel grows a finger length every 100 years, even in death, so his sarcophagus has reached some 60 feet in length. The site continues to recieve many pilgrims, and the folks who administer this place are very friendly.
Daniel's Sarcophagus
After that we returned to our hotel, went to the train station, and waited for our train back to Tashkent, and then the Fergana Valley.
By the time our train arrived in Tashkent, it was snowing pretty fiercly. Shortly before dawn, we left the train station and starting asking at the assembled taxis outside to see how much it would cost to go to Fergana City, usually about a 5 hour drive over the mountains into the Fergana Valley. Normally, a shared taxi should cost around $8, and a chartered taxi (all to yourself) about $25 under normal conditions. These guys were all asking for $100. Since their were about 5-6 taxis, they all, standing around, colluded with each other and maintained this absurdly high price. This isn't that unusual at the train stations and airports. "Snow" they said- "No one goes to Fergana."
So we left by metro and went to the Sobir Rahimov metro station, which is where the mashrutno/shared taxi stand to Fergana is. There we anticipated a plethora of vehicles going to Fergana or Kokand. Normally there are. But today, as it was snowing, not so much.
However, we did manage to get somebody to charter a taxi for $35. As this is only $10 above what the guidebook said, allowing for snow and inflation it wasn't too bad. A lot better than $100.
We soon discovered why none of the taxis were going to Fergana. The Kimchak pass is about 2000 meters high, and as we were approaching it the weather got worse and worse.
Visibility was down to about 50 feet due to fog and snow.
It didn't seem as if anyone could live here under these conditions; cold, steep hills, scrubby ground. But the odd village did dot the landscape here and there, and occasionally a herd of goats, small cattle, or sheep would cross the road.
The pass is a major chokepoint on the trade routes that go from Southern Russia to China, so there was a lot of truck traffic sharing the road with us. I noticed a number of jacknifed trailers on the other side of the road as we were climbing up, and at one point a tractor trailer in front of us lost traction and began to slide backwards down the mountain. We simply weaved around it and another struggling truck, and went on our way. No seatbelts, of course.
I was afriad that the rest of our trip was going to be a cold, lightless photographers nightmare, but as soon as we crested the pass, the skies became bright and clear.
The Syr Darya
Trucks after the Kimchak pass
some of these photos are from the return trip, but it seems to be appropriate to put them here. Coming back a few days later from the Fergana Valley, we shared a taxi with a couple of other Uzbeks.
they kindly stopped for me to take some pictures.
The road to Fergana
We stopped for Lunch in Angren, an old mining and nuclear power town. They stil obviously maintain some old links with the past.
Apartment Blocks in Angren
After you leave the mountains you come upon a sort of desert area, with irrigated fields on one said and scrubland on the other.
But, after about another hour of travel, the legendary fertility of the Fergana Valley becomes evident. This is the most densely populated valley in Central Asia, although there aren't many huge towns. It's also the agricultural center of the region, and has been since antiquity. Babur, the exiled Timurid who once ruled this valley but was driven out and forced to go to India (where he founded the Mogul empire), waxed poetic about the produce of the region. Though he sat amongst the riches and splendor of Delhi, he would always long for the simple Fergana melons of his youth.
FERGANA CITY
Fergana City is a rather recent arrival to the scene, being constructed by Russians in the 19th century. It is the least Uzbek, most Russian influenced town in the country. It is also the best center where one can stay and travel through the valley, with plentiful and good hotels, taxis, and other amenities.
One could easily think that one was a small Bohemian spa town here, if it wasn't for the people.
The town has a lovely and quite large park area, with a huge statue of Al-Fergani, a famus mathematician from the valley.
You can also play billiards outside.
The Author's long suffering better half
I must finish christmas shopping, so I am off. More to come tomorrow.
Thanks everybody for continuing to read, and for the nice comments. This post should almost wrap it up (strange that it has taken me longer to post everything than it did to actually go there!). After this, one more!
CHUST & NAMANGAN
We were very fortunate in the Fergana valley section of the trip. The weather in the valley was very nice (a bit cold, but clear). The tone of the Fergana valley is quite different than the rest of the country. Khorezm and The Zerafshan river plain (samarqand) have grand old Imperial cities and giant features; vast deserts, wide rivers, giant mountains. The Fergana is much more low key. It's more agricultural, the peaks of the surrounding Tian Shan mountains loom in the far distance, but the valley is so gently sloped and large that it seems to be no valley at all, but a plain. The habitations consist of small towns and hamlets, with a few cities of moderate size scattered about (other than Tashkent, all Uzbek cities are of moderate size).
But, if the lands beyond the Kimchak constitute the heart of Historical Transoxania, the Fergana is the modern center of gravity of Uzbekistan. It is the most densely populated section of Central Asia. It contains the second and fourth largest cities of the country (Namangan and Andijan), and each of these cities has numerous outliers, unlike Samarqand and Bukhara, which pretty much stop in the desert.
We set out the second day in the valley to find the city of Chust, famed for its production of knives. The Fergana Valley is home to the most notable production of knives in Central asia, and each city has a distinct style. Chust is related to be the nicest, and the guidebook stated that there was a knife factory open to the public- a factory in the sense of "a collection of artisans" rather than a mass production facility.
Kinves are worn to ward off the evil eye, and the water used in knife grinding is supposed to be a curative for all manner of diseases.
We went down to the bazaar in Fergana, and caught a mashrutka to Margilan. Although Fergana is bigger than Margilan, Margilan is more of a transportation hub- its about 15 minutes ride from Fergana.
Once in Margilan we found the Depot where buses go to Namangan, along the north rim of the valley. We were there about 30 minutes before the bus departed, so we ducked around the corner to get a breakfast of Somsa on the street outside.
The guy that was making Somsa had no change, so instead of 400 sum ($0.30), we paid 500 sum ($0.38). We then returned to the bus. The fact, however, that we had overpaid the man 100 sum apparently bothered him, as about 10 minutes later, as we were sitting in the bus, he arrived with suitable compensation; an entire tree branch full of persimmons.
That's a lot of persimmons for eight cents. But, as I said before, most folks in Uzbekistan seem to be pathologically honest and generous to travellers. Except, of course, for Taxi drivers, who are ifrit-spawn the world over.
Getting to Namangan took about 3 hours; mostly because we stopped at numerous little villages. We passed through Rishdon, a great place to get ceramics that, unfortunately, we never got to stop in. But if you have the time I have heard that it is quite nice.
After arriving in Namangan, we had to wait for 35 minutes or so at the central bus station for transportation to Chust, which is not a terribly big place. That was alright. In the bus station itself are a number of tables with food and coffee available. The "last" table actually has very good coffee, the only time in U-Stan that I found a decent cup ' joe.
Good coffee and good company in the Namangan Bus Station
This is the lady to buy cakes from at the Bus Station
After the appropriate time, our bus arrived. The buses tend to be old and strange looking, but they are usually pretty reliable.
Uzbek intercity bus
We piled onto the bus, and began our trip to Chust. Just before we left Namangan, the bus stopped, as luck would have it, just in front of the Philology faculty of the University of Namangan, and our bus filled up with foreign language students, most of whom were (to my pleasant surprise) very good looking ladies.
It was obvious to everyone that we were foreigners, so the girls immediately began speaking to us in English, most of them being able to speak it quite well. This was one of three occasions where we found good speakers of english. They all stayed on the bus for the better part of an hour, then most departed at an outlying village.
One of them inquired if I was married. I pointed to the woman next to me and stated that this was my wife (I thought it pretty obvious, as she clearly isn't Uzbek). The lady sighed and expressed voluble dissapointment.
It's good to know the pimp hand isn't totally rusty.
Our travelling companions (marriage minded woman, second from right)
In addition to marriage proposals, we also recieved an invitation to dinner from an older woman who spoke nothing but Uzbek, and wanted us to meet her 13 grandchildren.
85 year old Uzbek lady- the good air keeps folks young
Also, we discovered that people take the "one eyebrow" thing very seriously, Perhaps I mentioned it before, but having one single eyebrow (what we call a "uni-brow) is considered the acme of female beauty. Women who do not have their eyebrows connected will pencil in the gap, as demosntrated below.
As we left the Namangan area, our bus, which was totally packed to the rafters, had a bit of a suspension problem. It lurched, then canted alarmingly to the left. Such small matters do not deter valiant Uzbek drivers, so we continued on driving tilted for another 5 minutes or so, despite the grinding and crunching sound coming from the rear left wheel (whose shocks had collapsed). After a bit, this added friction was too much for the engine to handle, along with the 70 or so people sardined inside, and it finally gave up the ghost, everyone then piling out onto the side of the road.
The men on the bus began immediately tinkering with the engine.
While the rest of the passengers (several dozen) gathered around us in a circle and began asking us all sorts of questions, translated by the two english speaking women who remained. After some time it became apparent that the bus was not going to reach Chust in a timely manner, so we began to climb, in groups, onto other buses (themselves already packed) that were heading for Chust.
We eventually reached the town center, and walked to the factory, which was permanently closed. Disapointment, as it had already taken most of the day to get here (one can really only visit one city a day in the Fergana, as transport, while fun, is not fast). So we went to the Bazaar, where we saw some nice melons.
Also in the bazaar we found a small forge and shop that turns out knives and various other edged tools (saws and axes). they forge the blades and heads from steel.
For the knives, the steel has a smoky "watered" look to it. Mohammad (the chief craftsman) claims it is "Damascus Steel"- made by the same method famed in Damascus and Toledo. I am not sure if it is done to the same intensity that the famous blades of the levant were, but it has the same look and weight.
Once the blade is formed, it is then sharpened and buffed to a nce sheen.
the Knife Making Crew
Muhammad is a real craftsman. The knives take quite some time to produce, and he had only a few examples around that were complete. One knife he refused to sell because of an imperfection in the blade that wasn't visible to me, but bothered him, it was destined for the scrap heap (how often would you encounter that sort of attitude in Western Europe or the US?). We bought two blades; one with a mother of pearl haft for about $18, and one with a polished horn haft for about $7. The distinguishing feature of Chust knives are their large and relatively unadorned haft (handle), most of the other Fergana valley knives have skinny hafts that are quite guady. I prefer this style.
This is not my picture, but here is a typical Chust knife:
After obtaining our knives, we wended our way back to the Mashrutka stand, passing the obligatory sheep in the town parrk;
By the time we returned to Fergana, it was dark, so we went back to our hotel, the Ziyorat (English speaking staff, best place in the valley to sleep, $12 doubles) and hit the sack.
MARGILAN
The next morning we returned to Margilan to do the principal thing we wanted to do in the Fergana Valley, visit the Yogdorlik silk factory.
Uzbekistan sits astride the old Silk road, and sericulture (the harvesting of silkworms) has been known since around 6,000 BC, when it was first developed in China. The Chinese attempted to keep the methods of sericulture secret, but the technology had arrived in Fergana by at least 300 AD. Currently Uzbekistan produces about 30,000 tons of silk per year, most of it in Margilan. The Yogdorlik factory was started in the 1980s by folks who wanted to maintain an alternative to Soviet style mechanization. Although the scale of the factory is large, they follow traditional spinning and dying procedures, and their silk is amongst the highest quality in the world. Uzbek silk is made in a style known as Ikat.
Silkworms, in this case the bombyx mori, eat mulberry leaves, wich are abundant in fergana, they thin spin a cocoon in preparation for turning into a moth.
early stage silkworm cocoons, they have not yet turned white or grown very large.
The cocoon consists of a single thread of silk, wich is slightly over one kilometer long. this is one of the factors that makes silk strong; in addition to the incredible tensile strength of silk, which exceeds steel, each "sheet" of silk is woven from extremely long monofilaments.
These cocoons are collected in sacks, and delivered to the factory.
Before the moth can emerge and break the silk thread, the cocoons are steamed in order to prepare them for unwinding. (Sorry vegans!)
In the ultra-traditional way (Yogdorlik has absolutely traditional as well as semi-mechanized spinning, although all dying and design is traditional) the thread is then teased out of each individual cocooon, and readied for spooling.
The silk is then spooled onto large reels, and this is used to weave the heavy "raw" looking silks used for many carpets, etc.
This is extremely slow, however, so Yogdorlik has large setups where the spooling is more industrially efficient.
Each thread is almost to small to see with the naked eye, but each of the cocoons bobbing in the hot water has a thread that loops over the plastic wheel, and three of these threads are eventually wound together into a larger thread.
Three of these larger threads are then wound together and spooled onto a small bobbin.
The bobbins are then taken to a spooling room, where three small bobbins are spooled onto a medium bobbin (winding the three threads together into a cable-like larger thread).
Eventually, the silk ends up on a very large bobbin, where it is ready to be marked, dyed, and woven.
The silk is formed into "cords"
And then is laid out on a frame, where a master designer marks and tapes off sections to be dyed.
Once marked, it is taken off the frame, and brought to the dye house.
Dyes are made from natural vegetable material,
As well as metal for the iron oxide colors:
The cords are essentially "tie-dyed", with wrappings being removed, then the cord put in a sack and submerged in the boiling dye.
Wrappings are re-arranged, and other colors added to the cord.
Then the cords are dried in ovens.
The cords are then transported to the looms, where they are cross woven with either toehr silk, for pure silk textiles, or occasionally with linen or (most often) cotton, for blends.
Uzbek teen hearthrob
In addition to Ikat silks like these, they also weave carpets from silk and wool, or silk and cotton. Carpets here are "persian" style rather than the more north african that I am used to.
The patterns are "embroidered" through a field of textile.
Students learning the carpet making process
and then they are shorn off to provide a level carpet surface. It can take up to a day to do one centimeter od a complex design. Even in U-Stan, these carpets are expensive ($500 and up). In New York, however, they can cost ten times that.
more than a few bandaged thumbs
They also embrodier the "suzane" table cloth type things.
The tour of the factory is free, and supposedly available in English- although that day they could not find the sole English speaker so the foreman, Sobirjon, lead us aroudn and gave us a Russian language tour.
At the end of the tour they have a shop. There is no pressure to buy and the prices are quite cheap. We got 4 ikats, a hat, and a couple of bolts of silk (18 feet long each) for less than $100. Not bad really.
Yogdorlik silk shop
The tour is designed, I think, less to sell than to show off the craft. Everyone there seemed genuinely proud of their work, was quite courteous, and its definitely photo-friendly. Be sure to bring lens cleaning cloths, as going from the cold to the steam can fog up your glass.
A few other shots of the silk factory:
One more city, Kokand, and then our Journey is through. I must warn you, however, that Kokand contains the most disturbing hotel in the universe, so be forewarned!
So this is it, the last installment of the travelogue.
Towards the end of the day, we hopped on yet another Mashrutka to Kokand, the first major city one encounters when driving into the Fergana Valley, and the last when leaving it.
The site that Kokand sits on has been inhabited since at least the 10th century, but the Mongols staged a concert there during their 1221 world tour, and the after party left the place pretty much depopulated. The current town dates from 1732- so its not terribly old, but it has a wonderful feel to it. The city is clean and well laid out, and has a number of parks, small and large.
pleasant city park
pleasant...tree lined avenues?
The first thing we did was find a hotel. The Lonely Planet guide says that there is only one hotel in the city, the appropriately named Hotel Kokand- they, however, strongly recommend against setting foot in this establishment as it is somewhat less than, well, clean. In fact, the LP recommends that you keep on truckin' and sleep in a totally different city.
The Odyssey Guide, on the other hand, claims that there is a hotel at 92 Furkat street called the Hotel Oktyaber. We decided to search this out. It's near the bazaar, and is totally unmarked. when you enter the doors, you walk into a dimly lit cavernous hall with a staircase leading up, said staircase passing in front of a huge 2 story high grime encrusted mural showing workers and peasants laboring happily together. On the second floor is the hotel. It costs 1200 sum per night ($1).
The woman running the place was freaking out about our wanting to stay there. The hotel is very basic- each room has 4 beds, there is only one toilet for the whole building, little light, and no heat. It is the kind of place where farmers coming into town to sell their goods at the bazaar stay before they return to the countryside. It was old, but relatively clean.
The lady running the place thought that this was no place for a lady such as my CFO, and insisted that we go to the "nice" place in town, the Hotel Kokand. So we did. This is not that unusual- quite a few times business people will try to steer you away from their services based on the fact that they aren't "good enough" for foreigners. Trying to buy a 3rd class rail ticket is impossible, we had to talk to a woman for 15 minutes, for example, just to get second instead of first. (and when we took the train, they gave us, but no one else in the train car, the 1st class meal). Coming from the most capitalist of countries, this is odd to me.
The Hotel Kokand is actually not that different from the Hotel Oktyaber. Except the adjectives "clean" and "relatively clean" can in no way describe the horror show that is this hotel.
We settled for the "nicer" $12 suite vs. the cheaper and even nastier $9 room.
The fanciest room at the Hotel Kokand. The white stuff on the mirror? That's dust.
I won't get too deep into this, as we'll complete the description of the hotel later. Needless to say, we left the hotel as soon as it was possible to see the city.
The centerpiece of the town is the palace of Khudayar Khan- although Kokand is a bit of a backwater now, back in the 18th century it was the center of a relatively powerful Khanate. At one time, the Khanate of Kokand even took over Tashkent, but by the end of the 18th century it was being pressured by both the Emirate of Bukhara and the Qing dynasty of China. (Chinese claims to soveriegnty in the Fergana valley date to the tribute paid by Kokand to the Qing).
Khudayar's palace is not nearly as fancy as those in the great triumvirate of Khiva, Samarqand, and Bukhara- but it is well preserved.
Khudayar's Palace
The palace is fronted by the city's biggest park. The guidebook claims that there is an old YAK-40 airplane here that was converted into a children's cinema; but a few years ago that was removed (sadly).
It costs a few bucks to get into the palace (everything here costs about $2.25 to get into- given that this is the price of a meal, it's a tad outrageous). Inside the palace are a number of rooms and courtyards.
Central Courtyard
The Soviet tradition of having odd crap on display that appears out of place in tits chosen setting is alive and well here in Uzbekistan.
A display of local Taxidermy?
The Khan lived pretty well, in a series of apartments that are well maintained by the local museum staff.
The breakfast room (?)
The level of handicraft displayed is quite advanced, and the detail work is well preserved. The staff at thsi museum is relative large for a place that isn't so big, and its obvious that the city intends to take good care of its palace. Some restoration work is going on on the central courtyard Iwan, but most of the palace is in pristine condition.
Wall Carvings
The carved wooden capitol of an Iwan column
There is a woman at the museum who runs the place named Manzurahon Mansurova. She speaks absolutely perfect, almost accentless English. This is quite surprising, as very few English speaking folks get to Uzbekistan, much less to the Fergana Valley, and even less so to Kokand.
As we were chatting Manzurahon asked us if we would like her to arrange a homestay for us. We replied that we had already made arrangements at the Hotel Kokand, and a look of extreme concern passed over her face. "Oh dear!... that's a rather...'dreadful' place actually." she said. A wonderful woman who was a pleasure to talk to.
After seeing the museum, we strolled around the park a bit, and as we were heading toward the hotel we saw Manzurahon and some of the other museum folks walking home from work.
I figured that Manzurahon would love a chance to practice English with some native speakers (well one native speaker at least), so I suggested to my wife that we invite her out for tea at one of the local Chaikhana. I imagined that she would likely enjoy an hour or so of conversation (I know I always enjoy having tea with foreigners myself).
She told us that, unfortunately, she was headed towards her sister's house. We expressed regret, but she then insisted that we accompany her. I myself didn't want to feel like a cad, inviting myself to her sister's house, but she replied that it was no imposition at all- and rather insisted that we go.
When we arrived, unexpectedly, at the place her sister was basically in a house coat, but quickly changed into regular clothes. (we really were unanticipated guests!).
They immediately cooked and sat out a huge feast for us; includign plov (the national rice dish), Non, persimmons, raisins, grapes, fruits of all types, sweets, and black and green tea.
Uzbek food for the random house guest
Keep in mid that we had met this woman 30 minutes earlier for the first time. Other members of the family started drifting in, including Manzurahons 3 sisters, her brother, and a numerous amount of children.
The Manzurova Crew
Her brother was a big soccer fan, and had jsut returned from working with the local soccer team. I indicated that I was dissapointed because I had been looking for a Paktakor Team Shirt (Paktakor is Tashken't football team) but had no luck. Her brother immediately removed his jacket and revelaed that he was wearign a brand new UFF (Uzbekistan Football Federation) shirt. He literally peeled it off and gave me the shirt off his back.
This, to me, is the essence of the muslim world- Hospitality. As Manzurahon said, the Uzbek's have a saying that "The food you give to Guests, Allah gives back to you."
The news may show freaky Pathans and wacked out islamofascists with great frequency, but of all the muslim countries I have been to (granted, that's only 4; Morrocco, Kosovo, Turkey, and Uzbekistan- if you don't count Jersey City, which is pretty much an exclave of the NWFP) I have always been recieved with the utmost of courtesy, respect, and genuine friendliness.
Had we spoken Uzbek, or better Russian, we could have eaten and slept in people's homes every night. Not a day passed without some sort of invitation.
After about 4 horus of constant eating and talking, we began to get quite tired. Manzurahon's sister offered to let us sleep at her place, but we didn't want to take total advantage of her hospitality, we had already paid for the Hotel Kokand, and both my wife and I had a sort of tourist machismo thing going on- a "there's no hotel so nasty we can't hack it" sort of attitude. This turned out to be a mistake.
This TV hasn't worked since it broadcast news of Krushvev's passing
The suite actually had a bathroom, of sorts. the bathroom, however, had no toilet (although there had obviously been one here at one time, perhaps it was looted by the mongels?); and the bathtub consisted of an orange stained tub with a pipe above it that constantly dripped cruddy ferric smelling water.
The bathtub
All of this I can handle. We decided to sleep in our clothes, not like that hasn't happened before. This isn't as bad, I thought, as sleeping in the Belgrade Train station. The Belgrade train station waiting room, after all, smells of cheese-feet. That's just as nasty as it sounds. Actually, its a bit nastier than it sounds. Imagine camambert stuffed down a homeless person's pants for a week or two. Have you ever been prevented from sleeping by a smell? No? Then you haven't been to the Belrade train station.
The real problem was the toilet.
there was one per floor, and you couldn't miss it. As soon as you left the room the stank of something evil greeted you. This toilet was not only a squatter, it was an actual portal to the underworld. And a relatively unsavoury part of the underworld at that.
The actual portal to hell (don't ask me to explain what "that" is) Say hello to Dante and Virgil when you get there.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here
I resolved not to do anythign more serious than "#1." But, sometimes, these issues are really out of our hands, and I found myself confronting a rather delicate engineering problem, one that woudl confound even Dr.It's colleagues at the Massacussetts Institute for pracktical Magick.
WARNING- THE SQUEAMISH MAY LEAVE OFF READING NOW!
Here's the deal with squatters for those of us who wear trousers. When you drop those trousers and squat down, your pants make a little net directly underneath you and, believe me, you don't want to catch anything in that there net.
I surveyed the situation and saw that there was a lovely sink just opposite the actual toilet. A brilliant Idea occured to me. I would grab the sink with both hands, then hang my butt out, wind-surfer style. It worked perfectly, right up until the point where the sink detached itself from the wall, and sent me comically flailing my arms, attempting not to fall backwards into God alone knows what.
Did you see mission impossible with Tom Cruise? Remember when he was hovering inches above the floor? Imagine me doing that, backwards, suspending myself upon my fingertips, with my pants around my ankles, repeating like a mantra "pleae God don't let me touch this awful surface more than necessary."
Horrifying. The moral of this story is that, if you go to Kokand, go immediately to the museum and Get Mazurhona to arrange a home stay for you.
RETURN TO NORMAL, DECENT CONVERSATION
Kokand was the last place in the coutnry that we saw. We hired a chared taxi to take us from Kokand to Tashkent for about $25, the taxi driver dropped us off at Maxim Gorky Metro, and we spent one night in the Grand Orzu hotel. ($25)
I saw this on the ride back into Tashkent. God Bless America!
The staff at the Orzu was friendly and helpful, and it was nicely located to do a bit of last minute shopping. It is very near a place on Usman Nosir street called "Human House", a shop that has a number of great things on sale. Boslts of raw silk, handicrafts, and fashion (the dresses are all really well made, and unique- My wife basically bought a drrss she wore to the Met in NYC, blowing away the other ladies there, for $90).
Also near the hotel is the "Skynet" internet cafe. (Open 24 hours) You can rent the computer for $0.50 per hour. Our plane left tashkent at 4 AM, so the very last night, instead of paying for a hotel room, I played "Call of Duty" against Uzbek teenagers from 10 AM until 2 AM. All for about $2, then had them call me a cab for the airport. The Teens speak some English, and they definitely speak microsoft.
The Orzu also isn't too far from the "Caravan Art Cafe" Honestly, if you are flying out the next morning, its late at night, and you still haven't finished your shopping for gifts, then you have to come here. Whatever you didn't buy in Bukhara, Samarqand, or Nukus you can pick up here for reasonable prices.
But the restaurant attached to the shop is ridiculous. I have been in a lot of snooty places (I live just across the river from Greenwich Village, after all) but even the most pompous of New Yorkers wouldn't match these folks for attitude.
The cafe is way overpriced, (A beer and a sandwich for twice the price of a 6 hour taxi ride? I think not).
I took one photo of the place before the irate waiter stalked over and told us that "photography is not allowed in here!" This was the only time she actually showed any interest in us all night.
The illicit photo!
The staff is, of course, Russian, as Uzbeks would likely never behave in this fashion.
My point? Avoid giving them your money if you can. I had a few things left to buy, so I did, but it gave me no joy. The art is bad quality anyway. Mostly Kitschy schlock- not that I haven't sold a few kitsch photos in my time.
So, after the video gaming, we got on the plane, flew back to New York (with another 4 hours in the moscow airport) and slept for a long, long time.
Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed looking at this as much as I enjoyed making it, and I highly recommend that you visit Uzbekistan. It's a great place, with great people.
Very very well done. I appreciated every word and photo.
So where is your next hole-in-the-wall country that you plan to visit? (God Bless your wife.)
Gary
PS- How about Chad?
G
Chad's an interesting idea, but I try to avoid places with actual armed conflict. Although I might make an exception for Sri Lanka or the Bronx.
My wife has stomped down her delicately formed foot and is demanding that we spend next years vacation, or at least part of it, with her family in Portugal, so next year I'll have another Iberia travelogue. Probably in November, I am not sure yet.
I am, as always, unbelievably taken by the depth of knowledge in your travelogue, but for the moment I have to sit here and catch my breath from laughing so hard....
clapI just looked at this again. Good photos and good writing -- they don't always go together. :cry So when did you say you were leaving for Portugal??
This is an amazing post!!!! I just spent what seems like all morning going through the entire thread at one sitting....so intriguing I could not walk away until finished! You have an incredible writing ability as well as being an accomplished photog. I enjoyed every part of this, but some highlights for me were the shots at dawn in Khiva, the photography exhibit in Bukhara, and the family photo of the Manzurova family has such a wonderful old-world quality to it (plus the story that it tells of the friendly people you met during this time). Thanks for the trip....I certainly feel like I've been 'somewhere' this weekend!!! :ivar
My gosh you tell a wonderful journey story...the toliet encounter got me laughing, smiling and trying to visualize every word you were saying...thanks for sharing these awesome photos.
Comments
You can get silverwork...
carpets (I even saw one with the face of Lenin woven into it, but my wife refused to let me buy it)...
Shopping for textiles
In addition to goods, there are also services available.
Shoes repair
Musical instruments...
Hats and suzani (a sort of tablecloth)
Another textile hall
Saddle near the Lyub-i-Hauz
I put off buying anything for a few reasons. The first is that I still had a ways to go, and lugging a carpet can be heavy work. The second is that I wanted to wait until the great bazaar that I expected at Samarqand.
The Shakristan
The Religious center of Bukhara is the Kalan Complex, which includes a Mosque, impressive minaret, and Madrassah. Every town has such an urban core, and it is known as the Shakristan. The Shakristan is a neigborhood that usually contains the principal market, minaret, and mosques.
Bukhara's "main bazaar"- not touristy, but they sell everything one might need
The Madrassah at the Kalan complex is still active, so women can't enter while men are studying there. In fact, it is pretty much the most important MAdrassah in Central Asia. Students go there from all over the stans. As I have a policy of not going anywhere where my wife is not also allowed in, instead we settled for the defunct Ulug Beg Madrassah nearby.
The entrance is a "museum" that's actually something of a hopped up gift shop, but there isn't much of a hard sell. Once you navigate that, you can enter the courtyard with the hujra cells. Students used to live and study there.
Ulug Beg Madrassah courtyard, Bukhara
Ulug Beg the Astronomer Khan of Transoxania, who was one of the timurids, also built an impressive Madrassah in Samarqand (the capitol at the time). This structure was built in 1417. It is less well kept than some others, but everything is original, including the tile. Given the evidence of cranes and scaffolding lying in wait, this will likely soon change.
A view from inside one of the Hujra cells
Between the Ulug Beg Madrassah and the Kalan Complex
The Mosque and Madrassah at the Kalan Complex are relatively recent to Bukhara, built in 1514. The site has hosted a mosque since at least the 10th century, but they kept suffering repeated calamaties.
Kalan Mosque entrance and Kalan Minaret
courtyard of the kalan mosque
ablutory fountain (I think)
the Mosque and Minaret in better light
Kalan Minaret
The Kalan Minaret is one of the oldest surviving structures of the city, built by the Karakhanids in 1127. It rises to 150 ft (46 meters) tall.
The greatest tragedy to befall the city was the arrival of Genghiz Khan and his mongol hordes in 1220. I read a recent laudatory biography of him that was quite interesting, but apart from the pax mongolica that he imposed, there was a lot of awfulness associated with him. The mongols were very dangerous people.
They would ride into a town, and if any resistance was offered, (and there almost always was, as every prince was slain regardless) they would engage in an orgy of rape, pillage, and destruction, slaughtering the inhabitants to a man (those that is, that they did not enslave to use as arrow fodder and human shields for the next seige), and tear down all the buildings, leaving only piles of bodies and bricks. Then they would ride off over the horizon.
This, however, was only a ruse. After a little time had passed, and the survivors they hadn't managed to find emerged from the wreckage, they would ride back and kill them too. Very thorough folks.
The Kalan Minaret was the only building in the city that was spared. Apparently for Ghengis, accustomed only to the flatness of the steppe, this building opened the possibility of vertical dimensions he had never conceived of before. He thought it the most fascinating construction he had ever seen, and ordered it not to be destroyed. He did, however, throw the Emir and the Friday Mosque's Koran from the top of it, and order the city's sack.
After the Mongols departure, this was the only structure visible for miles.
A few views of the Kalan Minaret
The Ark
Every city of any size in Transoxania has, or had, an Ark- the local word for a citadel or fortress.
the South, or main gate, of the Ark
The Ark in Bukhara is the most notorious in Central Asia. The was the seat of "The Butcher of Bukhara"-Nasrullah the Mad.
As Ármin Vámbéry wrote about him in 1873:
"One must be able to form to oneself an idea of the society of the Bukhara of the day, crippled by boundless hipocrosy, crass ignorance, and unscrupulous tyranny, and sunk in the swamp of immorality in order to imagine the mixture of cunning and stupidiy, of pride, of vain-glory and profligacy, of blind fanaticism and loathsome vices which make up the character of Nasrullah Khan"
He was principally known for cruelty; for cleaving his closest advisor in half with an axe, for abducting, ravishing (boys and girls, he was broadminded), and killing the Khan of Kokand's entire family and, on his deathbed, ordering and observing the execution of his wife and daughters to insure their continued chastity after he shuffled off this mortal coil. They were simply the last of a long line of folks that he had executed, including the unfortunate Conolly and Stoddart.
Stoddart was sent to Bukhara to fend of Russian influence in one of the early rounds of the great Game (a term, ironically, invented by Conolly, who became one of its victims). He made a number of critical errors while approaching (quite literally) the Emir .
1st- he accosted him upon his return from Friday Mosque, a particularly bad time to speak to infidels, particularly when they address a walking Emir and do not dismount from horseback, which Stoddart did not.
2nd- he bore a letter, not from the Queen, but from the viceroy of India- indicating that Nasrullah was beneath the royal dignity.
3rd- He later barged into a royal audiance without invitation and took his leave of Nasrullah by turning his back and walking away.
Consequently, he was thrown into the bug pit. A 21 foot deep hole in the jail, where he was later joined by the unfortunate Arthur Conolly, who had been attempting to rescue him. After spending three years in captivity, they were hauled to the surface, brought in front of the Ark, and beheaded in a public festivity.
the square where Stoddart and Conolly met their grisly fate
If one is brave enough, there is a rickety abandoned watertower that had an old tea house at the top of it across from the Ark. You can get great shots of the citadel if you ascend it. Best to do it one at a time, however, as the stairs can sway a bit.
the elevator, unfortunately, has been out of service for some time
you can still take the stairs
The ark Gate
The Emir and his wives would watch ceremonies (such as the quite common public execution) from the paranja section of the Ark's South Gate. It is now a curio shop that sells, in addition to kitsch, a few ancient Fed knockoffs of Leica cameras.
The best sea in the house
From inside, the women could see out, but no one could see them. Latticework for this purpose is not uncommon in central asia.
The Ark's defensive walls
One of the last chapters of the Ark's history took place in the 1920's, when it was the seat of the Czarist educated puppet ruler, Alim Khan, grandson of the notorious Nasrullah. He wasn't too keen on the idea of the inclusion of Bukhara into the greater Union of Soviets, so the Bolsheviks responded by bombing 80% the Ark into rubble by introducing air warfare to Central Asia for the first time. The destroyed section of the Ark is still rubble.
80% of the Ark looks like this
Two cute little girls near the Ark, not relevant to the story, just cute
Next, the outskirts of Bukhara!
Just south of the Ark is the very nice Bolo Hauz mosque, with a fetid pool, as well as a lovely Chaikana where, after surviving the rickety tower, one can calm one's nerves with a cup of green tea.
A dressed up couple heading for the Chaikana
Samanid Mausoleum
Another structure to survive the Mongol assualt of 1220 is the Samanid Mausoleum, which dates from the 10th century (it was partially buried, which spared it from mognol notice). Before it was "dug out" by the soviets, it windows were in a sort of well, and people would whisper questions to an imam hidden inside, who would then hand out written answers on the other side.
Samanid Mausoleum and pool
There is a lovely park near the mausoleum, where one can occasionally see grazing sheep.
Also, about 15 minutes walk to the west, one will find the "Chasma Ayub" (spring of Job) where, according to legend, the prophet struck the earth with a rock and brought forth fresh water.
Ladies outside the Chasma Ayub
The next morning we made arrangements with a local guide to take us to a number of sites outside of Bukhara.
I woke up a few hours before we were to meet Ilker (he's an English speaking guide who hangs around the ark) and Fahreddin, from the Hotel, asked me if I would like to go get some bread with him (it was quite early in the morning). I agreed to do so, and we walked out into the pre-dawn darkness of Bukhara's winding streets.
After about 10 minutes we arrived at a small bakery, led which announced itself not with a sign, but with a mouth watering aroma of freshly baking non.
ISO 3200 on a kit lens, take that, Nikonians!
They basically mold out the non into a disc and slap it up into the inside of a beehive shaped oven, where it sticks until it is done. Then you collect your fresh hot bread!
Chor Bakr
Ilker is available for $20 per half day, which inludes car and gas, as well as tour guiding in very good english.
the first place that he took us was Chor Bakr, a 16th century mausoleum complex built for an important Bukharan sufi family, the Jubayris.
Chor Bakr Courtyard
the Chor Bakr is currently being restored
Minaret reflection
The sky was incredibly blue that day. Great light for photographs.
Chor Bakr dome
Nakshibandi Mausoleum
Entrance to the Nakshbandi Complex
Baha-ud-Din Naqshband Bukhari (1318-1389), founder of one of Sufism's most influential and largest orders. This is probably the most important religious structures in present day Uzbekistan, as Sufism is very influential there and this is the home "turf" of the Imam of Bukhara, who is technically second to the imam of Tashkent (in the eyes of the government), but Tashkent is an upstart, whereas Bukhara is an ancient city long renowned for religious learning. The imam of Bukhara can be seen on the grounds fequently.
the imam of Bukhara (in the white turban)
Nakshbandi Minaret
This is an important place of pilgremage for muslims all over the world, particularly Sufis. Imbedded in the mausoleum of Nakshbandi is a piece of the black stone of the Ka'baa of Mecca.
The Black Stone
The Nakshbandi call this place, "the second Mecca", but I think that may be a bit of hype. I'm not sure.
praying at the tomb of the Sufi Master
fountain next to mausoleum. According to our guide, the Emir of Bukhara had this filled with sweetoned lemon drink (basically lemonade) which worhsippers exiting the mosque could drink.
Detail of roof on "Iwan" (outdoor section of mosque for summer praying)
The Palace of Alim Khan
A few miles down the road from the Nakshbandi complex is the palace of the unlucky Alim Khan, last Emir of Bukahra. By the time he took over Bukhara was run under a protectorate system, and was about as independent as the princely states of India under the British Raj. Nevertheless, until chased off by the Soviets, whereupon he fled south to Afghanistan literally dropping off, one by one, his favorite dancing boys in order to slow his pursuers (he did, after all, retain some of Nasrullah's tastes.) But, Czarist pawn or not, the man knew how to live well. So we visited his palace.
entrance to the Summer Palace, Alil Khan's "Versailles"
Ilker, our guide
Courtyard and Iwan
Maintenance being done on the dining room
museum worker
parlour
game room
detail of gold painted wall panelling
Uzbek cradle on display in the folk art museum that is currently housed in the palace
detail of door latch
colored glass window
Exterior pool of Alim Khan's Palace
Alim Khan's harem had 40 women in it so one can imagine (particularly when one takes into consideration the ever present dancing boys) that he did not chafe much under the czars thumb. His harem often bathed unclothed in the Khan's pool, and when he had taken his fancy to one of them, he would toss her an apple. Alim Khan fled Bukhara in 1920 after the establishment of the Bukharan People's Republic, and died in Kabul in 1944.
I've got to go cook prepare dinner (I've been smoking a pork since 6AM) so we'll finish off with Bukhara and get on to Samarqand tomorrow!
Did you know most of this history beforehand, or are you just a sponge when traveling?
moderator of: The Flea Market [ guidelines ]
Gary
PS- Great Stuff
G
Unsharp at any Speed
Honestly, for the dates I have to go back to source material. I can't remember of the top of my head wether a madrassah was built in 1412 or 1411.
During the trip I carry a notebook, and write about 2-3 pages in every night. This is critical for recording a trip, because there are things you will forget if you wait more than 24 hours.
I make little photobooks of all my trips now, with info along with the pictures. I find it makes the trip a more enjoyable experience down the road. For example, If I read my notes and pictures from my 2004 Prague-Istnabul trip, I remember stuff I never would If I just had the pictures.
Before the trip I read as much material about the place as I can lay my hands on- standard history as well as guides.
For Central Asia, the best two history books are Peter Hopkirk's Setting the East Ablaze, which covers the bolshevik period, and his The Great Game. They are both still in print. There is also the serious book from the 1930s by Rene Grousset called Empire of the Steppes: A History of Central Asia, but its almost unreadable. It's basically 600 pages of lists of people with strange ethnic names.
Reading stuff beforehand not only makes it easier to write about afterward, but its a great help in determining where to go.
As far as bringing books with me, we travelled with two: Lonley Planet and the Oddysey guide to Uzbekistan. Both of these books are seriosuly flawed, but they sort of address each others problems, and they are pretty much all there is.
I don't understand why travel guides are almost universally useless. That must be the most fun job in the world, so I can't imagien why they are so poorly done, in the main.
a last look at the detail on the dome at Chor Bakr
Chor Minor
"Chor Minor" means "four minarets," and its obvious why this building is so named. It's actually quite recent- built by a wealthy Turkmen in 1807 to serve as part of a Madrassah complex (the Madrassah has since dissapeared).
What is interesting about it is its unique design. The Mosques and Madrassahs of Transoxania are often accused (with some justice) of being on a grand scale, but very much repetitive. The monumental architectural tradition of Central Asia was quite conservative, particularly during the 19th century when this structure was built.
The Chor Minor is actually the most radical architectural design of that period in Uzbekistan, and it is quite beautiful. The madrassah was destroyed by an earthquake in 1860, and the gatehouse suffered extensive damage (one of the four towers collapsed). The Soviets did some good restoration work in 1968, but the gracelessly stamped the date of the reconstruction on one of the domes (look at the center dome for the numbers "1968.") In historical preservation, as in all other things, the Soviet presence was both beneficial and destructive.
As this was one of my favorite buildings in Bukhara, I'll throw in an egregious amount of photos:
While walking back to our hotel from the Chor Minor (located to the South of the Lyub-i-Hauz) we heard the odd and atonal blaring of strange trumpets in a nearby alley. We emerged onto a street choked with a traditional wedding procession.
Drummers and trumpeters were escorting the groom to the house of the bride to be. In a strange holdover from Zorastrian days, the pair then circle a fire three times (this is not a typical muslim custom) before they are joined together.
As the trumpeters advance through the neighborhood, the following crownd gets biger and bigger. This sort of reminds me of the procession in the Portuguese village were I was married (minus the trumpets), the whole neighborhood turns out to gawk at the spectacle.
The horns didn't seem to have any sort of controls on them, so I am not sure how they carried a "tune," but they mostly did.
So that is pretty much it for our sojourn in Bukhara. That afternoon we arranged tickets on the "Sharq" fast train between Bukhara and Samarqand (about $8 per person, 4 1/2 hours).
The train left at 6 AM, and as we were sitting in the train station it began to snow. The desert can be quite cold during the winter months. The train left well before sunrise, so we witnessed that during our traversal of the desert.
The Snow had not followed us to Samarqand, yet.
Samarqand
the first thing we did after stashin our bags at the hotel was to head down to what many consider Samarqand's second greatest sight- the Shah-i-Zindah (Tomb of the Living King).
Shah-i-Zindah with snow covered mountains
It is believed that Qusam ibn Abbas, a cousin of the prophet who brought Islam to the area, is buried here. Thus the desire for both the powerful and the commoners of today to be buried near here, that they might stand with him when resurrected upon the day of judgement.
Timur, who ruled a vast portion of the muslim world from Samarqand, is not buried here. But much of his family is.
At the entrance they will ding you for another $5-8 per couple, extra if you want to take photos. This whole thing was really irritating. It's not so much the fact that you have to pay, and I would hesitate to say that the state has commercialized the place (hard to do when you get so few tourists) but it certainly isn't for lack of trying.
the main "lane" in the tomb complex
However, a tip from a Anglo-New Zealand couple; if you enter the graveyard at the top of the hill, you can come into the mausoleum complex from the back and thus avoid paying. As you will have to shell out for every other damn thing, you might want to try this. Also, the graves on the top of the hill are quite interesting.
I've got to clone out that branch!
The couple were great folks and, I was pleasently surprised to discover, smugmuggers. (we are everywhere, resistance is futile) This is their website.
The tomb complex is covered in magnificent blue tile, and each of the interiors are somewhat different, although some are in better repair than others. Bring your tripod (I, foolishly, didn't).
Kufic inscriptions above complex gate
contemplation at the Shah-i-Zindah Mosque
I've got to work, so more on Samarqand later!
Second: What a expieriencing trip!!!!
Third: What a wonderfull and intresting read!!!!!
Great Stuff!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mike and Ploy
Nicola
Iconic Creative
http://iconiccreative.smugmug.com
"To be creative means the ability to remain thirsty and to want more, never be content...you keep on seeing, discovering and understanding the joy of creativity"
Raghu Rai
Thanks for taking the time to write this all down.
http://www.germaine.smugmug.com
Samarqand was the first place that we encountered foreigners in any numbers (previously, we had seen two French guys in Khiva). We stayed at the Bahodir B&B. It's listed in the lonely planet, and is about 150 meters from the Registan, north, in the direction of the Bazaar.
The Bahodir is quite nice. It costs $20 per night for a double, breakfast included, with dinner an extra $1. The food is basic, but very good. Most of the foreigners staying in Samarqand seem to stay here. there were two Japanese, a New Zealander who is cycling from Japan to England, a mixed NZ-UK couple (nicky and alex, also smugmuggers), a crazed Albanian guy, and a German guy named Daniel.
The headgear of Central Asia, Albanian, Uzbek, and Tajik, modeled by, and Albanian, an American, and a German. (The Albanian headgear may be made up)
Bahodir is a quite helpful guy, who will secure you taxis to the airport at a good rate, can talk a bit of English, and will call folks on the phone for you. The rooms also have private bathrooms. Recommended.
The Bazaar
The moment, I believed, had arrived at last. I was going to see the Bazaar at Samarqand, the nexus of the Silk Road, a sight to shame both the Egyptian Bazaar in Istanbul and the Djem el Fnaa in Marrakech.
Sadly, I was dissapointed. The Bazaar in Samarqand is quite exciting, for those who have never seen a bazaar before. There is a lot of stuff for sale, from fruit, to little hats, to chinese made gadgets, but its a far cry from the reports of Clavijo, ambassador to Tamurlane from the Holy See, who in the 15ht century extolled its virtues. The soviets, I am afraid, killed all that and the bazaar has become a totally practical place.
Non seller at the Samarqand bazaar
"fashion pose" at the bazaar
We actually found a much better bazaar at a place called Urgut, about 40 minutes from Samarqand. The best day to go is Sunday. You can get their from the Mashrutka stand near the registan (you can get anywhere from the Mashrutka stand near the Registan, actually). TheUrgut bazaar reminds me a bit more of a classic asian bazaar.
The weather had turned cold and crappy, but it dod a decent job of shadow elimination in the photos. Unfortunately, the sky ws not impressive that day.
The Urgut Bazaar
Big Green Ovens for baking Non, mmmmm.....
Urgut is a good place to get textiles
I absolutely had to get a rug in Samarqand, to complement my collection (which consists of a rug from turkey, and a rug from Morrocco.) I ended up buying a "really old" (yeah, right) handwoven wool carpetlet that measured about 2 feet by 1 1/2 feet long. The opening price was $40, which is scandalous, as I had secured a silk rug twice that size for about $25 in Morrocco, but I eventually got them down to $15. It was still a jacked price, but how can one argue beyond a certain point?
The shop where I bought my ruglet
We had lunch in the bazaar as well. More of the stuffed meat pies called "Somsa" (that name always makes me think of Franz Kafka).
The Bazaar was a fascinating place to people watch, or rather, shoot people. This was were the 70-300 IS lens I had bought for this purpose really shone. See my sweet review for more info on it. (modesty is my finest quality, no?)
Tajik Aksakal ("White Beard", a term for respected elder)
no idea what these are
man with Tilpak
ubiquitous gold teeth
buying Non by the stack
Coming up Next; The Registan, Funereal Processions, Traffic Law Violations, and Ancient Marakanda, or "How to Turn a Museum into a Brothel!"
Se you then!
Behind the Shah-i-Zindah is a ridge, and about 250m north is a small, modern, mosque. It looks like this:
In front of this is a road that passes over the ridge. If you walk about 1 kilmeter down this road, you will come to the site of ancient Marakanda, called Afrosiab by the locals after the legendary founder of the city, king Afrosiab.
The author has no idea what this sign means
This road takes you to the site of the city Alexander encountered in the 4th century BC. There is a museum here, of exceedingly poor quality. The proprieters will follow you through the museum turning on the lights as you enter a section, and shutting them off as you leave that section. They will also mercilessly attempt to sell you postcards and other trinkets, and charge you an outrageous amount of money should you choose to snap a picture of the exceedingly uninteresting displays. Of course, they won't mention this until after you have taken a shot. The will also let you onto the excavation site itself upon payment of a fee- I refused for two reasons; one, amatuers such as myself shouldn't tramp on sites, 2; their exceedingly vulture like attitude irritated me. You might want to skip this one.
On returning back along the road we had taken to the we saw a number of interesting sights. For some unexplicable reason, the road is blocked in the middle by concrete barrier. This serves to provoke Uzbek drivers into strange contortions to get around the block, it doesn't actually deter traffic.
How to navigate an Uzbek Roadblock
Discretion is apparently not the better part of valor
Near the Museum we saw a funereal procession nearing the graveyard.
We decided to walk back through the bazaar and see the Bibi Khanum Mosque.
on the road to the Bibi Khanum
The Bibi Khanum Mosque was built in 1404 by Tamerlane, in celebration of his victory in Hindustan (wherein he carried out one of the more spectacular sacks of Delhi), and named after his chinese wife. It was definitely an architectural overreach, as it immediately began to fall apart.
The Arch leading into the Bibi Khanum is enormous.
Inside is an enormous stone Koran stand. Crawling under its supporting arches is reputed to impart fertility.
The authors wife attempts to insure great numbers of boychildren
Outside the Bib Khanum, on the way back to our hotel, we encountered a number of interesting scenes.
A late afternoon nap
Closer to the hotel, we saw another funereal procession. The casket of the deceased is shrouded within some sheets, and transported atop a palanquin.
A crowd mills around the casket as the deceased friends and family attempt to carry it forward seven steps.
The Gur Emir
Tamerlane. His empire, with its capital at Samarqand, encompassed Transoxania, parts of Russia, Anatolia, and mesopotamia, as well as huge chunks of Hindustan (Pakistan and India).
Timur's Realm
The list of cities he sacked reads like the itinerary of a grand asian tour; Merv, Delhi, Baghdad, Damascus, Aleppo. Upon the sack of baghdad, he ordered each of his soldiers to bring back at least two severed heads.
the author ponders the fate of empires
Yet even a world historical figure such as Timur must, as every mortal man, eventually die, and Timur eventually succumbed to the fate that all men share after catching pnuemonia during a campaign in Kazakhstan in 1405.
His mortal remains were ensonced in a suitable tomb, the Gur Emir.
Timur, being the new Uzbek hero, has the best and most extensively renovated tomb in Uzbekistan. It is covered inside with gold.
Timur's actual grave marker, strangely, is quite simple. a black stone, relativel unadorned.
this is just the marker. Timur's actual crpyt is below the Gur Emir. To deface a grave, in muslim tradition, is extremely bad mojo- Nadir Shah, ruler of Persia, discovered this when he removed the marker stone in 1740 and immediately suffered illness and deaths within his family. He returned the stone and his troubles ceased.
On the crpyt itself is carved the inscription "he who desecrates this tomb shall face an enemy greater than me." in 1941 Soviet archeologist Michael Gerasimov was the first person ever to open the crpyt, in order to examine the body. The next day Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. Interesting.
The Registan
Timur's greatest architectural monument, and indeed the reason I came to Uzbekistan, is the Registan. This was what I wanted to photograph. Unfortunately, other than some dawn shots, I don't have much in the way of good images. The weather immediately began to suck upon our arrival.
The Registan
Holiday Snap!
pano stitch
Last Look at Samarqand
Before we left Samarqand, there were a few more things we wanted to see. The first was the observatory of Timur's son Ulugh Beg. when it was built, this was the largest quadrant in the world, but was torn down by religious fanatics after Ulugh Beg's downfall.
the site of the observatory
All that remains is part of the Fakhri Sextant, which had a radius of 118 feet.
If one continues down the road about a mile, just past a bridge, one will reach the tomb of the prophet Daniel.
Muslim imams said, in the past, that daniel grows a finger length every 100 years, even in death, so his sarcophagus has reached some 60 feet in length. The site continues to recieve many pilgrims, and the folks who administer this place are very friendly.
Daniel's Sarcophagus
After that we returned to our hotel, went to the train station, and waited for our train back to Tashkent, and then the Fergana Valley.
and nice impression of Timur... you have plans for world domination too?
moderator of: The Flea Market [ guidelines ]
But of course! First, though, I must eliminate andy and take all of his glass trinkets! Muhahahah!
By the time our train arrived in Tashkent, it was snowing pretty fiercly. Shortly before dawn, we left the train station and starting asking at the assembled taxis outside to see how much it would cost to go to Fergana City, usually about a 5 hour drive over the mountains into the Fergana Valley. Normally, a shared taxi should cost around $8, and a chartered taxi (all to yourself) about $25 under normal conditions. These guys were all asking for $100. Since their were about 5-6 taxis, they all, standing around, colluded with each other and maintained this absurdly high price. This isn't that unusual at the train stations and airports. "Snow" they said- "No one goes to Fergana."
So we left by metro and went to the Sobir Rahimov metro station, which is where the mashrutno/shared taxi stand to Fergana is. There we anticipated a plethora of vehicles going to Fergana or Kokand. Normally there are. But today, as it was snowing, not so much.
However, we did manage to get somebody to charter a taxi for $35. As this is only $10 above what the guidebook said, allowing for snow and inflation it wasn't too bad. A lot better than $100.
We soon discovered why none of the taxis were going to Fergana. The Kimchak pass is about 2000 meters high, and as we were approaching it the weather got worse and worse.
Visibility was down to about 50 feet due to fog and snow.
It didn't seem as if anyone could live here under these conditions; cold, steep hills, scrubby ground. But the odd village did dot the landscape here and there, and occasionally a herd of goats, small cattle, or sheep would cross the road.
The pass is a major chokepoint on the trade routes that go from Southern Russia to China, so there was a lot of truck traffic sharing the road with us. I noticed a number of jacknifed trailers on the other side of the road as we were climbing up, and at one point a tractor trailer in front of us lost traction and began to slide backwards down the mountain. We simply weaved around it and another struggling truck, and went on our way. No seatbelts, of course.
I was afriad that the rest of our trip was going to be a cold, lightless photographers nightmare, but as soon as we crested the pass, the skies became bright and clear.
The Syr Darya
Trucks after the Kimchak pass
some of these photos are from the return trip, but it seems to be appropriate to put them here. Coming back a few days later from the Fergana Valley, we shared a taxi with a couple of other Uzbeks.
they kindly stopped for me to take some pictures.
The road to Fergana
We stopped for Lunch in Angren, an old mining and nuclear power town. They stil obviously maintain some old links with the past.
Apartment Blocks in Angren
After you leave the mountains you come upon a sort of desert area, with irrigated fields on one said and scrubland on the other.
But, after about another hour of travel, the legendary fertility of the Fergana Valley becomes evident. This is the most densely populated valley in Central Asia, although there aren't many huge towns. It's also the agricultural center of the region, and has been since antiquity. Babur, the exiled Timurid who once ruled this valley but was driven out and forced to go to India (where he founded the Mogul empire), waxed poetic about the produce of the region. Though he sat amongst the riches and splendor of Delhi, he would always long for the simple Fergana melons of his youth.
FERGANA CITY
Fergana City is a rather recent arrival to the scene, being constructed by Russians in the 19th century. It is the least Uzbek, most Russian influenced town in the country. It is also the best center where one can stay and travel through the valley, with plentiful and good hotels, taxis, and other amenities.
One could easily think that one was a small Bohemian spa town here, if it wasn't for the people.
The town has a lovely and quite large park area, with a huge statue of Al-Fergani, a famus mathematician from the valley.
You can also play billiards outside.
The Author's long suffering better half
I must finish christmas shopping, so I am off. More to come tomorrow.
My Gear
My Websites - Personal www.ericsmemories.com |"Professional" www.vividphotography.org
My Favorite Photos - Chicago, NYC, DC, London, Prague, Alaska, Yellowstone, Glacier NP, Vermont, Mt. Rushmore, Badlands NP, The Appalachian Trail
Thanks everybody for continuing to read, and for the nice comments. This post should almost wrap it up (strange that it has taken me longer to post everything than it did to actually go there!). After this, one more!
CHUST & NAMANGAN
We were very fortunate in the Fergana valley section of the trip. The weather in the valley was very nice (a bit cold, but clear). The tone of the Fergana valley is quite different than the rest of the country. Khorezm and The Zerafshan river plain (samarqand) have grand old Imperial cities and giant features; vast deserts, wide rivers, giant mountains. The Fergana is much more low key. It's more agricultural, the peaks of the surrounding Tian Shan mountains loom in the far distance, but the valley is so gently sloped and large that it seems to be no valley at all, but a plain. The habitations consist of small towns and hamlets, with a few cities of moderate size scattered about (other than Tashkent, all Uzbek cities are of moderate size).
But, if the lands beyond the Kimchak constitute the heart of Historical Transoxania, the Fergana is the modern center of gravity of Uzbekistan. It is the most densely populated section of Central Asia. It contains the second and fourth largest cities of the country (Namangan and Andijan), and each of these cities has numerous outliers, unlike Samarqand and Bukhara, which pretty much stop in the desert.
We set out the second day in the valley to find the city of Chust, famed for its production of knives. The Fergana Valley is home to the most notable production of knives in Central asia, and each city has a distinct style. Chust is related to be the nicest, and the guidebook stated that there was a knife factory open to the public- a factory in the sense of "a collection of artisans" rather than a mass production facility.
Kinves are worn to ward off the evil eye, and the water used in knife grinding is supposed to be a curative for all manner of diseases.
We went down to the bazaar in Fergana, and caught a mashrutka to Margilan. Although Fergana is bigger than Margilan, Margilan is more of a transportation hub- its about 15 minutes ride from Fergana.
Once in Margilan we found the Depot where buses go to Namangan, along the north rim of the valley. We were there about 30 minutes before the bus departed, so we ducked around the corner to get a breakfast of Somsa on the street outside.
The guy that was making Somsa had no change, so instead of 400 sum ($0.30), we paid 500 sum ($0.38). We then returned to the bus. The fact, however, that we had overpaid the man 100 sum apparently bothered him, as about 10 minutes later, as we were sitting in the bus, he arrived with suitable compensation; an entire tree branch full of persimmons.
That's a lot of persimmons for eight cents. But, as I said before, most folks in Uzbekistan seem to be pathologically honest and generous to travellers. Except, of course, for Taxi drivers, who are ifrit-spawn the world over.
Getting to Namangan took about 3 hours; mostly because we stopped at numerous little villages. We passed through Rishdon, a great place to get ceramics that, unfortunately, we never got to stop in. But if you have the time I have heard that it is quite nice.
After arriving in Namangan, we had to wait for 35 minutes or so at the central bus station for transportation to Chust, which is not a terribly big place. That was alright. In the bus station itself are a number of tables with food and coffee available. The "last" table actually has very good coffee, the only time in U-Stan that I found a decent cup ' joe.
Good coffee and good company in the Namangan Bus Station
This is the lady to buy cakes from at the Bus Station
After the appropriate time, our bus arrived. The buses tend to be old and strange looking, but they are usually pretty reliable.
Uzbek intercity bus
We piled onto the bus, and began our trip to Chust. Just before we left Namangan, the bus stopped, as luck would have it, just in front of the Philology faculty of the University of Namangan, and our bus filled up with foreign language students, most of whom were (to my pleasant surprise) very good looking ladies.
It was obvious to everyone that we were foreigners, so the girls immediately began speaking to us in English, most of them being able to speak it quite well. This was one of three occasions where we found good speakers of english. They all stayed on the bus for the better part of an hour, then most departed at an outlying village.
One of them inquired if I was married. I pointed to the woman next to me and stated that this was my wife (I thought it pretty obvious, as she clearly isn't Uzbek). The lady sighed and expressed voluble dissapointment.
It's good to know the pimp hand isn't totally rusty.
Our travelling companions (marriage minded woman, second from right)
In addition to marriage proposals, we also recieved an invitation to dinner from an older woman who spoke nothing but Uzbek, and wanted us to meet her 13 grandchildren.
85 year old Uzbek lady- the good air keeps folks young
Also, we discovered that people take the "one eyebrow" thing very seriously, Perhaps I mentioned it before, but having one single eyebrow (what we call a "uni-brow) is considered the acme of female beauty. Women who do not have their eyebrows connected will pencil in the gap, as demosntrated below.
As we left the Namangan area, our bus, which was totally packed to the rafters, had a bit of a suspension problem. It lurched, then canted alarmingly to the left. Such small matters do not deter valiant Uzbek drivers, so we continued on driving tilted for another 5 minutes or so, despite the grinding and crunching sound coming from the rear left wheel (whose shocks had collapsed). After a bit, this added friction was too much for the engine to handle, along with the 70 or so people sardined inside, and it finally gave up the ghost, everyone then piling out onto the side of the road.
The men on the bus began immediately tinkering with the engine.
While the rest of the passengers (several dozen) gathered around us in a circle and began asking us all sorts of questions, translated by the two english speaking women who remained. After some time it became apparent that the bus was not going to reach Chust in a timely manner, so we began to climb, in groups, onto other buses (themselves already packed) that were heading for Chust.
We eventually reached the town center, and walked to the factory, which was permanently closed. Disapointment, as it had already taken most of the day to get here (one can really only visit one city a day in the Fergana, as transport, while fun, is not fast). So we went to the Bazaar, where we saw some nice melons.
Also in the bazaar we found a small forge and shop that turns out knives and various other edged tools (saws and axes). they forge the blades and heads from steel.
For the knives, the steel has a smoky "watered" look to it. Mohammad (the chief craftsman) claims it is "Damascus Steel"- made by the same method famed in Damascus and Toledo. I am not sure if it is done to the same intensity that the famous blades of the levant were, but it has the same look and weight.
Once the blade is formed, it is then sharpened and buffed to a nce sheen.
the Knife Making Crew
Muhammad is a real craftsman. The knives take quite some time to produce, and he had only a few examples around that were complete. One knife he refused to sell because of an imperfection in the blade that wasn't visible to me, but bothered him, it was destined for the scrap heap (how often would you encounter that sort of attitude in Western Europe or the US?). We bought two blades; one with a mother of pearl haft for about $18, and one with a polished horn haft for about $7. The distinguishing feature of Chust knives are their large and relatively unadorned haft (handle), most of the other Fergana valley knives have skinny hafts that are quite guady. I prefer this style.
This is not my picture, but here is a typical Chust knife:
After obtaining our knives, we wended our way back to the Mashrutka stand, passing the obligatory sheep in the town parrk;
By the time we returned to Fergana, it was dark, so we went back to our hotel, the Ziyorat (English speaking staff, best place in the valley to sleep, $12 doubles) and hit the sack.
MARGILAN
The next morning we returned to Margilan to do the principal thing we wanted to do in the Fergana Valley, visit the Yogdorlik silk factory.
Uzbekistan sits astride the old Silk road, and sericulture (the harvesting of silkworms) has been known since around 6,000 BC, when it was first developed in China. The Chinese attempted to keep the methods of sericulture secret, but the technology had arrived in Fergana by at least 300 AD. Currently Uzbekistan produces about 30,000 tons of silk per year, most of it in Margilan. The Yogdorlik factory was started in the 1980s by folks who wanted to maintain an alternative to Soviet style mechanization. Although the scale of the factory is large, they follow traditional spinning and dying procedures, and their silk is amongst the highest quality in the world. Uzbek silk is made in a style known as Ikat.
Silkworms, in this case the bombyx mori, eat mulberry leaves, wich are abundant in fergana, they thin spin a cocoon in preparation for turning into a moth.
early stage silkworm cocoons, they have not yet turned white or grown very large.
The cocoon consists of a single thread of silk, wich is slightly over one kilometer long. this is one of the factors that makes silk strong; in addition to the incredible tensile strength of silk, which exceeds steel, each "sheet" of silk is woven from extremely long monofilaments.
These cocoons are collected in sacks, and delivered to the factory.
Before the moth can emerge and break the silk thread, the cocoons are steamed in order to prepare them for unwinding. (Sorry vegans!)
In the ultra-traditional way (Yogdorlik has absolutely traditional as well as semi-mechanized spinning, although all dying and design is traditional) the thread is then teased out of each individual cocooon, and readied for spooling.
The silk is then spooled onto large reels, and this is used to weave the heavy "raw" looking silks used for many carpets, etc.
This is extremely slow, however, so Yogdorlik has large setups where the spooling is more industrially efficient.
Each thread is almost to small to see with the naked eye, but each of the cocoons bobbing in the hot water has a thread that loops over the plastic wheel, and three of these threads are eventually wound together into a larger thread.
Three of these larger threads are then wound together and spooled onto a small bobbin.
The bobbins are then taken to a spooling room, where three small bobbins are spooled onto a medium bobbin (winding the three threads together into a cable-like larger thread).
Eventually, the silk ends up on a very large bobbin, where it is ready to be marked, dyed, and woven.
The silk is formed into "cords"
And then is laid out on a frame, where a master designer marks and tapes off sections to be dyed.
Once marked, it is taken off the frame, and brought to the dye house.
Dyes are made from natural vegetable material,
As well as metal for the iron oxide colors:
The cords are essentially "tie-dyed", with wrappings being removed, then the cord put in a sack and submerged in the boiling dye.
Wrappings are re-arranged, and other colors added to the cord.
Then the cords are dried in ovens.
The cords are then transported to the looms, where they are cross woven with either toehr silk, for pure silk textiles, or occasionally with linen or (most often) cotton, for blends.
Uzbek teen hearthrob
In addition to Ikat silks like these, they also weave carpets from silk and wool, or silk and cotton. Carpets here are "persian" style rather than the more north african that I am used to.
The patterns are "embroidered" through a field of textile.
Students learning the carpet making process
and then they are shorn off to provide a level carpet surface. It can take up to a day to do one centimeter od a complex design. Even in U-Stan, these carpets are expensive ($500 and up). In New York, however, they can cost ten times that.
more than a few bandaged thumbs
They also embrodier the "suzane" table cloth type things.
The tour of the factory is free, and supposedly available in English- although that day they could not find the sole English speaker so the foreman, Sobirjon, lead us aroudn and gave us a Russian language tour.
At the end of the tour they have a shop. There is no pressure to buy and the prices are quite cheap. We got 4 ikats, a hat, and a couple of bolts of silk (18 feet long each) for less than $100. Not bad really.
Yogdorlik silk shop
The tour is designed, I think, less to sell than to show off the craft. Everyone there seemed genuinely proud of their work, was quite courteous, and its definitely photo-friendly. Be sure to bring lens cleaning cloths, as going from the cold to the steam can fog up your glass.
A few other shots of the silk factory:
One more city, Kokand, and then our Journey is through. I must warn you, however, that Kokand contains the most disturbing hotel in the universe, so be forewarned!
moderator of: The Flea Market [ guidelines ]
Canon 60D
Canon Rebel XTi (400)
Canon 10-22mm, Canon 50mm f/1.8 II
MacBook, MacPro
So this is it, the last installment of the travelogue.
Towards the end of the day, we hopped on yet another Mashrutka to Kokand, the first major city one encounters when driving into the Fergana Valley, and the last when leaving it.
The site that Kokand sits on has been inhabited since at least the 10th century, but the Mongols staged a concert there during their 1221 world tour, and the after party left the place pretty much depopulated. The current town dates from 1732- so its not terribly old, but it has a wonderful feel to it. The city is clean and well laid out, and has a number of parks, small and large.
pleasant city park
pleasant...tree lined avenues?
The first thing we did was find a hotel. The Lonely Planet guide says that there is only one hotel in the city, the appropriately named Hotel Kokand- they, however, strongly recommend against setting foot in this establishment as it is somewhat less than, well, clean. In fact, the LP recommends that you keep on truckin' and sleep in a totally different city.
The Odyssey Guide, on the other hand, claims that there is a hotel at 92 Furkat street called the Hotel Oktyaber. We decided to search this out. It's near the bazaar, and is totally unmarked. when you enter the doors, you walk into a dimly lit cavernous hall with a staircase leading up, said staircase passing in front of a huge 2 story high grime encrusted mural showing workers and peasants laboring happily together. On the second floor is the hotel. It costs 1200 sum per night ($1).
The woman running the place was freaking out about our wanting to stay there. The hotel is very basic- each room has 4 beds, there is only one toilet for the whole building, little light, and no heat. It is the kind of place where farmers coming into town to sell their goods at the bazaar stay before they return to the countryside. It was old, but relatively clean.
The lady running the place thought that this was no place for a lady such as my CFO, and insisted that we go to the "nice" place in town, the Hotel Kokand. So we did. This is not that unusual- quite a few times business people will try to steer you away from their services based on the fact that they aren't "good enough" for foreigners. Trying to buy a 3rd class rail ticket is impossible, we had to talk to a woman for 15 minutes, for example, just to get second instead of first. (and when we took the train, they gave us, but no one else in the train car, the 1st class meal). Coming from the most capitalist of countries, this is odd to me.
The Hotel Kokand is actually not that different from the Hotel Oktyaber. Except the adjectives "clean" and "relatively clean" can in no way describe the horror show that is this hotel.
We settled for the "nicer" $12 suite vs. the cheaper and even nastier $9 room.
The fanciest room at the Hotel Kokand. The white stuff on the mirror? That's dust.
I won't get too deep into this, as we'll complete the description of the hotel later. Needless to say, we left the hotel as soon as it was possible to see the city.
The centerpiece of the town is the palace of Khudayar Khan- although Kokand is a bit of a backwater now, back in the 18th century it was the center of a relatively powerful Khanate. At one time, the Khanate of Kokand even took over Tashkent, but by the end of the 18th century it was being pressured by both the Emirate of Bukhara and the Qing dynasty of China. (Chinese claims to soveriegnty in the Fergana valley date to the tribute paid by Kokand to the Qing).
Khudayar's palace is not nearly as fancy as those in the great triumvirate of Khiva, Samarqand, and Bukhara- but it is well preserved.
Khudayar's Palace
The palace is fronted by the city's biggest park. The guidebook claims that there is an old YAK-40 airplane here that was converted into a children's cinema; but a few years ago that was removed (sadly).
It costs a few bucks to get into the palace (everything here costs about $2.25 to get into- given that this is the price of a meal, it's a tad outrageous). Inside the palace are a number of rooms and courtyards.
Central Courtyard
The Soviet tradition of having odd crap on display that appears out of place in tits chosen setting is alive and well here in Uzbekistan.
A display of local Taxidermy?
The Khan lived pretty well, in a series of apartments that are well maintained by the local museum staff.
The breakfast room (?)
The level of handicraft displayed is quite advanced, and the detail work is well preserved. The staff at thsi museum is relative large for a place that isn't so big, and its obvious that the city intends to take good care of its palace. Some restoration work is going on on the central courtyard Iwan, but most of the palace is in pristine condition.
Wall Carvings
The carved wooden capitol of an Iwan column
There is a woman at the museum who runs the place named Manzurahon Mansurova. She speaks absolutely perfect, almost accentless English. This is quite surprising, as very few English speaking folks get to Uzbekistan, much less to the Fergana Valley, and even less so to Kokand.
As we were chatting Manzurahon asked us if we would like her to arrange a homestay for us. We replied that we had already made arrangements at the Hotel Kokand, and a look of extreme concern passed over her face. "Oh dear!... that's a rather...'dreadful' place actually." she said. A wonderful woman who was a pleasure to talk to.
After seeing the museum, we strolled around the park a bit, and as we were heading toward the hotel we saw Manzurahon and some of the other museum folks walking home from work.
I figured that Manzurahon would love a chance to practice English with some native speakers (well one native speaker at least), so I suggested to my wife that we invite her out for tea at one of the local Chaikhana. I imagined that she would likely enjoy an hour or so of conversation (I know I always enjoy having tea with foreigners myself).
She told us that, unfortunately, she was headed towards her sister's house. We expressed regret, but she then insisted that we accompany her. I myself didn't want to feel like a cad, inviting myself to her sister's house, but she replied that it was no imposition at all- and rather insisted that we go.
When we arrived, unexpectedly, at the place her sister was basically in a house coat, but quickly changed into regular clothes. (we really were unanticipated guests!).
They immediately cooked and sat out a huge feast for us; includign plov (the national rice dish), Non, persimmons, raisins, grapes, fruits of all types, sweets, and black and green tea.
Uzbek food for the random house guest
Keep in mid that we had met this woman 30 minutes earlier for the first time. Other members of the family started drifting in, including Manzurahons 3 sisters, her brother, and a numerous amount of children.
The Manzurova Crew
Her brother was a big soccer fan, and had jsut returned from working with the local soccer team. I indicated that I was dissapointed because I had been looking for a Paktakor Team Shirt (Paktakor is Tashken't football team) but had no luck. Her brother immediately removed his jacket and revelaed that he was wearign a brand new UFF (Uzbekistan Football Federation) shirt. He literally peeled it off and gave me the shirt off his back.
This, to me, is the essence of the muslim world- Hospitality. As Manzurahon said, the Uzbek's have a saying that "The food you give to Guests, Allah gives back to you."
The news may show freaky Pathans and wacked out islamofascists with great frequency, but of all the muslim countries I have been to (granted, that's only 4; Morrocco, Kosovo, Turkey, and Uzbekistan- if you don't count Jersey City, which is pretty much an exclave of the NWFP) I have always been recieved with the utmost of courtesy, respect, and genuine friendliness.
Had we spoken Uzbek, or better Russian, we could have eaten and slept in people's homes every night. Not a day passed without some sort of invitation.
After about 4 horus of constant eating and talking, we began to get quite tired. Manzurahon's sister offered to let us sleep at her place, but we didn't want to take total advantage of her hospitality, we had already paid for the Hotel Kokand, and both my wife and I had a sort of tourist machismo thing going on- a "there's no hotel so nasty we can't hack it" sort of attitude. This turned out to be a mistake.
This TV hasn't worked since it broadcast news of Krushvev's passing
The suite actually had a bathroom, of sorts. the bathroom, however, had no toilet (although there had obviously been one here at one time, perhaps it was looted by the mongels?); and the bathtub consisted of an orange stained tub with a pipe above it that constantly dripped cruddy ferric smelling water.
The bathtub
All of this I can handle. We decided to sleep in our clothes, not like that hasn't happened before. This isn't as bad, I thought, as sleeping in the Belgrade Train station. The Belgrade train station waiting room, after all, smells of cheese-feet. That's just as nasty as it sounds. Actually, its a bit nastier than it sounds. Imagine camambert stuffed down a homeless person's pants for a week or two. Have you ever been prevented from sleeping by a smell? No? Then you haven't been to the Belrade train station.
The real problem was the toilet.
there was one per floor, and you couldn't miss it. As soon as you left the room the stank of something evil greeted you. This toilet was not only a squatter, it was an actual portal to the underworld. And a relatively unsavoury part of the underworld at that.
The actual portal to hell (don't ask me to explain what "that" is) Say hello to Dante and Virgil when you get there.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here
I resolved not to do anythign more serious than "#1." But, sometimes, these issues are really out of our hands, and I found myself confronting a rather delicate engineering problem, one that woudl confound even Dr.It's colleagues at the Massacussetts Institute for pracktical Magick.
WARNING- THE SQUEAMISH MAY LEAVE OFF READING NOW!
Here's the deal with squatters for those of us who wear trousers. When you drop those trousers and squat down, your pants make a little net directly underneath you and, believe me, you don't want to catch anything in that there net.
I surveyed the situation and saw that there was a lovely sink just opposite the actual toilet. A brilliant Idea occured to me. I would grab the sink with both hands, then hang my butt out, wind-surfer style. It worked perfectly, right up until the point where the sink detached itself from the wall, and sent me comically flailing my arms, attempting not to fall backwards into God alone knows what.
Did you see mission impossible with Tom Cruise? Remember when he was hovering inches above the floor? Imagine me doing that, backwards, suspending myself upon my fingertips, with my pants around my ankles, repeating like a mantra "pleae God don't let me touch this awful surface more than necessary."
Horrifying. The moral of this story is that, if you go to Kokand, go immediately to the museum and Get Mazurhona to arrange a home stay for you.
RETURN TO NORMAL, DECENT CONVERSATION
Kokand was the last place in the coutnry that we saw. We hired a chared taxi to take us from Kokand to Tashkent for about $25, the taxi driver dropped us off at Maxim Gorky Metro, and we spent one night in the Grand Orzu hotel. ($25)
I saw this on the ride back into Tashkent. God Bless America!
The staff at the Orzu was friendly and helpful, and it was nicely located to do a bit of last minute shopping. It is very near a place on Usman Nosir street called "Human House", a shop that has a number of great things on sale. Boslts of raw silk, handicrafts, and fashion (the dresses are all really well made, and unique- My wife basically bought a drrss she wore to the Met in NYC, blowing away the other ladies there, for $90).
Also near the hotel is the "Skynet" internet cafe. (Open 24 hours) You can rent the computer for $0.50 per hour. Our plane left tashkent at 4 AM, so the very last night, instead of paying for a hotel room, I played "Call of Duty" against Uzbek teenagers from 10 AM until 2 AM. All for about $2, then had them call me a cab for the airport. The Teens speak some English, and they definitely speak microsoft.
The Orzu also isn't too far from the "Caravan Art Cafe" Honestly, if you are flying out the next morning, its late at night, and you still haven't finished your shopping for gifts, then you have to come here. Whatever you didn't buy in Bukhara, Samarqand, or Nukus you can pick up here for reasonable prices.
But the restaurant attached to the shop is ridiculous. I have been in a lot of snooty places (I live just across the river from Greenwich Village, after all) but even the most pompous of New Yorkers wouldn't match these folks for attitude.
The cafe is way overpriced, (A beer and a sandwich for twice the price of a 6 hour taxi ride? I think not).
I took one photo of the place before the irate waiter stalked over and told us that "photography is not allowed in here!" This was the only time she actually showed any interest in us all night.
The illicit photo!
The staff is, of course, Russian, as Uzbeks would likely never behave in this fashion.
My point? Avoid giving them your money if you can. I had a few things left to buy, so I did, but it gave me no joy. The art is bad quality anyway. Mostly Kitschy schlock- not that I haven't sold a few kitsch photos in my time.
So, after the video gaming, we got on the plane, flew back to New York (with another 4 hours in the moscow airport) and slept for a long, long time.
Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed looking at this as much as I enjoyed making it, and I highly recommend that you visit Uzbekistan. It's a great place, with great people.
Except, of course, for the Taxi drivers.
Thanks for putting all the effort into that writeup
moderator of: The Flea Market [ guidelines ]
So where is your next hole-in-the-wall country that you plan to visit? (God Bless your wife.)
Gary
PS- How about Chad?
G
Unsharp at any Speed
Chad's an interesting idea, but I try to avoid places with actual armed conflict. Although I might make an exception for Sri Lanka or the Bronx.
My wife has stomped down her delicately formed foot and is demanding that we spend next years vacation, or at least part of it, with her family in Portugal, so next year I'll have another Iberia travelogue. Probably in November, I am not sure yet.
this one has less than 2000. :cry
we need to change that.
this is just a fantastic job of photo journalism.
take a bow. you deserve it.
amadeus.
I am, as always, unbelievably taken by the depth of knowledge in your travelogue, but for the moment I have to sit here and catch my breath from laughing so hard....
Photos that don't suck / 365 / Film & Lomography
http://www.germaine.smugmug.com
Ahhhh ... combat's not that big a deal ... just keep your head low and ammo dry.
Gary
Unsharp at any Speed