Silk Road and Samarkand

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May 20, 2012
Hotel: Caravan Seraile, Samarkand, Uzbekistan; $45/double
We had an early start today as it was going to be another long day on the road and a border crossing on the way to Samarkand. We caught a taxi right outside the hotel and told him we were going to the nothern bus station. When we got there and said we were going to the border, he offers to take us all the way for a reasonable amount, 100 TJS ($21.09) for 70 kms. A shared taxi would have been cheaper but we already had our bags in his car, and split 4 ways anyway it wouldn't have been much difference. The weather was gorgeously clear today, not too hot. We had been lucky with the weather so far this trip, no rain and May seems to be a good time to visit when the passes are clear but it's not boiling hot yet. The drive over to the border crossing at Oybek took a little over an hour, arriving around 9:15AM. I had gauged my cash usage perfectly again as my remaining som was just enough to cover the taxi fare.

The Tajik border crossing was easy.. but then we still had to cross over into Uzbekistan. Our last two border crossings had taken over an hour each, and this was no exception. This border was busier than the one crossing we had done going into Tajikistan, already there was a long line of locals waiting to cross. We get waived to the front of the line again but still end up having to wait for the guy in the stamp booth to show up... then fill out the forms again, then wait on 5 guys standing around doing nothing to do something. We waited... and waited... the natives started getting restless again as well as it had been nearly an hour and no one had been allowed through customs yet. Finally we do get our passports back and through around 11AM.. nearly 2 hours to cross the border this time!

There were a bunch of taxis waiting on the other side asking if we wanted to go to Tashkent. Tashkent was a bit out of the way to head to Samarkand so we asked if one would take us all the way there. At first they wanted $200 for the 300kms, eventually we talked them down to $120. $30 each wasn't bad for 300kms! At first we had to head north up towards Tashkent before turning west. The roads were in good shape for the first stretch, then degraded to potholes and gravel along one stretch where they are building a new road. We crossed the Syr-Darya river again at one point. This part of Uzbekistan seemed poorer and less prosperous than the Fergana valley had been. Finally we come across the new road from Tashkent. The original road cut straight across the flat plains and through a piece of Kazakstan, the new road has been constructed around Kazakhstan as the original road is now closed. We stopped at a huge CNG refueling station, probably 20 bays or more that look like carwash stalls.

The road continued on past Jizzakh and through some low hills before descending to Samarkand. We had prebooked a hotel for two nights since the guesthouse I had wanted to stay at originally had been booked out already a month before! The taxi driver dropped us off at the hotel after we found it on our GPS. Thats one really nice thing about hotel sites now, some are starting to put the GPS coordinates of the hotel in the booking confirmation. I had downloaded offline maps of Central Asia to my Android phone and was able to look up the street our hotel was on. The hotel was fairly new, and a great location between the major sights in Samarkand. It had a lovely courtyard and comfortable rooms. The best part was the rooftop bar overlooking the old town and across to the blue domes of the Bibi Khanym mosque.

We finally changed some money into Uzbek som... $25 got us a huge stack of bills since the highest-valued Uzbek note (1000) is only worth about $0.40 at the black market rate. We felt rich! We headed out from the hotel towards the bazaar which had been renovated and was still undergoing renovation. In the past few years they have redone the center of Samarkand, bulldozing old neighborhoods and putting in pedestrian streets lined with tourist stores. Unfortunately they haven't kept the traditional style or anything.. it now looks like a strip mall in California. Samarkand was one of the major towns on the ancient Silk Road, its very name evokes the idea of exotic... the reality is sadly different as tourism has found its way here in a big way. We walked around the bazaar and to the Bibi Khanym mosque. It was already late afternoon so the lighting on the mosque wasn't the best.. it is better to see the grand facade early in the morning. It was still an amazing structure, blue turquoise dome with dark blue tiles and Arabic script. Most of the tilework in Samarkands's monuments is not original, many of the buildings had been destroyed in earthquakes and were only rebuilt in the past century.

As part of the renovations, huge walls have been put up around the old neighborhoods to keep them away from tourists view.. a bit of a shame. We found a door through one of the walls and wandered back into the old Jewish neighborhood. Samarkand and Bukhara had a sizeable Jewish population well into the 20th century but now most have moved to Israel. We wandered down the street which reminded us of Istararavshan until we came across the 19th century synagogue. It was closed though so we could not look inside. We wandered around, past an ancient mosque and out to the Registan square. We were hungry by this point though and would be visiting the Registan tomorrow, so we gave it a miss and caught a taxi over to a restaurant that the LP had recommended for good beer and food. We get there, and they are out of beer! So we walk a few blocks through the Navoi Park to an Italian place. This part of Samarkand has been sanitized as well, it is more a modern European city than an ancient outpost on the Silk Road.

The restaurant was OK enough, though their interpretation of spaghetti bolognese was.. original. We got a bottle of wine to share with our meal, the vintage said April 2012.. a three-week old wine! The sun was setting so we raced over to the Gur-i-Amir mausoleum (where Timurlane is buried) which is supposed to look best at sunset. Unfortunately we were mere minutes too late. Nearby was a statue of Amir Timur.. which bore a strong resemblance to Sean Connery.

May 21, 2012
Hotel: Hotel Caravan Serail; Samarkand, Uzbekistan; $45/dbl
We had an early breakfast at 7:30 this morning but we were one of the last ones to arrive for breakfast. There was a large French tour group staying at our hotel and they were taking up most of the breakfast area. This whole trip I had been waking up at the crack of dawn, 4:30 or 5 AM.. something I never do at home. Breakfast was good but bready.. bread, pancakes and a scone. We set off for the Registan about 8AM and walked the 1km to the Registan complex. All the streets were lined with mulberry trees, and the berries would just fall to the sidewalk and ferment.. sometimes not the best odor. We were a little early to the Registan, supposedly it doesn't open until 9AM. We found a back gate that was open though and snuck in 😊

The Registan is a complex of three medrassas and is the crown jewel of the monuments in Samarkand and create one of the most gorgeous buildings in the world. The medrassas were built in the 1400-1600s and are some of the oldest buildings remaining in Samarkand, any earlier structures were destroyed by the Mongols on their sweep through Central Asia. Two of the medrassas were well lit in the morning light. It is hard to describe just how beautiful these buildings are.. they are a riot of colorful tile in geometric designs, with huge facades with Persian-style arches. The easternmost medrassa, Sher Dor (Lion) departs from traditional Islamic art by depicting a pair of lions on the facade.

As we are wandering around the plaza, one of the guards comes up and asks if we have a ticket yet.. we don't of course, having bypassed the entrance. We go and buy a ticket near the front, 13000 som (~$5) which is a reasonable entrance fee, and includes using the camera. As we go back into the complex, the guard says the minaret is open for 30 more minutes, then 'closed for 2 weeks for renovations'. How convenient for us. We've heard that scam before.. they are trying to get you to go up the minaret, then ask for an insane tip. We passed on that and just spent the next hour or so wandering among the buildings. They have been restored too but they really did an amazing job. One of the buildings had a photo exhibit of how the Registan and Samarkand looked in the early 1900s before renovation.

We still saw very few tourists... it was early though and the tour buses hadn't arrived. Obviously they get a lot of tourists as there were souvenir stalls setup in all of the old medrassa student dorms. We planned to come back to the Registan in the afternoon when the lighting was better on the Sher Dor medressa. We next walked over to the Gur-i-Amir mausoleum. Scott needed to buy a plane ticket from Khiva to Tashkent, he was planning on splitting off from our group in Bukhara. We found a couple of travel agencies, but none of them actually sold plane tickets (at least not domestic ones)! The Gur-i-Amir mausoleum was also decorated in the same Timurid style of turquoise dome with blue tile facade. We walked around behind it to the Ak-Seray mausoleum which was behind the wall in an old neighborhood. It was 3000 UZS to get in but my friends declined and only I went in to have a look. It was elaborately restored inside, blue and gold painting on the dome on the inside. We wandered back to Gur-i-Amir and went in the back way there as well, avoiding paying. 😊 There were three tombs inside, Timurlane and his sons.

We needed to buy our train tickets to Bukhara for tomorrow so next we hopped in a taxi to the train station, which was a few kms west of the center of town. The taxi driver kept trying to get us to go visit gold shops, go out to Shakhrisabz (birthplace of Tamerlane), etc. We did change more money with him though when we got to the train station and got a much better rate than the hotel had given us. The ticket office was a little chaotic but eventually we were able to buy our tickets for the next day departing at noon for 18000 UZS ($6.66). We walked across from the train station to a restaurant for lunch.. like others we had been to in Samarkand it was deserted. Where/when do people eat here? We all had hamburgers (we were taking a break from shashlik for a day or two), or at least their interpretation of a hamburger.

Next up was Shah-i-Zinda, an avenue of royal mausoleums not too far from Bibi Khanym mosque. The complex (5000 UZS admission) was amazingly gorgeous.. although restored recently it has some of the most intricate tilework we had seen in Central Asia. There are a dozen or so mausoleums lining the avenue running along the middle. The site supposedly is the burial place of a cousin of the Prophet Mohammed and we saw many local pilgrims here praying and making offerings. At the end of the complex, a path leads through the modern Muslim cemetery. The gravestones are a bit eerie as they have a photo of the deceased etched into them. We had seen similar cemeteries before in Armenia. The path continued around until we found a gate leading back out onto the main street. We walked back through the bazaar to the hotel.

For dinner that night, we found a shashlik/kebab place just across from Registan square. It seemed more like old Samarkand, a nice courtyard, mulberry trees and a smiling cook fanning the coals of the grill. On the way to the restaurant, we had stopped by the Registan again to get afternoon views of Sher Dor. The guards this time were still offering to let tourists go up the minaret, when we told them they said it was going to be closed for two weeks, they said 'oh no, it is open'.

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