Arab Ata

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Best day on the whole central asian part of the trip was spent venturing out to a 10th century Samanid mausoleum somewhat between Bukara and Samarqand. Katherine had a great book about mouments of central asia which included a tiny section about ArabAta in a town Tim about 200km from Samarqand along the old royal road between the two great cities of the Syr Darya. Our plan was public transport was after first walking away from the Tourist part of town nearby the Registan we found a taxi driver who took us to the mashruka stop for minibusses heading west. After a bit of negioiation we agreed on 3000 som each and after waiting for it to fill up headed out of town at breakneck speed. With not much russian between the two of us this is all a bit of hit and miss but we ended up at Kattaqorghan and from there another mashruka heading out to the tiny oasis town of Tim. The landscape is really quite amazing with long plains ever so occiassionally interuppted by small beautiful oasis towns which Tim is a classic example.

After getting to the Mausoleum the Iman was called by the villagers and after a little bit of a worry the lock was broken we got into to a beautiful 9th century building. The structure is famous for a couple of reasons which architectural historians regard as quite important for the Samanid empire and Islamic world as a whole. We spent a while and after some prays from the Iman set off back to Kattaqorghan and Samarqand.

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