Bukhara

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Hello from South Africa! Oups, I'm sorry, I'm still blogging about early August....in Uzbekistan! No diving today, but we had an amazing number of hammerheads over the week-end....blog coming...on day!



After small size Khiva, here I am in Bukhara. Good news, the old city is also pretty much manageable on foot. Took me most of the day to get taxi from Khiva to Bukhara. There was not wait to go to Urgench, but than I wasted a good 2 hours before we finally left for Bukhara. It's close to 500km, and it took us close to 7 hours, with a nice little lunch stop in the middle. Not a lot to write on the drive, beside that fact that this is a pretty dry place!



In Bukhara, I stay at the Amulet hotel. Had to negotiate less than 2 minutes to pay at the official rate...so another great bargain at less than 25usd per night for my little room. This will be my home for 2 nights. Fun to bump again in exactly the same people I bumped in the day before in Khiva. It's a small world. Most people start West and make it back to Tashkent. So we all agree...we prefer Khiva to Bukhara, and we are scared Samarkand will clearly not be at the same level too. Going East, price rises...you feel more as a tourist here than as a traveler...so the bargaining is tougher. Till, I cannot say there are many tourists here.



Amulet is an old little place...gorgeous staff, gorgeous place, and right in th middle of everything. Right place to stay! First evening, my day was pretty exhausting, so I just went out for another cool meal. Mantis to start...these are bigger than pelmenis, the local dumplings. Than it's on to some great barbecue meat shashlik. I tend to mix between beef and lamb or even chicken and veggies when it comes to the skewers! Each time, love those....washed with one or two local beer, and the full meal is never over 7usd, including the beer!



next day, it's full day in Bukhara touring the Old City. It's summer, the air is dry, ad it's easily 38 degrees in the shade. So I'm equipped with my camera....and bottles of water! Historic buildings are more widespread in Bukhara...but you still have a lot of local life in the small side streets of the Old City. The Walls of the Ark fortress were pretty impressive...the visit inside slightly less amazing though!



On interesting point here that I would like to share. They have impressive mosques all over...but all of them are empty. At least in Iran, when you walk in a mosque, you have the feeling of a living cult place. Here, you can see that the USSR was here for a while...even twenty years later...nobody in the mosques...sad!



I will not name all the buildings here...my Lonely Planet is back at home in Bangkok! Smile! Just enjoy the pictures...but these tiles, the blue skies and the earth tones are just simply amazing. I have to admit, I walked a lot, and came back more than twice at different times of the day just to enjoy the ray of lights on the buildings.



Late afternoon time, my mission was to find a train ticket to Samarkand. I had already the train ticket from Samarkand to Tashkent. I guess I have had enough for now of long and sometime scary shared taxi drives...train is as good and way more relaxing! They may arrive late, at least they arrive!



Next morning, I had to leave early...as always here...the train station is a good 10km outside of the city. So first, hard negotiation for a decent taxi ride. I can't imagine paying more to do 10km in a private taxi...than 500km in a shared taxi...no way!



Enjoy the pics....and I know, I'm very very late on blogging!

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