3 ~ Hello From Bukhara, Uzbekistan

Hello from Bukhara, along the “Silk Road”,

A comfortable 4 hour high speed train ride from Tashkent, we arrived around noon in Bukhara, an ancient city oasis and major stop along the old “Silk Route” between China and Europe. It’s a pleasant city full of 600+ year old mosques, madrasas, and ancient ruins. The largest of them is the 1500 year old Ark of Bukhara. It’s a massive fortress that once held 30,000 people. It served as the center of government until the Russians captured it in 1920. Interestingly, all of the historical sites that are not being currently used as Mosques or Madrassas have been turned into craft workshops and stores. While touring the historical sites there are always plenty of arts and crafts to shop for. There is a lot of construction everywhere, some of it new streets and buildings to house tourists and some of it restoring the ancient buildings. Most of the work is done by human labor. We watched workers tearing down old buildings with picks and shovels, mixing cement by hand and hauling everything in wheelbarrows. The work is fairly crude but the finishes are very nicely done by craftsmen. Our hotel room walls were covered with carvings and painted to look like a traditional Uzbek elaborately designed bedroom.

The old city center is a pleasant place to hang out and relax. Every day around noon, when the sun gets a little hot, we like to sit in the square for a couple of hours under the shade of a tree and drink tea while we watch the people meandering through. Often people will stop to talk to us, asking where we are from, where we have traveled and welcoming us to Uzbekistan. There are very few Western European faces here and we do stand out in a crowd. It’s a lot of fun interacting with the people and we look forward to this every day.

On Sunday, there were a lot of families with children from other Uzbek cities visiting the sites here. A lot of middle school children walking around on the square would stop to say hello and speak English. Most of them are studying English. Pretty soon one of them pulled out a camera and shyly asked if they could take a picture with us. Seeing this, all the other kids around rushed over and wanted to get their pictures taken with us too. A couple of them had old smart-phone cameras and we’re taking pictures for the others. After a round of about 20 pictures they finally finished and left. But, then, about 20 minutes later they were all back. They had discovered a photo shop nearby that could make a print from a cellphone camera photo. They all bought prints and came back to have us write our names and city and signature on the back. It was chaotic (but a lot of fun) as they were all shoving their photos at us to sign. I felt like some kind of movie star with everyone wanting my signature. It was a kick! Then we got the bright idea to get a photo of our own and have them all sign it for us. So, the whole group of kids led us over to the photo shop where we bought photos and had the kids sign them too. They were so much fun. These are our precious travel moments.

As we discovered in Georgia and Armenia a couple of years ago, the “inexpensive” way the Soviets ran gas pipes through their cities was to run the steel pipes above ground instead of under ground. This produces an ugly matrix of steel piping hanging on walls, running up over streets and doorways etc. Currently they run them underground but the old city centers still have the above ground pipes. The pipes are now very old and the welding on the joints is awful. They are rusting and starting to leak. Almost everywhere you walk in the old city you can smell the faint odor of natural gas leaking from the pipes. No one seems concerned about it, but I can’t help but wonder if they ever have explosions or fires from leaking gas. At least here they do add that awful smelling chemical to the gas so you can smell a leak. They didn’t do that in Armenia and no one really knew if there was gas leaking.

One morning we decided to walk through an area of town not on any tourist route. We passed an old man in a doorway waving for us to come in. Above the doorway was a sign in English that said “House Museum.” He lived in a very old Uzbek house that still had much of the old traditional carvings and decorations on the walls. He was trying to attract tourists to come in and see it. As we walked through the doorway he picked a stem of mint and offered it to us as a fragrant gift. Though he spoke no English, he led us on a tour of the house and its furnishings. When people are free to choose, many of them become entrepreneurs.

So far in Uzbekistan, we have not been enamored of the food. Most things are fried and a lot of it is based on breads or dough of some kind. They are supposed to be very proud of their bread. A lot of it is served, but to us it mostly tastes dry and not very fresh. So far our best evening meal was at an Italian restaurant. Who would have guessed that? However, we are reserving judgement until we get to Samarkand. They are supposed to be the bread experts using 17 different kinds of flours to make different kinds of bread. Hopefully we’ll find something really good there.

Tomorrow we leave on a two day excursion where we’ll visit some small towns, sleep in a yurt camp one night, ride “two hump” camels (we have only ever tried out the one hump variety) and spend one night with an Uzbek family. More on that next time. And, I’ve added some new photos to the gallery for your viewing pleasure.

Carol is readying her next blog about Bukhara right now. It should be available very soon:

https://carolapucci-tips.blogspot.com/2018/04/bukhara-old-and-new-treasures-along.html

Later…… your favorite travelers, Tom and Carol