Our last morning in Bukhara. I love this city with a mosque,
medrassa or mausoleum around every street corner and its dusty, old town
streets heavy with their Silk Road history. Both Bukhara and Samarkand were key
centres of the Silk Road trade route between China and Europe, which included
other historical centres such as Kashgan in China, Merv in Turkmenistan,
Mashhad and Tabriz in Iran and, of course, Istanbul.
After visiting the centuries old, Jewish cemetery, we decide to get lost in the abandoned mosques,
caravanserais (Silk Road era inns for travellers) and medressas on the northern
side of the old town, making our way through the alleys and lanes with the
locals and some basic Russian helping us along the way. ‘Na prava (to the
right)’… ‘Na leva (to the left)’… ‘Spasiba
(thank you)’… Alas, we run out of time and jump into our taxi for Khiva after
paying a quick visit to the Char Minor, the picturesque gate to a medressa that
no longer exists.
As green as the landscape was between Tashkent and Samarkand,
as barren and desert is the view between Bukhara and Khiva. Very few towns
along the way, a few gas extraction facilities and refineries and a spattering
of ‘in the middle of nowhere’ methane filling stations that look like something
out of a Wim Wenders or David Lynch movie. At one of these filling stations we
meet a group of travelling ladies. They are fascinated by the fact that 2
Western women have found their way to the middle of nowhere in Western
Uzbekistan. The road is full of pot holes
and not the safest. We are glad to get to Khiva...
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