Silk Road, Khiva to Samarkand
Graptolite's Sailing Log
Martyn Pickup & Heike Richter
Sat 16 Apr 2011 16:47
in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
Here's a Trivial Pursuits question. What do the countries of Liechtenstein
and Uzbekistan have in common? Answer later**.
My surprise birthday trip this year is to Uzbekistan where the Former Soviet
Union meets the Islamic world. We flew from Berlin-Tegel to Istanbul and
then on to Tashkent arriving in the early hours of April 8th. We don't
normally do "tours", but in this place it is impossible to rent a car and
making local arrangements is a nightmare without Russian or Uzbek so we had
a driver and guide meet us as the airport. We had a look around the bazaars
of Tashkent and the next day flew to Urgench in the west of Uzbekistan near
the Turkmenistan border. A drive to a couple of mud-brick fortresses in the
Kyzylkum Dessert was followed by lunch in a yurt camp and then on to the
city of Khiva where we stayed in an old medrassa resplendent with blue tiled
minarets. On April 11th we had a nine-hour drive across the Kyzylkum Dessert
to Bukhara for further dose of minarets, mosques and mausoleums. These
buildings with their blue tiles and majolica are very fine structures but
natural disasters like earthquakes and Mongol Hordes mean that many of the
building have been extensively restored or rebuilt and are not always
entirely as old as claimed.
We had a couple of days exploring Bukhara. Like everywhere else there are
also shopping opportunities in Bukhara. Heike successfully haggled so hard
for one silk carpet that the police were very nearly called to throw her
out.
On the 14th we drove across the grassy steppe to another yurt camp. Our yurt
smelled like a wet camel. The actual smelly camels we took for a ride. There
were a lot of wild tortoises wandering around the camp but I couldn't
generate any enthusiasm with the camel herders for racing them like we used
to with hermit crabs or cane toads.
The morning of the 15th, my birthday, it was cold and wet and the yurt
smelled even worse so we abandoned a planned day of camel trekking and
headed off to Samarkand for a birthday dinner and lots of vodka.
M
**Liechtenstein and Uzbekistan are the only two countries in the world which
are "double landlocked". That is they have no coastline and are surrounded
entirely by countries that are themselves landlocked. Uzbekistan is
considered an unusual destination for yacht cruising people.