Medressas, Mosques and Mausoleums

Samarkand Mosque
Originally uploaded by rtw2007.

Judging from our email inboxes, we are slightly concerned that people don’t think that we are enjoying ourselves after the last few postings. We are: it’s just that Central Asia isn’t the easiest place to travel in… the paperwork requirements and constant police presence around here get more than a little trying (and the bottom of the van falling out didn’t help!). But it is very exciting to be in Central Asia at last.

We have seen a real change over the last few days as we have re-entered a relatively (at least in Central Asian terms) touristy area. The centre of Uzbekistan is in the middle of the ancient Silk Route, so we have visited the old Islamic towns of Samarkand and Bukhara, which were key stops on that route. It is strange to suddenly meet lots of other travellers (mainly Europeans) after not seeing tourists for so long, and to hear about their journeys across Asia – by train; by bus; or by bike (hi to Andy and Jared cycling from Southport to Bangkok). We were the only ones with a campervan though!

Samarkand is the bustling second city of Uzbekistan – although strangely everyone here speaks Tajik, as well as the ubiquitous Russian. The highlight is the sublime Registan Square, where the immense, high, tiled doorways of three Medressas (Islamic schools) face off against each other. We managed to find a B&B located only a stones throw away from the square, where the owner allowed us to park and sleep in his courtyard. He also provided a huge dinner for only a dollar each. We have found the food here to be quite good – we are living on big, round local flat-breads and copious amounts of chai (which here is either black or green tea), plus some shashlik (meat skewers); plov (rice with vegetables and meat); and manty (dumplings filled with boiled meat and onions).

By slipping one of the local policemen in Samarkand a small ‘donation’, we were able to climb the highest minaret of one of the medressas at dawn on our second day in the town. This gave us a great view over the square, deserted of tourists at five in the morning. We watched the sunrise over the mountains that run around the horizon of the town. The other highlight of the city was Shahr-i-Zindah; a very impressive avenue of heavily decorated mausoleums. Each one is fronted by an impressive blue tiled and patterned archway that goes through to the cool room inside containing plain stone tombs. This is a serious pilgrim destination as it also contains the (reputed) tomb of one of the more active cousins of the Prophet Mohammed, who spread Islam around Central Asia.

From Samarkand it is a further 250km or so west to the old city of Bukhara. Unfortunately this drive involved following a river down to lower elevations which means even hotter temperatures. Even in the late evening, the temperature here is still in the high thirties, so we have had to bail out of sleeping in the van and have opted instead for some air conditioning so that we can get some sleep. Bukhara is smaller and more compact than Samarkand; with dusty old streets in the old town, which is fantastic for wandering around. There are countless more decorated medressas, along with some well restored mosques. Our favourite was the Kalon Mosque which stands at the base of the intricately decorated Kalon Minaret – a tower that we were told Genghis Khan thought was so beautiful that he let it stand. The Mosque has a wide open courtyard that is surrounded by repeated patterns of arched doorways and a knarled ancient tree in the centre. It is very quiet and peaceful – not for the first time we have been struck on how different things would be (ie very well known and overrun with tourists) if this area of the world were more accessible to the ‘Western’ world.

From here we will head back east towards Tajikistan and the Pamir Mountains. We are following a more southern route than we had originally planned in order to avoid a potentially difficult border crossing at Penjikent. So hopefully we should be able to update you from Dushanbe in a few days. We can’t add any more photos to the website at the moment (or even update the pages), as all of the internet connections for the past couple of weeks have been dog slow. We’ll add some more pics as soon as we find somewhere with a connection faster than snail’s pace….