2018, Central Asia

We take a train for a two hour trip that will lead us fro Bukhara to Samarkand. This time we’re in a first class cabin of an old train. Our wagon only has first class cabins for two, so we’re all alone. Instead of seats, we have beds, so we get some sleep. We arrive in Samarkand at 7pm and take a cab to our hotel, more precisely a guesthouse not very far from the city center. Our hosts look nice, and the guesthouse is simple but comfortable enough for spending one night. Only problem: no Internet. The guy gives us the password for his WiFi, but the network simply doesn’t work. We’ll do without.

We go out for a walk in the evening and have the greatest surprise to discover a light show projected of the facades of the Registan complex: different lights and images tell the history of the main civilizations of the world and particularly those who influenced the silk road. A delegation of Japanese tourists have been specially welcomed with a VIP location, while the rest (including us) watched the spectacle some meters behind. In the end, the police opened the ways for everyone to come closer to the buildings, which are simply amazing, full of colors and incredible details of rich Arabic art.

It’s already late evening, but we have the time to taste (or so we can say) yet another dinner cooked in the microwave oven: we guess it’s a must for touristic cities - and we’re still not used to it!

The morning after, it’s time to visit the older part of Samarkand, composed of the Bibi Khanum mausoleum and mosque, the biggest of all Central Asia. After wars and earthquakes, the mosque is basically rebuilt from the ground up, with some ancient frescoes surviving - at least before ulterior renovations are finished. Despite the extreme overhaul the monument (as most Uzbekistan monuments) has gone through, this gigantic building acts very much as a place of pilgrimage for women across Central Asia. Many of them come praying here, venerating one of the main female icons of the Islamic world.

A few hundred meters away, the Mosque dedicated to the prophet Eliah is now basically dedicated to the honor of the late president of Uzbekistan, Karimov, passed away last year and buried in this place. On top of the hill, we visit the local “Père Lachaise”, with Uzbek personalities deserving a large marble portrait on their gravestones. On the same hill, one of the highlights of our day in Samarkand is the Necropolis of the Timurids, also hosting the burial place of the much venerated cousin of the prophet Muhammad, Kusam Ibn Abbas. As in the Registan, the richness of the ceramics, the cupolas nand of some of the internal decorations is striking.

It’s the very last day of our journey: a bit of blues and the heat are taking a toll on us. We get back to our hotel to finish packing before our flight home tonight and also to take a nap.

At 7 PM we’re ready to go back to the city and visit the simple mausoleum of Ruhabad, mentor of Tamerlane. Here, an old man tries to provide us with some explanations about the place in an extremely basic English. We’re about to wholeheartedly thank him when he shows a price list for his services. We find ourselves negotiating once again, with a reduction of more than 50% on the requested amount!

The mausoleum of Tamerlane, Uzbekistan’s greatest hero (after Karimov, apparently) and true icon of the whole Central Asia, sits just behind. We pay the ticket for entering and a few steps later a smiling guide welcomes us and asks if we’d like to have a guided visit of the place, paying of course. The requested price is, apparently, offer-based (“it’s up to you, you pay what you want”). Unsurprisingly, when we propose ours, the guide promptly asks for the double, which we refuse. And here goes the last (failed) negotiation of our trip: Samarkand’s not a land for hard bargainers.

The burial place features the richest decoration we’ve found since the beginning of our trip: ceramics painted in blue and gold cover the internal walls and the 30m cupola. After visiting, we get something to eat in a restaurant, again not very good (we had no luck eating in Samarkand), and head to the hotel to grab our stuff and wait for the taxi that will lead us to the airport.

We wake up early to check out from the hotel, not without taking our breakfast, of course. Our host and his family are already preparing the meal and other tourists are also there to eat before leaving.

We take a cab and head to Tashkent’s train station, where we take and old train to Bukhara. This time we have a first class ticket, but as the train is old, it feels more like third class. Anyways, it’s interesting to see how things work: in first class, you travel in a cabin for three people. All other cabins host 4 or more people. A guy crosses the train from time to time selling “hot doggy” and bread to whom it might interest. Again, there is a cabin right beside the entrance of the car with a samovar if anyone needs hot water for tea, noodles or anything else. The trip lasts 5 hours, which is quite long. We travel with another guy in the cabin, but cannot talk to him, as he doesn’t seem to speak English. Honestly, this trip is much less interesting than the trip from Andijan to Tashkent: the landscape isn’t as beautiful and we get a little bored. But that’s ok. We arrive to Bukhara at the end of the day, leave our stuff at the hotel and go for a walk into the city. A large number of madrasas, mosques and other monuments are waiting for us.

We go to the direction of the city center and visit the mausoleum of Ismail Samani, founder of the Samanide dynasty in the IX Century. Located inside the largest park of the city, the mausoleum has been discovered in the beginning of the XX Century and is quite well conserved, even too much: as many things in Bukhara, we believe most of the bricks have been replaced by new material, which doesn’t compromise the beauty of the monument.

What is striking here is that, while in Europe the so-called medieval times, culture and knowledge were struggling to find their place at the courts of Francs, Goths and other Germanic reigns, thousands of kilometers away, this region of the World was flourishing with wonderful works of art.

A few hundreds meters away, the Bolo-Khauz Mosque surprises us for its decorated wooden roof, 12 meter tall and its slim columns sustaining its weight. The whole building is supposed to convey the feeling of lightness and etherealness, in an attempt of bringing the complex, and our souls, towards more spiritual and religious dimensions. Funnily enough, these are the same very concepts that motivated the architectural choices of the earliest Gothic churches.

As we approach the very center of the city, the artisan shops become more and more frequent, even too much. Every 20 meters, sellers invite us to visit their boutiques, most of them located inside old mosques and madrasas. In Bukhara, among the dozens of madrasas, only two of them have kept their original function: the other ones have been converted to artisans atelier and shops. It looks definitely weird to see an ancient mosque being covered in carpets, bags, and clothes; still, this conveys to these shops a mystique allure, rare to find in other parts of Central Asia.

Goods being sold in shops are, in Bukhara, quite authentic: of course, cheap t-shirts or replicas are in almost every shop. But local handicraft is as original as we’ve rarely seen before: carpets, suzani (embroidery work), fabrics, clothes and other steelwork are made on site or in the proximity of the city with some artisans often working in the backsides of their respective shops. It is very interesting to admire their work, but we’re a little disappointed to find out that as tourists we pay much more than the regular prices. When we ask for the price of some articles, we often see sellers think a little before giving us prices in dollars or even euros. Prices are never written on the articles, so the sellers are free to make up their prices according to the clients (in general, Ouzbeks and foreign tourists - which pay much more).

The ancient city is heavily restored, and the most beautiful complexes, such as Poy Kalon, the Khodzha Karim monastery, the Nadir Devon Begi madrasa and the Kukeldash madrasa, have undergone a heavy face lifting during the years. Recent restorations, made with cheap materials, are struggling to bear with the extreme weather of the region, with summers hitting 50° celsius and winter down to -25°. Cracks or missing tiles are the most evident signs of interventions made more to please the eye of the tourist than to the well-being of the building itself.

That said, Bukhara is nothing short of spectacular, especially in this time of the year: the cupolas of the mosques, the water of the city pools, the blue of the ceramics, the shadows of the ancient bazaars passages give us the impression of living outside of time. Also, the whole town is pleasantly peaceful during the day and, albeit the number of western visitors, this never translates to the hordes of uncivilized cheap mass tourists that you can find in Italian or French cities.

During our visit, we notice Bukhara doesn’t have too many restaurants, and the ones we’ve found in the city center are a kind of a tourist trap: expensive and not very good. In the first evening, we try a little restaurant that looks like a local traditional cuisine with the menu presenting local dishes. So we order some dumplings but, while waiting, we hear the little bell sound of a microwave oven. We look at each other and simply can’t believe it. Needless to say, the dumplings are awful. Simone also eats a salad that will later make him feel a little sick. We swear to leave a bad review on Google or any other platform. But we’ll do this later.

The day after, we find another restaurant, close to the city center but outside of it. It looks like a place for tourists, but the location looks very nice indeed and we decide to try it. This is the best restaurant in Bukhara, according to us: good local food, great local bread, nice service and good atmosphere. We even repeat the experience before leaving the city.

In our last morning in Bukhara, we get a guided tour to revisit the places we’ve seen so we can have more information. Our guide speaks very good French and takes us to the major monuments of the city, such as madrasas and mosques, as well as to the shops spread all around. She explains a little bit of the process of making the silk threads used in embroidery and in the creation of the most beautiful fabrics. As a confirmation of the craftsmanship of the region, such process is still made around Bukhara.

We leave our guide at around 12, not before her telling us to convince other tourists to visit Uzbekistan, because “Europeans are afraid because we are close to Afghanistan but, as you see, here it is safe and people are friendly”. Indeed, we’ve been feeling very safe here and in Kyrgyzstan.

Our trip is now coming to an end, but we have one more stop to do: Samarkand.

Today we cross the Kyrgyz border to Uzbekistan. To avoid any possible delay, we leave early. Probably too early.

At the border, on a dusty street ruined by the passage of heavy trucks, nearly a hundred of Kyrgyzs are waiting to be admitted to Uzbekistan. As soon as they see us, they make us go in front of the queue, passing in front of locals, no matter the age. In fact we are surprised by the number of elderly people in queue at the border. 15 minutes later, we are already in Uzbekistan: our bagages haven’t been checked once and we’re welcomed by officials with a “Welcome to Uzbekistan”.

In an effort to make Uzbekistan more and more visited by foreign tourists, border controls have been greatly simplified during the last years; in addition, since our departure, Visa requests can be made online and for a fraction of the price we paid when we did ours.

At the border, a small and quite old bus drives directly to the closest train station in Andizhan, where we’re supposed to take our train to Tachkent. The vehicle is overcrowded; still, Uzbeks insist for leaving their seats to us, which we cannot accept. For some reason, tourists are extremely welcomed here: people offer their help spontaneously, or allow us to jump the queues at office desks. With some exceptions, of course, which is totally understandable. We almost feel guilty having so much privileges!

The ride costs us 2500 Soums per person, or around 30 cents: the inflation in Uzbekistan is at the maximum nowadays, which should not come as a surprise, as the country is basically self-sufficient and is a major exporter to a wide range of goods, from cars to home appliances, from fruits to oil.

We cannot but notice a pronounced modernization undergoing in the last years: train stations are brand new - some of them even look achieved earlier this very year. Cars circulating are simple but very recent too: most of them locally-produced Chevrolets.

Police is heavily dispatched in public places, and train stations are as controlled as airports are in Europe. But controls don’t go in the way of tourists as they do in Xinjiang. Officials are definitely better trained and friendly, some of them even able to interact with basic notions of English.

The Cyrillic alphabet, omnipresent in Kyrgyzstan, is here progressively being replaced by Latin’s, which favors the intelligibility of simple words and city names.

The laicity, imposed by the government, a well-disguised dictatorship according to unofficial sources, leaves local Muslims able to wear religious symbols (such as headscarves, unlike Xinjiang), along with much more uncovering outfits, often chosen by the richer Russian ethnic minorities living in the main cities.

The trip in the train, a second class which can indeed compete with, if not surpass, European trains in comfort, takes around 5 hours. Landscapes in the sunset have a unique beauty: red rocky hills often reveal green inhabited oasis spurring from the valleys or small rivers whose waters serve as refreshment for sheeps and goats.

In Tashkent, our hotel’s tenant speak a perfect English and reserves our taxi for the next morning.

It’s already late evening: we have just a couple hours to have a walk in the modern, but uninteresting, capital of Uzbekistan, eat a very good (and fairly expensive) ice cream, and do some food shopping at a very European-looking supermarket open til late.

We haven’t felt as much as in the Western World as here in Tashkent. But there’s no time to think about it: tomorrow’s time to leave to Bukhara.

We wake up at 9 AM in a room at a local guesthouse, held by an English-speaking Uzbek woman who rents rooms in the three houses she owns in Och. We meet lots of European tourists and backpackers including a Belgian guy, a French couple and a group of Spanish bikers.

Our plans for today is to discover Och, the second city of Kyrgyzstan by population, and visit the Suleiman mountain and the city center.

Before reaching the mountain, we look for a bank to change our Chinese Yuans: not an easy task, since it’s Saturday and most offices are closed. We manage using our card at an ATM to withdraw 30€ in Kyrgyz Soms. Our first investment in Och is a breakfast: hot tea, cold tea, Bakhlava and biscuits, all of that for a little more than 1€!

The Suleiman mountain is a sacred place for Muslims as it’s the supposed place where the prophet Suleiman met God, according to the tradition. The Mountain is a rocky hill just in the middle of the city and a stairway leads to the top, where a small temple and a museum are installed. It’s a very pleasant place with an outstanding view over Och and the Kyrgyz mountains - and has been recently added to the UNESCO World Heritage sites.

After climbing, we get to the top of the mountain and have a quick chat with some locals, who ask us where we come from and insist for taking some photos with us. We are pretty surprised to see so many old people on the top of the mountain: it’s quite a hard stairway to the top, especially under the hot sun of midday.

We go down by another pathway, leading to the sacred caves of Suleiman and to the Mosque at the bottom of the mountain. The Mosque is closed, so we only can see its outside, which is quite beautiful.

It’s time to hit the local Bazar, a stripped down version of Kashgar’s market, but definitely more authentic: along the alleys, seamstresses and sellers of traditional outfits are very appreciated by local customers: as in Kashgar, clients are most of all ladies, often accompanied by their daughters and sons.

It’s time to get back to the guesthouse, before having dinner at an outdoor restaurant. The weather is perfect to eat outside and the place, serving meat cooked on a barbecue, is the best way to leave us a great memory of our short stay in Och.

But, once again, it’s already time to move on.

So, we’re finally in the Kyrgyzstan part of Irkeshtam. We walk some meters with all our luggage to get controlled by Kyrgyz officers. After that, the Italian group gets in a van, but the driver doesn’t want to take us, although there is place available. The Kyrgyz officers call us a cab, but the price it proposes is ridiculous: 100$ to get us to Sary Tash, barely 50km away. We refuse and keep on walking, considering the idea of hitchiking until Och, the city where we planned to spend the night. We can count on 2 more people to share the taxi with: Wei and Simone, who are still with us since the first checkpoint.

A group of 4/5 kyrgyz, unofficial cab drivers, seeing us walking, stop us but the price they ask is still way too high, at least for the standards of the place. They first ask us 6000 soms, or around 90€, which is 22€ per person. For a 4 hour trip, that’s not too bad, but in Central Asia, it’s a major sum and we feel we’re being treated as tourists. It’s a long game: we say no to the guys, they drive away, then come back and propose a cheaper price.

At some moment, a white minivan stops by and proposes a way cheaper price: 3000 soms. We’re about to accept, when the first group of drivers approaches once more and forces the minivan not to accept the deal.

We then see two trucks coming from the border and decide to ask them to take us to the closest city, if not to Och. Our two new friends take the first truck and we take the other one, but some meters later another control is waiting for us and we have to quit our ride. After the passport control, we’re reunited with our travel companions and - of course - with the group of Kyrgyz drivers! The negociations restart and, upset for the missed deal with the minivan, we convince them to drop to 2000 soms (about 30 euros, or 7,5 euros/ person), which is the best deal we can possible achieve.

Despite the initial nervousness, we have to reconsider our positions: the car, a Hyundai from the end of the 90s imported from Japan, with the wheel on the right hand side, is extremely clean; the guy drives very well, without speeding and leaving us the time to take photos of the breath-taking panorama around us. We cannot talk to him, as he understands very little English, and our Russian vocabulary is very limited. The road is in very good conditions: we speculate it has been financed by the Chinese government, in order to facilitate trade of Chinese goods in the region.

At some point we arrive in Sary Tash, the first village on the road to Osh, after one hour driving. It’s a very poor village, and we realize that’s where our driver lives. Albert, our driver, stops there, in front of his home, a tiny humble little house, with almost nothing inside. A little boy comes out, our driver gets in and we wait. Other two little boys show up, and then a young woman with a baby in her arms. This is our driver’s family. We will later find out he’s only 23 years old and has already 5 children. It looks like a beautiful family, but their living conditions almost make us feel guilty for having bargained for such a low price.

From the road, every now and then, we can see the beautiful yurts of the local nomads, living of herding with their respective families, at times wearing their traditional costumes.

During our journey to Och, we stop along the road to have a hot meal and invite Albert to have dinner with us. He shows us a good local restaurant and we eat there. A marriage party is undergoing in the place, with young couples well dressed for the occasion, dancing on Kyrgyz pop music. We are in the middle of nowhere, and we are struck by the kindness of the locals, and moved by their genuine and simple happiness. If today we were home, and asked for a meal in a restaurant, in our walking shoes and after a 14-hour journey, we would have a hard time finding a place accepting us. Not here: we’re asked where we come from and we’re even invited dancing with the group - which, at least for decency, we cannot accept!

We order a soup with dumplings which is simply delicious. The bread is also great! We end up paying 132 som per person, which includes the share for Albert: it’s not even 2€.

We eat and take back the route to Och. An hour and a half later, we are at our hotel, safe and sound, not before leaving a well deserved tip to Albert. It’s time to leave our Italian and Chinese friends and to enter our room. It’s been an awesome experience, across wonderful routes and landscapes. In a way, we feel blessed for having been able to get such an intense experience of a World that’s barely known outside this remote area of the globe. Now, we can finally get some sleep.