Bukhara, Uzbekistan

View of the courtyard and Mir-i-Arab Madrassah from Kalon Mosque

Travel Dates 25th-28th September 2019.

Click on any picture to see a larger version. 

Every Uzbek railway station I passed through was built during the Soviet era. They liked to build to impress but apparently the concept of escalators or elevators was not popular at the time. Later I had reason to regret that when I arrived in Almaty, Kazakhstan; the crossover between platforms was equivalent to walking up three storeys and down again with luggage.

The 90 minute train ride from Samarkand in the Afrosiyob train was comfortable and shattered some preconceptions. The land we passed through was green and obviously fertile with not a trace of desert in sight. On my next train journey I discovered the desert begins further west and north.

Some occupational health and safety improvements have not reached this far but that is no different to every country I have visited in Asia.

We passed by this interesting structure on the way into town from Bukhara Rail Station. My arrival was a bit chaotic; another of those glitches I try to plan to avoid but as Burns put it so well "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft a-gley.”

The hotel I chose and booked on Booking.com six months earlier looked excellent: good reviews, all I needed for a reasonable price. Unfortunately high gates at the entrance were firmly locked and no-one answered regardless of how hard I pounded on them. After some phone calls by my cab driver I was told it closed a month ago. A pity nobody bothered to tell me. The next couple of hot, dusty hours were spent finding another guest house on the web-site, then finding it was terrible when I got there, then walking door to door finding every hotel in the old town district appeared to be booked out until I found one with a cancellation. I have expressed my displeasure to Booking.com but not received a satisfactory reply yet. I was able to spend two nights at Hotel Basilic followed by one night at its sister hotel Kukaldosh. Both were excellent. As they should be at more than double the price of my original booking.

To be fair, considering the disaster for 600,000 tourists around the world at that moment caused by the Thomas Cook collapse my problems seemed downright trivial. So I calmed down with soup and a beer for lunch followed by a relaxed afternoon walk around the district.

I wandered the old town area near the hotel in the evening. There was a small canal by the pedestrian way to an area near the Kukaldosh Madrassah with a park and dining area. 

Past that was an area which appears to be an archaeological site showing remains of buildings but there was no activity on the site.

At night the area near Kukaldosh was a popular place for families.

I had a simple but excellent dinner of grilled trout, grilled vegetables and a local beer at the Ayvan restaurant, one of the rare occasions I used Tripadvisor to choose; even rarer to find it was as good as the reviews. It was difficult to find as it is actually part of a hotel down a side alley with no exterior signage. Despite the quality the bill came to less than AU$15. I booked and ate there happily for the following two nights.

The old town and a multitude of mosques, mausoleums, madrassahs and museums is very compact. Most are accessible via a pedestrian mall. I spent most of my first full day wandering from site to site. The Kalon Madrassah and the Mir-i Arab Madrassah were prominent but there were many smaller buildings. 

Mir-i-Madrassah

The story of Mir-i-Arab

Kalon Madrassah and Minaret

  

I relaxed for a while in this quiet courtyard behind the main tourist area.

On the second full day I took a cab from the old town to the Ark, the ancient fortress and palace of the Emirs. 

The entrance fee of 75000 soʻm included a personal English speaking guide. She was excellent and did not object to my slow pace. She looked like a teen schoolgirl; I was very surprised to find she is 22. Her knowledge and description of the rooms and exhibits made the tour very interesting. As I mentioned in the Samarkand report There have been many waves of invasion and rulers.

The Emir's Throne

This shows one of the periods of foreign rule; I am guessing this was during the Iranian period. 

There are signs the Bukhara Oasis has been inhabited since 3000 BCE; the original township appeared about 500 BCE as the Persian Empire replaced the Sogdian culture. Bukhara became a rich Silk Road trading city as successive conquerors came and went until the Khanate of Bukhara appeared after the Timurid era, eventually becoming the hereditary Emirate of Bukhara controlling a significant area of present Uzbekistan. 

The present country amalgamates several past kingdoms: the Khanates of Khorezm (west) and Bokhara (central) and later Qoqon (east, also known as Kokand). All became one eventually under the Soviets. When independence came in 1991 the last communist ruler became in effect an autocratic President for life.

I visited the bar opposite the Ark after my tour for a beer. When I asked about the location of the toilets I was directed to go "under the camels". 

The cab-driver I hailed to return to the old town decided to go by the shortest but most tortuous route through the pot-holed dirt and gravel streets. Interesting views away from tourist central and a free spinal massage.

Next: Khiva, the slave city.

Cheers, Alan