May 19, 2012
Hotel: Hotel Sugd; Khujand, Tajikistan; $75.50/dbl
After the long day on the road yesterday it was nice to again have two nights in a place. There aren't a huge number of sights to see in Khujand itself. We started with an early breakfast at the hotel, it was decent enough with eggs, bread, cheese and watery dumplings. We caught a marshrutka (shared taxi) minibus to the Panjshanbe Bazaar (Thursday market) and the mosque/mausoleum of Sheikh Muslihiddin. The mosque was the first major example we had seen of Central Asian/Persian style with a tan brick minaret and curved domes. The area in front of the mosque was filled with pigeons and some children playing among them. The huge square between the mosque and the bazaar was filled with people this morning and very colorful. The women here seemed to dress more traditionally, we saw more headcoverings here than we had seen the whole trip so far. The bazaar itself is described by the Lonely Planet as Stalin meets 1001 Nights, a huge arched/domed entrance decorated in green/pink/blue tiles. People here were very friendly, waving at us and wanting their picture taken. Unibrows are fashionable in Tajikistan, many of the women here have them and will even use herbs to draw them in. The interior of the market is occupied by butchers and bread sellers. The bread here in Tajikistan was still the round style with raised edge.
Tajik som
Mausoleum of Sheikh Muslihiddin
Woman in market, Khujand
From the market we headed over to the Citadel, the original site of Alexander the Great's settlement. The walls have been recreated and the museum is located in the southeast corner. We wandered along the walls and met a group of girls that stopped to talk with us. Their English was excellent as well.. so far we had met more English speakers in Tajikistan than anywhere else. The Khujand area is the most prosperous area of Tajikistan, most of the agriculture is here since the remainder of the country is mostly mountainous. It was traditionally an Uzbek area but was added to Tajikistan when the Tajik SSR was created. We walked up to the river where there was a monument showing the different empires that had controlled Tajikistan.. Persian, Greek, Islam, etc. The museum was excellent, showing the history of the region. They had several models of sculpture from Persepolis (in Iran) in one of the downstairs rooms and a large map of the ancient world on the floor.
Citadel, Khujand
The mosque, bazaar and citadel were pretty much the only tourist sights in Khujand. The LP had mentioned the town of Istararavshan as being one of the best preserved old Tajik towns in the area, about an hour taxi ride away. We caught a taxi to the bus station and arranged a share taxi for 80 TJS ($16.82) to go the 75 kms. It was good to get out of Khujand and see some more of the countryside. We passed field after field, with people out working. Not sure what they were growing here though. The trip took about 75 minutes. Istararavshan is located in the thin neck of Tajikistan between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, cut off from the bulk of southern Tajikistan by mountain ranges. On the way into town we noticed a large hill that had once been the site of a Sogdian fortress that was destroyed by Alexander the Great. The taxi dropped us off near the Hazrat-i-Shah mosque. The mosque was a great example of Central Asian style, with an elaborately decorated portico, almost looking like a Chinese temple. Behind the mosque, the old town stretched out for many blocks. We started walking down some of the alleyways, lined with adobe buildings and the ubiquitous Soviet style plumbing. We hadn't wandered far before we attracted attention... local kids started coming up to us and following us. The word spread fast that we were the days entertainment.. at one point a dozen kids come running down one of the alleys towards us! Kids always love having their photo taken and seeing it on the digital camera. One of the older kids guides us through the maze of alleys to another mosque and medrassa (Abdullatif Sultan). One of the medrassa teachers invited us in for a few minutes for tea and fresh mulberries!
Road to Istararavshan
Istararavshan
Istararavshan
Istararavshan
The skies now looked like they were about to start pouring rain. From the mosque we wandered back through the scenic alleys to the main road and the bazaar to look for a place to eat and taxi back to Khujand. We couldn't find one of the places listed in the LP and the chaikhana was closed, but luckily it looked like the rain was going to miss the town. We eventually found a row of cheap kebab places ($0.50 each!) and had a quick snack before catching a taxi (60 TJS this time) back to Khujand. We walked the 1.5km from the bus station back into town before finding a restaurant right across from the Citadel. This turned out to be a great place, delicious food and still very reasonably priced. The restaurant was right next to the Grand Hotel. As we are sitting there eating dinner, a huge group (20+) of European tourists start pulling up in minivans... these were the first tourists we had seen the whole trip and were obviously on some package tour.
After dinner we headed to the Internet cafe again where I was finally able to upload my photos.
May 20, 2012
Hotel: Hotel Caravan Serail; Samarkand, Uzbekistan; $45/dbl
We had an early start today as it was going to be another long day on the road and a border crossing on the way to Samarkand. We caught a taxi right outside the hotel and told him we were going to the nothern bus station. When we got there and said we were going to the border, he offers to take us all the way for a reasonable amount, 100 TJS ($21.09) for 70 kms. A shared taxi would have been cheaper but we already had our bags in his car, and split 4 ways anyway it wouldn't have been much difference. The weather was gorgeously clear today, not too hot. We had been lucky with the weather so far this trip, no rain and May seems to be a good time to visit when the passes are clear but it's not boiling hot yet. The drive over to the border crossing at Oybek took a little over an hour, arriving around 9:15AM. I had gauged my cash usage perfectly again as my remaining som was just enough to cover the taxi fare.
The Tajik border crossing was easy.. but then we still had to cross over into Uzbekistan. Our last two border crossings had taken over an hour each, and this was no exception. This border was busier than the one crossing we had done going into Tajikistan, already there was a long line of locals waiting to cross. We get waived to the front of the line again but still end up having to wait for the guy in the stamp booth to show up... then fill out the forms again, then wait on 5 guys standing around doing nothing to do something. We waited... and waited... the natives started getting restless again as well as it had been nearly an hour and no one had been allowed through customs yet. Finally we do get our passports back and through around 11AM.. nearly 2 hours to cross the border this time!
There were a bunch of taxis waiting on the other side asking if we wanted to go to Tashkent. Tashkent was a bit out of the way to head to Samarkand so we asked if one would take us all the way there. At first they wanted $200 for the 300kms, eventually we talked them down to $120. $30 each wasn't bad for 300kms! At first we had to head north up towards Tashkent before turning west. The roads were in good shape for the first stretch, then degraded to potholes and gravel along one stretch where they are building a new road. We crossed the Syr-Darya river again at one point. This part of Uzbekistan seemed poorer and less prosperous than the Fergana valley had been. Finally we come across the new road from Tashkent. The original road cut straight across the flat plains and through a piece of Kazakstan, the new road has been constructed around Kazakhstan as the original road is now closed. We stopped at a huge CNG refueling station, probably 20 bays or more that look like carwash stalls.
Old Soviet bus
The road continued on past Jizzakh and through some low hills before descending to Samarkand. We had prebooked a hotel for two nights since the guesthouse I had wanted to stay at originally had been booked out already a month before! The taxi driver dropped us off at the hotel after we found it on our GPS. Thats one really nice thing about hotel sites now, some are starting to put the GPS coordinates of the hotel in the booking confirmation. I had downloaded offline maps of Central Asia to my Android phone and was able to look up the street our hotel was on. The hotel was fairly new, and a great location between the major sights in Samarkand. It had a lovely courtyard and comfortable rooms. The best part was the rooftop bar overlooking the old town and across to the blue domes of the Bibi Khanym mosque.
We finally changed some money into Uzbek som... $25 got us a huge stack of bills since the highest-valued Uzbek note (1000) is only worth about $0.40 at the black market rate. We felt rich! We headed out from the hotel towards the bazaar which had been renovated and was still undergoing renovation. In the past few years they have redone the center of Samarkand, bulldozing old neighborhoods and putting in pedestrian streets lined with tourist stores. Unfortunately they haven't kept the traditional style or anything.. it now looks like a strip mall in California. Samarkand was one of the major towns on the ancient Silk Road, its very name evokes the idea of exotic... the reality is sadly different as tourism has found its way here in a big way. We walked around the bazaar and to the Bibi Khanym mosque. It was already late afternoon so the lighting on the mosque wasn't the best.. it is better to see the grand facade early in the morning. It was still an amazing structure, blue turquoise dome with dark blue tiles and Arabic script. Most of the tilework in Samarkands's monuments is not original, many of the buildings had been destroyed in earthquakes and were only rebuilt in the past century.
$25 in Uzbek som.. largest bill is worth $0.40
View from hotel rooftop
Bibi Khanym mosque
As part of the renovations, huge walls have been put up around the old neighborhoods to keep them away from tourists view.. a bit of a shame. We found a door through one of the walls and wandered back into the old Jewish neighborhood. Samarkand and Bukhara had a sizeable Jewish population well into the 20th century but now most have moved to Israel. We wandered down the street which reminded us of Istararavshan until we came across the 19th century synagogue. It was closed though so we could not look inside. We wandered around, past an ancient mosque and out to the Registan square. We were hungry by this point though and would be visiting the Registan tomorrow, so we gave it a miss and caught a taxi over to a restaurant that the LP had recommended for good beer and food. We get there, and they are out of beer! So we walk a few blocks through the Navoi Park to an Italian place. This part of Samarkand has been sanitized as well, it is more a modern European city than an ancient outpost on the Silk Road.
Old synagogue, Samarkand
The restaurant was OK enough, though their interpretation of spaghetti bolognese was.. original. We got a bottle of wine to share with our meal, the vintage said April 2012.. a three-week old wine! The sun was setting so we raced over to the Gur-i-Amir mausoleum (where Timurlane is buried) which is supposed to look best at sunset. Unfortunately we were mere minutes too late. Nearby was a statue of Amir Timur.. which bore a strong resemblance to Sean Connery. After returning to the hotel we all went up on the rooftop bar to watch the waning light.