May 21, 2012
Hotel: Hotel Caravan Serail; Samarkand, Uzbekistan; $45/dbl
We had an early breakfast at 7:30 this morning but we were one of the last ones to arrive for breakfast. There was a large French tour group staying at our hotel and they were taking up most of the breakfast area. This whole trip I had been waking up at the crack of dawn, 4:30 or 5 AM.. something I never do at home. Breakfast was good but bready.. bread, pancakes and a scone. We set off for the Registan about 8AM and walked the 1km to the Registan complex. All the streets were lined with mulberry trees, and the berries would just fall to the sidewalk and ferment.. sometimes not the best odor. We were a little early to the Registan, supposedly it doesn't open until 9AM. We found a back gate that was open though and snuck in

The Registan is a complex of three medrassas and is the crown jewel of the monuments in Samarkand and create one of the most gorgeous buildings in the world. The medrassas were built in the 1400-1600s and are some of the oldest buildings remaining in Samarkand, any earlier structures were destroyed by the Mongols on their sweep through Central Asia. Two of the medrassas were well lit in the morning light. It is hard to describe just how beautiful these buildings are.. they are a riot of colorful tile in geometric designs, with huge facades with Persian-style arches. The easternmost medrassa, Sher Dor (Lion) departs from traditional Islamic art by depicting a pair of lions on the facade.







Registan

As we are wandering around the plaza, one of the guards comes up and asks if we have a ticket yet.. we don't of course, having bypassed the entrance. We go and buy a ticket near the front, 13000 som (~$5) which is a reasonable entrance fee, and includes using the camera. As we go back into the complex, the guard says the minaret is open for 30 more minutes, then 'closed for 2 weeks for renovations'. How convenient for us. We've heard that scam before.. they are trying to get you to go up the minaret, then ask for an insane tip. We passed on that and just spent the next hour or so wandering among the buildings. They have been restored too but they really did an amazing job. One of the buildings had a photo exhibit of how the Registan and Samarkand looked in the early 1900s before renovation.

We still saw very few tourists... it was early though and the tour buses hadn't arrived. Obviously they get a lot of tourists as there were souvenir stalls setup in all of the old medrassa student dorms. We planned to come back to the Registan in the afternoon when the lighting was better on the Sher Dor medressa. We next walked over to the Gur-i-Amir mausoleum. Scott needed to buy a plane ticket from Khiva to Tashkent, he was planning on splitting off from our group in Bukhara. We found a couple of travel agencies, but none of them actually sold plane tickets (at least not domestic ones)! The Gur-i-Amir mausoleum was also decorated in the same Timurid style of turquoise dome with blue tile facade. We walked around behind it to the Ak-Seray mausoleum which was behind the wall in an old neighborhood. It was 3000 UZS to get in but my friends declined and only I went in to have a look. It was elaborately restored inside, blue and gold painting on the dome on the inside. We wandered back to Gur-i-Amir and went in the back way there as well, avoiding paying. There were three tombs inside, Timurlane and his sons.


Gur-e-Amir mausoleum

We needed to buy our train tickets to Bukhara for tomorrow so next we hopped in a taxi to the train station, which was a few kms west of the center of town. The taxi driver kept trying to get us to go visit gold shops, go out to Shakhrisabz (birthplace of Tamerlane), etc. We did change more money with him though when we got to the train station and got a much better rate than the hotel had given us. The ticket office was a little chaotic but eventually we were able to buy our tickets for the next day departing at noon for 18000 UZS ($6.66). We walked across from the train station to a restaurant for lunch.. like others we had been to in Samarkand it was deserted. Where/when do people eat here? We all had hamburgers (we were taking a break from shashlik for a day or two), or at least their interpretation of a hamburger.


Samarkand train station

Next up was Shah-i-Zinda, an avenue of royal mausoleums not too far from Bibi Khanym mosque. The complex (5000 UZS admission) was amazingly gorgeous.. although restored recently it has some of the most intricate tilework we had seen in Central Asia. There are a dozen or so mausoleums lining the avenue running along the middle. The site supposedly is the burial place of a cousin of the Prophet Mohammed and we saw many local pilgrims here praying and making offerings. At the end of the complex, a path leads through the modern Muslim cemetery. The gravestones are a bit eerie as they have a photo of the deceased etched into them. We had seen similar cemeteries before in Armenia. The path continued around until we found a gate leading back out onto the main street. We walked back through the bazaar to the hotel.




Shah-i-Zinda

For dinner that night, we found a shashlik/kebab place just across from Registan square. It seemed more like old Samarkand, a nice courtyard, mulberry trees and a smiling cook fanning the coals of the grill. On the way to the restaurant, we had stopped by the Registan again to get afternoon views of Sher Dor. The guards this time were still offering to let tourists go up the minaret, when we told them they said it was going to be closed for two weeks, they said 'oh no, it is open'.


Shashlik chef