I'm really enjoying this TR and am looking forward to the rest.

Forty years ago I visited Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva, and Urgench in Uzbekistan, and also Dushanbe in Tajikistan as part of a ridiculously cheap 14-day all-inclusive tour - which included Moscow and then-Leningrad - put on by Intourist, the Soviet internal travel agency. (Total cost including hotels, meals, flights from LGW and all internal flights was £280 per person. Not making that up.)

We were among the first tour groups allowed into these cities, part of an attempt by the USSR to stimulate tourism to Central Asia. Things were, shall we say, somewhat undeveloped at the time; for example we couldn't stay in Khiva - condemned to Urgench - rhymes with stench - instead. The entire population of Khiva had been relocated to a shanty town surrounding the city - temporary housing so the historic city could be "restored" and made more visitor-friendly.

Bukhara was no less fascinating than you found it, albeit less restored. Being it was Soviet days, we also had a constant patter of socialist propaganda coming from our guide, which in Bukhara focused largely on tales of the "cruel Emir" (or probably multiple cruel Emirs) who would toss enemies off the top of the big minaret, or - better - sentence them to be thrown into the "Bug Pit of Bukhara" - a hole full of scorpions and other nasty crawling things. Oh, things are so much better now, comrades...

Anyway, you might find this photo interesting, showing how much tile was missing, and also showing a couple of the minaret's residents.



Keep up the great work!