Days 18 & 19: Shakhrisabz

After 4 days in Samarkand I'm on the move again, on the prestigious Afrosiyab (named after a former fortress in the above). Acres of leg room and stewards' attendance, and a loop to the city of Qarshi to avoid a mountain range. The station at Shakhrisabz is strangely deserted; where is the usual posse of taxi drivers? I have to ask a policeman to call a taxi to my hotel. So laid back it's almost horizontal.

Shakhrisabz is known as Tamerlane's birthplace. His statue lords it in spacious parkland and is selfie-friendly. Behind this stands what remains of the Ak Serai (white palace), created to Tamerlane's orders around 1380. A later dynasty destroyed most of it but enough remains of the ruined arch to show it would have been 150 feet high. A distant sunset view shows it looking oddly like a modern tower block. Numerous other monuments dot the parkland but to create this required the demolition of a traditional bazaar. Plainly there are ambitions to make Shakrisabz a major tourist destination but it hasn't caught on much yet. Preserving the ancient is admirable but there is in my opinion too much destruction of the not-so-old and the city has a lacklustre air. Apart from the gardeners who are exchanging some banter and surely up for a photo, even if one of them may or may not have her fingers the wrong way round!Read more