Bukhara

Bukhara, another mainstay city on the silk roads, is a compact place where you can walk almost everywhere - the opposite of Ashgabat. What's more, our boutique hotel is right in the city centre perfectly positioned for our tour.

Bukhara is one of the most complete examples of a medieval Islamic city. Much of the historic centre, which is still intact, has been listed as a World Heritage Site by Unesco (1993) and contains numerous fabulous buildings.

Our guide today and tomorrow is Mumin. Another person with seemingly encyclopaedia knowledge and more stamina than a Turkmenistani horse, it turned out!!

Anyway, Mumin started with a mildly convoluted history pertaining to the Ark Fortress which we would see in the afternoon. In the meantime I did pick up Bukhara is about 2,500 years old and its name means "lucky place".

The first stop is almost next door, the 16th century Kukaldosh Madrassa. It looked a carbon copy to the one we stayed at in Khiva, but not refurbished. It was Bukhara's largest madrassa that had 160 students. Today it holds craft shops.
Attached is an old mosque also converted into "shops". One of them was a fabric/clothing place where Mumin showed us how ancient people used to cope with the "output" from young babies, including props!! I think I will leave this description at this point 😲.

Next it's a short hop over the road to another Madrassa. The Nodir Devonbegi Madrassa, a 17th-century caravanserai converted into an Islamic college. Its remarkable animal-and-bird mosaics make it one of Bukhara's most distinctive madrassas. It was renovated in 1985 from photos taken in 1911 (before it was destroyed in revolutionary times in the early 1920s).

Just outside is the Khodja Nasreddin Statue. A clever ordinary man who outwits the rich and powerful through humour and common sense.

By now our heads were starting to spin slowly with all the data Mumin was bombarding us with. So here are just a few other things I remember from the morning session:
- Bukhara had a canal system in the 16th century and ponds to provide a water source. Some are restored today. The Soviets built a water tower in 1953 which today is a visitor lookout.
- There's a tiny Jewish quarter. There are only 150 Jews in Bukhara. There used to be many more but they fled to Israel. Bukhara has the only Jewish school in central Asia though which is thriving apparently.
- We went to a puppet making workshop which was fascinating. Today they are made from papier mache rather than the leather and porcelain of yesterday. The puppeteer gave us a nice demonstration of how the puppets are moving.
- We wandered through trading domes, looked at caravanserais and looked at more magnificent madrassas, mosques and the famous minaret.

Then we had lunch! To be honest all a bit too much as it was also very hot! And we still had the Ark fortress to go afterwards but by this time nobody except Mumin was paying too much attention. And everyone switched off when he started to take us through each object in the museum starting sometime 4th century BCE 😉

Anyhow, the Ark Fortress was Bukhara's royal citadel and seat of government for centuries. Archaeology suggests a fortress existed here as early as the 4th–3rd centuries BC, although it was repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt.
By the time of the Emirs of Bukhara, it was effectively a city within a city: around 3,000 people lived inside, with the Emir's palace, throne room, mosque, treasury, arsenal, government offices, workshops and accommodation for officials.
Much of it was destroyed in 1920, when the Red Army attacked Bukhara and the Ark was bombarded, bringing the Emirate to an end.

And by that point we were just about at the end - of our tether!! So we called a halt for the day and wandered back to the hotel. Unsurprisingly we had to stop for a beer at the first suitable watering hole 🤣🤣.

Bukhara has so much and is a fantastic place, better than Khiva in many ways. But it was tough going!

But after dinner we went back to the minaret and sampled the evening atmosphere and lights. We really like Bukhara.Read more