Bukhara

We left Khiva in the early evening and had a 6 hour train to Bukhara. Immediately got befriended by half the train carriage who could speak English (or French) and were all keen to make friends: we were offered lots of bread and fruit and vodka, and according to the Uzbek man who had lived in Birmingham it would be bad luck if we didn't drink the bottle. He drank more than half, Chris a significant amount and Elli a more modest amount, which did at least mean that Elli was sober enough to realise when we arrived in Bukhara and to just about get Chris out of bed and onto the platform.

It was 1am and tricky to get a taxi, but found one, and got to the guesthouse and to bed only to be woken up by the host hammering the door down at 8am telling us that water was pouring through the door. No need since by that point we were standing in an inch of water which half our bags were sitting in as well while the toilet cistern continued to happily explode itself over the floor.

Needless to say we were not happy campers about this and dragged our hungover and sleep deprived selves across town to a hostel to camp there instead.

Since we knew we'd have a pretty full on week afterwards through Turkmenistan then west to the Caspian, we were planning on taking it easy, which we more or less did in between varying levels of accommodation chaos: absolutely everywhere in Bukhara smells overpoweringly of drains, which is a bit grim. We did meet a few nice people in the hostel from Germany and had some decent food, although nothing earth shattering.

Perhaps because this is our last stop in Uzbekistan and we have seen a LOT of Islamic architecture it does mean it is now more or less variations on a theme, so perhaps we would have been more awed if we hadn't already seen so much of it. Nonetheless it is objectively a very beautiful city, perhaps with a bit more of the small alleyways and streets than Samarkand and more of the amazing tiles than Khiva, and maybe more tourists too (more Europeans over 60s tour groups: it is a bit ridiculous how no other demographic has cottoned on to Uzbekistan).

Elli continued the theme of visiting bathhouses everywhere we find them and got scrubbed violently and left on a stone slab for an hour covered in very spicy ginger and coconut which was an almost psychedelic experience, especially in the medieval hammam...

By the end we were a bit bored, which we generally regard as being a good thing these days since every day is a different form of overstimulation and it means we're doing something right.Weiterlesen