Busy in Bukhara

I see that it has been over a year since the end of my tour in Uzbekistan, and three months since I posted here. Ever since I got back from Japan in November I have been dealing with health problems, but it seems we may finally be closing in on a diagnosis, and a combination of cortisone shot and prescription medication this week has worked a lot better than the OTC stuff I have been taking. It’s still not clear when (or if) I’ll be able to travel again, but besides the end of the Uzbekistan tour I still have South Korea and Japan to cover.
September 16-20, 2016: Like Samarkand, Bukhara was an ancient oasis city, and it was certainly a welcome oasis to the tour group after our night in the desert and the long bus ride. Our hotel, the Amelia, was also an oasis, easily the best of the tour, with elaborately decorated rooms and a roof terrace. The location was good, too, just a short walk from the pool in the center of the old town. Fringed by trees and cafes backed by historic buildings, with arcaded markets close by, the pool was a magnet. Finding a cafe nearby that made proper espressos was a welcome bonus.

Since we had two full days in Bukhara I was not best pleased to have most of the organized sightseeing crammed into one. We started at 8:30 and didn’t finish until the group dinner at 7:30, aside from lunch, and a break for coffee which I suspect was not on the usual schedule. Although Bukhara did not benefit from the attention Timur lavished on Samarkand, it has a full complement of interesting buildings and a number of craftsmen’s shops. After the Timurid dynasty was defeated in 1512 (sending Babur, the founder of the Moghul empire in India, into exile) Bukhara once again became the Uzbek capital.

Bukhara is infamous in Silk Road history as the city where the Emir Nasrullah (the “Butcher”) consigned the British Captains Stoddart and Conolly to a “bug pit” dug behind the fortress known as the Ark before executing them. The Ark in one form or another dates to the founding of the city, although first documented in the seventh century. The sixteenth century version suffered badly in a fire in 1920 during a Bolshevik attack, but a fair amount remains. We started our sightseeing there, although my notes describe the museums housed in the old buildings as “boring”. I found the Ismael Samani Mausoleum, with its intricate brickwork, more interesting. Nearby, the Kalon Mosque, the second-largest in Central Asia and Bukhara’s Friday mosque, was overshadowed by its impressive minaret. At 120 feet high it even managed to impress Chenggis Khan, who decreed that it should be spared the general destruction.

Lunch was at yet another “house” restaurant, featuring a thick local soup which also showed up at dinner, and the traditional plov. I was able to get a better photograph of this plov. In the afternoon we visited the Summer Palace, where I found the museum much more interesting – but then it featured plenty of costumes and textiles, specifically the heavily embroidered silk or cotton Suzani style for which the area is noted. The palace itself was built to impress (and keep the emir out of the way) after the Russians took over and was a gaudy mish-mash of styles.

Q
We then went for a walk through the back streets, admiring some elaborate doors, before finishing a long day with some craft demonstrations, aka shopping ops, which I’ll save for the next post. Dinner featured a music and dance performance, this time with an adult dancer.