Sunday Spotlight: Bukhara

Bukhara streets

Hello! And welcome to the Sunday Spotlight. Each Sunday I aim to provide a post about somewhere in the world I’ve visited that is pretty darned awesome, in my opinion at least. I hope this Easter everyone is safe and enjoying a relaxing weekend with their families and friends. As for me, well, I am off to Mount Fuji today, finally getting up close and personal with this iconic landmark of Japan.

Main Square in Bukhara with lake.

But it’s too Uzbekistan I’m taking the blog to, and the Silk Road city of Bukhara, an ancient place with a middle eastern feel. It’s really the perfect place to appreciate Islamic Architecture and feel a part of history that many tourists worldwide have never considered and have never heard of. And Uzbekistan has loads of this sort of stuff, but the old quarter in Bukhara is quite self contained, great to roam the streets and alleyways, and is somewhat away from the bustle of the larger, more modern part of the city.

Getting there? Well the train from Tashkent, when I visited a couple of years back now, took around 7 hours, but they have since bought Talgo trains so the journey should be somewhat faster.

Sleep where? I slept at a great little guesthouse called Sarafon Bed and Breakfast. Uzbekistan has a great collection of Bed and Breakfasts, and this is no exception. Rooms are $25-30, comfortable, have bathroom and air conditioner, and the owners are friendly and eager to help. Good location in the old town.

Eating – Plenty of restaurants around, try the one in the main square Lyabi Hauz, I had a good meal with a couple of drinks for around $8.

Some of the things to see in the town include (from my ebook ‘Short Journeys: Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan’ –

Kalon Mosque

Kalon Mosque and Minaret from outside.

Wandering the streets is, on its own, a real highlight of visiting Bukhara. Dusty streets, high walls, many of them were pretty much deserted as I wandered around and then suddenly – Bang! A tour group. But I also passed Medressas and mosques in the amazing streets of Bukhara. The Kalon Mosque has a striking minaret which you see above the houses and walls in the area north east of Lyabi-Hauz. It’s kind of nestled between houses and such and it springs up on your out of nowhere.

Inside, the Kalon Mosque continues to impress with its great beauty. It features wondrous high arches and a blue dome, and isn’t quite as popular with the tourist as some of the other attractions in Bukhara. It’s big and mosaic work is exquisite. There are lots of corridors with arches in what are sort of cloisters, it’s also really peaceful. A real highlight of Bukhara.

The Ark

‘The Ark’ – with a name like that, I expected a big boat! Except of course that I’d researched already and knew it wasn’t. It’s actually a big citadel, reputedly the oldest part of Bukhara that was bombed by the Soviets in 1920. So what you see today is mostly rebuilt. But nevertheless, it’s very impressive.

From Lyabi-Hauz you walk past the Kalon Mosque and Minaret, through to the Registan area. The Registan is the square outside the Ark. You’ll see the Ark rising above the buildings as you close in. Then past a whole stretch of tourist shops selling artefacts and carpets and if you’re lucky postcards (postcards in Central Asia are rarer than hen’s teeth. Well, almost!).

Then there she is, rising out of the sand with huge turrets, a huge entrance, it’s almost a sand castle that got bigger than the kids had intended and will now stand forever. What’s inside? Well it starts with an impressive passageway past the opening gate opening up at the top with various buildings and so forth to explore.

Central inside the citadel is the Juma (means ‘Friday’) Mosque. It’s not massive, but it is interesting. It dates back to the 17^th century and inside are many different Korans. There are a couple of courtyards you’ll find once you start exploring. Everything may have basically been rebuilt, but it’s still quite striking and impressive. Be aware if you are there in summer as I was it will be very hot, and as in all of Bukhara there is very little shade.

If you explore the buildings and courtyards you will come across a couple of different museums. I always find the history of the last century or so more interesting than that of ancient times with broken pottery and the like, both are on show here. Perhaps what is best though is the view across Bukhara. Definitely worth the admission price (double if you have a camera) to get up there and look out across this amazing city that was once part of the Silk Road.

Bolo-Hauz Mosque

Pretty much opposite the Ark, you’ll find the Bolo-Hauz Mosque. It’s a really nice place inside, and worth a peak. If you’re lucky you won’t have too much company, although the tour groups kept coming in and out of there whilst I was there sadly. Its façade features thin wooden columns and a sort of lattice-worked wooden roof, then you enter and look up to a beautiful white dome. There are many arches, and the floor is covered with interesting carpets. It dates back to the early 18^th century and was specially built for the Emir of the time.

Outside there is something of a pond and a water tower between the mosque and the Ark. Apparently you can climb the water tower for great views. I didn’t, I hate heights and no-one else was climbing whilst I was there so decided it probably wouldn’t be a good idea.

If you’d like to learn more about Uzbekistan and my experiences there, check out my ebook available on Amazon Kindle – Short Journeys: Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.

Short Journeys India and a travelling lesson from Jaipur

I've been very keen to get the latest 'Short Journeys' up on Amazon for kindle, and finally it has arrived! 'Short Journeys: India' is a collection of tips, information and some experiences too - stories and so forth, from my three trips to India. It covers Delhi (the good, the bad and the ugly), a bit of Rajasthan - Jaipur, Udaipur and Pushkar, it covers Punjab - Chandigarh, Jalandhar (great story) and Amritsar with the amazing Golden Temple, and then it covers Agra, Varanasi, Kolkata, Darjeeling, Mumbai and Goa. It talks about the places I stayed and how I got about. So if it interests you, it's just $1.39 at the US Store, 85p at the UK store and 99 Euro cents at the European stores!

Short Journeys: India (US Amazon)
Short Journeys: India (UK Amazon)


The overall product page is here.

From the book, here's an experience I had in Jaipur where things got a little hairy for a while :

Jaipur and I

Jaipur was a bit of an awakening for me I guess as a backpacker. It all boils down to one strange day that could have ended pretty badly for me but fortunately didn’t. At the Ever Green there was a notice plastered on a wall in the restaurant advising people that if someone should approach them asking them to buy gems and sell them overseas for a small profit they should decline. I thought it was an interesting note as I scoffed down my breakfast, but my main thought was basically ‘I wonder what that’s about’.

Turned out I would soon discover. I had seen a bit of the town on my first day in Jaipur, and on my second I had a few things to do – principally to get an overnight train ticket to my next destination, which was Udaipur, and to send a parcel home.

Lake near Jaipur.

Getting the train ticket was easy enough, although it was my first real experience of standing in a queue to buy something in India. I stood back from the person in front of me, relieved that there was only one person in the line between the ticket window and myself, and from nowhere as I stepped forward after they were done, a guy basically ran in and pushed in when I was within half a step on the window!

I kid ye not – this does happen in India. Regularly. You’ll have to decide how you want to deal with it but when there are many people in a line it is just a huge group of people jostling like a crowd. It’s not just India, but the sub-continent is where it happens most and with the biggest numbers (although places in China are pretty bad too). It’s a cultural thing really, perhaps a strange defence of the behaviour, but with so many people it becomes a case of ‘if I don’t push in, everyone else will and I will never get my ticket’. And that’s the long and short of it. Play the game or don’t, it’s up to you. Just be aware that getting angry and self-righteous never EVER won a fight in India.

So to be honest at this point I was just ‘Ummm excuse me, but I was here first and you appear to, probably by accident not realising someone was here and all, just jumped in front and….’ or something to that effect. Or lack of. Yes, pretty poor form but I was still the small fish in the big pond that is India and today I would have pushed and glared. When I have stood up for myself, I seem to have been able to out stare them and win the day.

Once I had my ticket in the sleeper I headed to the nearby post office to ready my parcel and send it home to Australia. Well, it was another chaotic scene in the post office with crowds of people clamouring to get to the counter and I probably wasn’t feeling all too keen to dive in. When I got the customs form I had to take it away and write the details and then I would have to fight my way back to the front to actually have the thing posted.

So I took the parcel away to a bench where I started to fill out all the information. It wasn’t huge but was a little bulky. A guy came up to me and offered to help, and I didn’t have the smarts at this stage to say ‘I’m right thanks’. He helped me get a really professional job done on the parcel, he took me to a counter where the parcel was sewn into a hessian bag, and then was sealed with wax. The customs form had to go to one window to be approved and then to another to post. He managed to get it done very quickly as if my parcel was top priority.

I was very thankful to be honest and in the end the parcel made it to Australia with no issues. He then invited me to his house for a something to eat and I agreed and hopped on a rickshaw. I was taken to a pretty nice house maybe fifteen minutes or so from the station. I sat down outside in a courtyard area and chatted away to my new friend and his pal about – well me mostly. They gave me a bottle of Coke and I drank.

Somehow the conversation turned to gems. They were mining gems. I had unwittingly told them the next destination for me after India would be Europe. They started saying that I could buy some gems from them at a very low price and then sell them when I got to Europe and make a lot of money. Uh-oh… THAT was what the sign at the hotel was going on about! So now I had to extricate myself from the situation as best I could.

They were quite insistent and turned a little aggressive. They were offering me an easy way to make money so what was wrong with me not wanting to take a swag of gems with me to Europe to sell? I just kept saying ‘no’ but was starting to worry they weren’t going to let me go to be honest! Eventually, after more than half an hour of insisting, they let me go without any gems. Although they asked me to pay for the Coke!

Rickshaw speeding along.

They signalled a rickshaw and it took me back to the station area. I had probably made up a story about meeting someone there which is why they let me go. I didn’t want to tell them which hotel I was staying in as they would know where to find me and I suspect would have turned up at some point to at the very least pester me. I got off the rickshaw and paid and my ‘friend’ got off too. I then went the longest way possible back to the Ever Green to make sure I wasn’t followed.

And so I began to learn about the difficulties travellers can face occasionally in India. You can trust SO many people India, really. I dropped my wallet at Delhi station and someone picked it up and ran after me to give it back. But there are those who will prey on travellers if you let them. You can sense it usually – they are too friendly, they make up unlikely stories, they ask you to take gems with you for a price. Odds are anyone out for some sort of scam will speak excellent English and be somewhat slimy and overtly polite in their approach. Use your instincts, you should be fine!