26 September 2024 (Thursday) - Samarkand Day Two

I had a rather good night’s sleep which was something of a result. And a (relatively) very good brekkie too.

We did our packing. Having moved the tea tray to the floor because there was no plug anywhere within reach of the kettle’s power cable, as we had a last-minute check of the room we discovered the kettle’s extension cable.

 

We took our cases to the hotel’s lobby. The coach took us to more mausoleums, then leaving us behind set off with the cases on the road back to Tashkent taking a seven hour journey. We stayed for another day in Samarkand.

The mausoleums were good if you like mausoleums. If you don’t then (quite frankly) you’ve no business being in Uzbekistan.

 

From the mausoleums we walked up to the market. We were warned to be careful of gypsies in the market. Apparently they hypnotize you and rob you. We took no chances and walked up the road where we found a rather good little café. They offered Big Macs and probably will continue to do so until the McDonalds corporation get wind of them. We had a chicken skewer each and a couple of glasses of pop, and change out of a fiver.

 

We all met up again after dinner and walked along an avenue of conker trees. Who would have thought they had conker trees in Samarkand? We went on to Registan Square where we admired the madrasahs and then had a little wander around. I found a stall selling raspberry milk shakes. before setting off for dinner. Yet another traditional Uzbek dinner. It has to be said that by this stage I would have killed for pie and chips.

 

And with dinner scoffed we aid goodbye to Samarkand. At the risk of seeming negative, Samarkand was something of a disappointment. When I was a lad, adventure comics painted Samarkand as a far-off land of mystery and intrigue where the likes of James Bond did derring-doo with Johnny Foreigner.

In reality Samarkand isn’t any different from any other city.

 

We went to the train station which was something of an adventure. Having been promised tickets on the Shark Train it turned out there weren’t any tickets available, so we took the standard train back to the first hotel in which we’d stayed in Tashkent.

We got to bed shortly after one o’clock.

 

I took a few photos today. I do that.

25 September 2024 (Wednesday) - Samarkand

 

I think in retrospect I’d done our hotel a disservice. Having decided that the place was “Guest House Paradiso” last night wasn’t helped by a dreadfully hot night and having to unplug an incredibly noisy fridge at three o’clock in the morning.

I wasn’t in the best of moods when I came down for brekkie. The waiter asked if I would like coffee. Yes please - I would. Would I like americano, espresso,  Montevideo, arseacheandchipso… I wanted a cup of coffee. A cup. With coffee in it. Was that so much to ask? Clearly it was, so I contented myself with some fruit juice and sulked.

My opinion of the hotel wasn’t helped when we got on the coach and were asked who was it who’d paid the previous night’s drinks bill on their Visa card; apparently it might have been anyone.

 

Again all twenty-seven of us piled onto the coach and after a few minutes we were at the observatory of Ulugh Beg. We did all the touristy things, then once we had a few minutes to ourselves I slipped off to find a geocache. Having solved the puzzle weeks ago and having being presented with a picture of the location I saw it was behind a wall. I hopped on to the wall and tried to look inconspicuous as I searched. A nearby market trader came over, smiled, reached over the wall and handed me the geocache.

I bought a T-shirt from him; I felt I owed him that much.

 

From here we went on to the tomb of St Daniel. According to Wikipedia the tomb is in Iran, but the Uzbeks would disagree. Apart from some religious chap howling, the place was rather interesting; it was a shame that we were supposed to believe that the Pope of the Greek Orthodox Church had resurrected a nearby tree, but there it is.

We piled back on to the coach and made our way to another museum of dull bits of broken pots where we had a video show. And once I’d slept through that we had a few minutes free time to get over-excited bout the dull bits of broken pots. AS no one was watching I nipped over the road for geocachical reasons.

 

Pausing only briefly to visit a winery (this is a Muslim country, you know!) we had a very good bit of dinner. Well… to be honest the dinner was just the same as pretty much every meal we’ve had here, but the location was rather good. A very posh ornate restaurant. Just how I always envisioned Samarkand as being.

And with dinner scoffed we went on to Amir Timur’s mausoleum, The Uzbeks get very over-excited about mausoleums; far too over-excited if you ask me.

 

With mausoleum visited we had some free time. We went for a little walk again guided by local geocaches. It was good to walk round seeing the locals. One of them stopped me and pointed at my water bottle and jabbered. I replied that I didn’t understand him. On hearing I was English he asked if I had whisky in my water bottle, and could he please have some.

Another success for my idiot magnet.

 

Our dinner was in a local restaurant. Apparently a rather posh local restaurant, but apart from the birthday cake served up for one of our number whose birthday it was, the food really wasn’t anything special.

We came back to the hotel. With twenty-three of our number off to bed, four of us had a little drinkie ion the bar. No gin and tonic, but a brandy and lemonade was every bit as good. Or would have been had there been any lemonade.

Sprite is an acceptable substitute… isn’t it?

 

I took a few photos of the day as I do.

24 September 2024 (Tuesday) - (Another) Road Trip

Brekkie was a bit iffy. To be honest the hotel in Bukhara has been far and away the worst food-wise. We finished our packing and seeing the expression on the face of the hotel porter I carried out suitcases downstairs myself.

We loaded up the coach and set off on another road trip.

Unlike the trip from Khiva, the roads onwards were rather pot-holed. After two hours we found some feral toilets. The public toilets in Uzbekistan are grim (to say the least), and every one has some local demanding three thousand soms before you can use the place. Personally I think eighteen pence to piss in a hole in the ground is overpriced, but what do I know? Today’s toilet had some local chap taking the money who got incredibly over-excited when he heard we were from the UK, and started telling everyone about how his is a Manchester United fan.

 

After another two hours we were at our lunch stop. Lunch was much the same as what we’ve come to expect – salad followed by soup followed by a strange main course followed by melon.

And then back on the coach again to Shahriabs.

 

At Shahriabs we had a good wander round the Amir Timur park. It would have been a better wander had it not been so hot. The coach told us that he external temperature was forty-one degrees. But taking a selfie at the statue and answering a couple of questions gave us the thumbs-up for an Earthcache.

 

Back to the coach and we drove off along fifty miles of what we were assured was the worst highway in Uzbekistan. The driver was slaloming around the pot holes rather impressively.

 

It was rather late by the time we finished our two hundred mile road trip and we got to the hotel in Samarkand. Perhaps I did the place an injustice, but from the outside the hotel did look like “Guest House Paradiso”.

Dinner wasn’t bad, but the beer was pricey, and the wi-fi isn’t good.

 

I took a few photos of today’s road trip.

23 September 2024 (Monday) - Bukhara Day Two

What with all of the stress of dog sitting issues I took a while to get to sleep last night. Sadly I was woken by some strange music playing form four until five in the morning.

Brekkie was something of a scrum this morning, and with brekkie scoffed we were soon all assembled in the hotel foyer and onto the coach. Fax did a head count to check everyone was together – it really was just like taking the cubs on an outing.

 

We took the coach out to what was billed as the “Indian Village” which was rather pretty and ornate. Fax gave us a lot of religious talk here.

There were peacocks all over the place and we found a dog. I don’t know if it was a stray or not. Up until now we’d only seen two dogs – both being walked after dark. We made quite a fuss of this dog; had it been back home the dog would have come home with us.

 

Back on the coach and on to the Summer Palace which had two sets of toilets. “Regular” and “Emergency”. Sadly an emergency toilet in Uzbekistan doesn’t cater for the sort of potty emergencies that I was having. Squatting over a hole in the ground three feet from my bum is no substitute for putting my arse into a proper bum-sink.

Passing over the frankly feral toilet arrangements the Summer Palace was also rather pretty.

 

Back on the coach again. Gettng on and off of a coach has been a feature of this trip. From here we went to a car park near which was one of the worst statues of Mickey Mouse that I’ve ever seen. I can only imagine that Mickey has picked up whatever it is that is upsetting my guts. It was a short walk to the oldest mausoleum in Bukhara (and that is up against some pretty serious competition).

We chatted with some market traders that Fax knew – they were selling some rather good stuff, and then went on to the plumbing museum where our guide got into an argument. He was telling us about some incident that happened locally during the Soviet era when a passing Russian tourist got rather angry. She didn’t claim that what Fax was saying was wrong. But she thought it wrong that our guide should give us any factual information, and said he should stick to telling us Uzbekian fairy tales.

Fax seemed rather miffed; we all reassured him. The chap had been wonderful. Giving us snippets of history from three thousand years ago up to the present day, he made no attempt to gloss over any of the unpleasant parts. History is history.

 

We went back to the hotel where there were proper toilets. It had been three day since I have dared to fart without the safety net of a chodbin, and I was glad I’d not risked it earlier.

 

We were left to our own devices for the afternoon. Yesterday a couple of our number had told us of where they’d lunched. We had ice creams there yesterday and today we had a rather good bit of scoff. Having gone out expecting the pace to be little more than shacks in a desert we were rather amazed to find i-pads being used as menus. A glass of rather good fruit juice each, a decent pizza and a very good cheesecake and for all that the bill ran to six figures it came in less than sixteen quid in UK money.

Once we’d finished feeding the kitten that had shamelessly joined us we walked round the market; I took a selfie with a sleeping cat. We had a pint by an ornamental lake and watched a stray dog getting a drink and having a bath.

 

We went back to the hotel where the hotel staff came up to our room. Having been constantly complaining about the lack of wi-fi in our room a chap came up, took our phones, pressed all the buttons that we’d pressed, pointed at the screen saying “internet not connected” and then typed something into his phone using Google Translate. He brandished his phone at me which said “it is fixed” and wandered off with a smile on his face.

 

This evening we were out for dinner again. Dinner was rather good (by the standards of the trip). As we ate so a band was playing traditional music whilst young girls modelled various clothes we might like to buy. The clothes were odd; at best they might have been used as pyjamas.

 

One of our number had a birthday today. The band struck up “Happy Birthday to You” and we had (proper) cake all round before all going back to the hotel.

Having heard good things about the rooftop bar we walked up to find it was something of a disappointment, so we had a gin and tonic in the foyer bar, This one tasted nothing like last night’s one.

 

As always I took quite a few photos.

22 September 2024 (Sunday) - Bukhara

Another bad night’s sleep – the bed was rock hard. We went down to brekkie and again I fancied a cup of coffee but it was not to be. Hotels in Uzbekistan don’t seem to have catering coffee machines. They have the sort of thing you have in your house which is all very well when you are making one cup of coffee. But taking over a minute to make one cup and a queue of dozens of people didn’t work for me.

As we breakfasted so one of our number, a particularly posh old lady, commented on my tattoos and asked if I’d been in the merchant navy.

 

We took a coach trip to the other side of town and walked back to the hotel slowly. As we walked we visited The Ark – a huge fort, and called in to mosques (shoes off – shoes on). Our guide Fax knew several market traders and they chatted with us in passable English, and we visited a traditional carpet shop who gave us tea whilst they gave us a mini-demonstration and talk.

As we walked Fax explained that people weren’t staring at us because we were English – they were staring at him. Being with Titan holidays (a subsidiary of Saga) our guide was holding up a huge “Titan” banner so we could see where he was. Apparently “Titan” is Uzbek for “Viagra”.

 

We went back to the hotel where we were left to our own devices for the afternoon. We sparked up the geocaching map to give us a guided tour and we found two caches, watched a cat jumping a stream and had three ice creams before going back to the hotel for an hour’s sleep.

 

There is a phrase about getting your knickers in a twist. Somehow or other “er indoors ^TM” got her bra in a knot. But with knot untangled we were on our way to a local restaurant where we had a little cooking masterclass and then the best meal of the trip so far. Plov isn’t bad really.

We walked back to the hotel. Despite it being late evening all the market stalls were still open.

We got back to the hotel where we had a quick gin and tonic, then fought with the Internet.

 

And having established a connection we swore at the news from home. The plan for the week was that Morgan and Bailey would stay with the first fruit of my loin for the first week, and then a friend from Dog Club would have them for the second. Having dropped the pups off, after half an hour “My Boy ^TM” got a phone call to come and collect them. Apparently Bailey had attacked their dog (seriously?) and their eight year old daughter was terrified. He’d gone back to see the eight-year-old playing with them, the husband of the family demanding that the dogs go, and the woman who’d offered to take them was nowhere to be seen.

The reason for the dogs going to a second place for the second week was that “My Boy ^TM” and Cheryl had things to do and were off on holiday themselves.

With no possibility of cutting our holiday short (there’s only two flights a week from Uzbekistan to the UK and we were four hundred miles from the airport) we frantically messaged all over the place, but Cheryl decided that it was too much stress for the pups and they cancelled their holiday, with a friend from Dog Club dog-sitting when Cheryl had a couple of appointments.

 

I took a few photos today… I do that.

21 September 2024 (Saturday) - Khiva to Bukhara

We knew what the itinerary for the trip would be so we can’t complain… but again we packed up our luggage and with packing packed we had brekkie. Earlier than yesterday there were a lot fewer people swarming about, and with brekkie scoffed we all piled on the coach and set off.

After half an hour we pulled up by the side of a field where one of our number ran off down a track to find a shrub to hide behind. The rest of us piled off the coach and Fax (the guide) gave us an impromptu talk on the cotton trade in Uzbekistan.

 

We then drove on to a proper toilet. Or what passes for a proper toilet in Uzbekistan. Me – I’d call it a rather gruesome hole in the ground, but what do I know?

From here we picked up a rather impressive modern motorway. On a par with anything here in the UK; if not better. Apparently the Chinese are paying for a motorway network in Uzbekistan in exchange for the rights to any gas they might find whilst prospecting along the way.

 

We stopped off at an Uzbek service station for lunch which wasn’t bad really… if you like raw tomatoes and cucumbers followed by potato and carrot soup.

Some of our number braved the holes in the ground into which you piss (I hesitate to use the term “toilet”); those who thought they would instead clench stayed inside and had some of the brandy Fax  was offering.

If nothing else it helped us sleep for the afternoon’s drive.

As Fax waxed loquacious about how men don’t need to wash but women will die if they don’t, and about gangrene of the knob we headed on to our next destination.

 

After two hundred and fifty miles we got to Bukhara at half past four. Once checked into the hotel we all met up for a little wander round the Jewish quarter of the town. We visited a synagogue and the rabbi there was very welcoming and gave us quite an interesting talk (which Fax translated for us).

 

Dinner was rather good… to be fair it wasn’t anything special but compared to what had gone before it was rather good. So far the food has been something of a disappointment. What the Uzbeks lack in quality they make up for in quantity. Five courses were a tad much.

 

We went back to the hotel for a quick drink. I had a gin and tonic which tasted almost, but not quite, entirely unlike gin and tonic. And we then fought with the hotel’s wi-fi. Despite two fifferent hotel wi0fis, nwither worked outside the hotel’s reception area.

 

I took a few photos today. But not that many – much of today had been spent sitting on a coach. And I’ve now got a stupendous guts ache.

20 September 2024 (Friday) - Khiva

As I do whenever I go on holiday I miss home. And I miss my dogs. I was particularly homesick this morning, but got up determined to make the most of the day.

I slept better than I had for the last few days and we went into breakfast shortly after eight o’clock… as did everyone else. The place was heaving. But the breakfast was better than we’d had in Tashkent and was streets ahead of the carrier bag we’d been given yesterday. It was only a shame the coffee machine wasn’t up to the job and was spilling the stuff all over the tablecloth.

 

We all assembled. With twenty-seven of us, there’s always something of an atmosphere of a school trip on every excursion. This morning we had a walking tour around the city. Seeing there was a reverse Wherigo cache nearby I sparked up my phone. With one of these your phone tells you how far you are from the geocache you are hunting, and when you get close enough it tells you the GPS co-ordinates and gives you a photo of the hide.

As we walked so the thing counted down and down, and we actually stopped about two yards from it. Seeing where it was I thought we’d come back later. It wasn’t far from the hotel, and it was far more interesting listening to our guide Fax. He really brings enthusiasm to his talks, and he is clearly very knowledgeable, but some of the things he says… Apparently William Shakespeare got a lot of his ideas from Uzbek legends, and you can keep milk cold by dropping a frog into a jug of the stuff.

 

We had a good walk round Khiva visiting all sorts of places of interest. Most of them were “madrasas” and involved taking shoes off on every visit. I wish I’d brought along a pair of slip-ons.

We popped back to the hotel if for no other reason to use the toilet. Uzbek toilets are on the feral side.

 

We were left to our own devices for the afternoon. We went back into the town to have a closer look at the bits we’d seen earlier and to go at our own pace. Our own pace was slow enough to get the only two geocaches within fifty miles.

We got pressies for people back home and I got an amazingly sexy jacket. I doubt I will ever wear it, but it is there should the occasion arise.

 

After a brief lay-down our group assembled and we walked into town for a meal which was accompanied by local entertainment. There was a lot of howling and some strange sort of play which looked interesting but I had no idea what it was all about. Something to do with a small boy stealing a pie I think?

 

After a quick pint in the bar with some of our group we went back to our rooms again feeling worn out.

I took a few photos today.