Bukhara. Day 11

The full day in Bukhara and there is pretty much a routine to our non-transit days, which is a tour in the morning, lunch, and then relaxing from mid-afternoon. That's pretty much how our day went.

We were bussed a few kilometers west of the centre to a closed amusement park - there was a ferris wheel and various other rides that we threated through, into the adjacent park. This must be a common tourist route (these itineraries are always pretty standard) as a number of other buses arrived after us, sometimes English speaking but often German and Italian groups. There followed a number of monuments, memorials, museums. The history of this region is complicated; all of the steppes that make up the silk road were ruled by various nomadic tribes that form empires for a hundred years or so and are then replaced. Most of them we've never heard of, though some are famous. It is hard to get invested in monuments to people you've never heard of, so we wander and most of the history goes past us.

Ismail Samani Mausoleum

Bolo Hauz Mosque

Ark of Bukhara

The Ark was the most interesting site - a large fort or castle, you walk up a long enclosed ramp similar to a European castle and it contains several buildings now used as museums (maps and pictures of bearded men in woolly hats). Beyond that is a large area still only partly excavated.

After this our guide took pity on us and hired long golf buggys to take us the rest of the way back to the town centre. We went to a nearby house for lunch - traditional plov (rice, carrot, meat) and the owner explaining/trying to sell us his ornate embroidery. It was very nice but we seem to be in a group of people as cheap as we are.

The rest of the afternoon was at rest and then we went out in the evening to wander and have dinner. All the restaurants, at least in the tourist areas, serve the same things: salads (greek, beetroot, tomato and onion, eggplant, 1-2 others) a few soups and then main courses which revolve around shaslicks. Which is mostly fine, although tonight the waiter smiled and said 'no' to the first couple of orders, which we took to mean they didn't have those things. And his best description of a couple of others was 'local food'. But we survive.



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