The traditional courtyard of Zuxro’s guesthouse

My second day in Bukhara did not start well. After a leisurely and late breakfast Zuxro told me that it was already 35 degrees and wasn’t even 9 o’clock yet!

I had two options – try to do all my sightseeing before the planet burst into flames at lunchtime or take advantage of the suprisingly good aircon unit in my room. I chose the latter. And so did everybody else at the guest house. It seemed that the endless days of 40+ degree heat in southern Uzbekistan was sapping everyone’s energy.

Throughout the day, the courtyard of Zuxro’s guesthouse became the defacto lounge room as we all emerged at various times from our little icy-cool redoubts to try to pass the time in some constructive manner until the late afternoon when the temperature became bearable again.

So I took the opportunity to chat with my fellow guests. There were no other motorcyclists but there quite a few overland bicyclists. How they had survived riding 100-150km, day after day, in that heat is beyond me.

With nothing better to do with my time I decided that I should sort through the many hundreds of photos I had taken and cull the garbage and try to make something worthwhile from the rest. So below is a selection of photos of Uzbekistan that didn’t make it into the blog so far.

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After the sensory overload of the Registan the rest of Samarkand seemed a bit of an anticlimax. But there were a number of historically significant sights to I wanted to see. Top of the list was Gur-e Amir mausoleum. It was originally intended for Timur’s favourite grandson and heir-apparent, Muhammad Sultan who died unexpectedly. After Timur’s death in battle he was also buried here. The mausoleum eventually became the final resting place for the entire Timurid dynasty including Ulugh Beg who finished the  construction.

Gur-e Amir mausoleum: more important historically than the Registan as it is the final resting place of Timur.

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As I rode out of the driveway of the Shakhrizabs Hotel, it suddenly dawned on me that today I was about to fulfil a long-held dream – a dream that began with a chance literary encounter.

The road to Samarkand – maybe not golden or silent anymore but a rare moment of solitude and time to reflect on a dream realised.

More years ago than I care to remember, I had read a novel that contained a short excerpt of a poem that captured my imagination for some reason. To this day I don’t remember the name of the novel but I eventually tracked down the poem. (This was in the pre-Google days, pre-computer days in fact, when you actually had to go to a library and search through the author index card system for a Dewey Decimal call number and then physically search the shelves for the elusive text).  The poem was  “The Golden Journey to Samarkand” by James Flecker (1913). A poet of some merit, Flecker served in the British Diplomatic Service in Istanbul and Beirut where he developed a love of the exotic world of Asia – far removed from his  days at Oxford and Cambridge. He died at the very young age of 30 from tuberculosis. There is no record that he ever visited Samarkand.

After reading Flecker’s poem in full I dreamed that, one day, I too would travel on the golden road to Samarkand. And now, several decades later, that day had finally arrived.

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Denov was a pleasant little town but, for me, it was just a hotel stop on the way to one of my major goals in Uzbekistan, the ancient city of Samarkand.

But Samarkand was still a long way off yet.

Up until a few years ago the main route to Samarkand from Dushanbe went directly north through the Anzob Tunnel in the Fan Mountains to Ayni, then west to Penjikent, the border and on to Samarkand. However some years ago this border was closed – apparently due to massive landslides in the area obliterating the road. Consequently, all vehicles now took the route directly west from Dushanbe to  Denov, then detoured south to Boysun and finally northwest to Guzar. From Guzar the road swung north back up to Shakhrizabs. Unfortunately this route is many hundreds of kilometres longer than the original Penjikent route.

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Crossing into Uzbekistan was like a breath of fresh air. The miasma that had overcome me in Dushanbe had lifted completely. Even though the ride to the border was only 70km, it was great just to be on the move again.

The Uzbek border post wasn’t much to look at but it was like a breath of fresh air to me.

The Uzbek border guards must have been bored when I arrived from Tajikistan because all five of them gave up on the 20-30 trucks waiting to cross the border and decided I needed special attention. All of them were friendly except for one. He asked me to unpack the entire bike on the ground. I was a bit surprised when he asked me to unpack my shaving kit completely. After inspecting every item, he grunted “Viagra”. I told him I didn’t have any Viagra. “Viagra!” he grunted again but more stridently this time. I repeated that I didn’t have any Viagra. “Viagra good!” he grunted a third time. At last I twigged. He wanted to confiscate any Viagra for his own personal use. I got the distinct impression that he was already suffering the side-effects of too much Viagra. Continue reading →