UZBEKISTAN: Bokhara

Some people in the U.S. have heard of Bokhara. Seriously, it's that famous. And for good reason. It was a major stop on the silk road and the capitol of a much feared Khanate, the site where the Amir once held two British advenurers in a bug infested pit for two years before behading them. About half of the modern city has stayed more or less the way it looked in those days--that is dusty, mudbrick alleys opening up to massive blue tiled madressas, epic minarets and domed bazaars. The streets of old Bokhara


Lunchtime

"Food is pretty good, the staple being "non", circular loaves of bread with blackened sesame--great when fresh, aweful when more than an hour old. The main dishes are "shashlik", basically minced meat smoked to succulence over a charcoal pit, and "plov", a delicious, delicate dish with rice, carrots and a bit of meat. We've also been having alot of "lakman" soup, made with hand rolled noodles, bits of lamb and dusted with dill. To drink, people seem very fond of the many brands of beer availiable here and most dinner tables have a bottle or two of vodka."

DISCLAIMER: Since I wrote this I have downgraded my opinion of Central Asian cuisine.

Toward a small market and the 12th Century minaret that so awed Ghengis Khan that he spared the structure.
Madrassa
View of the main mosque and the Ark from the 12th Century minaret.
Mighrab in a mosque The Ark, Bokhara's fortress and 19th Century palace complex. Capts. Connolly and Stoddart, two British adventurers (spies, our guide had been taught) were executed in 1842 from where this picture was taken.
Playing backgamon

We took a half day trip in Bokhara to a modern day shrine complex for some cleric who lived in the time of Tamerlane and helped define the somewhat mystical, flexible brand of Islam that's still in Central Asia today. The place was packed with hundreds of visitors who were mostly interested in performing pre-Islamic rituals that were believed to bring good luck and good health. There were various auspicious wells with holy water (Soviet scientists figured out that there are healthy minerals here) and an ancient tree which people circum-ambulated three times in the way that the Zoroastrians tend to. In the back there was a modern museum describing the lives of various wise men and sufi dervishes, built in the 1990s, said the director, "to reeducate Uzbeks about Islam after so many years of Communism."

Men circumambulating the sacred tree in a ritual inherited from the Zoroastrians

The Chor Minar (four minaret) mosque
Wine tasting with Soviet/Uzbek vintner. Aged 70 and in perfect health, he described what part of the body each of the Uzbek wines helps.
The vintner is very proud of this wine prize he won in the Ukraine



The palae complex of the last emir of Bokhara, who was retained as a Russian puppet ruler until the Revolution