Uzbekistan part two

Samarkand was our next stop here, another historic Silk Road city, with its share of ancient monuments and bazaars. I, unfortunately, was unable to see all of the city tour given by our local guide, Mansur, due to a bout of dodgy restaurant disease. It wasn't all bad though.

The night before, I had ventured out for a meal at the aforementioned restaurant, and whilst walking back to the hotel, two companions and I were accosted by a security guard at the Registan Square complex. This area has three of the most impressive madrassas in Samarkand, and probably in the country. The guard told us that if we were to return at 5am and pay the entrance fee of 4000 som, we could climb one of the minarets and see the sunrise over the city. For some reason this sounded like a great idea, so we went off to bed and got up at 4.30am to visit the minaret. The guard we met this time wanted 10000 som entrance fee, a bit steep, but he was haggled down to 6000 som.

The minaret turned out to be a very unofficial stop on the tour. We had to walk through a building site to get to its base, then climb lots of dodgy 15th century steps, and finally clamber out onto what can only be described as a tiny tin roof nailed to the top of the stone minaret. Needless to say, there were no safety features of any kind, and a long drop to the ground below. The view was fantastic though, and worth bribing the guard to see.

We had assumed that our payment would get us only into the minaret and were moving to leave the area, but surprisingly the guards rushed about to show us almost every nook and cranny of the place, which was all the more pleasant due to the lower temperature and the lack of other tourists milling about. Unofficial it may have been, but it was the better for it.

We only had one night in Tashkent, which wasn't enough to see anything, but the next day we had a new mode of transport: the private car. Due to local politics the truck wasn't able to go over the pass to Fergana, and so it had to drive the long way through Tajikistan. We, however, piled into a fleet of seven Daewoo Nexia cars, and raced off over the pass. In the picture you may be able to see the cracked windscreen of the car I was in: this appeared to be standard equipment on many Uzbek vehicles. Our journey was quite interesting for two reasons: the driver of our car spoke broken English and told us a bit about the area; and we stopped to visit the largest traditional silk factory in Central Asia.

I had no idea that making silk was so fascinating. The guide at the factory showed us all the different stages of making the silk, from growing the cocoons to extracting the silk to weaving the fabric and several others besides. At this particular factory the work was still done almost completely by hand, and each stage had different types of worker: old ladies, young teenage boys, twenty-something women, amongst others. We were given reasons for this, such as one stage required strength, so only young men could do it well, whilst another stage had to be done by young women because it required good eyesight, dexterity and small fingers. Something I personally found endearing: the looms which the young ladies used to weave the fabric were all covered with photos of their pop idols and actors, really cute.

Again only one night in Fergana, we stayed in an old Soviet hotel which attracted a, shall we say, varied clientele, and had payphones in the lobby which only accepted kopeks. And were therefore useless.

Kyrgyzstan next, and a whole different kettle of fish.