Our Silk Road Train Journey, Pt. 4: Entering Uzbekistan For The First Time
Last time I checked in we had spent two days in Kyrgyzstan, but now it was time to make our next stop on this whirlwind tour, the first of two stays in Uzbekistan, on this occasion primarily in the Samarkand Region where we would really begin to see our traveling companion, Ms. P, show her true colours.
Cheers
Sunday, April 13, 2025
In order to get to from Kyrgyzstan to Uzbekistan we would need to travel through Kazakhstan again, meaning besides border formalities it would be an uneventful day as we wouldn’t be leaving the train except to briefly stretch our legs as the vehicle’s water tanks were refilled at random platforms. There were several lectures conducted on The Silk Road and Islam in Central Asia over the loudspeakers, but for the bulk of the day we were either just laying in our cabin, reading, or hanging out with our fellow travellers in their cabins to have a chat. To make this part of the trip a little more interesting, however, was a vodka tasting session at dinner with our guide, Rustam, pulling up a seat at our table for a drink (above, right) and teaching us what he claimed was the phallic-sounding Uzbek word for ‘Cheers’. I’m not particularly a connoisseur so they pretty much all tasted like vodka to me with extremely minute differences, but we would continue with a few more drinks and chatting back in the cabins again before retiring for the night.
Monday, April 14, 2025
Once more we wouldn’t have a full night’s sleep due to several stops for passport checks, but once we arrived at another Soviet-era train station in Samarkand we were greeted once more by a traditional band and walked through to our busses, an enormous painting of what we were about to see adorning an interior wall. I also had my first ever Tesla Cybertruck sighting in the wild outside where I discovered that not only are those things ugly as hell, but they are absolutely enormous and quite pointy around the edges, my pelvic bone being able to verify that fact.
Before we move on, a quick look at our first proper steps on solid ground in over 24 hours:
We were now on the bus and 20 minutes later were at a site that would be the main focus of that morning and evening as well, the Registan:
The Registan was the heart of the city of Samarkand of the Timurid Empire, now in Uzbekistan. The name Rēgistan (ریگستان) means “sandy place” or “desert” in Persian.
The Registan was a public square, where people gathered to hear royal proclamations, heralded by blasts on enormous copper pipes called dzharchis — and a place of public executions. It is framed by three madrasahs (Islamic schools) of distinctive Persian architecture. The square was regarded as the hub of the Timurid Renaissance.
The three madrasahs of the Registan are the Ulugh Beg Madrasah (1417–1420), the Sher-Dor Madrasah (1619–1636), and the Tilya-Kori Madrasah (1646–1660). Madrasah is an Arabic term meaning school.
As soon as we all stepped off the bus there was a collective gasp, everyone awestruck upon witnessing what was before us. We walked down to a viewing platform, the infamous Ms. P needing to force her way to the front and block us all to take and check numerous photos in front of the structure, but on this occasion nobody minded, we just wanted to take in the beauty of this place.
Once in the square we were taken around the three main buildings, the Ulugh Beg Madrasa, which is the oldest building in Uzbekistan, the Tilya Kori Madrasa, and the Sher-Dor Madrasa, spanning left to right in the main photo, receiving a little history lesson on each from Rustam and one of the first things that struck me was that one of the building’s minarets wasn’t straight, apparently the result of an earthquake, but that was a mere afterthought for the rest of our group who were more amused by the fact that there was absolutely no chance I was made for the Timurid Empire when we were approaching the smaller doorways, them insisting on me posing next to the tiny entrances for their entertainment. As with almost all of the ancient buildings we’d be seeing over the course of our trip, a lot of the tiles have been painstakingly restored based around the faded colours of the originals and in many cases original tiles are still present for comparison. Either way, the design and detail of those tiles is absolutely stunning.
Take a look around the square and the three Madrasas:
Now you’ve seen the front of each building you need to remember these were places of learning so there was more around the back. The building on the left, the Ulugh Beg Madrasa, was one of the best clergy universities of the Muslim Orient in the 15th century and naturally it would need a bit of student accommodation so at the rear is a courtyard that contains a mosque, dormitory cells, and several galleries.
The rear of the Sher-Dor Madrasa was similar in layout around the front, here’s a look around from all four angles:
I doubt I’d particularly like to live in a cell as a student, but to be fair where I lived while in university wasn’t that great either, at least this place has a courtyard.
So if the buildings on the left and right have student accommodation, what could the centre building, the Tilya Kori Madrasa have going for it? An absolutely magnificent interior consisting of a detailed dome, gold calligraphy on the walls, muqarnas, and arabesques. Once again to enter Anna and her fellow female companions had to don a headscarf while I had to remove my hat and what we saw once inside this perfectly lit interior defies description. Naturally a certain someone had to barge her way to the front yet again to snap her photos and not care if she was in the way of anyone else, constantly walking in front of people who were clearly trying to achieve what she just had, or just standing in front of some of the most beautiful areas to check that her pictures had come out alright while rubbing on a little extra Tiger Balm.
The photos don’t even begin to do the interior justice, here a some of the shots from inside I managed to get that haven’t been photobombed by Ms. P, including one that has part of the original pattern next to the restored tiles:
We had been walking around in the intense heat for two hours so it was now time for some lunch which meant getting back in the bus, passing a cage of pink birds as we went, to go to Restaurant Samarkand, another lunch spot where Anna absolutely loved the interior. Although there were different dining areas, we would be seated in a hall with walls lined with marionettes, bird cages with live canaries, and pretty much everything else local you could imagine. I mentioned in my first post about this Central Asian trip that one of my only insights into this part of the world was the TV series Ambassadors, set in the fictional nation of Tazbekistan and based strongly on the reality of life in this region, one of the running jokes in the show being plov, a rice and meat based dish that is very common here. Naturally Anna gave me a bit of a side glance when Rustam told us that we’d be having plov for lunch and then we both burst out laughing. The others in our group were a little confused so we tried to explain why, but I guess you just have to have seen the series to get it. We ate and then everyone sat around the table relaxing and chatting after our meal so I decided to get up and take some photos around this enormous, multi-themed restaurant, from our dining room to several different outdoor dining areas and this looked like a great place to come back again. I returned to the table and sat down, however, I wouldn’t be able to push my seat in, because Ms. P had fallen asleep at the head of the table near me with her mouth open and one of her gnarled, fetid feet in front of my seat. Of course I could’ve woken her, but life was far easier for all of us if she remained unconscious and I wasn’t blocking anyone.
Before today we had spent a full day and night on the train so we were rewarded with two straight nights in Hotel Grand Samarkand so no more throwing toilet paper in the bin or booking 15-minute showers in a small cubicle with a dodgy lock for the next couple of days. We could flush the paper and stand upright while bathing before dropping by different areas of Samarkand:
Samarkand is a city in southeastern Uzbekistan and among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Central Asia. Samarkand is the capital of the Samarkand Region and a district-level city, that includes the urban-type settlements Kimyogarlar, Farhod and Khishrav. With 551,700 inhabitants (2021), it is the third-largest city in Uzbekistan.
There is evidence of human activity in the area of the city dating from the late Paleolithic Era. Though there is no direct evidence of when Samarkand was founded, several theories propose that it was founded between the 8th and 7th centuries BC. Prospering from its location on the Silk Road between China, Persia and Europe, at times Samarkand was one of the largest cities in Central Asia.
We would be seeing a lot around Samarkand over the coming days, including in the afternoon and evening, but right now was a time to freshen up and stretch out on a normal size bed for a bit before hitting the road again.
Lunch and our hotel:
Lunch was finished and our next stop revolved around a name we would be hearing a lot over the rest of the trip and seemed to be revered across the country, Timur:
Timur, also known as Tamerlane (1320s – 17/18 February 1405), was a Turco-Mongol conqueror who founded the Timurid Empire in and around modern-day Afghanistan, Iran, and Central Asia, becoming the first ruler of the Timurid dynasty. An undefeated commander, he is widely regarded as one of the greatest military leaders and tacticians in history, as well as one of the most brutal and deadly. Timur is also considered a great patron of art and architecture, for he interacted with intellectuals such as Ibn Khaldun, Hafez, and Hafiz-i Abru and his reign introduced the Timurid Renaissance.
For us we would be beginning at the end by first visiting the Gūr-i Amīr, Timur’s final resting place, as well as that of two of his sons and grandsons. Like many buildings of historical significance in Uzbekistan as you will see over coming posts, this complex too consisted of a blue dome and several minarets. The building was originally built for Timur’s dead grandson, but in what would become an eerie pattern that immediately stood out to me was that as soon as quite a few ancient Uzbeks achieved anything or celebrated a significant moment in their life, they died within a year or two. In this particular case, Timur died a year after the complex was built so he was buried there as well.
We walked around the grounds and inside the mausoleum, at one point a Ms. P unsuccessfully yelling at security guards to leave their guard posts and move for her photo. Here’s what we saw, including one of several Timur statues in a nearby main street that had been made from melted down bronze statues of Vladimir Lenin after the fall of the Soviet empire:
It was 6:45pm when we left the mausoleum and our day of sightseeing wasn’t done yet, but we would require more sustenance to continue and a home kitchen in a family’s house had been organised for us with six tables, each seating six people, meaning we would be eating with another group, some of them German and others Russian. The homemade spread was great as usual, but something caught Ms. P’s eye; each table had a large bowl of roasted chickpeas, but in her opinion people weren’t snacking on them sufficiently enough, thus implying that nobody wanted them so she saw an opportunity and she pounced! Pulling out a plastic bag she went from table to table and poured the chickpeas from every bowl into the bag for her to snack on over the course of the trip, justifying her actions by telling everyone in the room that they weren’t eating them anyway, leaving the non English-speakers, roughly half of us, extremely confused. Oh well, free home-roasted chickpeas for her, I guess.
The evening’s entertainment would have us returning to the Registan, because it is usually lit up with a light show, but tonight would be particularly special. There were about two dozen Arab dignitaries in attendance so not only would it be a light show, but a whole animated movie about life, creation, history, and everything else in between would be projected onto the building. The dignitaries were taken to front row seats, the rest of us standing back and the show began. I started filming and it and it definitely was impressive, however, after about five minutes it really was beginning to drag on for a bit and didn’t appear to be ending anytime soon so eventually I just stopped filming and took photos of different parts. After at least 20 minutes or so it was finally over and we were driven back to the hotel, but we’re not the early sleepers that everyone else seems to be so as usual we looked up an area near our hotel with some semblance of nightlife on a Monday, and after a 10-minute walk on a really dilapidated footpath and past an abandoned circus we found a spot to put our feet up, have a couple of pints of beer that equated to S$1.20 (US$0.93) each and look back on another fascinating day.
An illuminated Registan and a video if you want to see just a portion of the film that was projected:
Tuesday, April 15, 2025
It going to be another packed day in Samarkand and our first stop would be to see paper made out of mulberry bark using traditional methods at Meros Paper Mill. Here we would witness the way Uzbeks began making paper almost 1,300 years ago, the method from that link as follows:
Mulberry bark is taken as a raw material. The bark is cleaned from the outside and boiled in a large pan for four to six hours. The bark is then beaten in large stupas with the help of a water mill to make a homogeneous mash similar to dough in consistency. The resulting “dough” is subsequently placed in a tub with water and filtered on a large sheet of flazelin. A blank is pressed, and then is covered with the next sheet of flazelin and some sifted mulberry brew. The paper is removed from the plates and dried in a vertical position for a day. The resulted dried paper is stronger, more durable, and longer-lasting than modern paper. To remove the roughness of the paper, the master polishes it on a granite table with a piece of granite, seashell, or bone horn, giving the Samarkand paper its smoothness.
We were shown each step of the process, but if you read the details, above, it was the final step where Rustam probably should’ve taken a back seat, because although the mill employee made polishing the paper with a chunk of granite look like a piece of cake, our humble guide decided to have a go himself and left a giant tear in the sheet. At the mill they also had pieces that had been adorned with traditional artwork and calligraphy, as well as some local fabrics made using a similar process that Anna loved, because they resembled some of the patterns found in Malaysia.
A trip around Meros Paper Mill and a look at how paper was made in Uzbekistan back in the day:
The next stop after passing a very strange-looking building in the city was to be one of the most amazing things we would see, the Ulugh Beg Observatory, and in what was also becoming a common theme, to whom the observatory was named after was a grandson of Timur too. A little about Ulugh Beg:
Mīrzā Muhammad Tarāghāy bin Shāhrukh, better known as Ulugh Beg, was a Timurid sultan, as well as an astronomer and mathematician.
He built the great Ulugh Beg Observatory in Samarkand between 1424 and 1429. It was considered by scholars to have been one of the finest observatories in the Islamic world at the time and the largest in Central Asia. Ulugh Beg was subsequently recognized as the most important observational astronomer from the 15th century by many scholars.
Fortunately for Mr. Beg he didn’t die as soon as the observatory was completed, as he was assassinated by his own son 20 years later and the observatory destroyed around the same time. As for the device itself, it was explained to us at length, but these two descriptions should cover it sufficiently:
Ulugh Beg’s observatory included the largest quadrant principle device. The building was not tall but was allowed a maximal size for the arc of the circle. This device was carefully oriented, and the arc was scaled very accurately. This device was very versatile. It could accurately measure the sun from the horizon, the altitude of a star and other planets. The duration of the year, period of planets, and eclipses were measured by this device. Ulugh Beg’s measurements of planets closely relate to today’s measurement, showing us the phenomenal accuracy of the device.
The Fakhrı sextant had 70.2 cm divisions which represented one degree. There were also marks every 11.7mm to show one minute and 1mm marks that represented five seconds. These markings turned out to be extremely accurate, matching up closely to the calculations found today.
It was incredible seeing the observatory, but it was when we then visited the museum that we were completely mind-blown, seeing all of the accurate star charts, his observations, and calculations according to the Zij-I Sultani, Beg’s astronomical table and star catalogue (seriously, look up the mathematics he used in that link!) almost 600 years ago.
The Ulugh Beg Observatory and museum:
It was still morning so there was another site to take in before lunch, a tour of Samarkand Silk Carpets. We’ve all seen Persian rugs, but the ones found on the Silk Road were clearly going to be on another level, and it would turn out so would Ms. P. The people making these carpets not only wove traditional designs, but unbelievably with just a loom they could also accurately recreate images of the Mona Lisa and the National Geographic shot of the Afghan Girl. Depending on the size and materials used, some of these handmade carpets can take from a couple of months to several years to finish, but besides carpets they also made bags, scarves, clothing, and toys.
As we entered the factory we saw many hanging from the walls, both traditional patterns and the artistic and portrait carpets, that latter stunning everybody. How was it possible to make something with this much detail on a loom? Everything was for sale and outside Rustam had told us about the necessity of bartering, coaching us on the process; when told the price of an item, offer 50% and then slowly work your way up from there until you can get it at a more reasonable price. Ms. P clearly stopped listening after the first point so when she found a bag she wanted she insisted that the sales staff give it to her for half price, but when they said they couldn’t she would start yelling at them before moving on to another staff member. I pointed out to her that it was handmade and that’s time consuming so what she was asking was kind of unreasonable only for her to shout at me, “I don’t talk to tourists, I talk to people who give me what I want!”. She eventually got the bag, although we’re not sure if she got it half-price, but our Czech friends told us at lunch that if they had wanted anything, Ms. P had offered to do the bargaining on their behalf if the gave her 50% of what they had saved on the original price. One of several reasons everyone tried to avoid getting stuck sitting near her during meals.
Inside Samarkand Silk Carpets and just a handful of the more impressive artistic pieces, as well as a short clip of how it’s done:
After lunch we had one more major stop for the day, arriving at Shah-i-Zinda at 3:00pm:
Shah-i-Zinda is a necropolis in the north-eastern part of Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
The Shah-i-Zinda Ensemble includes mausoleums and other ritual buildings of 11th – 15th and 19th centuries. The name Shah-i-Zinda (meaning “The living king”) is connected with the legend that Qutham ibn Abbas, a cousin of Muhammad, is buried here. He came to Samarkand with the Arab invasion in the 7th century to preach Islam.
The Shah-i-Zinda complex was formed over eight (from the 11th until the 19th) centuries and now includes more than twenty buildings.
I understand it’s quite disrespectful to say that this complex was just like the others, because it served a completely different purpose and is historically significant, but those details are all available in the above link. For those just looking at the images, however, it will appear similar to other locations we had visited, but it was still incredibly beautiful nonetheless.
I mentioned in my first post about this journey when we were staying in Almaty, Kazakhstan that there were an abundance of dentists around and it turns out that it must be the entire region, because there were a lot of people, especially older women, with full grills of gold teeth. It turns out the teeth were seen as sign of wealth, but Rustam told us that they were also a way of keeping their valuable gold safe, especially from Soviet pillaging.
We wandered around the complex for about 90 minutes, meeting some of the locals, comparing the original patterned tiles with the restored versions, and stopping off at different mausoleums for a history lesson, someone in our group feeling the need to apply more Tiger Balm while sitting near the tomb of Timur’s wife. We were then given the opportunity to visit another small market, the common joke being who had supplied a stall’s roasted chickpeas, but Anna and I were focussed on getting more apricots and I managed to find some pickles as well.
It was our final night in the hotel so once we had returned and eaten dinner Anna and I opted for a similar plan as the previous night, making the trek once more along the uneven path, past the dilapidated circus, and to Pub Street once more for a drink while checking out the old Pulsar brewery from the outside.
Shah-i-Zinda, the market, and Pub Street for a final time:
So that’s it for our time in Samarkand. In the next post we will be back on the train through Uzbekistan, traveling to visit a family dance performance in the Qashqadaryo Region, exploring the historical centre of Shahrisabz, and visiting the ruins of Ak Sarai, followed by a day in Tajikistan.
Your post bought back wonderful memories of my trip there last year. Its such a special place and one of the places where I would go back in a heartbeat!
Thank you very much! We absolutely loved it, absolutely fantastic place, I just need to get around to writing about our stops in Bukhara and Tashkent