Baysun Mountain Village
Thursday 25th October started with the train to Kamaschi (a village 2.5 hours south of Samarkand) then a 40 minute bus trip to a desert community in the Baysun Mountains for a folkloric preformance of a traditional wedding ceremony.
Desert village in the Baysun Mountains
Village women dancing and singing ..
… welcome the bride and groom
Shakhrisabz
Back on the train for an hour to Shakhrisabz, the birthplace of the conqueror Temur (1336-1405). His World Heritage palace and mausoleum crumble away here.
Ak-Saray, Temur’s huge summer palace completed 1404 took 24 years to build
The 22m wide arch collapsed 200 years ago
Part of the original 600 year old palace floor
Dor Us-Siyadat is a mosque and the resting place for two of Temur’s sons.
Winter is coming; there’s snow on the mountains but is was quite warm
Uzbek wine tasting on the train
Tashkent
Friday 26th October: after 590 km on the train overnight we arrived at Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. Tashkent, once a major crossroads on the Silk Road, is now a sprawling metropolis. It suffered a major earthquake in 1966 but has been rebuilt. We left the train at 10:30 am and returned exhausted at 9:30 pm to depart for Kazakhstan.
Tashkent, in places, is an attractive leafy city
The portal and domes of 16th century Barak Khan Medressa collapsed in the ’66 quake but were rebuilt
Hazroti Imom Mosque, built in 2007 in 4 months in a 16th century style
For our last night in Uzbekistan, a fabulous preformance by an orchestra playing traditional Uzbek instruments