Bukhara (episode 1 and 2)

Back in Bukhara, the lovely little town I m gonna spent four more days...waiting for my Turkmen visa to be ready (might be on the 16th....might be).
And the place is just perfect for relaxing and doing nothing.
I spend most of my days wandering around, go to internet cafe, relax at the guesthouse ans spend some times with the owners and the other guests.


























Nice to spend some time relaxing but I do wish I could go to Turkmenistan as soon as possible to go then to Iran (THE country I m looking forward to visit)...

We had the chance Arnaud and I during our first stop in Bukhara to be invited by kids who were selling drinks to play football after. Meeting at 7 o'clock behind the main medressa...quite good fun with all the 10ish years old kids running around while Arnaud and I were having quite a hard time breathing with the still-high-temperature and the dust in the air (and maybe the lack of training but shhhh).

They were all shooting "mister ! mister !" as soon as Arnaud or I would get the ball.. and no way to distinguish which kid was playing in which team. Teenager came a little bit after and the kids all left the field to seat on the wall without beeing askedf, they knew their playiong time was over. Playing with older guys made the game a little bit more interesting I have to say...

Few pics...check out the football field nice hein !!!! Shooting on hundred years
walls...raaaaa
































Part of the team (my goal keeper was not even 1m high...lol)
















And a video with the kids:



For Bukhara pics, I chose to show you sunset pics (instead of the traditional bright sunny ones)...let s go....
As usual, medressas, but also full of old and narrow streets.































































And of course nice people:

















Took a night train on the 14th to Tashklent to pick up my visa on the 16th....then I ll start the big race to be as quickly as possible in Turkmenistan

Aral Dead Sea

Taxi up north for our Dead Sea trip...destination the boring Nukus town. We have to change cab half way to the trip, and, while waiting for the shared cab to be fill up with other passengers, Arnaud and I managed to see an Uzbek fight between a huge coloss and an old guy who wanted to take the cab with us (guess who won)...anyway after taking the poor face bleeding old guy to the hospital with the cab'.. we finally managed to ride up north to the desolated Karakalpakstan province where nothing seems to grow anymore since the Aral Sea desaster.

Arrived in the desolated Nukus town of the desolated Karakalpakstan province, let me tell you that we don t expect that much of the town except maybe the museum which is suppose to be one of the best of Central Asia (Why here ???). the hotel is litteraly falling appart and the unskilled"managers" try their best to properly run it. Anyway, we manage to have quite a lot of fun there and simply accept that such dead/crappy/unreal places are part of the trip. Hopefully we meet Miquel, this funny Spanish guys who s doing a year trip on a beautifull BMW motorbike.

....OK, so now, let s see the sadly famous Aral Dead Sea, for thoses who don t know about the story of this sea (like me a few days ago) lets say that the Uzbek government decided to develop agriculture and added a lot of cotton field. Cotton of course needs a lot of water to grow and all of the water needed for it and taken from the river that was going to the Aral Sea... it didn t take that much time before the Aral SDea became totally dry.

Monyaq, the fishing port of the Aral Sea (220km foar from Nukus) has now only a few thousands inhabitants, and the weather that was once "liveable" by the influence of the sea.... is now hot to death...

Let see the good points...makes quite a good scenic spot for pictures:



































We can t stay that long under the sun... never sen such
























...and just because my Daddy asked me....another video:

Samarcand became famous because of its strategic position between India, China and Persia and has been for a long time a key silk road city. Alexander the Great apparently said about this city "Everything I ve heard about Samarcande is true, except that it more beautiful than I ve ever imagined".

Sounds good enough for me to go and have a look at this city...

We arrive quite late in the city after a chaotic bus trip that seemed to never ends. Anyway, we find a cosy guesthouse with an inner garden in the city center.
We wake up quite early, in order to enjoy the morning weather, which quickly takes place to a 35 to 40 degree about 11am, and go around the city for a little sightseeing. The city is full of Mosques, Mausoleums and Medressas (Coranic schools).

The biggest monument is by far the Registan. Three huge medressas buikt between the 15th and the 17th century.
Beautifull architecture...let you guys have a look at the pics rather than boring explanations...





































Have a little stop at the bazaar for lunch... rest and relax, now way to walk at noon, the weather is too hot for us (even for locals).
We just follow the "place to go" part on the lonley planet but the city is quite small and we finish the tour by the end of the afternoon.

...Mausoleums





















I have to say, Arnaud and I quite fell in love with the local .....
.....
.....
..... cars.


Ohhhhh yeah, beautiful stylish old sovietic Ladas.... they are just great !!!! Want one !!!


























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ON
THE
ROAD
AGAIN

Here we are, Uzbekistan... From what we know, there are mainly four places to see there, Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva, and the Aral sea (erm, what s left actually).

We spend our first two days in Tashkent, the capital city of Uzbekistan. Nothing much to say about the city... I didn t even take pictures of the town except a few ones at the big bazaar.

The town s not that beautiful and doesn t have this little charm Bishkek has (capital of Kyryzstan...for the lads who don t memorize my blog). Buildings in a russian style are planted here and there and most of the buildings, houses, shops, look just abandonned to the dust.
One pretty odd thing I have to say is the metro of the city. Looks like a little caprice form the president to install this mean of transport when the city has some major imporvement to do for its traffic organization....few more buses would have been welcome instead of taking a taxi (or random car which suddently becomes a taxi) for each place you want to go. Anyway, this metro, just fallen from the sky, makes an interesting contrast with the rest of the city, huge empty echoing alleys, "beautiful" excentric decorations, and a 100% chance to have passport control from the police.

Not much to see and no reasons to stay there any longer except for my Turkmen visa application...

As soon as the application is done, we re taking a bus to Samarkand, famous historic Uzbekistan city, and first town of our little trip around the country.