This leg of the trip we’re going to visit 5 different cities here in Uzbekistan and in Tajikistan over the next week and a half.
That means we’re moving from city to city every second day.
It’s a bit chaotic but it’s tempered by the fact that we’re going to take it easy when we get to each city.
The cities aren’t huge so we’ll be able to explore them at our leisure.
Since yesterday was a travel day, that means that today was our day to get out and explore Uzbekistan’s second largest city, Samarkand.
The plan for this and the other cities in the explore in the morning, relax in the afternoon when the sun is at its’ peak, and then head back out in the evening.
Breakfast
I woke up at 8:30 this morning and enjoyed the free breakfast the hostel puts on for us.
They actually make your breakfast to order when you get up and I was able to communicate that I couldn’t have bread so, instead of egg and meat filled wraps, I was given a meat filled omelette.
Nice!
I chatted with a nice Japanese mother and daughter who were visiting Uzbekistan for a week because her daughter learned about the silk road in school and wanted to explore the country.
What a great mom to travel with her daughter.
With a full belly, it was time to finally go out exploring.
Afrasiyab park
At 10am we headed out to Afrasiyab park which is a short walk from where we are staying.
On the maps it looks like a huge swatch of green with different points of interest taking about 40 minutes to get from one end of the park to the other.
First we visited the Mausoleum of first president of Uzbekistan who died in 2016.
There were a few tourists about but none of those huge tour bus groups so we counted ourselves lucky.
And then we went to the nearby Necropolis and, well, we found the tour bus groups.
We paid our 80,000som ($10) and we were each given a light cotton skirt to cover our knees as we explored this sacred area.
The next 15 minutes was a maze through tourists happily taking selfies.
Next stop, ancient ruins…
Are there ruins here?
Like I said, on the maps it showed a vast green space with the ruins smack dab in the middle.
As we started to walk toward the ruins, the grass turned from green to brown and soon it was just rock.
All the tourists we encountered were nowhere to be found.
In fact, it seemed for awhile that we were the only two people in existence.
Despite all of it, we kept following the route my map showed me to take until we came upon a gate blocking our path.
Meh, that didn’t stop us though!
We walked up some stairs past a little building and down a little hill to get past the gate.
And on we walked.
We were gonna find some ruins, dammit!
Finally we reached the spot where the ruins should be.
We were literally right on top of the map marker and there were no ruins anywhere.
If you’ve been following this trip you’ll know that that was pretty much par for the course.
Anyway, we headed back to civilization at the end of the park where, of course, we were met by tour buses.
Just can’t get away from them!
An observatory tourist trap
After our fruitless exploration of ruins, we grabbed a Yandex (their version of an Uber) and drove to the Observatory of Ulugbek a couple of kilometers away.
It was on all the lists of things to see while here in Samarkand so, naturally, it was ours as well.
As we walked up the stairs into the main courtyard we were immediately met by a man yelling “ticket” from across the courtyard.
So, we paid our 75,000 ($9) and looked around.
In the courtyard there was a little museum building across from an entrance with a long canopy covered tunnel which I assumed would lead to the observatory we’d heard so much about.
We were in and out of the museum pretty quick and excitedly made our way into the observatory.
The long canopy covered tunnel was completely blocked off on the inside and we were only able to walk about 5 feet inside and take a picture of the tunnel down below.
It was…
Underwhelming.
Very underwhelming.
Sigh, another tourist trap has hit us again.
In all, we were in and out of the complex in about 10 minutes.
Alright, enough exploration for awhile – time for some lunch.
A lunch hack
For lunch today we went to the restaurant right next door to the one we went to dinner at last night.
To be honest, pretty much every restaurant has the exact same menu items at pretty much the same prices so it didn’t really matter where we ate.
The one, though, had a meal that caught my eye.
A beef cutlet with cheese and a side of fries.
It was basically a fancy way of saying it was a deconstructed burger because when it came out it was exactly that.
A burger patty filled with cheese, a side of tomato and lettuce, and a smear of burger sauce on the plate.
Wow, it’s like they read my mind and knew that I, as a celiac, couldn’t have a bun with my burger.
They also figured out a hack to let me eat a burger guilt free by calling it a beef cutlet instead.
Genius!
Oh, by the way, it was easily the best meal I’ve had on this trip.
Siob bazaar
After lunch we visited the Siob bazaar right next door.
It’s what we’ve come to expect form a bazaar in this neck of the woods – lots of souvenir stands along with fresh produce, nuts, spices, and other food items.
I wanted to buy souvenirs but, man, it’s just the same crap at every stall.
I’m telling you, the person who figures out that they need to offer unique souvenirs is the one who’s going to make all the cash.
Anyway, we wandered the stalls for awhile and, despite the best efforts of some of the stand operators, we came away empty handed.
By 2pm, we had enough exploring for the day and decided to take it easy for a few hours before we headed out to our 6pm walking tour.
6pm walking tour?
Earlier today I noticed there was a free walking tour happening at 6pm and, unlike the others that ran 3 or even 4 hours, this one only lasted 2 hours.
This was perfect!
A short tour in the early evening hours when it’s not so hot anymore.
I signed up for the tour and got my confirmation email.
The starting point for the walking tour was a full half hour’s walk away so we left just before 5:30 to get there in time.
We walked up to our meeting point just as the clock was turning six and saw a few people milling around.
I asked the people standing there if they were there for the free walking tour and they just kind of stared at me cluelessly.
Seriously?
Did our walking tour guide stand us up?
Yup, sure enough, after 10 minutes of waiting, we accepted our fate that we had, indeed, been stood up.
So, we did the next best thing which was to just walk back into town past some of the attractions we were supposed to see and just admire them.
At 7pm we had arrived right back where we had started 90 minutes ago.
Somehow we had still managed to walk for 90 minutes even though our walking tour didn’t take place.
After dinner at the same place as last night, we were back at our hostel by 8pm and in for the night.
It definately was a weird day of exploring and, like I said earlier, kind of par for the course for this trip.
But we keep moving on…
Tomorrow is a long travel day taking us over the border to country number 70, Tajikistan.
The trip is entering it’s final week but there’s still so much to explore…
