Uzbekistan

2014 we decided to take a trip to an interesting country, Uzbekistan, providing traces from the days of Djingis Kahn, Silk road traffic and Islam, former soviet union and now trying to find it´s way to modern democracy. We visited Tashkent, Nukus, Khiva, Bukhara, Nurat and Samarkand.

Tashkent is the capital of Uzbekistan. 1966 an earthquake destroyed most of the old buildings and today Taskhent has numerous parks and modern buildings. We noticed that the locals were as curious on us tourists as we were on them.

A greater part of western Uzbekistan consists of desert. We flew with a small propeller airplane cross the desert and it was difficult to find any signs on civilization down there. Our destination was Nukus where we visited Savitskij art and ethnographic museum. Nukus is located in the Karakpakstan which is the west most part of Uzbekistan.

Khiva is exiting city where we stayed in the old town. The hotel was located in an old madrasa, former Quran school. Khiva has many interesting buildings decorated with beautiful ceramics.

The road from Khiva to Bukhara you are mainly travelling through plain desert. At some places you are not sure if you are travelling on or off the road.

Bukhara is another interesting city where we stayed at a hotel in the old town. There are a lot to see in Bukhara including Mosque’s, the Ark (a fortress) and the bazaar.

From Bukhara we travelled the road through Navoi and up to the small city of Nurata. Nort of Nurata which is close to Kazakhstan, we stayed at a small Yurt camp. In the evening we tried riding on camels.

The bus took us all the way to Samarkand passing small villages. Both sides of the road there were big mountains.

Samarkand is maybe the most well known of the cities in the Uzbekistan part of the Silk road. It is the second largest city in Uzbekistan but off course have many wonderful buildings reflecting its past history. We visited famous mosques and madrasas, Ulug Beg observatory, local market and much more.

From Samarkand we travelled by the modern high speed train back to Samarkand where we spend some hours before flying home via Istanbul to Copenhagen.