Train day.
We departed Samarkand midday, taking a ‘fast train’. While it looked like a bullet train (scoop nose at the Engine), it travelled at more or less usual train speeds I think.
The view was heavy with monotony. Sepia sand and scrub as far as the eye could see. The Tien Shan and Kun Lun ranges fell away, replaced with horizons flatter than Saskatchewan on either side of us.
The heat in Bukhara steps up a notch from TK and SK. Those now feel like prep-work for the oven that greated us on arrival. I just came in from a 20min walk around the tourist areas of Bukhara at 7:30pm, and returned dead beat and dragged out; my cap with new salt stains on it from sweat.
There wasn’t much to see, except that already this city feels quite different from either of the other two cities we’ve visited so far. The immediate area around this hotel (much touristed; seeing more tourists here than in SK, where I thought I was already seeing a lot) is full of narrow alleyways and open drains. Doors, both old and wooden and steel and new, open from homes directly onto these small streets. Some drivers find space to crawl up these passages, and I was obliged to step into doorways now and then to allow them to pass.
We have a guided walking tour tomorrow for just the two of us that our fixer arranged. We’ll begin at 9am but I am wary of such a tour. It will be ungodly hot already at that time and I am unsure if I’ll be able to complete it. We shall see. One thing about living into your sixties is knowing full well what one is capable of, and what not. The barriers of ‘what not’ leap up and bar the way with increasing abundance these days.
So, just a few picsh from this downtown, older core before the tour in the morning.
