After a very good night sleep we finally start our day with oatmeal again. Just like we’re used to eat at home. Surviving in Uzbekistan as vegans with little children is not easy and we are thankful for our kitchen.
We have a mausoleums run on the programme today. We pass the Registan to follow the road leading towards a cemetery and mausoleums outside of the former city gates, along this road Timur built a mausoleum for his favourite wife Bibi-Khanym and opposite of it a mosque. There used to be a madrassa too, but it was destroyed by the Persians.
The mosque had the purpose to be the pearl of Timur’s empire, and was at the time one of the largest mosques in the world. 95 elephants were imported from India to move the marble and other heavy construction parts, but the big structures we see today were rebuild in the 70’s. It has a large inner garden with a huge marble quran stand in front of the entrance of the mosque. Local lore has it that any woman who crawls under the stand will have lots of children. As we have enough children, we won’t give it a go. This stand used to hold the Uthman Quran from the 8th century which Timur looted from Baghdad.
Just outside of the Mosque, there is a huge bazaar, but bazaars are not part of our Mausoleum run, so we continue to Shah-i-Zinda, the most famous necropolis of Central Asia. For the first time in Uzbekistan, it’s rather busy at the site. It consists of over 20 mausoleums, most of them originate from the 14th and 15th century, the oldest ones date back to the 11th century. Strolling around the mausoleums avenue with the rich tilework gives a special feeling. Some tilework is extremely stunning. Unfortunately, many mausoleums were restored in 2005, so we’re not sure how much is still original.
A shrine to Qusam, a cousin of the Prophet Mohammed, existed here on the edge of Afrosiab for around seven centuries before Timur and Ulugbek buried their family and favourites near the sanctity of the original shrine.
As it’s lunch time, we take a Yandex back to our apartment, ready to cook another healthy meal. But there turns out to be a power outage, so no cooking, no charging of our devices and no wifi for us. Luckily, Yandex also has a food delivery option that we try out. It’s a challenge for the rider to find us, as we get a push message that the food was delivered but we were still hungry and waiting. Sending some selfies back and forth did the trick. The driver apparently didn’t think we, tourists, were his customers, so he searched in vain.
While Zeno does his nap, Cleo and Olga go back to the bazar to buy more fresh food. They spend all their UZS. Not very smart, as the electricity is still down and the ATM’s also don’t work. At least we have food, but our water reservoir is also coming to an end… and it turns out that besides our electricity, the running water stopped working too. Our conclusion is that we just have to visit another museum.
We add our credit card to the Yandex app so we can still use the taxis without using Tims last money. As it’s already 17.00 we have to hurry to get to the ‘Afrasiab and History of Samarkand Museum’. Here they have some of the remains of the old city of Marakand, the precursor of Samarkand which was totally raised to the ground by Genghis Khan. The highlights are the 7th century Sogdian Palace fresco’s.
Now we have just 1 euro in UZS left, so we gamble that the next museum will accept card payments and take another taxi to the Ulegh Beg Observatory. The Observatory was built in the 1420’s by the grandson of Timur, the Timurid Ruler Ulegh Beg, more famous for his mathematics and astronomy than his conquering. It’s been a long day and the weather has changed as winds pick up, a sandy haze and even some rain make us want to go home quickly.
Luckily, the street lights are working in our neighbourhood, a sign that the electricity is back. We can indeed use the ATM, and therefore buy water, and cook a meal at home (wraps with lentils, onions, carrot and bell pepper). Just the water is not working yet, but the day is over anyway. After dinner the children go to sleep while Tim goes for another night tour and does some recon of Timur’s mausoleum, which we will visit in two days time.
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