From Samarkand to Bukhara — Driving 1/5/2020

Greetings from Bukhara

Since we were mostly in the car today—moving from Samarkand to Bukhara, the images are not spectacular like those of the mosques and mausoleums… Rather, let’s say…. they are descriptive of the day.

Finally the sun came out in Samarkand — just in time to bid us farewell as we began our journey driving from Samarkand to Bukhara in our little Nissan Sentra (with a totally packed trunk). We left at about 11 a.m. for the four hour drive, which we figured would really take us about six hours, considering the strong possibility of getting lost and stopping for lunch. We walked along that unbelievable “ledge” from the hotel to where our car was parked. The photo included above attempts to describe the three foot wide “path” (along that wall and the 8 foot drop along the way – with people going in both directions and during the day workers with wheel barrels as well). The hotel guys carried the luggage on that narrow ledge as well. There is a secondary entrance/exit from the hotel which takes you to a walking street leading to the mosque, but it is a pedestrian street so there is no way to park or get a taxi to that entrance. Thus we walked on that ledge every day.. to and from the hotel.. even late at night when a taxi would drop us off there.  Along the way, a group of Uzbeks stopped to ask if they could take our picture… We are sort of exotic here. This has happened a few times. So either these are Russian spies assigned to us and taking our picture shows they are doing their job, or we are just different and interesting.

By the way, the taxi driver we had last night when we left the restaurant had a few words of English and we learned that he has been trying for five years to get access to a visa to the US. He’s in the green card lottery and he tried each year. He says there are 30 million applicants and 50,000 get selected. He has a friend who won that lottery a few years ago, so he’s hopeful. His friend lives in Queens – naturally – and is working in a supermarket. The taxi driver seemed to think this was a good job and the friend makes good money.

Anyway, we successfully left the hotel, got the car backed out of the narrow street and we were on our way to Bukhara. But first we had to deal with daily traffic, triple parked cars, people crossing the street where there aren’t any walkways,  left turns requiring complete u-turns because there aren’t any left turns, and more. We had been told by the rental car company in Tashkent that there weren’t going to be any petrol stations between Samarkand and Bukhara, so we heeded his advice and gassed up on the outskirts of Samarkand. As it turned out there are petrol stations practically lining the road so there wasn’t any need for panic… I think the rental car guy in Tashkent needs to get out of the capital city more often.  We stopped also at a roadside cart selling delicious Samarkand bread – a particular round bread that has pepper in the center. It’s really delicious… So for a while we snacked on great bread and water.. (sort of like prisoners but with better bread, I suppose).

About two hours into the drive we decided to look for a place to have some lunch..  We knew we wouldn’t find much along the road, but figured we would stumble on something.. We finally came to a town (?) – more like a series of shops lining the road – each shop selling some kind of home repair or building supply.. Kind of like a linear Home Depot. We parked the car and walked down the street and found a “restaurant”… tables inside (and two tables outside, but it was about 40 degrees!).

We sat down and clearly this was not a place for foreigners to eat. Many of the 20 or so tables were filled. Some tables had chairs; others required you to take off your shoes and sit cross legged. We opted for chairs.  A few minutes passed but no one came to take our order. We weren’t sure we had done it correctly. Anyway, a little while later someone came out with a big platter with pickled cabbage, some kind of shredded green raw vegetable, two bowls of yogurt with dill, bread, tea, and cutlery. At first we weren’t sure this was for us. But we’ve traveled enough to figure out that this is some kind of first course or starter that everyone gets.

Eventually, a “waiter” came to the table and we ordered – without speaking the language. We pointed to the shashlik and said “lamb”… but we weren’t certain how many skewers came with the order or how big each skewer would be. We showed three fingers to indicate three skewers, but we must have looked a bit confused so the waiter went to a refrigerator and brought out the lamb skewers raw… and he had six skewers… We then pointed to one, two, three… and he smiled and went off to cook them on a little jerry-rigged barbecue outside. Of course I followed him and photographed. About halfway through our meal, another waiter came to the table with an order of “plov,” the national meat dish that is sort of like rice pilaf.. Mike ate that as well as his share of the shashlik. At the end of the meal, a group of guys (Uzbekis) asked to take a picture with us, so once again we are exotic. They seemed excited to learn we were Americans… they thought we were Germans. FYI, the picture of the toilet is compliments of Mike.. I knew better…

Then we were off again for the next two hours of our drive. We were using our own GPS and also a new app that the car rental guy suggested called MapsMe… It can give you directions and location information without being on WiFi which proved helpful when we lost a signal for a while.

We had reservations at a hotel called Lyabi House Hotel which had looked quite nice on the Internet. But, while we thought we had a reservation we were a bit skeptical since, the hotel never answered any emails we sent regarding our arrival time. And we didn’t have any phone number. So, as we got close to Bukhara we talked about what would be good to have in a hotel for the next few days… especially given that while Bibikhanum was fun and well located, it was actually difficult once I developed my ankle problem. So we said we really needed a good mattress, a place that could bring ice to the room to ice my foot, and that had an interior lobby so that we didn’t always have to walk in the rain when we were actually already inside the hotel. We looked again at Lyabi House and it no longer seemed like the best option.. I searched the internet as Mike drove and a hotel called Malika Bukhara looked good.. and had good reviews. So I called and they had a room which we booked. We have no idea if we paid for Lyabi House or not.. but we decided it didn’t matter. Hotels are very inexpensive so we’d live with the consequences.

We arrived at Makila Bukhara and checked in… We asked for a really good restaurant recommendation — you guessed it…. Lyabi House.. So we got to our room which is on the second floor.. and guess what.. It’s an interior courtyard and you have to walk upstairs in the rain, just like we did at Bibikhanum.. and as we knew we’d have to do at Lyabi House.

Oh well.. We checked out the room – good mattress and they had ice, and even a plastic bag for the ice. Once we got settled in the room, we ventured out to dinner at Lyabi House.. more on dinner in a minute. The hotel looked really nice, and I think we were both a little sorry that we jumped ship so fast. Probably should have gone to Lyabi House, checked it out… and if we didn’t like it, then we could have moved on to Malika. The only drawback for Lyabi House would have been that it is about two blocks into a central square that is completely pedestrian… so if my foot continued to act up and we needed to use taxis we’d have to walk two blocks to just get to the taxi. We resigned ourselves that we made the right decision.

As we walked to Lyabi House for dinner, across the pedestrian square, a little girl approached us and said in perfect English: “Hello, my name is Lucilia (or I think that was the name); I am 10 years old…” We asked her grade but she had a little trouble with that one.. and we asked if she lived in Bukhara. She didn’t; she lived in the Fergana Valley; she was visiting Bukhara with family. As I turned around I could see her beaming mother who was now videoing my conversation with Lucilia who then started over again: “Hello, my name is Lucilia; I am 10 years old.”  We did chat a little more as I asked very very simple questions. With each response the mother seemed happier. Then we hugged for the camera and I took a very quick picture of Lucilia. Not sure where all of these pictures and videos that people are taking of us are going. Then again, they don’t know where all the pictures we are taking of them are going either!

But, dinner at Lyabi House was actually wonderful. First truly good meal we’ve had in Uzbekistan. The restaurant is within a 135-year old building, across the courtyard from the hotel. We had an appetizer of marinated herring in a vegetable salad (really a sort of compote of chopped marinated vegetables on top of which sat the pieces of herring); little raviolis stuffed with lamb served in a very very light pesto sauce; medallions of veal with a simple balsamic sauce (cooked perfectly rare as we requested — first time a restaurant here understood “rare” and first time the meat wasn’t leathery); we ended with a very very wonderful and unbelievably light cheesecake. We had a whole bottle of red wine (from Uzbekistan which was actually good. 

The bill for the dinner which could stand up easily to a Bay Area dinner… was $21.00!! Truly amazing. We already made reservations to return on Tuesday night again, for dinner. The waiter was delightful. He was super-excited to practice his English (which wasn’t bad, although he apologized profusely and asked us to correct him if he makes mistakes. He has been trying to take the TOEFL exams although I don’t think he’s planning to study in the US. Since he seemed to like food, we asked for recommendations of other restaurants in Bhukara and now we are set.  By the time we left Lyabi House it was raining and very very cold. Supposed to rain all day tomorrow so we will have to figure out a plan..

Best –

Fern