Uzbekistan

After the very clean and very deserted Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan came as a bit of a shock. It reminded more of a country in Africa than a former Russian state. The heat also took us all by surprise. I know I have been saying that the places have been hot, but Khiva our first stop was something else. It got so hot that by half ten in the morning you had to return to the hotel, sit under a fan, and not venture out again until 6pm. Even then it was still uncomfortably hot. It was in the high 40's.

This is a large blue minaret in the middle of Khiva. Khiva is an old walled city, it hasn't changed much in the last 500 years or so. The town seemed to be run by children, it was children aged from 10 to late teens who did all the work, the only adults I saw were laying down. The children were pumping and carrying water from the street pumps (no water in any homes), serving in the shops, waiting on the tables, the boy in reception of our hotel cannot have been more than 11, as well as looking after our hotel keys he did play on his computer game alot.

The currency in Uzbekistan is called som. There are 2800 som to one US dollar. But for some bizarre reason the largest note they have is 1000 som which is equivalent to 25p. This is me carrying aroung $60 worth of som. we had to start carrying our money about in carrier bags - no way could it fit in a purse or wallet - you couldn't fit enough in to buy yourself a drink! After barely surviving Khiva we moved on to Bukharra and then to Samarkand. The photo above is of Rajestan Square in Samarkand. Bukharra reminded me alot of York, again it was a walled city but it was small and concentrated around quite a touristy square and lake. For some reason Uzbekistan is very popular with French tourists, there were loads of them in every city we went to. After seeing no tourists for weeks, it seemed very strange to have to share places with them. Whilst in Bukharra I went for a Hamman. These are places were you get scrubbed clean. Hammans are very popular in Turkey, though the Uzbekistan hamman is slighty different. I stood in a large heated chimney for 10 minutes (like a sauna), then I was scrubbed down with a rough mit before having freezing water thrown at me. After a massage my upper body was covered in a paste of honey and ginger. It didn't take long before my skin felt like it was on fire, even after the ginger was washed off, my skin was aflame for a couple of hours. I have to admit though, my skin felt silky smooth for a couple of weeks. As well as the cities, the film crew also took us to a couple of tiny villages, so we could watch some master craftsmen. The first house we went to belonged to a lady who produces a type of embroidery called susanni. Her, her daughters, and grand-daughters are produce this work. The film crew love filming crafts people. We also went to see paper being made. This paper was made with the bark of the mulberry tree. It is in mulberry trees that the silk worms live, and from the worms the silk is produced. as we are travelling the old silk road, this type of paper seemed very apt. The process was fascinating and I was even allowed to make a page of paper myself! By this time I only had 5000som to my name (less than $2) so it was time to cross another border.