More on Almaty

"Pricey" doesn't begin to cover it. There is oodles of wealth about and every shop, stall, service, restaurant and cafe wants their share of it. I've come back to the hotel to savour an (expensive) cup of tea and pass the time here for a bit yet. If I'm going to be charged heaps, I might as well drink here and use t'internet. I'll just put it down as one of those days.

The tallest wooden structure in Asia. A very impressive cathedral.

Some children apparently being devoured by pigeons.

A modern, and thoroughly impressive war memorial.

Highlighting the atmospheric conditions of the city. It is rather polluted.

But it does give the light an almost tactile quality.

This is the hotel

And an independence statue.

Almaty

Almaty looks like a vibrant, fast, happening city. I'm in a hotel that looks like the dark tower from the Lord of the Rings and I like the feel of the place. But I am only here tonight and all day tomorrow. We shall see what can be done.

The flight from Tashkent here was fine (good size plane and smooth flying) and the same from Bukhara to Tashkent. So some of the hesitation was unfounded. The mountains we flew over were simply beautiful. It is good.

Bukhara

Getting to Bukhara was an experience. From Tashkent to Samarkand, you pick up the bus that goes there - it will leave when it is full, but that is pretty much the only quirk. With it being a nice big bus, and air conditioned, I was almost a little disappointed. Almost. The Samarkand to
Bukhara one was much more interesting, despite being similar in appearance. For a start, it was the Tashkent to Samarkand bus and it would only stop if it wasn't full, which ruled out the first few. Then it got to the ar$e end of nowhere and everyone got out. Those going on to Bukhara were shunted into a minibus which was, by happy coincidence, exactly big enough for all of us. As long as people sat on the stools in the aisles. Yay! The spiderweb lattice work on the shattered windscreen was standard equipment. I was grinning pretty much all the way in. I'm expecting similar or even worse in China - especially the Yunnan trip.
The madrassas and mosques are very similar to those of Samarkand. This is no bad thing as they are still wonderful.
Too much history is a bit overwhelming!


The pool in the centre of Bukhara where all would gather.


The tower. Genghis Khan didn't flatten it because he felt something so impressive would bring him bad luck.



The citadel. 500 BC or somesuch

A wooden mosque

The oldest bulding in town. Also not razed by GK, but this one because he didn't know it was there.

This one has a pole with a yak's tail hanging from it. This symbolises that a saint is buried here. This one devised a branch of Islam based on working as well as worshipping.

Samarkand

Okay, so I didn't get anywhere with decent internet. Hopefully Bukhara etc...
Samarkand and Bukhara are out of the way, really. I go to Bukhara tomorrow for 2 nights then back to Tashkent. From there I go on to Kazakhstan, which I left just on Thursday! Admittedly it is a big, big country but the trip could have been more direct if I had gone straight to Almaty. However (and this is possibly the single biggest 'however' I have ever written), that would have been a mistake. Without even seeing Bukhara, I can assure you that Samarkand has made the side trip worthwhile. Actually, the moment I stepped into the mausoleum of Tamburlaine (Timor the Lame) was one of the high points of the trip. I've not seen anything quite like it. Much of Samarkand has been rebuilt, curiously by the Soviet administration (I say 'curiously' because their standard behaviour was not generally to restore religious temples and pilgrimage destinations). But this mausoleum was largely intact. And it felt old. Registan was also extraordinary, but without the history lesson would have felt even more impressive, but simultaneously less so, as the fabulous buildings are reconstructions. Nonetheless, what they were, and how they were found and how they were reconstructed just adds to the story for me. The observatory of Olug-bek is a slice of science (accurate recordings of astrological movements), history (the son of Tamburlaine, he was killed in a power vacuum struggle), philosophy (he gathered many of the leading minds of the world to Samarkand), dedication (the massive sextant he built must have been utterly demanding and a work that could not greatly be shared), sadness (after his death, the townsfolk pragmatically took the buildings apart to add to their own domilciles) and serendipity (the site was discovered by chance and move recovery took place). This was a warrior/philosopher/scientist/king. But he was Tamburlaine's son, and as such, a disappointment to his father who seemed to be, compared to anyone else in the world, the sun to their candlelight. The necrolopis with its many mausoleums was also a remarkable place, and anywhere else woud have been a stand out attraction! Similarly for the reconstruction of what was intended to be the largest mosque in the world.
Just a point about these: they all look better from further away. The old work (15th century) is often not that finely detailed, and the reconstructions are done with what might politely be described as broad strokes.
I also went to a very good museum, but it was a pale shadow of the reality. Tamburlaine overshadows this town, so the fact that his mausoleum dominates my experience seems reasonable, but I felt that about the tomb from the moment I walked in there - before I knew much of his history and what he was and how he changed the world. He didn't write history, he was history. He makes Tsars look like dilettants. And then, apparently, his great-grandson was Genghis Khan.

Vasco da Gama and the other great navigators effectivelly bankrupted this region, by stopping the flow of goods around the middle east. The Silk Road, where ideas, lessons and communications travelled with the camels and donkeys, closed up. It is sad to see what remains of the region. According to the National Geographic video I watched though, the Silk Road never quite got going, either during the Roman times or after Marco Polo. So maybe my guide was misinforming me...?


The difficult part is picking pictures. By gum it's beautiful.
Registan:


Tamerlaine/Tamburlaine/Timur the Lame Mausoleum. So important, Genghis Khan left it standing (and not just because he didn't notice it).

His throne and a 'vase' he brought back. From Syria. Must have been fun lugging that through customs.

The black one - as you probably would have guessed.


Olug-bek's observatory. What a thing, and what a place!



A book stand for the most enormous Koran you can imagine


There are loads more, but I'll save that.

The Road To Samarkand

Everything was fine and relatively smooth. I am tired though, as my bus left at 9am this morning (after getting to bed at 3). The 5 hour bus journey was absolutely acceptable and I am in my hotel, a little distant from the town centre but no worries. I shall rest for the remainder of the day (still coughing a bit) and have a major explore tomorrow. Bukhara the day after.
Some places are smells (Vienna: horses, Barcelona: dog poo) and others can be colours. Russia was white, that beautiful snow white that I loved in Bavaria. Kazakhstan was yellow, a desert sand with again a dusting of snow. Uzbekistan looks brown, as of mud. It appears to be a giant farm, albeit one with a predilection for concrete. Kazakhstan also appeared to have ducts. I don't know if you recall the old 'pipes' screensaver for Windows, but that is what large sections of the roadside resemble there. Two pipes would run in parallel for a bit and then one would go over the other then they'd swap back, go away for a bit and then return.
I'd also like to mention how different the weather looks. From the bus I saw clouds like ice cream cones pointing at the ground, others the were arranged like a flat arrow, and another that (honestly!) looked like a Stonehenge arch. All around this isolated mountain range. No doubt some hideous Tchernabog summoning is going on down there (that's actually a reference to classical music, folks, and not another of my ramblings). Believe it or not.

At the Uzbek border

Most things I've been prepared for, at least tolerably forewarned. I was most concerned about the Russian borders, what with declarations and records checking, but once that was done, I was expecting smooth sailing. They all took longer than I'd hope, but what can you do? Anyway, hours of waiting ended with a form being dumped on you. In Russian. I speak none and no-one except the guard spoke any English and he was understandably preoccupied. Thankfully I got the gist. The guard told me what to write and where to sign. This isn't the Long Walk To Freedom, so sign it I did. He again asked what money I had, but presuming he was still hankering for a bribe I didn't tell him (also I don't like showing my cash in a room full of strangers: I know, I'm strange). Thankfully the actual customs man spoke excellent English and I had to comply. I'm pleased I didn't dissemble - first because I could trust my roomies, and second because they searched every bag in every room of our carriage, and possibly others. Making us about 3 hours late. By which time I had expected my ride to have gone home, but they hadn't, and I'll tip them when I get back to Tashkent.

Alanis

In one of her feature moments, Ms Morisette penned a tune called "Ironic", ironically about coincidence. I guess pedants take their amusement where they can. Anyway, irony, or possibly coincidence took a hand in my own days in the extraordinary trek from Moscow to Tashkent. Basically I caught a cold only at the very end of my visit to Moscow, when the weather had taken a turn for the warmer. I was late for the convent tour because I elected to follow the tour company's instructions rather than my own map-reading! But there possibly isn't a better time to get taken ill than when one is stuck in a compartment for 3 solid days (my travel companions would probably disagree of course). Rest obligatorily taken. But the cabin was not a comfortable place: I think that they are trying to melt winter by sending superheated vehicles out to defrost the ice, because that is how it felt. Of course you couldn't go into the corridor because that was full of people and hence equally hot. And the gaps between carriages were Ice Station Zebra with footing so trecherous it would have been no suprise to see fallen goats underneath. So I was running a fever in a sweltering icebox in a superheated carriage travelling across a frozen wasteland. Nice. Only one person on the train appeared to speak any English - the conductor - but on being led to believe that I had no money which with to pay for the necessary services he would charge only me for, he lost interest, but was still friendly enough in passing. The group in the cabin were a great bunch (mum and daughter returning to Karshi) and a young man back from living the high life for a few days). Three days is a long time in those conditions, but we got on fine, possibly because they couldn't understand me.
By the time we approached the border with Kazakhstan, I was at my most feverishly unwell (not on the grand scale of things, just relative to this cold). And rather than worrying about the armed guards inspecting cases and grilling everyone in a marvellously suspicious manner I was more concerned about a lady I like (who doesn't reciprocate) and whether she'd found someone else. I look back in some amusement, as I really did have better things to worry about, and the Uzbek border reminded me of this later (see next posting)

Novodevichy

This is the convent used as, basically a storage place for wealthy families' wayward females. But it is built more like a fortress. Tsars' first wives and ambitious sisters were often placed here to take the veil, whether they terribly wished to or not.






The cemetary is another monument to the odd iconography of communism. It is where they put famous people, simple as that. But the definition of fame is not mine. Mid ranking military and party apparatchiks are unsurprisingly over-represented, but there are more flowers for personalities and characters. See Khruschev, Prokofiev, Checkhov (I have many others)... and possibly the most moving was Raisa Gorbachev.





To leave Moscow, you need to see the Peter the Great statue. I liked.

Just quickly

I've got several updates as you might expect, but internet access from that finest of Stans - Uzbeki - is sorely limited and the blogspot website is generally unavailable. Nonetheless it appears to have made itself visible right now so I'm going to briefly update you:
1. Novodevichy Convent and Cemetary in Moscow is beautiful and interesting
2. 3 days on a train from Moscow to Tashkent is tough. Especially if you caught a cold on the last (and warmest) day in Moscow. It was like a frelling oven in there.
3. Border crossings on a train can be really dull, and not a little scary.
4. Haven't seen enough of Tashkent to comment yet - and may not at all. Big place and I need my energy.
5. Samarkand is stunning.
6. Bukhara is stunning. No, really.

I have written 'proper' blog content for these, and I have photos (lots) but my PC is not on the net here (this is from an internet cafe). Suffice to say I am well, if exhausted. Flying to Tashkent tomorrow and then the same to Almaty the day after. Then a tough train journey to Urumqi in China (yay!). Supposedly the border crossing takes 6 hours, during which you cannot leave the train or use the toilets. Could bring a new definition of 'fun'.