After a simple breakfast of tea, biscuits and an omelette, we were privileged enough today to visit the greatest historical site in Central Asia: the Registan of Samarkand. The name of the city conjures up the most fantastical and legendary images of traders on the Old Sik Road, the great medieval empire of Tamerlane and all the exotica that goes along with caravans of camels trailing through the broiling sands of the desert.
The Registan, then, is a large square faced by gardens on one side and three intricately frescoed facades on the others. The central square once acted as the beating heart of Samarkand and indeed, the whole Silk Road network, as one brimming bazaar. Goods from China going one way could be exchanged for treasures coming the other way, from the emerging cities of western Europe. They would all intersperse with handwoven rugs originating from workshops surrounding the Registan, in a shopper’s Mecca.
The buildings, glittering with azure and lapis-blue tiles, each surmounted by fantastical turquoise domes, were the intellectual and religious centres of the city. Here was the mosque, the interior of which was riotously decorated in a million myriad pieces of gold and blue, crescendoeing in a spiralling dome. Facing each other across the bazaar were the looming archways of the medresas, medieval centres of learning where the Quran was painstakingly studied and where selected students were quartered as in a modern university. They each would have huddled around small stoves, cocooning themselves in their rugs on cold winter nights, as explained to me by a local carpet salesman. It may be pushing 40C now but in January temperature drop regularly to -20C. The most famous teacher here was Ulug Beg, grandson of Tamerlane, who even constructed an observatory to study the stars. The foundations have only recently been rediscovered. I called at the wonder of it all, purchased a few Uzbeki-made bowls as souvenirs and felt ready to continue the journey.
East once more, towards the little town of Angeren, now dominated by its glowering Soviet-era factories, where we paused to tap the tonnes of watermelons for sale at roadside stalls, picking out a suitably hollow-sounding one for a future camping treat. Earlier we had stopped for lunch at a motorway cafe where hot, triangular pastries were offered, bursting with beef and onion. They were called somsas, a local speciality and were not unlike Cornish pasties.
Our luck tonight ran out when it came to pinpointing a suitable campsite and we found ourselves driving desperately into dusk then darkness. The terrain was so open and not right for tents at all. We were too exposed. One dusty mountain track off the road led to a barren hill and a wildly gesticulating farmer who was adamant we not camp there so redirected us into Angeren. Here we asked a local by the side of the road where we could stay and he led us out of town to a glamorously out of place looking establishment which was unfortunately too expensive and too posh to accept dollars. We didn’t have enough Uzbeki-made some left to pay for it so had to abandon the idea. We were grateful for the man’s help and he left without accepting any money for his friendly efforts.
So, as it was now getting to 10 o’ clock at night, we shot down the first side track we came to out of town and kept going until to continue would have been folly, so pulled over upon a ridge suitably away from any dwellings. Here, we placed the cars at right angles, the van and the Swiss ambulance, to hide and shelter the tents and hurriedly erected a makeshift camp. We were drained by the whole experience and didn’t get to bed until 1 in the morning, beside some anonymous track up a hill no-one had ever heard of in the middle of absolutely nowhere, lost in Uzbekistan.
Team Yes We Khan 