Samarkand

We are really aware of being on the Silk Road now, having left Tashkent and travelled to Samarkand.

We ate an interesting thing before leaving Tashkent although, as it turned out, we ate it wrong. In a Georgian restaurant, and Georgian food is amazing by the way if you haven’t tried it, we ordered an appetizer of 3 dumplings called khinkali. Took one each, put it on our plates, cut into it, and — soup spilled out! We ate the dumpling wrappers, with meat and vegetables inside, and scooped up the broth. Then noticed other diners were lifting each khinkali by the doughy topknot, carefully biting in to drink the soup, then neatly eating the remainder. We will know next time!

I must admit we are seeing a lot of mosques and mausoleums here in Samarkand, it seems to be an important hub, and much associated with Timur aka Tamerlane, a 13th-century Turco-Mongol conqueror who founded a dynasty in what is now Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. A few pics of Timur’s mausoleum are below:

The earliest settlements in this area were established around 1,500 BC, and the city itself was a key stop on the Silk Road — the network of trade routes connecting Europe and Asia — for hundreds of years. Marco Polo described it in the 1300s as a beautiful city of gardens and fruit trees.

I would not have known Registan Square before I came here, but recognized it from pictures.

Attended a performance last night, traditional Uzbek dances. The costumes were colourful, and by the way, we do see women in the streets wearing outfits that would be considered rather glitzy for daytime wear in Toronto. Even our young tour guide broke out a very elegant shimmery trouser suit for our walking tour this morning. We tourists looked dowdy in comparison, with our jeans-and-sweatshirt variations!

And to close things off, we’re on the second floor of our hotel in Samarkand, it’s a charming small inn, and these are the light fixtures, snapped from our door. I could use a few of these at home… if I could find any room for them… 😉