Onward to Bukhara

We stopped in a remote area a couple of days ago, to see a hill where Alexander the Great built a citadel, and when we got there were asked to help a stranded French tourist.  She started from Paris a couple of months ago and is making her way (solo) to India via hiking and public transport. She wasn’t talkative so I don’t know her exact route, but she crossed Western Europe, then went through Russia and Georgia, and is now crossing Central Asia. She made it to Alexander’s hill, then found that a bus she needed was not running that day. She hitched a lift with us to Aydarkul Lake, as we were heading there too.  Here she is (orange backpack, left side of frame), setting off to find a place to camp for the night.  As you see, it’s just her and her backpack, which must contain her tent and food as well as all her trip clothing.  Sometimes people say Geoff and I are adventurous but I couldn’t even imagine doing a trip like this.

We have spent the past two days in Bukhara, a really nice small city.  Again, many mosques and minarets and madrasas, and some really ancient sites, including the alleged tomb of the Biblical character Job.  I’m not sure if this is how things would be done in the West, but it seems that rather than display archeological sites as they are, they rebuild facsimiles in the location to show what they used to look like.  So I guess we *are* seeing the past but not exactly.  Not sure how I feel about that, hmmm.

We were introduced in Bukhara to the highly-unusual Central Asian cradle. Can’t decide if it’s a piece of brilliant engineering or just overly-constricting bedding for the baby.  Or both.  Our guide says that, although most families still use these, younger parents are starting to question the wisdom of keeping the baby tightly swaddled at night — but she also said the babies sleep very well.  🤷🏼‍♀️ Check out the first picture — the baby is swaddled into the cradle, there’s a hole in the bottom of the cradle, and if you look closely you will see a little chamber pot below that hole, strategically located below the baby’s hind end. To ensure maximum efficiency, they also position a little stick to direct pee into the chamber pot. Here is our giggling tour guide demonstrating the girl version and the boy version. Just when you think you’ve seen everything….

Visited the Puppet Museum, an interesting place with many cool puppets, but my favourite thing was a big wall of photos showing museum visitors who looked like museum puppets.  So many that it seemed uncanny — but hilarious!

And finally, a random photo — our Bukhara hotel’s very pretty courtyard!