Samarkand

This morning, shortly before nine o’clock, the hotel owner knocked on my room door and told me that I had to leave the room. I was already awake and preparing my things, but that still felt rather early. I took my time and ate something first, though by 9:15 I was ready to leave. But then I asked whether I could get the registration confirmation. In Uzbekistan, you are supposed to collect such slips at least every three days in order to prove where you stayed when leaving the country. The guy took forever to prepare the document for me — he probably doesn’t do this very often. In the end, I was only able to set off at 9:50.

After barely five kilometers, a man stopped me and wanted to take a photo with me and, of course, know where I was from. Afterwards, he also seemed to want to invite me for tea, but since I had already started late and still wanted to have some time in Samarkand, I declined.

After about one third of the route, I took a break at a small roadside shop. After shopping, I sat down on a bench, and a man named Fazleddin sat down next to me. He first asked whether I could speak Russian. When I said no and he looked somewhat disappointed, I explained that I do speak several languages, just not Russian. Somehow we then discovered that he could speak Turkish because he had lived in Istanbul for several years. Turkish and Uzbek are related languages anyway, and many words are similar or even identical. So in the end we were actually able to communicate reasonably well, although my Turkish still has a lot of room for improvement. For a simple conversation, however, it worked more or less fine.

Before I continued riding, we took a photo together, and many children from the nearby school gathered around us. Their teacher, who was only 20 years old, spoke good English with me, even if it was only for a few sentences because I was already about to leave.

The route now left the large road I had been following since yesterday and instead went over small rolling hills, constantly up and down, though overall gradually climbing higher. After all, Samarkand lies at just over 700 meters above sea level. The day once again felt rather long, but eventually I reached the traffic of the fairly large city and soon arrived at the apartment where I would be staying tonight.

Odette, whom I had met during the tour in Bukhara, rented an apartment here for a few days and said it would be silly for me to spend money on a hotel when the apartment had a second room she didn’t even need. Many thanks for this Croatian hospitality here in Uzbekistan :-).

When I arrived, she wasn’t home, but she had left the key for me. I quickly took a shower and then went out again to explore a bit more and see some of the sights before it got dark.

After sightseeing comes food, of course, and today once again there were tourist-oriented restaurants offering a selection of vegan dishes. With a full stomach, I returned to Registan Square, probably the most famous landmark of Samarkand. Odette had told me that there would be a light show there, so we met up to watch the spectacle together.

It was lovely to see Odette again. And the apartment she had rented was conveniently located right across the street from Registan Square, less than five minutes away on foot. And so another eventful day came to an end. I wonder whether tomorrow I’ll once again feel as if I had just come back from a rest day?