One day in Tashkent

In all honesty, I have very little sense of Tashkent, which is fairly understandable since I was only there for one day. And because I knew I was only going to be there for one day, I used the subway a lot to get from place to place, even though Tashkent really isn't that large and I normally would have walked everywhere—I find that walking places gives me a much better sense of a place, it's people, and the geography.

After waking up and having a breakfast that was a little more leisurely than I like (especially since I almost never have breakfast unless it's free), I headed down to the train station but a ticket for Samarkand, and was only able to secure a first-class sleeper berth for that evening. In retrospect, it would have made more sense to buy a ticket for Bukhara, then come back to Samarkand, then take another night train from Samarkand to Khiva—trains to Khiva only pass through Samarkand, and not Bukhara.

Khast Imam

After this I headed to the premier religious complex in Tashkent, the Khast Imam complex, and it was already 1:00 by the time I arrived there—I really had only half a day in Tashkent. The central mosque contains what is claimed to be the oldest Quran in the world, written in 655. For me it was most interesting as a place to observe the obvious tension between the government and the devout—something especially curious given that the current mosque was recently constructed as a way to curry favour with the religious.

The main entrance to the new Khast Imam mosque. Uzbekistan makes sure that the religiously devout know they're being kept tabs on, as there were a bunch of police cars ostentatiously parked directly behind me.

Shoes galore.

Behind the mosque are s number of other religious buildings, including this, the Barak Khan madressa. Like many madressas in places frequented by tourists, the study rooms facing the interior courtyard have been converted to souvenir shops.

The back of the mosque. The air is so polluted that shooting into the sun makes everything look hazy and washed out, while shooting with the sun yields very different results.

Gorgeous geometric tile work and the aturquoise tiles on the dome that characterize so much Timurid architecture—unlike the mosque, the madressa dates from the 16th century.

The mausoleum of Abu Bakr Kaffal Shoshi, just north of the madressa.

This child knows the universal pleasure of playing in a pile of fallen leaves.

A woman asking for alms in the shadow of the madressa.

View from the interior colonnade of the madressa.

Looking east from the madressa.

Detail of the dome and tile work.

The western entrance of the mosque.

Chorsu Bazaar

The nearby Chorsu Bazaar is, to my mind, much more interesting than the Kumtepa in Margilan, and is probably the best bazaar I visited in Uzbekistan. As the main bazaar in a huge city, it's an appropriately large complex, with different sections/buildings for fruits and vegetable, clothes and consumer goods, spices, etc. The most charismatic building is a circular domed building that somewhat resembles a cross between Phnom Penh's Central Market and a Soviet-style circus building—but which was undoubtedly inspired by Samarkand's ancient Chorsu bazaar, which is also round—and which holds the spice & dry food market.

Porters man their carts next to an entrance to the spice market.

Concentric rows of spice vendors under the dome.

Piles of rice on display. In the middle, directly under the dome's oculus, is a souvenir stand selling postcards, bags and the like.

This spice vendor wanted me to take his picture. A uni-brow is considered very attractive in Uzbekistan, especially on females—you often see it penciled in by those who only have two distinct brows.

Panorama of the market from the second floor.

View from the second floor.

A young couple admire the Kukeldash Madressa, located just southeast of the Chorsu Bazaar.

I was taking this picture when I was approached by a curious local who wanted to talk to me. He was pretty friendly, and when he asked me what religion I was, I made the mistake of saying I had no religion. He wouldn't have minded if I said I was Christian or Buddhists (and I doubt he would have minded if I said I was Jewish), but he was legitimately concerned for me when I said I wasn't religious, and for his peace of mind he had me repeat the Shahada to signify my acceptance of Allah and Muhammed as his last prophet.

Inside the madressa, which still functions as a religious school.

Tourists aren't supposed to climb the stairs to the second floor, but I'm a very bad person.

Navoi Park

The Istiklol Palace concert hall, on the northern end of Navoi Park.

South of Istiklol Palace is the Abdulkasim Sheikh madressa, which is now used as a space for cultural exhibits. The north side exhibits significant earthquake damage, and was apparently the most interesting thing about the madressa.

There's a wedding palace in Navoi Park, and it's clearly a popular place to take wedding pictures. As with most of Central Asia (in the cities, at least), western-style wedding dresses are typical.

The Amir Timur statue with the Hotel Uzbekistan in the background. Like the Hotel Kazakhstan in Almaty, the Hotel Uzbekistan was an architectural landmark... though I think the Hotel Kazakhstan is a much better building.

The Ministry of Justice building has an unusual, Art-Deco-ish design—certainly a departure from typical Russian or Soviet-style architecture.

There were a surprising number of shopping centers in buildings near the Ministry of Justice, but they were unusual in that they were like shops lining relatively narrow indoor hallways, like you might find in a subway complex or something. They had a few international stores like Zara (somewhat fittingly in the "Zarafshon" shopping center) but these appeared to be unofficial shops. There isn't much foreign corporate presence in Uzbekistan, and the international hotels apparently withdrew their investments/presence after the 2005 Andijan Massacre. On the other hand, you do have things like the Uzbek Chevrolet factory (75% locally owned, 25% by General Motors), as well as international things like an ATP tennis tour event.

Bit in reality Uzbekistan is very much isolated from international commerce. There are only a handful of ATMs that take international cards, and since I knew I was going to need to collect dollars for my time in Iran (where you cannot use ATM cards at all and have to bring enough hard cash into the country to last your entire stay—which I figured would be $800), I knew I would have to try and get dollars wherever I could—daily withdrawal limits had hampered how much I could withdraw in Osh. The only places that have international ATMs tend to be high-end hotels that get foreign tourists and/or businessmen, and I tried to track a couple down after the sun set and exploring was no longer possible. I found one of the few hotels that had an ATM, went past their guards and valet parkers, walked inside the extremely luxurious lobby, only to find that their ATM was empty—a common situation. I would have to hope that I had better luck in Samarkand or Bukhara.

After that, I took the subway back to Chorsu, picked up my bag from the guesthouse, and headed down to the train station to catch my train.

I'll let you guess what each of these snack-food vendors at the Chorsu Bazaar were selling.

Budget

November 2, Tashkent: 52,900 som

• Night train to Samarkand (1st class): 40,000 som
• Coffee sachets and ice cream: 2,200som
• 1kg of apples: 2,000 som
• Lavash and drink: 5,000 som
• Subway (5 trips): 3,500 som

Karakol: a Russified village nestled between the Tian-shan mountains and Issyk-kul lake

You can catch a marshrutka to Karakol from the Western Bus Station in Bishkek. It cost 300 som for the 6-hour drive there, following the northern shore of Issyk-Kul lake. Issyk-Kul was a popular resort area during the Soviet era, and beach resorts line the northern shores. Slightly saline, the lake doesn't freeze over in the winter, which is why its name means "hot lake" in Kyrgyz.

It's a six-hour marshrutka ride from Bishkek to Karakol, broken up by a rest stop at a real, full-fledged restaurant in the lone pass between Bishkek and Issyk-Kul lake.

View from the rest stop.

Because the ride from Bishkek takes six hours, there's not much time to do anything once you arrive in Karakol and find a place to stay (especially since the bus stop is some distance from the center and the CBT office probably isn't open, in case you were hoping to stay at a CBT guesthouse).

I ended up staying at the Neofit hotel, which was 450 som for a single room, including breakfast. Bathrooms were shared, but they had ample hot water and good pressure. I thought it was a good value, but not the best place to stay if you want to meet other people and arrange trekking in the area.

The colourful entrance to the Neofit Hotel's restaurant. The hotel entrance is around the corner on the left.

Karakol's Chinese Dungan Mosque. Dungans are the local term for Han Muslims, and are basically what the Chinese would call Hui. The ladder on the right is to harvest the pears ripening on the tree.

Most of the worshippers look more Kyrgyz than Dungan/Han to me.

Students line the park in front of the University. I quite like the unkempt look.

Turpan & Jiaohe

The Turpan depression is the lowest point in China, and the second lowest in the world after the Deadd Sea, at 155 meters below sea level. It's also the hottest place in China, with a recorded high of 48°C.

Turpan was also my first exposure to Xinjiang, even if it was almost 800 km from the border with Gansu. As the bus from Dunhuang was ultimately headed for Urumqi, I was dropped off at the northern end of town, where the highway clips the edge of town.

I had no idea where I was but started walking south along a major road. I eventually reached town, but even at 8:00 in the morning I had to stop a few times to cool down. After walking around the center of town for a bit, I headed to the Turpan Hotel—which was supposed to have dorms—hoping that they still accepted foreigners. It took a while for the English-speaking attendant to show up, but she said I would be able to check in later—I think they accepted foreigners because they were a large three-star hotel that also hosted tour groups in their main hotel operations.

When I checked in that afternoon, I discovered that the dorms were actually located in the basement of a side building whose entrance was to the right of the main hotel entrance steps. Lots of people seem to complain about these dorms, but in my mind they were actually pretty good: 3 beds in an air-conditioned room with a TV and attached bathroom featuring a western toilet, and daily cleaning from hotel staff, all for the typical hostel price 50 yuan per night. Given that hostels usually lack AC and are much dirtier, being in a fairly dark and humid room (there was window high up on the wall, but always closed since people tend to use AC instead) was fine with me, especially since I didn't plan on being there that much.

Emin Ta Minaret aka Sugong Ta

After dropping my bag at the hotel, I decided to see one of the major attractions in Turpan: the Emin Ta Minaret.

You can take bus 1, 6, or 102 to get there. I took bus 6, which takes back streets and drops you off near the rear entrance to the mosque. I ended up walking all the way around to the front entrance because I couldn't read the signs pointing out the shortcut access, which seemed to indicate it was an exit only. It was a pleasant walk through empty backstreets bordering on grape fields, and much more interesting than simply being dropped off directly at the entrance.

Anyway, a bigger problem is that Lonely Planet calls it Emin Ta—and only gives the Chinese characters for Emin Ta—when everybody local calls it Sugong Ta and the signs and buses only use this name (苏公塔). This makes it kind of tough to tell if you're getting on the right bus, not least since the buses don't all seem to have numbers on them.

The back roads that bus 6 takes you over is a nice introduction to Xinjiang, however, as you pass through dusty streets lined with mud-brick houses—all very monochrome and Central-Asian looking. Between this kind of architecture and the poplar trees, this is the sort of landscape I was expecting, and hoping, to see in Central Asia. Dunhuang may have offered a taste of it, but this is where it really felt like the Silk Road was beginning.

Muslim cemetery near Emin Ta, with typical Turpan lattice-brick grape-drying houses in background.

Beds in front of houses and in the streets are a common sight in scorching-hot Turpan.

Living quarters below, grape-drying on top, and sleeping platform out front.

View of Emin Ta over grape vines.

The minaret is 44 meters high and richly ornamented with decorative brickwork.

Modern admission gate to the mosque complex.

Below the mosque's main entrance.