In October of 2011, we and a few of our teacher-friends went on a 9-day trip to Uzbekistan (in pink on this map, right below Kazakhstan). I have to say it’s one of the most interesting places I've ever been. It was amazing to see such beautifully-restored mosaics, minarets, mosques, mausoleums, and madrassas (religious schools) – what our guide called the “five Ms of Uzbekistan”. The history of the place mingles with present-day life. Once the capital city of the ancient Silk Road, Samarkand (and all of Uzbekistan) still attracts visitors from far-away lands, and the small squares in each city we visited hum with the work of artisans making ceramics, metal goods, intricate wooden carvings and silk embroidery.
Over the last 100 years, the government has poured a lot of time and money into restoring the country's ancient buildings. The government now pays people to stay in the family business and learn artisan crafts. Young people are encouraged to go start internships with artisans teaching restoration work and traditional crafts. Sadly, this didn't start early enough – the art of staining mosaics was lost, so the old historical tiles often have better color than ones not older than a few decades. Even still, the work they have achieved is something to behold and absolutely incomparable to anything I've seen before. If you can get yourself there, I highly recommend it! Here are some highlights.
Our itinerary:We flew into Tashkent (1 night) then on to Khiva, spending two nights in an historic madrassa converted into a hotel. From Khiva we took an 11-hour bus-ride to Bukhara (2 nights). After Bukhara we spent a night in the desert at a yurt camp (camel ride!), then moved onto Samarkand (2 nights). Finally, we drove on to Tashkent and caught our flight home that evening.
A note about Uzbek money:
The biggest note in Uzbek currency is 1,000 som, which is around 50 cents (USD). You can imagine that people have to carry a lot of cash to live their daily life. (Our guide came on the bus with a duffel bag and said, "for our money". We all laughed. And then he said, "No, really... Uzbek people have to have big money bags. You'll see." Indeed we did!) We were a group of six. Each time we went out for a meal together, paying the bill was always amusing for us. We’d hand over a huge stack of bills and watch while the waitress counted them out in front of us, quickly and expertly. Once, we asked if we could pay in dollars and have change given to us in som. The stack of bills that came back to us (pictured) received a lot of amused attention from other tourists in the room, several of them taking pictures while we tried not to look like brash high-rollers. If you so please, you can pretend to be a rock star in Uzbekistan, extravagantly fanning out your money. I only regret that we didn't take the time to do money “snow angels” on the bed, like in those old Las Vegas movies.Tashkent:
We stayed at the inevitable Hotel Uzbekistan, a requirement for all travelers. Just kidding... Maybe. Well, it was one of the first major hotels in Uzbekistan and it remains a major landmark. It's certainly in a great location and every taxi knows it. We had some delicious food in Tashkent, and visited an impressive bazaar filled with the sights, sounds and smells of every spice you'd expect to find. This is a culture whose history is steeped in trade (the Silk Road!), so I wasn't surprised to find that they still take a lot of pride in their markets and their work. Tashkent is also home to one of the longest-standing Eastern-Orthodox churches in the world, built entirely out of wood but without a single nail (mostly held together by dovetail joints). Uzbekistan is also lucky enough to have a slightly-more-temperate climate that some of their -stan neighbors, so even though our friends back in Kazakhstan were in three inches of snow, we were wearing light jackets and eating fruit (are you noticing the bright-blue skies in each of these photos?). Awesome. Yummiest thing I ate in Tashkent? Pumpkin samsa (pictured), a kind of flaky bread roll filled with different things. Often it's potato and onion, but these ones had sweet, tender pumpkin inside. Yum!Khiva:
Khiva’s old center is a UNESCO World Heritage site. No cars are allowed inside the old city walls, so it is a small sanctuary from modern life. Old buildings have been restored, including the castle and the king’s harem, and artisans sell their wares inside the squares. It’s pretty impressive to be in a small village without any hint of the outside world. We stayed in an historic madrassa that had been converted to a hotel. (Madrassas usually have dozens of small students’ rooms surrounding a large courtyard.) The building itself also had UNESCO protection – for good reason. The intricate mosaics on the floor, geometric wood carvings in the ceilings and on the doors (pictured), turquoise and cobalt tiles covering the half-finished minaret outside (pictured)… it was enchanting. It was also one of many places we could admire Uzbek pottery, beautiful bowls and platters stained in the same blues and greens as the mosaics all around us. For me, Khiva was the highlight of my trip to Uzbekistan. One morning, we were lucky enough to see women making bread in a traditional tandoor (an outdoor wood-burning, clay/mud-brick oven -- they quickly slap the bread against the side of the oven, where it cooks against the hot coals). She watched us all happily eat her bread right on the street, warm and fluffy and reminiscent of grandma's house. While we ate bread, we watched a young boy head off to his circumcision ceremony, dressed in his fanciest garb and being paraded through the streets by his very proud parents (to collect money and well-wishes from the townspeople). We also briefly joined in a few passing wedding parties. It was great to see such a healthy slice of 'normal' life.
Bukhara:
Genghis Khan came through Uzbekistan on his conquest of Asia. There’s a legend that he came to Bukhara and marveled at the minarets, the mosaics, the madrassas ... he was impressed. But he’d earned his reputation through a reign of destruction, and he wasn't about to stop. As he was admiring the minarets he was about to destroy, a wind came up and blew his hat off. As he bent to pick it up, he realized that the winds of Bukhara had just forced him to ‘bow’ to the city. In recognition for this bit of cleverness, he spared the city and moved on. I’m glad he spared it. It’s stunning. (We also learned that Genghis Khan had first sent ambassadors to offer trade agreements to the different kings. They laughed at the ambassadors and a few of them were murdered. Enraged, Genghis promised that he would rule the land, either through trade or domination... and they had just made their choice. Wow -- he was good at vengeance.)
Friends of ours who had been to Uzbekistan the year before told me that Bukhara was their favorite city in Uzbekistan (they didn't go to Khiva, so I couldn't ask them to compare). It certainly is beautiful. The center of the square where our hotel was located had a large madrassa (converted into a bazaar) over-looking a pond and some ancient-looking trees (pictured). Like so many other buildings in Bukhara, the old madrassa was covered in intricate mosaics of turquoise, cobalt, saffron, red and green.
We also purchased several small suzani (Uzbek embroidered tapestry-like wall hangings/table cloths) to give as Christmas gifts -- all the Bukhara style of red, blue and green thread on cream-colored linen.
Basically, all we did in Bukhara was take dozens of photos of amazing mosaics. By the end, we were almost overloaded with the intricacy of everything and were happy to just sit in the sunshine and have a coffee by the little pond. Lovely.
We brought back a bunch of suzani. These days, you can find all kinds of suzani at the Pottery Barn and other such places, selling for five- or six-times the price of what you’d pay in Uzbekistan. The first time I’d heard about it was from my aunt, who keeps up with stylish interior design and told us about them. A man we met in Samarkand was finishing a PhD based upon the styles and symbolism of suzani. He taught us there are several styles of embroidery, based on where in Uzbekistan the artist was from. All suzani convey specific meaning centered in their cultural roots (and the old religion of Zaroastriosm). My two favorite types were the Bukhara design (usually blue, red, green threads on cream or white linen), and Samarkand design (usually lots of thick, black embroidery embellished with red, orange and white thread). In both styles, there are common symbols used by the artists, sewn into the suzani for different purposes. Pomegranates (a major crop in Uzbekistan) represent family and children. Chilies represent protection from harm. Black lines (Samarkand design) represent a separation of day and night, good and evil, while clouds represent hope and ways to keep away the evil. All suzanis are meant to remind the user of what is important in life (home, family) and offer protection from anything that might harm them. 
In between Bukhara and Samarkand, we spent the night at a Yurt camp. We also got to ride camels.
Samarkand:
One of the show-stopping moments of our trip was visiting the Shakhi-Zinda Mausoleum, located at the top of the highest hill over-looking the city (pictures). The oldest graves are enclosed in small rooms of exquisite turquoise tile, or metal tiles carved into geometric patterns. It’s a unique place to say the least. Over a hundreds of years, the most elite members of the city were buried here in these elaborate suites. All of them are open to the public, at the top of any tourists' list (which is why you’ll always see a lot of people here). It’s still used as a cemetery, but all the modern graves are located on the back of the hill. The new graves almost always had pictures of the dead engraved on the headstone, along with pictures of things that were important to the person (we saw a headstone engraved with a eyeglasses, a stack of books and a globe for a teacher). 
Also in Samarkand was Ulugbek’s observatory (not pictured here). Ulugbek, Timurlane’s grandson, was devoted to sciences and mathematics. He studied the stars and found new ways to chart them, and his calculation of the length of a year is still one of the most accurate of all ancient astronomers (I think he was accurate to within an hour or two -- amazing, right?). It was during his time (around 1425) that Samarkand was a hub for students from all over the ancient world.
Finally, don't forget to stop and enjoy the pilaf ("plov"), a rice dish cooked in a massive pan. Each city has its own recipe for pilaf, and I found the Samarkand recipe to be particularly tasty.So...
I've used (and re-used!) a lot of superlatives to describe Uzbekistan and, honestly, I haven’t even told you everything. I could go on for much longer describing more buildings as beautiful, exquisite, amazing, stunning, incredible… but you can’t really appreciate it until you go see it for yourself. Honestly, it’s worth it. I took almost a thousand photos over 9 days! Doesn't that tell you something? (…besides the fact that I need more “digital discipline”, as my dear-friend puts it? Haha.)
Notes for travelers: The most expensive part of the trip to Uzbekistan is the airfare. It really is off the beaten track. Once you’re there, however, it’s a very reasonably-priced place to be. We've had friends go to Uzbekistan (with a five-year-old) and make all their own arrangements. For our trip, we decided to hire a guide through the travel company Kyrgyz Concepts (a professional-yet-reasonably-priced tour company we’d used for a group trip to Kyrgyzstan). The great thing about this is that we had a very-knowledgeable guide tell us great stories and take us around his favorite places (he's from Samarkand), all bus transportation was arranged, no one in our group had to be the navigator, none of us had to drive through the tiny streets, and we had a translator when we needed it. That meant that we could just enjoy the sites, enjoy each other's company and not worry about the little things. What a great way to spend a week!
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