Author: TC0241

There and in an instant we have changes countries, we sort of flitted in and out of Tajikistan no sooner were we there than we left.

Mike and I did manage to go to a coffee shop and sit in the sunshine for 30 minutes with a little walk either side using different routes (Well Mike did have a map and a compass)

 

Anyway we are now in Almaty in Kazakhstan. A place quite familiar to me as I came here about 3 years ago for a few days, there are some earlier blogs of mine one about a Thai massage which still makes me smile.

 

Two minute history, given independence by the Russians when the Soviet Union dissolved, it is the ninth largest country in the world the historic capitol was Almaty where we are but the president moved it north to Astana nobody is exactly sure why as the climate around the new capitol can move from +40 in summer to -40 in winter (Celsius that is). The place is overflowing with oil and gas which is piped both East to China and West to Europe.

 

Almaty means “apples” and they are reported to have originated from here and it still remains the economical heart of the country.

 

We are staying in a hotel close to the Panfilov Park where there are a few sights we will check out. They have a cathedral which is made only of wood. A monument to the fallen hero’s of the “great Patriotic War” (WWII to us) plus a Museum of musical instruments’ which is never ever open.

 
  

We are taken up to the Medeu Ice-rink which is rather large at 10,500 sq metre and is the Highest Ice rink in the world at 1,691 mt above sea level.

I am sure it is very impressive but it is rather lost on me (sorry if you are a speed skater and this is your El Dorado)

 

On the way back we see some people selling apples and the size of some is astounding they are huge and I am sure there would be one as big as my head somewhere in the back of the van.

 

Not sure we need any of these but it would be rude not to get at least one which will provide lunch for 4 or 55 of us.

 

We are taken up one slope by bus so that we can come down by cable car ?sounds strange process but when in Almaty etc etc.

At the top is a small petting zoo some old fashioned rides for kids a few souvenir shops and a couple of  bars / café’s.

As one would expect you gat a great view of the pollution from high up.

 
mm

Well what a palaver that was as we try and exit Tajikistan through their main airport in Dushanbe

 

We arrive and yes there are 22 of us and it is quite early in the morning so we are expected to create a little bit of fuss at the best of times.

Well this time it is almost farcical. As usual before you get into any of these airports you have your bags scanned and you have to be a little assertive to keep a place in what could laughingly be called a queue it is more of a horde or scrum. Anyway we eventually get everyone through and are beside an area roped off on the other side of which is our check-in desk which is not yet open (I said it was early) 

 

Our guide is attempting to get the guard to allow us to to line up at the desk rather than hang around creating a jam in the main doorway. I should have said it is not a big place I mean really quite small so the 22 of us plus luggage is creating a lot of tension anyway. The guard is not impressed with our guide until he quietly asks if we are “diplomats ?” our guide says nothing but just smiles and stares at the guard who then moves one of the ropes and lets all of us through and we duly line up at the check-in desk waiting for it to open.

Now as to the layout there are 6 desks 1,2,3,4,5,6 ok so far good we are at desk 3 which shows the flight to Almaty fine you might think however the guard is now trying to be helpful and suggests we line up at number 2 as well.

Ok not a problem so we are now split but it is ok.

 

After a while the desk clerks arrive and open up 3 and 4 so everyone lined up at 2 have to shuffle round to number 4 still with me so now we are at 3 & 4 our guide hands over all the details and passports so they can check our visas and generally stare at the pages. 
 

One of the clerks then announces that we are not booked on the flight and we need to leave. There is a lot of excited discussions with our guide who is adamant we are booked and confirmed although they still insist that we do not appear on their manifesto. It takes almost 15 minutes before they realize they are looking at the list for the afternoon flight not the morning one and low and behold there we all are on their list.

 

Ok so now can we check in, well not really they now decide that they do not want to use desk 3 and we have to move to desk 5 so everyone in the line shuffles round.

as the desks are technically open they are letting other people into the queues and there is a small woman with some huge cartons leaning into me every minute of two as if that will somehow speed up the process (I am the last in our group). The lady is continually clipping my heels until I put my case strategically in between us.

 

Now as the last one in the group to reach the desk I think they will have it all off pat and it should be a breeze but after checking my case they suddenly decide they want to weigh my knapsack as well I tell them it is my hand luggage and going on the plane with me but they insist and what do you know the combined weight puts me over the limit they then inform me I am overweight and I need to pay a fine. I am trying to explain that there are 21 others that they have just checked in all with knapsacks none of which were stopped or weighed and I am reticent to pay any excess. They in turn seem adamant I do so a bit of a Mexican standoff ensues. To break the deadlock I suggest that we should bring back all of the previous 21 people and they can all have their knapsacks weighed and they can all pay the excess so I call loudly to the guide to bring everyone back over.

I turn and stare at the girl at the desk who then hands me my boarding pass and tells me to have a nice flight.

 

We go through another scanner and into the main terminal hall which might hold a couple of hundred people and the next you know we are landing in Almatymand given what we have been through in the last couple of weeks the arrival process customs and luggage collection are very easy.

 

Well today we are supposed to be seeing a giant reclining Buddha in the Museum of Antiquities but for some reason we do not, either that or I fell asleep.

Also the burial place of a Sarazm Princess and her burial attire (remind me to show you the Gold suit in Almaty) and the Soghdian murals from Piandjikent, 6th-8th Centuries.

 

At the time I was not really bothered as it was just another museum but now after reading so much about the history of the area I have to say I am a bit miffed.Maybe it’s a good enough reason to go back sometime.

 

Anyway as I said yesterday we are off to a market so lots of pictures the town we are in is called “Dushanbe” which in Tajik means “Monday” and the place grew out of a village which had a very popular Monday market.

  

 

Now those are big tubs of honey,

 

 

Grapes or bread or maybe a grape sandwich

 

Herbs by the large bunch and three girls modeling what could be bed sheets or something else colorful.

 

butchers which was a little disconcerting as everyone went and felt the stuff before buying so god knows what germs are around. The candy looks a little more inviting though.

Today we cross into “Tajikistan” which is new country so another one to tick off, The border is long and tedious especially as the customs people decide to stop after processing half of us and go for lunch. Doh!!!

We decide to just sit and eat our nuts and fruit (from the market the other day remember) we strike up a bried aquaintance with a young girl from South Korea who is touring on her own and using public transport to get around, she tells us she went to Afghanistan and Iran a month or so back, she picked up a visa at the border. Have to say she is a plucky soul and we wish her well although she has already surpassed anything I will ever get up to.

 

Once finished we are off to see another Fort and Madrassa complex. The Hissar Fortress and the Khona Madrassa. Now there are many fortress-related legends which are supported by local residents. On one of them runs that the fortress was built by Afrosiab for the purpose of protection from Rustam’s armies (remember the word “afrosiab” the original town which became Samarkand the other day). The fortress-citadel consists of three parts and is located on the natural hill and dates from the epoch of Timur and Timurids and was considered as the center of Eastern Bukhara, where the representative of Tsar dynasty (son or brother of Bukhara Ruler) was in reign.(Tsar now where have we heard that word before)

 

We are told that this particular Fortress was captured 23 times which make it a very bad fort, surely the purpose is to repel invaders.

If they got beaten 23 times I think maybe they need to improve the lock on the gates. 

 

Now we are off to Dushanbe capitol of Tajikistan and from what we see on the way in it is mostly a Russian style town.

We are shown some of their main sights however as this is not particularly rich with the gas / oil of the other “Stan’s” but I am sure it will come soon.  

They still have a few brand new buildings to show off even if you can not actually get close to them.

they do appear to have the worlds tallest flag pole but for some reason not the highest as there is one in Uzbekistan which though shorter is on higher ground.

 

And the pollution to go with it which is caused by their use of coal as a fuel as well as the cars which they drive without any regard for road rules.

Tomorrow we are off to yet another market but they are so colourful (colorful) that I don’t care they are a great place for photos. 

So the coach just stops and we all get off, now there is absolutely nothing here to see, Serge explains the place is a kilometer away but once we have crossed the railways tracks and the irrigation channel we will be fine.

   

 

yes the bridge planks were not secured and in places were missing but in for a penny as they say.

  

The green bit is Afghanistan (sort of) the river Oxus moves so the border changes sometimes,

Alexander The Great conquered this place in around 350 BC and left some of his staff here to rebuild and occupy the area.

An internet search brought this explanation. Alexandria is situated on the confluence of the mighty Amudar’ya (the ancient Oxus) and the Kokcha.

Across the river is a spectacular wall of steep rocks. The city became rich because it controlled the trade in lapis lazuli, but it was also situated on the Silk road.

One of the Bactrian kings, Eucratides I (c.170-c.145) honored the city by calling it after himself, Eucratidia.

It is about 2 km long and 600 m wide, and was excavated by French archaeologists and looks surprisingly like a Greek city, including temples, a palace, colonnaded courts, city wall, gymnasium (sport school), houses, Corinthian columns, free-standing statues, and a theater wth 5,000 seats. 

The city’s wealth attracted enemies, and it was sacked by Sacae nomads in c.135 BCE, and later by the Yuezhi nomads (who later founded the Kushan empire in the Punjab).

A very interesting place and I might have said this previously but it may just be the oldest thing we see on this trip (but its not finished yet)

 

Info gleaned from various web sources. 

Timur (8 April 1336 – 18 February 1405), Tamerlane in English (from Persian: Timūr-e Lang, “Timur the Lame”), was a 14th-century conqueror of West, South and Central Asia, and the founder of the Timurid dynasty (1370–1405) in Central Asia, and great-great-grandfather of Babur, the founder of the Mughal Dynasty, which survived as the Mughal Empire in India until 1857.

Timur is his Turkic name, which means ‘iron’. In his life time, he has conquered more than anyone else except for Alexander the Great.

Timur was in his lifetime a controversial figure. He sought to restore the Mongol Empire yet his heaviest blow was against the Islamized Tatar Golden Horde. He was more at home in an urban environment than on the steppe. He styled himself a ghazi (warrior) while conducting wars that severely affected some Muslim states, in particular the Sultanate of Delhi. A great patron of the arts while his campaigns also caused vast destruction.

His armies crossed Eurasia from Delhi to Moscow, from the Tien Shan Mountains of Central Asia to the Taurus Mountains in Anatolia. From 1370 till his death 1405, Temur built a powerful empire and became the last of great nomadic leaders. Those who saw Timur’s army described it as a huge conglomeration of different peoples – nomad and settled, Muslims and Christians, Turks, Tajiks, Arabs, Georgians and Indians.

Timur’s conquests were extraordinary not only for their extent and their success, but also for their ferocity and massacres. The war machine was composed of ‘tumen’, military units of a 10,000 in the conquered territories. Timur’s armies were feared throughout Asia, Africa, and Europe, sizable parts of which were laid waste by his campaigns. Scholars estimate that his military campaigns caused the deaths of 17 million people, amounting to about 5% of the worlds population (read that again that is 17,000,000 people killed by his armies).

Timur and his army were never at rest and neither age nor increasing infirmity could halt his growing ambitions. In 1391 Timur’s army fought and won in the great battle of Kanduzcha on June 18. Following his campaign in India, he acquired an elephant corps and took them back to Samarkand for building mosques and tombs. He led the attack and victory on the Ottoman army in the battle of Ankara on July 28 1402

Here is one example from Wikipedia of Timurs style.

Capture of Delhi
(1398)

The battle took place on 17 December 1398. Sultan Nasir-ud-Din Mahmud Shah Tughluq and Mallu Iqbal’s army had war elephants armored with chain mail and poison on their tusks. With his Tatar forces afraid of the elephants, Timur ordered his men to dig a trench in front of their positions. Timur then loaded his camels with as much wood and hay as they could carry. When the war elephants charged, Timur set the hay on fire and prodded the camels with iron sticks, causing them to charge at the elephants howling in pain. He had understood that elephants were easily panicked and faced with the strange spectacle of camels flying straight at them with flames leaping from their backs, the elephants turned around and stampeded back toward their own lines. Timur capitalized on the subsequent disruption in Nasir-ud-Din Mahmud Shah Tughluq’s forces, securing an easy victory.

Delhi was sacked and left in ruins.
Before the battle for Delhi, Timur executed 100,000 captives.

The capture of the Delhi Sultanate was one of Timur’s greatest victories, arguably surpassing the likes of Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan because of the harsh conditions of the journey and the achievement of taking down one of the richest cities at the time.

After Delhi fell to Timur’s army, uprisings by its citizens against the Turkic-Mongols began to occur, causing a bloody massacre within the city walls. After three days of citizens uprising within Delhi, it was said that the city reeked of decomposing bodies of its citizens with their heads being erected like structures and the bodies left as food for the birds.

Timur’s invasion and destruction of Delhi continued the chaos that was still consuming India and the city would not be able to recover from the great loss it suffered for almost a century.

He invaded Baghdad in June 1401. After the capture of the city, 20,000 of its citizens were massacred. Timur ordered that every soldier should return with at least two severed human heads to show him. (Many warriors were so scared they killed prisoners captured earlier in the campaign just to ensure they had heads to present to Timur.)

The rulers of Europe were glad that the Ottoman Turk sultan Bayazid had been defeated, but they trembled at the idea that “Tamerlane” was at their doorstep. The rulers of Spain, France, and other powers sent congratulatory embassies to Timur, hoping to stave off an attack.

Timur had bigger goals, though. He decided in 1404 that he would conquer Ming China. (The ethnic-Han Ming Dynasty had overthrown his cousins, the Yuan, in 1368.)

The Timurid army set out in December, during an unusually cold winter. Men and horses died of exposure, and the 68-year-old Timur fell ill with a cold and died in February, 1405 at Otrar, in Kazakhstan really not that far from Samarkand which is his greatest lagacy.

Some Badass if you ask me (pardon my French)

So now for a bit of fun, we are told our next stop is over the hills to the South about an hour away but our coach is not allowed to cross the mountain pass for safety reason so we need to use cars, ordinary cars so we pile into 8 or 9 of them and set off. It is reminiscent of the “Italian Job” or “Grant Theft Auto” a snake of cars all far too close to each other going hell for leather up a mountain pass, I wanted to turn my head around and see if the Police were really chasing us but though it better to stay focused on bracing myself for what ever might come.

Mike and I had a car to ourselves and a 6 foot 6 inch drive who had to move his seat forward to get us in so his knees we either side of the steering wheel which could not be comfortable of very safe but hey we had other thinks to keep us amused like trying to calculate how many inched we were from the car in front.

  

 That is covering the bases a radar detector and religious icons

  

anyway the pass turns out to be no worse that ones we have been passing over for the last week or two.

 

Snack on the way down anyone.

  

Some dried yoghourt balls which actually taste pretty much like sour chalk and one tries not to think of exactly how they are made. 

 

Now as we descend it is probably time for me to explain why we are going to this place,,,, well it is the birthplace of the guy Tamerlane who has been mentioned often.

So tomorrow is a history lesson. 

So we depart Samarkand today and we are off to the “Registan” which is the central part of the old town which is the most famous part.

Not sure why it was saved for our exit but it was. We walk around which is about a kilometer but it is bright and warm here as it has been for all of our trip which means I have been dragging around jumpers and coats for no real reason Doh !!.

Anyway as we walk towards the place and it comes into full view you start to get the majesty and commonly described as ensemble of majestic, tilting madrassas – a near-overload of majolica, azure mosaics and vast, well-proportioned spaces – is the centre piece of the city, and one of the most awesome single sights in Central Asia.

The Registan, which translates to ‘Sandy Place’ in Tajik, was medieval Samarkand’s commercial centre and the plaza was probably a wall-to-wall bazaar where announcements and executions would be held maybe the reason for the sand ?

 

Now to help you with the pictures of the buildings from left to right they are (and there might be a quiz later so pay attention) Ulugh Beg (remember him from the Observatory) Medrassa the Tilya-Kori Madrassa and the Sher-Dor
Medrassa.

So a bit of history for you on Samarkand.

Meet and greet with the Locals ?????????????

 

It is difficult to capture or explain the scale or the color or the brightness of the place. Now I know lots of it have been restored but to be honest you can already see the cracks and it would seem our 20th century building techniques are not a patch on those of our ancestors. The place does hold your attention and your imagination, I am pretty sure everyone has heard of the Silk road and Marko Polo and this very place where all of this trade passed through.

That makes It a bit special. One quote we had was “When Babylon and Rome were being founded Samarkand was already in full swing” 

 

 

 






















 








 

 

Next is a somewhat special place as it is the tomb on Timur (and I promise in a few days I will explain all about him&nbsp to site is called “Gur-Emir”, in English “Tomb of the Commander”, it is the mausoleum of the 14th-century Mongol conqueror Timur, or Tamerlane. Though it has suffered from time and earthquakes, the monument is still sumptuous. Completed in 1404, it was originally intended to be the tomb of Timur’s grandson Muhammad Shah, but after Timur’s death in 1405 whilst on a campaign to China he was brought back and interred there as well, along with other members of his family.

 

The extant structures in the complex consist of a chapel crowned with a ribbed blue-tiled dome, enclosed by a wall, and fronted by an archway. The mausoleum plays an important place in the history of Islamic Architecture as the precursor and model for the great Mughal tombs of Humayun in Delhi and the Taj Mahal in Agra, built by Tamerlane’s / Timur’s descendants, the ruling dynasty of North India (now I bet that was a bit of a surprise to you well it was to me as well)

 

  

I sometime have to remind myself that we are not the only people interested in these places as there are many many locals who are visiting the sights as of course it is there country and it is there history as well.

I suppose the Tower of London has lots of English visitors as well

 

Quite a place and well worth an hour or so. We are going to finish our tour tomorrow morning and we get a couple of hours off to be tourists and get some supplies for some long road trips we have planned so we are off to yet another market (well tomorrow on the blog, what do you think of it so far ??)