It is a 7 hour drive to get from Khiva to Bukhara......and most of it is desert! SO ...very few photo opportunities! The walls of Khiva are however very impressive!
At one point we stopped to view Turkmenistan! Highlight of the drive!! If somewhat abandoned!
Late afternoon we arrived at our boutique hotel the Minzifa...... with its beautiful courtyard and Ayvan, covered terrace!
we were delighted with the rooms we were offered.....
and the hotel itself was in a great location, easy walking to all the historic sites.
On our first evening we had dinner at the Lyabi Hauz complex, with a view over the 'Hauz', Persian for reservoir, which was great! In this case the reservoir was artificial from around 1620!!
The following day we started a more serious tour of what Bukhara has to offer!
Our first stop was to check out the Trading domes from the 16th century! The original shopping malls!
The closest one to the Lyabi Hauz was the money changers dome....Toqi Sarrafon
Money changing hands now comes from the tourists! When they return!
Then Trading dome #2 Toqi Tilpak Furushon.... originally hats, now textiles and souvenirs......
Then on to Trading dome #3 ....The Tim Abdullah Khan....... which used to be for carpets...and still has some.....but we were happy to just have a coffee there!
... but still checked out some textiles and carpets next door!
The largest dome was probably Trading dome #4, the Taki Zaragon... the original jewellers bazaar..
Near here we were given a demonstration of the
Paranja, worn by all Uzbek women prior to the arrival of the Russians!
As this was always worn when out in public it must have been exteremely hot in summer when temperatures averaged 37C or about 100F!
We had lunch in a central restaurant,
Dolon, where the owner allowed us to go on the roof terrace to get a good view...... the food was just OK!
It had a great view .....from what wasn't exactly an expected rooftop terrace!
To be fair we went up an extra spiral staircase to improve the view!
The sunset view of the moneychangers dome was great!
No comments:
Post a Comment