Samarkand's secrets

Samarkand has a gazilion sites not too dissimilar from the Registan. There's complete beauts, rustic ruins, and some restored numbers; there's a bunch of archeological sites too. Serene courtyards and ornate decorations, really stunning stuff.

Me and some internals of a mosqualeum. Hello mother!

The outsides are all mosaics, and the inside are part mosaic part delicate paint and gold leaf. But, as beautiful as they are, it still doesn't take long to become immune to nice, old architecture. So I went in search of some normal things. Below is a collection of monuments to dead people; but in the foreground is the 'old town', walled off from the tourists; I was curious so dipped in through a rare door in the wall and found quite a maze.

Background: old things; foreground: normal things

The streets are thin -- just wide enough for a Lada to squeeze down -- and they feel like back streets because everyone lives in courtyards, so there's no front gardens. I quickly got lost in the maze; there's very few ways 'out'.

I enjoyed wandering round and using my three words of Uzbek to say hello to people as I walked. It soon got dark and a power cut meant no street lights; I couldn't see more than a metre ahead.

I needed some help.

I continued saying hi to everyone, and a group of jolly people in the street spotted the foreigner and started shouting at me ... CHAI CHAI! HELLO HELLO! And so I joined them for some chai on the street; we had a good old friendly 'international' natter, where the meaning of the words is unknown and irrelevant but the sentiment carries just fine.

Chai club, LtoR: Me, girl, man, man, imam, Baxodur

Baxodur, on the right, arrived later with fabulous English. It's hard to describe how charming it is to find a group of friendly strangers offering you tea when you're lost in a pitch black maze one evening in Uzbekistan.

So after some chai and chat, Baxodur and I went off to find a way out of the friendly dark maze, because I was genuinely lost. On the way we stopped off at a mosque, which the local Imam showed me around. I was standing there in my socks when the unanticipated conversation came via Baxodur, who was translating from Uzbek; I was balancing my conscience with my manners:

Do you believe in god?
No.
Why not?
Ummm. [long, slightly uncomfortable pause]
God created everything, therefore you should believe in him.
Ummm. [slightly shorter but still quite long pause]

Anyway, we shook hands and walked on, discussing how many mosques there are in Uzbekistan, and whether people go to church in England. Before I left the old town maze we stopped off at one more place, but that's another story.