Juicy Melons

I'm very excited to have made it to Bukhara, particularly as quite recenty it looked a little unlikely that we'd be able to visit Uzbekistan at all. This city along with Istanbul and Samarkand were the spurs that set me off thinking about my trip so many months ago. It's a place that English travellers have traditionally found it a little tricky to get to - and out of. Yesterday we saw the 'bug pit' in the local gaol where two Victorian adventurers were encarcerated by the Khan of Bukhara for four years before being publicly beheaded in the main square.

Bukhara was one of the great cities of the Silk Road and in the early medieval period a city famed for it's learning and religion - the home of Avicenna, whose work on medicine was the key text for European medical knowledge well into the early modern period. Then along came Genghis Khan in 1220 and obliterated the place, leaving only the Kaylon Minaret standing, reputedly because he was so awed by it's beauty and majesty. Having seen it I can understand his point of view, though these days it is the blue tiled portals and domes of the great mosques and madrassahs constructed in later era that first catch the eye. Ibn Battutah came here well over a century after Ghenghis and reported the city to be still largely ruinous and devoid of the intellectual vigour that had made it famous throughout the Moslem world. However, he thought the melons in Bukhara the finest he had encountered on all his travels, and went to great lengths when in India to procure dried melons from Bukhara that had been carried there by travellers along the Silk Road.

Like Khiva, Bukhara has a the feel of a city geared for tourism but lacking any tourists. I bought an Uzbek shirt from a lady who told me that this was her first sale in two weeks on account of a 'a little trouble we have had in Andijan'. Next week we pass through the Fergana Valley area and will see for ourselves, though so far in Uzbekistan there has been no sign of unrest and very little evidence of a police or army presence.

For a few days I have been afflicted by that great scourge of the traveller - the upset tummy. In a way it's a blessing as I was rapidly tiring of lamb kebabs in any case, though it would have been nice to road test the melons. Still, I seem to be over the worst which is good news as it's a long trudge with a trowel in the desert to find any privacy for decent crap in the sand. Once a day is definitely enough!