We arrived to Samarkand early in the morning. The train station was few km out of the old city, on the edge of the new Samarkand.

We cycled through the new city which was still under construction and looked very European. It was strange that they were building new houses in the style not fitting into the environment. But I guess this is happening all over the world.Tourists come to this part of the world to see local architecture and not what they can see at home, but it looks the government doesn’t understand that.

It took us quite a while to reach the outskirts of the ancient Samarkand. I really didn’t like the new town and after Khiva I was a bit disappointed. We heard of this legendary city on the Great Silk Road, capital of mighty warlords and romantic home for famous poets, and all what we could see was new buildings until we finally reached magnificent Reghistan square. It was made the center of Samarkand in the time of Amir Timur and it is truly very impressive.

We were looking for a small home stay we heard about from some travelers. I stayed with the bicycles and Mirko went to explore the area. It was still very early so all the streets were just starting to wake up. It was nice to observe the street life in back streets of this very touristic city.

Mirko was gone for almost an hour. He came back with good news; the B&B DAVER was just behind the corner 2 minutes away from where I was waiting. The owner of the place was very nice; he gave us good price for the room and prepared us a big vegetarian breakfast with homemade apricot jam, freshly baked lipjoska and a big pot of green tea.

While we chatted with the owner and enjoyed our breakfast time it became very hot. We decided to explore the area in the evening when the heat would not be as strong. We went to the room and had a good rest; the summers here are so hot you can’t really do much during the day.

The Buildings in Samarkand are very impressive much more than in Khiva, but they are not in one place, they are scattered all over the city, a bit here and a bit there. So the feeling is not the same. I liked Khiva much more and I was happy that we took time to really enjoy it.

While walking the streets of Samarkand we decided to take the night train to Tashkent the next day and apply for Kyrgyz visa, which takes few days to receive.

We wake up early in the morning and after breakfast decided to have a trip to Shahrisabz which is only few hours’ drive from Samarkand on the other side of the mountain. We had time till the evening when we had to catch the night train to Tashkent. We took the taxi and had a nice excursion, feeling like real tourists hihihih…

When we came back we prepared the things for the trip to Tashkent. The owner let us leave the bikes with luggage in his place and took us to the train station. It was Sunday and the train was over crowded. We only could buy the hard sit tickets. There was hardly any place for us to sit and I was wondering how I will survive the night.

We didn’t have much sleep this night, only few hours before we arrived we get some space to strech our bones. It wsa quite an expirience.

Below: pictures from Bukara …

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