We are off to Tajikistan!

On Wednesday, we walked to a less touristy part of Samarkand. It's actually a nice city. Lots of park space, and crews of people constantly cleaning and sweeping leaves, even into the evening. 

Beautiful sunny day, with a forecast high of 19C (66F). But with the sunshine, and no wind, it actually felt warmer than that.

Lots of fountains too, many of them actually working!

We walked down a big tree lines boulevard...

There are thousands of these little minivans on the roads here in Uzbekistan.

They sell for the equivalent of about $11,000 USD.

Fancy hotel.

We saw this interesting church, where there are normally mosques.

St. Alexiy Cathedral.

It was built in 1912, however after the revolution of 1917 it served various purposes including a dance hall, military garrison, gym, and dining room.

Only after Uzbekistan independence in 1991 was it returned to worshippers.

It is an interesting architectural design because there are no support columns on the inside.

Another older building.

Back at the guest house, we did some more research on Tajikistan. While Uzbekistan is the most popular and has decent infrastructure, Tajikistan is probably the most primitive. 

We're not exactly sure how our travel day today (Thursday) is going to end up. We're going to take a Yandex-Go taxi to the border, then another taxi to the town of Panjakent. From there, we are going to try to find a bus that goes towards Dushanbe (the capital), but we want to get off halfway there and try and get a ride to the little mountain town of Sarytag. This is going to be an adventure, because we're really not sure if we'll be able to get transport there, or if when we get there will there be any availability at a guest house if they are even open because the season up there is pretty much over. And if not, will we be able to get a ride back to the main highway and on to Dushanbe?!

We want to stay up there for two nights because there is a hike we want to do in the mountains up there. The weather window looks perfect, although it will be chilly overnight. 

For dinner, we found a decent shishkabob meal...

Actually, one of our better meals out!

The Registan lit up at night.

And a fountain lit up at night.

Ruth and the mounted policeman.

Ruth had read about the mausoleum beside our guest house and that the interior was worth seeing. Against my better judgement, she talked me into playing tourist and we spent 60,000 SOM ($5 USD, $6.75 CAD) to go inside.

The exterior is spectacular. Also, it's free.

The interior is also spectacular...

But it's hard to justify the money to spend five minutes looking at it.

Also, many of these old mausoleums and mosques were just ruins at the beginning of the 20th century and have been rebuilt.

Still impressive though.

Okay, we're off to Tajikistan. You may not hear from us until Saturday, depending on how things go. Wish us luck...

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HP 15" Laptop.