Uzbek Som

Traveling around with Som, Uzbekistan's currency, is a pain. $1 USD = 2,300 Som (official rate), but the black market rate is 3,000 Som for $1 USD. The biggest denomination is a 1,000 Som note. So 20 bucks is 60,000 Som. Try fitting that into your wallet. Bank cards are not accepted anywhere nor are there ATMs. Annoying. Changing money isn't difficult as every bazaar has a spot and it's surprisingly not shady. 

A shared taxi ride around town costs 3,000 to 6,000 Som, to the train station 20,000 Som. A Coca-Cola costs 7,000 Som or over 2 bucks while their national orange soda or super sweet tea costs 1,000 Som. Local Uzbek beer called Pulsar, which is a light lager and pretty good, costs 3,500 Som. The Danish beer Tuborg is the only western brew available and it costs the same as a Coke. 

We have been using Mark's school backpack to lug around the thousands of Som needed for commerce in the country. Every Uzbek carries a kind of purse or murse. Counting a 90,000 Som meal takes about 10 minutes after both parties have shuffled through the stack. 

Road to Samarkand

We had to be on the move a lot in Uzbekistan because our visa expired Wednesday July 30 and our train into Kungrad arrived the evening of Friday July 25. That gave us 5 days to get to and see the Uzbek Silk Road cities of Khiva, Bukhara, Samarkand, and Tashkent. All far away from Kungrad, a forgetful Soviet army construction, and Nukus, the regional capital of Karakalpakstan, the northwest state in Uzbekistan that also encompasses the dying Aral Sea, where we managed to find a place to crash after our 28-hour no sleep train experience. 

The distances are great in Uzbekistan, unfortunately the transportation options not so much. So Khiva had to be missed since it took 8 hours by shared Taxi to get to Bukhara from Nukus. As the sun set and the driver blasted melodic Arabic chanting during the final day of Ramadan, the same desert landscape passed by. But then the stars appeared. 

I was sitting in the back right side awe struck by the thousands of southern stars and luminous Milky Way. The Sky Guide app on the iPhone identified the jumpingly bright Scorpio constellation and the star Antares, one of only a few stars bright enough for Mark and I to see in Jersey City. 

The front seat passenger, a sugar trader named Javahir, was captivated by the Sky Guide app and we soon bonded - again without speaking each other's languages, only the joy of the stars in common. 

We made it to Bukhara after midnight. I already wrote about Bukhara so moving to Monday morning July 28 - this time we were happy to take the last 2 tickets available for a high speed TGV-like express train three hours to Samarkand. The regular train takes 8 hours. 

Samarkand! The fabled Silk Road city. Home of the Registan (see photos below), the name for three mammoth Madresses (schools) with intricate mosaic facades, domes, minaret towers, mausoleums, mosques and courtyards. All three similar in design but built hundreds of years apart. The oldest in 1420, the newest in 1660. Samarkand has been rocked by violent earthquakes over the centuries destroying the city numerous times, yet these three buildings still stand. 

We visited other famous Samarkand sites including Shah-i-Zinda, an eerie row of about 40-50 tall, artistic mausoleums, and Gur-e-Amir, another mausoleum housing the remains of Timur, the ruthless Khan who with a lame leg nonetheless conquered Samarkand and bankrolled the Registan. 

To see all in one day was exhausting and honestly the buildings started to blur into one. It is forbidden to depicit any human form in Islamic art and architecture to prevent the false adulation of people over Allah. So complex patterns and colors must be woven into the mosaics placed on the structures.