Sunday, 27 September 2026

 

Start: Tashkent (UZ) 11:45

Arrival: Samarkand (UZ) 18:00

 

Total: 306 km

 

 

We hated to leave our wonderful hotel in Tashkent. But needs must, if we wanted to see more of Uzbekistan. Soon we were on the road to Samarkand.

 

 

We crossed the Syr Dayra once more - the ancient river Jaxartes, on which Alexander the Great won a decisive battle against the Scythians. To think that the Greek soldiers had come this far from Greece, many of them on foot. Anyway, this time, Sonia was ready. I think the picture she took out of the car turned out great, especially considering how bumpy the road was.

 

 

Soon, it was going uphill again and the landscape, which was actually much greener than I had expected, turned to desert hills once more. In the mountains, the asphalt was better than before which was a boon when we were driving downhill.

 

 

 

 

The 300 km from Tashkent to Samarkand seemed to take forever. One shotgun-town after the next, with car washes, tire shops (probably much need for that, considering the state of the roads) and endless samosa stalls. So many makeshift food stalls offering heeps of watermelons, bread and oven baked dishes. Very rarely did we see someone stopping and buying something. We didn't feel like trying the food either. Shashlik piled high, getting burnt to coal, then cooling off in vats of fat. Bread piled up on a table right next to the gravel road, soaking in the exhaust fumes of countless trucks. Beverages fermenting in the summer sun. I had been looking forward to their supposedly ubiquitous fresh juices. Not a fresh juice anywhere on offer, only litre-bottles of Pepsi, Fanta and Sprite everywhere you looked.

 

 

 

 

We had booked a hotel on the outskirts of Samarkand, as a pitstop on the way to Bukhara. But as we were already here and the day still relatively young, we decided to see at least one highlight of Samarkand: the Ulugbek Observatory.

 

I must admit that I'd thought Ulugbek was an astronomer, maybe an ingenious mathematician after whom this Medieval observatory was named. Nope, the bloke was the grandson of Amir Timur! Here I am, posing in front of his statue. He was a great patron of the arts and sciences and enabled this observatory to be built. Actually, as we later learnt, he was a great astronomer in his own right and spent many hours making his own observations.

 

 

We climbed the stairs to the open air museum. We'd seen a replica of Ulugbek's huge 90-degree sextant at the Museum of the Timurids in Tashkent. How much of it would still be visible on site?

 

Quite a lot of it, it turned out. After we had paid the entrance fee and ignored the offers for a guided tour, we strolled towards the entrance and peeked inside.

 

 

A very big part of the sextant was still intact (or rebuilt "in old", the cynic in me adds). Here, astronomers calculated the movements of the stars more than 150 years before Tycho Brahe established a similar observatory on the island of Ven in the Öresund. Impressive, although I must admit I have not the faintest idea how the sextant enabled them to make their calculations. Something to do with the light falling on the steps? I'll never be a Galilei nor Avicenna.

 

 

The adjacent museum tried to shed light on these difficult questions. Maps of the Timurid empire, Ulugbek's own writings, a mini replica of the sextant, models of the solar system and cultural exhibits from the late Middle Ages. We overheard the guide who had offered his services to us explaining things to two German tourists. Basically, he rephrased the explanatory panels. We much preferred to look at things at our own pace. An Uzbek tourist group entered and took over the museum. Children running around screaming, people beleagering an exhibit to take endless do-I-look-cute pics, the guide trying to be louder than the general din and everybody basically ignoring his explanations. Luckily, they took less than five minutes inside the museum, then the horde move on and we and the German tourists had the exhibits to ourselves again. Blissful quiet. One of many reasons why I do not like organized tours.

 

 

"If you worked here, that's what you'd be writing about", Sonia grinned and pointed at a showcase. 15th-century writing utensils! A pencil case, pen, inkstand - yes! I would definitely be writing about Ulugbek, his travels and favourite quill, just like I had written about our very own Edmond de La Fontaine's travel set. I caught myself rummaging through my mind for the perfect headline.

 

 

The museum might be rather compact, but I loved the fact that the entire area basically showcased one single object: the sextant. Just like I'm all for mini hikes, I'm an equally big fan of tiny museums. It allows you to really zoom in on the one important object and analyse it from all angles.

 

We strolled all around the observatory. The sun stood already low in the sky, perfect for picture-taking (last picture on this page). Among the rose-bushes, we found a marble stone. Who might be buried here? Vasily Vyatkin! We had just now learnt his name in the little museum.

 

 

This was the Russian archeologist who had looked for and unearthed the remains of the observatory, centuries after it had been forgotten by Ulugbek's own countrymen. One might rightly say, the Schliemann of Samarkand.

 

Our hotel was only ten kilometers from the observatory. We were getting hungry, but the hotel had already replied to my inquiry on whatsapp that no, contrary to what they claimed online, there was no operating restaurant. There only seemed to be a "burger-pizza-doner shop" close-by. Ah well, let's first check-in, then we'd decide on dinner.

 

 

We quickly covered the few kilometers (picture above) and to our delight, reception informed us that, if we wanted, they had dinner on offer after all. Just soup and plov, but we were welcome to it for 9 euros per person. "The leftovers from what their mum cooked for lunch", I surmised, but plov sounded better than burger-pizza, so we accepted.

 

But first, pitstop in our room. The door did not open. Sonia went to fetch the receptionist. He came, showed us how the keycard needed to be put to the door, and failed. Why is it that people always assume you are too dumb to hold a card to a door? "Please sit in the foyer while we open it", he said and went to fetch his younger brother. We watched him run down the corridor towards our room. Five minutes later, a woman strode purposefully in the same direction. "Does she have an axe?" I asked anxiously, "she looks determined." "Why don't they simply give us another room?" Sonia wondered, "this hotel is huge and looks mostly empty." I don't know what they did, but ten minutes later, we were allowed into our room. Sonia cautiously tried to open the door from the inside. It worked. In any case, we were on the first floor. The window was always an option.

 

 

Now food. Considering that the restaurant was supposedly not open, it was well filled. An entire airline crew was eating here. Like them, we were served a wonderful potato-and-lentil soup, then a plate of plov with just a slice of beef (much better than the nauseating heaps of meat one usually gets) and bread, watermelon and drinks at liberty from the buffet. What an excellent meal!

 

"The airline paid for this meal", I stated the obvious. And as there's always plenty of soup and plov, the hotel had let us and the other guests tag long - pocketing the 9 euros per person. They are very welcome to it, because it was one of the best meals we'd had for some time!