My latest adventure with Trekkup was a whirlwind weekend tour of Uzbekistan: Silk and Spice weekend. I had been trying to do this popular trip for over a year now (thanks Covid and Saudi!). I was a little mentally exhausted due to my busy busy work schedule, but I needed to do this one. Initially we only had 5 or 6 people sign up in our group; at first, I was bummed because this is supposed to be one of the more popular trips, but then I was a bit relieved - with my mind not exactly in the right place to be uber social. However, a few days before, seven people were added to our group - they were supposed to have been six couples who knew each other but all the husbands backed out except one. They mostly kept to themselves, understandably, but I thought they were hilarious. So, we had a merry group made up of Brits, Canadians, a Pole, an Emirati, and a and me the sole American. We kind of sorta met up at the airport checkin, though it was a long wait to get thru the checkin queue - 45 minutes! Fly Dubai in
the Emirates terminal.... not ideal. But, we made it through, and I met N at the gate where I found out just how chatty she was! (She was a friend of another super chatty and guy I met on two of these trips, G2, so she is now F2). Also, I knew one other woman, E, from Namibia. So, it was kind of a fun flight, though I got very little sleep (I also had almost no sleep the night before due to work obligations).
We arrived around 3 am and quickly got through immigration and found our guide, Dilya, outside. We only had carryon luggage - I had a very light backpack but some of the mom crew had some full on rollers! Dilya took us to our hotel where we would get a whole 2 hours nap time before breakfast and departure. It was a decent hotel; F2 and I shared and the room was a massive suite! I tried to get sleep, but was never able to get it. Breakfast was a nice full buffet, where I mostly ate fruit. Then we took the minibus to the train station where we got right on the
high speed rail to our first stop: Bukhara. We had a couple of extra seats as three people did not show up for our trip and I was able to lay across two of them and get a little sleep, finally!
I was warned about the heat in Uzbekistan, and even though, I was still surprised at the heat the whole time! It was like we never even left Dubai.... Also, apologies if the photos are out correctly - the portrait sized photos do not seem to orient themselves properly all the time and I dont know why! :p
Bukhara is a very old city located on the Silk Road and was once a regional capital, meaning there was a lot of interesting history, architecture and culture. In fact the city center is on the UNESCO World Heritage sites, so we had a full day on arrival after lunch to check it out. Dilya informed us that Uzbekistan got its independence in 1998 and explained to us that at that time the alphabet changed from the Russian Cyrillic to a Latin based one, so the older generation cannot read Latin and the younger cannot read Cyrillic.
There are essentially three main languages in Uzbekistan and most people speak them all: Uzbek (Turk based), Tajik (Persian based) and Russian. Bukhara used to be a marshland where storks were prevalent; they are long gone but continue to be the emblem of the city.
Our first stop was the Ismail Samani Mausoleum. We were a bit confused as we parked at what looked like a carnival and Dilya had a good laugh. But no, we walked through the park to our first glimpse of the amazing architecture we would see on this trip. This mausoleum is made out of basically fried bricks and is considered a masterpiece. 80%!o(MISSING)f the building is original, while the rest was restored (though this seemed to be the division throughout the trip). It is originally from the 9th or 10th century and had 18 different patterns in the interior.
