Tuesday September 30th

 

 

Today we flew to Bukhara , strangely all internal flights seem much better than the international flight. Such is the pace of Aston's tours we hit the ground running, straight into the mini bus for the first tour to important sites outside the city.
 

This was the Chor Bakr mausoleum, the burial place for four brothers thought to be direct descendants of Mohammed.

 

 

 

Since becoming a place of pilgrimage other emirs have also had their tombs there .  It is a large complex with mosques and madrasahs, all, like other monuments we have seen, beautifully kept.                             

 

 

 

 

We then made our way to the summer palace of Bukhara's last emir about 4 kms south of the city.

 



The name of the palace means "stars meet the moon" and it took twenty years to complete, beginning at the end of the 19th century. Inside the decoration is widely influenced by European taste and treasures brought back from Europe. In the gardens peacocks abound but I still have not ever seen a peacock open its feathers...

The last stop was to the most sacred place in Bukhara, the Bakhouddin Nakshbandi complex. This is dedicated to  Nakshabandi who was the founder of the Sufi Muslim order and had been constructed throughout five centuries and reconstructed in the 80s. It is a place of pilgrimage and has a very calm and tranquil  atmosphere.

 

 

In the evening we went to a lovely lake side restaurant where Norman modelled a kebab Uzbek style!

They certainly like their meat.