Day 274: Angkor WHAT?

OK, so it's been four months since my last post - when I was in Kyrgyzstan.  I'm now visiting the temples of Angkor in Cambodia, getting here via Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan (again), China, and Vietnam.  However, true to the tradition of this blog I'll take a ride in the time machine and continue from where I left off ...

Bopping in Bokhara

Escaping Tashkent, I took the night train to Bokhara.  I was in 3rd Class ("Platskartny").  It was hot and crowded, but in the morning I hopped out in Bokhara and took a marshrutka to the centre.  The Old Town turned out to be easy to navigate once I learned the main streets, as the alleys sooner or later run into a street.  I did turn up an alley too soon while looking for my hotel, wandering a bit at random before realising I was lost.  Just when I decided to head back down to the main street  I looked up and realised that I was standing outside the guesthouse I was seeking.  Within minutes I was sitting in the courtyard of Nasruddin Navrus, packing away a breakfast while waiting for my room to be cleaned.  The room was large and air conditioned and cost $20 per day - not a bad price in Uzbekistan, where Government policies keep tourist accommodation prices high.


With my pack settled in my room I was free to explore, and I made a beeline for the Ark.

While Bukhara was still an independent emirate, two British officers, Stoddart and Connelly, were imprisoned in Bohara.  They were kept in the town prison, the Zindon.  Usually their cell was a windowless pit referred-to as the "bug pit".  Their fate hung in the balance for a couple of years as the emir's opinion of the British Empire wavered, but finally he decided that he had nothing to fear from Britain and had the pair beheaded and buried beneath the marketplace in front of the Ark.  This placed both the Zindon and the Ark on my list of places-to-see in my Great Game itinerary.

The Ark was in a ruinous state.  It took a battering from Russian guns when the emirate was finally overthrown, and although some of the walls have been rebuilt the interior is still a shambles.  In a final indignity, the peddlers who used to skin the citizenry in the market have moved their stalls into the Ark and now skin tourists there.

Ultimately I retraced the dolorous last steps of Stoddart and Connelly from the Zindon, along the foot of the still-ruinous north wall of the Ark into the marketplace.  I tried to figure out the most likely spot for the execution but didn't have enough facts to work on.  Close to the main gate - the emir had a place there where he could review his troops and peform other public acts, and he would have wanted to see the executions - but out of the flow of traffic to and from the gate.

I also visited the Summer Palace of the emirs, a place that proves that they had little taste but attractive enough in its own way.

 I stooged around Bukhara for several days, walking the back streets looking for traces of the past, but in the end I had to conclude that although much of medieval Bukhara does survive in the form of modern buildings built to ancient designs using traditional materials - notably mud and straw - my fantasy of finding an exotic Arabian Nights survival was just that: a fantasy.  The city's centre has drifted east and south, leaving the ancient heart behind as a sort of "Bukhara-land", but the life that once animated that heart has also moved to the new city centre.  It was time to leave.