An 8.30am start today. Before leaving Bukhara to drive to Samarkand we visited the Summer Palace of the last emir. What a magnificent structure. Spectacular rooms and decorations and large gardens. Over the centuries the road to Samarkand has been traveled by Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan and Tamerlane on their incredible journeys. On the way we had an early lunch at a ceramics factory. Nothing there that we felt like buying. Fairly ordinary stuff and the lunch was also somewhat ordinary. Cold rice!, rice and vegetable soup, boiled meat and a piece of cake (the best bit!). Some nuts to nibble on. Suspect this lunch was the cause of a later in the day "tummy episode" Once again our snack bags were a god send. Bill is still unwell and it was a dreadful journey to Samarkand. The main (so called) highway was shockingly broken up and rough. Together with our basic Chinese bus it was a rather trying trip. There were two stops for "open air" toileting when we relieved ourselves behind trees on the roadside. The rural landscape is mostly cotton farming in small holdings, with donkey carts being the main form of carrying goods and doing work. Subsistence farming.
Views of the Summer Palace of the last emir. This is the sort of thing we had been seeing in Uzbekistan. Magnificent, stunning buildings.
Ceiling work
Entrance courtyard
Tombs
An unbelievably intricate magnificent ceiling
So huge that only tiny pieces can be shown
All so beautiful and ornate
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