Canyons and Kazakhs

After four posts and a lot of purple prose about Uzbekistan, I feel the need to wax poetic about Kazakhstan, where I actually live.

I returned from Uzbekistan just in time to join a consulate field trip to Charyn Canyon, Kazakhstan’s answer to the Grand Canyon.

Disclosure: I’ve never been to the American wonder so I can’t really compare. But Charyn looks similar to what I’ve seen in pictures—think striations of rock in autumnal colors—although much smaller. Smaller as in Thelma and Louise could have made that jump.

The full canyon is about 50 miles long, but on a day trip from Almaty, most stick to the stretch known as the Valley of Castles. Here, a two kilometer hike takes you from a parking area down to the Sharon river, passing by sandstone rock formations that look very much like the ruined mudbrick kasbahs I know from Morocco. In addition to the castle formations, there were a couple of rocks that looked like they were maybe one millimeter away from breaking free and allowing us all to play Indiana Jones.

The drive there is several hours, out into the steppe. While it’s not the flat as a pancake steppe of northern Kazakhstan, it flattens out enough that finding such a dramatic landscape in the middle of it is surprising.

Touted as one of Kazakhstan’s greatest natural wonders, this is a popular destination for locals and tourists alike so you shouldn’t expect perfect tranquility. But it was very clean, which is good because my Russian tutor told me the last time she went (two years ago) it was full of litter. Maybe they’ve invested some more resources in upkeep. And maybe next they could invest in better translation services? What if this signage, in Kazakh, Russian, and “English” is a future civilization’s Rosetta Stone?

 

For those who want to linger, the trail ends near a restaurant and several lodging options, including cabins and yurts.

My lagging energy level told me the hike back was harder than I expected and my health app said I climbed over 70 floors! For those who don’t care about getting their steps in, golf cart style transport was running between the river and the staircase up to the parking area.

My next Kazakhstan excursion was over last week’s long weekend when a colleague from Astana/Nur-Sultan invited me to join her on a trip to Shymkent, Kazakhstan’s third largest city (after Almaty and Astana) and the most “Kazakh,” as opposed to “Russian,” of the three. How appropriate for the holiday I prefer to call Indigenous People’s Day.

Early Morning Flight

Airport park where I waited for my colleague as the “arrival hall” is basically just a shed with a luggage carousel

Airport Dining Room actually located in park right outside the airport

I can usually recognize the difference between written Kazakh and Russian and I quickly saw that Kazakh is given pride of place in signage in Shymkent. My colleague, who had extensive Russian-language training, noticed it in the predominance of the spoken language. If she spoke in Russian they would often answer with their own Russian that lapsed into a kind of Russian-Kazakh patois.

Shymkent isn’t exactly full of sights. It’s an old city, a big enough stop on the old silk road for Genghis Khan to bother razing it to the ground, but the visible history doesn’t stretch much earlier than initial Russian dominance. We met up with a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant who lives and works there and he had nothing but praise for the friendliness of locals. That was our experience too. I can see that if you live there, you could keep busy—lovely parks and good restaurants and a serviceable locally brewed pilsner. Close to the border with Uzbekistan, it has a sizable Uzbek population and you’ll find tashkentsky (Tashkent Style) plov on many menus. My colleague, living in mostly treeless Nur-Sultan, especially enjoyed the parks and tree-lined boulevards.

Is it just me or does the WWII memorial look like two nutmeg graters?

Most tourists, if they stop, stop briefly en route between Almaty and Turkistan. That’s probably the way to go. We flew in early in the morning on day one and flew out the evening of the next day and were kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel of things to do by the last few hours. The one museum I wanted to stop in (Museum of Victims of Political Repression) was closed on the weekends. But among markets, restaurants, and parks we kept ourselves mostly busy.

Here we get to the problem and the joy of foreign service. If I was advising a regular tourist I’d say get a car or a car+driver and go Almaty to Shymkent and then onto Turkistan over maybe a course of four or five days. Stop at Taraz, one of Kazakhstan’s oldest cities, Sayram, birthplace of the holy man buried in Turkistan, and at the ruins of Sauran, former Mongol capital city near Turkistan.

Problematically, I am not on vacation all the time. My travel is within the confines of weekends. So I took one weekend to go to to Turkistan and another to go to Shymkent but have missed those surrounding areas. Yet if I was not in the Foreign Service I likely wouldn’t get to Turkistan and Shymkent at all. So it’s glass half full or half empty depending on how you want to see it I guess.

I’m just days shy of my one year mark here in Kazakhstan and, if the current plan holds, have eleven months left. Time is ticking! If this winter is anything like last, hibernation season is about to set in and I won’t be doing much in the way of regional exploration until spring. Nice to see a few more bits of Kazakhstan before I stop wanting to leave the house at all.

Silk Roads and Stargazers

Samarkand. Built with the wealth that Amir Timur plundered from military campaigns in today’s Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Iraq, Georgia, Pakistan, Turkey, and northern India (his great-great-great grandson Babur established the Mughal Empire). Timur never went past Turkey and into Europe because he considered that continent beneath his notice. He had his eye on China when he finally died.

Appropriately, I finished Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World, on the train ride to Samarkand, capital city of Timur’s vast empire.

It’s where he invested the most and where he and his descendants built much of what we treasure about Samarkand today, including the first of the three madrasas of Registan Square, built by Timur’s grandson and successor, Ulugh Beg.

Samarkand was the place-name that jump started my interest in Central Asia back in 2012. It was also, I had been told multiple times, sure to be a let down after Khiva and Bukhara. Was making it the last stop on my itinerary courting disappointment?

Well, it wasn’t an auspicious start. While the train from Bukhara was fast and comfortable, no driver showed up at the station, as planned, to take me to the hotel. Laden with heavily-weighted baggage courtesy of my spendthrift last day in Bukhara, I had to bargain for a taxi, which dropped me at my hotel in the middle of a soviet era apartment block neighborhood.

Post-Soviet mural still reflects Soviet design ethos

If I hadn’t looked at a map, I would not have believed that the tour company had honored my request to put me within walking distance of Registan Square.

Just before sunset I set out to explore the much heralded Registan (pronounced with a hard “g” as it turns out), winding my way through the parking lots of the soviet apartments surrounding my hotel, and eventually emerging onto a busy four-lane city street surrounded by more apartments. Was this really the right direction? I trudged a few blocks until I caught a glimpse of what I had waited seven years to see. Registan square was…covered in a temporary platform consisting of plywood and green pipes.

Okay. The buildings themselves weren’t covered up, just the plaza ground. I reminded myself I was lucky to be here at all. But crabbiness threatened, fed by the tourist who plopped his bag in the middle of the front steps of one of the madrasas and proceeded to take photos, unencumbered by his bag or any consideration for his fellow tourists who might not want his backpack as our photo focal point.  Grrr…

And then…the sun set. The nighttime lights went on and illuminated the square. Everything was magic.

Before and after sunset. I tried to crop out the plywood and pipes but you can still see some.

 

Samarkand is Uzbekistan’s second largest city and the sights are more spread out than in Bukhara or tiny Khiva. Unlike in those towns, you’re bound to catch sight of garish Soviet architecture even if your hotel isn’t in what appears to be the parking lot of Khrushchyovka (don’t worry, the hotel grew on me).

But by god! the rest of it! The millennia of history! The stunning Timurid Architecture!

Yes, the Soviets over-restored Samarkand. But I’m a tourist, not an archeologist. Standing in the middle the plaza with those beautifully illuminated madrasas is a memory to treasure. I can’t believe how lucky I am to have lived a life that got me here.

Registan (“sandy place” in Persian) was mostly a bazaar and public plaza until Ulugh Beg commissioned the first medrasa. An astronomer and mathematician, Ulugh Beg brought (invited? coerced? kidnapped? That was his grandfather’s way) scholars to work and teach in Samarkand.The portal of his medrasa evokes the stars against the night sky to reflect his interests.

He also founded a nearby observatory where scientists produced catalogs of stars and calculated the rotation of the earth around the sun down to mere seconds.

Statue of Ulugh Beg

Excavated remains of the observatory’s sextant

 

While this madrasa was started in 1417, it took another 200 years before a second one joined it. Sher-Dor Madrasa means madrasa of the lions. It’s more like “ligers” but either way, a flagrant disregard for Islam’s prohibition against representational art.

 

A decade later, up went the final madrasa, Tilla-Kori, which means “decorated with gold.” And how!

 

The Registan was just the start. While secular Timurid buildings didn’t fare well (see observatory, above, and the ruins of one remaining palace, about 50 miles from Samarkand), many religious buildings from Timur’s reign survive today.

My guided tour the next morning took me not just back to the Registan, but also to Amir Timur’s own mausoleum, the Bibi-Khanym mosque (named after Timur’s wife), and to the Shah-i-Zinda Necropolis, a whole complex of mausoleums containing his family members. That may have been my favorite thing. If I ever come back, I’m headed there either as early or as late as possible to enjoy it even more with fewer crowds.

It’s difficult to explain how exquisite I found these sights. I literally gasped at times as I turned a corner or walked through a doorway and caught a new view of golden ceilings or dark blue tile work.

On my final evening I returned to both Registan square and Amir Timur’s mausoleum to see them lit up. I actually felt sick when I had to to depart. It didn’t seem right to physically turn my back and walk away from such places.

After Timur’s death, his succession plan was unclear and his grandson, known more for mathematics and astronomy than for military or civil society leadership, assumed control. Shortly thereafter things began to fall apart for the Timurid empire. But it sure left its mark.

As this is my final post on my Silk Road vacation, here’s a summary:

I have been privileged to travel to lots of beautiful places in this world but Uzbekistan was extra special.

If you prefer lower key cities, or have trouble looking past soviet urban planning, maybe I would recommend that you start your tour in Samarkand and head towards Bukhara and Khiva rather than going in the opposite direction as I did. But anyone who tells you that Samarkand is nothing compared to Khiva and Bukhara is a monster (note: this includes several of my coworkers. Should I walk the comment back? Nope⁠—MONSTERS!).

Other than the minor annoyance of having to get an actual visa for Uzbekistan ($20 online through a glitchy website), it’s very easy to navigate as a tourist. Khiva is a bit more out of the way but the fast train connecting Bukhara-Samarkand-Tashkent is comfortable and truly fast (unlike Kazakhstan’s “not as slow” trains). English is spoken widely in many of the tourist cities and if not, menus with pictures abound. Uzbekistan is also a steal–I don’t think I ever paid more than $5 for a meal and I ate at decent restaurants. Even if you tire of plov and dumplings, at least you never shell out much money for them.

Aim for autumn or spring to avoid scorching heat or ice planet of Hoth cold. You could do Uzbekistan on a real shoestring with hostels and shared taxis, but I opted to make things a little easier by having a tour company arrange my decent but not fancy hotels, private guides, and most of my transport. If that appeals, maybe go with an Uzbek company? Then you’ll pay Uzbek prices. Entrance to sights ranges from a few cents (literally) to about $6. The most expensive sight was the $16 ticket covering 90% of Khiva’s monuments for 48 hours.

While I opted to bring home embroidery, Uzbek hats, and the now infamous rug, you can also find beautiful jewelry, pottery, wooden furniture, and fabric in Uzbekistan. I probably would have grabbed some if I hadn’t already emptied my bank account. Of course, I just scratched the surface. There’s way more to Uzbekistan and Central Asia than this. But spread the word: Uzbekistan is beautiful, affordable, and not really that hard to visit. Other than the flight from the US, which is undeniably a pain. Sorry!

Samarkand has been occupied since at last 500 BCE. The ancient city is today referred to as Afrasiab. Excavations in the 20th century found this impressive multi-wall fresco depicting scenes from China, India, and Samarkand.

 

Shah-i-Zinda necropolis is said to mark the site that Muhammed’s cousin, who looked just like him, is buried. Later, Timur’s family members including sisters and a niece, were buried here.

 

The Bibi-Khanym Mosque, constructed during Timur’s rule, owes its current look to extensive restoration.

 

Pigeon finds a new home

The Gur-e-Amir was built for Timur’s original heir, who died prematurely. Timur himself planned to be buried in his birth city of Shahrisabz. However, because he died in winter when roads were impassable, here he rests.