After landing, there is a big reception committee for us: at one time we count 14 people around our plane. Many of them in uniform. But everybody is again very friendly and helpful. Customs is a bit complicated: forms to fill out and our baggage has to go 3 times through scanners, all within 20 meters. Never seen before! After a short drive we are in the Hotel Amelia. Very basic, but clean and nice. The owner only speaks Uzbek and we Swiss German - but the combination works very well. Our guide Nazira, an elderly lady picks us up. She is somehow special. Must have been a school teacher in the old Soviet days; a real drill sergant!. Which means it is somehow difficult for us...

A taxi brings us to the starting point of our walking tour. Ismail Samani Mausoleum, built in 905 for Ismail Samani (founder of Samanid dynasty) and town’s oldest Muslim monument is quit impressive. Not far away is the Chashma Ayub Mausoleum, built from the 12th to 16th centuries over a spring from which we are offered water. Next to it is the Bolo-Hauz Mosque, the emirs’ official place of worship, built in 1718. Nazira sounds like a record player and never wants to stop! The real old Soviet style! The Ark, a royal town-within-a-town, is Bukhara’s oldest structure. It occupied from the 5th century right up until 1920, when it was bombed by the Red Army. Now about 80% ruins so not too interesting. In front of the Ark is Registan, Bukhara’s main square. In the old days it was the favored venue for executions, including this of the British officers Stoddard and Conolly which made history in the Victorian days.
Kalon Minaret was built in 1127 and was probably the tallest building in Central Asia being 47m high and a 10m-deep foundations. Chinggis Khan was so dumbfounded by it that he ordered it spared when he raided the city. The Kalon Mosque is big enough for 10’000 people. Used in Soviet times as a warehouse, it was reopened as a place of worship in 1991. Mir-i-Arab Medressa is right next to it and is a religious school.
At the end of the tour we invite Nazira for a drink. But all of a sudden she gets up and tells us she has to leave now. We guess Tom somehow upset her when he climbed the camel next to the restaurant.

In the evening we see a folklore show in a restaurant. Food is ok, wine awful and the show just fine.

The Uzbekistan land was once part of the ancient Persian Empire and was later conquered by Alexander the Great in the 4th century B.C. During the 8th century, the nomadic Turkic tribes living there were converted to Islam by invading Arab forces who dominated the area. The Mongols under Ghengis Khan took over the region from the Seljuk Turks in the 13th century, and it later became part of Tamerlane the Great's empire and that of his successors until the 16th century. The Uzbeks invaded the territory in the early 16th century and merged with the other inhabitants in the area. Their empire broke up into separate Uzbek principalities, the khanates of Khiva, Bukhara, and Kokand.
Russia conquered Uzbekistan in the late 19th century. Stiff resistance to the Red Army after World War I was eventually suppressed and a socialist republic set up in 1925. During the Soviet era, intensive production of "white gold" (cotton) and grain led to overuse of agrochemicals and the depletion of water supplies, which have left the land poisoned and the Aral Sea and certain rivers half dry.
Independent since 1991, the country seeks to gradually lessen its dependence on agriculture while developing its mineral and petroleum reserves.