May 28th, 2017 Samarkand, Uzbekistan

5:25AM I have a headache that changes with position now. I have no idea what it is except to think I'm still dehydrated. I left around 5:40AM since it was super bright already.

6AM I got to Registan. The security guards wanted 20 USD to go up the tower and I refused. I was making great progress and went through Bibi Khanum Mosque, the bazaar, Hazrat Khizr Mosque at 7AM. I arrived at Shah-i-Zinda but didn't go in and instead took a taxi to the observatory. It didn't look like a good place to pay to go into either. The taxi driver was funny and said he doesn't speak English and could teach me English. He didn't understand anything else though.

I tried to get to Afrosiab but was misdirected back to Shah-i-Zinda. They let me in for free to walk though the cemetery area. But Shah-i-Zinda was a gem here.



9AM I then walked to Afrosiab museum, which like I thought was a complete waste of time. I walked for another mile to find a taxi to Amir Timur.  I didn't go in because a local girl thought the Registan was the best of the three places- Registan, Bibi Khanum and Amir Timur I thought was good to go into.

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9:30AM I took 15 minutes to walk to Registan and basically go through from the side without paying. There was a line on the other side also.  I tour the three buildings and walked to the hotel with some help from a lady who called the hotel.




10:05 I got my stuff and took the first taxi to the train station. He wouldn't do it for 7,000 UZS so I got off and took another for 5,000 UZS. He tried to give me a hard time for a second but left. The road was not paved going back and we got there at 10:35AM. I couldn't find a business class ticket and the VIP ticket was over 150,000 UZS. I just took the economy one for 48,000 UZS. I got to the other side of the tracks and ran back to get a 1 liter coke and ran back but the train wasn't even there.






11:06AM Thinking about it, it took a lot of effort to get all this done. Now the next challenge is to buy the tickets off someone's phone or hope that mine would work at the airport. We will see in 3 hours instead of 2 since this was not the fast train I expected.




3PM Actually, the train is not 3 hours. It is 4. I got to Tashkent and took the taxi directly there for 5000 UZS.


4PM Well, there was no ticket through Moscow to Dushanbe. In fact, there was no seat on any flights to Moscow today. I couldn't really find it on any search engines since it would not actually show me tickets so I believe it wasn't really updated.

6PM I bought a ticket to the next destination, Azerbaijan. It goes through Turkey and is at 2:40AM. An Uzbekistan man who spoke Chinese told me about the direct flight to Baku, Azerbaijan. However, only business class seats were available for more than 600 USD.

6:50PM I took another taxi to Hastimon for 5000 UZS. It was not impressive at all when compared to Samarkand and Bukhara. I then took another taxi to Kukeldash, which was even less impressive. Chorsu, on the other hand, is just an area. I ate at Milliy Taom Rayhon and met the owner there. They let me try about 6 dishes. Uzbekistan definitely jumped a couple of places after that.  I had a couple of dishes and asked someone else to try their horse dish. I asked to try some dumpling and other Beshbarmak. They were pretty good and reminds me of a mixture of Turkish and Asian cuisine. A few young 20 some year olds drove me to the airport.

I finally left at 2AM.