Carpet Weaving in Bukhara

No, the method for weaving carpets doesn't change from town to town. I thought the light was too dark to make out much detail in the other video. My guide took me to a carpet shop in Bukhara that was much better lit, so I took another video.

At this carpet shop, I was told that carpets are made from sheep wool, camel wool, and silk. The type of material affects the price of the carpet, as does the size, but the main factor in price is the number of knots per square centimeter. I felt the difference between a couple of carpets with different knot counts. My purchasing advice? Spend the extra for more knots per centimeter. The detail in the designs is unbelievable.

Carpet Weaving in Samarkand

It's still possible to find hand-woven carpets in Uzbekistan, and they are rightly expensive. Not only because they are so beautiful, but you can get an idea from this video at the time and effort that is required to make one.

Uzbek plov

First off, I should note that if you think about the word "pilaf" when you see "plov," you'll get the basic idea. Plov varies greatly from family to family, restaurant to restaurant, country to country. I've had it in three of the Central Asian countries and not really been impressed. I can make rice just as well. However, at the place with no name from my other post, I finally found some in Samarkand that was super tasty.

Full disclosure, this is NOT a picture of that plov, but it looked pretty much just like this. Only the other kind was tastier. I was told that the shredded vegetable on the top was the mysterious yellow carrot. I had never heard of such a thing, but Uzbekistan also has green radishes.

Bakery in Samarkand

I took a short video of bread being made at a place in Samarkand. When I asked the guy what the hardest part of the job was, he said there was no hard part. I figured that he'd say sticking the entire upper half of his body into the oven would be a bit tricky. I was wrong.

Samarkand

 Yes, I really do visit these places, even though I don't have many pictures of myself to prove it. I opted for guided tours of Samarkand and Bukhara over a long weekend, so my guide in Samarkand took this one for me. In the background are three medressas (Islamic schools) established by Ulugbek, one of the most famous scientists of his time. This area is called the Registon, and it has a wide public square in front where markets were.

We went inside the medressas to see the study rooms and living quarters that students experienced. Most rooms were quite small and unfriendly to the taller tourist. However, they also now contain souvenir shops, and I found some nice, hand-woven decorative cloths. This time of year is slow for tourism, so we had time to talk to the shopkeepers who were happy to have visitors.

The rest of the pictures here are from Amir Temur's mausoleum. Central Asia is earthquake prone, and the building suffered a lot of damage over the years. However, a good portion of the original work still exists, and much more has been restored.

One of the things I really enjoy about Islamic art is the amazing tile work. The entryway, with its three-dimensional qualities was something I hadn't seen before. My guide told me that was a Persian style of architecture. In the mausoleum room, there were markers for Temur and several members of his family. The black one is Temur's. The bottom two photos give you an idea of how amazing the craftsmanship was that went into the design and construction of the mausoleum. The blues and greens in the tiles are still used in Uzbek pottery that is made today.

Visit to Uzbekistan

As my time in Central Asia grows short, I'm trying to do some of the things that remain on my list of "to dos". Visiting Uzbekistan and seeing some of the historical sites was an important one, and a temporary assignment to our office in Tashkent, the capital, allowed me to check this off the list.

All of Central Asia is very interesting for a variety of reasons, and Uzbekistan is the most interesting of the four I've visited so far. The top picture shows Amir Temur, or as I learned his name in history class -- Tamerlane or Timur the Lame. In the background is the Hotel Uzbekistan. I was told some horror stories about tourists getting hassled by police for taking pictures that inadvertently included government buildings, so I was hesitant to take this photo. A couple of policemen were hanging around, and I didn't see anyone else taking pictures. Eventually, I saw another couple of people take some shots, so I finally took this one and left.

Uzbekistan works hard to insulate itself from the rest of the world. Rather, the country is more like Hotel California for foreign investment. They like foreigners to come and spend money in the country, but they don't really like people to take money out of the country. Because it's difficult to get foreign currency out of Uzbekistan, changing money is (ahem) interesting. The government of Uzbekistan sets the official exchange rate, but the unofficial rate is significantly higher. I stayed at a few different hotels in the country. All quoted rates in dollars, but they didn't all use the official exchange rate for payment in local currency.

Another interesting part of using money in Uzbekistan is the fact that the highest value of a bank note is 1000 soum. The official exchange rate is about 1800 soum to the dollar. This results in people carrying around stacks of bills like the one in the middle picture. That's $100 in Uzbek soum. While I was disappointed that the weather wasn't warmer during my trip, it did mean that I had a coat with plenty of pockets to stuff cash into.

Prior to coming to Kazakhstan, many of my colleagues who had been here before told me to make sure I had plov, a rice dish with various ingredients depending on the region where you get it. Most plov has horse meat and chickpeas. Sometimes, it will come with raisins, and I had some that had hard-boiled quail eggs in it. However, during my 18 months in Central Asia, I had never had plov that I considered that good or worth getting a second time. Uzbekistan is known for having excellent plov, so I knew that if I didn't find it on this trip, it just didn't exist.

The bottom picture shows the exterior of a restaurant that had excellent plov. The only one where I would get it again. I'll add a picture of the plov later, but I just thought this was the type of place that would have great plov. There were three businesses operating in this building. On the left was a car wash, and the restaurant is in the middle. I didn't get a chance to see what the other business was, but if you didn't know this place was here, you'd never find it. I was told the secret ingredient was yellow carrots. Whatever it was, it tasted great.