Why Uzbekistan's Samarkand should be your next city break

Exquisite mosques, vivid Soviet frescoes and illicit vodka... Liz Dodd dives into the city that astonished Alexander the Great
Cultural feast: the Tilya-Kori Madrasah in the Registan
Getty Images
Liz Dodd18 March 2019

I arrive in Samarkand dressed in a navy train conductor’s uniform, sitting on the false base of a bunk bed stuffed to overflowing with contraband. I have just finished the last of the neat vodka the Uzbek conductor gave me as a payoff for spending the night asleep atop his smuggling enterprise.

It seems strange to arrive in Samarkand on a train at all. Its imposing minarets, bazaars and gardens are the backdrop to the dreamscapes that Scheherazade spins in One Thousand and One Nights. They were the signal to caravans on the ancient Silk Route that rest was in reach and evoke a time when arrival would have been at the back of a caravan perfumed with spices from China or Turkey.

Then the Russians came, and the Twenties found the city at the centre of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. Suddenly the Muslim stronghold — at whose heart were the three Islamic schools of the Registan — ran with vodka and railways, its city walls painted with the frescoes of the revolution, Brutalist monuments to space and science. But this is the new Uzbekistan, I realise, as I pull into the gleaming station — all marbled waiting rooms and ticket halls — and notice signs in English for a high-speed rail route to Bukhara. Two cultural capitals of the ancient world, now connected by air-conditioning and wi-fi.

The line was built just in time for Uzbekistan’s new, favourable entry rules to boost tourism: long a fortress in Central Asia whose visa was almost impossible to get, the country has introduced a visa-free scheme for citizens of European countries including the UK. One of the most mysterious cities in the ancient world has just swung the gates wide open.

National uzbek bread sold in the market in Samarkand, Uzbekistan
Alamy Stock Photo

The brief taxi ride from the station to my hotel, once past the admittedly unlovely Soviet-era commercial district, is a slideshow of Islamic architecture so clichéd it’s almost Disney: birds drink out of fountains in pristine gardens next to a restored Bibi-Khanym Mosque, which the 14th-century conqueror Timur built with elephants following a campaign in India.

Before I have even set down my bag in Guesthouse Furkat, a snip at £18 a night, I am ushered to a daybed draped with blankets and served endless cups of tea. Dinner is at Platan, one of the most popular restaurants in Samarkand, on the fringes of the ancient centre. It is noisy and boisterous, and people are dancing, but the food is excellent — I have manti, big, chewy dumplings stuffed with mushrooms, and a Georgian salad of walnuts and beetroot.

The next morning I go on an expedition worthy of Timur himself, to try to obtain some more Uzbek som. Som is a closed currency, so to get any you have to be prepared to change dollars inside the country. This used to be a black-market affair, conducted in the smoky corridors of the bazaars, until in 2017 the government raised the official exchange rate.

This made life easier but, if you run out of dollars — as I have done — you have a problem: only a handful of ATMs in Uzbekistan accept foreign cards. Eventually, embarrassingly, I am rescued by an ATM at the luxury Hotel Registan Plaza. The few dollars I change at the bank next door fill a tote bag: inflation in Uzbekistan is still a problem, with one som equal to about £0.00009: a loaf of bread costs around 2,000 som.

Plov — the national dish of Uzbekistan
Alamy Stock Photo

This all adds to the sense of adventure, to that rare feeling in modern travel of being far from home. As I stand in the centre of The Registan, the heart of the ancient city, flanked by three of the most imposing, beautiful buildings I have ever seen, I am reminded of what Alexander the Great supposedly said on entering Samarkand in the fourth century: “Everything I have heard about Marakanda [its Greek name] is true, except it is more beautiful than I imagined.” The domes of the three madrasas, or religious schools, blend into the still blue sky; everywhere is a dizzying riot of mosaics that spin your head and lead your eyes in zigzags.

In the 15th century the square would have been bustling with traders and lined with the caravanserai — roadside inns — where traders on the Silk Route would rest before or after tackling the harsh mountain ranges ahead in Tajikistan. Now it stands empty once the daytime tourist coaches have left, which makes every silent, tiled hollow somehow more grand.

I eat al fresco around the corner at Cafe Bibikhanum, keen to stretch out the warm evening. I devour my lagman Uzbek noodles cross-legged on a daybed listening to the call to prayer.

The interior of the Registan buildings are now craft markets, so I save my som for a trip to Timur’s mausoleum the next day. Gur-e-Amir is a short but fascinating walk from Registan, along a high street resplendent with Soviet murals, stern-faced workers in copper and grey staring down at the street below.

Centre of learning: Registan square is peaceful when the tourist coaches leave

Nowadays Gur-e-Amir is perhaps even more splendid than Registan, a feat of restoration in the Seventies that saved the magnificent tomb left to decay under Soviet rule. And as his paradise city crumbled, Timur lay inside, in the unadorned black coffin that still sits in a comparatively simple chamber.

Over plov, the national dish of unctuous rice with flaked meat and dried fruits, at Labi G’Or, as the lights from the Registan evening light show catch on the cutlery, I wonder what that merciless conqueror would have made of modern Samarkand, of its high-speed rail link, internet cafés and Instagram influencers? As the waitress brings my special request, vegetarian dumplings, I decide that Timur wouldn’t have been fazed. This may be the dawn of a new, more open era for Uzbekistan — but it is not its first sunrise.

Details: Samarkand

Aeroflot flies from London Heathrow to Samarkand via Moscow for £553 return (aeroflot.ru/gb-en)

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