Photos to come

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Well we headed back down to Shakhrisabz but decided to hang out there instead of heading further south. It’s a cool little town, full of sprawling markets, winding backstreets and friendly locals. Though, as it turned out, our stone carving was finished earlier than expected – we are now the proud owners of our portrait carved in granite! Once we’d picked it up we headed back to Tashkent to explore for a few days before our flight to Riga. Even though we’d been there twice we hadn’t really done any sightseeing and to be honest I wasn’t overly optimistic about the attractions in the ex-Soviet capital, but it had a few surprises up its sleeve.

Chorsu Bazaar was near our hotel and provided hours worth of wandering and people watching. I dream of living in a place that has a market like that, the fruit and vegetables were all so fresh and beautifully presented. There was a massive section devoted purely to melons, with huge army trucks coming in to restock the cages of watermelons. We can attest to their tastiness. Actually it was a bit hard to tell where the market ended. There was the official section under the dome, with it’s numbered stands and signage but outside that the stalls, stands and people presenting their wares on blankets stretched on. They sold not only food but also everything else imaginable – clothes, kitchenware, hardware etc.

A more official attraction was the History Museum of the People of Uzbekistan, thankfully with some English signage. Among the potshards and primitive arrowheads were gems like a list of NGOs that used to operate in the country before most western interests fled following the 2005 Andijan Massacre, and a display showing how advanced the National Bank of Uzbekistan was. They even issue Visa cards! Another museum was the Museum of Applied Arts, a combination of fine arts and local crafts. It was pretty cool. There was a beautiful collection of just about every local art form we’d seen for sale in the many souvenir shops, but of course better quality and more historically significant.

We also went out to the spiritual centre of Islam in the country at Khast Imam Mosque. There we saw the Uthman Quran, a copy of the Quran written on deer hide. It is about 1300-1400 years old and was compiled by Uthman ibn Affan to ensure the purity of the Quran which had, until then, been mostly passed on via memorisation. As people who had actually known the prophet Mohammed passed away and stylistic differences in readings in different areas became apparent it was decided that a standardised edition was needed. All other versions, complete or fragmentary, were burnt. The Uthman Quran that we saw, although huge, contains only a third of the actual verses of the Quran. It has big, bold script on shiny pages and legend says the red spots in the spine are the blood of Uthman, assassinated while reading it.

Having seen those attractions we were ready to leave Tashkent and Uzbekistan. From the comforts of Riga it already seems like a long time ago and my impressions are already changing. By the time we left I was kind of sick of the heat and the lack of variety in the food. On top of that it seemed like we got cheated a lot in our last few days, including an instance when we had the Uzbek menu and correct prices in our hands but were charged more (yes we argued, yes we still got ripped off). In a nutshell I was ready to leave. We seemed to be really tired there, something we attributed both to the heat and the food. I didn’t mind the food there, certainly it didn’t taste like greasy mutton the way some Muslim cuisines seem to, but there just wasn’t a lot of variety at the chaikanas we ate at. I can think of six dishes that we rotated amongst: shashlik, plov, lagman, dolma, samsa and manti. All of them are delicious but after a month I started craving something else.

Here in Riga we’ve been making up for lost time, stuffing ourselves with excellent and varied food. Even the breakfast at our hotel was blissful – so much choice! In two short days we’ve had burgers, sushi, tex mex, brownies, thai, ice cream (that didn’t melt within 3 seconds of being outside the freezer) and quite a few cocktails. And of course, I’ve reconnected with my internet addiction. Oh the joys of Wifi. We’ve also done a bit more wandering around the city, checking out the semi-dodgy area our hotel is in as well as the old town. There seems to be more activity here than last time we were here – lots of outdoor cafes in all the squares and plenty of people out enjoying the sunshine. It’s still warm here but nothing compared to Uzbekistan.

Tomorrow we head down to Vilnius for a few days before coming back up here to fly out. Brett heads back up to Norway to work and I’m heading back to Munich to study up on some German. Then it’s off to the States for some family and friends time. I’ll catch my sister there and we’ll head down to Mexico and through some of Central America until I fly back to Australia in November.