Samarkand was the first city in Uzbekistan that I visited.
My friend and I were here for 1.5 days, and we felt we saw the most important attractions already. For the rest of the time, we simply walked around although there weren’t many people in March, 2013. The place just looked very quiet. See this famous Registan! There were hardly people there.
There was a road that led to the vegetable market. I remember it was marked. And interestingly, there were hardly tourists around. I felt Uzbekistan was very off-the-beaten road (even though it’s silk road!) Are people not interested in Silk Road? True, the visa was hard to get, but there shouldn’t be this less tourists.
We passed a tourist information thing, but it was sort of closed.
And a tea house place (sort of open inside but the price was too ‘touristic). It’s beautiful to walk around, just strange that it’s so quiet.
We didn’t order tea there but I found people incredibly friendly, shy, polite (although English was not widely spoken).
And closer to the vegetable market we saw more people. Locals though. I guess if we didn’t see many tourists in Registan then why should I expect to see tourist in this little market?
And we spotted this beautiful restaurant at the vegetable market (you can see the market in the background!). There were a bunch of beds that serve as bed, table and chairs. Haha! It’s brilliantly lazy! But again no tourist was there. Hmm. Wrong season?
We had a look of what is available in the local market. Of course, dry food! Almonds, apricots,raisins and walnuts.
I bought this plate of dessert. It’s a rolled fig with nuts and raisins. Very sweet and delicious! Remember to bargain! It’s not expensive but I did notice that sometimes foreigners are charged a surplus. Well, if you don’t mind then it’s fine.
To my surprise I saw this weird food that felt out of the place. Kimchi? In Uzbekistan? So odd! But since many stalls were selling kimchi, I supposed it’s also a part of their food. Well, it’s the Silk Road. You’d expect Uzbekistan to be influenced by Eastern Asia. I was too curious and wanted to let my Koreans know about the Uzbek kimchi so we bought some.
See!
We ate it in another random restaurant. We only ordered tea but the waiter gave us plates to eat this kimchi. See, Uzbeks are friendly, and I think they wanted to know how we liked their food.
Well, it didn’t meet our expectation. It definitely wasn’t a delicacy. But it was fun enough to try.
In a souvenir shop (closed, of course) on our way back to Bahodir B&B, Uzbeks have a special feeling with grandpas, or the country has picked grandpa as their image. You’d see a Timur-like grandpa with tea, a fat grandpa with bread or another grandpa with a plate that says Samarkand. All kinds of grandpas, all kinds of actions. (You’d see two more grandpas in the background!)
It was fun, very authentic and strangely quiet. Maybe that’s what we call exotic.
Traveling Mega
