Bukhara Beckons: Part I

The Journey to the Train Station

Our train from Tashkent to Bukhara was scheduled for 9:00 am. We had to leave our spacious apartment by 7:30 am at the latest. Our apartment manager said he would send the cleaner over and we could give her the keys. We told him that she had to come on time, and thankfully, she did. She looked very relieved and happy when she saw how clean we'd kept the apartment.

On this particular morning, I had a premonition that something would go wrong with our train journey and it proved itself correct!

We were taking the super-fast bullet train to Bukhara. I asked Simon to check whether Tashkent had more than one train station. Sure enough, it did! There were two train stations - one was located in the north and the other in the south. The North Station was better known as the Central Station and it was the one most people would use when travelling to Samarkand or Bukhara. It was located just five kilometres from the city centre, which was where we were. We did some cross checking on Goggle Maps and when we were really sure, we left the apartment, called a Yandex and headed to the Central Station.

As we lugged our luggage towards the main entrance, I noticed that it was strangely quiet!  We heard a cabbie calling us but we ignored him. Then, we saw for ourselves that the station was CLOSED! We panicked!

The cabbie who called us followed us. Of course, he knew that this would happen. He explained to us in broken English and sign language that this train station was not operating and he could drive us to the South Station, which was located a good 10 kilometres away, near the airport! It wouldn’t have been the first time that he'd picked up some business this way! We really didn’t have any other choice as we were too pressed for time to summon another Yandex. We asked him how much he wanted. It was not unreasonable, so we agreed to have him drive us. He certainly drove fast enough to get us there without being reckless. When we arrived at the correct train station, we still had 20 minutes before the train departed. PHEW!

Uzbekistan train stations had a rather strange way of checking in. We had to use a side entrance where our luggage had to be scanned and our tickets checked before we were allowed to make our way to our platform.

Afrosiyob Trains

Afrosiyob was the name given to the ultra-fast bullet trains in Uzbekistan. When ours arrived, I was quite taken aback by how modern and sleek it looked. It was named after an ancient archaeological site in Northern Samarkand. Uzbekistan was the first Central Asian country to possess a high speed rail line that spanned 600 kilometres, connecting Tashkent to Bukhara. The train was mainly white with some blue and green lines on it, reflecting the colours of the Uzbek flag.

The fleet of Afrosiyob trains was purchased from Talgo, a well-known train manufacturing company in Spain. The first train set, a Talgo 250 series, was delivered to Tashkent on 22 July 2011. Each train set consisted of two power cars, eight passenger carriages (or wagons as they called them) and a dining car with a total capacity for 257 passengers. Its tracks were built on a Russian railway gauge measuring 1520 millimetres. Its inaugural commercial service was from Tashkent to Samarkand and commenced on 8 October 2011. The journey was just under two hours. 

Afrosiyob’s services were extended to Bukhara on 25 August 2016. With speed up to 250 km/hour, the journey from Tashkent to Bukhara now took only two hours and 20 minutes instead of seven hours by normal train. Sharq trains were the normal trains in Uzbekistan, operating at 150 km/hour.  Had we missed our Afrosiyob train, we would probably have taken the Sharq train to Bukhara.

As our train drew up to the platform, we quickly looked for our wagon number.  Afrosiyob offered three classes – economy, business and VIP. We had selected economy and were very satisfied with our choice. The seats were comfortable with plenty of leg room, and there was a fair choice of food and drinks for purchase.

Each passenger received a free 3-in-1 sachet of coffee and a croissant which was delivered to us in a little brown paper bag with a sketch of the bullet train and a famous monument. To facilitate the drinking of the coffee, an attendant would walk through the wagons carrying a flask of hot water and empty paper cups. Passengers would then summon him for a cup to empty their coffee mixture inside and have hot water poured into the cup.

Every now and then, another attendant would carry a tray of mocktails through the wagons. These weren’t free, of course. Another item for purchase was ice-cream. There were three flavours on offer – chocolate, lemon and a third one with a most unusual flavour - a combination of watermelon and cantaloupe. I bought the third one. The ice-cream was a delightful pink and orange. Similar to the dried fruit, the cantaloupe flavour was very distinct and combined well with that of the watermelon.

Being the foodies that we were, we took a walk to the dining car to see what we could eat for breakfast. To my joy, I saw little plastic boxes of blini for sale. There were three rolled-up blinis in each box.  Blinis were Russian crepes filled with cottage cheese. That was my brekky for the day.  How good was that!

I chatted with the captain of the train, who was in the dining car. He spoke fairly fluent English. The other workers in the kitchen couldn’t but they were very friendly. I requested them to take some photos together with me and they gladly obliged. Most of the service staff inside the train were male but I did see the occasional female.

After travelling for about two hours, we arrived in Samarkand, where lots of PRC nationals boarded the train. After the boarding commotion died down, we travelled for another hour or so before arriving in Bukhara. There wasn’t much view to admire through the train windows. It was mainly flat land and quite dry as Bukhara is located in desert terrain. 

The Bukhara train station was located in an ex-Russian settlement called Kagan, which was a good 15 kilometres away from the old city centre. We had a booking for two nights in Shonishin Boutique Hotel. I had already made contact with Jahan, the receptionist in this hotel, and booked a transfer from the train station to the hotel for USD 10. Jahan could converse in very fluent English as he had worked overseas before.

We met our driver Jamshid. He couldn’t speak any English, which wasn't unusual, so no conversation transpired between him and us. Bukhara Train Station was an impressive white rectangular building with arched windows made of blue glass.

A little research revealed why the train station had to be built so far away from Bukhara town centre. As Russia expanded its boundaries into Central Asia in the 1800s, it needed to decrease its reliance on American cotton. Colonising Uzbekistan would solve this problem as this part of Central Asia was a prime cotton growing region. A railway line would come in handy for dual purposes – to transport the cotton back to Russia for manufacturing and to mobilise Russian troops to conquer new colonies. The Emir of Bukhara, Said Abdul Ahad Khan, eventually granted permission to the Russians to set up a settlement in Kagan and a railway station here as one of the stops for the Trans-Caspian Railway Line. 

The Emir received German silver for acquiecing to the deal, but he imposed the condition that it had to be built away from Bukhara. He was wary of the heathen’s ‘shaitan arba’ or ‘devil’s cart’! The railway station opened in 1888 in Kagan. A bazaar and the Orthodox Church of St. Nikolai also came into existence.

As we drove away from the station, I saw this splendid mansion along the road. It was the Kagan Palace!  Emir Abdul Ahad Khan had this majestic building built when he heard that Tsar Nicholas II was going to visit Bukhara, and he wished to “accommodate him in style” (according to Caravanistan). He commissioned a famous Russian architect, Alexey Leontievich Benois, to design it in August 1895 and it was completed in 1898. Its design was “an eclectic mix of Moorish, Imperial Russian and Bukharan styles, exploding into an extravagance of turrets, domes and horseshoe arches”.

Unfortunately, Tsar Nicholas II never visited, but Kagan Palace became a hotel for visiting dignitaries. They were deemed as heathens who were forbidden to enter the holy city of Bukhara. Today the building houses the Railway Museum. We didn’t visit it, but it really stood out with its sumptuous and unique architectural style.

The History of Bukhara

Here is a little bit of history of Bukhara. It is an ancient city that has existed for more than 2000 years. It was a prominent stop on the Silk Road trade route between the East and the West. Between the 9th and the 16th centuries, Bukhara was the largest centre of Muslim theology, particularly on Sufism. Being a major medieval centre for Islamic scholarship, theology and culture, Bukhara is considered the most complete and unspoilt example of a medieval Central Asian town which has preserved its urban fabric till the present day. It still contains hundreds of well-preserved mosques, madrasahs, bazaars, caravanserais and mausoleums. Little wonder that the UNESCO named the Historic Centre of Bukhara a World Heritage Site in 1993.

Today, Bukhara is the 7th largest city in Uzbekistan with a population of around 281,000.  Surprisingly, the mother tongue of the majority of Bukharans is the Tajik dialect of the Persian language, which is closely related to Dari, a dialect of the Persian language spoken in Afghanistan. Uzbek is spoken as a second language by most residents here. Bukhara grew rapidly with the discovery of natural gas nearby in the late 1950s. In 2020, the Organisation of the Islamic World for Education, Science and Culture designated Bukhara as the capital of Islamic culture.

Soon, we arrived at the Historic Centre of Bukhara. My, the roads here were really narrow! The buildings were old with exposed bricks. Our hotel had an unmissable sign outside with its name on it. It had a large wooden door with two brass rings as door knockers and an ancient-looking oil lamp suspended on the top left of the door. We knocked and entered the Shohnishin Boutique Hotel.

The interior of most hotels in Bukhara was embellished in a similar style to those in the mosques and madrasahs, i.e. with colourful and elaborate tiles in floral and geometrical patterns. Our hotel was no exception. This time, Simon and I had booked a small room each and we were pleasantly surprised by the brightly-coloured majolica tiles that covered the walls of our rooms. Even the bathrooms were adorned with blue tiles from the floor to right up to the ceiling! It was akin to living in a cell in a madrasah!

The common areas in the hotel were also elaborately ornamented. On the rooftop, there were tea beds with drapes. These were not actual beds but wide benches for guests to sit on and recline while enjoying drinks and food. They definitely resembled beds minus the mattresses.

Lunch at the Old Bukhara Restaurant

It was around 2:00 pm. We were starving by this time. We decided to pick Old Bukhara Restaurant as our lunch spot. This eatery was a tourist trap, no doubt about it. It possessed an elaborately ornamented courtyard with lots of life size figurines of Uzbek men and women with friendly, smiling faces, welcoming guests to the restaurant. It was packed with tourists.  We couldn’t get an open air table in the courtyard but were instead allocated a table inside one of the many dining rooms. No other customers were inside this room. 

Below are the three dishes we ordered.

1.  Uzbek’s Eggplants – baked eggplant rolls with cream cheese, tomato, garlic and greenery (so said the menu)

2. Our first pilaf or plov called ‘osh sofi’ with rice, beef, carrots, onions and spices

3. Pickled veggies comprising tomatoes, capsicums, gherkins, cucumbers and cabbage

The waiter mistakenly brought us a fresh salad instead. It had a colourful assortment of vegetables and dill.  We took photos of it, and then returned it to him!

I tried a Bagizagan Chardonnay white dry wine which wasn’t as dry as I thought it would be. Simon had a yoghurty drink.

Despite it being a tourist trap, we enjoyed our lunch. I walked around the restaurant after lunch and took lots of photos, including one of two Uzbek men roasting tomatoes on the charcoal.

After lunch, we were ready to explore Bukhara’s Old Town. However, I wanted a costume change as I would be posing in front of all those magnificent blue/turquoise tiled madrasahs, and I wanted my outfit to colour coordinate with my background!