Domina President Palace Samarkand

... seen it before it was totally restored because there isn't much modest about it. <br><br> I was busy taking photos and not paying attention to the stories like I should so I had to look it up in the Lonely Planet guide. The men are actually buried in a crypt under the mausoleum as is usually the case. There are markers in the mausoleum though and per the Lonely Planet, Timor&#8217;s market was a large block of dark ...

... we met up with Abdullah, the manager. He said they used to have men and women together but that didn&#8217;t work so they put the men out of town in a different factory and the production rate when up 30%. The workers must be 18, must have an education and must have patience. He gives them training for 4 months and then a test. They are told that they must work at the loom for 8 hours without a break for ...

... but instead there are 8 windows under the dome. At the foundation is a bricked up crawl space where the bodies would have been put into the mausoleum to be buried. <br><br> The whole complex is beautiful and incredible. It climbs up the hill to the very last mosque which is nestled between parts of the soviet-Muslim cemetery and you can walk into the cemetery from there. One part has a small courtyard where there ...

... stakes) we came across a great little restaurant called the Old City which went some way to salvaging my extremely over promoted night of romance!<br><br>The next day we visited the Guri Amir Mausoleum, which was right around the corner from Antica. This mausoleum housed the remains of Timur, two of his sons and two of his grandsons. When he died (while planning a campaign against the Chinese in what is now Kazakhstan) Timur's wish was to be buried in his nearby hometown ...

... of Central Asia. The city center is a maze of narrow alleys opening out onto tree-shaded courtyards with Mosques and other old buildings dotted amongst the new. Weather getting hotter now and the garden courtyard of the hotel was a real oasis, surrounding us with fruit trees laden with ripe fruit.<br><br>Met a great selection of travelers here in our two-night stay and enjoyed many hours of conversation with people from France ...

... up on their own. <br><br>We wandered off to dinner and introduced the new people to the delights of the Sheesha or Hookah. Pieter the friendly dutchman and Ben the American became quite animated after inhaling about 30 cigarettes worth of nicotine in one go. Heidi, Pieter's wife had to restrain him as he wanted to get up and run around the room in ever decreasing circles.<br><br>Great food and about $20 nzd for two meant that our budget was going just fine. Budget ...

... as well as we were only starting to recover from our food poisoning and it was to be our longest tour on our program.<br><br>Larger than life was the lovely Lola, our guide for the day. With wild blond hair and an effervescent personality, the exotic Lola was a walking package of Ukrainian, Tajik, Uighur and Uzbek nationalities. She was an entertaining guide and like our other guides a wealth of knowledge about her home city of Samarkand. "I'm sooooo passionate about my city" she purred ...

... even take in our decision.<br><br>Our trip from Bukhara to Samarkand was long and tedious. Alan was lying in the back seat of the car, almost delirious and only surfacing when we had to scream to a stop to let him out to be sick on the side of the road. <br><br>We now often joke that like Alexander the Great in the 3rd century BC, Alan left his DNA all along the Silk Road. It was not a case of rape and plunder but rather that of belch and chunder. It is ...

... fent de turista interior a Khiva. Truquem a l alegre ginecoleg Jasur desde l estacio del tren de Samarkanda, per mediacio d una amable telefonista russa, de mitjana edat, que mentrestant aprofita per comprar uns ous frescos, que passaven per alla. En traiem dos telefons penjats i una adressa aproximada d una farmacia on treballa el nostre home. Una micromashrutka de l ultima fornada ( Daewoo Damas, maxima compression ...

... we know it we're entering Samarkand, the road we enter on comes up a narrow valley with a number of what look like inhabited caves cut into the rocky sides, there's no indication that we're about to enter a large city, when all of a sudden we're driving past the beautiful 14 &amp; 15 C entrance to the Shah-i-Zinda and shortly afterwards past the Registan, on first sighting these places are awesome and will certainly remain etched on my memory ...