Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
A day in Samarqand (Uzbekistan)
A good day, we did that touristy thing in the morning round the Rajastan and a selection of mausoleums, I thought the tiles were remarkable, they individually chop out the pattern for each tile and lay in the different coloured pieces, a huge amount of effort for each tile. Dena, the girl showing us around, certainly knew her stuff, the highlight for me was Tamalain's tomb which still has his original jade tombstone and apparently his body is still buried in the crypt although Stalin dug it up and took it to Moscow for verification. The story goes that the tomb has a curse on it so when the Russians threatened to disinter him the locals warned them of the consequences, apparently they ignored them and the day after they disinterred him the Germans declared war on the Russians. Apparently Stalin was very superstitious so as soon as possible the bones were returned to the site and re-interred. While we're talking about the Russians, they were the ones responsible for refurbishing the mosques which were largely destroyed by a combination of earthquakes and neglect. It may seem like sour grapes but they seem to have overdone it they look amazing inside but there seems to be little of the originals left, they should perhaps have left one of them in an un-restored state so we could have an idea of the degree of change.
- comments