Cute lovely Uzbek pottery that adorn the courtyard of the Old Bukhara Resraurant

 

A modern mobile Tandoori oven adds to the efficiency in bread-making?

Plov-a-la Old Bukhara Restaurant. It's vegetarian and the strips are yellow carrots. More details of Plov will come in a later post.

Mausoleum of the 14th Century Sufi saint Bahal al-Din Naqshband, founder of what became one of the largest Sunni Sufi orders, the Naqshbandi.

How Naan is prepared where the dough surface is indented before baking to ensure better baking. Naan is a critical part of Uzbek cuisine. We had some from this batch for our lunch.

Potter at work where we stopped for lunch on the way from Bukhara to Samarkand.

A caravanserai which has been preserved. They are common in the Silk Road and some have been converted to hotels too. On the way to Samarkand, I spotted some silos resembling those used in nuclear plants. I found out that the project has a Russian connection. After the silos are completed, Russian technology will be inputted to generate the power needed for domestic consumption.

 The first pub in Pub Street, Samarkand, where we went to top up beer and pub grub,

The pub grub served here is skewered and heated up when ordered. Not to put on more, we opted for vegetables with an abundance of raw onions. 

A schematic of the empire of Emir Temur, the founder of Uzbekistan.

A genealogy of the Timurid Family. One of his 9th generation great-grandsons, Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, built the Taj Mahal in Agra, India. The influence of Uzbek architecture can be seen in the Taj Mahal.

The golden niche in which Emir Temur is interred.

A golden dome in the mausoleum,

Shot taken in the inner courtyard of the Gur Emir (mausoleum of the great Emir Temur aka Tamerlane).