The incredibly bad highway.
An area of sand dunes.
The last mosque in Turkmenistan.
Truck caravan using connecting road from bad road to good highway.
Chor Bakr Necropolis...
Saturday, April 26th.
We were up at 6 for breakfast aiming for a 7:15 departure, but things got slowed down as it was not a buffet breakfast but a sit down one where they brought us each a platter with a variety of things, coffee, juice, rice porridge, flan, toast and jam, a small omelette, hard boiled egg, tomato and cucumber, and olives; and our poor guide Jordan was feeling poorly and was the last down for breakfast. We did get away about 7:30. We drove for hours along a brutally bad highway. It is a major northeast highway connecting Mary with Turkmenabat, the second largest city in Turkmenistan and is used by international transports, the new caravans. It is supposed to be a three lane highway, but all the cars, trucks and buses drive carefully avoiding potholes, broken roadway, sandy and gravel patches, changing lanes repeatedly and even driving in the lanes going in the opposite direction. Several times we had vehicles passing us going in the opposite direction on either side of us; or driving up behind trucks driving four wide. Really crazy and very different from the new modern highway we drove the other day (more on this in my summary later). We saw a couple of instances of nomadic people filling potholes with sand hoping to get money from drivers for repairing the road. We had to stop twice for bush toilets, women on the right, men on the left and then finally a rest stop with proper western toilets. It was incredibly dusty there due to the trucks and blowing sand. Someone labelled it the ‘silt’ road. After that we changed to a new highway with three lanes in each direction and continued as the scenery gradually changed, transitioning from the arid desert to the fertile plains of Uzbekistan until we arrived in the historic city of Bukhara, once the capital of the powerful Emirate of Bukhara. As we approached the city, we saw some of its ancient architecture and monuments. We stopped at the Chor Bakr Necropolis, a vast cemetery that spans over a thousand years of history. This sacred site offers a glimpse into the city's past, with its intricate tombstones and mausoleums. The city's well-preserved center, which has remained largely unchanged for two centuries, offers a unique opportunity to experience pre-Russian Turkestan. We explored the massive royal fortress, a symbol of the city's former power, and wandered through the labyrinthine streets lined with ancient madrassas, public baths, and the remnants of a once-vast market complex. Then off to the group dinner in the Jewish quarter where we had a nice meal in a lovely setting, and back to the hotel for the night.
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