Encounters on Tashkent Road
Samarkand, Uzbekistan, on Monday, October 20, 2014.
It’s really easy to get to all the main “101” sites in Samarkand’s Old Town. Tashkent Street is a tree-lined walking promenade that links them all. It’s sort of like following the Yellow Brick Road, only in grey.
The Full Manti. — at Art Cafe Anorgis.
Walking along Tashkent Street to my next historical site, I encounter two familiar faces just outside the Bibi-Khanym Mosque, as I’m trying to take a photo: the cheeky old Australian Richard and his younger Uzbek guide Mohammed that I encountered in Tashkent and the train. Richard and I try to get a photo with some people in it, to show the grand scale of the building. We’re distracted because two begging women start bothering us. Mohammed tries to get rid of them.
“I missed that one,” Richard says to me, still looking at the camera screen of his iPhone, pointed towards the building. In perfect position, a little girl would have shown scale, but we were distracted by the pesky women.
“Oh, wait, there’s another one,” I say, as another person walks into the sweet spot.
“Aw, but she’s not as cute.”
Mohammed uses an abrupt and short yell to scare off the women, but it startles me instead and I flinch.
“Sorry,” he apologizes. Eventually the women leave while Richard and I are still taking photos.
“What we have to do is Photoshop the Hotel Uzbekistan behind this,” Richard jokes.
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