After having just a couple of hours of sleep in a hotel in the Uzbek capitol Tashkent we jumped on the next train that would take us to what many will consider the main highlight of the Silk Road, namely Samarkand. The city had been captured by Alexander the Great and Ghengis Khan, but the one who had done the greatest impact on the city was Timur in the fourteenth century. His empire stretched as far as from Istanbul to New Delhi, where Samarkand was the capital getting all the treasures and resources for building mosques, mausoleums and minarets.
Some of the buildings have remained untouched since they were built, but most of them have been restored after the Russians left the country in 1991- now looking more beautiful than ever!
The most impressing place to visit was by far Registan Square consisting of three mosques facing each other beautifully decorated by colorful tiles. The narrow streets of the old city just a few minutes away gave a feeling of jumping eight hundred years back in time. To the time when Samarkand was the capitol of Eurasia.
Our hotel, Furkat, was also the best place to stay with a rooftop restaurant overlooking Registan, a charming tea house commonroom and the friendliest staff. It was also very close to all the major attractions like the Bazaar (market) where we would stock up food for our next train trip to Bukhara.