Leaving Registan Square we passed this statue of Islon Karimov, the first president of independent Uzbekistan who served from 1991 until his death in 2016. Like the statue of Ulugh Beg the other day, this monument is popular with local residents and often featured in photo sessions for weddings and celebrations. Why do statues always have a bird perched on top!
Just a short walk away from Registan Square stands the Bibi-Khanym Mosque, a 600-year-old landmark built by Temur for his favourite wife. It is known for being one of the largest congregational mosques in Central Asia, historically able to hold roughly 10,000 worshippers.
Central courtyard and minaret.
Main portal
This marble Quran stand has only been encased in glass in the last couple of years; previously it was believed that crawling through the base would miraculously aid a woman in becoming pregnant.
We than had a couple of hours to ourselves for lunch and/or shopping. There was a market nearby and Farik helped some of us buy spices to take home. There were quite a few "gypsy" looking ladies around selling all sorts of tat - this one had cheap elastic bead bracelets and boxes of matches.
More cheap plastic.
Whereas this lovely lady though had great taste, she was selling just one hand crochet stole, which was made of such fine wool I couldn't resist it at just US$10. And I got her photo.
Walking back to pick up our coach this is the Hazrat Khixi Mosque which is actually just opposite Shah-i-Zinda necropolis which we visited on our first day here.
These young ladies were enjoying themselves, Uzbekistan certainly seems to be a very happy place to live.
Arriving at Samarkand's very modern station whilst waiting for the train to arrive I wandered around a couple of the shops and would love to have bought one of these little keyrings only there was no one around to pay.
The high speed Afrosiyob Train, which makes the 300km journey in 2 hours 15 minutes, is a very popular way to travel between the two cities and tickets have to be reserved many months in advance. Unfortunately it arrived early and caught me unawares
so I wasn’t ready for taking photos.
We passed some beautiful scenery including snow capped mountains but on the other side of the carriage so no photos. By the time we arrived back in Tashkent it was dark and we made our short way to the hotel where our cases had already been delivered. We said our goodbyes to the group as they were leaving early in the morning and we had another day to look around. With 16 of us it had been a slightly larger group than we'd have liked, but a good mix of people including an Emeritus Professor from Cambridge and the current Master of the Roll's brother.