Uzbekistan - Bukhara & Samarkand

This is that place most people with an inkling of Central Asia are thinking of.

The silk route cities of Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva. Alexander the Great's Óxus river  and the Aral Sea.

Russian anthropologist Mikhail Gerasimov ignored the legend that disaster would befall anyone who disturbed the tomb of Timur the Lame ( Tamerlane ) in the Registan of Samarkand. The day was 22nd June 1941 and within minutes  news was heard Germany had invaded Russia. Two years later within weeks of being reburied the Germans surrendered at Stalingrad.

For the Great Game, the British Officers Stoddart and Conolly were thrown into a verminous pit by the Emir of Bukhara and eventually beheaded outside of  the Ark or Citadel. The pit is still there.

The Metro in Tashkent, built after the great earthquake of 1966 is a work of art in itself and the Opera house build by prisoners of war … the sense of history is everywhere.

Samarkand is now an industrial town but to visit the Registan is one of life's great experiences as are  the remains of  Ulug Bek's observatory high above  the town. His observations placed him in the same league as Copernicus. Like Galileo he eventually fell foul of religious orthodoxy and the observatory was torn down by religious fanatics. Its re discovery in 1909 is considered one of the major discoveries of the 20th Century.

The Registan, Samarkand.

Bukhara remains my favourite in Uzbekistan. It's a magical place. The Ark and the timeless pool of Lyab-i-Khauz . The Kaylan minaret was spared from destruction by Genghis Khan, who found it a convenient height from which to fling the vanquished to their deaths. Thereafter it became known as the Tower of Death.

The Kaylan minaret

I was fortunate to travel across Uzbekistan in the early 1990's as an old world order was evaporating, and a new direction for the County had yet to be determined.

Djibouti & the Danakil Depression

Djibouti was to the French what Aden was to the British.  A key port at the southern end of the Red Sea when steamers could refuel to or from Suez .

My first visit to Djibouti was to open a bank account for an NGO programme in Somalia at the height of the fighting well before the arrival of American forces..

The government ministries had been comprehensively trashed in Mog and the  new owners of the national stock of passports were doing a roaring trade in authentic Somali passports with all the right stamps for ten dollars. Diplomatic passports were slightly more expensive.

Arriving at Djibouti Airport there was a huge barrel  filled to the brim with Somali passports, many fresh off the press. Their dismayed owners sat in a long line on a bench awaiting a long conversation with immigration officials.  My western passport went into the same barrel and I was in.

Djibouti town was  a magical  haven of plenty after months in the Somali bush.  Shops with fresh cakes, air con and cold drinks and of course operational banks. Djibouti also provided access to one place I had always been determined to visit, Lake Abbe on the  border with Ethiopia. It is the final destination of the Awash River that Wilfred Thesiger explored all those years ago and recorded in his Danakil Diary.

Lake Abbe

Lake Abbe is within the Danakil Depression, the lowest place on earth and one of the hottest. The landscape is wild and volcanic and the Afar who live here are perfectly adapted to their harsh environment. If you want to know what they use their curved knife for 'the jile', you really need to read  The Danakil Diary.

Volcanic activity in the depression