Our time in Bukhara

Being wheelchair bound has it obvious disadvantages when trying to visit a historical city like Bukhara, however, the effort to at least to give it a go can leave you well rewarded. The old city of Bukhara has to be one amazing cities that I have ever travelled to. Echoes of the past are everywhere in this ancient Silk Road stop over, so much so that if it wasn’t for people dressed in western clothing mingling between carpet stalls you would be convinced that you have travelled back in time. Bumping down cobbled streets it is not long before you stand astonishingly looking up at Bukhara’s intricately tiled mosques and madrasahs. The latter were places of study that housed some great Islamic thinkers over their history, which gave way to theories that the earth rotated around the sun and span on its own axis. It made the city a magnet for learning and culture. Not bad for the 9th century. In between the many madrasahs we passed vital resting and watering points for traders and camels on the Silk Road, which were called caravanserai.

Added to the amazing architecture you can’t help being drawn to the city with a tinge of morbid fascination. Apparently, many unsavoury tyrants ruled over the city during its life time and committed many appalling acts to ensure the people remained under their ruthless control. One such act was to sentence individuals who had committed a crime to death by bundling them into a sack and hurling them off the top of an intricately designed tower that is over 50 meters tall. Incidentally, when Genghis Khan was rampaging through the area and leaving a wake of destruction behind him he thought that the ‘Tower of Death’ as it was nicknamed was so magnificent that he didn’t allow his troops to destroy it.

The Ark, which we arrived at last, is a walled fortress where the oppressor of the time lived in, stashed his goods and imprisoned his victims and was the scene of other numerously distasteful acts. Including beheading two English soldiers who were caught up in the cat-and-mouse shenanigans between the English and Russia in the struggle to acquire more land/assets during a period in the early 1900’s nicknamed the ‘Great Game’ by the British.

As we approached the forbidding walls of the Ark along a tree lined walkway I was already feeling the heat despite it being only 10.30am in the morning. My personal woes were abruptly knocked into shape as we passed a boy of around twelve and his mum sitting in the shade. The Uzbek boy had Cerebral Palsy and was sitting in an antiquated steel wheelchair that was 2 sizes too big for him that deceivingly made him look smaller than he actually was. As I wheeled passed the two of them it a struck me that this young boy has to cope with the heat and probably many other hardships that aren’t visible to the naked eye day after day. These thoughts rushing through my mind made me feel very fortunate to live my life in the UK. Moreover, despite any discrepancies that one might envisage the West to have they are mere inconveniences compared to problems that people in other countries in the world face. This alternative view made me feel very lucky with my lot and on our way back to the van we stopped briefly to talk to the mother and sun but unfortunately the language barrier stood in the way.