Samarkand, Uzbekistan: The Ancient Crossroad of Central Asia’s Renaissance or They Have the Best Bread!

August 18, 2026 | 2suitcasesfor2years

Upon your arrival to Samarkand, one of the first things you will notice is the huge number of informal roadside vendors, especially the folks selling loaves of bread from the trunks of their cars along the side of the road, or from wheelbarrows at every historic site. There is something akin to a great soccer rivalry here, not in which team you are rooting for, but in something far more essential to daily life in Uzbekistan. Whose bread do you prefer? While Tashkent, Bukhara, and Khiva all traditionally bake obi-non, a flat round loaf that’s decorated with intricate stamped patterns, in Samarkand folks favor their local variety of non, that looks similar to a bagel on steroids or a small tractor tire.

The dense loaves are beautifully glazed and baked to a golden color and typically weigh about 1.5 kilograms (3.3lbs) and taste delicious. I mean after being one of oldest continuously inhabited cities in Central Asia for over 3000 years, folks should certainly have a winning bread recipe! When we observed the amount of business being conducted along the roadsides we could only imagine that “Va nonni unutmang,” – don’t forget bread, is a common catch phrase in Uzbekistan when folks know you are visiting Samarkand, with the hope that you will return bearing loaves of the bread. The loaves are traditionally never cut with a knife but torn apart by hand and shared at the beginning of each meal.

The Afrasiyab Museum on the outskirts of Samarkand was our first stop. It’s a small museum but thoroughly engaging with exhibits displaying an array of artifacts uncovered in Afrasiyab / Maracanda.

Folks have lived in the Zerafshan River Valley region since around 1500 BC, eventually establishing Afrosiab, as Samarkand was originally known, on a large hill. Over the centuries it grew into an important trading and cultural hub ruled by a succession of Persian and Turkic rulers. By the time Alexander the Great captured the city in 329 BC it was called Maracanda. In 712 AD, Arab forces swept through the region and captured the city, cementing Samarkand as a premier center of Islamic culture that continued to gain riches due to its location on the Silk Road. This wealthy walled city survived until it was pillaged and totally destroyed by Genghis Khan’s army in 1220. It must have been a beautiful city as Genghis Khan spared the lives of skilled craftsmen and sent them as prisoners to Karakorum, in Mongolia, to build his capitol. Other prisoners were used by his army as human shields in their conquests against Tashkent, Bukhara, and Khiva.

The old city was permanently abandoned and today all that remain are its ruins which can be wandered through at the Afrasiyab Archeological Park which were uncovered by a succession of Russian archeologists through various digs from 1894 – 1970s; wall murals dated to the 7th century in the city’s old royal palace were discovered, along with the remains of an 8th century mosque.

Nearby was The Holy Spring of the “Three Religions,” an enclosed well at the base of the stairway to the Mausoleum of St. Khoja Daniel which overlooks the Siab River. The spring is uniquely cherished by Muslims, Christians, and Jews who visit to drink and collect its healing water.

Muslims call him the Khoja Daniyar, the Jews call him Dānīyyēʾl, and in Christianity he is known as Daniel, the Hebrew prophet who served the 6thcentury Persian King Darius who ruled an empire that stretched from Susa in what is now modern-day Iran to Egypt and beyond. Daniel is also the Daniel of the Old Testament, most notable for the biblical story of Daniel in the Lion’s Den. He faced death with three friends for not worshipping King Darius; they were placed overnight in a lion’s den but were saved by Daniel’s unfaltering faith in God. Witnessing this miracle, King Darius allowed the revered prophet to be buried after his death in a royal mausoleum in Susa. How the relics of St. Khoja Daniel actually arrived in Samarkand is a mystery, as some think the remains were brought to the city by early Christians, while others think it was by the decree of Samarkand’s famous medieval ruler Amir Timur, Tamerlane. One popular legend reinforces this theory – believing that after failing to conquer Susa, Timur was told the city was protected by the relics of St. Daniel. “Upon hearing this Timur decided to change tactics and negotiate with the townspeople about reconciliation, but on condition that he would take away part of the sacred relics to Samarkand. When the caravan carrying the sacred relics reached the outskirts of Samarkand near the Siab River, the camel carrying the relics suddenly dropped to its knees on the ground and refused to move until a miraculous spring with healing waters burst from the earth.”

The tomb for the saint’s relics is amazingly 18m (59ft) long to accommodate a relic that some believe grows larger every year, while others say it was Timur’s idea to hide the exact spot of the relics with the extraordinary length of the tomb to deter grave robbers from easily finding them. It’s a tranquil place of pilgrimage for many travelers. Our next stop was the Observatory of Mirzo Ulugbek.

One hundred and fifty years after the Mongols destroyed Afrasiyab, Amir Timur oversaw the ancient city’s revival, growing like a phoenix from its ashes in the desert, and in 1370 called it Samarkand, and declared it the capitol of his Timurid Empire. It was under his tutelage during the14th century, later to be known as the Timurid Renaissance, that Samarkand became a center for Islamic studies, and the sciences that rivaled Bagdad’s past influence in the Islamic world. He indorsed a new style of architecture, where geometry and art intersected, and which would eventually bear his name, that featured Colossal Pishtaqs – towering arched entrance portals; vibrant blue domes – that featured cobalt and turquoise colored lapis lazuli glazed tile; intricate tilework – that featured geometric, floral, and calligraphic patterns; and a blending of cultures that drew upon Persian, Mongol, and Central Asian influences, all of which were connected through the Samarkand Silk Road crossroads.

Timur’s visionary influence continued for several centuries after his death, most notably in the scientific achievements of his grandson Mirzo Ulugbek, an accomplished astronomer. He ruled Samarkand from 1409 – 1447 as a regent for his father Shah Rukh, before becoming the supreme ruler of the Timurid Empire. His reign only lasted two years before political infighting led to a coup and his assassination in 1449. It was during his time as the regent that he oversaw the construction of his observatory, a massive three-story structure featuring a 40m (131ft) radius marble sextant/quadrant, built into the ground to avoid vibrations, that he used to make highly accurate naked-eye observations to map 1,018 stars and record highly accurate orbital movements of the Sun, Moon, and the five known planets of his era, two centuries before the invention of the telescope. Ulugbek also calculated the length of the stellar year with unprecedented accuracy – 365 days, 6 hours, 10 minutes, 8 seconds, an error of less than a minute.

After his death the book of his work, the Zij-i Sultani, was smuggled out of Samarkand to Istanbul by his assistant who feared its destruction by religious conservatives. By the mid-1600s his work was translated by scholars at Oxford University and validated by telescope-using astronomers. He also established the first madrassa on Samarkand’s Registan Square which had a curriculum that prioritized mathematics, geometry, and astronomy alongside theological studies.

“Religion is scattering like fog, kingdoms are being destroyed,

but the works of scientists remain forever”

(Mirzo Ulugbek)

His admonition to trust science still rings true 577 years later. Sadly, only the inground portion of the sextant survived the building’s destruction immediately after his death, as it was buried in the demolition. Stones from the building were removed from the site, and used for other buildings, until it was totally levelled. The exact site was lost to history for nearly 500 years until Russian archaeologists used 17thcentury land deeds to rediscover the buried sextant in 1908. Across from the remains of the sextant is a small museum with exhibits explaining Ulugbek’s achievements and models of his observatory.

The historic sites in Samarkand were surprisingly very far apart and required transportation to reach, unless you are willing to devote hours to walking between places. This is the result of successive empires over the millennia rebuilding destroyed settlements nearby rather than on top of old ruins. This is very different from the feel of Bukhara and Khiva where the historic sites are surrounded by ancient mahallas, neighborhoods, only a few steps away.

Registan Square, with its three iconic madrassas famously facing each other, was our last historic stop for the day. The scale of the buildings was awe inspiring and considering the fact that every inch of them is covered in tilework is amazing. The first madrassa on the site was built by and named after Mirzo Ulugbek in 1420 where several Silk Road caravan tracks converged in the center of the ancient city.

It was a dusty lively spot, a “place covered with sand,” as is the meaning of “Registan,” with a domed traders’ and merchants’ bazaar, surrounded by awning-covered stalls of tradesman and farmers selling their crops. Of course, bakers were selling Samarkand bread, an essential food for caravaneers’ long journeys. With the construction of his grand madrassa Ulugbek gradually transformed the crossroads into a ceremonial and educational center, where folks gathered to hear royal declarations, news, and witness Islamic justice.

It stood alone on the plaza for two hundred years until 1636 when emir Yalangtush Bakhodur, who served the khans of the Bukhara Khanate, opened the Sher-Dor Madrasa directly across from it. With its name meaning “adorned with tigers,” the entrance is embellished with two lions with Mongolian-faced Zoroastrian-inspired suns rising from their backs to symbolize the enlightened mind, chasing white gazelles. This is very unusual for Islamic art as it normally prohibits using depictions of animals or human figures and reflects a short-lived regional relaxation of the rules in the 17thcentury when the Khanate of Bukhara ruled Samarkand. Twenty years later in 1656 the Tillya-Kori Madrasa was the final grand addition that centered the grouping.

Various shops now occupy the old classrooms. In one room an 11th generation tile artisan gave our group a demonstration of how the ornate tiles are cut and pieced together. Many of the intricate geometric designs have over twenty different design elements comprised of polygons, triangles, squares, rhombuses, and various multi-sided geometric stars, while others featured floral or biomorphic motifs or calligraphic scripts.

On average it took twelve years to complete each madrassa and required a massive workforce of thousands of skilled artisans and unskilled slave labor to convert raw material into the astonishingly beautiful buildings that define Samarkand. (Samarkand and Bukhara had notorious slave markets that operated for centuries. Successive Empires sold into captivity those captured along the frontiers of Persia and Russia by nomadic raiders or military conquests, to buyers across the Arab world, Central Asia, and India. While popular history focuses on exotic goods like silk, spices, and jade, slaves were also part of the Silk Road’s cargo and transported over thousands of miles along its trade routes).

With the discovery of a maritime route to India, Southeast Asia and China in the beginning in the early 1500s the importance of the cross-continent Silk Road caravans to Istanbul steadily declined. By the mid-1600s Samarkand entered a long period of reduced global significance and slow long economic decline. With reduced revenue from Silk Road caravan trade rulers could no longer finance their endowments of the madrassas and the financial aid they gave to support the students, which caused enrollment to dwindle.

Over time the buildings slowly fell into a state of disrepair from lack of maintenance. By the time the Russian Empire invaded the region the Silk Road Khanates were lacking the funds to buy the modern military weapons needed to defend themselves with any chance of defeating the Russians. The resulting defeats allowed the Russian Empire to force the Khanates to become protectorates, with the khans only symbolically ruling their domains. With the Soviet Union’s takeover of Uzbekistan in the 1920s and subsequently outlawing traditional Islamic education, the madrassas were closed. Rooms in the schools were used as offices, warehouses, and an ammunition depot, while the square was reserved for political rallies that promoted communist propaganda, mass veil burnings and trials of counterrevolutionaries. But the Soviets also began the restoration of the crumbling buildings.

The madrassas on Registan Square were the last grand structures built during Samarkand’s golden era. The historic and cultural achievements of this 250-year era is a time that Uzbekistan is most proud of and promotes as the most significant part of the country’s history which it has been seeking to reestablish after a combined 150 years of Russian Empire and Soviet Union domination.

We wrapped up the late afternoon with an unexpected wine tasting in an underground cellar featuring local wines made by Samarkand’s famous Bagizagan Winery. It was a generous tasting that offered six types of wine, brandies/cognac, and chacha, Uzbek grappa, paired with local cheeses, nuts, crackers, and seasonal fruit. The tradition of winemaking around Samarkand goes back over 2,500 years in the fertile Zerafshan Valley. A family of winemakers for over 150 years, their property was collectivized during Uzbekistan’s communist years but returned to them after Uzbekistan’s independence in 1991. We thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and the wines were very good.

The next morning, we were up early to walk to some sites that we passed while on our bus that were relatively close to the Hotel Royal Samarkand where we were staying, but not on our itinerary. Our destinations were the Amir Temur Monument and the Memorial of Samarkand’s Tigers, both of which were located along Registan Street. The morning sun was just cresting the adjacent buildings as we entered Bul’var Park, a long skinny stretch of land bounded on each side by University Boulevard. The walkway down its center was dotted with sculptures and fountains. Bird calls filled the air.

At the far end of the park was a statue of Amir Temur staring thoughtfully to the east. Farther along was a sculpture of Samarkand’s two guardian tigers. The Turanian or Caspian tigers historically symbolized royal power, but it also commemorates the tigers that lived along Central Asia’s river thickets until population growth in the region contributed to their extinction in the 1950s. Returning to our hotel, as we walked along Orzi Makhmudov St. we stopped to watch a restauranteur stack freshly baked somsalar into an outdoor display case. We met a young schoolgirl who was so curious about seeing foreign visitors on her street that she stopped to say hello. It was a charming moment of connection that warmed our hearts.

Joining our tour group after breakfast we headed to Gur-e Amir, ” the Tomb of the King.” Built in the early 1400s, it is the royal mausoleum of Amir Temur and his sons Shah Rukh and Miran Shah along with his grandsons Ulugh Beg and Muhammad Sultan. Also honored with a place in the tomb is Timur’s teacher Sayyid Baraka.

The courtyard’s grand entrance portal leading to a large ornate blue dome flanked by flat topped minarets became the master blueprint for an architectural style that was embraced across the Islamic world as Timur’s descendants continued to expand the Timurid Empire.

When Soviet archeologists decided to open Timur’s tomb in 1941 rumors went around Samarkand that disturbing the tomb would curse those who opened it, as the tomb is inscribed with a prophecy that reads “When I rise from the dead, the world shall tremble.” Local leaders attempted to warn the Soviets, but the excavation team persisted. Opening the tomb allegedly revealed another inscription declaring “Whosoever disturbs my tomb will unleash an invader more terrible than I.” Two days later Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Apparently, Stalin believed the curse and quickly ordered Timur to be reburied with full Islamic burial rites.

Continuing on we traveled to Shah-i-Zinda, Samarkand’s famous necropolis that features a narrow avenue lined with eleven ancient, spectacularly ornate blue tile covered mausoleums, smaller tombs, several small mosques and several historical buildings. “Its name means “The Living King,” referring to a legend that one of the figures buried here, Qusam ibn Abbas, a cousin of the Prophet Muhammad was not truly dead but “living” underground.”

According to legend Qusam came to Samarkand in the 7th century during early Arab incursions to preach and establish Islam. Attacked by raiding Zoroastrians he was beheaded while performing his prayers. “Rather than dying, Qusam picked up his own severed head, tucked it under his arm, and descended into a deep underground opening linked to paradise, where legend states he continues to live to this day.

This legend encourages pilgrims from all across the Muslim world to visit the site. His original shrine on the site dated from the 11th century but was destroyed during the Mongol invasion of Samarkand. It was later rebuilt during Timur’s reign and later as his female family members, wives, and nobles chose the site as their final resting place during the 14th and 15th centuries, turning Shah-i-Zinda into one of the most important burial sites in Central Asia.

Late morning when we arrived was similar to trying to enter the New York City subway system at 5PM, packed with folks queueing for the best spots to take photos. The necropolis is stunning, but it was nearly impossible to take any photos without other people in the picture unless we had our cameras pointed at the beautiful ceilings. In hindsight our suggestion would be to plan a visit at 7:00AM when it opens or visit later in the day when the tour groups have headed for dinner.

After dropping us off our bus driver had to park farther away, near the local hillside cemetery. As simple as it was it had its own elegance. Greeting us, our driver broke some Samarkand bread with us and provided some local cheese for lunch in the shade of the bus before we headed to our final destination in Samarkand.

It was a very hot afternoon in late April as we slowly walked up the hill past the Makhsum Baba Mausoleum. Built in the 1800s the mausoleum of the revered local awliya (saint) features a much simpler, less ornate Persian style architecture, and because of this it is often looked by folks.

Continuing on we took a brief respite in the shade of the market pavilions at Siyob Bozori. It has functioned as Samarkand’s largest and oldest bazaar since the construction of the Registan displaced the merchants that once kept shops there. It was filled with beautiful ceramics, breads, honey, nuts and spices, as well as textiles. Vendors eagerly offered samples, hoping to encourage a sale.

Next to the bazaar was the Bibi-Khanym Mosque, the façade of which was very similar to those of the madrassas on Registan Square. Our only critique of Tumeric architecture is that, while the facades are embellished with different mosaic designs, there is not a very distinguishable visible difference between the shape of the madrassas and the mosques. Though intriguing, visiting too many of them tends to be visually repetitious.

Its towering entranceway opened to a treed courtyard, at the center of which stood a very large glass exhibit case that held a giant marble pedestal carved in the shape of a book stand during the Timurid era. It was used to hold the legendary, oversized 7th-century Osman Quran that Timur brought back to Samarkand following his military campaigns through Iraq, as a prized war trophy and token of religious prestige for his royal library. It was a huge book that weighed 80 kilos (176 lbs) and required multiple assistants just to physically turn the massive leather pages for the Imans during religious services on major Islamic holidays when it was removed from the library. The Quran was seized by the Russian imperial army in 1868 and taken to St. Petersburg. Upon repeated petitions it was returned to Tashkent in 1924 and is now displayed in the newly opened Islamic Civilization Center there. The ancient pedestal is also the subject of a local fertility legend that believes “a childless woman will miraculously conceive and bear children if she crawls underneath the giant marble book stand located in the middle of the courtyard.” Evidently this was done frequently enough to raise concern that the monument might be toppled, and the decision was made to protect it within a glass enclosure.

Built between 1399 and 1405, the mosque was a huge structure that suffered from numerous engineering deficiencies which resulted in it beginning to crumble as soon as it was completed. A major earthquake in the 19th century caused large sections of masonry to collapse; that along with a Russian artillery strike in 1868 hastened the already dilapidated complex’s demise. Though for a short period of time, in its heyday, it must have been spectacular.

We had a wonderful time in Samarkand. In hindsight we wished our tour had chosen a hotel closer to Registan Square, which would have facilitated exploring some of the sites we missed in our free time.

Tashkent, Khiva, Bukhara and Samarkand were all remarkedly different. We had a great time in Uzbekistan.

Go for wonderful architecture of the Timurid Dynasty, but don’t forget the bread.

Till next time,

Craig & Donna

Bukhara, Uzbekistan: A City of Culture and Style on the Ancient Silk Road, or Time Traveling in the Desert

August 2, 2026 | 2suitcasesfor2years

In mid-April 2026 we flew from Tashkent to Urgench on our way to Khiva. We were a month too early to take advantage of the newly operating “Jaloliddin Manguberdi,” a high-speed electric train that whisks passengers 1,020km (630 mi) across the country from Tashkent to Khiva in 7.5 hours with stops in Samarkand, Bukhara, Urgench, and Khiva.

We are not fans of bus trips, preferring to rent a car, and organize our own road trips so we can stop frequently, but the distances between the cities in Uzbekistan were just too great, and we opted for a group tour instead. Consequently, a couple of long bus journeys were part of the itinerary, such as the six-hour trip to Bukhara. While some folks used this time to catch up on their emails and texts, or read, I preferred to look out the window, level the horizon, and try to compose a few photos as the bus bounced along. Leveling the horizon was nearly impossible.

In this part of western Uzbekistan there is not a modern highway system. While the roads were decent, the “highways” were also local roads when they passed through towns, and the sights could be unusual: like the local butcher who had a freshly slaughtered cow’s head hanging in front of his shop; kids in their school uniforms walking to school in a culvert along the edge of a field as a cow grazed nearby; numerous new mosques under construction. In places, large ancient cemeteries lined the road. There were also many examples of Uzbekistan’s informal economy underway when we entered or exited a town, with folks selling the in-season fruits and vegetables, or honey, eggs, and homemade cheeses from their cars parked along the roadside.

At rest areas, tandoors cast forth the wonderful aroma of freshly baked samsas. Passing through the town of Hazorasp, a large silver sculpture of a winged horse flashed by too quickly to grab a photo. This was the Tulpar, the legendary ultra-swift horse in Uzbek mythology. The town’s name “Hazorasp,” literally translates to “a thousand horses.” It’s taken from a folkloric legend where a herd of winged horses descended to the Amu Darya river delta.

We reached the Hazorasp Tumani bridge over the Amu Darya River, a narrow, two-lane steel and concrete bridge that closes to all vehicle traffic when a train crosses the bridge on railroad tracks that straddle the yellow center line. This event caused such a long wait, that our driver and guide made us hot tea and coffee in the shade of the bus as we waited in the queue, with other folks who were leaving their vehicles to stretch their legs, killing time before the train passed.

Our route paralleled Uzbekistan’s border with Turkmenistan and at a viewpoint overlooking the Amu Darya River our guide pointed out how much the width of the river had shrunk since his childhood during Uzbekistan’s Soviet era, when the river’s water was overdrawn to irrigate cotton fields, and that during the communist years there were an incredible 17 security checkpoints between Khiva and Bukhara, that everyone was required to stop at. Farther on the scrubland of the Kyzylkum Desert extended in every direction to the horizon.

One unusual thing that we noticed at the many gas stations we passed along our 443km (275mi) route to Bukhara were the concrete walls between the filling islands. The stations didn’t provide gasoline. Instead, they sold highly compressed natural gas for cars and trucks that had been retrofitted to take advantage of Uzbekistan’s substantial natural gas reserves. Occasionally, explosions during the refueling process happens, and the concrete blast walls are to contain the damage. Drivers using these facilities are also required to wait in certain no danger zones, a safe distance away from their vehicles. The stations are all connected via pipelines and frequently there are problems with their pressurization which results in temporary station closures and long lines at other facilities. If you are renting a car there isn’t any need to worry, as all rental cars in Uzbekistan run on gasoline.

Wide multi-lane boulevards greeted us as we entered the outskirts of Bukhara, a city of about 305,000 people. The roads were lined with newer three to five story buildings with a vast array of shops and services on the ground level and apartments above. And there was a good amount of western style advertising with billboards and digital displays marketing athletic wear, soda and banking services. There had been a large 12km (7.5mi) defensive wall around this Silk Road trading hub for over two millenniums, only succumbing to destruction when the Soviet Red Army bombed and shelled the city in 1920 before they forced Bukhara into the Soviet Union. Prior to this, the Emirate of Bukhara existed as an absolute, conservative Islamic monarchy, while being a Russian Empire protectorate, a result of Russia attacking the city in the late 1860s to end its and Khiva’s notorious slave markets that sold around 100,000 Persian and Russian slaves every year to other Islamic khanates in Central Asia, India and the Middle East.

Just shy of the pedestrian only historic center of Bukhara, we disembarked from our bus, across from the Labi Hovuz, an ancient public square, dating from the 1620s, that’s centered with a large reservoir surrounded by a shallow set of stairs that lead down to the water’s edge. Surrounded by centuries old mulberry trees, it was a popular spot for merchants from the caravanserais, and students from the nearby madrassas to relax in the cool of the evening. The pool was also a vital source of drinking water for the surrounding homes for several hundred years. There used to be many of these hovuz, pools, across Bukhara’s mahallas, neighborhoods, but they were also the breeding grounds for waterborne diseases like guinea worm and cholera, and they were filled in for health reasons during the Soviet years.

Dragging our suitcases behind us, we passed the Magoki Attori Mosque, dating from the 9thcentury; it was built above the ruins of an early Buddhist monastery and later Zoroastrian temple. Interestingly, before the first synagogue was built in the city, Muslims and Jews shared the temple but worshipped at different times. It is the oldest mosque in Bukhara, having survived Genghis Khan’s sack of the town in 1220, and a millennium of Bukhara’s evolving growth, which has left its entrance 4.5m (15ft) below the surrounding city level.

We entered the inner part of the historic center of Bukhara through the Toqi Telpakfurushon, a long gate-like, multi-domed tim built in 1570, that was first used as the booksellers’ bazaar. Its narrow lane was lined with a variety of colorful stalls and workshops, and it is expected that tourists will bargain with the merchants for their best price. We passed through the Toqi Telpakfurushon many times during our two full days in Bukhara, but appreciated the beauty of the building most in the early morning hours as the city was awakening.

Just outside the far end of the bazaar was the Bozori Kord Hammam, dating from the 14th century. It is one of the oldest continually operating bathhouses in the world, where a restorative 30-minute massage can be enjoyed.

Our hotel, The Shahriston, was a few doors down. It’s a newer hotel built in 2018, that wonderfully retains the authentic character of the surrounding medina, and was conveniently, centrally located on Khakikat St, and within easy walking distance of Bukhara’s many historic sites. It also had a nice rooftop terrace for views over the medina’s Toqi trading domes and workshops.

After getting settled in our room, we headed to the Poi Kalon Complex, as the golden hour was approaching, and quickly decided that the rooftop restaurant at Kazan, directly opposite the plaza, would be the perfect spot for dinner and photos later. We made reservations.

The plaza is considered to be the religious center of Bukhara and is bordered with three buildings built between the 12th-16th centuries: Kalan Minaret (1127) replaced an earlier design that collapsed during construction; The Kalan Mosque was completed in 1514, ( it replaced an older 12th century mosque destroyed by Genghis Khan’s army in 1220); and the Miri Arab Madrassah, which dates from 1535.

The square was lively with vacationers, tour groups, and vendors offering balloons, photo services, and souvenirs. The architectural brickwork design of the 48m (157ft) tall Kalan Minaret is amazing. The minaret so impressed Genghis Khan that he ordered his troops to spare it as they totally destroyed the rest of the city when the Mongol army sacked Bukhara. It was also known as the “Tower of Death,” where criminals, political rivals, and unfaithful spouses were marched up the 105-step spiral staircase to the open rotunda at the summit and cast to their deaths. Though there is the legend of a Khan’s wife who on the eve of her execution was granted her last wish – to wear all her dresses. “People stood breathless as the woman jumped, but then a miracle happened as her wide skirts billowed out like a parachute and she landed softly.”

Purposefully designed to rival the size of Bibi-Khanym Mosque in Samarkand, the monumental entrance arch of the Kalan Mosque opens to a grand courtyard that can hold over 10,000 worshippers and is surrounded by 208 pillar-domed galleries. At far end of the courtyard is an octagonal brick pavilion that is the tomb of a revered imam, just before the iwan, an open front vaulted room, where the minbar stood. Sadly, in 1924 the Soviet regime in Uzbekistan closed the mosque to religious use and repurposed it as a warehouse. During those years the mosque fell into neglect and wasn’t partially restored and used as a mosque again until 1991 when Uzbekistan declared its independence.

Directly across from the entrance to the Kalan Mosque were the blue domes and façade of the Miri Arab Madrassah covered with fascinating intricate tile mosaics featuring geometric, vegetative, and calligraphic patterns. Some historians suggest that the madrassa was built to commemorate Bukhara’s decisive victory over Persian troops at the Battle of Gijduvan in 1512, and that the ornate craftsmanship throughout the building was financed by khanate when it sold 3000 captured Iranians into slavery. The school was closed for 25 years after the Soviet Union took control of Uzbekistan, but was reopened in 1945 when the USSR government granted permission to the Miri Arab Madrassah to be the one official Islamic educational institution for Muslims within Soviet Union, hosting students from different regions across Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Russia. Today about 56 new students a year are accepted into a 4-year course of study to become an imam.

Dinner later on the rooftop terrace at Kazan was a charming and unhurried experience and we lingered, watching the color of the golden hour across the plaza transition to twilight, as the size of the crowd on the plaza ebbed and flowed. The food was excellent. Unfortunately, as a functioning school, the restaurant does not permit tourists inside, but occasionally folks are allowed to step into the entrance portal and view the entry hall. However, during our research we found this interesting video tour of the Miri Arab Madrassah’s interior.

The next morning our group headed to Samonids Park, a large lush green park with a Ferris wheel and other amusement park rides, as well as shaded walkways through a nicely manicured landscape, on the outskirts of the historic area. We followed our guide down one of these lanes to the Mausoleum of Ismail Samani, the founder of Bukhara’s Samanids dynasty, (875-999).

The mausoleum is a highly decorated beautiful small structure, with all of its exterior and interior walls covered with intricate symbols and geometric relief patterns that resemble the design of woven textiles and basketry. It’s an effect that gives the building a highly textural feeling. The mausoleum is considered a masterpiece of early Islamic architecture. Through fate or luck, it is the oldest surviving Islamic structure in Bukhara, having been entombed in silt from repeated river flooding or, as legend believes purposely buried in sand to prevent Genghis Khan’s Mongol army from destroying it in 1220. Amazingly it stayed buried until Soviet Union archeologists rediscovered it in the late-1920s and found it in surprisingly good condition, due to the fact that it was entirely constructed with kiln-baked bricks, that resisted the erosive effect of repeated flooding.

Our tour continued through the park to the adjacent Markaziy bazaar, Bukhara’s central market. It’s a substantial complex with several halls and numerous vendors displaying their foodstuffs and offering samples. It is best described as a gauntlet of temptations.

Continuing on we came to the Bolo Hauz Mosque, built in 1712 across from the Ark of Bukhara. It was the official mosque of the emirs of Bukhara until the Soviet Union took over Uzbekistan. With the addition of an ornate 20-pillar wooden portico called an iwan in 1917, the mosque has a unique non-traditional façade. We had seen iwans earlier during our stops at the royal palaces in Khiva, where they were in the private courtyards, not on the front of a mosque. But it’s the perfect addition to accommodate worshippers in the hot summers.

The Ark of Bukhara was a heavily fortified citadel and palace within the extensive defensive wall that ringed the city. It enclosed the royal courts, living quarters and throne rooms of the Emirs. Along with housing for around 3,000 people, it also had mosques, a mint, a treasury, and a prison.

The unique shape of its curved towers and ramparts has been meticulously preserved and today the inner rooms of the palace are a museum detailing the city’s history. The view from the defensive wall back towards the Poyi Kalon Complex was also striking.

Twenty minutes from central Bukhara our group visited The Memorial Complex of Bakhouddin Naqshbandi, the 14th century Islamic theologian who founded the widely followed Naqshbandi Sufi order and was renown as the spiritual mentor to Amir Temur (Tamerlane), the ruler responsible for Uzbekistan’s Timurid Renaissance.

Over the centuries his once simple garden tomb at his home grew into a vast site that includes the dynastic necropolises of the Sheibanid, Ashtarkhanid, and Mangit rulers. Later additions included a mosque, minaret and madrassa. After Uzbekistan declared its independence, with the help of international donors, the country totally renovated the site which had fallen into disrepair during the Soviet era, in time for the 675th anniversary of Naqshband’s birth in 1993.

This was one of the first major opportunities the new Uzbekistan government took to reclaim its Islamic and Central Asian heritage after living under 70 years of communist atheism. Newer additions include a Sufi museum and theological research center, where translations of ancient Islamic texts are undertaken. Through the centuries it has become a revered pilgrimage site for folks from all across Central Asia and beyond.

Everyone was so friendly and eager to take photographs of us, and have their photos taken too, it was a very heart-warming experience. Our guide shared that for many people living in remote villages this was their first trip away from home. He spoke of a Central Asia folk belief which claims that three trips to the shrine equal a Hajj to Mecca, which underscored how dangerous the trek across the desert to Arabia was.

Afterwards our group headed to “the palace that resembles the stars and the moon,” Sitora-i-Moh-i Khosa, the summer palace of Sayyid Mir Muhammad Alim Khan, the last emir of Bukhara. The palace is poetically named for the emir’s wife, whose beauty he often compared to the heavens. Built between 1912 and 1918 by Bukhara craftsmen, the emir had sent to St. Petersburg to study western techniques.

While the exterior facades are traditional, the interior of the palace is a visually and texturally rich artistic expression that wonderfully overwhelms the senses. We mused that the flamboyant Las Vegas entertainer Liberace would have been right at home in its over-the-top décor. That speculation surely dates us as kids of the 60s.

The day we toured the site there were numerous crafts vendors, with fairly priced merchandise, set up along the garden paths and peacocks roaming freely about the park-like settings.

The emir only had a few years to enjoy his creation before fleeing the country after the Bukharan emirate fell to the Soviet Red Army in 1920. Fortunately, the communists appreciated the artistic merit of the site and preserved it as a decorative arts museum.

That evening under a clear night sky we enjoyed live piano music on the plaza around the corner from the hotel, at The Terrace Bukhara ECO Café.

On our last full day in Bukhara we had the morning for ourselves to wander around and explore. There are so many ancient madrassas in Bukhara, many of the smaller ones throughout the town have been or are in the process of being renovated into boutique hotels. And there are others in a state of semi-ruin, that have been stabilized enough to be safe for vendors to set up craft stalls in but remain architecturally interesting. The Abdulaziz Khan Madrassa (1652), located directly across from the Ulugbek Madrassa (1417), was an amazing example of this. Its monumental pishtaq, entrance way, had one of the best examples of a muqarnas, the intricate honeycomb-shape vaulted ceiling, found on madrassas in Bukhara.

Even though the domed ceilings above the vendors in its main hall were not restored, they were also stunning. In the courtyard large sections of tilework were noticeably missing.

Continuing on we walked through the medina to the Chor Minor Monument, a unique structure with four blue capped towers, which represent the cardinal points of a compass and the Samanids, Shaybanids, Karakhanids, and Manghits dynasties. Atop one tower is a sculpture of nesting storks.

They used to be a common sight nesting on the domes all across the city. Their presence was enjoyed, with folks believing the birds brought good luck, peace, and domestic happiness. Across from the monument was an antique shop that features all sorts of Soviet memorabilia.

Afterwards we headed to the Labi Hovuz plaza where we were scheduled to reunite with our group at the bronze statue of Khodja Nasreddin, a legendary folkloric figure who used his “sharp wit, humor, and feigned ignorance to outsmart the greedy, hypocritical, and powerful,” in front of the Nodir Devonbegi Madrassa for a dance and fashion show.

Nodir Devonbegi was originally built in 1622 to be a caravanserai but was repurposed when during its opening ceremony the khan inadvertently praised it as a madrassa. So be it. The front of the building is unusually adorned with an elaborate tile mosaic featuring a pair of stylized birds, mythical Simurghs, clutching deer and flying toward a human-faced radiant sun. This is very unusual for Islamic art as it normally prohibited using depictions of animals or human figures and reflects a short-lived regional relaxation of the rules in the 17thcentury.

Inside we were enthralled by a lively performance of traditional Uzbekistan dances in between the wardrobe changes of a surprisingly interesting fashion show by the internationally acclaimed designer Umida Kabilova, who gives a bold modern interpretation to ikat, a dyed patterned silk fabric for which Bukhara is known.

Afterwards we made a quick stop at the Khammam Sarrofon, a hammam built in the early 1530s. It is a cavernous space that had a heated floor, and was used almost continuously for over four centuries until the Soviets damaged it during their 1920 attack on the city. It was restored and served the community until the 1970s.

Down from the hammam was the studio and gallery of the Ustoz Shogird Miniature Workshop, founded by Davlat Toshev, an internationally recognized artist who is known for his work on restoring ancient manuscripts. He was clandestinely taught the art of Persian miniature painting by his father during the Soviet era, when Uzbekistan’s cultural identity was being suppressed. In a desire to keep this ancient tradition alive he started mentoring students, many with learning handicaps, in the 1990s, eventually opening a school in 2018. It’s a beautiful space, and the demonstration of how to color silk paper by two of his students, with a member of our group participating, was charming. The artwork on the walls was beautiful. We couldn’t resist purchasing one for a souvenir. It was a really great experience that we highly recommend if you like art.

Toshev enjoys sharing Uzbekistan’s culture, so much so that his family offers a culinary workshop on how to make plov, the country’s national rice pilaf dish, in their home. It was our group’s last dinner in Bukhara, a festive occasion, and a great way to end our time in this intriguing ancient city on Silk Road.

Till next time,

Craig & Donna

Khiva, Uzbekistan: An Intriguing Ancient Walled City on the Silk Road

July 24, 2026July 25, 2026 | 2suitcasesfor2years

Lush farmlands surrounded Akhchakol Lake. We were traveling through the Khorezm Oasis, in the Amu Darya River Delta, the ancient breadbasket of Uzbekistan, whose headwaters start in the Pamir Mountains on Uzbekistan’s border with Afghanistan and Tajikistan, then flow north-westwards towards the once massive Aral Sea. Since Uzbekistan’s Soviet Era, water from the 2,400km (1,500 mi) estuary has been relentlessly siphoned off to irrigate extensive cotton farms and food crops. Not a drop of river water reaches the Aral Sea anymore, its desertification one of the largest manmade ecological disasters of the 20thcentury.

On the north side of the road was the Kyzylkum Desert, a monochromatic vastness that seamlessly blended to the overcast sky as it spread towards Kazakhstan. Our destination was Toprak-Kala, an ancient citadel and palace built by King Artav in the 2nd century CE to defend the Khorezm Oasis and Silk Road caravans from raids by nomadic tribesmen. The palace also served as the residence for the kings of the Khorezmian Empire.

It is part of the “Golden Ring of Ancient Khorezm,” the Elliq-Qala, a cluster of over 20 excavated fortress ruins, built between the 4th century BCE and the 6th century CE. From a distance the earthen colored ruins merged into the profile of the Sultan Uvays Dag, a low, rugged mountain ridge that runs through the Kyzylkum Desert near the border with Kazakhstan.

A well-worn dirt path coursed up an ancient man-made hill to what was once a huge 102 room palace. Atop its apex we surveyed how vast the 500 x350 m (1640 x 1148ft) site encompassing 120 hectares (300 acres) was. A massive 11m (36ft) tall defensive wall, covered with alabaster whitewash, encircled the area that is believed to have housed 2,500 people in organized residential blocks.

Soviet archeological research beginning in the 1930s unearthed coins, clay sculptures, and fragments of painted murals. These suggest the influence of Greek and Eastern art traditions, reflecting its position along ancient trade routes. Excavation also unearthed archaic ledgers recorded on clay tablets, leather and wood, along with ancient artifacts associated with Zoroastrian religion

Abandoned since the 7th century, the incalculable number of the millions of adobe bricks used to construct Toprak-Kala have slowly eroded away through the centuries. Adobe construction is still a widely used building technique in the region as evident by the brick factory we passed, and the new traditional style attached homes and free-standing western style homes going up along our route through Urgench to Khiva. Many of the homes had large sunken vegetable gardens, fruit trees or grape vines in the front yard between the street and house. This is a traditional gardening method that takes advantage of the region’s high ground water, and creates a cooler microclimate sheltered from the desert’s dry winds.

Outside of Urgench we stopped at Ulli Hovli, meaning “big yard,” a restored 1600s era caravanserai. It was built by the Khan of Khiva to protect local Uzbeks and Turkmens who had been given land in exchange for guarding the Silk Road. The original complex had over 100 rooms and functioned as a mahalla, neighborhood community, housing both Uzbeks and Turkmens, who practiced a blend of agriculture and traditional crafts. Today the caravanserai is an ethnographic museum/restaurant that caters to tour groups. Of course we rode a camel and tried on some traditional Uzbek outfits. The weight of a Turkmen coat was particularly impressive and would be a toasty winter coat in any cold climate.

Reaching Khiva, we drove through the South Gate of The Dishan-Kala (Outer Fortress), built in 1842 by order of Allahquli Khan to protect the city from marauding tribal attacks. The 6.25km, (4mi) long, 8m (26ft) tall and 6m (20ft) wide adobe brick defensive wall has 10 gates into the city. Allegedly it took an estimated 200,000 free men and slaves 30 days to construct the encircling wall around what was historically the city’s outer residential and commercial areas. Only a short portion of the wall on either side of the South Gate survives; most of it was taken down during the Soviet era, and used as raw material for brick production.

A short distance up the road was the Hotel Asia Khiva, our hotel for two nights. Located across from the South Gate and a narrow water channel, the last remnants of a defensive moat that once encircled the inner walled city of Khiva, Itchan Kala, the hotel was very convenient to the old town’s historic center.

Khiva is old, over 2,500 years old, and one of the longest continuously inhabited cities in Central Asia, a fact that along with its outstanding Islamic architecture which spans many centuries, led UNESCO to declare Khiva a World Heritage Site in 1990, the first site in Central Asia to be so recognized.

Khiva is believed by legend to be founded by Shem, the son of biblical Noah, after he dug a well known as Kheyvak. As the story is told, Shem, thirsty and dusty, was wandering in the desert for years after the great flood, and one night in a dream, he saw 300 burning torches. Taking this a prophecy, he founded the oasis city within the positions of the torches he dreamt, and dug the Kheyvak Well at their center. “Oh, what sweet water!” a delightful phrase exclaimed by weary desert travelers upon quenching their thirst from the well, over time evolved into the name Khiva.

Surprisingly, the first known westerner to reach Khiva was not Marco Polo, who by-passed Khiva, traveling from Persia through Urgench as he followed the Silk Road through Uzbekistan in 1271. Anthony Jenkinson (1529–1611) was an English explorer and diplomat who reached Khiva in 1558 on a trade mission for the English Crown, Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible, and the Muscovy Company, which had a sole monopoly on trade between England and Russia. It was an off shoot of the “Mystery and Company of Merchant Adventurers for the Discovery of Regions, Dominions, Islands, and Places Unknown.” You have to love the name of a company that so thoroughly embraces the age of exploration.

The overlapping histories of Central Asia are complex, and that of Uzbekistan in particular, which has roots with Eastern Iranian Nomads in the 1st Millennium BCE, followed by Persians and Greco-Macedonians in 6th–4th Century BCE. Then during the 2nd Century BCE – 4th Century CE the Indo-European nomadic tribes like the Yuezhi, Xionites, and White Huns followed the Silk Road into the region, heavily influencing the trade and culture. Arab armies in the 8th Century CE brought Islam to the region, linking Central Asia to the broader Islamic Golden Age and transforming local arts, sciences, and urban life, culminating during the Timurid Renaissance from 1370–1507. Later Turkic-Mongol tribes migrated into the region between the 11th–16th Century CE, progressively replacing Eastern Iranian as the dominant spoken language. This demographic mix solidified during the Mongol Empire in the13th century and peaked with the early 16th-century arrival of nomadic Uzbek tribes led by Muhammad Shaybani Khan, a great-grandson of Genghis Khan.

In 1558 Jenkinson would have entered Itchan Kala, the inner city, through a defensive wall significantly less substantial than the massive one still standing today, that was constructed during 17th and 18th centuries. He noted in his journal the tombs built atop the lower slope of the fortification to avoid the oasis’ high-water table, a tradition since the 12th Century. He would have explored a medina containing only The Juma Mosque, (10th Century), Kunya Ark Citadel (12th Century), and the Sayid Allauddin Mausoleum (Early 14th Century). He witnessed Khiva’s notorious slave market that sold 50,000 Persian and Russian slaves to other Islamic khanates in Central Asia, India and the Middle East.

Though his trade mission failed to establish ties with merchants along the Silk Road due to increasing nomadic raids at the time, he was a meticulous note taker and amateur cartographer, and provided the first western accounts and maps of central Asia. Jenkinson’s ability to safely navigate deep into Central Asia and return with jewels and silks immensely impressed Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible and probably pricked Imperial Russia’s future interest in the region.

The second Westerner on record to reach the Khanate was Prince Alexander Bekovich-Cherkassky in 1717. Sent by Peter the Great to discover a route into India, Bekovich-Cherkassky was initially welcomed by the Khan of Khiva but ultimately betrayed and executed, with his head placed on a spike at the city gate; his comrades were massacred.

The second known Englishman to reach Khiva was the British officer Captain James Abbott who in 1839 traveled from the city of Herat, Afghanistan to Khiva disguised as an Afghan. He was on a covert diplomatic mission to see the Khan of Khiva and negotiate the release of Russian slaves, thereby stripping an advancing Russian army of their primary pretext for invading the region. Of the slaves he saw, Abbott wrote in his journal, “The men are chained together by the throats at night. So that rest is scarcely possible, whilst the contact of the frozen iron with their skin must be a torture. Alas! He who enters Khiva abandons all hope, as surely as he who enters hell. His prison house is girdled with tracks of desert, whose sole inhabitants are the sellers of human flesh.”

This was the era of the Great Game when Britain feared the Russian Empire might expand into India. The Russian army was defeated before ever reaching Khiva, when nearly half of the military’s 5,000 expeditionary force succumbed to illness and died from exposure and 10,000 of its transport camels froze to death in one of the harshest winters in Central Asian history. Thirty-four years later, in 1873, following a successful Russian military campaign, the Khanate was stripped of its independence and formally established as a Russian protectorate, and Khiva’s slave trade ended.

By Abott’s arrival in Khiva, the city was still at the height of its glory and would have looked substantially different from Jenkinson’s 1558 visit, with a building boom for nearly three centuries that reflected its importance as the capital of the Khanate. The city saw the addition of the Arab Muhammad Khan Madrasah (1616), commissioned to celebrate Khiva becoming the capital of the Khanate; Shirgazi Khan Madrasah (1718); Muhammad Amin Inak Madrasah; Darwazakhana of Shah Niyaz Khan (18th Century) structural gate enhancements in Ichan-Kala; Kutluq Murad Inaq Madrasa (1804); Allakouli Khan Madrasah (1834); and the Allakouli Khan Caravanserai & Tim (1830), a prominent trading hub and domed bazaar gallery tailored for Silk Road merchants.

Construction of the green-and-blue tiled Kalta Minor, designed to be the tallest minaret in Central Asia at a height of 110m (360ft,) didn’t start until 1851, and ended abruptly with its final height at 29m (95ft) when its patron the ruler Muhammad Amin Khan was killed in an 1855 battle. One can only imagine how magnificent it would have been.

Having received a quick overview of the medina from our tour guide, the rest of the afternoon was left open for us to wander about the medina on our own. For us these are the best hours of a group tour, when we are free to explore the nooks and crannies of a place, allowing ourselves to linger at a weaver’s workspace, where generations of family were working together on a loom, spinning and carding, while the youngest was engrossed with her cell phone.

Or the woodcarvers’ workshop, where master craftsmen were still creating wooden panels with intricate O’ymakorlik designs, in a studio space filled with raw planks of walnut, juniper, elm and mulberry, their future canvases.

Away from the center of the old town, we followed the interior perimeter of Khiva’s huge defensive wall past old courtyard homes called havli. Renovated, many had placards above their doors advertising their availability as guesthouses. Around 400 families still live in Itchan Kala, though there are no longer any traditional food markets in the old town, so folks have to shop outside its walls.

Reaching the North Gate, Bakcha Darvoza, we climbed a narrow, ladder-like, steep set of stairs that opened on to the ramparts as if we were emerging from a rabbit hole, to a wall-walk that was surprisingly about 4m (12ft) wide. Unfortunately, the wall-walk did not continue completely around Itchan Kala and ended before reaching Kuhna Ark fortress. The southern half of the ramparts can be accessed at the South Gate. However, our guide had advised us against walking that section of the wall due to its condition, but we did notice folks taking the risk.

That evening our group enjoyed drinks and the sunset atop the rooftop bar Ayvon and later at dinner we were thoroughly entertained with music and a dance performance at Yasavul Boshi. Funnily, one of the musicians was a doppelgänger of Kramer, of Seinfeld sitcom fame, with expressions to match. While the entertainment was quite nice, the food at these large restaurants that cater to group tours tends, in our opinion, to be mediocre.

The next morning our group walked along the base of the towering sand dune-like defensive wall and towers. The immense structure was designed to project power as an impenetrable fortress to anyone approaching. Construction of this newer fortification with sloping walls, 19m (62ft) at the base and almost 9m (30ft) high, took a massive conscripted, forced labor force of local citizens. Each person was required to work for 12 days a year on the project, which three years to build.

After Khiva’s defeat by the Russians the wall lost its military importance and slowly fell into disrepair, and parts of it were demolished until the Soviet Union realized the importance of this cultural landmark and undertook its renovation in the 1930s.

Upon reaching the West Gate, or Ota Darvaza, which translates to “Father Gate,” a bronze statue depicting members of a Spice Road camel caravan greeted us before we entered the city. This was Khiva’s most substantial gate, with a customs office where traders would have paid a tax after their cargo was inspected, before being allowed into the city.

Entering, we were quickly in the heart of the Medina near Mohammed Amin Khan Madrassah and the spectacular half-finished blue tiled minaret, Kalta Minor. Nearby, puppeteers from the State Puppet Theatre of Khorezm, were performing in the street to drum up ticket sales for later shows. Puppetry in Khiva is deeply rooted in the history of the region, with roots tracing back to Zoroastrian religious rituals, where they were used to ward off evil spirits.

On the plaza in front of the entrance to the Kuhna Ark, there were traditionally costumed dancers which added a nice ambiance to the square, and an activity that often leads to Khiva being called an “open air museum.”

There was also a sculpture of two boys eating melons. Across the medina there were many sculptures illustrating Uzbek folklore and this one drew attention to the importance of the fruit in Uzbek cultural with two tales. The first: “Local legend holds that the sweet melon originally grew only in paradise (the Garden of Eden) before being brought to earth as a divine gift to humankind. And Central Asian proverbs famously praise the fruit, claiming that “melon makes cheeks ruddy, teeth stronger, hair silkier, and eyes younger!” While a second one called “The Golden Watermelon Tale,” tells the story of a poor Uzbek peasant who heals an injured stork. In gratitude, the stork later drops magical watermelon seeds that grow giant fruits filled with gold coins. A greedy, wealthy neighbor tries to copy the deed by intentionally breaking a stork’s leg to “rescue” it, but his magic seeds produce watermelons filled with stinging wasps, symbolizing that true generosity cannot be faked for profit.”

The lanes of the medina were lined with colorful merchant’s stalls as we headed to the Toshhovli Palace, a large early 19th-century palace, built by for Allakuli Khan to replace the Kuhna Ark. It had over one hundred rooms, a large harem for his 40 concubines, and a richly adorned ayvan, a grand columned, high-roofed, open-fronted porch with a geometric pattern wood ceiling. We questioned his choice of location, as the palace is directly across from the Olloqulixon Karvonsaroyi, which typically held 80 smelly camels, waiting for their cargo to be off-loaded, in its courtyard at any one time.

Believe it or not there are around 54 historic madrassas still standing in Khiva, many of which have been nicely renovated into hotels. They all share the traditional Khorezm style of Central Asian Islamic architecture that features corner towers and prominent entry portals that open to central courtyards. To say that they all look the same might be an over generalization, but some were definitely more interesting than others. And the Mohammed Amin Khan Madrassah, now the Orient Star Hotel, was a fine example, with intricate plaster carving called ganchkorlik. The craftsmanship was extraordinary.

Behind the madrassa was Khiva’s central plaza, Ichan Kala, a refreshingly relaxing park with planted trees and flowers, it was a nice place to linger.

Though the medina is mostly a monochromatic sand color, offset by blue tiled facades, it is still a strikingly beautiful and fascinating. But with everything being similarly colored it is difficult to remember a landmark and we got twisted around several times as we tried to find our way back to the South Gate and our hotel.

The next morning we were up at twilight and walked along fortress wall to the East Gate, the “Hero Warrior’s Gate”, Palvan-Darvoza, as the sun was rising, casting a warm glow onto the ancient adobe. It’s named for Pahlavan Mahmud, a celebrated 14th-century poet, philosopher, and a famous Khiva wrestler with legendary strength. He was also a devout Muslim and was considered by many to be Khiva’s patron saint. His mausoleum is near the gate. Palvan-Darvoza was also known as the Executioner’s Gate, as there was a prison near it, where escaped slaves from the slave market and rebels were executed.

As we entered the East Gate to wander through the medina one last time, it was difficult to believe that beyond its walls the 21st century still existed.

Till next time,

Craig & Donna

P.S. The newly operating “Jaloliddin Manguberdi,” a high-speed electric train that will whisk passengers 1,020km (630 mi) across the country from Tashkent to Khiva in 7.5 hours with stops in Samarkand, Bukhara, and Urgench.

Tashkent, Uzbekistan: Historic and Cosmopolitan or Surprisingly Fascinating & Wonderful

July 13, 2026 | 2suitcasesfor2years

Uzbekistan is having its moment after years of slowly simmering interest; it’s exploding into a full-fledged tourist boom. It is exponentially growing from 1 million tourists in 2016 to almost 13 million in 2026, and with a modern infrastructure that includes the newly operating “Jaloliddin Manguberdi,” a high-speed electric train that will whisk passengers 1,020km (630 mi) across the country from Tashkent to Khiva in 7.5 hours with stops in Samarkand, Bukhara, and Urgench. The country is quickly becoming Central Asia’s most intriguing Silk Road destination, and with the recent opening of the state-of-the-art Islamic Civilization Center, Islom Sivilizatsiyasi Markazi, in March 2026, Tashkent will be of particular interest for tourists from the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

The ATMs at TAS, Tashkent’s International Airport, were conveniently located next to the baggage carousels in the arrivals area, as were signs for YandexGo, the most popular ride-share service in Uzbekistan. Walking away from the ATM with about 2,400,000 Uzbekistani Som, roughly $200.00 at the rate of 1 USD = 12,000 UZS, we felt like newly minted millionaires. We were not able to link a credit card to the YandexGo App, but soon realized a twenty-minute ride across Tashkent to the Hotel Uzbekistanwould only cost 21,000 UZS. Outside the terminal we navigated our way through a gauntlet of taxi hawkers to a sea of ubiquitous white cars. In and of itself, white cars are not unusual in any region where you can cook an egg on a rock during the summer, but the fact that they were mostly American branded Chevrolets, not the ever so popular Japanese cars, was very remarkable. They are the result of a thirty-year-old joint venture between GMC and the Uzbekistan government-owned UzAuto Motors, and steep import tariffs on foreign cars, which has led to Chevrolet producing 95% of the country’s new vehicles.

The Hotel Uzbekistan opened in 1974 when Uzbekistan was still part of the Soviet Union, eight years after a April 1966 earthquake destroyed many of Tashkent’s centuries old historic neighborhoods where the one and two-story homes were made of adobe brick. The catastrophic event left 300,000 people homeless.

The Soviet Union used this crisis to transform Tashkent into a “model Soviet city” with wonderfully wide boulevards, open plazas, and earthquake-resistant buildings, deploying architects and laborers from across its republics to build a “showcase of socialist modernism and multicultural “people’s friendship.” The revival of the city mushroomed after Uzbekistan’s independence in 1991, and continues with a building boom that peppers the city’s modern skyline with construction cranes.

The style of the city’s new buildings constructed right after the earthquake is often referred to as Soviet Brutalist, an architectural style which features the love of concrete, and functionality over grace. And Hotel Uzbekistan was designed to be the centerpiece of the Soviet Union’s vision. For many years the building, with an open book profile designed to resist seismic activity, stood as the country’s tallest building, and was the premier hotel for international delegations to stay and hold conferences.

At the time its seventeenth-floor restaurant overlooked Lenin Square until the colossal statue of the Soviet leader was sent to the scrap yard in 1991 when Uzbekistan regained its independence, and replaced him with an equestrian statue of Amir Temur, an enlightened ruler who united the independent kingdoms of Samarkand, Bukhara, and Urgench during Uzbekistan’s 14th century renaissance, as the country seeks to reclaim its cultural history.

A thumping bass reverberated through the hotel, preventing any attempt of catching an early shuteye. Dressed again, we never intended to be Uzbeki party crashers, but we got caught up in the spirit of a couple’s anniversary celebration and enjoyed watching the band perform for a while. The hotel would be our base for three days to explore Tashkent before joining a group tour to Khiva, Bukhara and Samarkand.

By 1970 Uzbekistan’s capital city was mostly rebuilt, and construction of Central Asia’s first subway system, a series of beautiful stations that were also designed to be utilized as bomb shelters in case of emergencies during the Cold War era, was underway. The next morning, we set out after an early breakfast and worked our way against the morning crush of young professional ascending from the depths of the Amir Temur Hiyoboni station, just a block from our hotel.

The underground tunnel leading to the turnstile offered perfect acoustics for a young Uzbeki busker who played for the commuters. The Tashkent Metro now has four lines, and 50 stations along 70km (44 mi) of track. Rides at the time of our visit cost 1,700 Uzbeki Som (about $0.14 USD), and were easily payable at the turnstile with a tap of our credit cards.

We spent a good part of the morning riding between the stations that encircle central Tashkent, hopping on and off to photograph some stations that were noteworthy for their striking architectural beauty, that often resembled a formal waiting chamber in an elegant palace, before transferring to another line.

We eventually worked our way to the Kosmonavtlar Station, where the walls are beautifully embellished with tile portraits of early Soviet astronauts. Surprisingly, because of their dual use as bomb shelters, photography in the subway stations was banned until 2018.

We also visited the plaza above the station where we viewed another interesting monument to the Soviet Union’s space program, before we made a short excursion to Tashkent’s Museum of Applied Arts, only a few blocks away. Founded in 1937, the museum is housed in the former mansion of an Emperial Russia diplomat and has a rotating collection of over 4,000 Uzbeki decorative handicrafts, with examples of traditional wood carving called O‘ymakorlik, ceramics, embroidery, gold weaving, jewelry and musical instruments. In the museum’s traditional courtyard was a very atmospheric café where we enjoyed coffee.

Before descending back underground we detoured slightly to see a modern interpretation of Islamic architecture represented in the 1970s era facade of the Central Exhibition Hall of the Academy of Arts.

The 1930s built Alisher Navoi Grand Theatre, survivor of the earthquake, features a blend of classic European architecture with traditional Uzbek ornamental styles. Along our route we walked through many of the parks and green spaces that give the city a wonderful ambiance.

Back on the subway we continued on to the Chorsu Station, only a short walk away from the Chorsu Bazaar, Tashkent’s historical central market, whose history goes back 2000 plus years to the founding of Tashkent. The main hall’s futuristic dome, where meats, poultry and dairy products are for sale, dates from the reconstruction of the city after the 1966 earthquake.

After wandering through the rows of clothing merchants, where nothing has a price tag so bargaining is expected, we were enticed by the aroma of slowly grilling kebabs over an outside fire at Especialidad Pinchos. A smile goes a long way when you don’t understand the language and we were quickly seated outside and served a delightful lemon tea. The restaurant was the perfect place to relax and people watch. It felt as if we were in the audience of an old TV sit-com where good-natured chiding was going on, from the quips flying across the open-air restaurant. We mentally supplied the dialog: “Yasmina we are so busy, can you clear the tables faster?” “Now Zarina you might be the golden one and Bobur’s squeeze, but don’t you go telling me how to take care of my side of the cafe!” And so it went, their familiar back and forth continuing the whole time we were there as the women busily tended the day’s lunch crowd.

Wheel barrel vendors selling round, flat disk-shaped non coursed through the shoppers. These loaves of dough are traditionally decorated with a stamping tool called a chekich, before baking. We’ve read many rave reviews about Uzbekistan’s non but have found it’s best enjoyed when fresh out of an oven, as in our opinion it becomes a disappointing “eh” later. It’s definitely worth spending the time to find the central bakers in the market to watch them form the dough and then lean into the tall brick ovens to throw it against the side walls to bake. The result is heavenly.

Stairs rose from the market’s lower level to the gastronomical equivalent of Aladdin’s “Cave of Wonders.” Literally it was like a culinary temple, with vendors freely offering samples, it had us wishing we had rented an apartment with a full kitchen. The quality, variety, and abundance of the foodstuffs were amazing. It was difficult for the cooks in us to resist the temptation to buy a cart full of groceries, but we did and only purchased some dried fruit and pomegranate juice for a snack later.

After leaving the market we crossed the street into the Hastimom Mahalla neighborhood, in the Almazar District and walked along Zarkaynar Street. The lane was recently renovated as part of an effort to revitalize the maze of narrow lanes in the ancient quarter that lies between the Chorsu market and the magnificent new Islamic Civilization Center.

The street was pristine with new historical murals and buildings shining with their new facelifts, but it lost much of its authenticity in the process and felt a little too touristy. Young boys were enthusiastically kicking a soccer ball back and forth down the lane until a neighborhood buvi, grandmother, put a stop to their raucous play.

Fortunately, as we walked deeper in the mahalla, smaller alleys led to traditional homes still made of adobe brick that share a communal courtyard called a sheriklikli hovli. It was down one off these lanes that we hoped to find Tandyr Samsa V Dome, a small family run bakery in a hovli that is acclaimed for their samsas, a savory pastry filled with meat, chicken or potato, and then baked in a traditional wood-fired clay oven called a tandir. We had a very difficult time finding it. In this labyrinth our mapping app got us close, but eventually we just had to try different lanes until we discovered the right one. Unfortunately, by the time we found the right hovli, baking for the day was over and the family encouraged us to come back earlier on another day. It was very late in the afternoon when we stopped at a small nondescript restaurant, with a plastic pullback sheet as a door, and one low table and cushions on the floor. The owner was delighted we stopped and shared his experience about working the United States for a short time, while serving his many neighborhood customers who came in to get their takeaway orders. Our meal was very simple, just kebabs and non, but it was delicious and memorable.

Afterwards we headed to the Hazrati Imam Complex, an ensemble of buildings around a large plaza that include the16th century madrasah Barak-Khan, that is now a crafts center, the 19th century Muyi Muborak Madrasah, which now exhibits a collection of ancient Islamic manuscripts, and the Hazrati Imam Mosque completed in 2007.

They were built around the Mausoleum of Hazrat Imam, which had become a pilgrimage site. Hazrati was a brilliant 10th-century polyglot and local locksmith who went by the name of Kaffal al-Shashi before pursuing his religious studies in Baghdad, Mecca and Medina. Upon returning to Tashkent he became one of the town’s first local imams and received the title Hazrat Imam. Beloved, he came to be regarded as the chief spiritual protector and patron of Tashkent.

The complex is one of the few large open spaces in the Almazar District, and it’s a popular spot for local families to bring their children to learn how to ride bikes and fly kites.

Next to the Hazrati Imam Complex is the Islamic Civilization Center, a newly opened museum, “conceived under the vision and leadership of Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev in 2017. The Islamic Civilization Center was envisioned to be more than just a museum, but function as an international hub for science, culture and learning, combining the richest treasures of pre‑Islamic and Islamic heritage of Uzbekistan with modern digital technologies and academic research.” The center’s striking design took inspiration from the architectural masterpieces constructed by the Timurid Empire in the 15th and 16th centuries.

The ICC was not on our radar when we planned our trip to Uzbekistan, but we were delighted to find that the center stays open until 10pm every day, and seeing that the queue for entrance into the museum was very short we spontaneously purchased tickets. Upon entering the building folks were divided into small tour groups determined by the language they spoke and then led through the exhibits with a bilingual guide.

It’s a huge building with over 2,000 historical items, manuscripts, and cultural artifacts on display, 743 of which have been repatriated from international collections, and a 45,000-book research library. It was a fascinating tour that lasted about two hours and ended in the Quran Hall with a dramatic multimedia event where sacred verses of the Quran were projected onto a digitally created night sky in the 65m (213ft) tall dome, directly over the treasured 7th-century Uthman Quran, and a holographic beam of light descends from the heavens to spotlight the manuscript, representing divine revelation.

Though the constitution of Uzbekistan defines the country as a secular state, there are some concerns about how heavily religious freedoms and activities are restricted and monitored by the government in Uzbekistan. The Islamic Civilization Center is part of Uzbekistan’s efforts to reclaim its history and Islamic heritage for the next generation, information which was repressed during the 67 years the country was under the Soviets Union’s control.

Exiting the building just before sunset, we had the opportunity to take some night photos of the dramatically illuminated building before enjoying dinner several blocks away at the Khan Ahmat, an upscale eatery.

The next day we set out to see the landmarks next to our hotel before exploring farther afield – the Palace of International Forums Uzbekistan, is a modern conference hall opened in 2009, marking the 2,200th anniversary of Tashkent, and the 18th anniversary of the country’s independence; the circular shaped State Museum of the Temurids, which houses a collection of artifacts relating to the 14th century ruler Tamerlane; the Yuridik Instituti (the Tashkent State University of Law) housed in a late 19thcentury building. It is one of the few examples in Tashkent of Tzarist Russia Emperial architecture to survive the 1966 earthquake.

Turning the corner past the school we entered Sailgokh Street, a wide, treelined 1km (6/10mi) long, pedestrian-only boulevard that links Amir Timur and Independence Squares, that’s locally known as Broadway. Sunlight reflected through party lights strung across the street that was lined with food stalls and outdoor seating. Behind them students from the university were challenging their professors to games of ping-pong at numerous tables along the sidewalk. Caricature artists whiled away the time waiting for customers to sit in front of their easels as parents watched their young children scoot about in electric toy cars. It’s a popular destination to grab an inexpensive meal or dine at one of the fancier restaurants along the walkway.

Surprisingly on this street in 1928 Tashkent was on the cutting edge of technology, when a crowd had gathered to watch the first-ever telecast showing a moving tram, made with a device called a Telephot, created and patented by Boris Grabovsky, a student at Tashkent University, and the son of the famous Ukrainian poet, Viktor Popov. Unfortunately, by 1930 he was forced by Soviet officials to stop working on television technology.

Farther along was a very attractive small royal palace built in the late-19th century and early Art Nouveau style in 1891. It was the home of Grand Duke Nicholas Constantinovich who was permanently exiled to Tashkent by the Russian royal family for stealing valuable diamonds from an icon belonging to his mother, so he could lavish extravagant gifts upon his American mistress! Let’s talk about the punishment fitting the crime here. The entrances are flanked by bronze sculptures of deer and hunting dogs, a reflection of the Grand Duke’s passion for hunting. He was by no means a pauper during his punishment, and received a gracious royal stipend which he invested in cotton mills, a soap factory, and the city’s first cinema. To furnish his prison palace he was allowed to bring his collection of Russian and European artworks from St. Petersburg with him into exile. Using profits from his local business ventures he continued to acquire new pieces of European art, rare books, and priceless artifacts. Before his death in 1918, he graciously bequeathed his art collection and palace to the city of Tashkent, to become the foundation for the State Museum of Arts of Uzbekistan collection. During the early Soviet era the palace was used as a museum to display his collection but later was transitioned into an after-school activity center for young Soviet Pioneers. Sadly, the palace was closed for renovation when we visited.

Crossing under Sharaf Rashidov Avenue we reached the large reflecting pool of the Mustakillik Fountain in front of the building housing the offices of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan. Unfortunately, all the fountains we passed in Tashkent in mid-April were off. We can only speculate how stunning they must be when they are shooting water skyward.

A short walk away was Independence Square where more dry waterworks paralleled the Arch of Ezgulik, a 150m (492ft) long archway held aloft by 16 white marble columns and crowned with a beautiful sculpture of three giant storks circling a globe as they soar skyward. Storks are a prominent theme on the top of many important buildings in Uzbekistan, and in Uzbek folklore they symbolize humanism, peace and prosperity.

Beyond the arch, down a narrow evergreen-lined walkway, was the Monument of Independence, a tall obelisk with a globe atop it, the map of Uzbekistan chiseled into its center. At the base of the monument is a statue of an Uzbek woman cradling a baby, called the Happy Mother that “symbolizes the Motherland, national rebirth, and hope for a prosperous future for the next generation.”

Continuing on we entered Memorial Square where an elegant, long, open-sided wooden building stood, surrounded by traditional Navoi-style carved wooden pillars, called the Memory Corridor. It holds Memory Books which contain the names, inscribed in gold lettering, of over 400,000 Uzbek soldiers who died during World War II.

Across from it was a large statue called the Grieving Mother that overlooked an eternal flame. It was a very somber memorial and hardly a whisper could be heard from the observers.

Progressing along Sharaf Rashidov Avenue toward the Monument to “Courage,” we passed the Turkistan Concert Hall, where a stylized statue of a majestic stork is perched on top of a tall column.

Along the way we noticed that everywhere we walked there was a definite sense of “pride in ownership.” The city was immaculately clean. Street sweepers with traditional brooms called supurgi, made with bundles of twigs tied to a wooden handle, were always out and about, as were the city’s landscapers who seemed to be everywhere planting decorative flower beds and pruning. When they were done in one area, they packed up their tools and brooms and hopped onto a city bus to go to the next location needing tending.

The Monument to “Courage” is a gigantic statue of a family, erected in 1976 on the tenth anniversary of the April 1966 earthquake that commemorates the victims, as well as collective efforts of Tashkent’s survivors and the thousands of workers who arrived from across the Soviet Union to rebuild the city from the rubble. At the foot of the sculpture is a recreated fissure in the earth’s crust that is believed to be directly above the epicenter of the 5.2 magnitude earthquake that rattled the earth for 11 seconds and had nearly 1,000 aftershocks. Behind the statue is a wall of 14 stelae with stylized bronze bas-relief sculptures depicting the reconstruction efforts of the workers and volunteers who rebuilt Tashkent, from literally the ground up.

A sidewalk next to the stelae leads to Museum of Olympic Glory and crosses over a bridge above the scenic Anchor Canal as it weaves through a quiet woodland before the museum.

Walking from Independence Square along Sharaf Rashidov Avenue to the Monument of Courage, and then following Navoi Avenue, and Mustaqillik Ave back to our hotel, the new design of this “model Soviet city” was particularly apparent with the wide treelined streets, and tall apartment buildings well-spaced apart.

On our last full day in Tashkent we took advantage of multiple inexpensive YandexGo rides and zipped across the city to various destinations. Our first stop, which we had passed earlier in the week, was Magic City Park, an open-air shopping and entertainment complex, that as the name suggests borrows heavily from the mouse kingdom, and seemed very out-of-place in downtown Tashkent. Mid-morning, we had the place almost entirely to ourselves, except for a girl’s dance group practicing their routine in traditional dress.

It was a quiet morning, and we enjoyed walking down a colorful painted and umbrella- covered street, making folks smile as we hammed it up in the mouth of Jaws!

Behind Magic City is Milliy Bog, a large open area national park with statues of important Uzbeks along lanes that lead to the Tashkent Museum of State History; the 19th century Abul-kasim Sheikh Madrasah, which once held a sacred relic of the Prophet Muhammad; the Legislative Chamber of the Oliy Majlis; the Friendship of the Nations concert hall; and the Shomakhmudovs Monument, erected in 1982, as a symbol of wartime generosity and unity.

The monument commemorates a local blacksmith, Shaakhmed Shamakhmudov, and his wife, Bahri Akramova, who during World War II adopted 15 orphaned children of various ethnicities. They were only a small portion of the over one million refugees evacuated from the Soviet Union to Uzbekistan to receive food and shelter, an event that caused many to call it “the city of bread.”

From there we traveled far across Tashkent to a beautiful park across from the Tashkent Television Tower that hosts the Museum of Victims of Political Repression. Along our route we passed many examples of older apartment buildings designed with that harsh “Soviet Brutalism” ethos, and only softened by Uzbek tile murals at both ends.

Life in Uzbekistan during Russian times was not easy and the museum documents the hardships and atrocities committed against the Uzbek people, starting with Imperial Russia’s colonization of the country, where the best farmland was given to Russian settlers, through the communist Soviet Union era. Many exhibits draw on information culled from the former KGB archives.

The blue domes of the museum purposely resemble an ancient mausoleum as the building is constructed over the site where the Soviets executed “enemies of the people” during the 1930s. Across the country over 100,000 people were arrested, and over 13,000 of them were shot. Trees in the park symbolically come from the gulags around the country where folks were imprisoned. During World War II ethnic groups that allegedly collaborated with the Soviet Union’s enemies were deported en mass to Siberia.

Outside, the man-made river that runs through the park is symbolically shaped like a Greek meander, to symbolize the eternal flow of life. Under the park’s tall rotunda is a nephrite tomb with the inscription in Arabic, English and Uzbek: “The memory of those who died for their country will live forever.”

Across the busy road was the Tashkent Television Tower, the tallest freestanding tower with a height of 375m (1,230ft) in Central Asia since its opening in 1985. To get to the elevators that take you up to an observation deck and revolving panoramic restaurant at 104m (341ft) above the ground we had to walk along a long corridor lined with models of other significantly tall television towers around the world, a display of archaic boom boxes, an abstract tile mosaic mural and the wax museum likeness of Michael Jackson and maybe the doubleganger of Melania Trump? The restaurant was enjoyable, though expensive for cake and coffee.

However, the views from the observation deck out over metropolitan Tashkent were fantastic, especially where we would see the shadow of the tower cast across the landscape.

We ended our evening and last day in Tashkent with a short walk to Besh Qozon, a tremendously popular, large, fun restaurant that is known for its Plov, Uzbekistan’s celebrated rice dish. The dish is traditionally prepared by men, and at Besh Qozon visitors are allowed to walk through open kitchen and watch the cooking of several different variations of the recipe being stirred in huge caldrons, and the continuous baking of fresh non.

The first known settlers in Uzbekistan were Persian nomads who settled around the oases in the vast Kyzylkum Desert during the in the 8th–6th centuries BC. The desert covers most of central Uzbekistan, stretching from Khiva in the western part of the country to Samarkand in the east. Many of these oases became crucial caravanserais, fortified waystations, to protect the camel caravans along the Silk Road. Others like Samarkand, Bukhara, and Khiva grew into rich influential regional seats of power called khanates.

In 329 BC Alexander the Great spent two years marching across Uzbekistan in an exhausting campaign to defeat a Persian rebellion, and only left after what legend claims was a love at first sight romance with a local princess named Roxane led to a strategic alliance with her father. The legend of Roxane remains alive in Uzbekistan, with many distinguished families in the region still claiming their lineage from the marriage of Alexander to Roxane, before he set off to conquer India.

In the west we often associate the history of the Silk Road, a 6,400km (4,000mi) camel tract, with the travels of Marco Pollo across central Asia to China in the 13th century. But its history started much earlier in the 2nd century BC, when a Chinese emperor of the Han dynasty sent imperial envoys across Central Asia to establish formal trade routes and military alliances against the Huns. These agreements of safe passage resulted in silk and porcelain from China reaching the eastern-most regions of the Roman empire by 25 BC. On their return journey caravans took glassware, linen, wool and cotton to the Far East.

The Huns never invaded China, but did conquer much of Central Asia, and established a stronghold in southern Uzbekistan during the 4th and 5th centuries. Trade along the Silk Road ebbed and flowed through invasions and peace. Arab conquests swept through Central Asia, bringing the Arabic language and Islamic religion to oasis cities like Bukhara and Samarkand in the 7th–8th Century AD. The Mongol armies of Genghis Khan brought massive destruction to the region in the early 1200s.

By the late 14th century, the region was the central hub of trade and ideas at the crossroads of the known world at the time, and experiencing a renaissance of art, science, and Islamic architecture under the enlightened rule of Emir Timur. By the 16th century the successive invasions of Turkic and Mongol nomadic tribes had ended. The invaders from 92 tribes, as legend believes, had settled and intermingled with the local folk and established what eventually would be recognized as the Uzbek identity.

By the 16th century Spanish and Portuguese Navigators were mapping maritime trade routes across the Indian Ocean to India, Southeast Asia, the East Indies, and China. These nautical routes from Asia to Europe were significantly faster and safer than transporting goods via the Silk Road and trade on the overland route slowly diminished. Regional caravans still plied the deserts of Central Asia, taking supplies to isolated settlements well into the 1930s, but stopped when a growing road network ended the camel caravan era.

Without this international trade flowing both ways through Uzbekistan the armies of the Tashkent, Bukhara, and Khiva Khanates fell in succession from 1865 to 1873 to the technologically superior firepower amassed against them by Czarist Russian Empire in a drive to secure the region’s natural resources, mostly cotton, for the Russian economy. The Khanates retained figurehead monarchs, but all political and economic decisions were controlled by Moscow, which developed Tashkent as its administrative center. Czarist rule quickly forced all viable agricultural lands to be planted with cotton. This valuable crop, often called “white gold,” was then exported from Uzbekistan to the mills of the Russian homeland on the newly built Trans-Caspian Railway that connected Tashkent to the eastern shores of the Caspian Sea. Train ferries then shuttled the freight cars across the water to Baku, Azerbaijan for the last leg of journey. Trains returned to Uzbekistan with colonizers from Ukraine, Belarus, and regions around St. Petersburg and Moscow, who displaced Uzbeks and were given the best agricultural lands. Until this cotton monoculture was forced upon the farmers in Uzbekistan the country was agriculturally self-sufficient but soon relied on imported grains from other regions in the Russian Empire.

After Russia’s communist revolution ended in 1922, Uzbekistan was incorporated into the USSR, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, as the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. Communist authoritative rule expanded the cotton monoculture with extensive irrigation systems using water diverted from the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers, the source waters of the inland Aral Sea. This environmental mismanagement caused the sea, once an important fisheries resource, to lose over 90% of its volume and transformed the vital waterbody into the new Aralkum Desert within five decades.

Life in Uzbekistan during the Soviet communist era was harsh. While basic housing, medical and education needs were met, there was rampant underemployment, widespread poverty, lack of foodstuffs in the markets, and political and religious repression. During the yearly cotton harvests Uzbeks, including children, were forced to spend 15 – 60 days in the fields picking the “white gold.” Schools and universities across the country were closed, and even teachers, doctors and nurses were not exempt from participating. Refusal could result in the loss of your job or expulsion from higher education.

Over one-hundred years of combined Russian Empire and Soviet rule ended in 1991 when Uzbekistan proudly declared its independence as the Soviet Union was dissolving.

Till next time,

Craig & Donna

Vietnam: A Journey Along the Mekong River or A Lion Dance, Sampans & Fortune Sticks

March 17, 2026March 17, 2026 | 2suitcasesfor2years

Ho Chi Minh City surprised us with its vitality and prosperity, from the daily mass migrations of scooters throughout the city during the morning and evening rush hours to verdant parks filled with folks doing their morning calisthenics. The city’s success was reflected in its quickly evolving skyline where construction cranes almost outnumbered the buildings in this old French colonial town metamorphizing into a modern metropolis.

Slow commuter and transport ferries which used to be the only way across the country’s inland waterways are now being systematically replaced at an intense pace with modern suspension bridges to support an economy on steroids and a society that’s increasingly mobile. Since the year 2000 six major bridges have been constructed across the Mekong River Delta in an infrastructure push to improve the region’s connectivity. During our cruise we sailed beneath four new bridges under construction.

Torrential rain and high humidity define the monsoon season that ends during late September in southern Vietnam. The week prior we had lucked out on the weather with it being mostly sunny during the day, but with monsoon showers overnight into the early mornings. The humidity was intense, even for two folks living in the southern United States. What we didn’t expect was the extraordinary amount of time it took for our camera lenses to defog every morning, as we left our airconditioned cabin. Surprisingly it usually took about twenty minutes for our cameras to acclimate to the temperature differential.

Starting in the Tibetan highlands, the Mekong River flows 4,900km (3,000mi) through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam, before widening into a web of multiple channels that comprise the Mekong Delta as the river empties into the South China Sea. The delta is a huge area that covers thirteen provinces in southern Vietnam, a region that is often referred to as “Vietnam’s biggest rice bowl.” The river has been a life force in Southeast Asia since the first people settled along its riverbanks in the delta around 2000BC.

According to Vietnam’s ancient mythology, the dragon, as a symbol of the monsoon, is revered as a rain deity that rises from the sea to the heavens with the spring equinox, bringing rain, wind, and flooding along the country’s rivers. The flooding fertilizes the fields with a fresh layer of silt, before the monsoons cease and the dragon slides back into the sea at the autumn equinox, to wait for the cycle to start again the following spring.

As if wanting to remind us of his power before fading away until next year, the dragon whipped up a torrential rainstorm from which we and most of our fellow travelers couldn’t escape getting soaked, on the first day of our Mekong River cruise aboard the Pandaw RV Mekong as we departed Ho Chi Minh City. Built and operated by the luxury river cruise provider Pandaw, the Mekong is a classic shallow draft, teak and brass finished riverboat, based on historical designs of colonial era river ships that once plied the waters of the Mekong Delta and southeast Asia from the late-1800s to the 1930s. We had signed on for their Four Country 21 Night Combo Cruise, which would take us up river into Cambodia, then connect us with flights to Thailand and the resumption of the cruise, on the Pandaw RV Laos downriver from the golden triangle, where the borders of Myanmar, Thailand, and Laos meet along the Mekong River, in Chiang Khong, Thailand.

Located 50 miles upstream from the South China Sea at the confluence of the Dong Nai River and Sông Sài Gòn, Saigon River, Ho Chi Minh City is a major container seaport in Southeast Asia. Shipping containers offloaded at the port are then transferred to various size barges which then deliver their cargo to other areas further inland in Vietnam or to Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

The coffee-brown rivers in Vietnam were like highways, and the main channel of the Mekong River which is very wide and approximately 20m (65 ft) deep was robustly busy with container barges of every size. What was unexpected though was the hundreds of dredging barges loading construction grade sand into large barges with 4m (13ft) drafts to the point that their decks were almost awash as they navigated the waterway, to supply the country’s building boom.

As hectic as the water traffic on the river was, the pilots of the barges we passed all seemed nonchalant. As they steered their vessels with their bare feet, leaning back in their captain’s chair and watching the river’s ubiquitous long-tail boats, the waterman’s equivalent to a motor scooter, whiz by.

Viewing life along the river was intriguing. We watched fishers pulling nets from the river as we motored in a smaller boat to a landing near Bến Tre. We then traveled in a small convoy of openair tuk-tuks through a small town where students in their school uniforms and a bread vendor were bicycling along the road.

In the fields nearby we watched the back breaking activities of farm women, wearing the traditional cone shaped hat woven from palm or bamboo leaves called a “Non La,” as they planted onion sets by hand in raised beds near a riverbank. Occasionally laughter drifted from the field where the women worked rhythmically together in teams of two.

Afterwards as we walked to a nearby outdoor community center, we passed a vendor with a motorcycle-cart laden with everyday hardware and general merchandise conducting business along the roadway with folks that waved for him to stop.

At the center we watched a colorful and acrobatic Lion dance, accompanied by loud, fast-paced drumming and cymbals. It’s traditionally performed during the Tet Trung Thu, Vietnam’s mid-Autumn Festival, that’s held after the busy rice harvesting season for families to reconnect, thank the gods for a good harvest, and wish for prosperity and good luck.

Back on our tuk-tuks we continued through a village surrounded by soursop, jackfruit, and durian orchards to a small dock along a narrow canal in a mangrove swamp of nipa palms, water coconut trees. In narrow wooden sampans, boatmen poled our group along a stream through a jungle of towering trees, where the nipa palms’ roots extended into the water, like fingertips into a shallow bowl. The trees’ canopy cloaked the canal in silence, broken only by the gentle swoosh of the sampans slicing through the water and the occasional bird call.

At one point the canal was so narrow our boatman switched from poling and walked along the edge of the sampan from the stern to the bow and pulled us farther along by grabbing the trees next to our boat. The sampan ride ended at a rustic open air candy workshop where we sampled sweets made with locally harvested coconuts, and durian, that famously stinky fruit that surprisingly tastes delicious.

Returning to the Pandaw RV Mekong via a larger waterway we passed men chest deep in the river, using their bare hands to scoop up mud from the river bottom into sampans. The purpose: to backfill their farmland that’s been eroded away by the monsoon flooding. A little farther along a woman was waiting for passengers to ferry across the river in her sampan.

Across the Mekong the giant glistening white statues at the Chùa Liên Hoa – Mẹ Nam Hải Tiền Giang rose enticingly above the riverfront, but unfortunately the Buddhist pagoda was not part of the tour.

The next day our exploration of life along the Mekong continued as we headed in a larger sampan up a tributary of the Mekong River lined with monsoon-worn, simple tin-roofed shacks on stilts, slung with hammocks, and floating homes on a variety of rivercraft that seemed permanently moored. Boat dogs barked as we floated past.

Our destination was the Miếu Ông Bảo Sanh Đại Đế temple built in the late 1800s by Chinese immigrants to Vietnam. The temple is dedicated to Bảo Sanh, an ancient physician widely worshipped for treating the sick. Today his followers can receive his advice by using “fortune sticks,” where you shake a container of numbered bamboo sticks until one falls out, revealing a number that corresponds to a specific fortune card located on a wall rack that is then taken to the temple’s fortune teller for interpretation.

The numbers 3, 6, 8, and 9 are quite auspicious, being linked to wisdom, luck, prosperity, and longevity. It was very busy with local folks and a family that brought a newborn child to the temple for a blessing.

The temple was colorfully decorated with figures from Chinese epic novels and mythology to create a tranquil space for contemplation.

Occasionally we passed the belltowers of Catholic churches as we continued upriver to Cambodia that afternoon. Nearer the border the sand dredging activity was significantly higher and we were amazed by the number of barges traveling up and down the river, as well as ferry boats traversing the river from one bank to the other.

Crossing the border, officials from Cambodia’s Department of Border Control were welcomed aboard as they jumped from a small motor launch onto the deck of the RV Mekong, to check everyone’s passports. It was a simple process and they were quickly finished.

We continued sailing. More floating homes lined the riverbank, and the river’s islands now hosted banana farms and clusters of simple homes. Farther along cattle stood in the water up to their knees to drink from the river.

The last roar of long-tail boats racing by faded with the twilight as their drivers tried to reach home before total darkness fell, as the darkening river slowly blended with the tree line.

A silhouette of a Buddhist pagoda, highlighted by a swath of orange on the western horizon, slowly vanished with the setting sun. By dawn we would be approaching Phnom Penh.

Till next time,

Craig & Donna

A Balkans Road Trip Part 9: Split, Croatia – Rocky Coasts, Sunny Skys and Relics

February 4, 2026 | 2suitcasesfor2years

From Mostar our route along the M6.1 climbed above Stari Grad into karst mountains covered in a garrigue landscape freshly green with the colors of spring. Along the high road, sweeping views of farmlands, vineyards and orchards spread west to the horizon where the Biokovo Mountain range rose and separated Bosnia and Herzegovina from Croatia’s Dalmatian coast and the Adriatic Sea.

It wasn’t the fastest route to the ancient city of Split, but it avoided backtracking along roads that we had driven on during some day trips from Mostar, and allowed us to see a different part of the region. Getting our exit and entrance stamps at the Vinjani Gornji/ Osoje Border Crossing went smoothly and we were soon driving through the Sveti Ilija tunnel to the Makarska Riviera and Baška Voda. The town is dramatically set at the foot of the western slope of the Biokovo Mountains which tower above it and provide a dramatic backdrop to the beaches and harbor along the town’s waterfront. We parked and enjoyed lunch at a restaurant across from the harbor, one of the few eateries open midweek early in the May shoulder season.

After lunch we strolled a little way along the Lungomare Promenade, a 60km (37mi) coastal walkway that starts north in Brela and runs south passing through pine forests, alongside pebble beaches, and seaside villages to Makarska, before ending in Gradac. During the summer high season Baška Voda’s crystal-clear Nikolina Beach is a popular destination along the promenade. It’s been a Blue Flag beach since 2006 and is often listed as one of the nicest beaches in the Mediterranean. The town is also a favorite spot to splurge on a boat hire to explore the nearby islands of Brač and Hvar.

The ride north along coastal Rt8 was gorgeous, and we stopped at nearly every scenic overlook along the way. Outside of Dubci the Stella Maris lookout provided a fabulous vista to the south of the rugged Makarska Riviera.

Some of the towns along the way hosted large marinas filled with massive superyachts and sailboats of every size, where boatyard workers were busy readying the vessels for the start of the warm weather boating season. Our favorite sight though was the shipwright, who was extending the life of one, old wooden tour boat for a few more years, in a small boatyard along the side road in Omiš.

The narrow roads around Diocletian’s Palace in Split’s historic center are normally congested at any time, though even more so in the days preceding the annual May 7th Feast of Saint Domnius. Martyred in 304 AD by the Roman Emperor Diocletian, he is also the city’s patron saint. Fortunately, our hosts at Pellegrini Luxury Rooms recommended several parking areas and we were able to find a convenient lot within easy walking distance from the small boutique guest-house converted from a 200-year-old historic stone building, that was once the home of a wealthy merchant. The inn was just 60m (200ft) from the palace’s Zlatna Vrata, the golden gate, and the giant statue of Gregory of Nin, which we would pass many times during our in Split.

Nin was a bold medieval bishop in the 10th century who advocated strongly for the use of the Croatian language in religious services so that Croats could understand the liturgy, a move which Pope John X outlawed in 925. It’s common practice in Split to rub the golden big toe of Nin’s 8.5-meter (28 ft) tall statue, because legend believes it brings good fortune and the fulfillment of wishes.

After settling into our room, we headed into Diocletian’s Palace, a huge fortified grand estate the size of a city block in Manhattan. It took ten years to build before the Roman Emperor voluntarily retired to it in 305AD to tend his gardens, where he was particularly fond of “growing cabbages,” preferring peace over the “storms of a never-satisfied greed.” Though his retirement city is a far cry from a pensioner’s cottage in the countryside.

Diocletian was a hometown boy, born in Croatia around 244 AD, who rose through the Roman army’s ranks to become a prominent calvary commander during the rule of Emperor Carus. After Carus and his son Numerian died while returning from a successful campaign in Persia, Diocletian, who was commander of Carus’s elite imperial bodyguard, was proclaimed emperor by the troops. This was contested by Caru’s surviving son, Carinus, whom Diocletian defeated in 285 AD at the Battle of the Margus in Serbia to retain the throne. His reign was known for stabilizing the frontiers of the Roman Empire and dividing the empire into Eastern and Western halves for administrative purposes, the precursor to what eventually became two separate empires. He also initiated the last, most severe and systematic persecution of Christians before the empire slowly began to adopt Christianity under Emperor Constantine in 312AD.

Following narrow alleys, some of which needed retaining braces across them to prevent the centuries’ old buildings from collapsing onto the cobblestones, we reached the Peristyle, the imperial plaza.

A marching band was playing as part of the prelude to the celebrations for the Feast of Saint Domnius. Fans of the Game of Thrones television series will recognize the Peristyle as the filming location for the city of Meereen, during seasons three to six.

Surrounded by a colonnade of Corinthian columns, this was the ceremonial heart of the palace, with the Temple of Jupiter, as well as Diocletian’s mausoleum, now the Cathedral of St. Domnius. The cathedral’s belltower, which blends Romanesque and Gothic styles, is the tallest along the Dalmatian coast at 57m (187 ft) in height and took over 300 years to build from when its cornerstone was laid in the 13th century. If you have the stamina, the belltower is open for folks to climb 183 steps to the top, for a beautiful view over the city.

On the other side of the Peristyle a Roman Temple of Venus once stood, though only a circular marble medallion denoting the position of the temple remains on the floor of the Lvxor Café. The café’s site has gone through multiple reconstructions across the centuries before receiving its ornamented columned façade in the Middle Ages, when it was used as Split’s City Lodge, an administration center. Later it was repurposed as an elaborate home for various Split noble families until 1941, when the Lvxor Café opened. It’s now a popular place for coffee and dinner, and to people-watch while sitting on the steps out front on cushions they provide.

At the far end of the plaza were the stairs to Dioklecijanovi Podrumi, the palace cellars, which were also used as the location for a dragon’s dungeon in Game of Thrones. At the other end of the cellars was the Porta Maris, or Sea Gate, where imperial galleons rowed by slaves once docked along the palace’s seaward wall. Stairs going up also led to the Vestibul of the royal quarters. It’s a tall cylinder-shaped tower with a dramatic ocular opening at the top which illuminates the interior wall with a round beam of light on a sunny day. From here various passages, now walled off, led to different living areas within the palace.

With the decline of the Western Roman Empire, Avar and Slavic tribes began attacking the region in the early 7th century, and large numbers of folks living in the area fled to safety behind the palace’s defenses. Over the centuries these refugees turned the palace into a small bustling medieval city where homes and trade shops were built within, around, and on top of the palace walls and halls. It was during this time that Diocletian’s mausoleum was converted into the Cathedral of St. Domnius, and the relics of the saint were encased in a silver bejeweled bust and displayed in a side chapel of the church, while the Temple of Jupiter was repurposed as the church’s baptistry.

The city became an important Roman port after the region was reconquered by the Byzantine Empire, the former Eastern Roman Empire. Today, Diocletian’s Palace is a vibrant UNESCO World Heritage Site, and a living city with 3,000 residents that live behind its walls, blending history and daily life. Locals and tourists enjoy coffee in cobbled courtyards, and shops and restaurants invite visitors into buildings that have stood for nearly two millennia.

We exited the Sea Gate, now 60m (200ft) from the sea onto the Splitska Riva, a wide palm tree lined promenade along Split’s harbor. Looking back at the palace, we saw the last vestiges of Diocletian’s private cryptoporticus, a columned and arched balcony that extended along the entire waterfront façade of the palace. The columns and arches still stand, but the spaces between them were walled up with windows ages ago and turned into apartments, and boutique hotels like the Heritage Hotel CardoandPalace Suites Heritage Hotel. Lined with umbrellaed tables restaurants and bars, the Riva is a popular spot to dine outdoors and enjoy some Croation wines or the ubiquitous Aperol spritz.

As the day’s shadows lengthened we strolled along the waterfront and watched various cruise ships arrive, and ferries depart for Hvar or other nearby islands. There is also a twice a week ferry service to Ancona, Italy. At the end of the Riva, workers were busy assembling a large stage for the May 7^th festivities.

Past the Riva at the end of the quay, we enjoyed dinner seated outside on a terrace that overlooked the harbor at Konoba Fratelli. Their specialty, of course, was seafood. The quality of the seafood was splendid, and it was so fresh. Locally caught, the morning catch moved quickly from the fishing boats to restaurants the same day, and we couldn’t get enough of it. Afterwards the sunset silhouetted the palm trees along the Riva as we headed back to our hotel. The marble surface of the Peristyle’s plaza and the cobblestones of the old palace, polished smooth by centuries of foot traffic, warmly reflected the old town’s night lights.

Split was delightful to explore, and we spent our days soaking in the ambiance of its weathered walls, interesting vignettes and small plazas with numerous places to stop for a leisurely café.

Outside the walls of Diocletian’s Palace, the surrounding streets and neighborhoods that grew up around the citadel were equally interesting with historic squares and sculptures. The stone lanes were wider, but only enough to allow an innovative burek deliveryman with his three-wheel scooter to scoot by when we pulled in our chairs on the lane at the Tinel Specialty Coffee Shop, a nice place for a variety of coffees and small bites.

Down from Trg Republike, Republic Square, on Matošića ul, a long line had formed at Kantun Paulina, Paulina’s Corner, a small tavern that allegedly has been serving the best ćevapčići, in Split for close to fifty years. Cevapčići is a heavenly combination of grilled kababs served in a somun flatbread, similar to a pita, and garnished with diced red onion, creamy kajmak, and ajvar, a relish of red peppers and eggplant. At Paulina’s it’s a popular takeaway food.

The old town gave way to newer high rise apartment blocks as we walked along Ul. Zrinsko Frankopanska, a tree-lined shady street, to the Split Archaeological Museum.

This was a fascinating museum with a large courtyard and surrounding portico which sheltered an extensive collection of Roman architectural elements, statues and exquisitely carved sarcophagi unearthed in Split and the surrounding region. Inside there are exhibits of coins and jewelry, as well as artefacts from earlier ages.

Backtracking we had dinner at the Downtown Grill Split where their freshly made burrata was delectably soft and creamy on the inside and the grilled octopus marvelously tender. Through our travels we’ve gotten into the habit of having our dessert and coffee in another establishment after dinner. We’ve found it to be a nice way to experience a greater variety of eateries in a limited amount of time. Split takes its coffee scene, an integral part of the social fabric of the city, very seriously. With that in mind we only had to walk a few feet across the small plaza to Stow Coffee Roasters Split, a local favorite and one of several new specialty coffee shops that include Kava2, D16 Coffee, and 4Coffee Soul Food that have opened across Split in the last couple of years.

The next morning was May 7^th, Saint Domnius’ feast day. Outside the palace’s East or Silver Gate, preparations were underway for a colorful religious banner-led procession with scores of people and school children dressed in traditional costumes. The participants were preparing to accompany the silver-encased relic of Saint Domnius, which had been brought from the cathedral for the occasion.

It was a well-attended pageant with thousands of spectators lined up along the route to watch the procession make its way down the Riva to the stage that had been constructed earlier in the week, where a mass was then held before returning the relic to the church. Later that day the festival ended with an evening concert featuring local musicians, but thunderstorms canceled plans for a fireworks display over the harbor.

The morning and afternoon weather was perfect, and we spent the day investigating the Gradska Tržnica, Split’s daily outdoor morning market, that featured some early spring vegetables, cut flowers, tasty Croatian cheeses and wine, along with permanent small butcheries and fishmongers. We love cheese and purchased some vacuum packed goat cheese made by the award winning Gligora Dairy on the nearby island of Pag and a Dalmatian kozji sir roko goat cheese to savor when we returned to the states.

Afterwards we strolled along crafts booths on the Riva where it’s been a tradition to buy something wooden from the crafters of Solana, modern Solin, where Domnius was once bishop. The tradition is so old no one is sure exactly why or how it originated, but it has been in existence for centuries. One of our little traditions is to purchase a handmade wooden spoon from a local business, and we were hard put to choose just one from the immense selection. The craftsmen’s tents were also full of wooden spoons, cutting boards and klepetalo or ptice klepetuše. These are wooden toys with birds or butterflies at the end of a long stick with wheels. When pushed along the wings of the flying creatures flap and they clack as they go. Literally hundreds of kids were playing with them, and wooden spoons protruded from numerous shopping bags. It’s a very festive occasion.

We had a grand time exploring Spilt. It was especially nice being there during the Feast of Saint Domnius, which gave the city a wholly different cultural dimension. It was the perfect place to end our travels through Slovenia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Croatia, a roundtrip journey that started and ended at the airport in Zadar.

Till next time,

Craig & Donna

A Balkans Road Trip Part 8: Bosnia and Herzegovina: Mostar, Počitelj and the Kravica Waterfall – Charming, Intriguing and Magnificent

January 29, 2026 | 2suitcasesfor2years

We had been in the Balkans almost two weeks by now, and this was the first time we encountered heavy traffic. Without realizing it we had planned on driving from Sarajevo to Mostar on May 1st, Labor Day, a major two-day holiday in Bosnia, where it is traditionally spent picnicking and relaxing with family and friends in the countryside. It was a warm beautiful spring day, and did in fact feel as if every family in Sarajevo was heading to Mostar, in the southern Herzegovina region, turning what would normally be a two-hour drive into five.

Our journey was off to a good start as we headed southwest on the A1, from Sarajevo through the rolling foothills of the Dinaric Mountain Range, a wide 644km (400mi) long stretch of peaks that runs southeast from Slovenia through Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Serbia, Kosovo, Albania, and North Macedonia. But it soon slowed as this major four-lane wide infrastructure project, which will eventually reach the Adriatic coast, narrowed for construction projects. The countryside was lush with fresh spring greenery, though disappointedly there were not any scenic pullovers along the way, and we contented ourselves as best we could, by taking landscape photos through the window of our car as we drove.

Our “drive a little then café” yearning for caffeine was seriously overdue, so we detoured slightly to Restoran Vrata Hercegovine for coffee and lunch when the A1merged into the two-lane E73 at the traffic circle in Bradina. They had a large menu to select from and everything we ordered was very good; the pricing very budget friendly.

From here the E73 basically follows the Trešanica River, the headwaters of which flow from the slopes of Mt. Bitovnja 1,700m (5600ft) which wasn’t far from where we stopped for lunch, to Konjic where it merges with the Neretva River at Konjic before flowing into Lake Jablanica. We had originally planned to have lunch here and walk across the Stara Ćuprija, Konjic’s old Ottoman bridge, a six-arch stone span constructed in 1682. The bridge is 107km (66mi) downstream from the river’s source on the slope of the Zelengora mountains near Mt. Maglić 2,388m (7835), Bosnia’s highest peak on the border with Montenegro. Nearer to Konjic is Glavatičevo, a popular village for river rafting on the Neretva.

The road roughly traces Lake Jablanica’s picturesque shoreline. The large lake is actually a manmade reservoir that is 30km (19 mi) long and covers 67.5 square kilometres (26.1 sq mi). The damming of the upper portion of the Neretva River was created between 1947 and 1955 to supply hydroelectric power to the region. While this was the first dam built on the Neretva River there are now many environmentally controversial proposals to block the remainder of free-flowing waterway with 50 more dams across the river and its tributaries. In Ostrožac there was a nice beach where we stopped to take photos of the Lake.

South of the lake we detoured to the Old Neretva Train Bridge in the town of Jablanica, an important site during the “Battle of the Wounded” during February–March 1943. Here Josip Tito led the escape of over 20,000 Yugoslav Partisans, plus roughly 4,000 wounded, east across the Neretva River to escape the pursuit an overwhelming Axis force assembled to destroy them after their unexpected victory at Prozor.

This successful strategic retreat relied on a deception which required the destruction of all the bridges across the Rama and Neretva rivers between March 1stand 4th. This action led the Axis forces to believe the partisans were headed towards northern Bosnia, while in fact Tito was leading his men to safety on March 7th and 8th across a temporary wooden bridge built across the Neretva, in just 18 hours, after the rail bridge was destroyed. A museum at the site commemorates this history. As does the 1969 movie “The Battle of Neretva” starring Orson Welles and Yul Brynner, among an international cast by directed Veljko Bulajić. The film was a contestant in the best foreign film category in the Academy Awards that year. The European film poster for the movie was famously designed by Pablo Picasso, in which he used motifs of his painting “The Rape of the Sabine Women” but “painted them red to symbolize the anti-fascist fight for freedom.” It’s one of the two movie posters that Picasso ever designed. The artist refused payment, instead requesting 12 bottles of Yugoslavia’s finest wines gathered from across the region.

Our 55km (34mi) drive from Ostrožac on Lake Jablanica to Mostar paralleled the river as it coursed through rugged gorges on its way to the Adriatic Sea and was gorgeously scenic, pun intended.

There is time-limited metered street parking in Mostar’s old town near the historic old bridge, Stari Most. Many folks decide to visit Mostar as part of a guided day trip from Sarajevo, Dubrovnik & Split, Croatia or even as far afield as Kotor, Montenegro. We chose to base ourselves in the Hotel Kriva Ćuprija for four nights to enjoy Stari Grad, the old town, and explore the region. We parked in a convenient monitored lot at the foot of Onešćukova that the hotel recommended. The view from our room looked out over slate roofs, a mosque, and an old stone bridge.

The 1990s war in Bosnia brought total devastation to Mostar, where an estimated ninety percent of the buildings were destroyed by forces bombarding the city from the surrounding hilltops. Mostar was once a tiny hamlet along the Neretva River, before the Ottomans seized it and transformed it into an important multicultural trading center and frontier garrison town during their 15th century conquest of Bosnia. The site where the hotel stands overlooking the Crooked Bridge, Kriva Ćuprija, from which it takes is name, was an ancient dwelling, and the hotel is a modern reconstruction of Stari Grad’s historic “Turkish houses” – residential buildings of stone and wood that defined the Old Bridge Area’s pre-war heritage. While the famous 15th century Stari Most bridge was destroyed in the 1990s war, the Crooked Bridge amazingly survived the conflict but succumbed to raging flooding in 2000 and was subsequently rebuilt.

Reconstruction of Mostar began with funds from the European Union, the World Bank, and UNESCO shortly after a permanent ceasefire was established with the Washington Agreement on March 18, 1994, nineteen months before the cessation of the wider Bosnian conflict was resolved with the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords on November 1, 1995.

Old Town Mostar is beautifully atmospheric and while most of the buildings in the Stari Grad have been fully restored, several owners have chosen to leave the numerous bullet marks on the sides of their buildings as reminders of the wrath of war. Throughout the city there are still over 1,000 buildings in ruin or abandoned as a result of the conflict, with many of them concentrated across the river in east Mostar.

Cobblestone alleys twisted through Stari Grad and we followed them all to soak in the ambiance. Visiting the old town was a sensory experience: dazzling color, aromas of grilled meats, textures and the melancholic song of the call to prayer that the muezzin sings from the minarets dotted around the city.

Our wanderings took us over the high arched, Ottoman built Stari Most. The iconic symbol of Mostar was a vital lifeline used by soldiers and civilians to transport food, medicine, and arms to besieged areas of the city on the west bank Neretva River during the 1190s war. It’s a popular area where folks gather to hopefully watch divers jump from the bridge 28m (92ft) into the cold water below, a decades old tradition that started in 1968. None of the divers were working the crowd for tips when we crossed. Diving from the bridge has also existed for 450 years as a traditional rite of passage for young men, and as an old legend says, “the way a boy becomes a man in Mostar.”

Across the bridge the lane narrowed through the Kujundžiluk alley. Known as the old goldsmiths’ quarter, it served as a crucial trading alley for merchant caravans before they paid customs duties to cross the bridge during the Ottoman era. Our “walk a little then café’” philosophy took us to the restaurant Urban Taste of Orient. Their beautiful terrace offered spectacular views of the river and Stari Most. We were enjoying a charcuterie board of Bosnian cheeses and cured meats when I looked at the bridge and noticed a lone man, seemingly much taller than the rest of the folks, who from our perspective appeared to be standing on the bridge’s far wall, until he vanished. I almost screamed to Donna, “look, a diver jumped,” as his silhouette splashed into the river. We had just witnessed the first dive of the tourist season on this Labor Day holiday.

Afterwards we visited the early 17th century Koski Mehmed Pasha Mosque, where it’s possible to climb its 30m (98ft) tall minaret for panoramic views of Mostar and the river. We also viewed the wrenching exhibits at the Museum of War and Genocide Victims, the only such museum we visited while in Bosnia & Herzegovina. It gave us tragic eye-opening, first-person accounts of life in Mostar when it was under siege.

The next morning on an early morning walk before Mostar awakened, I came across one of the town’s tagged stray dogs, a large black sheep dog, semi-asleep on the bridge’s highest point. He struck me as the reincarnation of an ancient watchman guarding the entrance to Stari Grad. He opened his eyes, but did not move, having determined I was not a threat, and I passed quietly.

Beyond the old town we found Mostar to be a wonderful compact cosmopolitan city with cafes and large colorful street murals in some neighborhoods. The walk along Alekse Šantića Street, a former frontline in the war, to the Cernica neighborhood is full of mural paintings. It was an initiative in 2012 by Marina Mimoza, a prominent cultural activist and artist who sought to heal the wounds of war and promote reconciliation through art “transforming ruined, bullet-ridden buildings into a vibrant cultural hub, and open-air gallery.” Since its inception the event has grown into The Street Arts Festival Mostar which turns the city into a colorful canvas each summer for invited artists and performers, typically in June or July.

Several tourist attractions nearby beckoned to us. First Fortica Hill, on the east bank of the Neretva River where the Skywalk, a glass bridge, has been open since 2021. From its height there’s a commanding view of Mostar and an Instagram worthy “We Love Mostar” sculpture. Amazingly, there was no entrance fee for the Skywalk, and there’s a small restaurant with a great view from its terrace.

Within walking distance of the Skywalk were the late 19th century ruins of an Austro-Hungarian stone fortification that had sweeping views north to the mountains on both sides of the Neretva River Gorge.

Later that afternoon we headed fifteen minutes south of Mostar to the orthodox Žitomislić Monastery, dedicated to the Annunciation of Mary. The church on the site was constructed upon the ruins of an earlier house of worship in 1566 with the surrounding monastery buildings taking another forty years to complete. It was a major spiritual center in the 16th and 17th centuries, hosting a large library, a scriptorium, and beautiful iconostasis. At the height of its existence the monastery was supported by large land holdings that included vineyards and orchards worked by the monks themselves. During World War II the entire brotherhood of the Žitomislić monastery were killed by local fascist troops allied to the Axis Alliance, and the complex was severely damaged and looted. Rebuilt after World War II, the monastery was again burned, but the church was savagely destroyed with explosives, reducing it to rubble during the 1990s Bosnia War. The original stones of the church were reused during its reconstruction in 2002 to recreate its earlier appearance, and it was reconsecrated in 2005.

We arrived to the monastery just as a tour bus finished disgorging its passengers. We dislike crowded sites, so we decided to explore the new monastery’s museum first, which had a small collection of ancient manuscripts, books, and liturgical objects, as well as a collection of some of the region’s oldest surviving icons. The works transcend several artistic styles from traditional Byzantine, featuring austere lines and dark color, to more graceful interpretations as Venetian and Baroque influences reached the Balkans. During exploration of the museum’s gift shop we discovered that the resident monks still make a traditional walnut liqueur called Orahovača. It’s made by soaking green, unripe walnuts in plum brandy with honey, citrus and spices like cloves and cinnamon. It is usually enjoyed chilled as a digestif after meals, or to treat stomach ailments. It was very tasty and we enjoyed the small bottle we purchased throughout the trip.

When the tour group departed, we entered the foyer of the church where a 200 liter, (50 gallon) stainless steel drum of what we assumed was holy water stood in the corner, available to fill your water bottles from. Entering the sanctuary revealed a stunningly beautiful space where every surface was covered in rich iconography.

A short drive away, but a long walk from the parking area was Blagaj Tekija, a historic Sufi Dervish monastery constructed in the early 16th century at the foot of soaring 240m (787ft) sheer rockface next to a karst cave. The cavern shelters a spring called the Vrelo Bune which is the source Buna River. It’s a dramatic setting. From its banks we watched visitors take small boats rowed by local men a short way into the mouth of the cave to see its large cavern. Professional divers have explored the dark cold water of the spring to a depth of 150m (492ft), but the total depth of the spring remains unknown. We enjoyed a late afternoon dinner at one of restaurants along the river’s edge. It was a very tranquil setting with ducks lazily paddling about on the softly gurgling water as it glistened in the bright sun.

Heading back to Mostar we made one last stop at Objekt Buna in Gnojnice. It’s an unofficial tourist site where visitors are semi-discouraged by a decrepit incomplete fence to not enter this Cold War era secret aircraft bunker. Located across the main road from what is now the Mostar International Airport, the military bunker was constructed into the side of a small hill in 1969 to shelter up to twenty planes and helicopters from attack. It was abandoned after the Bosnia War and is now a graffiti covered relic of the communism of Tito’s Yugoslavia. Outside the bunker the hillside was covered with wild poppies.

Mostar was especially enchanting in the evenings. Across from the small beach under the bridge where the boat rides launch from, we were surprised to see so many photographers lined up with their cameras mounted atop tripods placed, we hoped, firmly into the riverbed. Along with us, they were all intent on capturing the ultimate night picture of Stari Most as darkness fell. There were many previous attempts to build an arched stone bridge across the river, but all had failed, to the frustration of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. In 1557 he commissioned Mimar Hayruddin, a former apprentice to Istanbul’s grand architect Mimar Sinan to build a single arch bridge, but legend says the Sultan threatened him with death if his design collapsed. Fearing the worst as completion of the bridge neared in 1566 the architect reportedly prepared his own funeral shroud, expecting to be killed when the scaffolding supporting the bridge was removed. But to everyone’s relief, the 29m (95 ft) span, the widest man-made stone arch bridge in the world at the time, held firm. A marvel of engineering, the original stone structure stood for over 450 years until it was destroyed during the 1990s Bosnia War.

For our last day trip from Mostar we headed to Kravica Waterfall, but we rarely go directly to a destination, as there’s always other sites of interest along the roundabout routes we choose. Forty minutes south of Mostar we stopped at the Church of St. James in Medjugorje, a modest Bosnian town with about 4,000 people living in it. The catholic church was started in 1934, but its construction was interrupted by WW2, and religion was suppressed in Yugoslavia’s early communist years until authorities loosened their policies toward religious institution. The church was allowed to be completed and consecrated in 1969. But the quiet town suddenly rose to world-wide fame when six young people claimed to have seen the Blessed Virgin Mary on June 24th, 1981 on Crnica hill. Subsequent apparitions appeared to the children in different locations around the small town, and eventually in the church. The Virgin Mary’s visitations, with her messages emphasize reconciling with God, reading scripture, and encouraging peace are said to have occurred daily since then. And Medjugorje has grown into the third most visited pilgrimage site in Europe, after Lourdes in France and Fatima in Portugal, receiving over 40 million pilgrims since 1981.

When we arrived an outdoor mass was in progress behind the church in a large park-like setting; thousands of pilgrims were seated along rows of permanent benches or stood nearby. Around the front of the church folks prayed before a statue of the Virgin, as another mass was underway in the sanctuary.

Continuing our journey we headed to the Fortress of Herzog Stjepan Vukčić Kosača. Set atop a towering hill, the medieval 15th century castle was an important stronghold of the Kingdom of Bosnia as the Ottoman Empire expanded across the region. Kosača’s title “Herceg” (Duke), was also the name of his expansive domain which later became known as Herzegovina. Unfortunately, there was a large sporting event being held the day we visited, which would have required us to park at the bottom of the hill and walk to the summit. This would have taken too much time away from the rest of the day, so we contented ourselves with photos of the mighty stronghold from the foot of the hill.

The Trebižat River was full from runoff from recent heavy spring rains across the region and the Kravica Waterfall was the beautiful beneficiary. The spectacular bridal veil fall is 120m (394ft) wide with a cascade that drops 25m (82ft) into a crystal-clear turquoise basin. Local boatmen can be hired to row folks closer to the falls to hear the thunder of the water and get soaked in mist. A few swimmers were daring enough to brave the cold water.

There was plenty of parking near the park entrance and we opted for the ticket with the tourist train. This is especially helpful for folks like us with bad knees; the other alternative is a walk down many steep stairs, but be prepared for a vigorous climb up. Along the water edge there are three outdoor restaurants that are seasonally open. If pursuing waterfalls is your thing, another smaller cascade, Koćuša Waterfall, is 30 minutes away to the northwest.

The last stop of the day on the way back to Mostar was the ancient fortified stone village of Počitelj along the east bank of the Neretva River, that’s a tentative UNSECO site. Our descent into the town was down a narrow single-track lane, with occasional pullover spots in case you encountered any oncoming cars. At its bottom was a small plaza with a few restaurants and a tourist shop, from which the village spread dramatically up a steep hill. Founded in 1383 by Bosnia’s King Tvrtko I, the village was also a strategic stronghold and administrative center of the Ottoman Empire for 400 hundred years after its conquest in 1471, having a large mosque, hammam, madrasa, and a clock tower to reflect its importance as a governmental seat.

We entered the old town through an arched gateway. Under an ancient watch tower we spotted the largest fig tree we had ever seen, growing spectacularly from between stones of tower’s wall. If the tree ever fell, we were sure the tower would also collapse. Though there were several other tourists about, and signs that some of the old dwellings had been gentrified as vacation homes, the village felt as if it had been forgotten in time and abandoned; the aftermath of the 1990s Bosnia War.

Reaching Pašina tabija, a restored tower along the upper defensive wall, we were rewarded with a fantastic panorama of the village and the Neretva. Renovation to the tower included a glass walkway along the ramparts and a large deck to be used as a venue to host summer sunset concerts. Our late afternoon visit to Počitelj was the perfect way to end our time in Bosnia & Herzegovina, a destination we founded to be very charming and intriguing.

The next morning as we departed Mostar I promised that we would drive straight to Split, Croatia. “We’ll only stop for coffee, right?” “Yes, unless the steering wheel guides me like a Ouija board to some interesting locations.” I winked.

Till next time,

Craig & Donna

A Balkans Road Trip Part 6: Zagreb, Croatia – A Charming Walkable Weekend or Witches, Fires & Earthquakes

January 17, 2026 | 2suitcasesfor2years

Taillights glistened on the rain-slicked roadway as we followed a tram through the Friday evening rush-hour in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. It’s a large metropolis with newer neighborhoods spiderwebbing for miles from its ancient medieval core atop Gornji Grad, the Upper Town. We were heading to Hotel Park 45, conveniently located near the old town, with the availability of reserved paid parking. It was the base for our three-night stay in the Croatian capital.

Deterred by the rain from venturing too far from the hotel that night, we found the Evergreen Sushi Bar, several doors down. The restaurant was nicely designed in a casual modern Asian theme. The sushi we ordered was very good and the evening was enhanced with the theatrical presentation of some of the dinners which flowed from the kitchen. It was a nice change from the traditional Balkan fare which we had been indulging in.

The next morning, we enjoyed the ambiance of the Lower Town’s old buildings as we slowly strolled past the earthen tones of 19th-century Austro-Hungarian architecture. Some had interesting embellishments but had been allowed to deteriorate, and we were pleased to see renovations beginning on these beautiful structures. Our destination was Gornji Grad, and we turned to follow Mesnička ul, a long xsteep street to the Old Town.

Eighty decades earlier, halfway up the hill, the Croatian government at the time excavated the Tunel Grič during World War II, as a bomb shelter for its citizens. The war ended shortly after its completion and the tunnel was used as a warehouse for many years before being closed and forgotten until it was needed once again to shelter the populace during the Croatian War of Independence in the 1990s. Fortunately for us, after extensive renovations the 350m (1,150ft) long tunnel was reopened in 2016 as a pedestrian passageway and shortcut between the upper and lower town, which saved us from an otherwise strenuous uphill trek to Gornji Grad. Throughout the year the tunnel is also used to host events and art installations. Its most notable transfiguration is during the Christmas holiday season when the tunnel is turned into an enchanting winter wonderland.

At the far end the tunnel opened to Ul. Pavla Radića, a charming, historic cobblestone lane that was for centuries the primary connection between the lower and upper towns. Today it’s lined with shops, cafes and galleries as it runs downhill to Trg bana Josipa Jelačića, Zagreb’s central square or uphill, the direction we were going, to Kamenita Vrata, Gornji Grad’s old stone gate. An equestrian statue of Saint George guarded the entrance to the Upper Town, across from pastel toned buildings, which were a nice change from the ubiquitous sandstone facades.

Kamenita Vrata is Zagreb’s last surviving Medieval stone gate. Its construction was started in the mid-1240s after the first Mongol invasion by the army of Great Khan Ögedei, the third son of Genghis Khan; his campaign left a swath of destruction across the Balkans, and Zagreb in ruins.

Within the gateway is an actively used shrine to the Virgin Mary. Legend believes the shrine’s painting was found miraculously untouched in the tower’s ashes after Zagreb’s Great Fire of 1731. The icon has become a symbol of the city’s resilience, and a popular spot for contemplation and candle lighting, surrounded by marble plaques hanging on the walls offering thanksgiving to Mary for answering folks’ prayers.

Through the gate we wondered along to Plato Gradec, a small plaza with murals and a view of 14th century Zagrebačka Katedrala, Cathedral of Zagreb, which was wrapped in construction scaffolding as it undergoes a multi-year renovation to repair structural damage it suffered during the 2020 5.5-magnitude earthquake that struck the region 140 years after an 1880 quake damaged it significantly. The first flowers of spring were blooming in a sheltered patch of sunlight.

From here we walked to the Love Rails, a romantic spot that overlooks the Lower Town, and where couples symbolize their commitment to each other by attaching love locks. Lower on the hillside are the Zakmardi Steps, a colorful graffiti-lined narrow alley, that leads to Ul. Pavla Radića street or the funicular station. Instead, we chose to follow the tree shaded Strossmayer Promenade, a charming historic walkway, built with public donations, atop the foundations of the Upper Town’s old defensive ramparts in the mid19th-century. It is named for the influential Bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer, who served the people of Croatia for 55 years, and was admired for “the unwavering loyalty and affection he demonstrated for his people despite encountering significant opposition from both the Pope and the Austrian Emperor.”

Nearby was Lotrščak Tower, as old as the Stone Gate; it gets its name from its medieval “thieves’ bell,” which rang every night to announce its closing until sunrise the next day. The tower was spared during the demolition of the citadel’s ramparts in the 18th and 19th centuries, as the town expanded. Originally shorter, additional floors were added to the tower in the late 1800s. In 1877, the Grič Cannon, a signal cannon, was fired from the tower for the first time to mark high noon. The city’s bellringers synchronized with the cannon in order to ring the church chimes at the proper moment later in the day. It’s a long-standing tradition that still continues.

The climb to the top started across from an exterior residential staircase, artfully lined with colored pots, before entering the third and fourth floors which showcase historical photographs of the city, hung on the tower’s nearly 1.2m (4ft) thick walls and the Grič Cannon. If you are scared of heights, windows on these levels offer safe vantage points for views over the city instead of continuing the climb up the old spiral staircase to the polygonal shaped fire observation tower and its catwalk. The catwalk was quite jammed when we visited, but the panoramic views over old Zagreb and its modern skyline dotted with construction cranes were fantastic.

It’s from here that the iconic photos of St. Mark’s Church’s tiled roof are taken, with the medieval coat of arms of the Triune Kingdom of Croatia, Dalmatia, and Slavonia and the City of Zagreb. Though the Gothic styled church dates from the 13th-century, it did not get its colorful tile roof until a major renovation in the 1880s. We had hoped to photograph Zagreb’s funicular, the world’s shortest public funicular, connecting the Lower and Upper Towns in a quick 64-second, 66m (217ft) ride, that has been operating since 1890, but it was undergoing repairs.

On opposite sides of the street as we headed to the church were two interesting museums, the Museum of Broken Relationships, and Croatian Museum of Naïve Art. Both have small exhibition spaces, but the former has a quirky collection of heartbreak stories and symbolic possessions from past loves that people from around the world have donated to the museum. A lot of reading is required to navigate through this literary journey of lost love, where many of the stories echo true. The museum also has an excellent café on site.

The latter museum has a unique collection of art from self-taught painters from the rural village of Hlebine. The villagers were inspired by Krsto Hegedušić, a native son who was academically trained as a painter, illustrator and theatrical designer, but returned to his family’s village every year and inspired several villagers in the 1930s to paint “what they see and feel.”

They went on to create a body of work that depicted rural life, portraying the hardships of labor and social injustice, along with often mystical landscapes. Many of the oil paintings are reverse painted on glass, a fragile but inexpensive medium at the time. The technique gives the illustrations a wonderful translucent quality. The museum has a collection of 1900s artworks, though only 80 are rotated through the exhibition space at a time. Don’t let the name Naïve Art dissuade you from visiting the museum as it has some great pieces on display.

Nearby was Pod Starim Krovovima, Under the Old Rooftops, the oldest tavern in Zagreb which poured its first beers in 1830. It’s a small quietly charming place that used to be the favorite haunt of Zagreb’s poets and writers, and we had hoped to eat there. However, it doesn’t serve food anymore, but it does offer a nice selection of Croation wines, beers and cordials.

Instead we had dinner at Tavern Didov San, around the corner on Mletačka ul, a quaint street that would look more at home in a country village than the city. The restaurant specializes in authentic, regional Croatian cuisine; besides the traditional hearty beef dishes there are recipes that feature frog legs, eels and snails. The restaurant’s very nice staff, its ambience, and the delicious food all contributed to a memorable evening in Zagreb.

Opening the window of our hotel room the next morning revealed the street was blocked, and preparations were busily underway for a street fair. The seductive aroma of fresh baked chocolate croissants wafted up from the pâtisserie a few doors down, and called to us to come and indulge.

It would be hours before the festival was in full swing, so we headed to Ban Jelačić Square. The equestrian statue of Josip Jelačić Bužinski (1801-1859), a Croatian military hero and politician who abolished serfdom in Croatia, is backed by some beautiful examples of Austro-Hungarian buildings built after the earthquake of 1880. The attractive square earned the city the nickname as “the gateway to the Balkans.” On the far end of the plaza was Manduševac fountain. It’s all that remains of a natural spring that is mentioned in 1700s court records as “the main night gathering place of witches and warlocks in Zagreb.” The punishment for a conviction of witchcraft was to being burned at the stake at the infamous execution spot called Zvedišće, near the entrance to Tunel Grič on Mesnička ul, too eerily close to our hotel. Witchcraft trials ended in 1756 when empress Maria Theresa condemned the practice.

Stairs lined with flower stalls led from the plaza to Tržnica Dolac, Zagreb’s daily market. It’s a large square ringed by shops selling meats, poultry and fish, while the center is covered with seasonal vegetable vendors set up under a vast sea of red umbrellas. On opposite sides of the square the belltowers of the 18th century Church of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Cathedral of Zagreb rose above the market’s low buildings.

Several blocks of Ilica street were vibrant with activity. In places folks had pulled couches and chairs from their apartments into the street, in order to comfortably relax while listening to buskers entertaining the crowd. Artisanal craft vendors set up tables selling handmade pottery, soaps, jewelry, toys and homemade food. We purchased a pop-up puppet on a stick whose maker assured us it would withstand the abuse of any six year old. Another vendor offered slices of her baba’s scrumptious Bregovska Pita, an 8-layer filo dough layered pie, filled with apples, raisins, and walnuts.

It was a gorgeously warm sunny April day as we sat outside at the Wave Bar. Across the way we watched folks wander through the Sunday antiques market that was underway in Britanski Square, searching for that undiscovered gem that lay hidden in the market’s cornucopia of brass, wood and glass bric-a-brac.

It was a great afternoon experiencing the energy of Zagreb, and the perfect way to end our stay in this charming city. Two full days in Zagreb were only enough to scratch the surface of this intriguing city, and in hindsight we should have planned a third day, but hopefully we’ll get a chance to return. Tomorrow, we will cross the border into Bosnia & Herzegovina.

Till next time,

Craig & Donna

A Balkans Road Trip Part 5: Slovenia – Into the Kamnik-Savinja Alps to the Logar Valley

January 11, 2026 | 2suitcasesfor2years

Days earlier, atop the ramparts at Ljubljana Castle, we got our first glimpse of the Kamnik-Savinja Alps, a rugged sawtooth mountain chain that lies north of the city, along the Slovenia – Austrian border in the Solčava region. The range’s three highest peaks, Mt. Grintovec (2,532m), Mt. Jezerska Kočna (2,539m), and Mt. Skuta, (8,307m) still glimmered with snow in early April.

Within the mountain range is Logar Valley, a 7 kilometer (4.3 mile) long alpine glacial valley, surrounded by equally tall sheer summits. Inside the picturesque valley there are trails between Rinka Waterfall (90m – 295ft), the tallest falls in Slovenia, and three other ones that cascade from the mountainsides. It is 1.5 hours from Ljubljana, and we planned to visit the valley during a travel day. Later, backtracking from the mountains, we stayed in Kamnik for two nights before continuing on to Zagreb.

Along our route into the mountains, we stopped to visit the Volčji Potok Arboretum, a large formal garden, only 30 minutes from the city. The park’s tulips beds were in full bloom, and we were just about to purchase our entrance tickets when we were caught in a sudden downpour. Unfortunately, it didn’t look like the weather was going to improve quickly. Crossing our fingers, we hoped the mountains would be storm free, and we continued on.

Past Kamnik, the road slowly rose from the plain into the foothills as it followed the Kamniška Bistrica river, swollen with snow melt. The fresh greenery of spring covered the hillsides. Fruit trees flowered in roadside orchards. Twisting and turning along switchback roads, we drove higher, only to descend into small valleys sheltering tiny hamlets with only a handful of homes and always a church, before ascending again.

A sign pointed the way to Velika Planina, a vast alpine plateau in Slovenia’s Kamnik-Savinja Alps, where traditional transhumance herders continue to graze cattle and sheep seasonally on the high-elevation pastureland from June to September. In planning our trip to Logar, we had considered going to Velika Planina, but to do it justice required a longer visit to the area. It’s one of the dilemmas of planning a trip: what to include, what to pass, what’s research for the future or a simply a teaser, needing a sequel to complete your odyssey.

Eventually the road leveled and followed the Savinja River as it coursed through a narrow gorge, where in certain sections rock ledges loomed ominously low over the road, and we wondered if any campervans had ever lost their roofs along the way.

Signs pointed to the Austrian border, but we turned and sharply climbed to Razgledna Točka pri Klemenči Domačiji, the Lookout Point at the Klemenča Homestead, our destination before entering the valley below. The vantage point overlooking the working farm and mountains is 1,208 meters (3,963 feet) above sea level and is along the Solčava Panoramic Road, a 37km (23mi) scenic route that weaves through spectacular alpine views and past tracs that lead to self-sustaining high mountain farms. The view over the valley surrounded by multiple 2300m (7500ft) mountains, their peaks still hidden by clouds, was stunning.

Like an old-fashioned trading post, the last chance for supplies at the edge of the frontier, was its modern equivalent, a vending machine with dried sausages, cheese rounds, and sandwiches made at the Klemenča Homestead.

Next to it was a whimsical statue of Lintver, a Slovenian folklore dragon associated with the Logar Valley and the Solčava region. Centuries-old legends tell of his role in shaping the area’s valleys and landmarks. Nowadays in Slovenia, the dragon symbolizes the powerful and beautiful forces of nature.

We coasted slowly through the beautiful wide grassy valley to its terminus, the trailhead for the Rinka Waterfall. Though it was only a twenty-minute trek from the parking area, we passed on the opportunity and had a late lunch at Penzion Kmečka Hiša Ojstrica. Their outside deck was open, and we enjoyed a tasty meal while warming in the afternoon sun, if only for a brief moment, before heading to Kamnik for the night. Really, exploring the area in depth requires several days, especially if you want to do any hiking. The park’s website is a good resource for accommodation in the valley and surrounding area.

It was pouring again as we reached Kamnik. Totally unprepared for this deluge, we parked as close to the entrance of Guest House Pri Cesarju as we could. Kindly, the proprietor of the hotel and pizzeria where we were staying ran to assist us with umbrellas as we unloaded our luggage. After a chilly day, it was nice to relax in the comfortably warm restaurant with a glass of local red wine and delicious pizza. The weather the next morning was perfect with a sunny blue sky. A nice change from the cloudy weather pattern that had been over the area for several days.

We drove to Kaminska Pekarna, a hidden gem of a bakery and confectionery, on the side of town nearer Ljubljana. We had discovered it the day before while seeking to satisfy our “drive a little then café’, caffeine cravings. It’s a very simple shop, with only a dozen tables inside, and few outside, under the building’s overhang for the smokers, but it was very busy with local folk, and their sweet and savory pastries were scrumptious. Over our two days in Kamnik we stopped there three times. It was that good, and extremely budget friendly. Parking near the old town is very limited, but it was the shoulder season, and we thought we found a good centrally located spot down a quiet side street. More on that later.

Kamnik is a historic town, one of Slovenia’s earliest, first mentioned in historical records in 1061. By the early 13th century, it had grown into a bustling crafts and market center on the trade route between Hungary and the Adriatic, and it was granted formal town status.

For a time, its importance in Slovenia rivaled that of Ljubljana’s and the town boasted two castles, minted its own coins and was granted a Franciscan monastery, which is still in use. Now in ruins, Stari grad, the old castle, commanded the tall hill across the Kamniška Bistrica river from the village. The tongue of a modern cantilevered viewing deck at the site can been seen from town, but the site was not open in early April when we visited Kamnik. In the center of town Mali grad, the little castle, stands on a small knoll that overlooks what would have been the main routes through the medieval town.

Though this castle was also closed, the path to it led through a nice, shaded park and offered several great views of the red-roofed town with the beautiful Kamnik-Savinja Alps in the distance. A teenage girl, playing hooky from school and enjoying the tranquility of the location, lounged on the castle’s steps, absorbed by her reading.

The warm sunny day called for a gelato, and we stopped at a small café’ with outdoor tables, at the top of Šutna Street. Once the town’s main thoroughfare, it is now a colorful pedestrian lane lined with an assortment of well-preserved homes and guild buildings, dating as far back as the 14th century.

Along the way was the Immaculate Conception Parish Church, a Gothic structure with later Baroque additions, notable for its freestanding bell tower.

At the bottom of the Šutna treet was a life-size silhouetted profile of a distinguished man. The commemorative inscription next to it told the story of Rudolf Maister, a nationalist hero, who was born in a house on this street in 1874. Choosing a military career, he rose to the rank of Major in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in which Slovenia was a province at the time, while serving on the front near Graz, Austria. At the end of World War One, when the “Great Powers” were redrawing the maps of Europe, on his own initiative he disobeyed orders to turn the town over to German-Austria troops. Rallying 4000 loyal Slovene troops to support him he secured Styria, the region south of Graz to be Slovenia’s northern border and part of the newly formed State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, which united with the Kingdom of Serbia into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which eventually became Yugoslavia. He was an interesting individual who was also recognized for writing two volumes of poetry and starting a military orchestra.

A short distance away in a plaza across from the bus station was Kip Mamuta, a life size bronze sculpture of a woolly mammoth. It commemorates the 1938 discovery of a nearly complete mammoth skeleton, unearthed by workers expanding a bridge, in nearby Nevlje. The site upon further archaeological excavation was determined to be a Paleolithic hunting settlement dated to be around 20,000 years old. The skeleton is on exhibit in the Natural History Museum of Slovenia in Ljubljana. Returning to the car hours later, we realized we had parked down a restricted residential road, which just happened to have its gate up when we drove through earlier that day. Now the automated gate was closed and we were trapped. Waiting patiently until a local resident exited, we followed close behind. Kamnik is a charming small town which we had mostly to ourselves in early April, and we found it very easy to explore fully in a single day. Every September the town hosts the Days of National Costumes and Clothing Heritage, Slovenia’s largest ethnological festival, featuring a grand parade, historical costumes, reenactments, traditional music, dance, regional crafts, and local food.

Finicky weather resumed the next morning as we headed to Cistercijanska Opatija Stična, the Cistercian Abbey of Stična, a 12th century walled monastery along the A2 which we were following to Zagreb, Croatia. It is Slovenia’s oldest operating monastery, though only 14 monks remain, a vast difference from the hundreds that lived there during the Middle Ages and supported the abbey’s vast land holdings and 300 churches in the region. The Cistercian Order is an offshoot of the Benedictine Order, that follows a return to a stricter, simpler monastic life based upon a self-sufficient agrarian orientation, emphasizing austerity, manual labor, solitude, and a balance of prayer and work. During the early years of the monastery, it acted like an agricultural college, where the hard-working monks shared their advanced ideas of crop rotation, irrigation systems, better iron ploughs, selective breeding, and new crop varieties. “They revolutionized the local agriculture,” and contributed to the prosperity of the area by not requiring the local peasants on their granges to pay the annual tithe.

The order’s influence grew with time and the monastery evolved to support a traditional school as well as a music school, herbal pharmacy, and a library where manuscripts were copied. The Stiški Rokopisi, Stična Manuscripts, a famous series of illuminated medieval manuscripts, were written in the mid-1400s by the abbey’s monks, not in Latin as was the tradition, but in the Slovenian language, one of the first such books of the time.

During the Middle Ages the monastery was located on the Slovenia frontier, an area that separated the Christian northern Balkans from the Ottoman Empire. Turkish raids in the area were a common occurrence, and even though the abbey was enclosed within a defensive wall it suffered severe damage during attacks in 1475 and 1529. The abbey continued to prosper until 1784 when Joseph II, the Holy Roman Emperor and ruler of the Habsburg Monarchy, confiscated the lands of monasteries in his realm, and forced monks and nuns into “useful” state-approved roles. The abbey was returned to the Cistercian Order 1898.

According to the abbey’s records there has been an herbal pharmacy in the monastery since the 15th century, which gathered and used the region’s 400 medicinal plants. This tradition was revived again after 1898 and grew in importance under the direction of Father Simon Ašič (1906-1992). The pharmacy was especially useful during World War II, when many sick refugees sought help from Father Simon. Because of the war, medicines were in short supply, but he was able to help many people with his herbal preparations. Always recording the recipes and results, he published his knowledge in three books. The abbey honored his legacy in 1992 with the founding of SITIK, an herbal products company that sells items prepared according to the original recipes of Father Ašič.

We visitied the abbey’s church, the Our Lady of Sorrows Basilica, once one of the largest in Slovenia. The sanctuary and its cloister were very interesting to explore. Something that we never noticed before in a church was that the confessionals all had small red and green lights on them to indicate which ones were in use.

Regrettably, we missed the tour of the herbal pharmacy, but we did get a small brochure, with some of Father Ašič’s herbal recipes.

Zagreb beckoned. On we went.

Till next time,

Craig & Donna

P.S. Each year in the fall, the village of Stična hosts an arts festival known as Festival Stična.

	2suitcasesfor2years on Driving the North Coast 500…
	Douglas Pollock on Driving the North Coast 500…
	baseleytyriek85 on Driving the North Coast 500…
	2suitcasesfor2years on Jerez de la Frontera: Quiet an…
	Prij on Jerez de la Frontera: Quiet an…

2 Suitcases for 2 years

Traveling the world, on the road without a home or 2 years.

Travel Couple

Samarkand, Uzbekistan: The Ancient Crossroad of Central Asia’s Renaissance or They Have the Best Bread!

Bukhara, Uzbekistan: A City of Culture and Style on the Ancient Silk Road, or Time Traveling in the Desert

Tashkent, Uzbekistan: Historic and Cosmopolitan or Surprisingly Fascinating & Wonderful

Vietnam: A Journey Along the Mekong River or A Lion Dance, Sampans & Fortune Sticks

A Balkans Road Trip Part 9: Split, Croatia – Rocky Coasts, Sunny Skys and Relics

A Balkans Road Trip Part 8: Bosnia and Herzegovina: Mostar, Počitelj and the Kravica Waterfall – Charming, Intriguing and Magnificent

A Balkans Road Trip Part 6: Zagreb, Croatia – A Charming Walkable Weekend or Witches, Fires & Earthquakes

A Balkans Road Trip Part 5: Slovenia – Into the Kamnik-Savinja Alps to the Logar Valley

Please share my page with your friends

Please share my page with your friends

Please share my page with your friends

Please share my page with your friends

Please share my page with your friends

Please share my page with your friends

Please share my page with your friends

Please share my page with your friends

Please share my page with your friends