sunrise and markets and bus rides

Sunrises and Markets and Bus RidesOctober 14, 2009 We started the day quite early as 5 of us got up to see the sunrise over the ancient rebuilt town of Khiva. There are 4 gates into the old city and we headed towards the north gate to get up onto the city walls. There was a ramp leading up and then we had to scale a 4' wall to get onto the wall itself. That may sound fairly easy but not to someone with arthritis. Still I managed it without much more than dirty, dusty pants. We walked quickly around the wall until we could go no further and waited for the sun. It was rather anticlimactic in the end. The sun wasn’t there and then it popped up over the horizon and came up fast, all the dark was light and then there weren’t many colors so not the best of sunrises but fun to be out before the town wakes and before hardly anyone is stirring. Back to our hotel/Madrassah for some breakfast. We are staying in a lovely converted Madrassah, or an old school. Either everyone in the 9th century to about the 17th century was really very short or they just couldn’t figure out how to make a door that someone could walk through without stooping. Luckily I am not as tall as some members of our group so I can occasionally find a door where I can go through without fear of conking my noggin. We have a long bus ride today to move from Khiva to Bukhara. Marat, our guide, suggested going to the market to get some fruits and such to eat on the bus. I had the trusty map he had given me so I head over that way to do just what he advises. How odd that I walked all over and could not find the market. I could find people and what looked like it should be a market but the stalls were empty. People were standing in groups waiting in anticipation for the market, I assume. And there were sales people there with bags of apples and peppers and other such produce and some bread people but they weren’t putting it on the tables. As I watched, a man with a cart full of cut meat comes by. He is followed by a crowd. There is a lot of talking back and forth. Another man opens a tall gate and the crowd surges into the courtyard behind the gate. He starts to close it and then realizes that the meat man is still trying to maneuver to get his cart to the gate to go through. He holds it for the meat man and then shuts the gate quickly in the face of several people who were now following the meat man. He locks the gate. How interesting. I wish I had taken initiative and run to go in the gate as well but if meat is so hard to get, it’s possible I would have been viewed as competition and therefore not very welcome. I am the only non central Asian walking around in this area. I toddle back through the city walls and wander around a bit and find a couple of other tour members. They are making the rounds of anything that can be climbed. They have already done a couple of gates and minarets and are not making their way to the tallest minaret. A lady is the guard and charges 3000 Zum (about $2) to go up the 180 stairs to the top. I do want to go but my hip is giving me some nonsense thing like "do it and you’ll pay!" The other tour member doesn’t want to pay that much and asks if he can get a discount. The lady says, “There is a student discount.” She has to repeat this 4 times and I have to nudge him and say be a student before he realizes that she is giving him a way to get a discount so he finally gets it and says, “I’ll be a student if you want me to be” and she lets him into the minaret for 1500 Zum ($1). I think maybe I was just at the market much too early so I go back and it is much the same except there are more people standing there ready to sell goods and more people standing there ready to buy goods but still no one is doing either. Maybe there is some great bell ringing that signifies the opening of the market or maybe they must wait until all salesmen have arrived as more seem to come out of the cracks every minute. Finally I just don’t have any more time to wait as I must catch a bus with the rest of the group to go to Bukhara. I will have to make do with whatever stale bread I have from the train and some fruit from Tashkent. This is going to be a long day on the bus. We leave around 10:30 and it is a 9 hour drive. There are not a lot of sights to see out the bus windows, some desert, some dried grassy plains, some small villages, some sheep, an occasional mosque. We did have to stop at one point and wait for a train to cross a bridge because that is the same way we were getting across the river and trains have right of way. I did doze, watched some IPod, worked on some photos on my computer but it was really too bumpy to do anything efficient. We finally get into Bukhara after dark so I have no idea what the town is like. We join forces to go out to dinner but I’m not really too hungry for some reason and in spite of dozing on the bus, I am sure ready to hit the sack when it is about 10 p.m. Can’t wait to see the town in the light.