The Cube

After breakfast, we were off to Uhum Market and then road trip to Samarkand. Breakfast in Uzbekistan is luxurious affair, always combination of hot and food - crepe, cookies, fruits, cheese, bread...


It was time to bid goodbye to Asraf Village and was really surprised that everybody came to send us off. Lol.. hehe.. we were wrong, what we didn't know was that Raxmat was assigned to send us to Uhum Bazaar then all the way to Samarkand. After the drama with the driver who picked us from Bukhara, they swapped with Raxmat to send us to Samarkand. So technically the family was probably sending Raxmat off, more than us. Haha.. ok, maybe us too (Grin, console ourselves... haha). It was actually us being clueless because we did see Raxmat's wife getting him a bread and water. He actually put the bread in the car's glove compartmen... haha..


Uhum is the biggest villages around Nuratau northern slopes. There's a bazaar every Sunday early morning, probably around 7-10am on the outskirts of Uhum. By the time we got there, most stalls have already packed up. We did see some selling clothes or plastic wares though. So we were there for a very short while only.



Then we were off to Samarkand, after a short detour to Forish to pay Responsible Travel.




Then we saw this...


Raxmat was excellent, he dropped us right at the B&B, even waited till we checked in before he left.


Side note: Craving for some potato curry!

This tapchan is over a stream

Asraf is located along the Nuratau mountain range, between Eski Forish and Uhum. Based on ancient rock paintings found in the mountains, it was said that human have lived there for more than 2000 years. It was also said that many customs that are practised today at Asraf could be originated from Zarafshan areas rather than the ones from Samarkand and Bukhara Tajiks.


From Yahshigul Guesthouse's homepage, it mentioned that Nuratau region was a trade route that connects between Bukhara and Tashkent. Mountain valleys in Nuratau and Kyzyl Kum plains were used as a stop over points by traders.

Our homestay for the night is at Asraf Village at Yahshigul Guesthouse. If I am to be very brief and describe it in one sentence, I'll say it is a farm homestay experience up in the mountains. There was a lot of eating and lazing around chillaxing in the two days. After resting a little on the tapchan, it was time for lunch! (See - a lot of eating and chillaxing).



Yahshigul Guesthouse is a very self sustainable residence. They have some free range chickens, cows, pony, a good size vegetables patch and some fruit trees. At the time of our visit, the owner, Mr Bobojon Kozokov, his wife (Yahshigul), their two sons, daughters-in-law and two grandsons were living there. They also have a daughter but she is already married and moved to Uhum. The older son, Furqat is married to Feruza and they have two sons, Hushnud and Mehruz. Their younger son, Raxmat is married as well and his wife is sweet and lovely. For the life of me, I cannot recall her name but I suspect it is Zila or something along the line.

A small stream

Chooks

Noisy donkey

Vege patch

Fruit trees

We played with the two kids for a bit and had a chance to see Feruza made some non. Score! They usually don't make the bread everyday so we were lucky.


After kneading, shaping and letting the dough rest, she brought them out to bake at the tandoor but firstly need to heat up the tandoor till it is hot.


After it is hot enough, Feruza put on a thick jacket and oven mitten as she had to put her hand into the tandoor to stick the nons on the inside of the tandoor.


After all the eating and doing nothing, it was time to do a little hike at the mountains behind the guesthouse. Raxmat was our guide for the hike and we told him prior that we could only cope with easy hike and told him to pick an easy trail. According to Raxmat, the easiest walk available is to see a village but he said the village is already a deserted village. We bite the bullet and go for a hike instead, the easiest hike trail though. Lol, he promised it was easy and not steep though on hindsight I don't think it mean anything since he probably does the trail a few times a day. = ="




Ok, let's try a 360 degrees video view because I can't do panorama shots. Over the hills we can see a valley where Uhum is located and further beyond, vast plains of the Kyzyl Kum steppe.


The person you see squatting down and talked on the mobile is our hiking guide, Raxmat. It just reminds me of telco advertisement. Lol - insert Celcom tagline here.... haha.. The reason it reminds me of Celcom because in the past, the advertisement usually show people receiving a call in an isolated place. Well, at least now I know that marketing ploy is effective to me on a certain extent though I have never used Celcom. haha...

We weren't too slow but we only started out around 3:30 pm because we wanted to see Feruza made the non and of course because of the hot weather. Raxmat went even faster on the way down compared to going up, because it was downhill and secondly we were due to "assist" in making dinner. Haha..

While he was waiting for us, he saw this fruit tree and plucked a couple and passed to us. Umm.. I can't remember the name of the fruit now, it doesn't help that I don't even know what it is in the first place to begin with.
Edit: Sis promptly let me know that this is a date after reading that I could not recognise this fruit...


We cut cross the village on our way back and in spite of our best effort, we were late.

Jump or don't jump?

Feruza had started cooking, it was a plov dinner and we had freshly baked non too. ;) At the same time, (?)Zila was preparing some pickled vegetables with another relative who was visiting. We decided that it was probably best not to assist or nobody will get dinner that night.

Bottles of pickles ready to be cooked

Ok - one more photo, our room for the night.

Check out the mud wall!

Almost forgot - contact details for Yahsigul Guesthouse as below.
Sharipov Raxmat
+99897 325 01 20
+99894 191 79 67
Yahshigul@gmail.com


Side note: I am still the only person I know watching Criminal Minds.. and S11E11 is really good! Lol. 

In our little imagination, we thought we might be able to see sunrise too and set the alarm clock to get up but nope, no sunrise for us but it is ok. What we saw as the photo above... lol..

For some strange reason I was having craving for some orange juice the day before and told sis, "I really want some OJ, do you think they will serve us any?" LOL, sis laughed and to be honest both of us didn't think that we will get any. Staple breakfast beverage in Uzbekistan are tea and coffee but mostly tea. So we were both pleasantly surprise to see this carton of fruit juice on the table. It wasn't orange juice but any fruit juice is a bonus! ^^


Soon after breakfast, we bid goodbye to Kyzyl Kum yurt camp and moved to Lake Aydar. Lake Aydar or Aydarkul is a large man-made lake. It occupies 4000 sq km. Its length spans almost 250km and width 15 km. Lake Aydar was initially formed about 50 years ago as a result of catastrophic flood water escaped from Sirdaya when the Chardara reservoir was overflown. Apparently Lake Aydar was a good place for fishing but we didn't see anybody there doing any fishing activity. Actually, nobody was there, only us, the tour guide and the driver.



Next up in the itinerary was to visit a Kazakh village of Dungalak. In all honesty, till now I have no idea if the village we visited was really a Kazakh village or were we really in Dungalak. The village we visited felt like a deserted village, saved for a family which consisted of an elderly man and two little kiddies. We were not able to verify with the villagers due to language barrier so we could only rely on the words of the tour guide. Well, I tried googling but the village is probably too small for any information to be found online. Photos that came out from my google effort were mostly of Lake Aydar or yurt camp due to the close vicinity.



They actually have a yurt set up in their backyard but not in use yet at this stage.


After this little village visit, the driver dropped the tour guide off at a intersection near Nurata and we continued on our ride to Nuratau Mountains. It was all still a little strange, funny strange though. After awhile the driver stopped and told us we have reached, it felt like in the middle of nowhere. Hahaha. Then someone came and asked us to follow him. There were not any words exchanged till we tried to confirm we were at the right place. All is good, else I wouldn't able to write this post or the next one eh? ;)


Side note: My left shift key is going a bit wonky.... :/

Kyzyl Kum Desert, translated as 'red sand' occupies about 300,000 sq km and lies between Amudarya and Syrdarya rivers. Taking a holiday from our holiday, we did another yurt stay, this time at Kyzyl Kum Desert.


This one is vastly different from our first yurt stay. I'm saying this not in terms of geographic location (country as well as mountain versus desert) but the set up as well. This yurt is part of a camp, obviously geared towards touristy activity. Even the toilet is a sitting toilet (clean too!) complete with flushing system. There are even shower stalls and lighted up when it gets dark.

Notice the water outlet?

Complete with toilet washing brush

After we were assigned to our yurt and dropped our luggage, we were served welcoming drinks and nibbles. We made ourselves comfortable on a tapchan and laze the day away. :P

Yurts in the front

The sun wasn't shining on us when we started out...

Think these are apricot kernels... they are da best... :D

From memory we were told these are apricot kernels, they taste a little like pistachios. The shells are a little hard to open but it is part of the fun and well worth it!

Oh and you know how flies and hot weather are good friends?

And no... we didn't get food poisoning but we didn't eat much of this though

After we had laze enough, it was time for camel ride. My second time but sis' first time. We had 2 camels to keep us company while waiting for our turn.



We were the second or maybe third batch to get on the camel because there was a group who came with a tour bus. It was alright though because I think our timing was perfect. The sun was setting but not yet, so we had nice orange colour :)

Photobomb by camel

That was our shadow (with two other people)

After our short-ish camel ride, we walked up a higher sand dune area to see the sun set. Then made a dash for shower before dinner. Hehe. Umm.. this was when we were a little lost too because our tour guide didn't tell us what time was dinner. Actually he sort of left us on the sand dunes and walked away...


If you remember our other yurt stay where food was simple and smaller portion, here we had more than enough.

There was another big potato chicken dish not in picture

After dinner we were ushered to a campfire where they had a performer who travelled from a nearby village to come and sing. According to our tour guide, it is a custom to give a little money/contribution as a gesture of appreciation to the performer at the end of his performance. Umm... we did prepare some money to hand over to the performer but didn't end up giving him... because there wasn't a chance to do so..lol. It appears that the tour guide for the other group passed a token of money to the performer discreetly and he just took off... lol. I supposed we were a little slow... haha..


We have been wanting to see the stars under the Central Asia sky. Sis did get up when we were in Song Kul but the weather wasn't good. I remained in bed... because I was too lazy to move my butt. When we were in Khiva, I wanted to at least get up and peek through the windows to see if it was worth to get up. What happened was I kept on dreaming that I got up but in actual fact I have not budge from the bed... haha...

We did this time though and after all we didn't really have to wait till the middle of the night as it was dark enough before long.

My effort from squating down for a loooong time.. lol

That - was our first day at Kyzyl Kum Desert yurt stay. Of course, the experience between the two yurt stay is really different. Despite it being touristy I did enjoy myself and it was a good break from the mosques and medressa. On top of that, we get to see different and more things in Uzbekistan.

Ok, one last photo - to show how the sink was looking like when we brushed our teeth.



Side note: Got to start studying already!