The name of the city of Samarkand is probably one of the most famous cities on the silk road and I was finally heading to this romantic and exotic city. Marco Polo described it as “splendid”, while James Elroy Flecker idolized the city in The Golden Journey to Samarkand. The city is renowned throughout Central Asia as having some of the best decorative madressas and mosques filled with beautifully intricate majolica tilework. I was really looking forward to arriving.

Getting there was not as straightforward as one might have hoped. The train left at 7pm and arrived in the middle of the night so I decided to take the bus. Once again the bus price was extremely high and the bus driver refused to leave until he was full. It was 10.30am and he had 20 passangers and needed 30 more. When I asked what would happen if no-on came after 5 or 6 hours, he just said that he would leave tomorrow instead. I decided that waiting around for this was not a good option especially when for a few dollars more, a shared taxi for 4 people was leaving in 10 minutes. I still don’t understand how the bus business works or how it ever makes any money with a system like this. If you have a regular timetable then people who want to take the bus will turn up at that time rather than just strolling in at anytime and having to wait for the bus to leave? Surely it makes little difference to the number of people who will travel on your bus? But maybe I have missed a vital business point – if anyone knows, please do tell me!

In the end I opted for the shared taxi again and fear that I won’t get to use the buses much in this country if it continues like this. Also sharing the taxi was a Canadian on holiday called Gregg and we chatted throughout the journey despite the fact that the driver evidently wanted us to be quiet. Every time we spoke, he unhelpfully raised the volume of his radio to try and drown us out. We persisted and won.

Arriving at the bus station produced the usual taxi driver touts charging 5 times the price for a short journey and claiming that we were 20km out of town. Why is it that almost in every country, no matter how lovely the people are, the taxi drivers have a bad reputation? We walked away to angry protests from the drivers. If they wouldn’t give us a fair price, why should we use them? 2 minutes walk away we found a taxi for the right price and jumped in heading for the Bahodir B&B that comes highly recommended.

The rest of the afternoon was spent taking tea in the courtyard and chatting to the other guests. This has been one of the more touristy places so far, but it was a nice change to meet some fellow Western travelers and exchange the usual traveller tales.