i am in samarkand, just back from a day trip to shakhrisabz. samarakand is an ancient city. alexander the great was here and met his wife roxana in this town before turning his armies south towards india. but samarkand achieved true greatness under timur the great (or terrible, depending on your point of view). he was known as tamerlane in the west and christopher marlow wrote a play about him. i spent yesterday wandering the city with zemfira, a person i met in this very internet café the day before yesterday. the highlight of the day was in the registan, the most famous collection of mosques and madrassas in this country, zemfira told me it was possible to climb one of the minarets and managed to find the stairway. the stairs were dark, dusty and crumbled under our feet as we climbed. at times we were in total darkness as the stairs twisted away from any light source. at the very top was a hole in the flat metal roof of the minaret. the hole was very thin, i had to take off my backpack to fit through. there was no observation deck at the top, no railing, no floor really. just a circular metal roof in the shape of a cone that was maybe 2 meters in diameter, sloping downward before the terrifying drop off to the plaza far below. zemfira climbed right out of the hole and slid over on the metal roof to give me room to come up. i followed her, but kept at least one foot on the solid stairs down in the hole on the roof. we stayed up there enjoying the view, until a policeman came up and yelled at us to come down. i guess we were spotted.
today, i went to shakhrisabz, the home town of timur and a little more off the tourist track. i took local transport there, which is remarkably easy considering that i don’t know any languages that are remotely useful here. in the north of the city is a the ruins of the ak serai, the “white palace.” the palace is two towers connected by a huge arch between them. at least it used to be, the arch later collapsed. of course, i had to climb one of the towers, which i did. this time, there were others climbing too, uzbek tourists. as i stood at the top and surveyed shakhrisabz, it suddently occurred to me that i was standing at the top of a building that has already partially collapsed and that is located in an earthquake zone. once that thought crept into my head, i came down. i think that’s all the climbing for now.
