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The Silk Road Journey Pt3: The Holy City of Bukhara

April 21, 2012 by Bino 7 Comments

From Khiva, we left early in the morning for the long and bumpy ride to the holy city of Bukhara – our next stop in the trip. People weren’t kidding when they said that the road was bad. The road conditions between the two cities were probably the worst I have seen in any highway! I reckoned it would not have made much difference had we driven on the sandy desert path instead.

the kalon mosque

The drive only reinforced the idea of how isolated Khiva was. We practically crossed a desert that extended for hundreds of miles, across empty wastelands with nobody and nothing but the odd shrub in sight.

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The Real Iran Pt4: Esfahan – Half the World in a City

November 24, 2011 by Bino 15 Comments

reflections at the sheikh lotfollah mosque

After two days of wandering aimlessly in maze-like streets and surveying what looked like Aladdin’s Agrabah, it was time to make a move again. I left Yazd with both sadness and excitement. I really liked the city, and told myself that I’d return one day. But at the same time, I was looking forward to our next city, which everyone we met along the way had been raving about. There was this rhyme that a local had taught me, it was a Persian adage that goes: Esfahan Nesf e Jahan which means “Esfahan IS half the world.” To the unfamiliar, this may seem like a cheeky thing to say. But I later realized Esfahan is one of those places where you really have to be there to see it. Home to awe-inspiring mosques, palaces, gardens, churches and bridges, Esfahan is considered the masterpiece of Persia and widely considered to be – you better believe it – one of the world’s finest cities.

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