Bukhara

I felt awful in the morning. I couldn't face eating bread, the only carbohydrates I could stomach was sugar in tea & from a handful of dried fruit. The ride to Bukhara was of the mind over my body's determination (in the face of an empty tank) to do as little as possible. It spurred me on that the French trio of cyclists that I had met the previous day were in better shape than me & keen to arrive in Bukhara.

Fortunately Bukhara wasn't far & by 10:30am we were having breakfast at a guesthouse, though I could only manage to eat fruit & yoghurt, while our rooms were being prepared. While the others went to explore the city I enjoyed the sensation of being clean & doing nothing on a very comfortable bed. I managed to go for a short walk in the afternoon but felt like less like an intrepid explorer/adventurer than a tired old man, moving so slowly & carefully.

I could see that Bukhara was something special. The guesthouse was next to a historical square in the old town called Lyabi-Hauz, which means in Tajik 'around the pool'. It was surrounded by fine medressas (koranic schools) & caravanserays, many decorated with beautiful blue tiles. With Bukhara being a big tourist draw these places were turned over to the sale of carpets & souvenirs.

Like many of the public places in Bukhara Lyabi-Hauz used to have, so said my information, it had a pool at the centre. It survived being filled in following the Russian takeover in the early 19th century, which many others did not. The Russians, with their European ideas of sanitation, recognised that the stagnant water, used for drinking as well as cleaning, in these pools was bad for public health. Even with the introduction of a better water supply more than 100 years ago the water & sewerage standards were far below what would be acceptable back home. Toilets in 19th century buildings were of the disgusting pit variety & many places to relied on maintaining some kind of cistern for their water, which was not of drinkable quality unless your stomach was used to.

My experience of getting sick (from food not water) made me review my earlier idea to habituate myself to local water. I realised that my drinking unfiltered & untreated water in Turkmenistan, while it wasn't the cause of the illness, it could quite easily have been. In future all water drawn from anything other than a spring or untainted high mountain stream would be either filtered or treated before drinking. It would cost me time but probably save me grief. In the evening I was able to eat some proper solid food. I hoped this meant I was on the mend.

I cycled 38 km in 2 hours & 36 minutes
Total so far 6430 km in 90 days