It's little incidents that make travelling so interesting.
Seeing children playing games that I played when I was a child, but which have now been superceeded largely in the west brings back memories. Games like marbles (Tuyoq, Xinjang); Jacks (Laos); Cats Cradle (Mongolia and others); and the one that's like cats cradle crossed with skipping and seems to involve elastic (usually knicker elastic nicked from Mum's sewing box, I remember) which I've seen all over Asia.
Kites are a big thing in Uzbekistan. Even the scruffiest urchin has a some newspaper on a light wood frame and piece of string. The poshest one we saw was about 4 feet high, clear plastic with a red cross and tassles, being flown in a park near the Samarkand bazaar. It looked like a strong gust would have lifted the boy on the string off his feet!
There are other incidents, too. Navrus festivities in the Registon in Bukhara, where we watched the tightrope walker walk, run, jump and slide across his tightrope, while holding on to a guidewire, accompanied by long trumpets and drums. We wandered off when he finished so as to avoid his perfoming monkey performing. We drifted over to the crowd around the wrestling, where Andy got suitably engrossed, and gave me a running commentary. As we were in a crown of shifty looking blokes mostly (although the police in the front seats just looked enthusiastic) I was aware that it was possible there were pickpockets around.
I saw someone sidle up to Andy and reach towards him gently. The next thing I knew Andy was holding a tiny copy of Koranic verses, and I was being offered one too. Then we were given a little amulet style necklace/holder for them, and we just about managed to gather together a sensible comment and express thanks before the guy drifted away. 'Hello' and 'Thank you' here are accompanied by a lovely hand-on-heart gesture and slight bow of respect which, as we were warned, is quite addictive.
No-one has told the Uzbek people (many of who are Tajiks and Kazakhs due to Stalins divide and conquer boundary strategy) that velour and swirly gold embroidary shouldn't be worn with, say, fringing of fake coins, or that eye-wateringly bright ikat patterns shouldn't be made into suits. Needless to say, we revelled in this wonderful explosion of cheerful decoration - tassled trousers, caps with long fringes of silver or gold beads, the traditional colour mix of bright purple, white, yellow and green, often with some shocking pink or magenta to liven it up a bit. The Uzbeks seem to be the friendliest people we have ever met, and most of them are not only happy for us to take their photos, we are now totally used to being stopped in the street for them to have (many) photographs taken of us with them, their friends, families and random interested passers-by. It is all done with such friendliness that refusal would be utterly churlish, although when we felt a queue forming behind us at one point we did take advantage of a lovely guy who just wanted to talk to us, to make a run for it! We ended up talking to him for several hours though.
Anyway, Samarkand is quite lovely. The centre is fairly small, and most attractions are easily walkable. Uzbekistan doesn't have so much traffic yet, so pollution is fairly low (after China anyway). The Registon is an utterly sumptuous display of Islamic tiling, with more complex geometry than you can really take in. Much of the decoration comes from stylised Arabic script which takes a bit of spotting in some cases - motifs are repeated, turned, twisted, pixellated, embellished, spiralled, foliated and sometimes just too big to see. Unfortunately, the medressas that make up the Registon (pronounce it like the Ariston advert) are now all mini-shopping malls for tourists inside, but I did pay my bribe to the policeman in charge (3000 sum now, up from 2000 in the guide book) to climb the steep and dark stairs to the top of one of the mostly decorative minarets of the Ulugbek Medressa. The view from the top was sublime - from a storks eye view of the Registon, all the way to the Pamir Mountains, shimmering with snow in the distance.
