What do you write when a place cannot be compared to anything -- a completely new and unique experience. Starting with the Ka'aba in Mecca may appear preposerous, but the Ka'aba was my first point of reference for the square mausoleum which appeared out of the dark. Take an image of a solid cuboid structure that awed even Genghis Khan when he spare the oldest Muslim monument in Central Asia.
Compared to the dozens of humbling structures across the vast old town of Bukhara the mausoleum is tiny; and instead of dominating squares or peaceful pools it is tucked away in a barely lit park. Yet it is more sinister than all of the monuments together. This mausoleum sits between life and death like a skull, not completely inanimate -- a skull carved like indian ivory, similarly riddled with groves and twists. The carvings on each side goes deep enough to present a grid serving more as a gill than a window, so that the figure inside could breath. Instead of a figure is a single imposing tombstone, only fully present at one angle with the help of the moon light. Inside is a slight disturbance of flapping, and then silence.
There was only time for a tantalising taste of Bukhara, somewhere that would take months to uncover. It was instantly refreshing to be dropped off by the most peaceful pool in my experiences. Gentle sunlight and ancient mulberry trees, as old as the pool, gave all kinds of people the choice to find their optimal cumfort, perhaps dining, drinking, sleeping or strolling. Madrassas flanked the square with the pool and a statue of a semi-mythical odd ball character. Instead of being highly organised like a shopping mall, as in Samarkand, these had a few rooms inhabited by children making carpets and, presumably, their manager sipping tea. Again unlike Samarkand the occasional door was left unattended, without even a policeman to grease the palm of. These doors gave access to upper levels of the madrassa where the professors would be housed.
Until the mausoleum, my image of Bukhara was watching the sun set over square, dominated by a gigantic free standing minaret. If the square was dominated by the minaret then consider that two madrassas peered across at each other past the minaret. Each of the madrassas was at least as big as the madrassas in the Registan in Samarkand. Until this point I had been mislead to believe that the Samarkand Registan was central Asia's grandest experience. The setting of this focal point in Bukhara, one of many, appeared more real as the town around brought the experience alive. Perhaps a taste of medieval Central Asia was being offered, and that offer was exceptionally peaceful. As the sun was slipping over the horizon, a stream of migrating birds stretched across the sky from the furthest point in the West to the furthest point in the East. Even hundreds of thousands of birds made almost no sound in this holiest of places.
All of ancient Bukhara is encased in the remains of what was once twelve kilometres circumpherence of heavy wall --- walls as heavy as those of the collosal Ark; in front of which, little more than a century ago, British visitor dug their own graves to massage the Sultan's vanity. Elsewhere sublime peace was maintained.
