Today we have a 334 km drive to Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. We once again have many people along the way waving to us.
Our drive out of Ferghana is on a backroad and we pass fruit orchards growing cherries, plums & apricots and farms growing lovely plump red tomatoes, small cucumbers & grapes.
Our first stop for the day is at Rishtan that is famous for it’s ceramics.
We visit the pottery of master potter Rustam Usmanov and his son gives a demonstration of throwing a couple of pots on the wheel. He makes it look so easy.
He explains the process of letting the green ware pots dry and then they dip them into a kaolin slip prior to the bisque firing.
The designs are painstakingly hand painted onto the pots and it is interesting to see 2 of the methods they use to put the designs on.
The geometric designs are drawn onto the pots using a ruler and pencil.
Other more complex design are first drawn onto tracing paper and pin holes are put around the edges to create a template. The template is then placed onto the piece of pottery and ash is rubbed over the tracing paper which transfers the pattern in a series of dots through the holes. This is then hand painted in the different colours and glazed before the final firing.
The pottery pieces here are exquisite mostly in blues, greens & red colours. We can’t help ourselves and buy 2 tea cups and a blue & white tile with a “Silk Road” pattern of a trader leading a fully laden camel. This will go very nicely with our Silk carpet that we bought yesterday.
We have morning tea at the pottery before driving onto Kokand to visit the 19th century Khudayar Khan’s Palace that took 10 years to build and was completed in 1873. Khudaya Khan was the last ruler of the Kokand Khanate before the Russians invaded Uzbekistan in 1876. The Russians used this palace as a garrison for it’s army when they proclaimed Uzbekistan as a Protectorate of Russia and they destroyed a large part of the palace as it had fallen into disrepair.
Today the restored Palace is a museum with brightly coloured ceilings and decorative posts.
We sit in the park to the side of the Palace and have our lunch under a large tree. Tourists are exempt from Ramadan so we are able to drink & eat during the day.
Our cars draw quite a large crowd, so driving away from our parking place is not that easy.
We continue on our way to Tashkent over a pass where we stop at the top to take in the views, have an ice cream & talk with the the local tourists.
We arrive into Tashkent at 5:30 pm in time to be taken by bus to a restaurant as the guests of the tour company that has organised our drive through “The Stans”.
We have a wonderful meal of salads, bread, yogurt dip and kebabs, followed by a birthday cake for Paula.
Each car is presented with a present of a Uzbekistan Tubeteika and a lovely matching purse, from the tour company, very kind and thoughtful of them.
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