Shah-i-Zinda, Samarkand, Uzbekistan

Still at Darwaza I met three Italians and their twenty year old Fiat Panda doing the Mongol Rally (from a village near Modena to Ulan-Ude). I asked them if they could share a ride to the uzbek border and we ended up travelling Uzbekistan together for a week.

While the landscape doesn’t change  drastically crossing from Turkmenistan into Uzbekistan, the cities do. Having been important stops along the Silk Road, they are rich in colorful and impressive mosques, madrassas (religious schools) and mausoleums.

Some of the later can be found at the Shah-i-Zinda necropolis, where Kusam ibn Abbas, a cousin of the prophet Muhammed, who was buried.