Mir Sayid Bakhrom Mausoleum and Varakhsha Settlement

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Mir Sayid Bakhrom Mausoleum

   Navoi is a strange and rather brilliant city. It does not appear on any old caravan map, because it was founded in 1958 in the middle of the Kyzylkum desert, to house the workers of the gold and uranium industries and to give the Soviet planners a clean slate. It was named after Alisher Navoi, the fifteenth-century poet who wrote in Chagatai Turkic and who has become the national literary hero. Wide avenues, tidy parks and rows of apartment blocks give it the air of a model town, and in the heat of the afternoon it is remarkably quiet.

   Read the complete Mir Sayid Bakhrom Mausoleum write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Mir Sayid Bakhrom Mausoleum is where the day begins. Next is Chasma-i Ayub Khazira.

2. 2. Chasma-i Ayub Khazira

   North of Bukhara, the green irrigated oasis of the Zarafshan river spreads out in a patchwork of cotton fields, orchards, mulberry trees and villages, and the point named Chasma-i Ayub Khazira lies in this landscape, near the village of Khazara, between Vobkent and Gijduvon. Chashma-i Ayub, the spring of Job, is a name given to several holy springs in Central Asia, linked to the legend that the prophet Job struck the ground with his staff and water gushed forth in a time of drought. The most famous is in Bukhara itself, a mausoleum over a spring, and this site near Khazara may be another shrine of the same tradition, listed as part of the Silk Roads corridor of the Zarafshan valley.

   Read the complete Chasma-i Ayub Khazira write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Chasma-i Ayub Khazira comes up about 72 km into the recorded legs. Next is Varakhsha Settlement.

3. 3. Varakhsha Settlement

   Thirty kilometres or so west of Bukhara, beyond the last irrigated fields, the land turns to sand and salt crust at the edge of the Kyzylkum desert, and here a low mound of eroded mud brick rises from the flat ground. This is Varakhsha, once a flourishing town and the residence of the Bukhar Khudats, the pre-Islamic rulers of the Bukhara oasis. It thrived in the early medieval centuries, when the oasis extended further than it does today, and was abandoned around the eleventh century, probably as irrigation failed and the desert advanced.

   Read the complete Varakhsha Settlement write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 139 km into the recorded legs you reach Varakhsha Settlement. Next is back through Chasma-i Ayub Khazira.

4. 4. back through Chasma-i Ayub Khazira

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Chasma-i Ayub Khazira write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   back through Chasma-i Ayub Khazira, late in the day. Next is Mir Sayid Bakhrom Mausoleum.

5. 5. Mir Sayid Bakhrom Mausoleum

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Mir Sayid Bakhrom Mausoleum write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Back at Mir Sayid Bakhrom Mausoleum. That is the ride.