but this is insane. Our Airbnb tonight in Samarkand.

Uzbeks love their cars and in particular to wash them. There are car washes everywhere and in the afternoon we decided to get rid of the grime and dirt that has accumulated over the last few days.

A simple and quick high pressure washing is unknown here, every car is shampooed by hand several times using different detergents (the scent of which you can choose yourself), interior cleaning is always included in the package, and drying the car involves a big hair drier used to blow away the last drop of water from difficult to access areas like the grille or the rearview mirrors. It costs a few dollars only so I asked for the full package.

At the end of the procedure the car was clean like never before, but a bolt was missing from then rear right window. I quickly realized that it must have come loose already before and that we were lucky to discover the issue before losing (and breaking) the window somewhere off road. The damage turned out to be even bigger, one of the hinges was broken off completely. We had to remove the window, find some strong epoxy glue, fix the hinge, find a replacement bolt and then mount and adjust the whole thing again. This is how a 5 minutes car wash finally became a 3.5 hour repair marathon.

For almost 2 millennia Bukhara has been the center of Persian culture and education, and you can still see that today. There are countless madrasas and mosques as well as a nice fort. In contrast to Khiva, however, it does not feel like a museum.

The biggest mosque is (literally) Kalan mosque for 10000 people. We were the only tourists there:

Its minaret was the tallest building of Asia in the 12. century, and it served multiple purposes: the muezzin was calling for prayer from the middle of the tower, the upper levels were used as watchtower to detect fires and as a lighthouse for caravans approaching Bukhara.

The nicest building of the town, in my opinion, is the Samanid mausoleum, however. Only one type and size of brick was used to create all these ornaments: