It’s psst psst psst here kitty kitty meowww meowww all over town.
From the Biennial website: “Bukhara Biennial is a transformative and evolving platform for contemporary art and culture launching in September 2025 in the city of Bukhara, a UNESCO Creative City of Craft & Folk Art.” If you’re interested you can read about it and if not-so-much, no problem. I had no idea it was going to be here!
The theme is Recipes for Broken Hearts departing from a local legend where “the father of modern medicine Ibn Sina invented the recipe of the staple Uzbek dish, plov, to cure a prince’s sickness caused by an impossible love for the daughter of a craftsman.”
There were plenty of people around, I guess I just waited for a clear shot. Those silver floaties are part of an art project.
Pots, bowls, and cups on the outside, plates and platters on the inside.
An imagined prayer space made from palm scrap.
The Bukhara Museum of Fine Art joined the theme.
I thought it was interesting how they built these display boxes, to avoid hammering into the old walls.
There are shops and displays in each of those alcoves.
Below are drapes celebrating the historic canal that bisects the old city fed by the Zeravshan River and largely responsible for Bukhara’s prosperity. The Zeravshan River used to be a major tributary of the Amu Darya.
In a related note, remember back at the beginning of my trip when I went to the isolated and desolate Nukus area. Most people go there to visit the Aral Sea, once the 3rd or 4th largest inland lake, now shrunk to almost nothing and virtually dead. I chose not to go there because you must travel many hours on rutted, rocky, unpaved roads. Here’s what google’s AI has to say: “The Amu Darya River used to flow into the Aral Sea, but now little to none of its water reaches the sea due to massive diversion for irrigation projects, particularly those for cotton cultivation during the Soviet era. This diversion has led to the severe shrinking of the Aral Sea. The river’s historical path was also altered, but the primary cause of its current “dead” state near the Aral Sea is water diversion for agriculture.”
All the items on this menu are “Brutal”.
And this is the Simurgh on the portal of Nadir Divan-Beghi madrasah, part of Lab-i Hauz complex.
Surrounding the historic center are these side streets of hotels, all pretty small, maybe originally homes.
I have been eating a modest breakfast at the hotels and one more meal around 3-4. By this day I was longing to feel full, so I got this pizza and I ate it. Not that it was good, but I was happy.
This is what’s left of the Jewish Quarter in Bukhara. There are only a couple hundred Jewish people left from what was once 20,000-30,000 and they don’t have a rabbi but a layman can do services. There is a small museum and a residence available for a tour that takes about 20 minutes, which I did do.
A room from a house once used as both a synagogue and a mosque.
The cellar that led to the museum.
The man doing the tour was a Muslim and anxious to present an Uzbekistan that was always welcoming and tolerant of all people and all religions.
This guy is the legendary folk hero Khoja Nasreddin Efendi (1208–1285). You can click the link and also read more on wikipedia of course. He “is a character commonly found in the folklores of the Muslim world, and a hero of humorous short stories and satirical anecdotes.” We are reading his stories in my zoom group!
The internet in my hotel has been so bad, it shows up for two minutes and then disconnects for ten. What an agonizing drag. So I went to this restaurant below where the connection was better, slow but still, there, so I was grateful.
