Samarkand

This is what I came for - to stand in the middle of Registan Square in Samarkand. Beauty beyond imagination.

And the inside is worthy of the outside.

Another trellis window. I cannot tell you how many beautiful buildings there are in Samarkand. I have a huge number of pictures and I hope I shall be able to recall what was where. I am downloading my photos to the iPad every day, cropping etc and then uploading them to Picasa with captions. It does at least tell me where I was and when because the album title contains the date and place. We spent all today sightseeing. Hard work for someone who was poorly yesterday. I sat out the tour of the excavations and the cemetery

We visited a factory making mulberry paper but this was so interesting that I will finally set up a website when I get home and put in a section on visiting a silk factory as well. The only thing which I have to write down is that they showed four herbs for natural dyes, pomegranate husks, asparagus tops, madder and walnut shells and were adamant they used no mordant or chemicals. The textile experts amongst us were not convinced. The silk was for carpet weft so was not at all tightly spun.

We were invited to try our hands at marbling paper at the paper factory. The above is a stunning piece done by Barbara. It was done on water not carrageen. Water is the Japanese way.

 

Posted with Blogsy