Oct 2 - Fergana, Uzbekistan - photos of our Two Day Visit

We spend 2 nights in Uzbekistan and will return to tour the rest of the country

We drove from Kyrgystan to the Uzbekistan border where we had to walk with our luggage on unpaved dirt paths. Fortunately there were locals wanting to earn some money. We gladly paid them to haul our luggage in a cart directly from one bus in Kyrgystan to our new bus in Uzbekistan. The first town we drove thru was Margilan

Driving into Uzbekistan

Bek, our guide in Uzbekistan told us that cotton production is the country’s main economy (driven by Soviet rule before independence in 1991) We passed lots of cotton fields

Tons of these little vans are everywhere

 

First stop in the village of Rishton was a visit to a silk factory where we saw workers taking the silk from the cocoons, wetting the silk and winding the strands onto bobbins

  We watched the women weaving silk threads to create beautiful patterns

 We watched the worker on the left wrapping silk threads and tie dying silk to create beautiful scarves which of course we couldn’t resist buying!

 Next stop was the ceramic workshop of Rustam Usmanov.  After watching an artist shape the clay, the piece is fired and cooled, the artist then draws a design on the piece with a pencil 

 This artist is hand painting a plate that has been fired once.  When completed it will be in beautiful greens, blues and yellows.

The artist we watched makes his brush handles from this bush when it has dried

 The brushes are made from mohair because the hair is very fine and perfect for painting intricate sections on the pottery

We stopped in Kokand and visited the Kokand Karnate Khan’s palace.

    Minaret on the grounds

Columns were made with wood from India carved in Uzbekistan.  The setting of these columns provided a natural air conditioning for overflow of Muslims attending the mosque