Having only managed to visit Bukhara after hours, cruise the empty streets and use a nice little guesthouse and its comfy bed for insufficient sleep, I had a weary train journey back to Tashkent to contemplate my situation and the adventures of the past few days.
My visit to Bukhara really highlighted the problem with fixed schedules. I say visit, it was more like a rebound off. Bukhara is another historically significant city in Uzbekistan and I had been persuaded by the people at Sundowners and STA Travel that one day, in fact one afternoon, would be enough to see what Bukhara had to offer. I was easily persuaded as I hadn't done any research and didn't want to spend too much time (and therefore money) making my way to Beijing... I was interested in Central Asia, but it was not a priority.
Ruslan and I had talked about my plans and schedule, but somewhere along the line we musn't have understood each other – not that surprising given the extreme limitations of our shared language – and so I thought by joining Ruslan and his friends on the road trip to Bukhara, we would leave later than the bus, travel faster and I would still arrive with time to see some of what Bukhara had to offer. As the day evolved, it became more and more apparent that we wouldn't make it to Bukhara until the evening and I resigned myself to that, deciding that to attempt to discuss our miscommunication would achieve nothing useful even if I was able to get my point across. And so I went with the flow, happy to chose people over places, now over history, living life over observing evidence of others'. Bukhara will have to wait for my return. There are other interesting things to see in Uzbekistan beyond the scope of this visit and what Bukhara has to offer is likely to be the same whenever I might return in the future.
