Uzbekistan Pt 9

One of the towers of Bhukara ...

Bjorn acting as entertainment for the locals in one of the villages in Uzbekistan. You'd think he was turning cart-wheels with all the interest being shown, but he was only changing an air-filter!

Back to Samarqand again ...

In gaining the much treasured Chinese visa, there was no need to wait a whole 7 days to pick up my Kyrgyz' visa. And have got to say here, that I really can't be arsed to go into another over-long anecdote about persuading the guys at the Kyrgyzstan embassy to take my passport off of 7-day visa processing pile, and put it on to a smaller pile that's labelled 'same day', just so I could the heck out of there. But I will tell ya this much ... and that is once I finally gained ingress to the Kyrgyz embassy had to do some fast-talking, as the Consul initially told me that 'it can't be done'. But I managed to encourage him otherwise, as it was evidently a lot more work and hassle for him to return my money and passport without visa (my idea was to apply for it in Dushanbe). And so it was, that he finally accepted my nice crisp new $50 dollar note to upgrade the application. Over went the fifty dollar bill and back came nothing! “Come back at 4 O'clock” he told me, so trustingly went along my way intending to be back there on the dot at the prescribed time. It was fairly clear, that the absence of a receipt meant this one was 'off the books'. But hey ... so long as my visa got processed, I didn't care if my fifty bucks was going to stand the embassy crew for their first round of drinks on a Friday night. In walking back out, looked at my watch to see how long I had to wait till the 4 O'clock pick-up time. It was 4 O'clock! Anyway, heading back across towards the small crowd who were waiting in the shadows cast by the trees on the other side of the avenue, and found my new fellow traveller buddies Alvaro & Salva'. These guys had been away from their home country for years, with plans to keep travelling for many more years to come. My Spanish buddies were both overland cyclists and were waiting to pick up their visas too. In touching base with these guys I didn't notice the fearful heat and time passed quickly. Suddenly the call for people to pick up their passports and visas went out.

Having done my 'time' here in Tashkent was getting out of there. It was too bloody expensive for one, and with little or nothing else to encourage me or other tourists to tarry, it was back to Samarqand.

The picture above was taken in Bhukara and is nothing to do with Samarqand, but as it's Uzbekistan decided to put it in an as it's similar architectural style throughout the region ...

I've got little to say about the journey back from Tashkent, except to say it was a mirror image of the ride there. Another dodgy night-ride during the last hour that had me gritting my teeth, but little else to remark upon here apart from that. And the same applies for the one-night stopover back in the Samarqand, and that my mad dash back had drained most of my 'good stuff', leaving me feeling as if I could stay for at least one more night to recover. Once again, my inbuilt warning system failed to send enough feedback, to prompt me to dig my heels in and do just that. Bjorn's urgency it turns out was somewhat misplaced, and was to prove that two more nights chillin' in the cool shade of the guest-house with cold beer, would have been way, way better than what was to come ...