A relaxing morning at the hotel to gird our loins for the arduous passage through the Uzbek-Kyrgyz border. A lovely experience just before we got to the border. We stopped for a drink and a teenage girl who had been weeding in a field came to talk to us. A few minutes later she came back with several of the most tasty tomatoes from a nearby polytunnel, which gave a lovely lasting memory of Uzbekistan.
The border was even worse than expected. We felt rather embarrassed at being taken to the front of huge queues of people with boxes of all sorts of shapes and sizes, including a man carrying the largest possible Hitachi television on his back. The people were mostly poor rural dwellers in traditional garb and they smiled sadly at us as we were taken to the front of the queue. Didn’t do us much good as the computers were down and nothing was happening. Got through Uzbekistan only to face even more hassle getting into Kyrgyzstan. We have to pay customs duty to get the van into the country. Not much (about £10) but they don’t take cards or Uzbek soms and if we have soms we have to get through a maze of fences and gates to a seedy-looking shop with “Valuta” (foreign currency) over the door to change soms into somonis at a scandalous rate of exchange. Got through the border eventually and must say that everybody was extremely friendly and courteous. Getting pissed off with hearing about Manchester City. Nobody has mentioned York City. Or even Carloway FC.
Had a very nice meal in Osh, consisting of thick slices of chicken with bacon and salami in a sandwich wrap made of some kind of vegetable, and a very helpful girl drew a map of how to get out of Osh on the M41 highway to Sary-Tash and Dushanbe. But we still got lost, and an Indian man helped us on our way. Stopped at the side of the road at the village of Mady at what we thought was a truck stop, chatted to an old man sitting at the side of the road who said we were welcome to park there for the night, and eventually a very pleasant young man came out of what we thought was a factory gate to talk to me. Chatted for half an hour, amazing myself with how much conversational Russian (as opposed to oil and gas stuff) I could use if I had to. His name is Nurbek and he worked on the Olympic Stadium in Sochi. Doesn’t like football!!!! Do I play?!!! Er, no. Had a peaceful nights sleep and set off for Sary-Tash in the morning with a temperature of 15 rather than the 30-35 of previous days.
