I'm glad I prefer the heat to the cold, as it's boiling here!!! It's dry heat though, so I'm not actually feeling it that much, but a couple of people in my group are struggling. I am now travelling with 1 Canadian, 2 Irish and a fellow Aussie. The combination of all our different accents and slang is amusing us, although confusing our tour guide at times! After leaving the capital, we flew to Urgrench a small agricultural town in the North West region and then made our way to Khiva, a captivating ancient city. Now I'm not very good at [View Full Entry]

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The next day I finally have an easy border crossing and enter Uzbekistan. I stay in the historic town of Khiva, inside the ancient city walls. After Turkmenistan it feels really nice here - people are friendly, relaxed and interested, and of all the muslim countries I've been to, it's by far the one that ahs best integrated the religion into their lives without it interrupting it. I walk the streets of the old town, taking lots of photos of mosques and madrassas. I was sorry to only spend such a short amount of time here, but did have my first [View Full Entry]

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I will laugh at an English tourist... You set off for a 6 week trip. You decide on day 1 that you're so homesick that you want to go home. What do you do? You give up and go home almost immediately. Well this one did, but not before coming out with: "so this is raw onion?" and (passing by the mausoleum of Ismail Somoni) Me: "Somoni's really popular in Tajikistan, they've even named their currency after him." Him: "What's their currency called then?" Me: "Um, the somoni." The Somoni mausoleum was restored to shiny newness, like almost everything of antiquity [View Full Entry]

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After having left Turkmenistan, I found myself in a quite deserted spot in Uzbekistan: Konye Urgench in the Autonomous Republic of Karakalpakstan, which covers the North Western part of the country. Its capital is Nukus, a quite unimpressive town with an extraordinary art museum and an omnipresent heritage of the Soviet Union. The city was an outpost of the Union where biological warfare was developped and the fish, which came from Aral Sea, was processed. The only reason for tourists to enter this city [View Full Entry]

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We stayed inside the old wall, a small hostel with courtyard gardens, really nice and close to all the sights. the next day was a city tour with our guide for the rest of Uzbekistan, Jalol, really funny guy. Anyway I really love this city, all the sights are close by and really gorgeous architecture, but same as before, cannot be bothered remembering the names of places, i know i should make an effort but with the pace our group is trucking through different countries at the moment all i can do is send photos and maybe later take my [View Full Entry]

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Sleeping late again and reducing my breakfast intake to a sip of Tip Top fruit juice form the nearly deserted hotel bar. We're going to spend the entire day exploring the city of Khiva, some 30 kilometers to the southwest of Urgench, very close to the Turkmen border. Its main attraction is the Ichon Qala, the old city surrounded by an imposing mud wall. It has been preserved and restored like an open air museum, and there are plenty of beautiful buildings around, including mosques, medressas and some major minarets. Although marked a UNESCO World Heritage site some purists would regard [View Full Entry]

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