Blogs from Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Asia - page 2

Avid followers of the blog will know that I was impressed by the talents of Ozodbek and his compere for the show. Just to give you an idea of how big (not in the physical sense) this guy is, the compere that is, we've attached a picture of him as a cover model. Now why did I drag Nicola to Uzbekistan? A lure of outpost towns in the desert, inhabited by the mainly static Uzbek people with a penchant for hard bargaining with the nomads of the Silk Road. This gave them plenty of money to build fantastic medressas and minarets inside wonderful walled cities. And what did we find? Prices that start at three times higher for tourists than locals (told you they bargained hard) Gold teeth - they are clearly loaded But despite all ... read more

We left Ashgabat behind having met up with some new passengers, three Australians, two American and two Dutch and headed off into the desert having first visited one of the largest markets in Central Asia, where you can buy anything from carpets to camels (We didn’t buy either). We visited both areas, the carpets were gorgeous and the camels were very smelly and noisy - but then I would too if I knew what fate was ahead of me! The desert was unrelenting - a huge sand dune desert which just went on and on and we spent two days driving through it. The temperature was 50° in the truck with all the windows open. The breeze blowing in was like a hot hairdryer blowing in your face and it was all quite uncomfortable. We set ... read more

We arrived into Tashkent after a pretty hectic day crossing the Kazakh/Uzbek border by foot. The border gaurds were seemingly pleasant on the outside, laughing and joking with us but were less amused when they looked through my bag for "guns and "narcotics"( or more likely some petty cash which they could pilfer for their own added tax) and all they found were postcards of Nantwich and Newark. I proceeded to tell them these were pictures our home towns and they could keep them as a gift if they liked, a momento of our impromtu meeting, unsurprisingly they didn't keep them and when they realised that money was not going to be found let us through! Tashkent is a city spreadover a large area, with both old ancient parts such as the mosques and newer soviet ... read more

Uzbekistan. We had been planning this trip for so long and finally the time had come around. My mate Leigh met me in Riga the day before we were due to fly into Tashkent. We started to get pumped up about the thought of seeing the Socceroos start there World Cup qualification campaign in a couple of days time so instead of wasting this new found energy we had a massive night in the Old Town of Riga. We spent most of the night in a Russian nightclub where most of the local women looked like FHM models....welcome to Latvia. A nasty hangover the following morning failed to wipe the smiles off our faces as we prepared for the outward journey. Lido was pretty much the first and only stop for the entire day: a traditional ... read more