Blogs from Uzbekistan, Asia - page 26

I will copy and paste the email that I sent out first, and then explain. --- Hello, colleagues and friends! I wouldn't normally mass-mail to such a diverse group thus, but the events of the weekend and the near future warrant it. Friday evening as Mayzie and I were preparing our dinner, I began feeling a dull pain in my chest. For about an hour, the pain grew in intensity and locale, never sharp but with an increasing sense of tightness and pressure. Of course, I figured it was just the side-effect of some bad sausage I'd bought earlier in the day and tried to ignore it. After the first hour, the pain was strong enough that I could barely stand, and I lay down on the couch to tough it out. (bad sausage? not so ... read more

The last day in Nukus, and today's task is simply to head back for Tashkent. Rustam sends us off at the airport at noon and it feels like I was here only yesterday. We are on time, and so are the other passengers but there is no plane. Not to worry though, soon the familiar silhouette of an Anotnov An-24 graces the tarmac and we can be on our way to Yuzhny Airport without further delay. The evening is spent riding around Tashkent with Otabek looking for an open money exchange office after having got refunded some 100 USD bills that are seemingly impossible to cash in. It all works out in the end and after having done some late night shopping we say our goodbyes and I return to the hotel to start reading up ... read more

Picking up the pieces from last night we're quite happy to return to Nukus. We load up the car but before leaving we head downtown to the local Aral Sea museum, since the caretakers have opened it especially for us. It is a small hall with various regional memorabilia, paintings of fishermen, models of fishing vessels made by school children, photographs from the old canning factories, stuffed animals from the region and so on. Paging through a binder with old photographs I suddenly come across a photograph that captures my interest. It depicts some ships and a special tractor with a crane that I recognize from one of the photos I originally found on the Internet months ago. On this photo the tractor can be seen with around ten grounded vessel in the desert and I ... read more

Morning comes and again relieves me from the agony of unsuccesful sleep. I am very much glad to pack my gear and move on, even though I know that our next night will be spent somewhere in the desert. We have a simple breakfast consisting of (you guessed it) tea, bread and noodles. Rustam arrives with the UAZ jeep and we pack our belongings and remaining water back into the trunk. We also bring along two matresses and some bedsheets from the hotel. It is a beautiful sunny morning, and already it is starting to get hot. We begin the day by inspecting the sights in and around Moynaq, starting with the nearby fish canning factory. It used to employ several hundred, running three shifts around the clock, canning and distributing various kinds of locally caught ... read more

I wake up with a terrible cold and a running nose. Today's plan is to reach Nukus by air, but the plane does not leave until late in the afternoon. I decide to go sightseeing somewhere and inspect my new map, which has some nice colour photos of interesting places, and point the finger towards Kukeldosch Medressah near the Chor-Su bazar and metro station. The first step is actually reaching the metro, and I decide to give it a try on foot. Sure enough it doesn't take that long, but in doing so the heat has my skin soaked with water. Since I practised riding the metro with Shoista yesterday it turns out very easy for me to find the proper transfer point at Pachtakor and switch to the Uzbekistan line. However, my plan is foiled ... read more