Our ride to Yazd bus station arrived promptly. Iranians are very punctual, if not 5-10 mins early. We enjoyed the cool of the early morning once we’d found our bus. Passengers started to get grumpy when 9am came and we still hadn’t left (it was supposed to be an 8:30). A young woman who was studying in Yazd had sat opposite us and we’d been chatting to her as she spoke good English, she’d made a deliberate beeline for that seat in a relatively empty bus so we knew she was keen to engage. She told us that the driver was saying it not his fault he couldn’t go, that there was some problem with the company that they couldn’t understand something to do with accidents and the company be temporarily closed. The men on the ... read more

We were on an 8:21am train to Yazd so our accommodation did us an early breakfast and dropped us off at the train station for 8. It didn’t arrive until 9. We looked enviously at the old rolling stock that had earlier arrived from Tehran as our rather shabby modern train arrived. It was dirty and boiling hot. It you think about an modern train that has no opening windows so you rely on the aircon but someone forgot to put the aircon on and stuck you in a desert you get the idea. Thankfully when we finally pulled out of the station some faint aircon came on to take the edge off. It was an agonising slow trip, lots of work is being done replacing or building more tracks next to the existing one so ... read more

Leaving Uzbekistan was straightforward, we had to queue to go through 4 sets of security/immigration checks but that was about as exciting as it got. 3.5hrs later we were in Dubai to the news that Trump is the next US President. We focussed on the important things in life like getting more hand sanitizer, soap and shampoo. We think it was helpful having an Iranian visa (instead of doing a VOA) as we got questioned before they'd let us on either flight about visas. We flew through Iranian immigration with a barely a glance, just a straight stamp in. The bags turned up pretty efficiently given the shabbiness of the airport. We changed a few dollars to get a bit of local currency and then caught a taxi to a hotel we'd emailed and booked the ... read more

We slept well but still had a leisurely start to the day – we’re on holiday. We reconsidered about breakfast being ok when it gave us both stomach ache so we took a very slow walk to the Registan, our first stop. The guidebook describes it as arguably the most awesome single sight in Central Asia. The 3 buildings are among the world’s oldest preserved madrassas (Genghis Khan having destroyed the older stuff), the oldest having been completed in 1420. They are huge. We paid the entrance fee and went into each, highlights were in Tilly-Kari Madrassa (the middle one); the mosque as it is intricately decorated in gold and the young girl who took us into her family’s shop in what used to be a professor’s room, where she explained the meaning behind the symbols ... read more

We got up at a leisurely time and after breakfasting in what looked like the boiler room (which was hot inside) we headed out to see the sights properly. We first went back to Kalon Minaret and after poking our noses into the medressa we paid to go into the mosque. With a large courtyard and deep sides with large arched ceiling it is big enough to hold 10,000 people. We had it almost to ourselves - tour groups had clearly had a more leisurely start to the day than us. Next we walked over to the Ark a royal town which is Bukhara oldest structure and has been occupied since the 5th century. We checked out the mosque, courtyard and each of the small museums but didn't think it was worth the hefty entrance fee. ... read more