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7NNT25: Day 8 – The road to Khiva
Soundtrack: “Wide Open Road”, The Triffids Somewhere on the road to Khiva, with no other people in sight, the only signs of civilisation being the power poles and the road itself, my phone showing no signal, I glanced at the dashboard and the realisation kicked in: the damn fuel light is on. I don’t know when it came on, but I figure that if this car is like most, that means it has at most somewhere around 50km worth of fuel. I start doing the maths, if we’re doing just over 110km/h, that gives us maybe 30 minutes. I’m not panicking yet, afterall the driver seems quite calm about it,…
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7NNT25: Day 7 – Bukhara
Soundtrack: “People Who Died”, Jim Carroll Band A full day in Bukhara that kicked off with meeting a new guide at 9am. She spoke fast and I’m really bad at remembering names, so I’m not sure what exactly her name was. Uzbek names also take a bit of getting used to, there’s a lack of Shazza, Kazza, Bazza and Dazza here. Mix this with a morning of more stories about 16th-19th century Uzbek Amirs and I’m sadly floundering in the name department. All credit to the guides, they definitely know their stuff and have got all the names, dates, and places sorted, but it’s a lot for someone who’s only…
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7NNT25: Day 6 – Samarkand to Bukhara
Soundtrack: Having hit peak Timur, it was time today to leave Samarkand and head further down the Silk Road to the old capital of Uzbekistan, Bukhara. I keep remembering and then forgetting that these are kind of the footsteps of Marco Polo, who came through here 800 or so years ago. Would have been cool if he’d been like the Vikings, and left some graffiti behind, but can’t have everything. I can safely say that he never took the fast train and watched the countryside scroll at 159 km/h. Though the fast train didn’t have the same level of service today, there were no free pastries or tea, boarding was…
