After camping with the herders we sadly split from the other two teams. They are heading through Kazakhstan and we are going down through Uzbekistan. They have been great guys to travel with and really epitomise the rally - two blokes from Cornwall who crashed their car on the way to the rally start in Hyde Park, can't read maps, don't even have maps, know nothing about cars and are always optimistic! We are planning to join up again on thursday though for the remaining journey through Kazakhstan Russia and Mongolia.
Shortly after that we filled up with petrol (where we found that a tube of pringles costs 3 times a litre of petrol!) and headed out into the wilderness. Wilderness does not quite convey the 1200 miles of nothingness though - just desert from horizon to horizon for 3 days! The roads ranged from the sublime (a strip of brand new tarmac with no markings that you good comfortably have done 200mph on. Tallulah didn't quite feel up to this though), to the ridiculous - roads so bad that we chose to drive in the desert next to them, roads under construction as we were on them so we were driving next to the graders, roads which are more pothole than road etc). Tallulah didn't quite come out of this unscathed and her rear bumber was shaken off by the vibrations, so we are currently driving with one brake light, one indicator, one side light, no main lights and no reverse lights! Otherwise the old girl continues to amaze us and just carries on plugging away!
Enough about roads. The Uzbek boarder post was the most laid back affair ever. We thought this attitude might be a one off, but this trait has continued to the numerous police check points where we get stopped. They stop us, have a friendly chat, then send us on our way without even looking at our passports! At one place they even stopped us and gave us watermelon - I thought we were meant to be bribing them?
After the 3 days hard driving covering 1200 miles through absolute wilderness and desert we have finally arrived at the oasis of Bukhara - jewel of the silk road and, more importantly, perveyors of $2 shashleyk and cold beer. We love Uzbekistan. For a start we changed $100 and were given a wadge of cash back over an inch thick! You don't need a wallet here but more a small train of porters just to carry your money around! We are currently staying in a "B&B" which is over 250 years old and is run by an absolute eccentric who insists on giving us fresh tea and grapes. More importantly Will and I had our first shower in 5 days (seperately of course!) and have even gone for clean boxers AND deoderant - such extraveganse no doubt brought on by our amazing surrounds.
This post really does only scratch the surface of the stories and the amazing time we are having! Off to Samaraknd tomorrow before sauntering back into Kazakhstan and beyond!
Love Jules and Willxx
PS. Apparantly we just missed the Russian invasion of Georgia - we were in that region only 4 days ago.
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