Uzbekistan

23 May – Uzbekistan – ~169 miles

A bit more of the Silk Road… Samarkand.
Relatively short ride, arriving in enough time to look around some of the major sites, before a “team dinner”.
Impressive looking city, plenty of cool big old stuff, and when taking a taxi to the restaurant for a (large and cheap) dinner – new city looks modern/prosperous.

A day walking around Bukhara – done in a couple of hours really, including the inside of the Ark (the old fort).
Spent most of remainder of the day trying to figure out alternatives to sitting down and drinking beer. While sitting down and drinking beer.

21 May – Uzbekistan – ~284 miles

Uzbekistan – not much petrol to be had. Nearly all cars are running on one of several derivations of natural gas, with lots of “Metan” or “Propan” stations available. “Benzine” or “Petrol” – not so much… and where there are some, they’re often selling only 80-grade petrol. Not sure how the bike will handle that, but need to ask the owners of the bike if it would be acceptable in an emergency. But today – made the journey, with the petrol sign flashing a warning for several dozen miles… but made it.

Rode from Khiva to Bukhara – the second of the “Big Three” Silk Road cities in Uzbekistan… many miles of boring highway on fresh concrete roads, and quite a few miles on “in-progress” motorway… at best, pot-hole trap-filled sections (feeling good about dodging a few potholes, then see a six-foot wide 1-foot deep trench I’m about to hit)… and some simply “this isn’t road, this is just base rock with remnants of road gravel with pits”.

A late afternoon recon of Bukhara – suggests it’s a slightly bigger version of Khiva. Full day tomorrow to wander about a bit more, but I’m figuring the day is going to go similarly to Khiva. Although I might need to re-stock on local currency… I don’t know how, but 1 million Som didn’t seem to stretch that far.

Probably the first “proper” Silk Road town on the trip. And pretty cool. Had no idea what to expect, wandered into the “Old City” yesterday evening – and discovered a massive wall around it made of mud. Went back in again today, had a bit of a meander… a fairly small place once you get your bearings – the north end of the Old City being actual locals/houses/kids-on-street, and the southern end – tourist-central.
I believe it hit 36 today as I was walking around… but luckily I realised how small the actual number/distribution of central sights was… and punctuated the day with beers, lunch, beers, a “haircut”, beers… until I ran out of money. It turns out to be rather difficult to correctly budget how much cash one should carry, when one’s normal “wallet supply” is about the size of a brick.
So – came back to the hotel, and found internet connection good enough to connect to my own website, and even post photos… albeit extremely slowly.

Local food is turning out to be rather tasty, but it’s getting a little difficult to eat sensibly when a soup, salad, main, and a couple of beers – is costing around £8. One just wants to try a little of everything… considering I think I’ve only got 4 more days here.