After a thorough search of the truck, following it’s detour through Tajikistan, it’s been determined that the Tajiki police stole Frosty’s Speedos. You probably had to be there.
Driving to Bukhara today we stopped in a village to visit a fort built by Alexander the Great, which happened to have a pond full of Holy Fish on top. Not overly excited by this a couple of us wandered round the corner to take photos of a party and got led into the family home and fed vodka by a drunk chap. He turned out to be the uncle of the boy whose circumcision party we’d wandered into.
Today was Bronwens birthday so we bought her a princess tiara, which she wore all day. People kept giving her funny looks as we all wandered round town. Turns out the tiara was actually a wedding hat, briefly worn by the virginal bride for her wedding night.
That evening we wild camped near a lake. Too near a lake it turned out as the truck sank a couple of feet into the mud and we had to dig it out and collect enough rocks and branches to build a small road back to solid ground.
The next night was spent in Desert Yurts – similar to the mountain ones at Song Kul, but with fancier doors to keep the sand out. Also go to ride double humped camels for the first time.
Another day driving towards Bukhara saw us being very touristy. We visited cotton fields (big field – lots of cotton), ruined Caravanserais (big field – lots of rocks), an enormous well (big hole – lots of water) and a ceramic factory (big building – lots of pottery).
