Uzbekistan. What a drama!

This will be a  2-day report.

Yesterday

After a great night in Dushanbe we headed out for the quick drive to the border with Uzbekistan.

The Tajikistan exit was extremely painless and all over in about 15 minutes. The great thing was we had expected it to be a busy border with lots of queuing and waiting. This was the quietest border except mountain pass borders I have been too.

The Uzbekistan border was going well with everything proceeding although slowly with it looking like a great experience. How quickly things can turn to crap around your ears. We had finished all the paper work and it was then time for the customs people to start, and did they start in a big way. I was the first car in the line so it was no time when the entire back of my car was spread out on the ground behind the car with three or four people going through everything in the first aid kit asking what each sheet of tablets was for and not just once for each sheet, but for every time a sheet was picked up the same question again and again. This whole process for me went on for meat least an hour and a half.

The main focus of the search seemed to be drugs, weapons and porn with people going through everything I owned including going through my Ipad and all the photos more then once.

The end came eventually when the boss bloke called off the search and I was free to go. The big problem was we think that as the border was quite they had nothing to do.

We eventually all got away from the border at 1.30pm for the drive to Qarshi for our overnight stop. With a couple of small geographical errors and a couple police checks requiring all the Passport data to be hand written in books that will most likely be never looked at again and crosschecked we arrived in town about ½ hour after dark.

For the last 3 days we have had no Alternator for battery charging and no time to fit the new belt from Dushanbe so our battery was getting low to run the lights well. Thanks to Garry who drove in front of me and Peter behind I didn’t switch on my light till a couple of block from the hotel.           On arrival at the hotel Maurie and I decided to fit the belt in the morning, as it was a short day to Samarkand.

I woke at 5.30 then woke up Maurie ready for the job. I had everything set up ready to start when he and Mitchel arrived at 6.00am. we reckoned we shoule be finished ready to leave soon after 8.00am so as not to hold up the rest of the group too long.

You are thinking why so long to fit an Alternator belt? Well on Penny the Alternator is driven from the back of the clutch so fitting the belt requires the removal of the gearbox and all the peddles then refitting them again. That is why the job had been delayed due time shortages and fatigue.

As we had removed the gearbox only 2 weeks ago in Hotan the process went like a F1 pit crew job. We all knew what each other had to do and the job was finished and packed up ready to for us to sit down at breakfast with the others at 7.15am.

It was so great leaving town this morning with all our electric running and not have stuff switched of because we need to save battery for the ignition.

The run up to Samarkand was a short 150ks with a quick stop for a cuppa to arrive at our Hotel for 10.30am.

We had a pre-booked city tour that we started at 11.30 to the main sites, which we broke up with a lunch stop.

After lunch I returned to the hotel for a rather large Poppy nap to catch up from some sleep after busy days at the steering wheel in all the mountains. I have woken from that rest felling like a new person and I’m catching upon the blog stuff.

For the last 2 day we have driven past thousands of acres of cotton with the harvest in full swing. In some fields there are 100’s of people all hand picking cotton

Till next time with Internet this is it. If we don’t have internet tomorrow night you wont get a report till we reach Atyrau in Kazakhstan on the 28^th September.