redder than red

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I left Bukhara without seeing Bukhara.

The plan was to do this another time. The road needed more walking first.

So I set out this morning, and I walked.

One of the first things I saw was this gas station, which had a rather long line of cars waiting in front of it:

I figured that this was one reason why there were so many cars running on natural gas in this country – you could never count on other fuel being available.

Walking was hard for me today, because I was suffering from a bad back. I made frequent stops to rest, bend, and stretch. One time when I stopped in a little village and got out a loaf of bread with some fruit juice, these two schoolgirls stopped and said hi:

And they did so in English: “Hello!” “Where are you from?” “What is your name?” “How old are you?” “What do you do?” “Do you like Uzbekistan?”

Then I ran into him:

He didn’t want to know anything. In fact, nothing was interesting to him except the rest of that loaf of bread I was transporting in the Caboose.

I gave him a little bit of bread. Not too much though, because I didn’t want to mess up his stomach.

Then I pressed on:

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There is something I haven’t told you until now.

I like to collect flowers on the road. Not every day, not even every week. But sometimes I pick a blossom or a leaf and press them in my diary.

So when I saw this redness, I was very happy:

It seemed redder than red.

I walked until evening fell, and I walked past the city of Zhondor. Some had told me that there was supposed to be a hotel there, but the closer I got, the more people said that my information was wrong, that there was no hotel.

So I walked past the town, and then kept on for a little bit:

And once I reached this friendly-looking restaurant I asked if I could store the Caboose there overnight:

The owner gave me a suspicious look and demanded to see my passport and the inside of the Caboose. Then he said yes, she could stay here:

I took a cab back to Bukhara, back to the hotel I had left in the morning:

I took a shower and crashed on my bed. Then I got out my diary and looked at the red, red flower I had picked on this day, sometime in May 2017, somewhere between Bukhara and Turkmenabat.