MacGyvered that shit

Posted on

Google Maps

By loading the map, you agree to Google's privacy policy.
Learn more

Load map

Not having found any suitable shoes at the bazaar, I MacGyvered something today.

Here’s the shoe that is damaged at the heel:

shoe damaged at the heel

Here’s my flip-flop where I cut out a piece:

the flip flop that had to die

Here is the piece:

fix for the shoe

And here is the fix for the shoe:

MacGyvered that shoe

Let’s hope it works.

We left early in the morning, when the city was just waking up:

flagging down a taxi in Mary

The road wasn’t too busy at first:

road out of Mary

And there were monuments for the past:

monument in Mary

And for the present:

Turkmenistan!

But it felt as though this simple drawing on the sidewalk was somewhat more alive than all those monuments:

drawings on the sidewalk in Mary

I took an early Let’s Walk video:

YouTube

By loading the video, you agree to YouTube's privacy policy.
Learn more

Load video

And then Mary said good-bye with another monument:

Mary city monument

There were advertisements for the Asian Games everywhere:

more advertisements for the Asian Games

And here, too, I saw two different kinds of buildings – the small, residential kind:

road close to Mary

And the massive, representative kind:

building that seems too big

I had a late breakfast of eggs and bread:

eggs and bread

I tried staying on the sidewalk, but, just like everywhere else in Central Asia, this was often a bit tricky:

tricky sidewalk

Another monument:

strange monument

And then there was a parking lot full of cars and people. I figured it was a bazaar for used cars, but it was actually the local equivalent to the DMV. People had come to get license plates or have their registrations renewed. These dudes insisted on a photo:

photo with dudes who are waiting at the DMV

And not just one photo, of course:

photo time

I passed what looked like a tiny minaret:

tower

And I took a photo of the Caboose and me in a green window:

selfie by window

And then:

big yurt

I mean, who wouldn’t want to have a big fat yurt, right? I was listening to an awesome song at this point, so I loved the big fat yurt even more.

It was just massive:

I mean, how big is this yurt?

One feature that Turkmen cities seemed to have different from their counterparts in the rest of Central Asia – they all had one very large bazaar outside of town:

Mary bazaar

These are just the gates to the bazaar of Mary, and I am suspecting that the big fat yurt was also somehow connected to it.

Anyway, Mary disappeared behind us after this. There was the occasional last bus:

bus near Mary

But then it was just tractors in the fields:

tractor near Mary

We made our lunch camp in the shade of a big old tree:

lunch camp under a tree

And I was very happy at first, because tree shade is a very pleasant form of shade:

lunch camp near Mary

But then I found a wasp nest in the tree and quickly moved away from it.

After that it was just road:

afternoon road in the Turkmen desert

At this point, much to my surprise, the shoe fix that I had MacGyvered in the morning was still holding up quite nicely, and I was very proud of myself:

YouTube

By loading the video, you agree to YouTube's privacy policy.
Learn more

Load video

Walking in slippers had never been a long-term solution anyway. Not in this environment:

single tyre

We were venturing back out into the desert at this point:

the desert comes creeping in

And then I saw my first snake in Turkmenistan:

dead deadly snake

It was dead, or so I believe. But I am told that some kinds of snake just pretend to be dead to lure you into a false sense of security. So I don’t know. It was probably dead. Yeah.

On my way to our camp site for the night, I walked past a heap of trash:

trash dump

Strangely, it was made up mostly of these things:

what is this

So people drove their trash from work way out into the desert and dumped it there?

When I got to our camp, the fire was already going:

dinner fire

I happily shared my snake photo with the Boss, upon which he said that I should make absolutely sure that my tent was closed during all times, and that I should be careful when I touched anything outside.

Aha.

The Milky Way didn’t care about these things, though:

tent with light under the stars

It was busy looking awesome.



Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *