MacGyvered that shit
Not having found any suitable shoes at the bazaar, I MacGyvered something today.
Here’s the shoe that is damaged at the heel:
Here’s my flip-flop where I cut out a piece:
Here is the piece:
And here is the fix for the shoe:
Let’s hope it works.
We left early in the morning, when the city was just waking up:
The road wasn’t too busy at first:
And there were monuments for the past:
And for the present:
But it felt as though this simple drawing on the sidewalk was somewhat more alive than all those monuments:
I took an early Let’s Walk video:
And then Mary said good-bye with another monument:
There were advertisements for the Asian Games everywhere:
And here, too, I saw two different kinds of buildings – the small, residential kind:
And the massive, representative kind:
I had a late breakfast of eggs and bread:
I tried staying on the sidewalk, but, just like everywhere else in Central Asia, this was often a bit tricky:
Another 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:
And not just one photo, of course:
I passed what looked like a tiny minaret:
And I took a photo of the Caboose and me in a green window:
And then:
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:
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:
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:
But then it was just tractors in the fields:
We made our lunch camp in the shade of a big old tree:
And I was very happy at first, because tree shade is a very pleasant form of shade:
But then I found a wasp nest in the tree and quickly moved away from it.
After that it was just road:
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:
Walking in slippers had never been a long-term solution anyway. Not in this environment:
We were venturing back out into the desert at this point:
And then I saw my first snake in Turkmenistan:
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:
Strangely, it was made up mostly of these things:
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:
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:
It was busy looking awesome.
HelenC
Love the photos, absolutely!
An experience you will never forget…
Otabek Ergashev
I am feeling like I have just been to Mary. Although last episode about Merv was awesome. I learned so many history.