forgotten sirup

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I woke up dreading the day. My spine still hurt, and I knew there was a high chance I would have to walk 50k today. I had some breakfast, then I went back to the road. There were truckloads of people being driven around, I suspected that they were working the fields somewhere: I walked […]


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 […]


old tourists

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With the Caboose, it was almost always the ball-bearings. I took her to a bicycle repair guy on the street corner today: And it took us a while, but I think we managed to fix the problem. Or at least contain it: I noticed that there were a lot of European tourists in Bukhara, and […]


forget about fast wifi

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Uzbekistan, albeit being a very nice place to visit, didn’t have very good access to the internet. Actually, in most places it was pretty painful. Yet there is one thing I don’t think I ever told you: Jizzakh, somewhere between Tashkent and Samarkand, had excellent internet. And I mean excellent. Bukhara, well, not so much. […]


Bukhara

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I was going to start walking at five in the morning, because I knew I was probably going to have to make 50k today. Only then I decided to sleep until seven, and I left the hotel at eight. On my way out of town, I stopped at this gentleman’s house: People in Uzbekistan seem […]


empty bottles

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I woke up in the same hotel next to Navoiy airport where I had spent the night before. Only it was 40$ instead of 60$ this time. I had breakfast, then I waited for a car to take me back to Kiziltepa: Walking to a place and then taking a car to sleep somewhere else […]


camelopia

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I had parked the Caboose in the back of the hotel, and when I went to pick her up this morning, she was covered in laundry: I thought it was cute, but she looked like she wanted to leave. The day was overcast, which was good for us, because it meant that temperatures wouldn’t get […]


who won World War II?

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See my GPS track on the map above? It branches out into different areas before deciding on a northwestern direction. The branches happened because of the police. My original plan was to walk west and then north, but I didn’t get very far before the police stopped me. I had taken a photograph in an […]


breakfast

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Every morning when I went down to the breakfast hall, I would have two hard-boiled eggs and four little bread thingies: I’d wash it all down with some fruit juice, then ask for some hot water for my thermos. I don’t like being without tea. Then I would sit down and work on the translation […]


characters

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I woke up with a bad head. Not terribly bad, just pulsing. So I had breakfast, then I stayed on the balcony for a while: And then I started working on the translation again: It took me much longer than I had anticipated. Chinese is more concise than German, meaning if you translate a German […]


hot pockets to funk

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My German book “Neuschweinstein” was being translated into Chinese. Not by me, my Chinese was not good enough for that. But I had offered to read the translation and check it for errors. That’s what I did today: Or at least that was the plan. At around two in the afternoon I went outside and […]


night grill

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Okay, neither one of my balconies was very spacious: But it was enough for me. After successfully obtaining a sunburn, I decided that my clothes looked disgusting and needed washing: I hung them all over the room: Then I went outside to a garden restaurant: Ali was working the grill: I ordered a bunch of […]


holiday

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Had an awesome hotel room with two balconies: By loading the video, you agree to YouTube’s privacy policy.Learn more Load video Always unblock YouTube So I sat on my balcony (on one of my TWO balconies): And tried to get a tan: At 35 degrees celsius it felt a little bit like a beach vacation. […]


90 minutes

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There were no marshrutkas in Navoyi. So I hopped on a shared ride and went back to Samarkand: It had taken me several days to walk to Navoiy from there, but it was only a 90-minute car ride. How easy. When I got there, I went straight to the post office: I had to show […]


avoid the sun

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When I left Ziadin in the morning, I saw a lot of people on the road: Most were waiting for rides: There were young women with parasols: And old ladies in colorful outfits: And there were European campers, a lot of them. Sometimes it was just motor home after motor home. Some of the drivers […]


weld grind burn

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So I went back to the road, tripod or not. It took a while to get back to Mirbazar, after all it was more than 100km from Samarkand. I took a cab, and on the way there I slept. When I looked out the window once, I saw rain outside. And then I was in […]


what weekdays mean

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Sometimes, when I am on the road, I lose track of which day of the week it is. Dates are somewhat important to me, mostly because of my visa issues, but weekdays just don’t seem to have a lot of meaning. Today I decided to stay in Samarkand, because I wanted to pick something up […]


night train

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Walked into this charming gentleman at the hostel where I was staying: We introduced ourselves and then talked for quite a long time, so long in fact that when I realized that I had forgotten his name it seemed somehow impolite to ask. He was from Germany, he traveled solo, and his beard was much […]


refusal to steam

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The next country I wanted to walk through was Turkmenistan. I didn’t know much about it, except that there were fast horses and beautiful carpets. And there was another thing that I knew: with the Caspian Sea to the West of Turkmenistan and Afghanistan to its East, there was no way around it. Alas, I […]


our photos

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When I got back to the restaurant where the Caboose had spent the night, the first thing we all did was take photos together: Lots and lots of photos: And because everyone felt sorry that I hadn’t been able to spend the night there, I got treated to a very nice breakfast of chicken tabaka: […]