What with all of the stress of dog sitting issues I took a
while to get to sleep last night. Sadly I was woken by some strange music playing
form four until five in the morning.
Brekkie was something of a scrum this morning, and with
brekkie scoffed we were soon all assembled in the hotel foyer and onto the
coach. Fax did a head count to check everyone was together – it really was just
like taking the cubs on an outing.
We took the coach out to what was billed as the “Indian
Village” which was rather pretty and ornate. Fax gave us a lot of religious
talk here.
There were peacocks all over the place and we found a dog.
I don’t know if it was a stray or not. Up until now we’d only seen two dogs –
both being walked after dark. We made quite a fuss of this dog; had it been
back home the dog would have come home with us.
Back on the coach and on to the Summer Palace which had two
sets of toilets. “Regular” and “Emergency”. Sadly an emergency
toilet in Uzbekistan doesn’t cater for the sort of potty emergencies that I was
having. Squatting over a hole in the ground three feet from my bum is no substitute
for putting my arse into a proper bum-sink.
Passing over the frankly feral toilet arrangements the Summer
Palace was also rather pretty.
Back on the coach again. Gettng on and off of a coach has
been a feature of this trip. From here we went to a car park near which was one
of the worst statues of Mickey Mouse that I’ve ever seen. I can only imagine
that Mickey has picked up whatever it is that is upsetting my guts. It was a
short walk to the oldest mausoleum in Bukhara (and that is up against some
pretty serious competition).
We chatted with some market traders that Fax knew – they were
selling some rather good stuff, and then went on to the plumbing museum where
our guide got into an argument. He was telling us about some incident that
happened locally during the Soviet era when a passing Russian tourist got
rather angry. She didn’t claim that what Fax was saying was wrong. But she
thought it wrong that our guide should give us any factual information, and
said he should stick to telling us Uzbekian fairy tales.
Fax seemed rather miffed; we all reassured him. The chap
had been wonderful. Giving us snippets of history from three thousand years ago
up to the present day, he made no attempt to gloss over any of the unpleasant parts.
History is history.
We went back to the hotel where there were proper toilets.
It had been three day since I have dared to fart without the safety net of a
chodbin, and I was glad I’d not risked it earlier.
We were left to our own devices for the afternoon.
Yesterday a couple of our number had told us of where they’d lunched. We had
ice creams there yesterday and today we had a rather good bit of scoff. Having gone
out expecting the pace to be little more than shacks in a desert we were rather
amazed to find i-pads being used as menus. A glass of rather good fruit juice
each, a decent pizza and a very good cheesecake and for all that the bill ran
to six figures it came in less than sixteen quid in UK money.
Once we’d finished feeding the kitten that had shamelessly joined
us we walked round the market; I took a selfie with a sleeping cat. We had a
pint by an ornamental lake and watched a stray dog getting a drink and having a
bath.
We went back to the hotel where the hotel staff came up to
our room. Having been constantly complaining about the lack of wi-fi in our
room a chap came up, took our phones, pressed all the buttons that we’d
pressed, pointed at the screen saying “internet not connected” and then
typed something into his phone using Google Translate. He brandished his phone
at me which said “it is fixed” and wandered off with a smile on his
face.
This evening we were out for dinner again. Dinner was
rather good (by the standards of the trip). As we ate so a band was
playing traditional music whilst young girls modelled various clothes we might
like to buy. The clothes were odd; at best they might have been used as
pyjamas.
One of our number had a birthday today. The band struck up “Happy
Birthday to You” and we had (proper) cake all round before all going
back to the hotel.
Having heard good things about the rooftop bar we walked up
to find it was something of a disappointment, so we had a gin and tonic in the foyer
bar, This one tasted nothing like last night’s one.
As always I took quite
a few photos.
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