Day: April 22, 2006

Long, straight lines, sultry heat, total absence of wind.  It was an interminable day which ended with Serge walking 6 kilometers.  He doesn’t want to give up anything even if for the last two days we have been encouraging him to do fewer kilometers.  “I have an objective and  an average to keep.”  Serge is at the end of his tether and at such a time he complains about the slightest thing.  “When I’m tired I can’t tolerate anything.”  Communication with others is broken or at least it’s of very poor quality.

It was time for a thorough spring cleaning of the camper by Benjamin and Laure, to the rhythm of wild music.

Going through Boz, we passed two cotton mills.  The white fluff in the air makes us think of cotton but Serge wasn’t wrong: it’s pollen.  The fields go on as far as the eye can see and there is a lot of activity for a Saturday.  Most Uzbeks work six days out of seven, with Sunday off.

Our camper has been drawing crowds since we left Iran and the interest proves to be a bit cumbersome when at every stop people ask to get in for a look.  The Toyota 4 wheel drive, which the Uzbeks call the Jeep, is an object of desire and we have found guys sitting behind the wheel, after taking advantage of our inattention.  Having to watch everything closely all the time becomes oppressive.

We stopped in a restaurant and the owner let us use a room for the night, with a mattress on the ground.  We ate a traditional Uzbek dish: Plosh, which is made of rice, onions, chick peas cooked in oil and garnished with meat.  Serge obviously like the dish because he helped himself three times.  At 20H00 everyone was in bed.  

Tomorrow we will go through the border between Uzbekistan and Khirghistan.