Malika Samarkand

... it to Samarqand (am I mad or what?) while Abdullo, Ziyodullo and I travel by car. Rustam, now responsible for me, has paid the medical and hotel bills. We arrive safely in Samarqand and after parking the bike in a lockup we head for Rustam's home, his wife and two young daughters. It is clear he is going to struggle financially with the cost of this episode. He cannot afford to put us up in a hotel ...

... in the same light and dark blue tilework as the Registan, that stretched for hundreds of metres up a hillside. The site was originally used as the resting place for the Prophet Mohammed's cousin before being sacked (along with everything else they came across) by the Mongols and then restored to glory by Timur. The current occupants are all favourites of Timur and his sons, and include wives, teachers, friends, etc. The little avenue was again breathtakingly beautiful, and ...

... of Central Asia. The city center is a maze of narrow alleys opening out onto tree-shaded courtyards with Mosques and other old buildings dotted amongst the new. Weather getting hotter now and the garden courtyard of the hotel was a real oasis, surrounding us with fruit trees laden with ripe fruit.

Met a great selection of travelers here in our two-night stay and enjoyed many hours of conversation with people from France ...

... contact details.


Best time to buy is now, after the tourist season although they will also work on commission as the total output of the factory is only 600 carpets a year. The staff are paid on the basis of the work they complete and can earn from $100 to $400 USD a month. This does not seem much but it is considered a good wage for what can only be a part time job. The work is just too demanding on eyesight.

The majority of the staff are ...

... chambers. We were treating this seriously as we knew we would be quizzed when we came out. It was however somewhat disconcerting to hear the snoring and loud knuckle cracking of one of the watchmen who sat in the corner of our chamber. Try as we might it was impossible to meditate. How he managed to snore and simultaneously crack his knuckles we would never know.

And so our day ended some nine hours after we began. It was a wonderful tour but we were by then in a state of collapse!

... cycling for a long time, not sure how you could keep sane! After 100km we were stopped by the police for no real reason, they just wanted us to wait....after 20 minutes they let us go again??? Just before we got to camp we saw a bus full of German tourists. Hadn't seen tourists for a while now so it was a nice surprise to see them here just\ outside of Turkmenabat before the Uzbekistan border. DAY 91 " Border crossing and desert winds" - Bushcamp to Buhkara (135km ...

Deja vu - another Racing the Planet race; Gobi March 2008. I flew to Karachi on June 3rd to volunteer for yet another RTP race. This time I was the volunteer manager responsibl for training the volunteers and assigning them to checkpoints and campsites. We were a good group of people working together, though not as good as the group in Vietnam. I shouldn't say good or bad; the dynamics were just different. There were about 170 competitors from about ...

The following story is true. The names have been changed to protect the innocent. What follows is a story of adventure and excitement, of new friends and broken hearts, of persistence and a whole lot of luck. It is the story of Dario's camera, lost and found. ACT I Our tale begins at around 3:00pm. We have just been dropped off by a Marshutka (group taxi/van, the main form of transport around town) at the AfroSiab Museum in Samarkand, after a lunch meal at Siab restaurant ...

... we know it we're entering Samarkand, the road we enter on comes up a narrow valley with a number of what look like inhabited caves cut into the rocky sides, there's no indication that we're about to enter a large city, when all of a sudden we're driving past the beautiful 14 & 15 C entrance to the Shah-i-Zinda and shortly afterwards past the Registan, on first sighting these places are awesome and will certainly remain etched on my memory ...