With passports in hand we were now free to leave Tashkent, and after 30kms we finally left the suburbs to start heading out into the green countryside. By the end of the day and a total of 93km, it became apparent that our month off the bikes and bouts of sickness had taken its toll on our strength and fitness. We found a camping spot by an irrigation stream, rehydrated some instant noodles, added some cooked vegies, dined and fell into our tent absolutely exhausted!  Things weren’t much better the next day, when we only managed to complete 59km. There was a slight gradient so our lunch stop turned into a three hour snooze! After passing through more police checkpoints we eventually found a track off the main road down to a river and pitched the tent nicely out of sight. It had been a hot and sweaty day so it was great to jump in the cold river and have a wash! Later that evening we were very surprised when first a lorry, then an excavator came down the track, forded the (deep) river and stated work by moonlight! We assumed it was illegal activity but in the morning even more trucks went across and more digging started – mostly by hand!

Rebecca climbs out of our riverside camping spot / quarry and back to the main road. Continue reading →

And so our train arrived in the Uzbek Capital of Tashkent, where we would be staying whilst we applied for our Chinese Visa. The first two hostels we attempted to find no longer existed – a disadvantage of buying old guidebooks off ebay – but fortunately after cycling across the city, we got lucky on the third attempt! The hostel owner apologised because the only beds they had available were in a tiny room with just two mattresses on the floor and no other furniture. If we wanted to stay, we could have the room at a discount  and at the same price as a dorm bed – what a result!! We settled into our tiny cupboard and started getting ready to apply for our visa. Tim shaved off his beard, new passport photos were taken, and we spent an entire day ‘generating’ the documents that would be required to support our application. The next day we donned our smartest clothes and arrived at the embassy just after it opened at 9am only to find  that there was already a substantial queue. We knew the embassy would close at noon so we stood in line in hope. After three hours we were getting close to the front when some words were uttered by the guard and the queue dispersed, we hung around for a while to hear the words we suspected; “closed!” DOH! With the embassy only working three half days a week, we now had a day and a half to wait before we could try again!

Uzbeks most wanted: Do you know these men? Continue reading →