Well the tarp seems to have held up all night, we didn't wake up buried in sand anyway! We're off to the Uzbek border today, hopefully it won't take too long, the heat is already unreal and the sun's only just come up!
Stopped not very far along the road now, another rally car out of service, this one's another 4x4, one of their wheels and the axle had come right off and flown across the road. Turns out they'd had troubles with the bearing before and had replaced it with a tractor one, which failed spectacularly. They managed to keep it under control though, and noone was hurt. The team were canadian and had 3 cars, two smaller ones (Chevrolet Metros) and the 4x4 (Chevrolet Tracker) so plenty of people too.
We stuck around to watch the car get put on a turck and see them struggle to work out how much the man wanted (Turkmen money is crazy, they have New Manat, Old Manat - 5000old = 1 new and USD, and a lot of people quote your price in old manat but leave off some 0s). Then we helped them out by taking some of their bags into the town for them and now we're off again, looking for some food and cold water.
Team Young Offenders stopped at the only food shop they could see on our drive through Turkmenabat and we bought some bread, water and some lemonade. The lemonade tastes like melted strepsils - Yuck! The bread is pretty solid and horrible, and the water isn't even cold, none of us like Turkmenabat, it's a total shithole.
We've just realised that we've paid about 20USD to cross a bridge! We thought when we were paying that it was some border type charge, but no, just a crappy sinking bridge - it's made of metal rafts tied together and bounces up and down depending on how many lorries are on your section of raft.
Finally made it to the border after driving around Farab for quite a while and now we're out of Turkmenistan. Unfortunately we're not out of the heat! Hugh almost passed out in passport control and was looking quite green for a while. We've just bumped into Jeandre and Adina again: Disaster! - their Uzbek visas don't start until October! They camped in this little car park last night and don't seem to have any solid plan to get out before October. They don't seem bothered by it at all though.
We stuck around and chatted for a while, bought them some water and used the no-man's-land tap to have a wash, we also bumped into Morris2Mongolia again but only briefly and through border fences. Now we're into Uzbekistan! We're sitting at a checkpoint 2km from the border waiting for Rastamouse to get through (Russ knows one of them from MSN chat and we bumped into them just before Hugh nearly passed out).
After a brief argument with a soldier in order to get Mondo2 (My American football) back, we're back on the road, now a convoy of 3, towards Bukhara.
Just stopped in a little farm or something because we caught up with the Canadians with the broken bearing. (They put the old one on to get through the border and are just parking it up here for a while) Lots of local kids around having fun on the mountain board, and some of the girls have been given cuddly toys by Charlie of team Rastamouse.
Had dinner in Bukhara, 7 of us round the table for all sorts of who-knows-what, great meal had by all, hopefully no food poisoning!
As we were driving out of town we saw Jeandre & Adina's car! We found them in a restaurant just starting their meal, so waited for them and drove out of town together, 4 cars! to find somewhere to sleep.
Photos from the day.
Stopped not very far along the road now, another rally car out of service, this one's another 4x4, one of their wheels and the axle had come right off and flown across the road. Turns out they'd had troubles with the bearing before and had replaced it with a tractor one, which failed spectacularly. They managed to keep it under control though, and noone was hurt. The team were canadian and had 3 cars, two smaller ones (Chevrolet Metros) and the 4x4 (Chevrolet Tracker) so plenty of people too.
We stuck around to watch the car get put on a turck and see them struggle to work out how much the man wanted (Turkmen money is crazy, they have New Manat, Old Manat - 5000old = 1 new and USD, and a lot of people quote your price in old manat but leave off some 0s). Then we helped them out by taking some of their bags into the town for them and now we're off again, looking for some food and cold water.
Team Young Offenders stopped at the only food shop they could see on our drive through Turkmenabat and we bought some bread, water and some lemonade. The lemonade tastes like melted strepsils - Yuck! The bread is pretty solid and horrible, and the water isn't even cold, none of us like Turkmenabat, it's a total shithole.
We've just realised that we've paid about 20USD to cross a bridge! We thought when we were paying that it was some border type charge, but no, just a crappy sinking bridge - it's made of metal rafts tied together and bounces up and down depending on how many lorries are on your section of raft.
Finally made it to the border after driving around Farab for quite a while and now we're out of Turkmenistan. Unfortunately we're not out of the heat! Hugh almost passed out in passport control and was looking quite green for a while. We've just bumped into Jeandre and Adina again: Disaster! - their Uzbek visas don't start until October! They camped in this little car park last night and don't seem to have any solid plan to get out before October. They don't seem bothered by it at all though.
We stuck around and chatted for a while, bought them some water and used the no-man's-land tap to have a wash, we also bumped into Morris2Mongolia again but only briefly and through border fences. Now we're into Uzbekistan! We're sitting at a checkpoint 2km from the border waiting for Rastamouse to get through (Russ knows one of them from MSN chat and we bumped into them just before Hugh nearly passed out).
After a brief argument with a soldier in order to get Mondo2 (My American football) back, we're back on the road, now a convoy of 3, towards Bukhara.
Just stopped in a little farm or something because we caught up with the Canadians with the broken bearing. (They put the old one on to get through the border and are just parking it up here for a while) Lots of local kids around having fun on the mountain board, and some of the girls have been given cuddly toys by Charlie of team Rastamouse.
Had dinner in Bukhara, 7 of us round the table for all sorts of who-knows-what, great meal had by all, hopefully no food poisoning!
As we were driving out of town we saw Jeandre & Adina's car! We found them in a restaurant just starting their meal, so waited for them and drove out of town together, 4 cars! to find somewhere to sleep.
Photos from the day.
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