From the nomadic steppes of Kazakhstan to the frenetic streets of Hanoi, Asia is a continent so full of intrigue, adventure, solace, and spirituality that it has fixated and confounded travelers for centuries.
This is the day we bade farewell to the lovely city of Tashkent, flying to the western city of Urgench. Flying domestically was…interesting. Airport security was this…. Place everything on the conveyor – suitcase, carry-on, breakfast – and then walk through the detector. Wait…breakfast?? Yep, people put their sack breakfasts and drink on the...
We appear to have left the laptop’s power brick at home, so this is sadly, likely the last post this trip. (i.e. unfortunately you won’t be able to follow live, it will be an “after the trip” look. We’ll get the days in as quickly as we can…)
“The day we became millionaires”. Misleading statement……. We exchanged $200 USD and got back 2,180,000 Uzbeki Cym (pronounced “SOOM”). The bills were 100K and 5K notes, so we ended up with a stack of 37 bills. Talk about a fat stack! (We were told you used to have to bring a back-pack to carry your money… but that thankfully they...
After about 3-1/2 hours of sleep, we headed back to the airport to retrieve the missing luggage (they don’t deliver here – you have to retrieve it yourself). It was a beautiful morning (70-ish) to drive with the windows down and this was our first glimpse of Tashkent during the day. What a beautiful, green and clean City! Jay’s suitcase was indeed there...
tl;dr We left Kansas City at 1:50 pm Saturday afternoon. We arrived/checked-in to our hotel at roughly 3:20 am on Monday morning. Day 1 (travel day, flight day, etc……) a very long start. We normally don’t report on our outgoing journey, which is often why we don’t truly have Day 1’s and why this is more a narrative of the day with minimal pictures. But this...