From Tashkant
28th day Fri 9th May 2014

Went to local market to pick up lunch for our journey – fruit and veg, some cheese and some ham – food items for our picnic/lunch, which has now become a fixed slot when we are on the road.

Off to Kokand, south east of Tashkent. May not be able to make it to Fergana by the end of the day. At the start of the day, we were unaware, that today we will have the pleasure of seeing some superb, snow covered mountain scenery. We reached a hight of over 7,000 feet and it was an experience – mixture of views from Switzerland and Kashmir.
The three happy snappers are Peter, Kirit and myself. I love to take hundreds of photos, Kirit happy to stop car and Peter now more relaxed about this.

 
I did a bit of driving – Manvir happy to drive, he’s not into mad photo taking. Peter gave me a lesson on clutch wear and tear – most of it went over my head, because I couldn’t prove or disprove what he said.

The picnic stop is drivers choice and Kirit picked a gem – right by a river.
Very scenic indeed.

Bollywood saved the day! On our way we were stopped again, this time at a security check point, somewhere in the mountains, this check point was manned by the Uzbeckistan army. Was I taking sneaky photos – they love going through our documentation, passports etc and once again went through, almost all the photos I have taken on this trip and beyond i.e. from my previous holidays. To be honest, although they were all heavily armed, they were not aggressive at all. But here’s the thing, after they revisited our Indian background (the 3 of us) the five or six army guys around the land cruiser were rolling out names of Bollywood actors and films – me acknowledging them and with Manvir’s help adding a few more names, things got really friendly, even had a few hand shakes thrown in, recognising our common interest or basic knowledge on my part.

Realised that in most of the East European countries, which we have travelled through including, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakstan and Uzbeckistan – all the people we have talked with have had a great affection for and knowledge of Bollywood.

 
Reached Kokand with the view of now, just to relax. Kokand looks like a boutique town, everything nicely manicured and pedicured. Checked into the hotel to be told we would be unable to stay because our visas expire mid night tonight. We knew this but thought it would slip under the radar – but it didn’t. So we had to hurriedly and unceremoniously leave to try to get to the border crossing and try to get into Kyrgyzstan. We did make it to the border crossing – absolutely no one there, but some how managed to attract attention for a number of officials to come to the gate and let us go through Uzbeckistan border control. It was 12 pm by now and after a thorough check of all our baggage and car, bearing in mind we were the only vehicle there, we were finally allowed into the ‘no man’s territory’ i.e. on this occasion it was the 100 yard crossing to the Kyrgyzstan side.Now this was the fun bit – although we were allowed through there was no one to greet us at the gates. Quite eery and a bit spooky, however, probably the safest place to be if suddenly there was any conflict between Uzbeckistan and Kyrgyzstan!

 
Realising we may have to sleep in the car, we also had to eat! Time for the ready packed curry meals we had brought with us, all we needed was some boiling water – the vast resources of the Land Cruiser came in handy, we had on board a gas cooker and importantly some gas. Got started and this neat outcome seemed like something positive was coming out of a mini ‘unexpected’ situation. As we were getting into it, a lone border petrol guy from Kyrgyzstan side came to the gate – understood our situation and after checking our documents, let us through to the next phase of immigration – had to frantically pack away all the bits for cooking – the meal had been cooked and was perilously sitting on a plate on Manvir’s lap.

Crossing into Kyrgyzstan from their side was absolutely no problem and as soon as we had done this, with a 100 yards into the country, we stopped the car and finally, with a cold beer in hand (we also have a fridge at the back of the vehicle), had our meal at 2 am and made our way to our hotel which we had frantically book, last minute in Kokand.
Extremely satisfying day.

It took an age to find our accommodation, even the tried and tested method of one of us jumping in the Taxi and following it to our destination look longer – finally finding that it was in some remote place. Kirit’s random running around methodology to find the solution, almost got himself run over, because he forgot his left from his right.

Unable to see much of Tashkant, but I have given a bit more background below, about this historic city. Noticed the ‘Salvar Chameez’ prominently worn by ladies in Bukhara not seen as much here in Tashkant. Again very clean and pretty modern looking place.

The second highlight of the day was, after reaching our accommodation, we decided we were going to cook chicken curry tonight. Manvir and I got cracking, purchased one whole chicken from the local market, gathered all the spices and spare utensils we had in our vehicle and got cooking. It turned out great! Seriously delicious, and not because we hadn’t had a curry for almost a month – this was good. With the salad, rice and ice cold beer – it was, job done for the second highlight of the day.
Kirit loved the cooking so much he did all the washing after wards – possibly the third highlight – no I wouldn’t be so mean!