We woke up our last morning in Uzbekistan and walked sadly over to our last meal of wonderful home cooked Uzbek food. Shoney’s mother had gotten a large ice cold bottle of Kvas and some Somsas from down the street. I found myself tempted to eat some of the leftover Plov from the night before.

That breakfast turned out, however, to only be a minor precursor to the main meal, which was Laghman, the noodle dish we had so fallen in love with while in Kashgar and Urumqi, the Central Asian part of China. Along with the Laghman were some more of those amazing Manty. It was all just too delicious and in too vast of quantities for us to resist eating beyond the normal limits. AsiaWheeling was being spoiled rotten here in Uzbekistan, so before we got soft, we figured we’d better split.

It was time to go.  But, before we hit the road, we paused to take a few Uzbek style (no smiles allowed) group shots, and even a few portraits of the Yabukjanov team.

In honor of his great contributions to the AsiaWheeling team, and our unending love for all that is Uzbek, we would like to, upon our departure from this great land, announce yet another tee-shirt, titled “The Uzual Suspect.”

Feeling like we could not say thank you enough times, we finally climbed on the bikes and headed toward the Kazakh border. It was less than a 10 km wheel and we made short work of it, stopping once to ask for directions from a fantastic trio of gentleman, who were in true Uzbek style, delighted to give us directions and eager to engage for as long a conversation afterward as we could spare time.

When we finally apologized, explaining we had a Kazakhstan to get to, they asked us to autograph one of their 1000 cym bills, which, being what I believe is the first autograph request of the entire trip (outside of legal documents), we were more than happy to do.

And off we went, pounding through the Uzbek countryside, growing ever closer to our next post-Soviet country.

When we reached the border, cab drivers clustered around us, warning us that foreigners would not be able to cross here, explaining that we would need to drive to another border crossing 50 km away. We thanked them for their advice, and explained that we would like first to hear it from the border officials, and then we would come back and talk cabs.

Sure enough, it was corroborated by the officials, who were, while delivering negative news, generally very upbeat and positive guys, already laughing out loud at our bizarre bicycles, and doubly so at my Russian. I began to realize that I must sound like the American version of Borat to these people. And they loved it.

So after some thorough bargaining and some calling of Shoney on the Beeline, we climbed into a cab and headed for the next border crossing.  As we drove, I made good friends with the fellow who drove us. When we arrived, he hustled to make sure all was in order and to shoo away any con artists and beggars who appeared out of the woodwork.

We had changed the rest of our сум back to USD with Shoney, so we had to pay the fellow in a few thousand sun and a couple US dollars. He seemed happy enough.

Here too the officials were delighted to see us, and confirmed that indeed “Inestranetz” could pass through. And so we wheeled the bikes on, towards the Uzbek customs station, which was no small walk from the road.

When we arrived, we found the entire thing to be a maddening cluster bomb of people and screaming. By trial and error, we were able to figure out the system, which for any of you who would like to, in the future, cross between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan in the area of Khodzha-Khan, here is how it goes:

Proceed past the long line of people and enter the central area, underneath the rusty gas station-style overhang, where all the broken and upside-down tables are, and proceed to the edge of the metal barrier. Make like the locals and scream at the top of your lungs at the official who paces just three meters away from you and eyes the queue. He will pretend not to notice. That’s fine. He actually is registering your screams. Continue the screaming narrative, emulating the people around you, and state your name and the country that issued your passport. If you are an American, this will interest him and he will make a vague hand gesture at you. This gesture will mean “is your friend over there an American too?” You may tell the truth or not here, I believe.

He will then flag down a short heavyset woman, who will be rushing by carrying a giant stack of papers in one hand and a billy club in the other. She will give you six copies of a form.  Luckily, they are bilingual: in Russian and Uzbek. Divvy them up with your friend. Fill out all three using the upside-down tables with the pens that you forgot to bring. Good luck — the forms will not be easy.

Now get in line with all the other people, and watch as newcomers to the line blatantly cut you, climbing over your folding bicycles and getting in front of you, sometimes actually pushing you backward a bit to make room for themselves. The recommended strategy here is to position the folding bicycles as a kind of crowd barrier, and to fend off people with nasty looks and seemingly inadvertent knocks with your pack.

Listen for the screaming at the front of the line, because this means another group is being let into the main inspection  room. Keep your wits about you. Right after the screaming is when you’ll be cut the most, usually by old women carrying hundreds of shopping bags, who gain temporary superhero agility and spring like tree frogs over you and your bicycle.

Finally you’ll get into the room. It will be hot inside. Everyone will need to get their luggage scanned, except for you. This is normal for Americans. Everyone else will need to wait in line, but not you. Those who cut you previous in line will look upon you with equal parts distaste and confidence that they will complete the process before you.  Smile.  You will get a special officer dedicated to your case, and he will very diligently not check any of your paperwork or luggage and flag you through with all politeness. Meanwhile others will be pushing each other in line and the same woman who gave you the paperwork will be beating a fellow mercilessly for pushing an old lady ’til she fell down.

It will be raw, but soon you’ll be in Kazakhstan.  As many an ex-Soviet spin class instructor has shouted over thumping music:  “You’re not yet halfway there.”

Kazakh customs will be much cleaner, whiter, fancier, and with more hawks all over everything. The hats on the heads of the boarder guards will grow threefold.

The line will be very short, the forms will be small and in English, and the Kazakh border official will stamp your passport, underlining that you must register with the Kazakh OVIR office within five days to avoid a $100 fine.

As official literature has indicated, he should be able to register you upon entry.  However, he will not do so.  If you ask him whether or not the registration office will be open on Friday, he will look at you as if you are suffering from some terrible abnormality and dismiss you with “of course.”  This is, in fact, false.  None of this concerns him.  It only concerns you.  He will then sneeze magnificently all over your passport and send you on.

Nursultan Nazarbayev - Нұрсұлтан Назарба

Now that was easy; this next part will be hard. Pass through the green channel, marked “nothing to declare” then proceed over to the scanning station. Put your things on the conveyor and begin chatting about Kazakhstan in Russian with the guards. The men working the customs desk will teach you the name of the Kazakh president. Remember it. They will test your memory at the end of the conversation.

They will also request you to take a picture of them.

Do not do so.  The picture is part of an entrapment scheme. For when you leave, another armed guard will refuse to let you out of the immigration complex until he’s scrutinized your camera to see if you took any pictures of the interior of the customs hall.

Luckily, we did not fall for the trick.

They will also ask you if you’ve seen the movie.  The answer is: “What movie?”

Everyone had described Kazakhstan to us as the Europe of Central Asia, as the richer, fancier, more cosmopolitan place. We were about to see how much water that theory held. All we really hoped was that the Internet would be a little faster.

Outside the customs hall, it looked basically like Uzbekistan, women were hounding us to change money and cab drivers were asking astronomical prices to drive us into Shymkent. We finally managed to bargain a decent price to share a black VW station wagon with a bunch of Kazakh women into the city.

However, after driving for some time, the driver of our cab attempted to pull the old Jordanian switch on us (which we might from now on just as rightly call the Kazakh switch). He was suddenly doubling the price! And as I attempted to bargain with him, he simply began muttering and shaking his head, blinking long and hard in a way that seemed unsafe while driving. Yap as I would, I couldn’t get him to respond. Then suddenly I realized that the muttering was some kind of prayer that he was saying in Arabic. So I shut up and let him finish. Later, after silence had reigned for a while, when I started to re-enter the negotiation, he just started again muttering over my talking.

It was, of course, ridiculous childish behavior, but we were in his car now, and so I looked back at the women we were sharing the ride with and asked them in Russian if he was overcharging us. They grinned very large grins and said no. Fair Enough.  I grumpily agreed to pay the new inflated price.

Once we arrived in Shymkent, we were happy to be rid of the driver, who had after we agreed to pay him double. attempted to repair the relationship through uncomfortable conversation about sexist and racist topics. We had him drop us off at one of the budget hotels listed in the Lonely Planet, but in classic Lonely Planet style, the hotel turned out to be none too cheap, and also lacking in rooms with windows. So we wheeled on.

We stopped to ask a group of young men about hotels, and while they were unable to help us find a cheap place, they did speak a little English, which gave Scott a chance to talk, and when we parted, they gave him a white Kazakh Muslim skullcap as a gift. Shymkent was racking up points.

The wheel turned out to be a long and hungry one. We continued to go from hotel to hotel, but each one was more expensive than the last. We stopped to ask some men crouching under a street light about where we might stay, and they offered to let us stay in their home for about $20 per night. Something about them felt untrustworthy, though, so we just took a group picture and left.

Finally, we found a place. It was a hotel known as the Ordabassy Hotel. We were able to get a room there for a very reasonable rate, and the lady at the front desk was most friendly and wearing very tight leather. As we were about to haul our things upstairs and find some food, a couple of fellows walked by us on their way into their office, which was in the same building as the Ordabassy. They called out to us and insisted that we come back to their office with them.

They turned out to be members of the Kazakh film industry and invited us to sit down and drink orange soda with them and to learn more about their work and to take some glam shots with us in the Maui Jims.

It was quite late by then, and we were tired and hungry, so we excused ourselves after a few cups of orange soda and headed out to find the nearest place that was open. It ended up being a large beer hall and restaurant down the street. We ordered a couple of glasses of the local Shymkentskoye beer, and before we knew it a blond woman had walked over to us and invited us to join her and her friends at their table.

We looked at each other for a moment and agreed. We stood up and wandered over to their table to find five Russian Kazakh women laughing and drinking beer.  We introduced ourselves, and told them a little about AsiaWheeling. They introduced themselves and told us about their lives. One of them was a gas station attendant, a little ways out of town, another was a an office manager at an office (with computers, she underlined), another was a student in St. Petersburg who had some experience in Finland.

The ladies spoke essentially no English, and I very little Russian, but we more or less struck it off, and we parted that evening with plans for them to meet up again the next evening, for we were the first Americans they’d ever met and they wanted to show us around town.

Kazakhstan was shaping up to be an interesting chapter.

The Uzbek Sum

The Uzbek sum has been depreciating against the dollar over numerous inflationary cycles as a result of loose monetary policy, creating an excess in the money supply.  How much the currency has actually devalued, and since when, depends on who you ask.  At the time of this writing, the official exchange rate is 1,622 Sum to the USD, though the black market money exchangers quote the rate at 2,230 Sum to the USD. This makes it 37% more desirable to change USD in the bazaar with a man holding a black bag, rather than at any licensed exchange office.  Presumably, these money changers sell the dollars at a higher price to firms or individuals intending to trade abroad, or make a sizable domestic purchase such as an automobile.  For the country ranked 150th on the World Bank’s ease of doing business index, this is not surprising.

Both the official and black market rates go up nearly daily, though the black market rate seems to increase even faster, implying that the discrepancy between what the Sum is actually worth and what the central bank is claiming its worth gets greater and greater with each passing day.

In case the situation doesn’t seem absurd enough, the largest currency note is 1000 sum, or 45 USD Cents. This means that to change 200 USD, I’ve got to strap a bag around my waist to hold bricks of bills.  This, dear reader, you already know from our Uzbekistan dispatches — but it bears repeating.  Imagine your spending power limited primarily by how much you can physically carry. In the morning, we each pack our wallets with as many bills as they can hold.  The state capitalizes on this physical limitation as an instrument of monetary policy.  In an attempt to stave off another inflationary cycle, the National Bank of Uzbekistan has resisted printing larger notes, as non-portability is seen as one of the forces curbing inflation.

Market Information Experiment

Before Uzbekistan, we had never been to a place with such inflation and an ineffective monetary policy that creates such a liquid black market for dollars.  The information flow of this black market intrigued me, and I wondered how these informal currency traders shared price (and perhaps volume) information with each other.  Those who are in the know must call a trusted source and get “today’s rate” before going to the market.

An interesting experiment would be to allow all market participants to contribute and share market data through text messages, which could be aggregated on a server and published both on the net, as well as on demand via SMS request.  Internet is still spotty in Uzbekistan with a low penetration of personal computers. However, the high penetration of mobile phones makes the SMS interface an attractive option.

Would the website get blocked?  Probably.  Would the SMS gateway numbers be shut down by the mobile operators?  Seems logical.  Though what if this information sharing created a transparency that slowed inflation and aided the National Bank’s effort to control the sum?  If the market data became valuable to participants, and did affect price, the experiment would no doubt have fascinating implications for information’s role in pricing.  The cost of the experiment would be low, and could potentially allow for a business model after development.

If similar projects have been done before, or if anyone well connected has an interest in making this a project of the Uzbek monetary authorities, by all means please comment.

Mobile Payment and Banking Opportunity

Employees are paid in a combination of physical cash (Uzbek Sum) and direct deposit into bank accounts.  These bank deposits are only nominally cash, since the banks themselves do not have the currency to dispense to the deposit holders.  However, these deposits can be accessed through a Visa debit card at supermarkets and some upscale retail shops.  In order to make any sizable purchase, one must carry large bricks of Sum around, or use US dollars, which are difficult to obtain.  With inflation continuing, lugging around cash to make purchases becomes only more of an annoyance.

There is an opportunity for a mobile phone-based transfer system that could act as a replacement for currency, allowing buyers to transfer cash-like credit to sellers through their mobile phones.  The payment transfer company could accept physical Sum, which would then be converted to “eSum” in the users account, and used as a medium of exchange through the phone.

Technologies like this are developing similarly in India and Sub-Saharan Africa.  With the right vision, technology, and relationships, solving this problem in Uzbekistan could provide a fundamental building block to the economy.

We had only gotten two hours of sleep the day before, albeit on some very comfortable beds, on the floor of a generous Uzbek denim merchant’s dining room floor. But it was still quite difficult getting up early the next morning. But get up we did, collecting our things and heading out to the street to catch a cab for the outskirts of Tashkent, where we were to meet Shoney.

We would be heading up into the mountains outside Tashkent with him and a few of his friends. The friends were all members of a certain Uzbek heavy metal group, knows as Tortoise Minja. We were the first to arrive at the meeting spot, five minutes late, and soon the rest of the team rolled in. Much like at band rehearsal, there was one guy who just didn’t show up. So we called his house and spoke with his mother, who assured us he was already on his way, meanwhile screaming at him to get up in the background.

So we bided our time, munching some Korean steamed buns that were being sold by some members of the large  Korean community in Tashkent. Finally everyone arrive, which gave me an opportunity to introduce the cast of characters.

Shoney : Your fearless Uzbek Bureau Chief and general Uzbek rainmaker/Boston Bro mashup.

Jesus/Noise : Call him what you like, this rail thin fellow played the base in Tortoise Minja, spoke in the most hilarious rudimentary English, had the beginnings of a thick beard. He was obsessed with Texas, and told us repeatedly of his love for the place, and wish to travel there, but dressed more like a fellow I once knew from Arkansas.

Timur : Lead singer, and generally pretty boy of the group, his flowing locks and operatic voice made me very curious to hear how he fit into the heavy metal sound.

Vladimir: The drummer, a cool and calculating character, interested in cooking and maximizing the speed with which he could deliver (double) bass drum hits.

Igor: Lead guitarist – rumored to be a savage kickboxer, a wirey and unwashed but otherwise peaceful character.

Scott: Your basic adventure capitalist, torn bicycle grease-stained Carhearts, William Cheng and Son’s tailored buttondown, large mustache, camera, chest hair, and a pair of Dawn Patrols to keep it klassnaya.

Combine those characters with your humble, ukulele-bearing, correspondent, and you have just enough people to fill a Marshriutka, Mienbaoche, or however you’d like to refer to those small vans that are the glue that holds transportation together all over this planet. The Marshriutka we climbed into made short work of the drive up into the mountains, playing bizarre Russian club music the whole way. We climbed out and paid the guy, setting a time at which he would come back to pick us up, and headed out onto the trail, laden down with Soviet military style canned meats, potatoes, onions, water, and a few bottles of “Pulsar” brand beer.

Soon the trail disappeared and we were just walking up into the Uzbek Himalayan mountains. It had been cloudy that morning, but just about the time the trail petered out, the sun burst forth, and all the clouds burned out of the sky. Sunscreen would have been a good thing to have remembered.

Jesus in particular, son of an auto mechanic, and somewhat the black swan in this group of otherwise very academic Uzbek rockers, swore like a sailor. I found myself learning all kinds of new and terribly offensive things to say in Russian, just hiking uphill with the guy.

The sun was viciously bright, and the scenery magnificent as we climbed up into the hills. We stopped for a moment to rest and scream down at the stragglers. Despite the fact that most of these guys chain smoked cheap Uzbek cigarettes, they could hike very quickly, and I found myself positively drenched in sweat just trying to keep up.

On top of that, they were singing! I wanted to join in, but I was so out of breath that I could barely get out the words to Black Sabath’s “War Pigs.”

To make matters worse, the soil was sandy and the rocks that made up the hillside were barely secured in place by the roots of the scrubby foliage and grasses that clung there. This made it no easy task climbing up the mountain, and I didn’t even want to think how it would be trying to come down, heaven forbid in the dark.

We spent a while trying to find the perfect location to set up shop. It seemed that as soon as we had found one that was decent, Timur would scream down from above us at the top of his lungs, proclaiming he’d found the true best spot, just another 100 meters ahead. This pattern of setting up and moving, setting up and moving, went on for some time, until we finally just put our feet down and stopped moving.

Scott immediately took his shirt off and began looking fabulous.

The guitar player and I grabbed our instruments and began singing and playing together. He was a much better instrumentalist than I, even on the uke, which was something I am sure he’d never even played before. The only thing I could do to hold my own was continually rely on that old favorite, “House of the Rising Sun,” which never fails to be a cross cultural crowd pleaser.

Soon we had settled into the place, and we began peeling potatoes, undressing, eating some of the home-make pickles that Timur’s mother had made, and generally getting sunburned.  Jesus began to wail.

One party was sent out to search for firewood, which was none too easy to find on the scraggly hillside;  another party was sent to find out whether one might be able to purchase a bit of oil from some shepherds across the valley from us. Both missions would be long and time intensive. I ended up on the firewood side of the table.

The oil searching team came back about an hour later, with harrowing stories of the mission downhill, including tales of Timur falling head over tail (evidenced by a constellation of scratches on his arms and legs), and Shoney surfing down a minor avalanche standing on top of a large boulder. They had gotten the oil, though. It was cottonseed oil, the cheapest kind available in this cotton producing country. They had also brought with them a most well thought out and serious argument for moving our operations to a new place that they’d found.

We’d been up on that particular cliffside, collecting firewood and peeling potatoes for some time, and, knowing we’d need to go down the hill sooner or later, illogic and laziness prevailed, and the group voted to stay on the top of the hill.

And so general chilling continued, escalated even. Soon a bottle of vodka was produced from someone’s backpack. Now we were in the bright sun, becoming burned to a crisp and dehydrated, and loving every minute of it, up on a cliffside in the Uzbek Himalayas, eating pickles, drinking vodka, playing music, screaming at the sky, and the like.

It was sometime around when Timur started singing Russian anthems out into the mountains…

…that we realized there was another good reason to go down and cook our lunch at the lower area that Shoney and Timur had found on their mission to the local shepherds for cottonseed oil. Some of the people in our little squadron were becoming drunk, and the mission down that loosely graveled hill would be none too easy if we were to allow the inebriation to continue unabated.

And so down we went, scrambling and taking our time. Jesus, being the drunkest of the crew, chose to simply slide down the sandy mountainside on his rear end.

This was successful in that it transported him down the mountain with relatively little harm to his body, and in being a very rapid means of traversing that bit of land, but unsuccessful in that it totally destroyed his shorts. So down we went, toting musical instruments and bags of peeled potatoes, picking our way across the uneven ground and doing our best not to lose our footing. Meanwhile, Jesus was down at the bottom of the hill screaming obscenities up at us.

From time to time, though the going was rough and I was forced to keep my head down to plan my next step, I found myself tempted to look up into the mountains. They were like none other, impossibly dramatic and beautiful. Ah, Uzbekistan, Ya Habbibi.

We set up shop again at the new site. This one had the added benefit that not only was it near some more plentiful sources of firewood, but it was in the shade of a large tree as well. We were all glad to get out of the sun, which had been beating on us and sapping our energy for hours now.

Vladimir went to work, pouring a long slog of cottonseed oil into the bottom of a cast iron pot that he’d brought, and beginning to fry the potatoes. Meanwhile, Shoney opened up his computer and plugged in a pair of speakers, so that we could listen to some of Tortoise Minja’s favorite music, a group called “Children of Bodom” It was some pretty raw stuff. Listen to this.

Vlad continued to fry potatoes while I cut more fries, and Scott DJ’d. We stirred the fries with an old stick, dumping them out as they got brown into a cracked plastic bowl that the shepherds had lent us along with the oil.

Then Shoney got out his hookah and began the arduous process of unpacking, assembling, and operating it. It was the first time that most of his cigarette loving friends had smoked hookah, and they found it to be quite the fascinating new drug.

We then set to chopping onions, which we fried with the last of the oil and some salt, and once the onions were caramelized, we poured in the two cans of Soviet military style canned beef, stirring it all together and mixing it with the French fries into one giant matted pile.

It may not look appetizing, dear reader, but I’ll tell you, after that climb up and down the mountain, it tasted like pure manna from heaven.

It then became time for the band to show us their signature Tortoise Minja move, which was a kind of finger motion paired with a high pitched screeching sound. It might be more illustrative to just show you the video…

With that out of the way, it was time for more singing. And so we did, taking turns between singing a Russian or Uzbek tune, and singing an American tune. In one of the Russian tunes, they kept mentioning something called “pork vein” and once it was over, Scott and I asked what that might be.  “No, no” Minja replied. “It’s port wine.” Ah, of course.

In fact, the tune (by Viktor Tsoi actually if anyone is interested) goes “My mother is Anarchy, and my father is a glass of port wine.” Here it is:

[audio:http://asiawheeling.com/music/MamaAnarhiya.mp3]

We sat around playing and singing songs. While we sang, Jesus took my tuning pitch pipe out of my ukulele case and began playing it like a harmonica. It worked quite well. You can see him here pictured with it.

Then it was time to clean up and head out. So we did, bundling everything up, and doing our best to practice leave no trace style outdoor gonzo journalism.

Then we made our way out of the mountains and back down to the street. We had arranged with that morning’s cab driver to come pick us up, but he had decided he had better things to do, leaving us for the time being stranded there on the roadside in rural Uzbekistan.

It was well after dark by the time we caught a car driving by and flagged it down. The car had four open seats, and there were sixof us, but we decided we had better squeeze in.

During the ride my legs fell further asleep than they ever had before, wedged as they were between Scott and the boney elbow of the lead singer in an up and coming Uzbek heavy metal group.

I watched through the cracked windshield  of the Lada we drove on, jostled back and forth as the driver worked to avoid potholes and wandering dogs, getting us back toward town. As we drove, I thought how amazing Uzbekistan had been, what an unexpected gem this country was. It felt so good to be here, to be speaking Russian again, to be drinking Kvas, to be eating Plov, to be out in the dry heat and the blazing sunshine.

We were heading to Kazakhstan the next day. I could only hope that it would be half as good as this place.

We are so grateful to Shoney and his family, and to the many people who took the time to be interested in us, to show us kindness and warmth. Oh, but now you’ve got me tearing up over Uzbekistan again.

When we got back to Shoney’s house, his mother had unexpectedly cooked up another giant Plov. This one was, as the last had been, just too good to be true. We ate like ancient kings, struggling to drink enough water to begin rehydrating from the day, for space in the stomach is always at a premium when Plov is around.

In addition to that, Luiza was on the mend, and we were invited to stay there that night, saving us a return trip to that nasty hotel.

That night we stayed up for some time discussing the politics of Uzbekistan with Shoney’s father and mother, both of whom scolded us heavily for not having remembered sunscreen. Guilty as charged.

We arrived back in Tashkent at the crack of dawn. I had not really slept the night before, and was feeling particularly cruddy due to a bit of horse-meat sausage that I’d eaten that had spent some time on the floor of the train. All things considered, we decided it might be better to just haggle a ride in a cab over to the hotel that had been registering us.

We would, of course have stayed with Shoney, but his sister Luiza, bless her, had fallen ill and we were asked not to come round the house to give her time to rest and to protect us from whatever virus she might be entertaining at the moment.

So I weakly haggled for a while, and then we piled in a cab and drove across Tashkent to the hotel. We were by this point as well down to our last сум, since there had been no ATM in Bukhara, and we had depleted the last of our secret dollar reserves in Samarqand. So it was literally our last 8,000 сум that we paid the cab driver, and after unloading all our things from the car, and bidding the chap farewell, we headed into the hotel, hoping they would not want us to pay up front. The last thing we wanted to do was head out on our cycles in search of a dollar spitting ATM and an illegal money changer, before we could catch a little shuteye.

But the story turned out to be even worse than we’d feared. Not only did we not have a reservation at the hotel, but the place was full. We were told to come back at 10:00 am, (in four hours), when there might be a chance of a room. Fair enough.

So we sat down on the curb in Tashkent, exhausted, sick, and with nowhere to sleep. We’d been up all night on a God forsaken train; we had all our stuff piled around us; we had about 75 cents to our names; and the sun was growing ever higher in the morning sky. So we decided to nap in a park, with our stuff locked next to us.

We packed everything up, strapped our things down, and headed out in search of a park. The park proved hard to find, but we did spot a quiet looking neighborhood, and headed in thinking we might find a little interior park or bench… When we spotted this ratty old topchan (a Central Asian low lying table on which you sit to eat, we decided it might be the perfect place to nap.

We were just locking our belongings to a nearby tree when a fellow living in one of the apartments came over. He was smiling and asked us who we were, where we were from, and what we were up to. I explained our story, and asked him whether sleeping on the topchan would we okay. He laughed and said sleeping on the topchan would be fine, but that he would not let us do so. And from there, he began a furious campaign of insistence that we park our cycles in his garage and come up to sleep in his apartment.

We did our best to refuse, indicating that the ratty old topchan was plenty good enough for such rambling trash as  AsiaWheeling, but he stuck to his guns, and eventually we found ourselves parking the speed TRs in a rusty Soviet shed, which he made a great show of locking up tight, and walking us upstairs to his place. Somehow, although I never caught him making a call up to his wife, two beds had been made and laid out for us by the time we arrived. He showed us where to put down our bags and then invited us to sit at his dining room table.

The man’s wife then began bringing out a veritable torrent of food. Meanwhile, the man of the house lazed, smoking cigarettes and questioning us as to what we were doing in Uzbekistan and on AsiaWheeling in general.  After exhaustive conversation, and introductions to his children, he left us to snooze for a couple hours on the beds his wife had made for us.

By the time SIM city 2000 rang out to wake us up and call us to duty, he was already off to his shop in the market where he sold jeans, and it was his wife who showed us back down to the shed and unleashed our bikes.

As we rode away from the place, we could not stop talking about how fantastically friendly and warm the people of Uzbekistan were. That experience was unlike any of the whole trip, really amazing.

We got back to the hotel just in time to meet Shoney there. “I’m telling you guys, Uzbeks love foreigners.”

Fair enough, Shoney. Fair enough.

We woke up the next morning in Bukhara, Uzbekistan.

After feasting monstrously on the lavish breakfast at the Hotel Malika, we headed out into the street to find a black Lexus SUV with Chinese plates parked outside. It seemed these Chinese chaps were on their own adventure through Central Asia, and from what we could see, they were doing it in style.

We continued to wheel away from the old city, positively thrilled at how unique the buildings were here in Uzbekistan. So many of them managed to simultaneously channel the Soviet brutal vibe and the ornate central Asian vibe. It was stupendous.

Our first goal for that day would be to head to the post office and send off the plate we had purchased the day before for Project K9. Considering the standard Uzbek levels of bureaucracy, we were more than prepared for this to take most of the day. We were, however, pleasantly surprised to find that only a minimal amount of waiting in line and being cut by strangers, was required, and that (probably) because of the bizarre black market exchange rate we’d been using, despite the rather remote nature of the place, sending a giant fragile plate off via airmail cost less than sending a similar package from Saigon. Nice one, Uzbekistan.

Not only was there price performance and convenience to be found in this blocky Soviet building, but the workers at the Bukhara post office were wonderful people, more than ready to bend over backward accommodating our terrible Russian, and helping us to properly package the plate for its long overseas journey.

Feeling splendid about the completion of that mission, we piled back onto the bikes and headed out in search of a little more wheeling, followed by a little more food.

The wheeling was just too easy in this city. Any direction we chose to travel offered a fantastic assortment of treasures. The food, however, was tough, and we wheeled for quite some time before we spotted what you might call a “chicken from the machine” type restaurant. Not wanting to squander what could be the only restaurant we saw for the next  four kilometers, we headed in.

The owner of the place ran up from the basement kitchen to meet us. She spoke Russian that was accented much more like the Russian I’d learned in Petrograd, and I found her very easy to understand. She also seemed to really enjoy my filthy, broken Russian, complimenting me again and again.

With all those pleasantries out of the way, we decided to focus on chicken. Low and behold, it turned out to be chicken in the same Soviet style as the place Shoney’s grandfather had taken us to across from the Hotel Uzbekistan in Tashkent. It was accompanied by the same thick Bloody Mary mix sauce, though here the Soviet bread was replaced with Uzbek Lapyoshka.  So we drank Kvas and feasted on chicken, feeling things could not get much better.

Beside our table, a large fish tank displayed a nearby sign requesting patrons to “please not smoke near the fish.”

So with stomachs once again stuffed, we headed back out on the bikes, wheeling off in a new direction. This move ended up taking us out past some very remotely positioned government buildings, and into areas where giant swaths of farmland were being turned into huge public projects. Take this giant orb on a pedestal, for instance. There were probably a few square kilometers of walkways placed around here, with forests of tiny trees, just waiting to grow into a grand shady forest.

We rode in toward the orb on the pedestal, and as we grew closer, the sound of construction befell our ears. All around this orb were Uzbek workmen building both the orb itself and other structures, like a large theater-opera-house type building, and like this arena – for blood sports perhaps?

We wheeled the complex thoroughly,  before turning back to return to town, looping around the old city and by the giant fortress that we’d seen the day before. Soon we ended near a huge and ancient mosque, overlooking one of Bukhara’s last in-city ponds. Most of the ponds, once common in town, had been paved over by the Soviets, but as a man walking by with a rake explained to me, this one was kept around because it was the most beautiful, and played an important role in the architecture of the nearby mosques and schools buildings.

The nearby buildings certainly were impressive, with many of those large wooden hand-carved pillars, holding up plenty of complicated Uzbek tile work.

Then, true to our word, we returned to the giant stadium, where we began to give it a much more thorough exploration.

It was not abandoned, per say, but in the way that many things are in the post-Soviet world, it had been allowed to fall into disrepair.

It was still used by the populace though,  for children’s sports, physical education, and the like (we saw a few signs for youth boxing classes), but it also felt very much like a post apocalyptic wasteland at the same time. All bathed in that delicious Uzbek sunlight.

We took our Speed TRs for a quick lap around the track, there and then headed back outside, glancing down at our watches. It was high time to head back to the Hotel Malika to pick up our bags. The wheel to the train station was quite flat, but it was still 20 km.

On our way out, we were stopped by one of the groundskeepers at the stadium. He wanted to learn more about us, and we decided we could spare a little time to chat with him. When he found out we were from America, he became very excited and began asking about American Indians, which he referred to as Indianski people.

Are there Indians that still flight cowboys in America? Where do the Indians live? Are they rich or poor? Can they work any job they want? What about a hotel? A hotel for foreigners? So you’re telling me I might check into a hotel in the US and an Indianski might just take my bag or be working at the front desk!? Get out of here!

I’m sure he was imagining Chief Sitting Bull unloading his bags from a New York taxicab.

We had already been talking for probably 20 minutes, so I just said, “yep that’s right,” and then bid him farewell. And with that, off we went, swinging by the Malika to grab our bags, and then hitting the road. We were a little behind schedule, but if we rode hard, we should still have been able to make it to the train station in Kagan in time to buy a few snacks and get on the train.

Then my rear tire went flat. First flat of the trip, right there and then in Bukhara, Uzbekistan. We looked down at our watches… should we take a cab? Or should we try to fix this thing and keep moving. Finally, we decided that we’d give ourselves 15 minutes to fix the flat, and if we were having trouble getting the big apple tire off the rim, or it was just taking too long, we’d take a cab.

We immediately switched into AsiaWheeling crisis management mode, flipping the bike over and working as fast and precisely as we could. As we were frantically working on the cycle, a child approached, pushing another legless child in a wheelchair. The two of them wheeled the chair up next to where I was furiously tearing the big apple off the rim and pulling out the inner tube.

Ah! It was a pinch! I had let my tire pressure get too low in my rear wheel! Good news was that the spotless reputation of our Schwalbe Big Apples (Thank you SpeedMatrix) was still unmarred. Bad news was that time was ticking and the kids had begun to beg from us in a most heart wrenching way, crying out as though we were their mothers, and asking in Russian for money, telling me he was cold (it was probably 90 degrees Fahrenheit out) and hungry (this was plausible).

In a stunning demonstration of inhumanity, I looked up from the wheel, and shouted in English “Times are tough for all of us, kid! Now get out of here!” I underlined the statement with a few choice phrases in Russian, and the kids shut up, but still hung around to watch the drama unfold.

A few minutes later, the tire was done and we were back on the road. The burst of adrenaline from the flat was still coursing through my veins and we road very hard, making the 20 km, fully loaded, back to Kagan in less than an hour.

Once at the train station, we purchased a a few snacks, and then headed for our train.

When we got on, we found our section of the train to be just packed with foreigners. There were five  or six Chinese stoneworkers from Beijing here to inspect a quarry, a family of somewhat disoriented French holidaymakers, and us.

I felt sorry for the poor automobile factory workers with whom we shared a bunk. For the air conditioning did not run all night long, the Chinese played Chinese pop music at ridiculous volumes from their mobile phones, and the French people were constantly occupying the bathroom having all been struck by dysentery.

We woke up plenty early the next day and wandered into the dining room area of the Hotel Malika in Bukhara, Uzbekistan. We had thought that the breakfast at the Caravan Sarai was luxurious… well this one took it to a whole new level, with multiple kinds of pastry, two eggs each, black (Russian) and white (Uzbek) breads, 4 different jams, all kinds of sausages, blini with sour cream, a fruit plate, a selection of deep fried shapes,  and a personal waiter! It was in all honesty just too much. It made me slightly uncomfortable, resulting in me rushing a bit through my meal.

Regardless, it was with bellies plenty full that we struck out into the bright sunshine to do some more in depth explorations of this most fascinating city called Bukhara, where the post boxes look like this.

We took a right turn, delving straight from our hotel into the twisted alleyways that make up Bukhara’s old city. The best we could hope for was that we would get hopelessly lost therein.

This we achieved with little effort. As we rode, we were continually stumbling upon giant compounds of Uzbek structures, the purpose of which we had no idea, but who’s facades told of long forgotten grandeur and years of neglect.

We rode along until we noticed this interestingly ornate plaque, which we would be more than grateful is someone more fluent in Russian than I could shed some light on in the comments.

We continued to ride on, getting deeper and more lost in the city. We noticed a bakery selling butter cookies, and stopped to but a few, riding on from there, munching as we wheeled.

We continued on, through mostly deserted streets, past giant structures which these days served lord knows what purpose.

This city felt ancient, frozen in time, remote in a way that no other place we’ve been to has felt.

Suddenly, we came upon a giant fortress, which we wheeled up to investigate more closely. It was huge, with very high walls, and bulbous turrets. When we arrived at the central gate to the monster, it seemed to have been turned into some sort of a giant tourist shopping mall…. So, rather than destroy the mystery with some mundane tourist garbage, we just wheeled on, leaving the wonder intact.

We continued to skirt around the great fortress, riding along the base of its walls and moving towards the back of the beast. Many places along the wall, the structure seemed to be dependent on long wooden poles which were plunged directly into the mortar, making them an integral part of the wall. I guess, this being the desert and all, wood does not decompose so quickly as it might in, say, Cambodia.

From the base of the fortress, we proceeded to loop through a system of back alleys which spilled us out into a central courtyard, over which towered the Kalyan Minaret.

The Kalyan Minaret, or “tower of death”.   It was built in 1127 and, according to the legend its builder killed a prominent Imam. The Imam appeared to the great Khan (the Mongolian ruler a the time) in a dream and asked that he lay the imam’s head on a spot where nobody can tread upon it. Thus the tower was built over the murdered Imam’s grave. It gets the name “Tower of Death” because rulers of Bukhara once executed criminals by taking them to the top, sowing them into a black bag and pushing them out, letting gravity do the rest.

Nowadays, one can find an amazing assortment of Uzbek pottery for sale at it’s base. And, remembering that we had a project K9 order in for a platter, we decided to purchase one then and there.

So we counted out a wad of сум, and bough the thing, but we were not free to go yet, for we were in a gaint market of pottery sellers and having shown now our willingness to fork over сум, we had to fend off the entire rest of the crowd, who had become increasingly interested in us.

One way to do that was to distract them with the majesty and glory of the Speed TRs. Unfortunately that leads to requests to take the thing for a spin. And, being the trusting chaps that we are, we agreed. The pottery seller on Scott’s bike came back after only 5 minutes of riding. The fabric merchant who had gotten on mine, however, disappeared without a trace.

So I sat down in her chair, where she had been selling colorful swatches, and began to wait her out. It was a long wait, and I had made very good friends with the rest of the merchants in the market by the time she arrived back, wearing a new outfit and with her kid sister riding on the rear rack. I thanked her for giving my cycle back, and we wheeled off.

Some people these days…

Feeling very satisfied with our day’s work, we packed up the platter and headed back to the Malika, where we spent the rest of the afternoon working furiously on correspondence for you, dear reader.

We woke up our last morning in Samarqand and signed the guest book at the Caravan Sarai Guesthouse. It was really a fantastic place, highly recommended to all you AsiaWheeling readers who are by this point just salivating to go visit the Uze.

From there, we strapped our things down onto the cycles and made our way to the train station. We arrived just in time to catch our train to Bukhara. The ride was short and sweet, and we spent most of the time working tirelessly on correspondence for you, dear reader.

When the train arrived, we climbed off and began to take stock of our surroundings. One of the first things we realized was that we were not in Buhkara. The train, it turns out, actually takes you to the nearby town of Kagan, from which Bukhara is only a 20 km wheel away.

That was all fine and dandy, but if we were about to wheel 20 km fully loaded, we needed to get a little food in our stomachs. So that became the first order of business.

We rode around hungrily for some time before selecting an outdoor shawarma place for lunch. The fellow who ran the place was thrilled to see us arriving, and quickly busied himself attempting to resurrect his wimpy little piece of shawarma. It seems the flame had long been off, and the rotational functionality long out of operation, but after hammering on the gas can, and eventually going inside to boil some water and pour it onto the thing, he was able to coax a small flame and warm the meat a bit.

He produced for us two sandwiches, both of which were scrumptious. By the time they arrived, though, word had spread throughout Kagan that AsiaWheeling was in town, and a crowd was forming around us, including a number of small business owners and a small collection of local children.  We were offered a cool beverage made by boiling dried apricots, and a plate of fresh fruit by one of the fellows who came to see the spectacle. After some more conversation with him, it was disclosed that he owned a nearby butcher shop, and he asked me if I might accompany him for a tour of the operation.

I was, of course, happy to, and accompanied him inside, where he showed me his apparatus for the gutting, bleeding, and slicing up sheep. He also showed me the many cuts of meat that he had for sale, contrasting their qualities and general price performance. And for the coup de gras, he took me around to show me his air conditioning unit, which he explained paid for itself in the rate that it slowed down the rotting of meat in the shop.

I thanked him very much for the tour, and when I reappeared in the sunshine, it was high time for us to get on the road to Bukhara. So we shook hands, took photos with the rest of the team and hit the road. We were about to head onto the main road to Bukhara when we had the thought that it might actually be easier to buy our ticket out of town now, while we were at the station, so we quickly wheeled back to the ticket hall.

With tickets in hand, we hit the road, and started riding hard through Uzbek farmland. The road was relatively new and smooth, the elevation change was negligible, and it felt good to be wheeling. We continued to follow the signs and ask people until we got found ourselves entering the city.

Now it was only a process of asking people where the Hotel Malika was, and riding around in circles for a bit before we were throwing our things down onto two giant beds in our startlingly large room. There was even wifi at this hotel, though its speed was enough to make a level headed AsiaWheeler pull his hair out.

So rather than battle the terrifyingly slow Internet, we decided to go out wheeling. The city of Bukhara proved absolutely excellent for wheeling. It was a quiet town, with very little traffic and plenty to see. The architectural style here was similar to what we’d seen in Samarqand and Tashkent, but less colorful and more brutal.

This city had a violent past, full of maniacal religious rule, and people being sewed into bags and tossed from the highest minaret.  It also had some of the most inviting ancient crumbling streets. We found Bukhara’s wheeling simply irresistible. We continued to pedal on past ancient and monstrous buildings, most of which, in sharp contrast to Samarqand, were locked up tight and not open to visitors.

We wheeled on, eventually passing out of the old city, and came across an old Soviet stadium. We rolled around it a bit, vowing to return when we had more time to explore. For the time being, we were interested in finding something to eat and heading back to the Internet to get some things done.

Unfortunately, finding a restaurant in Bukhara proved easier said than done. We ended up wheeling for some time before, while rolling by a kind of kid’s play land, we spotted a place that looked suitable. It may have been a restaurant designed for parents to relax in while the kids enjoyed the carnival. Whatever the business strategy, it was delicious.

We were served by a very friendly and rather gigantic Uzbek woman. The first waiter who had attempted to help us had spoken only Uzbek (one of the first people we’d met who didn’t speak Russian) and had been quickly replaced by this woman, who obviously held some power in the organization. She wasted no time in ascertaining what we wanted to order, instead just serving up some wicked Manty, Somsas, and Shashlik and trusting that we’d enjoy them.

Right she was.

This morning began just as the last had, with a giant and savage breakfast at the Caravan Sarai Hotel in Samarkand Uzbekistan.

Stomachs plenty full, we climbed on the Speed TRs and started wheeling past recently build, bizarrely empty office buildings and unsettling water advertisements.  We decided for this wheel to just choose a direction and keep going in it, hoping thst as it usually did, this strategy would yield some adventure and insight into the city of Samarkand.

Eventually, we found ourselves in front of yet another giant ancient Uzbek complex. This one we’d never head of, but it was giant and inviting, so we locked out bikes and headed over to investigate.

It was some 50 cents to get in, so we decided it worth a look. The interior was delightful, and completely devoid of fellow visitors.

It had a very Registan-esque flavor to it, except that his one featured a number of fruit trees and grape vines inside the courtyard, which really made for a delightful change from the blue cloudless sky and the sandy desert tones of this ancient city.

We wandered in and out of the buildings that made up the complex finding them all quite deserted, all the more interesting, and very ornate.

And then we were wheeling again. Tearing down the road, and really putting miles between us and the complex. Suddenly, it was very obviously time to eat, we realized. Luckily, there were plenty of restaurant all around us, as we rode, and we had simply to select one. The one we did choose was a fantastic, truly epic place, where we were able to eat a delightful meal of Shashlik, soup, bread, and salad for about 3 dollars each.

They served the Shashlik there with the most delightful red pepper powder, which was made all the more come hither by it’s fantastic packaging.

After we got back into town, we decided to check out the Guri Amir,  which we’d just seen the back side of the day before. It was also impressive, and we took our time riding around it, taking it in from all sides. One could see, upon circumnavigation, that the restoration was still very much underway.

When we stopped outside the place to catch our breath in the shade, we quickly struck up a conversation with some of the locals who were doing the same.

This conversation soon turned into a kind of photo shoot, in which all the visitors to the Guri Amir, were invited to pose with the strange foreigners. We must have posed with 20 or 30 people by the end of it.

One of them even went and had the photo printed for us.

When we got back to the hotel, we found ourselves in conversation with the director of a school of industry, not far outside the city of Samarkand. After a brief introductory conversation outside next to the Speed TRs, which I believe added credibility, he informed us that he had in his possession some lamb, some cold chicken and some vodka that he would be deeply offended if we did not consume with him.

And so he called out to the hotel staff to prepare a table and we sat down with him. After perhaps an hour more of eating, drinking, and chatting, he announced that he was heading off to bed. We bid him good slumbers and headed off ourselves to find internet somewhere in this town.

That was no easy task, but 5 cafes, and 4 internet clubs later, we found a place that was willing to let us plug our machines into their network. Now if only the internet had been faster that 2 or 3 kb/s once we’d done so, it would have been a true victory.

We woke up the next morning at the Yakubjanov residence, and the smell of more Plov was already wafting through the residence. Not to be outdone by Shoney’s grandmother, his mother too was eager to try her Plov out on us. Shoney had already been telling us about the majesty and wonder of his mother’s Plov. Nothing she’d cooked yet had been anything other that a home run, so we were excited to try it.

First we had to go on a mission for washers. I headed out with Shoney’s sister to go searching. You see, during the previous day’s open heart surgery on Scott’s Speed TR’s dynamo hub, we had been forced to remove and jettison quite a few pieces of the wheel, meaning that now the hub was a fair bit too small for the fork. My idea for a temporary solution to this was to simply fill the extra space with washers. So I looked up the word for washers in my Russian dictionary, and we headed out.

Eventually, after striking out a few times, we wandered into an auto mechanic’s shop. The man was not only swimming in washers, but he was more than happy to give them to me for free. “As many as you can carry!” he laughed.

By the time we all arrived back at the house, it was Plov time. And my goodness did she go all out.  The rice had been steaming in meat juices, and meanwhile she cut up a large piece of lamb, some horse sausage, a couple of hard boiled eggs, and unstrung a necklace of stuffed grape leaves. She then piled all this on top of the dish and presented it to us with a big smile, some apologies as to the out-of-season nature of the grape leaves. “You’ll have to come back when the grapes are in season. I’m sorry about that.” Mrs. Yakubjanov, we would be more than happy to come back and eat your Plov any time.

It was too tasty, the rice all filled with raisins and nuts, the grape leaves succulent and juicy, the meat salted and spiced to perfection. I just couldn’t stop eating it. It was served, as is the tradition, with a fresh salad of onion, tomato and cucumber.

Once again, we felt so full that we might have to be rolled out the door. And then it was time for melon! Another dynia, perhaps even sweeter and more delightful than the last.  My goodness do they eat well in Uzbekistan.

Then it was time to split. With so much gratitude that we could not tell which was more busting, our stomachs or our hearts, we thanked them again and climbed on the bikes.

“Now remember, my father has booked a room for you guys at the Caravan Sarai hotel. It’s the same place where he sets up his U.N. guests! The manager will meet you at the station. Good luck!”

The conductors on the train took one look at the Speed TRs, and saw an opportunity to extract a bribe. In the end, not knowing the rules of post Soviet rail travel, we paid them nearly $5.00 for each cycle.

As the train rumbled through rich Uzbek farmland, we chatted with our fellow passengers, all citizen of Samarqand. They seemed thrilled to be sharing a car with us. It was one older man, a cartographer by trade, and a mother and daughter. The woman ran the front desk at a hospital, I believe.

About every five minutes, I would hear “VooDya!” and the little girl would have sprung up with another question for me. My Russian was terribly rusty, and had gotten little better since I’d come to the Uze, so reliant had we been on Shoney to play translator. But now I was getting to use that old muscle, and it felt good, exhilarating in fact.

Near the end of the ride, they noticed the ukulele and asked for a tune. I was happy to oblige them with a little Doobie Brother’s “Long Train Runnin.”

We arrived at the station in Samarqand and were blown out of the water by how beautiful it was. It was the most impressive station Scott or I had ever seen, lit up dramatically in the night, and built out of gorgeous materials. We were just about to leave with the young manager who had come to meet us and take us to the Caravan Sarai Guesthouse, when I realized we had left our keys and helmets on the train.

I sprinted back and caught it just as it was leaving. The words for helmet and keys came back to me in a flash, and I was able to ask for them. Sure enough one of the women cleaning the train had found them and placed them in a large metal bin.

I came back out at a triumphant jog, the only words to describe my emotions at that point were in Lao: Uzbekistan Duuuh!

More feasting was the name of the game, here at the Yakubjanov household in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. This morning it was three fatty, piping hot giant steamed dumplings called, of all things, Manty. More of that dark earthy halva, and eggs fried with sausage. Grapes and fresh bread were always nearby was well.

We were cautioned not to eat too much by Shoney, for there was lots of feasting that would need to take place today.

So we ate, doing our best to hold back, but with Mrs. Yakubjanov’s excellent cooking, we were none too successful. We were going to get to try even more Yakubjanov family cooking, for our next stop was Shoney’s grandfather’s house for some Plov. Plov is the quintessential Uzbek dish, a rice pilaf filled with meat, onions, carrots and savory spices. As it is cooked, the steam is said to rise to the heavens along with your prayers.

That morning, Shoney’s sister had taken Scott’s Speed TR out for a ride and had come back complaining that it was making a weird noise. It had been a while since that front wheel of his had eaten a bearing, so we grabbed one of the spares that we’d bought in Syria at the NSK shop, grabbed his front wheel, and hopped in a cab. Shoney’s grandfather was actually an auto mechanic and engineer, so we were assured we would have the tools to perform the repair.

As we drove back to Nazarkulov’s neighborhood, we passed this Lada carrying a trunk full of raw meat. Very interesting.

Shoney’s grandmother greeted us at the door, and very cordially asked us to take off our shoes. We were then invited to retire to Nazarkulov’s study, to peruse old Soviet books, while she got the last bits of the Plov done and Nazarkulov made his way back from dealing with a death. It turns out that in his retirement, he had become the man in their community to make himself an expert on the many bits of bureaucracy and cultural observation that must be handled when someone dies in Uzbekistan.

And so we waited, perusing his amazing collection of books. He also had a computer and an Internet connection as well! Very rare among the older Uzbek generation. Not even Shoney’s family had Internet in their home. This old man was refusing to fall behind the times!

And then it was time, once again, to feast. And my goodness was it an amazing meal. It began with fresh tomato salad and fried cauliflower. Have I commented yet as to the amazing quality of Uzbek tomatoes? They are like nothing available anywhere else in the world outside of a backyard garden. And they are consistently amazing, and the most appetizing deep red. I don’t think I ate a bad tomato my entire time in the country.

The next course was the Plov. And then more Plov. And then even more Plov.  It was delicious, hearty, and approachable. Too easy to eat, one might even say. So good was it, that we just kept eating until we couldn’t shovel another bite in. Part way through the meal, Nazarkulov brought out some of his homemade white wine, which he had bottled in an old vodka bottle. It too was scrumptious.

When we were too stuffed for words, out came a giant plate of some of the most delicious Uzbek melon. And once we had finished that, it magically reappeared, full once again with melon. The dessert featured both watermelon and dynia, which is a cantaloupe-like variant, which is famous all over the post Soviet world. All of them were impossibly sweet and perfectly textured.

Barely able to stand up from the table, we thanked our hosts again and again, then humbly asked if we might use their tools.

Nazarkulov produced a magnificent set of solid Soviet tools from the closet and we began to go to town on Scott’s wheel. When we got into the thing, we found that it was not, in fact, the bearing that had gone bad, it was the dynamo hub itself. So we proceeded to dig deeper, taking the entire hub apart and finding that the magnet inside had indeed cracked and was jangling around inside as the wheel turned. So we just removed the entire dynamo and threw it away, leaving the entire interior chamber of the wheel a big empty cavity.

And so we headed back out, wheel repaired, wandering on foot, over to a park across the street from the Soviet housing development where Nazarkulov lived. Shoney was on the phone with the hotel that had registered us, and the news was not good. We were quite sad to find the current registration only covered one day, and it turned out we would need to keep paying this hotel in order to stay legal in Uzbekistan.

We got over that pretty soon when we realized we had a bunch more feasting to do.

The next task was to buy shoes — pointy, black, leather shoes.  If we were going to operate after dark in the post Soviet world, we needed to look the part.  Shoes were step one; the critical foundation to any hard boiled Soviet sartorial ensemble.  So we headed back to the market, where we began searching. At first it was tough to locate the right pair, but after we stopped and bought some homemade kvas from an old Soviet doctor who was hawking her homemade brew in the street, the skies seemed to open up and direct us right to the perfect corner of the market. We dickered over a couple of pairs of Uzbek-style pointy black shoes before it was time to head to another feast.

We met up with Shoney’s parents at a Kazakh restaurant, where they treated us to a scrumptious meal of Kazakh five fingers horse meat soup, endless skewers of shashlik, and some Russian-style mayonnaise-heavy salads.