When we were in Fergana a week ago staying at the Asia hotel, which I do not recommend by the way, we happened to meet the mayor of Kitab, Uzbekistan. We had gone down to have breakfast in the restaurant and there was nowhere to sit. A man offered to let us join him at his table and we had a small conversation with him. He told us there was a grape growers convention going on at the hotel and that’s what he was there for. He said we must visit him in his city if we were passing through. It turned out we were going to be driving right through his town. We had not planned to stop there, but now we had a reason to!

We left Samarkand to drive to Kitab. But our first stop of the day was a small paper factory outside town. They still make paper the traditional way and they show you each step of the way. The factory guarantees their paper for 2000 years. We were perfect little tourists and we bought some in the gift shop. They also have a ceramics shop where you can see the whole process from a glob of clay, to the spinning wheel, to the kiln, to the glaze. My daughter was interested.

As we drove away from the factory there was a funeral procession walking by! You know my interest in death. I didn’t want to be too rude and snap photos as we drove by, so here’s a bad one I got through our dirty windshield. Pardon the mess, we have driven all the way from Almaty.

We drove to Kitab. First, we went to an old palace of Amir Timur. Kitab was his birthplace so his legacy is very special to the local people. Then, we gave our friend a call. Sadly, he was very sick and could not meet us, but he sent some other people to show us around. They came and picked us up at the park where the palace was and took us to a restaurant where they treated us to an amazing meal and filled us with much vodka. Too much vodka.

Because we drank too much vodka there was no site seeing after; it was straight to the hotel for us.

The next morning we packed up our bags, checked out of the hotel, and were driving away to head off to Bukhara when they called us on the phone to invite us for a day of site seeing! They had been so kind to us and were such nice guys, we thought we couldn’t say no, so we said yes. We turned our car around and returned to the hotel to wait for them.

When they arrived they explained to us that they had been awake all night long. There is a severe drought happening in this region of Uzbekistan now and the farmers are breaking into the water system and stealing water for their crops. They were up all night going around the district, closing off the taps, and locking them, with the help of the police. It’s a very depressing situation all around. How do you explain climate change to uneducated, impoverished farmers and how we can’t just let the water flow freely now because if we do there will be no water later? They explained to us that there was no rain and no snow last season at all. But all the farmers see is their crops drying up now. My daughter learned about climate change in science class this past year so I was really happy for her to hear this real world situation. I don’t know if happy is the right word for it, it’s a depressing situation, but I was happy for her to see something she learned about in a book in a real life situation.

At one point we stopped in the car and they got out to have a meeting with the head of the reservoir and they had a big talk. He agreed to release more water for the farmers. In the end, everyone is happy.

The guys took us to a beautiful spot by a river for swimming and barbecue. I didn’t swim. I think I disappointed them but I HATE cold water and oh my god that was cold water. It was a fresh mountain river and I understand some people find that refreshing but, for me, no matter how hot I am, I cannot get in freezing cold water. There is nothing refreshing about that to me. It’s pure misery. I just watched. They pressured me to get in but I just stood there and said no way.

During our time with them they asked us several times about opening a business, bringing in business, business, business, business. We don’t have that kind of money. We can’t open a language school and we don’t have any connections with Ocean Spray to open a pomegranate juice bottling plant, but if you do, you should contact me, I’ll put you in touch with these guys because they’re eager to bring development into Uzbekistan. Even when they realized we weren’t millionaire Americans with tons of money to open businesses, they still treated us like family and made us feel welcomed. We’ve traveled in many developing nations and had people be really friendly to us when they thought we were rich just because we were Americans and as soon as they found out we weren’t rich they dropped us, but these guys didn’t. They stayed just as friendly from the first minute to the last. But, it was clear to us they are looking to bring investment and development in, so really, if you’re reading this, you’ve got the money, and you’re interested, I can put you in touch. I’m not looking for a business deal here. They didn’t ask me to say this. They were just really nice guys and I’d love to see them succeed in everything they want.

We ate a delicious lamb, potato, and tomato dish and then were on our way.

Now, if we had had more time we could have stayed a week in Kitab! There’s all kinds of stuff to do there. There’s an observatory you can visit, they’re even building a guest house. There are mountains to hike in, with some religious pilgrimage sites. There are museums. Even the grave of one of the grandson’s of the Prophet Muhammed is in Kitab. We would have happily stayed and done all these neat off the beaten path tours if we had had the time. But, we had to keep moving. I can’t find any information about this stuff online but I picked up a tourism booklet. If you’re interested you can send me an email and I’ll take pics of the booklet for you and send it to you. It really is neat.

The guys welcomed us and made us feel like family. Uzbekistan has truly grown to have a large part of our hearts.

So, if you’ve been reading my blog then you know one of the things I’ve loved so much about Uzbekistan is the calmness of the people and especially the calmness of the bazaars. I’m no twenty-something Western backpacker looking for the thrill of a wild outdoor market. I’ve traveled the world, I’ve been to bazaars from Latin America to Africa and I’ve grown to mostly hate them. The yelling, the pushing, the shoving, the haggling over prices, the trying to take advantage of the naive foreigner. These big open air markets just don’t give me the same thrill they did fifteen years years ago. When I find myself in one now it’s for a purpose. Either there’s historical value, or I actually need to buy something.

But! Here in Uzbekistan it’s been different! We’ve been in bazaars in Tashkent, Kokand, and Ferghana and all three were calm. No yelling, no one hassling me, no pushing, no shoving, no one grabbing my arm trying to pull me into their stall, no one demanding I buy something form them. It’s been a pleasure shopping here.

That was all until yesterday. Here. In Samarkand. The vendors here are much more aggressive. As we waked through the Siab Bazaar people were shouting us “Hey meester! Hey meester!” If I stopped for just one split second it was “Madame! Madame! Madame!” Look! Look! Look!” They are much, much more aggressive here. Inside the Bibi-Khanym Mausoleum I truly thought I was going to have to shout ‘Back off!!!” at a souvenir vendor to make her leave me alone.

I’m trying to decide what to attribute the difference to and I think it must be tourism. Samarkand sees way more foreign tourists than any town in the Ferghana Valley does. The vendors have have been conditioned and learned to be aggressive sales people to make the deal.

Societies change over time and I’m seeing it in realtime over a cross country road trip.

It’s still not anywhere near as bad here as it is in East Asia or Latin America. Sure, some people shouted “Meester and Madame” at us and one lady wouldn’t stop pestering me but you’d have to multiply that by 10,000 to even get close to walking through the main market in Xi’an.

We started our day at the Ulugh Beg Observatory in Samarkand. This is an ancient observatory of an old prince that was far more interested in the stars and science than he was conquering foreign lands. His observatory, built in the 1420s, calculated the length of a year with his accuracy only being off by less than 30 seconds. After Ulugh Beg was put to death by his own son his observatory was razed to the ground and forgotten about. Only the underground part was rediscovered centuries later. That’s what you’re looking at here. We paid the 30,000 som for the English tour and it was well worth the money. First off, it’s only $3 and second, he was highly knowledgeable and we learned a lot. I recommend it.

Next, we went to the “Tomb of the Prophet Daniel.” I put that in quotes because #1 you have to believe such a person actually existed in the first place and #2 a simple Google search will come up with at least nine different tombs all claiming to be the tomb of the Prophet Daniel, and yes, all the same one. It’s the same thing as when we went to see the burial place of Saint Nicholas, Santa Claus, in Ireland. I’m sure what I’ve typed here is heresy and someone’s gonna put a fatwa out on me but I still like to see this history. Was Daniel a giant? Why is his tomb so long? The teacher in me is forcing me to tell you to look it up. Not really. It’s just late at night, I’m tired, and I’m too lazy to type it up and it’s a simple google search away. Teach yourself something funny. Go!

Next, we went to the Afrasiab Museum at the Afrasiab archeological site. It was amazing! If you’re into history, you really must go! The site dates back to the 2nd century CE and was discovered in 1965. Their pride and joy piece is a large four wall mural. This museum was one of the best, if not the best, we have seen so far in Uzbekistan, no, I’m going to say the best. But remember you’re reading a world history teacher’s blog here. There’s my kid looking ever so excited to be brought to yet another museum.

Next it was time to eat. We wanted to see the the Siab Bazaar just because it’s been fully operational since the middle ages, so we walked over and found a restaurant to eat at near there. We found a place that was obviously a tourist trap but we were hungry so we stopped anyway. They had a simple straight forward menu: shashlik (barbeque), laghman(noodles), salad, bread, tea. Yeah. We were right. It was more expensive than it should have been, but whatever, it was clean, it was good, we’re on holiday, and the server was friendly. We felt better after getting some food in us too. The name of the place was Kyzyl Chaixona.

Now we were ready to move again. We went to the 15th c. Bibi-Khanym Mosque. It is in various states of restoration and we loved it. One of the buildings is in a terrible state of disrepair, one you can see has had some work done to it, and one is almost completely restored to its original glory. We also bought some art from a this guy. It takes him six days to complete one piece and he sells them for $20 USD.

While were there we we ran into a large group of local teens and their English teacher. I’m not exactly sure what they were doing there but they were eager to talk with us! They asked us lots of questions about American culture and were often surprised by our answers. They kept talking about how big the salaries are in the US but we kept mentioning how expensive the cost of living is. For example, a 20oz bottle of Coca-Cola only costs fifty cents here, an ice cream costs twenty five cents, a taxi ride across town is less an a dollar. Sure! Their salary may be less, but so is their cost of living.

It also blew the teacher’s mind when we told him ivy league schools are only about making connections. You don’t really get a better education at Harvard than you do at, say Kennesaw State University. The difference is at Harvard you might be going to school with Bill Gates’ kid or niece and you win all the connections that will help you later in life. The guy was blown away! He was like no way!! I thought things like that only happened here!!! We said nope. They happen in the US too.

We also had a small world experience while we were there. We met a professor of journalism at a university in Almaty! He speaks fluent English, we exchanged numbers, and said we’ll all hang out when we get back to town.

Next we went to Bibi-Khanym’s Mausoleum. I’ve had a thing for the dead since I was a kid. In the US people get really disturbed by it, but in the rest of the world it’s totally acceptable to go on tours like this. We did our whole mummy tour of Italy a couple years ago, there are ossuaries in France and ossuaries in Czechia, the mausoleums here are a major tourist attraction. No one here looks at me like I’m a freak when I say I’m heading over to see the mausoleums tomorrow.

The last thing we did today was see Uzbekistan’s first president, Islam Karimov, the authoritarian tyrant’s mausoleum. There are so many pictures and statues of him everywhere I was surprised there weren’t a bunch of flowers being laid by his grave like they do for Mao in Beijing. I did see old women praying to him. I wish I could have snapped a picture but there were no photograph signs clearly posted and the police had their eyes on me. Of course, I snapped some pics when I could but I missed the old ladies praying at Karimov’s tomb.

I lied. The last thing we did today was have ice cream. We had a jam packed day. We were on the move from 9 in the morning to 8 at night. Tomorrow it’s the Samarkand paper factory where they still make paper by hand and it has a 2,000 year guarantee.

We arrived in Samarkand about lunch time today and found our hotel. There’s no good signage and it was a little tough to find, but just like everyone else we’ve encountered in Uzbekistan all the neighbors are friendly and they were happy to show us where to go. It’s in prime real estate right by the Registan. The place seems to be brand new. All the other rooms on our floor are under construction.

I desperately needed a shower and the kid looked as if she was about to fall over dead of exhaustion so we took the afternoon slowly. I took my shower and told her to sleep. When the husband and I were both about to fall asleep ourselves we forced ourselves to get up and face the day. By now it was almost 3PM.

We went to find some food. the place the hotel owner recommended didn’t look too impressive from the outside. It looked like a fast food joint and we were disappointed he had judged us as Americans and assumed that’s what we liked/wanted but we were tired, we’ve been on the road, he suggested it, so we gave in and went in to eat. We’re happy we did. It was actually really good.

It wasn’t a fast food restaurant. It was a family restaurant. The husband had lamb that was cooked perfectly tender with potatoes, I had hamburger meat stuffed with cheese, and the kid had a noodle soup. When we ordered we weren’t all too sure of what we were ordering so it was a surprise.

We looked over and the table next to us had some tasty looking fried chicken wings and we couldn’t resist. There was a bit of an ordering confusion but eventually we got through to our server we wanted some. I tried using google translate and it wasn’t working. That’s when I realized he didn’t speak Russian. He had gotten our order before because we pointed at pictures. This time we speaking and it wasn’t working and we just thought he wasn’t understanding our crap Russian so we typed it out but he still wasn’t understanding us. It’s okay. We eventually made it clear what we wanted and we got our wings. And they were good! They had sesame seeds! They add a nice flavor.

After lunch we began walking toward the Registan, the old public square of Samarkand, the capital of the Timurid Empire from 1370-1405. It consists of three old madrassas which have been converted into a string of souvenir shops. The buildings are stunningly beautiful. The artwork is intricate and this was the place I have been the most excited about seeing in Uzbekistan.

It was a little depressing to see it’s being used for nothing more than souvenir shops but I guess that’s what keeps the money coming in. It felt very similar to walking around the plaza in Santa Fe. The big difference here was the vendors were very respectful, just like everyone else in the country has been. No one harassed us, no one begged us to come in their shop, people offered once, or even said nothing at all, and then let us keep walking by. I appreciated it. I’d like to write a letter to the Uzbek board of tourism. I wonder if such a thing exists.

We stayed a long time because as the sun was moving the lighting was changing and I was getting better and better photos. Eventually I knew my family would give up on me or get angry with me soon if I didn’t say let’s go. We checked Google Maps for a nearby cafe, found it, but it was packed with people, and we’re trying to be conscious of covid, so we decided to no eat there. By then, we were so close to our hotel we decided to just come back and eat some snacks we already had in the car. We had a big lunch anyway.

Tomorrow we’ll see some museums, an old observatory, and some other cool stuff before sleeping one more night here and moving on to our next place.

We woke up this morning, our final morning in Fergana, and our amazing host at our hotel made us breakfast. Oh my god! I love this place and I love the guy that runs it. It’s like he lives just to make his guests happy. He runs the kind of place I would love to run one day. He explained something to us at breakfast that made me want the dog even more. He told us those guys had bought the dog to use it as a fighting dog, but it was too sweet and docile, and wouldn’t fight, so now they’re just trying to get rid of it. I WANT THAT DOG. But how? I spent a good long time talking to my husband about it. We had to leave Fergana today but our friend, Mr. Hotel Guy, has the dog owner’s number and I’m plotting and scheming. 

We packed up and left. I must admit I was a little sad to leave. It’s so strange how we can form such strong attachments in such a short period of time but science says when we pack lots of experiences into a short period of time our brains process it as if it was a long period of time. So I had as many experiences in three days as many people have in six months. I feel bonded to Mr. Hotel Guy. I feel bonded to Muhammed, the Palestinian guest, and I only knew him for about 8 hours, but they were an intense 8 hours. Any serious traveler like myself that’s reading this will understand what I mean. The friends you make on the road are often become your deepest and best friends for life. 

Our first stop for today was a town called Namargan. We had two destinations marked: a mausoleum and a museum. Both were a bust. C’est la vie! Here comes the story. We arrived at the mausoleum and it turned out it was on the same grounds as a mosque and it was prayer time. Ugh. We wanted to be respectful so we stood outside and waited for prayers to end. It was hot, we were hungry and getting a bit grumpy, so we decided to call a Yandex, the Russian version of Uber, to our second location and then come back. Right when our Yandex was almost there prayers ended and there was a mass exodus from the mosque! All the men were really friendly and excited to see us. One even wanted a selfie with my husband, As the last of them walked past our Yandex pulled up. 

We went to the museum and they were excited to see tourists. We bought our tickets and walked upstairs. When we walked in the woman spoke to me and I told her we didn’t speak Russian, only English. She ran said oh English! English! And she ran off. A couple minutes later a young woman came back and very excitedly greeted my husband. My husband. Not me or our daughter. Then she proceeded to give my husband a tour of the museum. She spoke to him and only him. It was as if my daughter and I did not exist. She never even looked at us. I spoke up and asked questions three times and she gave no response. She only cared about the man. I’m guessing only men care about history? Only men know about history? The woman even asked him “Do you have children?” And he said yes I have a daughter. The lady replied where is the? And my husband said right here and he pointed to my daughter that was right damn there they whole time. I swear it was as if we weren’t even there. Eventually I got so angry I left. I took my daughter and we went to sit on the couch in the lobby. I am equally as interested in history as my husband is. I am not going to follow behind him and be ignored. I.WAS.MAD.

When my husband’s private tour was over and they came downstairs the woman suddenly noticed me for the first time and she asked me if I liked their museum. I said no. She asked why not and I said because you ignored me. You only spoke to my husband. You did answer any of my questions. How did she respond? She said oh! Please come back to our museum! No, lady. I will not be coming back to your museum. 

If you remember we were hungry and grumpy before the museum so maybe you can imagine how I was feeling now. We checked Google Maps for restaurants nearby and found Super Golden With good reviews. Um. I love Google Maps and I love reading people’s reviews, but people’s ideas of what good food is is always relative and this place sucked. It’s now on my all time top three worst places I’ve eaten list in the past year an a half. I might even for with two years. It was bad. 

We were so burned out on this town we decided to skip the mausoleum and hit the road. We even decided to skip the next small town on our list and leave the Fergana Valley all together. Due to our car issues we had stayed in the valley two nights more than we had originally planned anyway so this would get us only one day off track instead of two. We started driving toward Samarkand. It’s an eight hour drive from where we were. 

We had only driven a short way out of town when our car started beeping at us that we were out of gas. That didn’t make any sense. We had just filled up in town. What was going on? Were we having car problems again? Conveniently, there was a gas station not too far away, and that really was convenient because they’re hard to find here, and we pulled in. We really were out of gas. Shit! Something happened. We have two working theories:

#1 The gas station in the city cheated us, didn’t really fill our tank but charged us 

#2 Someone siphoned our gas from the parking lot while we were having a terrible time in the museum. 

I’m happy we had such positive experiences with people all over the Fergana Valley and even people outside the mosque in Namargan so a few bad apples didn’t really ruin much for us. Meh. Some people suck. Overall people are awesome. 

When we were in Namargan I noticed something interesting. There’s an unusual amount of very, very short people. I’d say pygmy short. Not little people. These people were different. All their proportions were “normal.” They were just extremely short. We also saw a disproportionate amount of people with just one bowed leg. I wonder if there have been studies on this? It’s got to be a genetic thing in the town/region. I mean, it was obvious to us. We were looking around and were like… whoa… are you see this? There are a LOT of extremely short people here. We haven’t noticed it anywhere else we’ve been so far. 

The next time we needed to stop for gas the owner of the staton came out and wanted to meet the people driving this car. They don’t see UAZ Patriots everyday in Uzbekistan. This is the land of Chevrolets. Chevy has a monopoly here and white chevy cars are all you see so people get really excited about us. Then, when they find out we’re American oh boy! It’s even more exciting. He came out we had a conversation about life, work, travel, and family. I think… He was speaking Russian and we were speaking English and well.. I don’t speak much Russian more than where is this, where is that, please, and thank you, and he didn’t speak any English at all, but I picked up on cues. I got that he’s building his own hotel in Chust, Uzbekistan and he has a daughter the same age as mine. When we were about to leave he signaled that he wanted us to wait so we did. My husband was annoyed. He wanted to get on the road, but this is how it goes when you’re traveling, you meet people, they’re not in a hurry, it’s special to them to meet strangers, and they want to welcome you. I knew something nice must be coming. And it was! 

A whole plate of garden fresh cucumbers! He told us he grew them out back and they were organic! Slight cultural differences like that are interesting to me. If you were to stop at a random gas station in the middle of nowhere somewhere outside Atlanta, Georgia the gas station owner might give you some of his fresh cucumbers but he’d never brag to you about how they were organic. I love this place. The guy was really great. He gave us his phone number and told us if we had any problems anywhere in the country to call him for help. It’s becoming a theme. We’re collecting numbers from Uzbeks. I think I’ll have contacts from Uzbeks all across the nation east to west and north to south before we return home. 

The rest of the day was just driving. Driving. Driving. Driving. Driving. 

One interesting thing happened. We stopped the car and sent our kid out to buy Coca-Colas from a small shop on the side of the road. When she got back, they weren’t Coca-Colas. The packaging said Coca-Cola but the liquid itself clearly wasn’t. We could see right through it. Something was off. I opened one just to see. The bottle was sealed, so it was direct from a factory, so I took a sip, it was not Coca-Cola. It was either factory rejects they had gotten ahold of or knock-off packaging. It wasn’t coke.  We don’t even drink Coke that often. It’s just that it’s SOOOOO hot here and it was such a long day! That Coca-Cola sounded good. 

That’s it. We stopped at a hotel about an hour and a half outside Samarkand. We knew we were at the right place when we saw the hotel cat. 

We woke up yesterday to a new guest in our hotel; a well educated Palestinian guy that was a pleasure to talk with. We talked all about education and I explained to him how I teach my world history class to fifteen year old students. He was surprised. He asked world history? How do you teach the history of the whole world? He said he wished I had been his teacher 🙂 I love hearing that from adults. We discussed biases in education and how important I feel it is to give my students a well rounded education with a small amount of knowledge on a large amount of topics from all around the globe. So they can have a very basic understanding of Leopold in the Congo, Bartolomeu Dias from Portugal, the Women’s March on Versailles, the World Wars, major revolutions and more. In the end I’m pretty sure we established I’m the best teacher ever.

Our car was still in the shop and he had some plans with the owner of the hotel and they invited us to join them. We’re always eager to make new friends and have new adventures so we said yes!  The plan was to go to a small village about an hour from here, then walk to a valley where we could pick berries right on the Uzbekistan/Kyrgyzstan border with one foot in each country. 

We all piled in a taxi and off we went. First, we went to a park to see a 1,000 year old tree. Then, we were off on our walk. After we had been walking, and talking, and getting to know each other for oh, I don’t know, maybe forty-five minutes the hotel owner’s phone rang. When he hung up he said we have to go back! Someone had found the other guy’s phone at the big tree. What???? How did that happen? He said no. My it must be a mistake. My phone is here in my bag. He checked his bag. It wasn’t there. He didn’t even know it was gone! He said he must have dropped it while trying to put it in his pocket after taking a picture back there. A complete stranger had picked it up off the ground, dialed the last called number that just happened to be the hotel owner, and so he got his phone back. Isn’t that some great luck! His last dialed number could have been anyone! He’s a Palestinian guy that lives in the UAE currently traveling in Uzbekistan, who knows whom he could have called last and it happened to have been the very person we were walking with at the time and spoke the local language!

So, we turned around and headed back to the big tree and talked the whole way back. Mostly about, you guessed it, world politics. When we arrived the lady was standing right there patiently waiting for us. I will never stop believing in the kindness of strangers and that people are good. We never made it to pick our berries on the border but I have a great story to tell anyway!

Sometime during all that the mechanic called and said our car was ready. We went straight from there to the mechanic’s shop where he showed us our beaten up old water pump. It was truly in bad shape. I’m surprised it hadn’t completely fallen apart. Now we have a new one and the car didn’t overheat on our drive home! It was only a short 20 minute drive, the real test will be climbing out of this valley the day ofter tomorrow, then the 8 hour drive to Samarkand, but let’s hope the car is fixed. The mechanic says we’re good to dive to the the moon now.

We didn’t get back to the hotel until 3:30 in the afternoon and our Palestinian friend had to rush off to catch his train for his next stop. I hope we run into him again before our visit is up. There were so many good conversations and so many good jokes during the day I wish I could tell you all of them like when my husband said: if you can’t have premarital sex if you don’t plan to ever get married. And the Palestinian said they may have a good laugh at you first but they will still kill you. We were talking about shariah law in the UAE at the the time.

The hotel owner told me he was going to his house to feed his dogs and offered to let me join him. He knows how much I love dogs. It turns out that not only is he a customer service extraordinaire, he’s also a dog rescuer! He has seven rescued street dogs and a littler of puppies he’s caring for! We went to the butcher and bought chicken for them and were on our way. I was excited to hear how they whined and cried for him as soon as we pulled up in the car and they could hear his voice outside the gate. The dogs were beautiful. Some were too timid to let me pet them but others couldn’t get enough love from me. 

We came back to the hotel and my husband and daughter weren’t here. They had probably gone out to eat or something. I was hungry, hungry, hungry and I asked the hotel owner if he was hungry. He was. We went to eat together. We went back to Brown Sugar, the same place my family and I ate together the first day we were in this town. I like that place. I’m sure I’d be a regular if we lived here. 

After dinner we went for a walk around town, and through the park, then back to the hotel. While we were walking in the park I met the most amazing dog. These two guys were walking a beautiful large dog and I asked if I could pet it. It instantly leaned up against me and I felt a bond between us. I know it sounds hokey but sometimes I really do feel it and I certainly did with this dog. Later, as we were walking back to the hotel we ran into the same guys again and I stopped to pet the dog again. This time they tried to sell us the dog, for practically nothing, and oh!!!! 

How I wanted that dog. But how could I? That poor dog would die in my car on this trip. It’s 40°C/104° F here and we leave the car parked for hours at a time while we walk around being tourists during the day. I couldn’t  do that to a dog. We got back to the hotel and I fell asleep plotting and scheming about ways of getting that dog back to Almaty with me. 

All in all it was a great day! Now I’m sitting here at 6AM waiting for my family to wake up so we can begin the next day and see what adventure awaits us!