Day 107: Border disorder

To save a little effort parts of this this are based on posts I made to the Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree site.

At the West Bus Station in Bishkek the marshrutka driver intially asked for KGS 1000 to Tash-Komur, but dropped it to KGS 900 when I counter-offered. I could probably have forced him down to KGS 800 with a little more effort. However, even though Tash-Komur is only 2/3 the distance to Osh, he only had five passengers in his (8-seater van) so I figured if I negotiated too hard he might hang around waiting for another passenger or two to turn up.

Day 106: Breather in Bishkek

After relaxing in Almaty for a week and a half I felt I was ready for a rest, so I headed to Bishkek, capital of neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, which proved well able to provide the goods on further relaxation.  I brought with me a new camera - not as good as the lost darling, but cameras cost 50% more in Central Asia than they do in Australia and I bought the best camera I could find for the money I was willing to spend.  The new device has only a 5x zoom (the lost one had 7x) and other shortcomings, but I figured it would be adequate to the task - and so, thus far, it has been.

Day 154: Sick and Shambling in Dushanbe

Long, long break.  I'm further behind the times now than I was when I completed my last post.  I shall do better.

I sulked around Turkistan for several days, then moved on the Shymkent, a larger town a little further south.  However, one thing I did do from Tashkent was visit the ruins of Otrar.