Mongol Rally, 2009

Well, it's understandable, at least!

The car ended up with a gooood many signatures, including some scored out as we nearly started a war between Kazakh and Uzbek border guards who took to insulting each other's countries by means of their graffiti on our car! Here, this is the staff of the hotel which was located for us by a drunken policeman. He'd found us at the side of the road, and offered to help. Sadly, it turned out that he wasn't a good guy at all. After careering around in the dark with only his blue flashing lights and no headlights (and the blue flashers only when he thought we might need them, like when he hared off around a corner), he found us a hotel. The rooms were $30 a night (for a double). He wanted $100 for his trouble! But the twit couldn't quite say so, and kept saying it was his birthday instead. So I lined us up and we sang "happy birthday to you" at him. I have seldom seen such a look of contempt on a face. He ended up being packaged off with $10 for his petrol and a guilt-trip "salaam alekum" from me.

We seemed to have arrived in Samarqand at the time of rehearsals for a great public, international celebration of Ramadan which was by then only a week or so off.

Off-duty dancers :)

Ha, ha, ha.

But I'm quite glad I didn't meet it.

This was going to be a rude word. I've spared you the rest, partly because I was *in* it.

Watch out, wait for my Kyrgystani landscapes. You ain't seen nothin' yet. ;-p