SAMARKAND

I was going 77 in a 70 kilometer per hour zone - less than 5 mph over the speed limit. It was a speed trap, I was caught on camera, and they waved me over down the road. I pulled onto the shoulder, bounced out of the car, and waltzed back to face three policemen lounging around their car.

My California ID got me out of the speeding ticket. The Uzbek cops were psyched to meet a 'surfer dude.' I was sporting a shaggy mop-top ‘do with a dirty tan, and I acted the part - all jovial and buffoonish, bobbing my head. They laughed at me, and reciprocated my enthusiastic gestures as they passed around my ID. Yeeaaah, California! 

Our British friends, the B-Team and the Desert Spoons, blew by in their four-car caravan as I smiled my way out of the speeding ticket. We hadn’t seen them since Turkmenistan. They honked, pointed, laughed, and pulled over down the road to wait for us. We were a couple hours outside of Samarkand, and once again running on fumes, our engine still rattling from the last poisonous refill. We joined the convoy and swerved through traffic on a dusty highway, finally finding gas on the outskirts of town. Uzbekistan’s second largest city sat before us, an Islamic cultural hub, and one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world - a historic midway-point on the Silk Road.

We were fifteen deep, having cruised into town with our fellow ralliers, and after parking we set out to explore. I stuck close to Henry, one of the leaders of the Desert Spoons. He'd done the Mongol Rally before, and had passed through Samarkand a few years back. Henry was a respectful traveler, interested in the world, and culturally aware of his surroundings. I admired him for that. Especially since the rally at times felt like an insular party-on-wheels. Derick, JP, and I had been traveling sans guidebook, and it was great having Henry around that day.

At the heart of Samarkand is the Registan, the old public square. Three majestic madrasahs (Islamic schools) face the common, and the old-town grows from there. The timeworn architecture is beautiful, noted for its tiled mosaic walls and ornate facades. Sadly, the Registan was closed due to an upcoming event, so we wandered the perimeter and explored some of the surrounding monuments. The old-town was magical at dusk, the parks and public spaces filled with townspeople as the temperature cooled, with children playing in the streets, and a pink and orange sky hanging over the minarets of the ancient city. Our British friends continued down the road after dinner, but we decided to stay, and spent the evening on the rooftop deck of our hostel, drinking beers and enjoying the view.

Our little Hyundai didn't sound so good, and we spent a good chunk of the next day at the hostel trying to get to the bottom of it, but with no luck. Tashkent was only a few hours away, so we left for the capital city mid-afternoon in hopes of finding a trusty mechanic. An hour outside of Samarkand a cop waved us down at an intersection on a country road. But for what? All we did was drive by looking foreign and confused, as usual. Which way to Tashkent?  He pointed down the road, and then yelled over to a farmer in a nearby melon patch. A few minutes later he had two fresh cantaloups for us. No ticket, just an afternoon snack, and another slice of Uzbekistani hospitality.

We spent twenty-four hours in Tashkent, a pretty uneventful stay, except that we got the car fixed for cheap. We left at dusk with our newly flushed-out engine purring like a kitten, and drove into the night towards country number seventeen - Kyrgyzstan.