Kazakhstan

Hi

we've now crossed to Kazakhstan and are living it up in Shymkent. Tashkent was a cool city althuogh a world away from the rest of Uzbekistan; full of wide boulevards, people who looked like expats, police and blond/bottle blond russian girls in spray on clothing who may or may not have been prostitutes. The police were slightly more vigilant here and stopped you everytime you used the metro to check your papers were in order (given we used the same 3 or 4 stops the whole time they were just stopping us to say hello by the end).

We spent a load of time in the Bazaar mainly perusing the aftershave stalls- I'm trying to find a souveneer sized bottle of "pure Cigar", "Mafia don" or "cash" (available in doller or Euro versions) but as yet have only found them available in large vats.

Unfortunately we both made our selves ill for the first time so have been largely lieing low. However Tashkent is a good place to recover as we found an italian restaurant that surved up Pasta and pizza dishes that were a fair approximation of what you can find at home (with real cheese!!!).

We limped acoross the border yesterday and Kazakhstan feels really different, much richer and slightly cooler. Hopefully will be fully better and we can head off to the mountains tomorrow. have updated the map so you can follow electronicly in our footsteps. 

Tom