For Spring Break in 2009, Robyn, Zoë and I headed to Uzbekistan. I've been wanting to visit Uzbekistan for years, but have always been detered by long and expensive flights. From Delhi, however, it's an easy and direct 2.5 hour flight!
Uzbekistan proved to be a great vacation, as it was the opposite of India in many ways. The air is clean, the country is sparsely populated, it has big wide empty sidewalks that make walking a joy, everything (including hotels) is clean and it has easy and functional public transport.
The food wasn't so great. In each restaurant, I'd say, "What do you have?" They'd say, "What do you want?" I'd think "Tex Mex, Tuscan steak..." I'd say, "Plov," or some other simple dish that is a national staple. They'd say, "No, we don't have that." After repeating that process four times, they'd say something like, "All we have is nasty dumplings filled with egg yolk." We'd say, "We'll take five," and then we'd stuff Zoë with another one of the 30 muesli bars that we had brought with us.
We flew into the capital Tashkent, then flew the next day to the furthest city in Uzbekistan, which is Nukus. We drove from there to the Aral Sea. Then we worked our way back to Tashkent overland, stopping at the Silk Road cities of Khiva, Bhukara and Samarkland.
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