Monday 22 May 2023
Highlights: Welcoming new tour members, exploring Tashkent

Today was effectively a rest day as we lost seven tour members in Alicia, Andy, Adam, Anne, Sue, Carmel, John who finished their tour and we waited for new tour members to join us.

During the day I went out to explore Tashkent a little and get more local currency. My morning walk I got so lost that I accidentally ended up back at the hotel just as I was about to use the map on my phone 🙂

This did give me the opportinuty to say goodbye to Sue, Carmel and Anne as they left our accomandation at noon. I’ll miss Anne in particular who I was fortunate enough to have many conversations with as we ended up near each other on the mini bus used on the first 9 days.

At 6 pm we meet seven new tour members; Mark, Kyle, Judith, Brenda, Rene, Nancy, Leta. We will also see another new member tomorrow in Calum. For the six people going to Turkmenistan (with me being one of them) we learned about the likely visa costs ($75-80 USD) and COVID RAT cost ($32 USD) for the first time. Rustam also went though what to expect in Uzbekistan over the next 8 days.

We then went to our first group dinner to get to know each other. As it was Kyle’s birthday there was also a surprise birthday cake for him.