Uzbekistan: Warm people - Beautiful architecture - Rich history - Searching for the Aral Lake

Ittinary Dashoguz-Osh (side trip to North West to Moynak)
29/09 - 16/10

Look 'round thee now in Samarkand,
Is she not queen of earth? her pride
Above all cities? in her hand
Their destinies?

Edgar Allan Poe, 1849

We pass a little river between Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, pass more gates, each opened by a soldier, then we see the Uzbek border. And all starts again, controls, filling in a lot of documents. It all goes well, but takes forever and all the sudden we feel very tired. We have done so much driving in the last weeks, road conditions being not very favorable, the stress that we had to make it through Turkmenistan in five days is gone and the desire to rest somewhere is getting stronger.

Antonia Posts again - forgotten text from Persepolis

Hallo Ik schrijf hoe het met de school gaat en ook over een tempel waar
Ik nu ben 22/09/2015/Iran : ik vind het met school wel heel vermoeiend maar het is
Wel heel leuk Maar het is wel heel. Moeilijk om te schrijven want het wiebelt te haart door het rijden Bij de Tempel Zijn er veel figuren en zoroastrismus
Zoroastrismus is een religie die noch voor het Iran bestond
Want Iran noemde het pärsiche Rijk want het was een heel groot land er was ook
Een museum er waren ook stenen in het museum die waren prachtig de stad noemde persepolis......

Antonia

Crossing Turkmenistan: A country which seems to be a big accident.

Crossing Turkmenistan

We enter Turkmenistan through a big gate. First thing I do is taking off the head scarf and the long clothes, back in shirt and shorts, great.
Turkmen officials seem nice and welcoming, they will show us soon that this first impression is wrong. A huge picture of the present Turkmen president greets us from a wall and we have a look at the colourful flag, composed by patterns of carpets from the five big families of the country.
We are almost alone, the last western tourists have passed this border 20 days ago, two young men we had already met in Teheran. We get our passports stamped, pay an entrance fee, exchange money and all we need now is the permission for the car to enter the country. That will take us more than four hours, handwritten notes in five different offices, 170 Dollars for five days of car insurance, controls of every single thing we carry with us and at the end I find myself screaming at one of the officials shaking a cigarette out of his hand... And last but not least a couple of days later we will find out that things from our toolbox were stolen during the controls. What a nightmare.

Exploring Iran: Four awesome weeks! Awesome hospitality - Paulis cheeks getting squeezed - diving into Persian history.

Our itinerary through Iran
from 31/08 'til 25/09

First let me apologise. Many of you have tried to contact us asking how we are doing and why we do not update our blog. Well the reasons are pretty straight forward: Iran is restrictive with usage of the internet, so e.g. www.blogger.com is blocked and only via workarounds accessible. Further we did not want to post in Iran, since it probably would not have been a good idea to post the text below, while being in Iran; we just dislike self-censorship. And last ut not least, there were just too many things to write down and that took a while...