Friday 12th August
The Uzbekis are a peculiar bunch was the
conclusion we came to on the way to Bukhara. They all have a full set of gold
teeth thanks to their obsession with sugary things. You walk into any
convenience shop and lined up before you are boxes and boxes of biscuits,
boiled sweets and Alf’s new travellers hairstyle – iced gems.
Soft as anything and only capable of
at best a one-dip into their iced tea, Uzbekistan’s biscuits have a long way to
go before they reach the dizzy heights of Earl Grey and a hobnob. Armed with
enough wafers to play Jenga with, we settled in for a long stint on the road.
What the Uzbekis have cracked however
is traffic calming. In what is possibly the best speeding deterrent I’ve ever
seen, they have erected life-size cardboard cut-outs of police cars at the side
of the road. At some point, the police commissioner of Uzbekistan has sat down
in front of his speeding control council and put this forward as a genuine
solution. This level of tomfoolery tricked us once but after that they became
the Holy Grail target for the sign slinger. By the evening we had made it to
Bukhara where we found a hostel popular with many other rally teams and enjoyed
a peaceful night sleep.
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| Yes that really is a cardboard police car in Uzbekistan |
Posted by: Rich