Feeling reinforced by being able to eat a good breakfast I felt able to head off from Bukhara. Though I left it until the early afternoon. In the morning I had a chat with a Swiss woman who was paid by the German government to help reform the tourist association. She advised local hotel & guesthouse house owners on how to attract Western tourists & organised a local association of tourism operators. The latter being the first in the country. It was interesting to hear how government attitudes to what she was doing were not entirely supportive, she described how in the early days of her operation the office had been watched by the secret police. Though this was changing as it was becoming understood what a money spinner tourism was.
My road took me North-East from Bukhara. The cruel wind that had opposed me in Turkmenistan had gone & was at times from behind. The countryside was totally flat & completely cultivated, though in a very pleasant way. That grown was varied, with fruit orchards beside fields of wheat & cotton. Water from the Syr-Darya was spread far through irrigation. Like that from its sister river the Amu-Darya little of it has made it as far as the Aral Sea since Soviet agricultural planners set up the huge irrigation schemes in the 60s. The Aral Sea is in irreversible decline as a result with a new desert predicted to form in its place later this century. The drying up has been catastrophic for the environment of a huge area of people & condemns the locals to all sorts of health issues. It's a textbook case for the care needed before any tinkering with Mother Nature.
Being unable to find a secluded place to camp I kept going until nearly sundown & finally stopped beside a farmers cottage. As I cooked dinner a thunderstorm threatened but only a few drops of rain fell, though the accompanying wind made eating outside impossible. The first hills since North of Mashhad could be seen in the distance.
I cycled 81 km in 5 hours & 1 minute
Total so far 6511 km in 92 days
GPS Coordinates of end point - N 40°5.652, E 65°0.556
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