Today we decided to depart as early as possible to avoid the queues at the Uzbekistan border, especially since the Tajikistan side has absolutely no shade.
We left early and drove for about an hour to the border, where we left our minibus and took all our stuff with us through customs. The first struggle was leaving Tajikistan, where we had to fight off the locals trying to cut in front of us. Thankfully, we made it through relatively quickly and avoided spending too much time standing in the sun.
Next, we walked across no man’s land until we reached the Uzbekistan border, which was already much more organised. We were through in about five minutes — way better than Tajikistan!
After making it to my 70th country, we took a car to our hotel in the centre of Tashkent. We checked in and dropped off our luggage before heading out for lunch at a local chicken fast-food restaurant, which had excellent chicken and a crazy-good sweet-and-sour sauce.
After lunch, we took the metro to Chorsu Bazaar. We walked around the different stalls, seeing all the fruits, vegetables, nuts and spices, and decided to get some ice cream.
However, while eating our ice cream, we decided to visit the main hall of the market, which turned out to be the section that only sold meat. This made eating ice cream surrounded by butchers and questionable meat-storage practices feel like a slightly questionable choice.
So we left pretty quickly and finished our ice cream outside while exploring the rest of the market and buying some souvenirs.
After the market, we went back to the hotel and rested before meeting up with our group for dinner at a local Uzbek restaurant. We ate some more local food before heading out for an evening walk, visiting the main square and Hotel Uzbekistan.
Finally, after a long day, we headed back to the hotel and fell straight asleep.