We leave Samarkand this morning with 250km to drive through the desert to our overnight stop at the Qizilqum Safari yurt camp.
We stop for morning tea on the side of the road under some lovely shady trees. We soon gather a crowd of inquisitive locals wanting to know who we are and all about our cars. We manage to communicate with them somehow and everyone is happy with the outcome, especially one man who discovers he is actually younger than Michael.
Our drive takes us through desert and small villages.
At one of the villages there is a speed camera set up and one of our group is pulled over for speeding (name withheld to protect the innocent). The rest of us continue on to a high spot where we can get a breeze to wait while Zaheed goes back into town to discuss the matter with the Police.
The result is a good one with the driver being let off any fine and we continue our drive. We continue on our way & see Aydarkul Lake in the middle of the desert plain, which was created by the Russians digging a channel to redirect a river in order to fix a dam that had a problem. This is a great result as it provides much needed water into this desert.
We arrive at the Yurt camp – Qizilqum Safari which has a circle of yurts around an open camp fire area. We are served lunch in an air conditioned yurt thank goodness as it’s getting really hot outside.
After lunch we settle into our yurt which is very colourful, quite roomy and the beds appear to be quite comfortable at least for a quick afternoon nap before we go to the lake for a swim.
We drive our cars to the lake where we go for a very refreshing swim although the water is a little salty. There are lots of reeds growing along sections of the lake with birds in them & a flock of goats & sheep come down to the water to have a drink and a cool off as well.
After returning to the yurt camp we ride the camels around the back of the camp & over the sand dunes which is a lot of fun.
We’re really intrigued by the antics of a dung beetles as it cleans up after the camels.
Before dinner we have a beer that has an appropriate label!
When we sit down to dinner there is a small bottle of vodka on each table. Apart from our group staying in the camp there are groups of French, Russian & German tourists & after dinner we all sit around the camp fire and a local man entertains us by playing a traditional instrument and singing folk songs, some of them in Russian. So the Russian group are able to sing along with him and before long we are all up dancing around the camp fire. Fortunately most of them speak English and there is much talking between the different groups, which makes for a real fun evening.
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