August 15, 2000: Uzbekistan (Central Asia) after the customs had inspected very interested our passports, we passed customs without any further problems. in uzbekistan we wanted to get on the track of the old silk road. for that reason we went on to khiva. in khiva you feel like you were in a oriental fairy-tale. there are only few tourists, we met an italian group, which we could travel with on to bukkhara. in our travel guide we read about a 600 years old "madrassa" which is used as a hotel, (used to be a muslim school, where the coran used to be taught). But the madrassa wasn’t in use as a hotel, for more than 2 years, although we finally managed to get a old students room. we didn't have any water, no restroom or shower, but we got a nice old room and the whole madrassa just for ourselves. we met two other backpackers (1 american, 1 mexican) in bukhara, in their company, we drove by minivan on to samarkand, the next desert-oasis. On the way we passed one more police checkpoint. our passports were ok, but the police officer insisted that jeannette had to take one of her calcium tablets. as she survived that and our driver came out of the police office, we finally continued our trip. samarkand used to be the most beautiful and powerful city of the world in the 14th century (empire of timur). today, the city still is beautiful and charming. we really liked samarkand - it is our favourite on that point of our trip. but we didn't have more time left - our visa for uzbekistan runned out in a few days. passing Tashkent, we passed the green mountains down to the fruitful ferghana valley, where about 30% of the uzbekistan population is living (total population of 8 mio.). after 2 nights in the "green garden of uzbekistan" we crossed the border by feet. customs inspected our backpacks 3 times, but finally we made it for one more time and were in kyrgyzstan

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