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The Bicycle box

UZBEKISTAN

Mar
2004-09-14 15:10:54

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a chair and table where we have lunch. At around the hottest hours of the day (48 Celsius in the sun) we leave for the last 60km.

Fans along the route/ Hospitality
It’s 11:00 and it’s coffee time! The first nice coffee spot we find is at the beginning of a driveway. When we start building up our kitchen tools a man passes by and asks what we are doing. ‘This is our stove and we are preparing coffee.’, we answer. ‘Aaaahh… my home, my home’, he replies and insists that we drink coffee at his place. Our coffee is almost ready but if we reject the offer it brings bad luck to his household. On the other hand it is believed that offering and sharing tea and food to trespassers brings luck to the family, even if we only take a small piece of bread or a sip of tea. We feel like we are on a pilgrimage. Luckily we don’t have to come up with a solution, the man runs away and comes back with a pillow-like cloth to sit on and with a handful of peanuts, raisins and some apples. Luck to all of us.

Our next break is on the pavement of a shop, with the intention to take a few sips of water (it’s very hot) and move on. Not in central Asia. The shop-owner has noticed us and she brings us a bottle of soft drink. We thank her very much and absorb the whole bottle in a Guinness record time. We offer to pay for it, but again, not in central Asia. Another gives us choice of melon and off we go, to the next pit-stop with all hospitality? Well not a pit-stop but a police road block. The policeman is very interested in our passports and where we are heading for. When China comes in the pictures he grabs a water melon of the ground and offers it to us. Unfortunately it’s a 10kg water melon this time and he understands that it’s difficult to carry that on top of our luggage.

Our last fan of today along the route before we go into Kyrgyzstan is a man of about 50 years old, driving a car. He adjusts to our speed and urges us to stop for a few minutes. He really wants to have a talk with us and share some tea. We kindly reject the offer and apologise a hundred times each since we want to cross the border today. Oh no, not again bad luck to a family? No, he finds an alternative. He gets into his Lada and drives along our route. After 5km we notice him waving at the other side of the street. He found us a nice spot in the shadow and he is ready to chop a melon (that’s the third melon offer today) for us. Okay, overruled by hospitality here. He knows that The Netherlands has windmills and water dams, it seems he’s an architect. When we show him the postcards of the Netherlands we brought with us, he chooses the windmill to keep. In fact, he wants both our wind mill cards.

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