I waved goodbye to Leon and his fridge, heading eastwards through Bukara and Samarkand- both as stunning as all the pictures and text suggest.
I manged to arrive in Tashkent 12 hours before Ann's flight was due from London which I thought was pretty good timing having crossed one and a half continents to get here. Ann (or Annie as she is also known) is due to travel with me until Mongolia - or until she gets tired of my singing on the bike.
She's had an intense introduction to life on the road - first a dodgy black market money transaction where the bloke tried to rip us off- money in Kazakhstan is tricky as the largest bank note is 1000 som (about 70 cents) so just doing a bit of shopping involves carrying a huge wad of money and counting out 166 banknotes discreetly in the middle of the street is not easy.
We had a good night out in the Biker's Bar (for those in Tashkent it is the VM Bar opposite the Plaza Hotel, Yuri the owner is very friendly) which led to us not making it to the Internet cafe before it closed to give a rundown on events before we left Tashkent, however we are probably barred now as we left with money owing on our bar tab - whoops.