After spending most of this week in Tajikistan, it was time to recross the border back into Uzbekistan yet one more time.

Yup, this will be the third time my passport is going to be stamped with an Uzbekistan entry stamp in the last two weeks.

It’s a crazy itinerary for sure but it works and now we’ll be crossing our last land border of trip to our final Central Asian city of Tashkent.

Taxi from Khujand to the Oybek border

I had taken down the WhatsApp number of our taxi driver a couple of nights ago so I could contact him this morning to drive us out to the Oybek border.

He had told us to contact him 30 minutes before we needed to go so I shot him a message as we were having breakfast this morning.

And waited…

And waited…

Um, dude?   This is literally how you make your money!   Where you at?

As I hadn’t heard back from him I swung into plan B.

Ask the indifferent front desk guy at our hostel.

Yeah, he was real excited to call us a cab.

But he did and just as it was being arranged, our pal Sultan finally messaged me back.

He said the roads were closed and he could take me tomorrow.

Um, what?

Meanwhile our new ride was pulling up to the hostel.

Yeah, let’s just block that number off my WhatsApp…

For the first time this trip our driver was a woman which was a nice surprise.

Also, yet again, our ride was a nice comfy SUV with the A/C flowing.

You’d think the cars in this part of the world would all be run down but we’ve actually found the opposite to be true.

Or maybe we’re just getting lucky in the cars that are driving us.

Anyway, the border is 68km northwest of Khujand and despite Google Maps telling us it would take an hour and a half to get there, we were there in just under an hour.

Speed limits, meh, what speed limits?

We paid 180tjs ($27) for the ride and walked towards the border station.

Crossing the border

Unlike some previous land border crossings, this one was pretty straightforward and quick.

There were only about a dozen people crossing at the same time as us so it didn’t take long for the entire process.

I think we were stamped out of Tajikistan within 10 minutes and then processed through into Uzbekistan in another 20 minutes.

Of course there were the inevitable taxi touts waiting for us when we entered into Uzbekistan but I’ve learned to just kind of ignore them and walk straight past them.

Being back in Uzbekistan meant that my Yandex app (their version of Uber) worked again and I’d no longer have any more of those crazy taxi adventures I’ve had in Tajikistan.

I sat on a bench and fired up the app to book a car to come pick us up.

Of course a couple of taxi drivers seeing this obvious foreigner sitting there got in my space trying to go with them instead.

The thing is Yandex is just better.

You can pay with your credit card attached to the app, you can enter a destination, and you can select what category of car you’d like.

I don’t get any of that with a taxi driver off the street.

Also, if you’re a taxi tout and you crowd me trying to get me to go with you, it’ll have the complete opposite result.

I will never reward that kind of behavior.

In fact, I will go out of my way to not go with you.

I’ll wait longer and I’ll even pay more.

I don’t care – you aren’t getting my service.

And that’s exactly what happened here.

Both drivers were quoting we 300,000som ($36) which is actually the going rate but I turned them both down.

I actually ended up getting a car in the Comfort+ category for 527,000som ($62) just to get away from them.

Between the two of us it was an extra $13 each and we figured we could afford that for some piece of mind.

Taxi from Oybek border to Tashkent

We hopped in our nice smooth ride at just before noon.

The road from the Oybek border to Tashkent is just over 100km and it’s anywhere from 2 to 3 hours driving time.

Thanks to some crazy Uzbek driving and passing of other cars, we made the trip in almost exactly 2 hours arriving at our hostel at just before checkin time of 2pm.

We waved the driver goodbye and started to head up to the hostel.

And then I realized I forgot something in the car…

My precious Owala water bottle.

That thing is a godsend and probably the best travel gear purchase I’ve made.

Sure Nathan makes fun of my constant desire to have nice, ice cold water but, dammit, I like my water cold and this bottle would keep it cold for hours.

And now it was gone – shoved in a backseat seat pocket.

There was some hope though because, since I had booked through the Yandex app and not used a taxi off the street, I had his contact information on the app.

Problem was it was only a phone number and I’m unable to make calls and, even if I could, I wouldn’t be able to communicate in Russian that I’d like him to come back to our hostel with my water bottle.

I tried to contact customer support but I’m pretty sure I was just talking to an AI bot who gave me the very helpful solution of phoning the taxi driver.

Wow, why hadn’t I thought of that?!?

I actually got someone at the front desk to call the number on their phone with the hopes that they could communicate with the driver in Russian but we couldn’t get through.

Eventually the app gave me a notification that my driver had found my item and…

Wait for it…

…to phone him to arrange to get it.

Gee, thanks Yandex!

By this point I had given up hope for the bottle.

I mean, it’s not a huge deal as we’re literally just days away from being back home.   It’s just annoying to have lost it in such a stupid way and frustrating not to be able to solve this seemingly very solvable problem.

Lunch and a nice surprise

During all this water bottle debacle we had also managed to checkin to our new hostel which, compared to the last few, is like heaven.

I mean, there are six, count them, six toilet stalls in the men’s washroom!

Pure luxury I tell ya!

We were pretty hungry by this point so we just headed down the street and stopped in the first restaurant we came across.

You can’t really go wrong with restaurants in this part of the world as they all pretty much have the exact same menu with prices that are pretty close to each other.

After having some very non-authentic Central Asian food the last couple of days, I went out of my way to find something at least close to this neck of the woods.

For lunch I had Sac Tava which is a Turkish dish of chicken and vegetables in a tomato spiced sauce.

And it was amazing!

I gotta say, I’ve had some pretty damn good food over the last couple of weeks so color me a happy camper when it comes to the food department.

After lunch we headed straight back to the hostel where I found a surprise…

My black Owala bottle was sitting on the reception’s front desk waiting for me!

Apparently my taxi driver took it upon himself to drive back to where he dropped us off and bring it to me.

I was lost for words!

Now, that’s some Uzbek hospitality.

I can’t believe I missed him because obviously I wanted to reward him for bringing it back to me and to express my sincere gratitude for his very generous act.

There was a note on the bottle with his name and phone number but sadly he’s not on WhatsApp and I just don’t have a way to call him.

So, if you’re out there which, I mean, obviously he is cause everybody reads this blog, thank you so much from the bottom of my heart.

A subway ride

It’s not very often you see an evening walking tour so when I came upon one that started at 7pm tonight, I signed us up.

I mean, anything with the word Soviet in it will always catch my eye and then add to the fact that I won’t have to walk around in the glaring heat?

Well, I’m sold!

For the first time in 4 weeks when we were in Almaty, we got to navigate a subway line.

I’ve been so coddled with taking taxis everywhere I think I kind of forgot that metro is normally my preferred method of transport when I’m traveling.

The metro here is super simple as they take card tap and you can just put your phone to the reader and, tada, the gate opens.

Our subway car came a few minutes later and, hot damn, it was packed like sardines in there.

Guess we’ll take the next one…

Yeah, that was packed too so we just kind of squished our way inside.

As we entered I was hit with a nice little surprise – air conditioning inside the car.

Certainly wasn’t expecting that!

Four stops later and we got off at our stop for the walking tour.

Soviet Tashkent by night tour

We walked up to the steps of the Uzbekistan Hotel and, wouldn’t you know it, we were the only two who had signed up for the tour.

At least our guide showed up this time but, damn, it’s always awkward when you’re the only ones in a tour.

I usually like to kind of blend into the background, take my notes and photos, and walk with the masses.

Not this tour though, we were front and center.

Luckily for me, Nathan likes to talk about history and all that kind of stuff so I was able to just walk quietly behind the two of them most of the time.

We started the tour in the Uzbekistan Hotel which is a remnant from the 1960s complete in Soviet design.

Our guide took us inside the hotel to the banquet hall where we talked about weddings and then up to the top floor to view the city from above.

Comically, I remember thinking “wow, imagine if the whole walking tour was just going from floor to floor in the hotel”.

And then the guide spent a good 20 minutes inside flipping through his folder sharing photos and the history behind them.

Eventually we did make our way back out to the street again to explore the surrounding neighbourhood.

We learned about how cotton was a main resource in this area especially after the US Civil War kind of cut cotton production way back when.

There was also a big earthquake back in 1966 which toppled the city and brought people from all over the USSR down here to help rebuild it.

Because of the unity of people, it was used as a showcase to other Soviets and to the rest of the world of how great communism and helping your fellow man was.

It was actually quite an informative tour and enjoyed it quite a bit.

A swanky dinner

The tour ended just after 9pm and it was time for Nathan and I to have a late dinner.

Despite my distrust of what TripAdvisor has deemed “number one” in the past, we still headed to a restaurant I had marked on the map that was rated #1 in the city.

This time, we weren’t disappointed.

Despite it’s very unappealing and non-descriptive name, Cafe 1991 is a fancy Lebanese restaurant with a menu offering local and western dishes as well.

The waiters were all dressed in tuxedos and, man, we’re we feeling a tad underdressed in our shorts and tshirts.

The menu prices were a bit higher than we were used to on this trip but we sat down and enjoyed our meal anyway.

For the 2nd time in 3 days, I had duck for dinner.

Not a typical Uzbek or Lebanese meal but, hey, when I see duck on the menu my eyes go straight to it.

With a couple virgin pinas colodas, my bill was $42 which, like I said, is pretty up there for a dinner in Uzbekistan.

But, hey, we’re on the tail end of our trip and, I mean, it was duck!

Mmmmmm… duck.

When the bill came this was the first time that I’ve seen no service charge automatically added to it.

Every restaurant we’ve eaten at the last month has had anywhere from a 10-15% tip added to it but not this one.

I’m glad I caught it cause I certainly don’t want to anger the service industry Gods out there and I’m a big believer in karma.

So I slipped some cash into the billfold after we paid to make it all good with the universe.

By the time we got back to our hostel it was closing in on midnight which is very late for hostel life.

We settled into our little sleeping bunks and called it a day.