Not all who wander are lost

By my estimation, I walked about 6 miles today.  My aim was to meander through the back streets of the old city, which is where I am staying, and make my way to the TV tower, which is the tallest structure in central Asia.  Alas, I did not have my passport with me, so I did not get to go up in the tower.  But I did find a lovely stream in  my wanderings.  It is so odd, when you are in the old neighborhoods, you don't hear the traffic, all you see and hear is the daily life in the narrow winding lanes, where sometimes gates stand open and you can see inside to the courtyard, which may have a floor of dirt, or beautiful tile, it may have the family car, or tables, couches and clothes hanging on the line.

Pairs or small groups of men sat playing backgammon, drinking chai, watching the women pass. Women gathered in pairs too, between chores standing outside their front gates, holding babies, while little ones played around them.

Often I could see the laden branches of fruit trees encroaching over the edges of the walls onto the common paths. The walls are made of mud/adobe and straw, with intermittent round wooden poles inside the walls (I saw this from a few that were disintigrating).

Yet Tashkent is the largest city in central Asia, with somewhere around four million people.

Today was garbage day, meaning a garbage truck would pass down the largest of the lanes, and people would come as if ants out of an anthill, carrying their garbage in buckets or grain bags, or whatever they had. The garbage men stood behind the truck and recieved the items, although it appeared that they also sorted through it for useful things.  Some of the women who appeared with their trash looked as if they were still in pajamas, with rumpled hair and slippers.

I stopped for a midmorning snack of some sort of baked thing, and the man put it in a newspaper cone for me.  When in Rome...

I visited a cemetery along the way, and the graves were fascinating.  Some of them are conical mounds of the same sort of material the walls of their homes are made of.

It is hard to know how much Som to keep on hand.  No one takes debit or credit cards, not even the train station, so cash is essential.

On to Samarkand via train in the morning.