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Konye Urgench was a massive city, so beautiful that Tamerlane thought it competition to Samarkand and so had it razed to the ground. In all the city was destroyed 7 times, only for the people to return and rebuild. The 5 or 6 buildings that survived are subject to huge speculation as the original use and reasoning for why these buildings were spared is unknown. One thought is that these buildings were important for the local population and to gain the respect of the locals the invaders showed some mercy.
This is our first taste of the history of the silk road, and we are so glad we came here, although we only spent an hour or so walking around the buildings before going to the border.
Our guide left us to it, and reminded us just to keep driving passed everyone else! The border here seemed quite small and was a basic building behind a small gate. There were a crowd of people, but not many vehicles. We got all the right stamps and drove through the next gate to the Uzbek border. At both the Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan border, the customs and immigration officials made every effort to help us through. We were given English language customs forms, and the Uzbek border guard that helped us by translating kept us chatting - even when the customs official had searched everything, asked if we had guns, got bored and sat in our car waiting for the him to finish the conversation!
We had been feeling anxious about Uzbekistan ever since we'd met some Malaysian overlanders who'd had a hard time here. But so far we have had no problems. If anything, it's all been relatively simple and easy! We found a nice hotel with a/c, wifi, western toilets and satellite tv - Jipek Joli, and made our plans for the next few days...
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