I’m not terribly upset to see 2018 go. Especially because my partner and I are setting out on 10 months of travel and to live life a bit more slowly in 2019. That being said, 2018 definitely hasn’t been all bad. I traveled to amazing places, spent time with family and had more friends visiting London than I can count. I also feel like London has become more of a home and I have a really kind and supportive community here.
In my 2017 reflections post I talked about how this year has been a year of stability. Mostly because I came back to London from Jordan in 2016 to be closer to Josh. Having a consistent base for more than a year has been really wonderful and much needed. But I’ve definitely still done a lot of travel this year, now just with the best travel buddy there is! This post is a travel round up of 2017 but first, here is my year in numbers:
In mid-2016 I moved back to London after working in Jordan. Another big life change and uprooting. One of many over the past 8 years!
It wasn’t easy to get settled back into London-life and find a job in the city. For a while I worked remotely for the job I had in Jordan. After some major hustle and a million job applications, I finally found work in London at the end of 2016. Josh and I moved in together around that time (another big life move!). By January of 2017 all of the pieces seemed to have come together.
“The value of things is not the time they last, but the intensity with which they occur. That is why there are unforgettable moments and unique people.” – Fernando Pessoa
The trip started out with just myself and one of my closest friends, Leah. By day three there were four of us, and by the end we were a rag-a-muffin crew of ten. In the beginning, we were really intimidated of biking with anyone else. “They’ll be more experienced, we’ll just hold them back, but look at all their spandex!” Luckily, we quickly got over our own insecurities about being bike touring newbies because the people we met along the way are what made the trip what it was.
We’ve only driven 20 minutes outside of the capital of Uzbekistan, Tashkent, and it already feels like we’ve entered a different world. The soviet style apartment buildings and lush parks of Tashkent dissipate into dusty villages and farm land. We are off to spend the day in the unfamiliar of Zaamin National Park!
I first became interested in visiting Zaamin National Park after reading an article about the elusive snow leopard that exists in the park. I had no intention of finding any snow leopards but after seeing pictures of the mountains and Juniper forests in the area I knew I wanted to visit before returning home.
There were no direct trains from the city of Khiva to our new destination, Bukhara, Uzbekistan. Instead, we took a shared taxi the 5 hours east. I was dreading making the long, bumpy drive crammed in the back seat of a rusty 1962 Lada squeezed between three old Uzbek men headed in the same direction.
As it turned out, the drive wasn’t as horrible as the Lonely Planet forums had led me to believe. A new highway, and I use that term very loosely, has been built that takes you half the way between the cities of Khiva and Bukhara. From there the next road makes it feel like you are riding right through the middle of the desert. The sand seems to be overtaking the road, leaving only one-lane to drive on.
On our way to Khiva, we visited Chilpik or the “tower of silence”. Dakhams are circular walled structures built on the top of hills. The dead were left inside the walls to be exposed to birds which eat the flesh. The bones are then dried in the sun and put in a central well. In an arid climate like Uzbekistan, they disintegrate into a powder. This Zorastrian burial practice pre-dates Islam which arrived in the region in the eighth century.
From Nukus we were able to find a shared taxi to the former fishing village of Moynaq. The 220 km drive took 4 hours and was far less bumpy than one would expect for being so remote. As the 6 of us snuggled close in the tiny car, the clouds hung low threatening us with rain. Passing through the small villages we could see first hand how shaped the land had become from irrigation canals siphoning water from the Aral Sea to the cotton fields.
Spring break draws to mind images of toned bodies, fruity drinks with pretty straws, and an endless escape of soft sand and blue water. I’ve never had this idealized spring break, and this year was certainly no exception.
Sitting in an old propeller plane I gripped tightly to my seats’ armrests as we set off across Uzbekistan and its vast desert to the small city of Nukus, in the western portion of the country. “Will the propellers still work if we run out of fuel?”, I stupidly spat out. My mind was filled with irrational thoughts of hurdling towards the earth in something called a plane, but looked more like a small rusty tin can. “WHY is there black stuff on the wing!?” Breath. The older I get, the more terrified I get of flying. The best part, I’ve been skydiving 4 times. Let’s figure that one out.