Finally a good night’s sleep! I was in bed by 2130 and didn’t wake until 0645 all of which made me feel a whole lot more alert.
The hotel breakfast is decidedly mediocre again with the same boring things as the hotel in Mary and nothing but ‘instant’ on offer as far as coffee goes.
From there it was off to the Iranian consulate to submit all of the paperwork for our visas. I’m not entirely sure why we needed to go. In the end we were taxied there, were given our passport, photos and the form we completed a couple of weeks ago back by Will, so that we could then hand them to the local helper, who then held on to them all till everyone was there. He then went away with them all while we sat on the footpath outside.
An hour later they put us back in taxis and sent us back to the hotel with instructions to ‘stay at the hotel until 1130 in case we need you again’. Kinda don’t see why given they didn’t need us in the first place!!
I spent the time we were under house arrest at the hotel getting a couple of blog posts uploaded and catching up on social media happenings. Shortly before 1200 we were ‘released’, but told that we’ll probably (hopefully) have to go back tomorrow, at a currently unspecified time, to collect our passport. Apparently there’s also a chance that they won’t be ready and that our departure from Ashgabat will be delayed the following morning until we can collect them – just as well we’re being bussed out of the city.
By the time that was done I was hungry (now that I’m healthy again this seems to be an almost constant state of being) so have repaired to a very nice beer garden to keep writing up the last two days plus also have some lunch and a refreshing beverage (or two 🙂
Blog writing always goes better with beer
Michael joined me at lunch after which we went for a wander in a different direction round the city to see what was out there. Again the answer proved to be not much other than heat so after a couple of hours it was back to the hotel and air-conditioned comfort.
I spent a couple of hours trying to work out how to get the short video clips I’d made into the correct aspect ratio in the blog – in the end the answer seemed to be to embed them in the middle of a clip which is the correct ratio. Note to self – only make landscape videos in the future! Then of course there was the issue of getting them to upload over the hotel WiFi which had been relatively good in the morning, but was far less co-operative in the afternoon.
By the time all that had happened it was time for dinner. Roger had reported seeing a reasonable looking restaurant underneath the circus building opposite the hotel so a group of us headed over there. It turned out to be more like a cafeteria than a restaurant, but actually that made things much simpler because we could see what was on offer and only had to point and smile rather than trying to work out a menu!
An obligatory ice-cream stop on the way back to the hotel where I’ve taken care of a little work and now it’s time for bed (all the way to 2130 – we’re such party animals).
Only two photos from today’s wandering:
