Alanis

In one of her feature moments, Ms Morisette penned a tune called "Ironic", ironically about coincidence. I guess pedants take their amusement where they can. Anyway, irony, or possibly coincidence took a hand in my own days in the extraordinary trek from Moscow to Tashkent. Basically I caught a cold only at the very end of my visit to Moscow, when the weather had taken a turn for the warmer. I was late for the convent tour because I elected to follow the tour company's instructions rather than my own map-reading! But there possibly isn't a better time to get taken ill than when one is stuck in a compartment for 3 solid days (my travel companions would probably disagree of course). Rest obligatorily taken. But the cabin was not a comfortable place: I think that they are trying to melt winter by sending superheated vehicles out to defrost the ice, because that is how it felt. Of course you couldn't go into the corridor because that was full of people and hence equally hot. And the gaps between carriages were Ice Station Zebra with footing so trecherous it would have been no suprise to see fallen goats underneath. So I was running a fever in a sweltering icebox in a superheated carriage travelling across a frozen wasteland. Nice. Only one person on the train appeared to speak any English - the conductor - but on being led to believe that I had no money which with to pay for the necessary services he would charge only me for, he lost interest, but was still friendly enough in passing. The group in the cabin were a great bunch (mum and daughter returning to Karshi) and a young man back from living the high life for a few days). Three days is a long time in those conditions, but we got on fine, possibly because they couldn't understand me.
By the time we approached the border with Kazakhstan, I was at my most feverishly unwell (not on the grand scale of things, just relative to this cold). And rather than worrying about the armed guards inspecting cases and grilling everyone in a marvellously suspicious manner I was more concerned about a lady I like (who doesn't reciprocate) and whether she'd found someone else. I look back in some amusement, as I really did have better things to worry about, and the Uzbek border reminded me of this later (see next posting)