So - two evenings back, we were sitting out on a balcony enjoying a beer when the Olympic torch ran past on its way to Beijing. We had suspected something was up, because crowds of school children had suddenly appeared at the side of the road, and then a couple of police cars had closed the main road past the Registan Square - but nothing happened for ages, and nobody seemed to know what was going on. Then, a series of runners and an entourage of cars a...

I am now in Samarkand and have an internet connection of a sort (no way to upload photos, sadly). We have travelled up from Ashgabat, across the Kara Kum desert, which took two days along a deteriorating road. On the way we stopped at Darvaza and saw a monstrous hole in the earth which had flaming gas pouring out of it. It was the result of a Soviet prospecting accident in the 1950s. It is still burning. On the way we passed various ruined cities and fi...