Wayne and I were allowed a short, unsupervised morning walk before our early breakfast, as we still had a long way to go, and we set off at 8:40.
To me, Yangykala Canyon doesn’t look like a typical canyon with walls on both sides, but it wasn’t formed by a river, but by a former sea. That’s why you find shells everywhere on the ground.
We stopped at the “Crocodile’s Mouth,” where I accidentally stood in a spot I wouldn’t normally stand in. Wayne will send me the photo; here he is in the same spot.
We had a (late) lunch in Balkanabad before driving back to Ashgabat.
Suddenly, Wayne shouted “Stop!” and pointed at the first sign that said “Workers” on our entire trip! There was no particular reason why it was on that street and not on any other before, but it was just there!
A former school friend collects photos of this sign from all over the world, and on my trip, I was able to take some from the Nangan Islands, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and now finally from Turkmenistan. (At least that he will not have yet.) Needless to say, we (in this case, first Guljan, then someone else for photos, and later me too, though photos weren’t needed anymore) met up again after the ice was broken.
Wayne and I decided to skip dinner and went straight to the hotel. Guljan also got home sooner than expected. Wayne and I wanted to write something in our travel journal, but suddenly his phone completely switched off and wouldn’t even respond to charging. That’s never convenient, but perhaps it was a particularly inconvenient moment, so close to his departure from Turkmenistan and his onward flight to Saudi Arabia, where you do so much with your phone these days…