Our tour company, Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT) usually designates one day of the trip as “A day in the Life”. On that day, we usually get very involved with locals in various ways, trying to experience what their daily lives are like. This post and the next couple will be from the day in the life day for our central Asia trip. We started the day by driving out of Bukhara into the country. We drove to a small farming village called Nayman. There we met with the Village Administrator. She runs the village and it is an elected office. From there we walked some of Nayman before going to one home for some chores and lunch.

We were leaving Bukhara on our way to Nayman in the first photo. You can see the agricultural field in the background and realize that this is big-time, big-tractor farming. But much like the people hoeing the cotton by hand, sights like the first photo were common. People used all sorts of rather primitive conveyance.

Many people have commented about how clean things were in central Asia. Indeed they were but not without some effort. You can see the second photo which I took as our bus was making a U-turn on the highway.

We were walking in Nayman in the third photo. These two ladies were pitting apricots. My assumption was that they were going to dry the apricots for their own use or for sale. I was wrong. They planned to feed the apricots to their goats. They were going to crack, bake, and then sell the apricot pits. We purchased some at other locations. They were cheap and a very good snack.

People came out of their homes to check us out in Nayman. I don’t think they get many tourists. They seemed pleased to see us – for some reason.

We stopped along the highway for a restroom break. The place was like a small strip-mall. Anyway, the guy in the last photo was cooking kabobs right on the edge of the parking lot. They looked good but we were still full from lunch.