No photo of yesterday’s meal : we had taken a photo with our host’s mum but we didn’t want the photo to be used on the internet... And the meal was spent between the men, with the women doing the cooking and washing up 🙁 ... Adam’s mum had prepared a salad with mayo, homemade samosas, fromage blanc, watermelon and to finish off, a cake... At the end a local speciality that I tried to taste but it was too much (a kind of soup with milk and herbs).

This morning we have breakfast with them and Adam explains how Tajiks drink coffee : very, very light with lots of milk and sugar. I stick to tea.

I’ll miss the coffee later and the coffee break halfway through the journey will be welcome.

There’s plenty of water on the road. The most surprising thing is this village where the bottles are cooled by the water flowing from the mountain.

We take a room a little before Ayni in a service station motel where electric vehicles come to recharge.