One of the highlights of this trip is the overnight stay in a Yurt. A whole new experience for me and I was very excited. Another tick on my bucket list.

We arrived late at night after a drive so bumpy that it added 500 steps to my Fitbit count!!!

The arrival was spectacular and the mountains were lit up specially for us.

The Yurt itself was comfortable and akin to ‘glamping’ so a colleague coined the phrase ‘glurting’. This one is ours. M6 was quite appropriate we thought.

As in a campsite there was a central shower block which was clean and had lovely hot water. But the toilets…

Ok so I need to tell you about the toilet situation on the Silk Road. It hasn’t always been easy. The predominant type is the squat which is challenging for us westerners who do not that the practiced thigh muscles and who are used to sitting. Anyone thinking of visiting needs to be aware of this.

Very often we have found toilet blocks which had the seat symbol on the door and our hearts were gladdened only to find that the desired . stall is locked!!! We were told that they use those cubicles to store the mops!! I went into one facility which was huge and had 8 seated stalls and ALL were locked. Also toilet paper is a rare commodity and we all had to buy extra packets of Handy Andys and regularly scavenge napkins from restaurants. If we find toilet paper anywhere it is a cause for rejoicing. And I won’t mention something of the smells…, you have to take the rough with the amazing on trips like this. I will just say that it is not for the squeamish.

At our Yurt site we had a toilet block near to us with one western style toilet which was broken! The other was at the other end so quite a trek! In the end I was so tired that I slept right through the night.

Breakfast was inside the giant Yurt but as you can see we had the place to ourselves.