Khiva, Uzbekistan

By the time I had reached Khiva, after a seven hour drive through the Kyzyl Kum desert of Uzbekistan, two months of travel through Central Asia and fourteen months of wandering the globe, I was officially tired. Taking a photograph seemed as big an effort as running a marathon and exploring an ancient town loaded with great architecture and history felt like having to sit still in eighth grade math class five minutes before the summer holiday bell rang. But meeting new people never lost its luster.
I had arrived into both Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in a blaze of Vodka fueled testosterone and had become accustomed to high levels of corruption. I was dragging my feet wearily in the heat through the streets of the old city of Khiva when I stopped for water and met Yerqinay, a sweet twenty year old Uzbek girl working at her family’s shop. Her spirit was so pure and positive that it seemed to erase all the thuggery I had encountered over the past months.
Sitting in the waning light of the sun amongst buildings that had seen centuries of progress along with brutal war, chatting with Yerqinay and her friend, my faith in the simple, honest beauty of life had been restored.