Before we begin- we did tie for second place on the Georgia round. Okay, onto Jerusalem.

Let’s just start by saying the real estate agent who sold the Western Wall to the Jews and the same land to Mohammad to ascend to Heaven and then somehow convinced the Christians to anoint, bury, and resurrect Jesus as part of a time share in the same plot not only created the birthplace of modern religion but also probably lawyers.

It takes only a few minutes to conclude that there will never truly be peace as each group has a religiously legitimate reason to have their share/control of this desert rock. The most plausible possible future is massive widespread atheism makes everyone too apathetic to fight. Then, Disney takes over the Old City, throws in some rides and Mickey Mouse and hijab Minnie, thus creating the happiest place on Earth.

Until then, each group lives in fear of what the other might do. One savvy Muslim observed that the extremists keep ruining it for everyone. A Palestinian, in regards to other countries funding Hamas, said “what are we going to do? Keep throwing stones at Israeli tanks?” His honesty and desire for a safe world to live in were far more real and important than 2000 year old caves and prayer walls.

So given all the religions, how do you choose which one to support? Let’s start with the basics of the Big Three. Each has their own mythology with its origin story and death defying heroes like a Marvel movie. Like the movies, each story comes with their own body count with the Bible being a big book filled with 2.9 million deaths (that Old Testament is a bloodbath). They all have a history of treating women as inferior. All have justified killing others in the name of their God and simultaneously claim to provide a proper framework of how to be a pious life.

Given all the similarities we need to drill down to the details. First, the art. Bloody Jesus versus geometric tilings, easy choice. Two of the three have hummus and falafel, the third has the Body of Christ. Sorry Christianity, cannibalism is a hard sell. Tahini and Garbanzo beans win. Jews serve cheesecake for breakfast. Judaism wins. The easiest way to a man’s God is through his stomach.

Crossing into Palestine was easy, coming back was more interesting. Going through a series of one way doors and getting to an unmanned fortified X-ray screening with a voice overhead telling you what to do felt like entering prison. Two young Muslim women were in our same small cohort. One of our travel teammates had hip replacements and when he set off the metal detector all the doors audibly locked. Fear flashed across the faces of the Muslim women slightly ahead of us. They pushed on the metal door in front of them and it wouldn’t open. They looked back at us and their panic didn’t match our carefree attitude as we waited to be cleared by the border patrol. The best part of this trip is the glimpse into other people’s lives, not just worlds.

The worst part of this trip was taking a large group tour to the Dead Sea and Masada. Our Ringmaster wanted us to experience it on a level playing field and, I doubt inadvertently, experience how terrible it would be to travel the other way. We suffered mandatory stops at souvenir/coffee shops with hawkers almost as slick as the water in the Dead Sea.

The Dead Sea is maximum salinity, 33%. That makes it more dense than most humans so that people float (and there are some pretty dense people). Like toothpaste, you don’t want to drink it or get it in your eyes, but somehow they tout it as healthy.

When we went in from the Jordan side years ago it was just a rocky, muddy beach. The Israel side has bars and restaurants that summarizes the economic differences between the two countries.

We found that everyone we talked to was kind and willing to help. The old walled in city with a maze of narrow stone streets is a setting unlike anywhere in America. The blend of cultures, religions, and excellent foods make Jerusalem a place worth visiting even if you aren’t on a pilgrimage.

The cable car up Masada. We walked down in the desert heat just wondering what people were thinking 2500 years ago.

We rush back to the hotel to be told to get 5 hours sleep. We are headed to Sofia, Bulgaria at 4am! 5 for 5 for countries Vi and I have not visited.

After 48 hours of scavenging we meet at the hotel and turn in our logs. One of the teams has Covid and will skip the next leg. A chill runs through the group as we know it could happen to anyone.

At the same time, we are eagerly awaiting the announcement of where that next place will be. We call out guesses and finally someone says the answer:

Israel! We are going to Jerusalem for three nights and we leave in a few hours. Vi and I are thrilled: 4 countries in a row we have never been to.

Hello Israel!

We started with a very Napa-esque wine tour in the grape growing region east of Tbilisi. The wine was eclipsed by fascinating conversation with the locals. A young female winemaker told us how the younger generation is more accepting of equality between sexes and of people’s sexuality. She said the old men winemakers said things like “winemaking is pure and should never be dirtied by women’s hands.” She equated closemindedness with the Russians. Others echoed her sentiment and the message, just like Uzbekistan, is that if you can get out from under the thumb of your oppressor and have the opportunity to get educated and get work that will create a happy country. Seems like every society needs someone to point a finger at and say “that’s not who we are.” For Georgia and Uzbekistan that’s Russia. For the Japanese and Canadians it’s the US.

You know those old guys who drive like no one else in the world exists? That was our next cab. Right turn signal on, left turn, slow to a crawl to show us a building and cross two lanes to do it, car slips out of gear every five seconds, staccato brakes and gas, all while humming “Strangers in the Night.” I click my seatbelt shut. Vi reaches for hers to find nothing and says “don’t forget to feed Jinx,” as we turn the wrong way onto a one way. The driver chuckles at the red-slashed sign like it’s a game of chicken with the grim reaper and he knows he’s not turning the wheel. Death flinches first and on we go as our driver makes the sign of the cross and resumes humming.

Mr Toad’s Wild Ride dropped us off in Vomitville. When we stop kissing the ground we find we are at Jvari Monastery replete with a splendid scenic overlook of old Mtskheta. It reminds me of the lower left of Escher’s masterpiece “Day and Night”.

We get to the most interesting challenge yet: 44. If you have your virginity lose it, if you lost it, get it back.

Peculiar. I thought we would have done that back in San Francisco. After sheepishly asking some locals we find ourselves at the sulfur bathhouses. The origin story of Tsibili is that a man shot a bird with an arrow and the bird fell from the sky into a sulfur pool so that when the hunter retrieved it dinner was ready. Miraculous Mother Nature.

Anyway, we get a private sulfur pool for no extra charge. Turns out the heavy stone walls are so no one can hear you scream. The boiling water vaporizes your skin upon contact, then the fat underneath melts away revealing pink muscle that boils to a tough gray leather in seconds. The only thing that gets you out of the tub is the thought of drug czars betting on which crocodile eats your spleen first when they throw your cooked organs into the pit.

Anyway, besides from the sulfur stench it was wonderful.

Accidental photo at a giant Stonehenge-y monument.

Tbilisi is a very European city with a rich mix of culture and history and worth a visit. And thanks to COVID when you walk past an old haggard guy who is coughing up a king you no longer assume it’s tuberculosis.

Hmm…it is called TB ilisi.

Tbilisi is far more European than we would have imagined. Not that we spent much time imagining a city we never really heard of in a country that hasn’t hit the news since their bloody war about 15 years ago. Vi’s friends came here disaster relief but being the repressive domineering partner that I am, I forbid Vi from helping in active war zones…at least while the relationship is working. 😉

There’s a bit more street hustle here with taxis quoting prices at 5x what they should be and then dropping you off two blocks early and pointing in the direction as to where you should walk. Someone at Webster’s must have botched the definition of taxi when translating the dictionary to Georgian.

Our fatigue is catching up and we will need a double dose of caffeine if we are going to do well on this leg. As for the last one, we won it!

Given no train or bus seats, the only way to Bukhara from Samarqand was by “hot potato” taxi. We get shuttled, along with whatever is hiding in the boxes in the taxi’s trunk to a another city, switch cars, and move on. Every time the driver passes us off he says “This is my brother, he will take you.” Seems the country only has ten moms.

Fortunately Bukhara has an ancient city center that is compact, navigable, and full of people who understand English. Within ten minutes we know it won’t be the struggle Samarkand was.

We head straight to a Tea House with the hopes that we are the first team in the city to do a scavenge. Vi can do tea. I’m more comfortable slurping Jello through a straw. The rock candy that was supposed to be dissolved into the tea was fun to chew on. Gotta keep the dentist employed. (Remember : enjoy the sweet things)

Bukhara is a beautiful ancient city. It also solidified our opinion of the people of Uzbekistan. We met three college students who were excited about the future. The president improved both education and improving infrastructure during his two terms (we did hear concern he might break the Constitution and run for a third term). The students looked forward to international travel and one of them hoped to drive a Yellow Cab in NYC for a couple of years to learn the lay of the land. Another wanted to go to Texas to see cowboys, not The Cowboys. We tried to buy them ice cream but they insisted on paying for us.

I woke up to a stomach “glonk” at 3:20 am. Which street food was it? The, grilled meat skewer? The phyllo wrapped meat paste? The strawberry taste test? Unsolvable Mystery.

I made it into the bathroom without turning on a single light. Vi sleeps through earthquakes but if I’m exposed to too many photons my solar panels wake up the machinery and it won’t go back to sleep until the next night.

When I finish I reach for the toilet paper. The til was free range and last I saw it was at the edge of the sink. Not the smartest thing to keep the thing that is supposed to be the driest next to one of the things that is the wettest, but there were no shelves or a holder.like I said, it’s free range and Vi had found it a new home.

I reached blindly in the dark along the floor but came up empty. Ahh, but I was thinking like me. Vi would set it on the back of the toilet. I start twisting backward to reach and silently curse that nimble saboteur. Soon I’m riding the toilet side saddle but I swing my arm back and make contact. That type of contact like the crack of a bat that just hit it out of the park. The roll goes flying into the night.

I twist to the front and sweep my arms down across the floor but come up empty. I sweep out my right leg like a blind man’s cane searching for…anything. Nothing. It has to be there.

I’m hoisting myself up a bit like a gymnast on the vault. Instinctively I know the rule to find the toilet paper involves keeping my butt above the toilet. This makes sense even though the train has already left the station and there won’t be another departure any time soon.

I stretch even further and OUCH! I pull a hamstring. I imagine Vi asking why I’m walking with a limp. Who pulls a muscle going to the bathroom? Old bearded men do. I make a mental note to shave the beard.

You might wonder why I haven’t turned on the light. Because the switch is outside the door. I would need an arm three times longer with thrice the elbows to get to it. I could always do the squatty walk of shame and do it.

I search one more time and hit pay dirt. It’s a short lived celebration when I remember the signage saying the toilet can’t handle the paper and to put it in the mini garbage can.

I fold. Squatty walk to the light switch it is.

And that’s why I only slept five hours.

We survived a seven-hour torture taxi ride back to Tashkent (because the travel agents said there were no seats only later to learn half the plane was empty from the two teams that got tickets). Some of the taxis are propane fueled and no one is allowed within 50 feet of fueling the car except the attendant. Knowing we are riding on a pressurized tank of explosive fuel makes weaving through traffic at 150 km/h (93mph) all while the driver surfs Tinder as exciting as a game of Russian roulette. The backseat has no seatbelts but as a token of solidarity our driver doesn’t wear his except when we drive through checkpoints, immediately removing it as soon as we resume speed.

Back in Tashkent we have seven hours to scrounge as many points as possible. This includes three meals/foods.

The surprise delight scavenge is the “subway safari”. This involves photographing five curated subway stations. Their antiquated subway has a charm and cleanliness NYC lacks. We wonder where the homeless, the addicted, and the mentally ill end up in this country, they aren’t in the streets.

Later, at a Lebanese restaurant we met a local who was third generation from North Korea. Her grandfather had left when the decision was made to divide the country. It was the sort of tie-in to the previous scavenge that no one could have predicted. Got Serendipity?

We returned to the hotel to end the scavenge at 9pm. And then we found out we are headed to Georgia on an early morning flight! Another new country we know nothing about.

Finally, say adios to the Darth Vader boxers. Yoda was right, the Dark Side is stronger.

See you in Tbilisi!

We made it to Samarkand!

One of our challenges was to stay overnight at someone’s home. Vi was hellbent on making this happen, whereas I prefer the comfort of a hotel, mainly to blow dry my beard.

The conversation with our taxi driver went like this:

“Do you know someone with an extra room we could stay in tonight?” Vi asked.

“You need a hotel?” The driver asked in remarkably clear English. Our day had been spent mostly communicating through Google Mistranslate.

“No, not a hotel, just a room at someone’s place.”

“A hostel?”

“No we want to be a guest in someone’s house for the night.”

“You want to be a guest in a house?”

“Yes!”

The taxi driver responded with a “why” that showed how half a world apart you could still communicate that you think someone is crazy just by the intonation of the word ‘why.’

But a few phone calls later he pulled through and the next thing we know we are at Ibrahim’s house. Ibrahim looked about 25, same as our taxi driver. His dad regarded us with a wave and went back to watching TV. Guess the world isn’t so different.

We stayed in a meager, musty, frigid room with narrow single beds. I was most comfortable sleeping in the pharaoh position on top of a sarcophagus. I had my hat to keep me warm and my earplugs to block out the noise of anyone sneaking into the room to murder us. Like most people, I want to go peacefully in the night, but sometimes you need earplugs to make it happen. Plan ahead, people. Last thing you want to hear is “This knife is kinda dull but I’ll make it work.”

I opened my eyes at 6am to see “Chaos” staring at me from a foot away. “Wake up. We’re going to grab the World by it’s tail and put it in our pocket.”

I finished the motivational speech. “Well, you’re going to find as you go through life you aren’t going to amount to jack squat.”

We ended up in two graveyards before 8am…both of us alive. Then we went to the Ulithi Beg’s observatory. In the early 1400’s he studied the movements of the sun, stars, and planets. It’s always fun to learn what people were learning long before the heroes of European science. Factoid: the ancient Greeks estimated the circumference of the Earth within 1.5 percent without traveling the world. Geometry springs eternal.

We took a tour of the Shahi Zinda. There we saw a young man in robes filming himself. When we wondered aloud if he was making a movie. He haughtily said, “I speak English. I am from New York. I’m shooting for my Instagram.”

He proceeded to snap a thousand photos of himself, always keeping just in front of us as if he needed a live audience to augment his online vanity. When he set up his cameras in the area with signs clearly posted “no photography,” I groaned and wished my backpack had a Canadian flag seen on it. They do that to not be mistaken as Americans.

We will leave you with pics from Samarqand.

Long flights are a great way to escape your busy life and learn something about your partner. One of us thinks “girth” is a naughty word. That same one of us swears like a trucker with thrombosed hemorrhoids. Go figure.

Since we’re on a flight over China and I’m struggling to stay awake because my circadian rhythm is keeping time worse than the Fourth Grade marching band, I’ll answer the questions about the Scavenger Hunt that have come up.

Why? Why not? Most of life is knowing exactly what the next minute, hour, day, week holds. I mean, no one really wants a surgeon who preps a patient with “I haven’t the foggiest what’s going to happen during your case but it’ll be a fun adventure into the unknown.” Whereas the nice folks of the GSH have scouted the world and crafted a playlist of possible hits all to be uncovered in a slightly chaotic random order.

Some might thing our team name refers to the personalities of the two members, but really it refers how we escape our highly ordered lives into three weeks of riding chaos with the thrill of a cowboy breaking a horse.

If you called BS, you’re right. It’s our personalities.

Anyway, how to pack is the next question. Vi brings layers and laundry detergent. I ascribe to the path of destruction method. I’ve jammed my backpack full of clothes I never want to wear again; threadbare socks begging to be euthanized, tattered T-shirt’s, and undies with more skid marks than the Indy 500. Okay, that’s not true but as I say, any joke is a good joke, even self-deprecating jokes that put my sphincter tone into question.

Anyway, wear and discard so in some way the world looks like a tornado swept through my closet and carried the worst of it across the globe.

As for the tech question. Some legs we can’t use any to help with scavenging, but posting to our millions of followers doesn’t break that rule. Nor does taking photos.

Finally: how many miles did you walk? In addition to taking a 7 hour bus tour to the DMZ, on Tuesday alone, we managed to put 12.5 miles on the Seoul of our shoes. Finally a vacation you can lose weight on!

Next up: I try to find a pun that goes with Uzbekistan!

It doesn’t take two steps off the plane to know we aren’t in South Korea anymore. Thicker necks, bigger bellies, and more shoving through the airport all accented by the harsh throat clearing sounds associated with Arabic and acid reflux.

In hindsight, the quietude of Seoul was quite impressive along with the lack of pushing. Sure, Americans want/expect more personal space than polar bears, but given that Seoul had 30 million people stacked in a city the size of a CostCo parking lot the respect for the individual was impressive.

This stands in sharp contrast to the airport in Uzbekistan. The doors to the passport control area open inwards towards the incoming crowd (a flaw that proves the world isn’t built to my specifications). The door isn’t automatic so people with luggage struggle to open the doors while squat men with thick necks and beards elbow their way past the poor sap who reached for the handle. You just know that the traffic is going to be the same.

We had 11 hours to rest before our next scavenge booklets were to be handed out. This was done in a modest room with a thermostat set to broil.

The next morning our breakfast has a jelly bar at the buffet. A first for me. Two types of honey, both superb. Some people say enjoy the little things but I say they have surgery to fix that. Instead, enjoy the sweet things.

Okay, the moment we’ve been waiting for. Forget the suspense: We took first place on the first leg!

We get our booklets and find we will be on the run across Uzbekistan. We can only use our phones/tech to translate and to take photos.

We get out of the hotel and into a taxi and are quickly rewarded by Google translate. Our driver spoke into the phone and it spat out “this dressing must be poured warm.” We were on the right track!

We are soon corrected from our first impression. the Uzbek language is closer to Russian and not as guttural. People are nice and rules only apply to people not willing to spend a few bucks. We could handle this.

The only problem is that we have to cover three cites, the farthest over 300 miles away. Can’t rent a car and can only fly one way from the furthest city, Bukhara.

We find our way to the train station only to learn there are no tickets, no bus tickets, and then ask the travel agent to check the return flight and they are all booked.

I start cursing the muthaflippin’ Ringmaster for bringing us to a Muslim country at the Eid Al Fitr. Vi says he does this crap on purpose and then misquotes Nick Nolte in 48 Hours, “we’re not brothers, we’re not friends, I own you ass, so quit complaining and find us a way to Samarqand.”

Here we go!

We started the morning just trying to plan what we were going to do. One of the top things on the list was taking a train to Busan. A Train to Busan! It’s a popular zombie apocalypse movie that a real train ride could never unlive up to.

We set out on out the adventure starting with a hike up a mountain that cradled the presidential palace at its base. Totally serene scenery punctuated by signs warning imprisonment if you take any photos, a zillion cameras attached to trees and walls, and barbed wire curling everywhere like kudzu strangling the mountainside. This juxtaposition of peace and a police state habituates the DMZ as we would soon see.

But first the zombieless train to Busan. A few hours from Seoul you get the sense you are in a real city with real working people. No one is catering to tourists outside of menus with photos on them.

Okay, we could talk about getting kicked out of a cab when the driver gave up on trying to find where we were going. Or, we could mention how my armpits smell like kimchee, not sure how that happened. but let’s jump straight to the fish market. Living sea creatures twisted against one another in plastic bins just waiting for the inevitable. As much as we love seafood, it made us sad to see it. We purposefully skipped the meat market in Seoul because seeing dogs in cages would have broken our hearts. Turns out our sympathies extend under the sea.

Sy Montgomery’s “Soul of an Octopus” had solidified my decision to not eat octopus. Critics of my idiosyncrasies call out my willingness to eat beef, also a smart animal, but we raise beef to eat. Without agriculture we would have hunted them to extinction or close to it, whereas, we are kidnapping very smart octopuses and eating them.

Seriously, they are really smart. I went into H&R Block a few weeks ago and they had these giant octopuses in tanks that would knock out your taxes in about an hour.

But one of the food challenges was to eat nakji. The seafood restaurant attached to the fish market advertised it. The menu’s photo showed octopus ceviche. Vi offered to take that one for the team because she knew of my support for a Free Octopus world.

The waiter brought this:

Still moving! Each arm has its own brain so even with the head gone, they were still trying to crawl back to the sea. When Vi tried to pick them up with chopsticks they would suction to the plate. A bit of free advice: if your food is trying to escape you while you are eating it, you might want to send it back to the chef, or at least point it in that direction so it can slither back to the kitchen itself.

Anyway, it pretty much looked like this.

Vi is a big fan of the Korean revenge movie “Oldboy”. There’s no reason you should take that as a recommendation. Vi’s love for the deranged, disturbing, and twisted is evidenced by her taste in movies and men.

Okay, soul sold, let’s move on and find a happy place. How about the DMZ?

Our DMZ guide provided us the quote of the day: “It’s a propaganda film. I think you’ll like it.”

Somehow the phrase “The DMZ is the road to peace,” doesn’t ring true. The DMZ is a land of peace and nature filled with birds and elk and over one million land mines. Sometimes you have to scratch your head when it comes to humans.

That said, the DMZ is a great place for tourists to realize how lucky they were to not be born on the wrong side of a line…or with eight arms.

Later we came across a “serendipity challenge” which is a nice way of saying we found something cool that we wish was worth points. In this case, search and rescue German Shepherds. The oldest one is “famous” for his ability to find missing people post disaster. Now if he could only track down Vi’s rogue left sock, it smells strong enough.

We ended the leg, no idea how we did, but plenty of fun had. I would have taken bets we were heading to Mongolia, but like most men, seldom right but never in doubt.

Instead we are headed to Tashkent, Uzbekistan. (Surprise!)

Sorry folks- this was supposed to be published the morning we got into Seoul! Now it’s more like an artsy movie with the scenes out of sequence so you get satisfaction when your brain puts it all into place.

Our flight arrived at 4am. By 6 am we were at the hotel and by 7 am Vi was in a fancy hotel pushing the buttons on the wall next to the toilet. And this wasn’t even for points!

At 8 am our Ringmaster handed out the scavenge booklets and set us loose for 51 hours.

We started with the important things, like stuff you can buy in a convenience store in South Korea that you can’t buy in the US. Admittedly, our nation is quite behind South Korea when it comes to education, cleanliness of cities, and prepackaged sausages on sticks.

In recent years the declining birth rate in Japan and South Korea and other developed countries has been a topic of discussion and concern. But no worry, Vi, childless fertility advisor, solved the problem in an hour. it’s really hard to get pregnant if no one ever looks away from their phone.

Of course, we have this problem in the US. And with clamped down borders it will be hard to get undereducated low wage workers, but the savvier States have figured it out. They’ll grow their own by outlawing abortion.

I’m sorry, too political for a travel blog but such easy low hanging fruit is hard to pass. Besides, it might just be the masking that ruined dating. After all, you meet someone who might be cute and then they remove their mask to reveal they look like The Predator, that’s gonna slow you down next time.

We won’t give more details until we finish the leg, but tune in next time for “Sold My Seoul” (not for the faint hearted).