We did not really know what to expect in Charvak. We read quickly on internet that it was possible to hike there, and to do some water activities. We needed a bit of nature after this week of city-touring, that seemed the perfect place, but things did not happen exactly the way we were expecting...

When we arrived in the place, we quickly realised that there was no real "city" next to the lake, but only tourist resorts. The shared taxi we took from Tashkent spent some time with us, trying to arrange us an accommodation. After a long 1-hour of complicated bargain sometimes with Google translate, sometimes through an intermediary on the phone, we finally had a room for 50$ for 1 night. That was 20$ more than the most expensive place we had since the beginning of our trip! Second cold shower: all the beaches are owned by expensive hotels, impossible for us to enjoy the lake! There was only 1 place where we could go, but we had to pay the entrance. I was furious, there was no way I would pay for that! We finally found a detour through a smelly dumpster to go illegally next to the water for free. The sunset was nice though, we could enjoy our fresh evening.

All this made really no sense... When we asked some locals if 50$ is a decent price for a night here, they told us that it was a very good price. Was that the "San Tropez" of Uzbekistan? Animal shits on the floor, broken houses, messy construction sites, poor farmers, people wearing old clothes... Not really San Tropez... It was even one of the dirtiest places we saw in Uzbekistan, full of trash (the rest of the country always appeared to us very clean). Even the expensive resorts (couple of hundred euros per night) seamed a bit "cheap", tasteless. How could this business work? That still remains one of the biggest mysteries of our trip...