Lifelong Friends

Without question, my favorite thing about traveling to other places is making new friends.  Making personal connections with people from such diverse backgrounds makes my life fuller and I now have true friends all around the world.  The sad thing is that I will likely not see most of them again. Thanks to Facebook and other social media, I can still keep in touch.

In the summer of 2012, I made a great friend in Lazis Otayarov (Laz).  This is a picture of us traveling together on Russia's trans-Siberian railway.  Laz is from Uzbekistan and I just learned last night that he will be in Tashkent this summer and we plan to meet for dinner while I'm there.  It's been five years sense our travels through Russian, Mongolia and China and I'm looking forward to our reunion this summer.