we're off to turkestan tomorrow. except we've been in turkestan ever since we arrived in central asia. this whole chunk of the world, basically former soviet central asia, northern afghanistan and western china was once known as turkestan.
tomorrow, however, we're going to the small city west of here that is also called "turkestan". technically its full name is hazrat-e-turkestan, which means "the saint of turkestan". the saint in question is khoja ahmad yasavi. his giant mausoleum is in the town and that's what made the place a major pilgrimage destinations after his death. i guess all those pilgrims got tirds of saying "i'm going to hazrat-e-turkestan" and shortened the name to just "turkestan", even though odds are that's where they probably were before they even started pilgrimming.
it's like if brussels changed its name to "the capital of europe". and then, after a while, everyone just started callin it "europe". which, i suppose, is sort of like what they do in cairo.
whatever it's called, we're going tomorrow. (to turkestan, not brussels or cairo). so there.
