We arrived in Tashkent at 1:10 AM this morning having flown in from London via Frankfurt and Istanbul. It was a long day - we got up at 4:30 AM in order to catch a bus from Winchester to Heathrow airport. Our Lufthansa flight departed for Frankfurt on time. We spent a couple of hours in Frankfurt having a light snack and then boarded our next Lufthansa flight for Istanbul. Once we landed in Istanbul, we knew that we were approaching the zone that we were headed to. Transferring to Turkish Airways involved going to multiple desks and getting bags transferred over and then, only after they had confirmed that they had found our bags would they give us our boarding passes. Just as we were finishing this long drawn out exercise, we met Paolo coming off of his Turkish Airways flight from London. Paolo had traveled with us on our Trans-Africa and around South America with is.
We then slowly made our way to our plane and boarded for the last leg of our trip to Tashkent and the start of our Silk Road journey. The flight was a bit long, but uneventful. It got a bit hectic towards the end when, at the last minute just before landing, they handed us our customs form, which includes a currency declaration (just like the good old days in the Soviet Union). This took some effort to fill out, as we had our money for two months stashed everywhere and did not want to flash it to everyone on the plane. But in the end, we made it.
We landed a bit ahead of schedule and we started the process of entering the country. As we got of the plane, we noted the Uzbek airline planes - old Russian ones. We were glad that we were on Turkish Airways. Everyone started to run when we got off the bus, but some how we were able to manage to get in a short line to clear immigration. But this was not too difficult - the immigration guy processed us pretty quickly. But we did notice that his insignia on his shoulder boards were made from gaffers tape. Then there was the long wait for the bags - it took forever for them to load the bags from the plane onto a small flat bed truck and then one-by-one put them on the conveyor belt (but we took advantage of the wait to go and change a bit of money so that we would not be caught short with none - we changed only $30, but we ended up with a stack of bills. They gave us Uzbek Som 100 notes that are worth less than 10 cents each. What a stack of bills we had). In the end, we were just glad to see our bags. Finally, it is through customs. They x-rayed everyone's bags, so it took some time, but they were actually quite friendly. Looked like the old Soviet Union, but a bit more friendly.
We fought our way through all the crowds of people trying to help us and found a taxi that would take the three of us to our hotel for $6. We were lucky to be able to get us all and the bags into the one car. It is a short ride through the dark, deserted streets to our hotel. It is a bit of a mad house there - lots of people checking in and we finally get our room at 3 AM. We are ready for bed.
Later that morning, we are up at 9 AM to go and have breakfast and the joining meeting for the trip. It is a light breakfast and the joining meeting does not take too long. It has been well done this time - much of the information has already been entered on the forms. After we finish the paper work, we head back to our room to rest for a while before some exploring.
We head out just after 2 PM and check out the city for the first time in daylight. This does really seem like the old Soviet Union. There are Ladas everywhere. The main streets are wide and largely devoid of traffic. Everything is in a varying state of disrepair. The water and drink vending machines where you share the glass dot the streets. The stores still use abacuses. Old ladies in their faded potato sack dresses sit by there small stalls on the street selling whatever they can. Everything is written in Cyrillic. Large monuments to dot the streets. The buildings are, well, Soviet creations - what more can we say ... The other thing we notice is that it does not seem very Muslim - maybe this will change once we are out of the main city. This is quite a mix of Russians and native Uzbeks.
We wander up and down the main street in front of our hotel and end up at a small street side stall where we get a late lunch. As we cannot read the Cyrillic writing and do not speak Russian, we had to resort to pointing at the food on other peoples' table (a bit rude, but what to do!!). It is meat on skewers, with bread and light salad. It is very good and costs about $1.5 for the two of us. The waitress was very friendly and helpful and we tried to leave a tip. But she refused to take the money and kept giving it back to us. What a great way to start this visit to this distant land. After a brief session on the internet checking our emails, we head back to the hotel to wash up. It is hot here - very hot - steaming hot. We need to take a shower as often as we can.
We meet up with the group at 7 PM in the bar in the hotel and after a couple of drinks head out for dinner. We have been told that the Caravan is a nice place, so we take a stroll down the street to this restaurant. It turns out to be a great selection. Excellent food, very nice decor and very good service. Just what we see in the decor is getting us excited about shopping potential here. We only have a light dinner as our lunch was so late.
Paying the bill is lots of fun - by the time we are finished, we have a tall stack of notes (the biggest note is a 500, worth less than 50 cents, but there are not many in circulation - this reminds us of Ghana in West Africa, where we had to carry money in shopping bags). It was a dark walk back through the hotel through the streets as most of the street lights did not work. But it felt very safe. Just had to make sure we avoided the many holes in the sidewalk (we did have a small torch to light our way). We are back at the hotel just before 11 PM and pack up our bags for our departure tomorrow morning.