Day 21 -The beginning of the end. Khiva to Tashkent

 A rather irritating day all round. It was never going to a great one as we had a morning to kill in Khiva, before driving to nearby Urgench Airport for the 15.20 flight to Tashkent. On from Tashkent airport, through the rush hour traffic, to our hotel in the city centre, giving us about 90 minutes to see Uzbekistan’s capital before last night dinner. Not ideal, but then again, Tashkent is never going to remotely compare to the Uzbek cities we’ve visited over the last week.

To be honest it was worse than expected. I didn’t sleep at all well as I’d got a horribly blocked nose due to a cold. Fired up on Ibrobrufen and Sudafed, we took a last wander around Khiva. We found a nice graveyard built into the city wall - slightly odd, but nonetheless characterful. 

Cate finally decided that she would like one of the gowns on sale from the many street stalls. There was a bit of a haggle, and we agreed at 150,000 S’om - sounds a lot, but in reality, it’s about £12. I’ve nevertheless set up a spreadsheet to track usage, and Return On Investment. Meanwhile, I treated myself to exhausting a stolen hotel loo roll on my streaming snout. Tissuetastic, in a snotmungous way!

I’d love to say that we had a quick lunch before boarding the bus to the airport. But we didn’t. Yet again, just like every organised lunch and dinner on this trip, it was four courses long. If I have one major criticism of our trip, it’s that there’s been, a) way too much food, and b) far too much time wasted consuming in a nice slow and leisurely way. I’m a sandwich on the run kind of person at lunchtimes; and mark my words, I’m not for turning on that. 

Haggling!

Already, below par from my cold, I spent the last half an hour of lunch muttering. I like to be at airports early; and when I’m there we move at “double airport speed”, which is 2 notches short of a jog. With just an hour and forty minutes to go before the departure time, we commenced the 40 minute drive to Urgench Airport! As a former season ticket holder on the “Bupa bus” (Heathrow to Manchester flight), I know that arriving an hour before departure is fine for a domestic flight. However, on the “Bupa bus” there was no luggage to check in, and I wasn’t part of a group 10 over 60’s. Mrs Patient did her best to calm my ever-increasing impatience and stress. She did a good job, and was proved right. 

En route to the airport it was nice to see some unharvested cotton fields. They grow a lot of cotton in Uzbekistan. But nowhere near as much as they did in Soviet times. The lovable old Bolsheviks made the Uzbeks turn virtually all their fertile land over to cotton production in order to provide clothing for the rest of the USSR. Consequently the Uzbeks had to endure horrific food shortages for years and years, as very little produce came back in the opposite direction to replace what they used to grow.

Back at the airport, we boarded our Uzbekistan Airways jet 20 minutes before departure time, and were airborne bang on schedule. Inshallah (god willing), we were headed for Tashkent; fully laden, complete with goats on the top of the fuselage, and yak’s flying alfresco on the wings! I’m a bit of a closet plane spotter, so it was rather lovely to see several old Soviet Antonov transporter jets on the tarmac at Tashkent. I must also add that I thought the Uzbekistan Airways livery was splendid - based around the colours of their flag.

About an hour after landing our bags arrived, and we boarded another minibus to do battle in the Tashkent rush hour. It lived up to its billing! Tashkent also lived up to my, somewhat low, expectations. Big wide avenues packed with hordes of white cars, lined by a combination of modern glitzy buildings shimmering with bright electronic advertising boards, and dour Soviet built apartments. We passed nothing of note on the fifty minute crawl to our hotel. 

Very irritatingly, I felt distinctly off colour on arrival, so opted not to go and see some of the, seemingly legendary, stations on the Tashkent metro. And that is nearly it for this epic trip. Up at 5.30am in the morning for our flight to Istanbul. I’m hoping the snot recedes, and I return home in fine fettle for a face full of peanut butter sandwiches!