Category Archives: Travel

Day 1

We have another moderately early start, as we have to catch a plane back to Tashkent. The staff of the Hotel Bankir once again prove that while the hotel may not have the best-designed rooms, it has a really excellent staff. They go the extra mile by opening up breakfast nearly an hour early so we can travel adequately fed. We then squander this benefit slightly by getting our wires crossed about departure time, and I’m sitting drinking coffee when Mehmet starts sending the "where are you all, we need to go" WhatsApps.

Check-in at the airport is remarkably easy, with most of the formalities being handled on our behalf by Ganisher, and no complexities around extra baggage fees like in Mongolia. The good news: it’s dramatically faster than the 2+ days we spent doing the outbound journey by train and minibus. The bad news: it still takes almost 4 hours, not because of the flying time but because the plane also stops at Bukhara, and the process of disembarking some passengers and then boarding a few more is interminable. There are no refreshments, and we could really do with a coffee when we arrive.

On the leg from Bukhara to Tashkent we fly relatively low, in almost cloudless conditions. Much of the terrain is no more noteworthy from the air than from the roads, but there is one exception, the man-made Aydar-Arnasay system of lakes, a Soviet-era reservoir arrangement. Some are so shallow that from the air you can see distinct colour bands highlighting features in the lake bottoms.

We grab a bite on the way from the airport, check into our hotel (the Excellent Lotte Palace, again), and then head out to photograph the Tashkent Metro. This, like its counterparts in other Soviet cities, is a magnificent, well-decorated tribute to Soviet and Uzbek excellence. We start at Kosmonavtlar (Cosmonauts) station, decorated with images of famous figures in Russian and joint space exploration, and then travel on to Alisher Navoi, named and decorated in honour of a famous Uzbek poet. On the way back we split up, and I spend a happy half an hour chilling with a latte in the park opposite the hotel.

For dinner we have booked into a smart and supposedly posh Turkish restaurant above the new Zarafshan shopping centre. The décor is excellent, but it becomes rapidly apparent that food service may be sub-optimal. The waiters are all circulating with two things: a large laminated menu with pictures of their dishes, and a long printed paper list of "what’s off". There’s a purported range of about a dozen soups, but the only ones available are broccoli, and lentil. Yeuch! The meat dishes have a similar shortfall, and I end up with about my third choice, lamb chops. However they are generous, beautifully cooked, and delicious, which provides some mitigation.

The issue seems to be that we are now towards the end of the Eid al-Adha (Jacob’s Sacrifice) Festival, which takes place over four days in Uzbekistan, and clearly digs deep into food and drink reserves. It’s not a disaster, but might be worth avoiding if you have a choice.

Last Supper taken, we head back to the hotel.

Day 2

We have the morning for a leisurely breakfast and repack, and head off to the airport around noon. The formalities are trouble-free, but amazingly bureaucratic. My passport and boarding card are checked four separate times between the check-in desk and the exit from Security, in a couple of cases only a few meters apart.

Once through one of our number slips off to the Business lounge, leaving Mehmet and myself to find a bar with beer and kebabs. Once again Turkish Airlines have a horribly confused "queue" (not really worthy of the name) through their boarding process, but at least I get on and get my baggage away without problems.

The flight to Istanbul is smooth, but has to be the hottest & sweatiest I have ever experienced. Ladies are all fanning themselves, other large men literally radiate heat as you get within a few feet of them. Either the air conditioning is not working or the cabin crew simply can’t be bothered to set it properly – I certainly don’t hear any apology.

On arrival there is the same lengthy walk and the same confused arrangement re transfer gates as on my flight back from Mongolia. I completely bypassed this complexity on the way out from London. (I have a suspicion, yet to be confirmed, that that is because Turkey and the UK have a visa-free travel arrangement, part of which was "and no two-mile walk to the transfer gates". If so, well done to whoever agreed it.)

My first stop is a Costa, where I am able to purchase an Efes beer. That’s an excellent innovation even if it does cost €15! Welcome back to Istanbul Grand Airport.

My layover is 12 hours, so after a short wander around the "retail opportunities" I get yet another kebab and beer (about ten times the cost of lunch), and then head off to try and get some sleep.

After the disappointment of the lounge, I have splurged slightly over £200 on 8 hours in a "sleep cabin" within the airside Yotel. The sleep cabins (not to be confused with the "sleep pods" which are suspiciously like temporary-use coffins) are single rooms with a proper bed, but linked to a shared bathroom area. Let’s see how this works…

Day 3

The sleep cabin is a fully-ledged hotel room, just small and not en-suite. I get to bed quickly, but take a bit of time to nod off, due mainly to a mattress and pillow which probably qualify as construction materials. However I eventually get several hours reasonable sleep. When I wake up the display on my Fitbit says 5.30am, exactly as I planned. I get a towel from the reception area, and head off for a shower. While the shared bathroom area is not ideal, it’s kept clean and well stocked, and I don’t have any real complaint.

Back in the sleep cabin, I start thinking about moving off, but glance at the TV which has come on for some unexplained reason. The corner of the screen is a clock showing just before 4am. 4AM? WTF? A quick scan of available timepieces reveals that the TV and my watch are in agreement, whereas my Fitbit is still on Tashkent time. Bugger. Back to fitful sleep for another two hours…

Note to Tissot: the T-Touch Expert Solar is almost the perfect travel watch. So why, oh why, did you not make the outer dial markings and hands luminous?

Note to Yotel: if you’re going to charge £200 for a few hours, you could at least provide a clock…

Ominously, the gate for my flight will be announced two hours ahead of departure, so I steel myself for a walk the length of the whole airport (tick), and a long queue (tick). The queue is not actually that deep, but the process is very slow and bureaucratic, with no fewer than 3 separate checks of my passport and boarding bass within about 3m. I’m puzzled why they need the duplicate checks, but then observe someone who has tried to jump the queue and skip one of the steps being escorted back out into the hallway to queue again. One can’t help thinking that a proper queuing system with barriers outside the gate, plus all the document checks being done once, fully, before entry into the gate, might be a better solution?

Flight, arrival at Gatwick and taxi home are uneventful. As Ole’ Blue Eyes sang "it’s nice to go travelling, but it’s nice to come home".

Yes, the travel has been hard work, and I’m certainly no fan of Istanbul Airport, but otherwise it’s been a thoroughly enjoyable and very successful trip. I’ll take full stock of it in the next post.