Uzbekistan - Getting to Know You

In September I had a two week adventure to Uzbekistan with a friend, Jean-Claude (JC).  JC is travelling the Silk Road bit by bit and I was delighted to join him on this unusual trip.

Saturday 21 September 

I started my trip by pogging on salads at Heathrow!  Bring meat free and gluten sensitive, and now heading for a country where fresh salads/raw food/unpeeled fruit are to be avoided, I knew it was going to be hard to feed a Ruth.

It was an easy flight to Tashkent changing at Istanbul.  The only event being a man collapsing one hour into our flight from Istanbul to Tashkent.  He seemed to not be in dire need of medical attention so we didn’t deviate course but it was still a reminder that we are all fragile.

Sunday 22 September

We landed at 0645 local time: a delightful 0145 BST.   Passport control was easy despite the Turkish ground staff telling JC that a Luxembourg passport needed a visa for Uzbekistan (it doesn’t).  Then the long wait for luggage commenced with our bags popping out at 0800.

It’s a small airport.  They put all the immigration officers on duty when a plane arrives then stand them down until the next one comes.  Part of me thinks the officers are then detailed off to empty the plane of luggage as it took forever for our bags to come through.  Sort of shifting from one job to the next.

We’d heard that Uzbeks were a friendly bunch and our first encounter of this was when, as we were leaving the airport, the customs officer called over to us.  Ok we thought, time to show him our luggage, but, no, he simply wanted to ask us if everything was ok as we were last out of arrivals.  We haggled for taxi prices and dropped our bags at the hotel.

Today was the day we found out how to do things.  We learnt that there is one flat fare for the metro.  It’s 1400 SOM (approx 15p) which gives you a blue token and entry to the metro.  You could spend all day underground if you liked.   We popped out at Amir Temur station expecting to be in the bustle of the city centre.   Instead we found ourselves in a pretty deserted hotel zone.   My three hour sleep the night before was showing and we stopped in a cafe to plan our day.   It was terribly hot ~32 deg C, I was sleep deprived and I was hungry.  This didn’t match well with Tashkent cafes offering of pastries and breads.   After iced tea we pushed on and walked down to the main railway station.

The station is a beautiful, imposing building typical of Tashkent.  Soviet architecture echos throughout the city.  As does complexity with buying things.  We wanted to buy a train ticket for later on in the week as buying outside of the country quadruples the price.  At the security kiosk to enter the station we were informed we had to enter a separate building to buy tickets.  Once we’d found that we navigated the queuing system and ticket purchase although ended up with economy which wasn’t the plan.

We caught the metro up to Chorsu to explore the huge bazaar there. It is enormous and categorised into quadrants of vegetables, meat, bread, dried fruits and nuts etc.  We headed for the latter in a circular dome topped building - meat on the ground floor, dried fruit and nuts on the first floor viewing balcony.

I was getting beyond tired and whilst JC wandered around taking photos I hung over the rails watching the ground floor market happen until the sight and smells of the horse meat got to me.  We bought some overpriced dried apricots and nuts (overpriced because even I was too tired to haggle hard) and we sat in the small shade we could find and dined on water and our goodies.

We watched local men lunch on water melon and bread.  Each group sat on cardboard, or directly on the grass, and carved up the melon with long knives.  Instead of slicing the melon into crescents as we do, they halved the melon.  From this they speared chunks of melon and, once finished, the last man drank the juice out of the massive fruit bowl.

Another discovery today was that Tashkent, and therefore most likely Uzbekistan, does not sell Diet Coke.  In fact it doesn’t seem to sell any diet drinks.  For some reason, no doubt fuelled by sleep deprivation, that put me in a sour mood.

We headed north to find the Hazrati Imam, the religious centre of Tashkent.  It contains the Uthman Qur’an - thought to be the oldest extant Qur’an in the world.  We walked an extra km or two in the stifling heat due to the construction of a huge mosque just beside it.  Post-communism, Islam is increasing its presence in these ex USSR countries.

Next on the list was the television tower.  This involved another metro trip and JC had a list of some of the stations he wanted to photograph.  Until 2017 photography was banned on the metro.  The stations doubled up as emergency bunkers and for this reason, and obviously Soviet sensitivities, had been off limits for photographers.  But now one can not only take pictures but use a tripod (something banned on London’s underground). We stopped at a few stations and JC set up and took some great pictures.  The security guards all came to see what he was doing.  They were fascinated by the images he was capturing as, using a long 30 second exposure, the people evaporate giving a strange emptiness to a station that’s never vacant.

Tashkent TV tower is 375 m high, which seemed quite small after my visit to the CN tower last month. Having said that it’s the tallest structure in Central Asia so not to be sniffed at.


The observation deck is 97 m high so it’s not a vast view once up.  It certainly showed how flat and featureless Tashkent was.  The odd tower, block of flats or mosque, but nothing to over excite the eyes.  But still an awesome view!

We lingered over iced tea for sun downers then headed for supper.

Another learning point for the day: Ruth really is very hard to feed in Uzbekistan.  We stumbled thro
ugh a menu of pictures with a waiter who had some English ability, but I ended up with a salad (bad), a dish of uncooked cabbage (bad) and a beetroot dish (good).  After sending one of them back I got a dish of beans (good).  Note to self - find out a better way to communicate.

USA - New York

Day 6 - Sunday 01 September

On Sunday we said farewell to the wonderful Toronto and flew back to the New York.  Unsurprisingly, Toronto has a very good public transport system so we used the streetcar (tram) and then the Pearson Express to head to the airport.

Interestingly you actually enter the United States before taking off.  There is a part of the terminal at Toronto just for American-bound travellers and you clear immigration and customs before leaving.   I like the self-service immigration portals at Toronto - both entering and leaving the country we used these rather than having to queue for an immigration officer.  On departure, as part of the customs process, I declared that I had fruit/vegetables on me (my in-flight banana).  Therefore, unlike Riona, who went through the 'good-to-go' queue, I had to talk to a customs officer and waive my potentially forbidden goods.  "How long are you going to the US for?" he asked looking at the USA stamp in my passport from only 6 days earlier.  "Um, a day," I responded.  "I've kind of been there before," I added by way of explanation.  

Strangely Riona took longer than I and when we met up she was soured faced.  "What's up?" I asked. Well, it turned out that as we parted for our different queues Riona had asked an official if she couldn't just simply go with her Mum into the 'something to declare' queue so we could stay together.  "Your Mum?" quizzed the officer.  "I thought that was your sister!" Cue grumpy 21 year old - affronted to be seen as a sister to a 49 year old woman.

Luckily there was a penguin on hand to cheer her up.

And then we sat in a bar and played cards.

La Guardia airport took a bit of navigating.  Well, leaving it was a cinch as we'd already cleared immigration, but the shuttle bus to the subway was hard to find and then a bit of a wait.  I'm not a patient traveller at the best of times. However, bus and subways all navigated, we found our hotel and a nearby Chinese takeaway and sat on our beds eating rice and fried vegetables whilst watching a Harry Potter movie.

Day 7 - Monday 02 September

Yay for breakfast!  Fruit loops US style, an old favourite of Riona's.

It was forecast to be showery today so, armed with waterproofs, we headed for Governor's Island.  This was our trip down memory lane as we had visited it in 2012 with Rog and Caitlin (here).

The clouds were gathering as we left Battery Park and looked towards Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges.

By the time we arrived it was drizzling heavily, which turned into proper rain.

We sheltered in Castle Williams, once a barracks but used as a jail in the late 1900s.  

The rain continued so we hopped to the coffee shop, which was disappointingly outside (Governor's Island is really designed to be enjoyed in fair weather) and we sat under the garden umbrellas with our coffees and waited for a break in the rain.

The clouds lifted briefly and we headed out to explore The Hills, a new area since our last visit.  It was obvious in 2012 that they had great plans for the island although unbuilt at the time of our visit.  Now there is a hill, adventure play area, hammocks, nature trails and all sorts of fun to be had....in the dry.  We scurried up the hill to see the views of Staten Island.  As we reached the top the rain broke and we scuttled down trying to find shelter somewhere.  Eventually we hid under a garden marque and dripped and shivered.

Eventually even the rain had had enough and we ventured out, dripping, to see the views.  There she is.

It was hard getting out of here and not falling into the puddle.

My little climber.

We remembered this chapel from last time.

And the views of Manhattan were, as ever, wonderful.

Back over to Battery Park for a late lunch.

And then the subway back.

Same old benches from 2012...

I flew home that evening.  A super easy trip from the hotel to JFK on the SkyTrain.  It felt strange to be leaving my daughter behind alone in a foreign country.  I knew she'd be fine - she had a Chinese takeaway, hotel room and TV, she's savvy and Mark and his brother were arriving the next day - but still weird.

Canada - Lake Ontario Paddle

Day 5 - Saturday 31 August

When in Canada paddle a canadian canoe.  And so we did.

The blog title is a little over doing it as we didn't venture far into Lake Ontario, in fact it was only Toronto's Inner Harbour, but I'm going for the 'I paddled on Lake Ontario story'.   We'd booked our hire slot and were to be taken across the Inner Harbour to the Toronto Island Park so we could paddle to our heart's content.

However whilst we were waiting we saw something familiar in the sky.

I did a double and treble take.  I was in Toronto and that appeared to the Red Arrows overhead.  I asked the skipper if it were the Canadian display team.  "They're called the Snowbirds," he commented.  Well, these certainly didn't look snow coloured.

It turned out that, yes, these were the Red Arrows who were on a North American tour.  In fact they'd been at Niagara Falls a couple of days earlier - that would have been a bit awesome to have seen them over the falls.

Our boat took us over to our canoe and off we set.

The Red Arrows continued their display whilst we paddled making this one of those 'right up there' memorable days - in a canadian canoe, in Canada, with the Red Arrows buzzing overhead.

Oooh look - a beaver-munched tree!

We paddled into a quiet cove and spied some waterbirds.

A great blue heron.

And an egret.

I'd spotted a light house on the map, so off we paddled.  Riona stayed in the boat whilst I hopped out at a pontoon to explore.  This is the Lake Light, one of the earliest on the Great Lakes, built in 1808.  It earned a reputation for being haunted when its first keeper mysteriously disappeared in 1815 and a skeleton was found nearby.

My patient boat handler awaited my return.

We then continued our exploration of the creeks and waterways that make up this island complex.  Toronto Islands appears to be well managed and ownership of the small island community of 600 cottages is restricted to a waiting list of locals.  There is no favouritism involved and houses are not sold privately, they have to be sold through the trust which regulates the prices.  You must use the property as your main residence: you are not allowed to buy as a holiday home or rent the property out.  Perhaps this should be rolled out for the Isles of Scilly...

Tortonto Islands certainly has a backdrop to write home about.

Riona's attempts at capturing a panaroma of the iconic skyline whilst floating on the lake proved amusing.

We finished our 2 hour slot and awaited our return to the mainland.

And then we were buzzed again.  These are not the Red Arrows so I can only surmise they are the Snowbirds, the other display team on the listings for the airshow.  Nice.

One back on the mainland we explored the Roundhouse.  These were unique circular buildings used to inspect, clean and repair steam locomotives: at one stage there were 3000 in North America.  This one has been preserved and we even had a little spin on the turntable.

More exploring on our last day.  Union Station.

We wandered the streets heading west to Kensington Market, a diverse and eclectic area of vintage shops, unique jewellery and hippy vibes. I loved the labyrinths painted on the pavements and roads.  And I loved this.

Another memorable day. :-)