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18 September 2024 (Wednesday) - Tashkent

Having got to bed at six o’clock in the morning the rep said that the plan for the morning was to catch up on sleep. But with limited time in Tashkent I decided that sleep was for wimps. I’m not convinced that “er indoors TM agreed, but she was scoffing brekkie with me not three hours after we’d gone to kip.
Brekkie was odd; I had a bowl of muesli that tasted of cheap bubblegum and followed it with a plate of cheese and curried tomatoes. 
 
We went for a little walk. As always when anywhere new I sparked up the geocaching map. The noble art of hunting Tupperware is still in its infancy in Uzbekistan, but we still scored three smiley faces (it’s a geo-thing), and as we did we found Independence Square, loads of fountains, and a statue of Amir Timur too.
 
We made our way back to the hotel. Having thought that Uzbekistan would be random huts in a desert we’d been rather shocked to find that Tashkent was not entirely unlike London, Paris or any other large Western city.
Once at the hotel we got a pint and sat outside watching the busy world go by. And it was busy.
 
At mid-day we went to the hotel’s lobby where our group rallied. Having gone on an organized holiday trip we knew there would be other people with us. Half a dozen? A dozen? Our group numbered twenty-seven.
Our rep explained that he was standing in until the proper rep arrived, and took us to what was billed as a traditional Uzbek house for a traditional Uzbek dinner. Salad, soup, fruit… there was loads of it.
And then we got on the coach and set off to have a look round a mosque. And a mausoleum. And the busiest food market you ever did see. Apparently the coach couldn’t wait at the market so we took a tube train to go find it. The Uzbek tube train was frankly amazing if for no other reason than that it wasn’t that different to the one in London. I really wasn’t expecting that. It was a shame that the tube train took us to where the coach was parked at the Uzbekistan Museum of Dull Bits of Broken Pots, but there it is.
 
Having pretended to be enthralled by the broken pots we went back to the hotel. This evening we had been left to fend for ourselves for dinner, so we sat on the hotel’s verandah and had pizza and chips which we washed down with a litre of the local beer and a gin and tonic.
Whilst we’d scoffed the cleaners had been at our room. “er indoors TM wasn’t impressed. She’d not wanted anyone to clean the room as they would see it was in a “pig state sty” (to coin a phrase).
 
I took a few photos today. After yesterday’s late finish I’m feeling all in.

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