DAY 14 TUESDAY OCT 13, 2015 ON TO UZBEKISTAN AND THE UNKNOWN
Breakfast was OK and we brought down our suitcases for us but I made sure they didn't walk onto someone else’s car or bus. We didn’t know this until this morning but Slava announces we are going to the museum first. It was not in the schedule and was a surprise to us but New York is ecstatic and she is paying so we can all go.
So we are off to the museum. Canada and I met a bunch of teachers outside so we stood out there and talked to them for a while and then into the museum and joined the group for the tour. I went downstairs with the group because there were some wonderful mosaics on the life of Alexander the Great down there and I did want to hear what the guide had to say
. When we went into the second room though, it wasn’t as interesting so I asked for the toilet and went back upstairs and then into the gift shop and didn’t go back to the tour. The second room was some pretty poor life sized dioramas of primitive man.
At the gift shop, I got a small Tajik doll in costume and also a CCCP (soviet) stamp and a Lenin pin. Then I went outside and waited. London was wandering around outside. Canada was in the gift shop. No idea where Mauritius was. A Pamir school arrived and spent a good deal of time outside taking photos before they eventually went into the museum.
Finally, a bit before 10, the group comes out and we load up and leave for the border. We drive about 1 ½ hours and we are at the border. We drag ourselves and our bags out of the vans and load up to go across the border leaving Tajikistan and entering Uzbekistan. Wales and Canada stop on the Tajik side to exchange some money. The rest of us just start walking to the first building inside the gates.
Almost as soon as we got into the gates, one of the wheels broke off my suitcase. Well, still have 3 so I can still trundle it along behind me
. Once inside the gates, it didn’t take us too long to check out of Tajikistan and then we are out the door and wandering across a parking lot to another building on the far side of the lot. Luckily, here we realized that Jamshed and Slava had made a mistake with the distance. It was not 3 kilometers from one building to the next but more like 300 meters. Thank goodness because there also weren’t any porters either. We saw one who was going the opposite way but he was the only one we saw ever.
Aussie couple actually stop at the duty free shop and buy some wine. Kind of wish I’d ducked in there too but was having trouble getting across the expanse with my bags that weren’t "heeling" well. When we got to the Tajikistan side, it took a few minutes for them to let us in because others were already in there trying to get through. As they open the door for me, the border guard helps me with my bag but he drags it up over the step which catches on the part of the suitcase that is holding one wheel on and it rips off the suitcase. Now down to two wheels and a tear in the suitcase.
There is a form to fill in even though we all have visas. Of course, there is only one place that has English so that we know how to fill in the form.
. AND we have to fill in two forms for some reason. It was really hot in the room and I was really sweating. Plus we had to put all our suitcases on a belt to go through a security X-ray. Mauritius gets through as do Wales and London and I’m next. The guard askes Wales if he had any drugs or guns. He didn’t ask me. I handed him my passport and two forms and he tells me they are soggy. I apologize and tell him I’m sweating. He kind of looks disgusted and says they feel like toilet paper. Yuck but he sort of thinks it is funny too. So he doesn’t ask me any more questions and stamps me into Uzbekistan.
I go out and join Wales and London. Mauritius has walked on ahead and comes back to tell us she thinks that she has seen our driver on the outside. At least someone with a small bus waved at her. So finally everyone comes through. We have one last place to get stamped and then walk out the gate and there is a long roadway to the main street. A man comes running across the grass and hops over the fence and tells us that he is our guide and to wait and the bus will come to us. That’s nice since my suitcase is totally not rolling now very well at all.
We have Surgat (? Spelling is wrong I’m sure) and our driver is Valentine who looks very Russian
. Surgat talks all the way from the border to Tashkent and gives us history of the country and the city and much more. He is doing exactly what Jamshed should have been doing all along.
We get to Hotel Uzbekistan and check in. At first, they put Canada and New York into the same room together but I step up and tell him, no, I am traveling with Canada and we are to be together so they change that and then that involves them having to change almost all the other rooms as well. Surgat is only here to get us checked into the hotel and to take care of any problems that are happening. AND that is it. Basically the tour is over even though, officially it doesn’t end until tomorrow morning. Many of us are leaving in the morning. Aussie couple is going back to China (they had done 3 weeks in China before coming and are doing a Yangtze cruise on the way home) so they are fine and go out to catch the hop on hop off bus around Tashkent.
Canada and Walking Aussie make plans to go to Bukhara together but suddenly we find out that W.A.’s visa expires on Friday AND so does New York’s!!! Neither one of them had checked the expiration date before they got the visa from The Visa Machine. Thank goodness I did because half the stuff on my application was incorrect so I checked very carefully. Surgat tells them that he will come back at 3 and take them to the consulate so that they can change their visa to a later date. Both had thought they had about 5 days in the country and now they only have 3.
While all this is going on, I had gone up to my room and one again, our room became meeting central
. I love that and thank Canada for being such a gregarious person that everyone wants to come and hang out with us. W.A. has to stay but London and Canada and I decide to walk over to Broadway which is across the park from the hotel and supposedly has the souvenir shops that everyone likes to see. Mauritius has gone off to do her own thing and go to the museum. New York and W.A. are in the lobby.
When we had arrived, the bellboys had asked us if we wanted to exchange money on the black-market rate. The rate you get at the bank is about 2600 som to $1. The black market rate was about 4900 som to $1. They were very hush hush about it and said they would bring our bags to the room and do it there. They wanted $100 to give us that rate and I didn’t need to exchange that much since I am just here overnight. So in the end, I got 4400 to $1 for about $40.
We walked over to Broadway and found a mall. Once inside, we found a suitcase place and they had a suitcase I could live with and thus leave my broken one behind and go home with a new one. We walked around the park first and looked at the paintings that were strewn all over for sale. There were also some people with old Soviet coins and medals and pins and such to be sold. Canada found a wonderful set of hockey medals that she could probably sell for a lot of money. A young girl who spoke English latched onto Canada and followed us all through the park in the shopping area. When we had finally reached the end of the line of sellers, a couple of young men asked me if they could interview me and see how I liked Uzbekistan. I said ok and they videoed me on their iPhone and asked questions like how did I like it here, why did I come. Canada is bargaining for her pins at the time, the young Uzbek girl is giggling at the interview as is London. When they are finished, they give me a small ceramic statue of a fat Uzbek man with a round loaf of bread. How nice.
We went back and bought my suitcase. I was afraid they were going to use the bank exchange rate because I was using dollars to buy it but she used the 4900 Uzbek black market rate so only paid about $122 for it rather than the over $150 it could have cost. I also found a T shirt with Bukhara, Khiva, Samarkand, and Tashkent on it but since I’ve been to those cities before, didn’t think it was cheating to get it. Only T shirt I couldn’t get was one in Tajikistan. Think I’ll just take one of my photos and make my own.
I was really too tired for dinner but it is our last night together. When we got back to the room, Walking Aussie came over and said she was totally screwed. They will be happy to give her a one day extension for $1500. So now she has to change all of her flights and that will also cost her about $1500. So she’s out a big wad of money no matter what. She hasn’t decided what exactly to do yet. We never saw New York again but she would have had the same options. She had been planning to go to Amsterdam and meet her boyfriend there but we think that had fallen through as the boyfriend couldn’t come or something. So no idea what she did.
As we went out for dinner, they were preparing for a huge wedding. For once, I was too tired to crash it and not sure they would have let us in with our jeans and stuff anyway. Two ladies dressed in what I can only explain as Louis IV French costumes (huge skirts, huge wigs) were standing outside the ballroom doors to greet the guests. They pirouetted and posed for us to take photos. Then the bride and groom arrived as we were leaving the hotel so we stopped for photos of them.
Mauritius has several places she knew of to go get dinner. She had wandered all over that afternoon and included going to the museum which is where the real souvenir shop was that would have been great with ceramics and all the wonderful stuff that I remembered from my last visit to Uzbekistan. I didn’t want to walk far and the others didn’t too so we walked about 5 blocks to the closest restaurant and ate there. Was pretty good but I’m still not recovered from the hotel with no water so couldn’t eat a lot.
Mauritius is leaving on a different flight than me but approximately the same time so I told her she could ride with me to the airport. We are leaving around 5:30 a.m. I almost set my alarm wrong! So a goodbye to all and we hope to stay in touch and then not a lot of sleep after I had repacked my new suitcase and such.
DAY 15 LEAVING UZBEKISTAN – GONE
Mauritius met me downstairs and when the driver arrived I told him she was coming with us. He didn’t seem to care. She also paid me what a taxi would have cost her which I didn’t think she needed to do but she insisted as arranging a ride ahead of time cost me a lot more. Then the dang driver didn’t go to the door but dropped us at the gate of the airport because he didn’t want to pay the fee to get into the parking lot. Jerk. So we are rolling our bags into the parking lot and putting them on the belt to get into the airport. Luckily it wasn’t hard to check in but there was no lounge open at that time. Sat with Mauritius for a bit but I wasn’t feeling good and I think she wanted to walk around so we said goodbye.
My flight was Turkish airlines and I had a change of planes in Istanbul. There wasn’t time to go to the lounge there either and they were starting boarding when I got to my gate and they also have no separate boarding for business class. Don’t really like Turkish airlines anymore as the flight attendants on both my flights were more interested in having fun with each other than with taking care of their people. Oh well. Home at last after quite an adventurous trip and 2 days before I leave for Dahab for diving. Yea!
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