Tashkent

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The Police
There are uniforms everywhere in Tashkent, police seem to stop every other car asking for papers. There are police everywhere on the Metro stopping people. I was a prime target but only got asked for papers once, as soon as he worked out I wasn't American he lost interest in my passport for some reason.

Just as I had trouble filling my time in Tashkent, I'm going to have trouble filling this page about Tashkent!

It was easier to fly into Tashkent from Bishkek despite them not being that far apart. All road and train links go via Kazakhstan, and that would mean a multiple entry Kazakh visa, and that meant more paper work - so a single entry Kazakh visa and a fifty minute flight it was.

I took a taxi from the airport in a very interesting car, it was large and rusty, but had no distinguishing marks, so I have no idea of the make. Normally airports are situated miles from the city they serve. Imagine my surprise on arriving at my hotel 5 mins after getting into the taxi. I swear I could have walked from the airport it was that close to the city centre!

The Clock Tower

About the most architecturally interesting building in Tashkent is the Hotel Uzbekistan, and that's saying something because it's a soviet concrete block. What makes it interesting is it's size. It occupies an entire city block on it's own.

There is a huge open air market to the north of city, and I took the metro out there. A metro so deep that it can take longer to take the escalators down and then up at your destination, than it can to travel between stations. The market is a sprawling affair selling just about anything you might want. Fresh bread to clothes, mobile phones to sweets - and very popular it is, half the population of Uzbekistan seemed to be there when I was wandering around.