Last day in Uzbekistan

It’s our last day in Uzbekistan and tonight we fly to Seoul. Yesterday we saw everything which was of interest so we can relax today. Tim was afraid that he left not enough time for Tashkent, but that was not the case. We rest, eat breakfast, bath and play some games before we go and view a mausoleum down the road.

The Sheikh Hovendi at-Tahur Complex dates back to the 14th century, but you don’t have to be a builder to see that the buildings which stand before us today are only a couple of decades old. So we do a quick tour of the tombes and sit on a bench in the shadow and enjoy the peace and quiet of the area.

Afterwards we head to the restaurant near our apartment which had excellent seating and room for the children to run around without bothering the other guests too much. We eat soup, pasta and more ice cream.

So recapping our Uzbekistan experience, it’s a beautiful country with some amazing sights. Travelling throughout the country is relatively easy, the food is not the best for vegans but most of it isn’t poisonous and it’s very cheap. Fourteen days was a bit long, in eleven or twelve days you can probably do it all, but the children liked the slower tempo.

We eat early dinner to shift our clock to the Korean time zone and leave at 18.00 with the taxi to the airport. Here the stress begins as we have to get everything out of the country which we took in and the restrictions are strict. We make it through the first 3 security checks to the check in desk, here we have to deal with the fact that Olga and Cleo got a new passport since we bought the tickets and hide our large and far too heavy carry-on bags. Luckily Tim has backup photos of the old passports in the cloud so we clear the check in.

Next obstacle is customs as we didn’t receive all the tourist registration forms by our host’s. You need one for every night spent in the country. Luckily he is not interested in those and we make it to the final hurdle, the fourth security check for our carry-on luggage which is far too heavy and has enough lithium batteries in it to power a household. This also doesn’t seem to interest them so we cleared all hurdles and can sort of relax with two tired children for 2 hours until our flight leaves. Next time we shouldn’t go to a country which scores 12/100 on the freedom scale. Still have to take off and transfer in Beijing, another country low on this list.

See you on the other side!