Different, but probably better! We decide to go through to the departure lounge for a bite to eat. Bad mistake. Heathrow Terminal 2 seems to be undergoing a major rebuild. A new shopping mall presses in from all sides, attempting to relieve us of all our travelling money, but the catering facilities are not yet complete. What there is appears largely closed and almost sold out. So much for one of the world's busiest airports. I doubt if Tashkent airport will be as bad.
We board the brightly painted Uzbekistan Airways Airbus on time at 22:45. The clean, modern, bright interior seems just like any other major airline. The excellent "In-flight" magazine holds a surprise though - a half page advert for Internet Access in Tashkent! All my preconceptions about the backwardness of Central Asia are proving badly ill-founded, and I'm beginning to feel this trip will be more educational than I had thought. No doubt the in-flight catering will bring me back to earth.
Wrong! An excellent dinner of curried lamb (choice of lamb, chicken, or vegetarian) is up to restaurant standard, and the cabin staff are cheerful and efficient. Quite a lot of room too, so I drop off to sleep looking forward to breakfast. I should have stayed asleep! Breakfast consists of cheese, a half slice of white bread and butter, two shortcake biscuits, and a Danish. The tea is cold. Dawn is better. The moon seems to float below us like a reflection in misty blue water, and the horizon is an angry purple, as though night is furious at being displaced. It makes up for breakfast, and even compensates for the fact that there is no duty-free trolley on this plane. At full light, below us is endless desert, like sea-rippled sand.
As we come in to land at Tashkent, the landscape is definitely foreign. We have to change planes here at Tashkent Airport.
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