Undersleeping in Uzbekistan

[kileskus]

Tashkent - Khiva - Samarkand - Bukhara (and some places in between)

"What ails you?" "Ah, my foot still throbs."
"Gout?" "The wound through which a bullet ran."
And at once the heart aches with longing
For the golden light of Turkestan.
- Nikolay Gumilyov, 'Turkestan Generals'. (Translation mine, meaning mostly preserved.)

Turkestan is an historic term used for a region in Asia inhabited by Turkic peoples that we now call Central Asia - the 5 Stans and Xinjiang. Gumilyov's lines were less about Turkestan itself so much as about the grit of Russian imperialist expansion contrasted against the frivolity of Moscow/Petersburg high society, but I find it evocative of the mystique of the region too.

This is my first major international trip in 18 months. In that time I've been dealing with personal and career setbacks; I moved to New Zealand for a 'fresh start' and learned that you can't run away from your problems if you are the problem.

So when I managed to get three weeks of leave, my first inclination was to use it for life admin. Do my taxes, add to the CV, read more Nietzsche. Travel was not on the list. Travel has, perhaps slanderously to admit on AFF, lost some of its shine for me.

Peer pressure made me book this trip: colleagues asking, "Where are you going for your leave?", to which "to the shops whenever the fridge is empty" would stick in my throat.

Part of me wanted to go back to Melbourne to drink with friends, get caught in a storm, and see if Town Hall station still smelled new. I hated Melbourne when I first went there for uni - the crowded streets, the PTV delays, the weather. But Melbourne has stubbornly become home to me; home is the place the you keep wanting to run away from, and then miss once you've left.

So this was how I decided to spend my leave: visit Uzbekistan, drop by Melbourne, and throughout this wrangle with the ATO, retool the CV, and read more Nietzsche. And hopefully re-ignite some passion for travel.

The final itinerary: WLG-AKL-JFK-LHR for 2-day stopover and then STN-SAW-OSS. Overland to Uzbekistan. 12 days there total, with many early morning starts. On the way back, TAS-CAN-MEL and then finally WLG. Essentially an eastward round-the-world trip, a bit of Phileas Fogging sans the hot air balloons.

I aim to do this report live, am posting this from my gate in WLG.

 

[RooFlyer]

Already my 'trip report of the month'

 

[Mtchrs]

I visited Uzbekistan in May this year so will be following.
Don’t miss the museum in Nukus, that was my highlight.

 

[kileskus]

WLG - AKL - JFK - LHR
JQ258, QF3, AA100 BA180

I booked this as a Classic award ticket for 64,000 QFF points in Y. There was availability to upgrade the QF3 sector to business but I'd burned most of my points on trans-Tasman J the past year thinking I wasn't going to fly internationally for a while. Ah the regrets.

Wellington is my nearest city with an international airport. It has the dubious distinction of being one of the windiest cities in the world, and these gusts congregate at the train station like children around an ice cream truck in a Perth summer. I've had patients who've fractured humeruses and femurs being blown over outside the railway terminus.

It was rainy and windy when I arrived, but the ground picked no fights with my bones. The plane to AKL was delayed due to bad weather in CHC. Check-in at AKL was then a bemusing process where the agent consulted a senior colleague for a long time and they both came back, asked if I had an ETA, and then started flipping through my passport pages looking for it.

As a plebeian QFF silver I had linked a lounge pass to be able to use the AKL business lounge, but given the flight delay and the check-in kerfuffle only had a few minutes so decided on a quick shower.



The suites are tastefully designed, but without an extractor fan it felt like a sauna by the end. They provide a stool too so I guess some people might sit down and use it as a steam room after. Boarding was called while I was in the shower, and then a dramatic last call while I was walking to the gate, 45 minutes before departure.

And then we sat... for 2 hours. Apparently 40 pax had had their incoming flight from MEL delayed so we waited for them, and then engineers came onboard as one of the toilets wasn't flushing. By the time we kicked off, missing my connection was a foregone conclusion.

Sleep on flights to me either comes early or never comes. This time it was the latter. I watched In the Grey, with the usual Guy Ritchie snappy montages and non-diegetic audiotrack, good action at the end but is slow to get going. I read a bit of Thus Spake Zarathustra next, and then an article entitled 'Devonian standard boundaries within the shelf belt of the Siberian Old Continent and in the South Tien Shan', as research for one of the places I'll be visiting if the plans of mice and men do not go awry.

At JFK the Qantas app showed I'd been rebooked for a later BA flight. Qantas ground staff gave me an express connection pass and as I am HLO it was 55 mins from disembarking to arriving at the gate, comfortable but not comfortable enough to check out the Centurion lounge for a drink that I badly needed by then.

The BA safety video is a riot. The dinner service was definitely up there as one of the better economy meals I've had, with a flavourful chicken and mash and some American comforts: a suspicious looking orange cheddar that actually tasted like real cheese, and a fluffy key lime pudding.




I found this notice on the back of the suspicious orange cheese amusing.

Am in central London now. 36 hours without sleep isn't the longest I've gone (thanks, night shifts) but definitely not rediscovering the joys of travel yet.