Goodbye Ruslan

Around midnight Anna made a little speech to thank Ruslan, our guide and we all rushed to bed to be up at 5 to 4 Uzbek time. Luckily we had allowed plenty of leeway for all the
time consuming formalities of a police state. We had to show our passport and tickets before going through a scanner outside the airport, then numerous security scanners within it. Another fun bit was the Money certificates - the stamped one saying how much we had on entry, and the new one with what we are leaving with. The young woman wondered if I'd not spent anything as I still had £20. I explained I spent my husband's and she said I was a happy woman. Then at passport - again - the chap wanted all my slips saying where we'd stayed - he looked at our plastic bag of them and gave them back. Eventually we were on our flight to Istanbul where we had a dash from one end of the airport to the other for our Heathrow flight. We were kept in a holding queue for over half an hour. We had a 4 hour wait for our Newcastle flight but by the time we'd changed terminals and gone through various securities, we didn't have long to wait really.

Our flight was on time - Mr C and I slept before it even took off!
It was bliss to get into our own bed after 22 hours on the go, which came after a day travelling and 4 hours sleep. This full-on schedule is not for the faint-hearted!